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Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts

Monday, January 03, 2011 5 comments

White Pickups, Episode 68

Contents

Monday, January 30, 2012

“Have you looked outside yet?”

Cody stood in the door, giving Tim a bleary look. He shook his head and pulled the thick green blanket tighter around his sweatsuit. “You wanna come in? It got cold again last night.”

Tim stepped in, holding a thermos. Cody’s place smelled of wood smoke and inadequate bathing — like every other occupied townhouse — and he had a warm-looking nest in front of the fireplace. “I brought us some coffee,” he said, “if you want some.”

“Sure. I’ll get us a couple of cups. You can have the recliner if you — holy…” Cody trailed off and went to the window overlooking the pool, dodging the bedding. The blanket slid off his thin shoulders and piled itself behind his ankles.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Tim grinned, watching Cody watch the morning sun sparkle on the ice. Last night’s rain had turned to freezing rain, and ice covered anything it could cling to, nearly a half-inch thick. Water and ice shards dripped where the sun shone.

“Yeah. I bet the power would be out if it was on to begin with.”

Tim laughed. “Yeah. Fortunately, there’s no big trees around the townhouses. We’ll have to take a ride — or maybe a walk — through the subdivision after lunch, just to see if any trees are down.”

“And need cutting up for firewood. People will like that, anyway.”

“Yeah. And if any houses are damaged, we might as well tear them down too.”

“Yow. I didn’t think about that.”

“At least if power lines are down, we won’t have to worry about them being live.”

“Hm… what about the roads?” Cody picked up his blanket and wrapped it around himself again, then ducked into the kitchen and returned with two coffee cups. “If anything’s down out there, we need to clean up some of it just so we can get around. But anything that messes with the trucks… I don’t want to take that away.”

“I don’t think people will care about the trucks if they get easy firewood, Cody.” Tim filled the cups. “Hey, you got any creamer?”

“Just that crappy powdered stuff.”

“Better than nothing. Sugar too, if you have any.”

“Yeah.” Cody retrieved the requested items and two spoons from the kitchen, handed Tim the creamer and poured a little sugar in his own cup. “When it comes right down to it, I guess I’d rather have a warm apartment too.” He nodded at the bedding. “I sleep in front of the fireplace most nights. Me and Sondra talked about doing that when… you know.” He looked at his feet for a moment, then looked up and smiled. “But we managed to keep warm in the bedroom.”

“I’ll bet.” They traded the cream and sugar. “So — how are you doing now?”

Cody sloshed his coffee, sending a little over the side. “Dammit.” He watched the spillover drip to the carpet, and wiped a hand on his grimy sweat pants. “Okay, most of the time. During the day, anyway. At least when I’ve got something to do, then I don’t have to think about it. Nights aren’t so good.” He trailed off and looked down again, then sipped at his coffee.

“Did you give any more thought to moving in with some other people? You’d be welcome at my place, even if there’s not a lot of room.”

“Thanks, but… well, you know about Caitlin. I keep hoping she’ll get over me, sooner or later. That whole thing is awkward.”

“Heh, yeah. People have been joking all along that she could be my daughter.” Tim flicked his red hair. “Especially since we’re in the same townhouse now.”

“Hey, she’s not all bad. She’s one of my best students in skate class. She’s probably trying to impress me, but she pays attention and works on her moves outside of class. That’s impressive by itself.”

Tim laughed. “Yeah, she was showing me she could ‘ollie’ — is that what you call it? — over a shoe last week.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean. She can ollie higher than the other kids, because she works at it. I was thinking, when it gets warmer, I’d like to take them over to the skate park. We’d probably have to spend half a day cleaning up all the leaves and junk, but maybe we could take some camping gear and spend a couple of days. I could show you a couple of stunt-bike moves if you wanted to come too.”

“Might be fun.” They sipped their coffee and watched the ice.


“Well, the bad news is that we gotta clean up this mess,” Johnny told the cutting crew he’d gathered after lunch; they stood looking at a big oak that the ice brought down into the street. The air was full of odd sounds: a near-constant whisper of dripping water, the patter and tinkle of falling ice, an occasional crack-hiss as another limb — or entire tree — succumbed to the weight of the ice. “The good news… this’ll make plenty of firewood, even if it is kinda green!” He picked up a chainsaw from one of the bike trailers. “Let’s start with the branches.”

“Looks like it’s gonna roll once we get workin’ on it,” said Cody, pointing at the boughs on the street, bent under the weight of the trunk.

“Good eye. Which way, do you think?”

“I dunno. Probably it’ll roll toward whoever’s cutting those branches underneath. Murphy’s Law.”

“Yeah, but Murphy has logic on his side for a change. Too bad we don’t have a tractor with an end-loader, we could lift it right up when the time comes and there wouldn’t be a problem. But we’ll make do with the jacks. Let’s get started — Tim said there’s at least two more like this inside the fence, and more out on the roads. We’ll be cuttin’ for a few days. Or weeks.”


The Laurel Room was well lit for supper; a day of bright sun had charged all the batteries nearly to capacity. “There’s stuff down pretty much everywhere,” said Tim, hands wrapped around a soup mug. “The trucks are getting around it, but it’s really slowing ’em down. We need to get at least some of it cut and out of the way, just so we can get around ourselves.”

“Well, at least we’re set for the rest of the winter,” said Johnny. “What we’re cutting inside the fence should get us all through March. What’s outside will give us a head start on next winter.”

“What are we gonna do about all those power lines?” asked Janet. “They’re down all over the place!”

“Not like they’re live or anything,” Palmer grinned. “We can just pull ’em off the road and outta the way. Maybe we’ll think of something to use ’em for later.”

“Yeah, whatever wood we cut up out there we can leave to dry too,” said Cody. “Maybe it’ll be a little lighter when we bring it in later.”

“If other people come around and see wood stacked up, they’ll know someone’s here. Or they could just take it themselves,” Cleve warned.

“So? Not everyone out there wants us dead. Rob knew we were here all along and he just moved in last week.”

“We can’t assume. Yeah, I know, we can’t assume the other way either.”

“Hey Palmer,” said Stefan. “What do you think we’d use those downed power lines for?”

“Hey, people used to steal phone lines just to sell for the copper. We could probably use it for wire — especially if we get more people in here and have to start running power into houses.”

“We could use the wires we got now,” said Cody. “But we already got all the solar panels from that place. If we get more people in here, we’ll have to come up with another way to make more electricity. If we decide we want it.”

“Windmills,” said Johnny. “And of course we want it. If we got enough juice that we could afford to waste some — hell, maybe we could air-condition the Laurel Room come summer!”

“Sooner or later,” Jason said, shaking his head, “we’ll have to build new homes that don’t need so much heating and cooling. I always wanted to try building a straw-bale house, but building codes around here didn’t allow it. But who’s gonna enforce those codes now?”

“The lack of straw bales?”

“Grass will be growing all over the place, especially where we don’t want it. We just have to bale it up, somehow.”

continued…

Monday, December 27, 2010 2 comments

White Pickups, Episode 67

Contents

From the diary of Ben Cho, winter–spring 2012

Things seemed to get a little better (except for Cody) after the bashers — maybe the universe decided it had shit on us enough for a while. We had an early warm spell, unusually long and dry for mid-winter, and people stopped complaining about being cold for a little while and started wondering if global warming had hit a runaway phase as some feared. The community grew a little — there were other people nearby, and curiosity (and running low on canned food) finally drove them to see who we were. Even better, two other women joined Sara in pregnancy, and Rita was happy to be the pre-natal nurse. We had occasional sickness and minor injuries for her to deal with, but (except for Sondra) nothing she couldn’t handle. One of the former homeless women moved in with Cleve, and everyone had to rib them about it because he’d arrested her back Before. The rest of Patterson’s crew started to truly become part of us as well. We had Cody on suicide watch for a while, but he made it. He ended up building a cairn of sorts over Sondra’s grave, with help from Patterson and several others.

The long dry spell got us a bit nervous about our water situation again. We’d had enough rain to live out of our rain barrels up to that point, but we were getting pretty worried before we got more rain at the end of January. It got us thinking about droughts and how we’d deal with them…



Part V
Water Shed


Sunday, January 29, 2012

Lanterns and oil lamps, hung over the card tables, augmented the dim light from the window over the pool. Outside, rain continued to pour down, with an occasional rumble of thunder.

“I guess I can live with this,” said Cody, sorting Tina’s pass into his hand. He laid his cards face-down on the table.

“It has to be better than what you gave me!” Sara grimaced.

“Yeah, this is an improvement.” Cody smiled and flipped the two of clubs into the center of the table. Sara sighed and played the ace that Cody had given her. Tim and Tina followed with the jack and king respectively.

“Aw!” Cleve groaned from the next table, “that pass was sloppier than this weather!” Kelly gave him a wicked grin. “At least the rain is doing us some good.”

“Let’s see who’s got the queen,” said Sara, leading the jack of spades. Tim sighed and played the queen; Tina and Cody played lower spades.

“Hey guys,” Lily called from the top of the steps, “they wanted me to ask how long the batteries are good for.”

“Hard to say,” said Johnny, taking the first trick at his table, with Cleve, Kelly, and Elly. “Even with the clouds and rain, the panels are still giving us a little power. It’s not enough to keep the batteries charged and all our stuff going, but you’re going to stop at four anyway. What are you guys playing?”

“Me and Ashley and Caitlin are playing Dance Fever. The boys are playing Barnstormer on the Playstation. Why do we have to stop at four? We can’t do anything outside.”

“We can’t let the batteries run too low. We have to have enough light for this evening, and we don’t know if it’ll clear up tomorrow or not.”

“God,” said Tina, playing the ace of hearts on Tim’s middle diamond lead, “I’d about kill for even a half-assed weather forecast!”

“Hey, Stef’s leg told us the rain was coming,” Rita grinned, standing behind Johnny as he dropped the queen of spades on a grumbling Cleve. “Now if it could tell us when it will stop…”

“I miss the Internet,” said Johnny. “It was made for a day like this. Just stay inside and surf. Besides, you could pull up radar and see if the rain was going away anytime soon.”

“Funny,” said Cody, “I don’t miss the net as much as I thought I would. You know what I miss? Going to my job at Breakbeat. I never thought I’d miss working!”

“I miss hot showers,” said Kelly; the women, and several men, voiced agreement. “It might smell better around here if Cody could get one!” Cody hunched his shoulders but otherwise pretended not to hear; Tina gave her daughter the glare.

“Running water, period,” said Cleve. If we hadn’t got this rain, we’d have been in trouble in a day or so.”

“Cheese!” Caitlin called from the top of the stairs; Lily must have replaced her on the dance pads. “It made me fat, but I love it!”

“You’re not so fat now though!” Sara called back, making Caitlin grin. “But yeah, cheese. And dairy products in general. We’re about out of that nasty powdered milk, even.”

“Not to mention beef and chicken,” Johnny laughed. “We need to round us up some livestock! Yeah, the venison is okay, especially what we smoked, but there ain’t enough fat in it to make a good burger with.”

“I don’t suppose you know how to train a herd dog?” asked Tim.

“Well… I tried once. Let’s just say the results were mixed.” Johnny laughed at the memory. “He wasn’t much of a cow dog, but he’d keep the neighbor’s free-range chickens rounded up!”

“Speaking of chickens,” said Elly, “I’d love me a big ol’ plate of eggs! Over-easy or soft scrambled, with a hunk of sausage and a side of hash browns!”

“Careful, babe,” grinned Cleve, “I could put on a couple of pounds just thinkin’ about that kind of food!” Everyone laughed.

“Sondra said she was good, as long as the coffee and chocolate held out,” said Cody, with a rare smile. “I always knew when it was time to hide, she’d be digging into her private chocolate stash.” He sighed and studied his cards, finally playing a middle diamond.

Kelly broke the silence. “Cheese… sausage… God, I’d love a pizza about now. Even one of those crappy cheap frozen ones!”

“Plenty of ex-frozen ones around,” said Cody, “but they’re probably all rotten by now.” He wrinkled his nose. “Remember how much it stank when we cleaned out the Saver-Mart and the other places? And set those dumpsters on fire?”

“Yeah,” said Tina. “That’s one of those things we used to call ‘hidden dividends’ at Maxcom. In other words, stuff that had to be done but we didn’t see the benefits. We’d have seen all sorts of problems if we let them go, though.” She led the two of hearts. “If we’d just left all that crap in there to rot, we’d probably be overrun with rats by now.”

“Aw, man,” Cody said, playing the jack of hearts. “Yeah, good point. But what about all the places we haven’t been to? As far as we know, we’re the only group of any size out there.”

Sara looked at him across the tables. “If we made it, other people must have.”

continued…

Tuesday, December 21, 2010 4 comments

White Pickups, Episode 66b

Contents

“I need to know something,” Cody told Patterson as they shoveled, filling in Sondra’s grave. Her final resting place was in the vacant lot behind the townhouses; Cody thought she would have wanted to be close to the place she’d called their home. He also insisted on helping with the burial, although he had paused for a long last look at the freezer before it disappeared under the clay.

“What?” Patterson was certain what — he’d heard what Cody was about to say many times over the years — but knew better than to say so.

Cody didn’t look up. “You talk all the time about your god and how he loves us,” he said, pushing a big lump of dirt in. “If he really loves us, why did he let Sondra get killed? Why not me instead?”

Patterson paused for a moment. “I’m just a man, Cody,” he said at last. “I don’t know His plan, or how this all fits into it. But I do know He loves us, enough to let us go our own ways and even mess up His plans from time to time. And he even loved the men who came at us, even if they’d been led astray by false teaching.”

Cody pushed his shovel into the dirt, then stopped and looked at Patterson for the first time. “Huh. Those last two, talking to each other… they said the same thing. ‘False teaching. Led astray’.”

“Too bad — if they’d lived, perhaps they would have repented.”

“Nuh-uh. Next thing, they were planning to slip in and wipe us out. I heard ’em.” Cody give the preacher a defiant look.

“You’re right, of course. I knew of Carlton Worleigh — he’d written his name inside the cover of the Bible you brought me — and I knew he was still abroad in the land, before the Truckalypse. But his…” Patterson shook his head. “His margin notes were bad enough, but he had gone so far to strike through those passages that didn’t support his twisted beliefs. I don’t use the word desecration often, but I can’t think of a better word to describe what he did to that beautiful old book.”

“What are you gonna do with it?” Cody looked genuinely curious.

“I’ll burn it, with prayer and fasting. It’s the best thing, I think. And by the way, you did what you thought was the best thing at the time with those two men as well. You avenged Sondra, and you may well have saved some more lives. I won’t judge the rightness or wrongness of that, it’s done and over. But I want to go back to the other thing you said: why not you instead?” He gestured at the grave, now half-filled. “If you could change places, would you want Sondra to feel what you’re feeling now? She would have, you know.”

Cody scooped up a shovel-full of dirt, took a deep shuddering breath, and threw it in. “No. But better that than her…” he looked down. “She would have gotten over me, sooner or later.”

“And you won’t? What are you going to do? Do you know what Sondra would want you to do?”

Cody stabbed his spade into the dirt pile with a chunk, then crossed his arms to glare at Patterson. A gust of wind blew his hair over his eyes, and he made no attempt to push it away. At last he gave a long sigh and shook the hair away from his face. “She’d want me to get over it too, I guess. I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to do that, though.”

“Neither do I, Cody. But you’re making the right start. You were there for her at the end, you spoke at her funeral. And you’re here to make sure she’s laid to rest properly. Whatever happens, you won’t regret doing these things.

“Listen a minute,” Patterson continued; Cody paused, one hand on the shovel. “Delphinia… sees things, sometimes. She has a gift, I think, and I fear it may have driven her mad. She calls you ‘Father of Nations,’ and says you’re destined to be a legend —”

“Some father, lettin’ the mother die before she could have our kids.”

“— but legends are about nothing more than ordinary people who stepped up and did what had to be done.”

Cody shook his head and returned to shoveling, saying nothing for a long time. Patterson worked alongside, waiting for him to finish thinking. Finally, “I never signed up for this legend crap. All I ever wanted was to be me.”

“But if you’re to be a legend, you are signed up. For as long as you want to be yourself.”

Cody shoveled up the last of the dirt and poured it on the grave, now a low mound. “Yeah? So it comes back to the same question: what the hell do I do now?” He patted the mound with the flat of his shovel. “I guess first thing is to get some rocks from that stone place across the freeway and make some kind of monument. Some cement, if it ain’t all gone hard by now.”

“Continue to honor her memory, Cody. But don’t let it turn into an obsession. I’ll help you lay the stones, if you wish. Just let me know.”

“Yeah.”

continued…

Monday, December 20, 2010 2 comments

White Pickups, Episode 66a

Contents

Thursday, January 12, 2012

The banging noise filtered through the sound effects of the game, and just wouldn’t go away. Cody finally hit PAUSE, pulled on a pair of sweat pants, and went to see what was what.

Tim, Sara, Tina, and Kelly stood at the front door of his old house. “What the fuck?”

“Sondra’s funeral,” Tina said. “We thought you would want to pay your last respects.”

“To your wife,” Kelly added; Sara elbowed her.

“Aw, shit,” Cody said. “Yeah. I’ll be right out. Come on in. Or something.” He walked away, leaving the door open.

Tim shrugged, then walked in and gestured for the others to follow him. It smelled a little musty inside, but better than most of the houses in the subdivision. The others sat on the couch; Tim walked back to the bedroom.

“Hang on,” Cody said through the closed door, “almost ready.” Tim waited; Cody finally opened the door. His black jeans perfectly matched the black t-shirt; the shirt had a picture of a little boy holding a huge power plug, with the caption “SKILLET - COMATOSE.” The clothes Cody had worn the night before were piled at the foot of the bed with uncounted wet wipes. All looked bloody.

Tim refrained from commenting and looked at the screen; it showed an aerial view of a farm and several biplanes frozen in mid-air up ahead. “You playing something?”

Barnstormer. It was Sondra’s favorite,” Cody said. “I just can’t get into the shooters right now. Not that I’m getting into this one, either.” The 8/8 in the corner of the display confirmed Cody’s assessment.

“Yeah. I can imagine.”

“No you can’t.” Cody gave Tim a defiant look.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Tim said, suppressing the urge to mention Rebecca, “but that’s not the point. Sondra deserves a proper send-off, and that means you have to be there. For her.”

“F— yeah.” Cody turned off the display, then the Playstation.

“Where did you get the console?”

“Neighbor kid had it,” Cody said. “He lived a few doors down. Not like he needs it anymore.”

“What about the generator?”

“One of those camping generators we had laying around. It’s enough to run the game, not much more, so I pretty much forgot about it until last night. Let me go shut it off.”


Reverend Patterson stood over Sondra’s body, wrapped in blankets and plastic packaging tape, lying in the open freezer that was now her coffin. “I’ve never conducted a funeral under these conditions,” he said, “but I’ll do what I can to honor the memory of our fallen hero.” Everyone in Laurel waited for him to continue.

Cody stood. “I’ll say a couple of things, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”

Cody walked to the front and looked down at Sondra. He caressed her cold cheek, speaking too quietly for most to hear. “Sondra was… when the trucks came, and there were only three of us, I thought I was happy. The people at school who hated me, because I wasn’t like them, were gone. My mom and dad wanted me to be a different person, and they were gone too. Finally, I thought I could be who I wanted to be and not have to worry about anyone else.

“Then Sondra came. I don’t know what it was anymore… maybe it was the way she looked at me that kept me looking at her. But I knew one thing: I was in love. And she loved me back…” his face crumpled for a moment; he rubbed his eyes and continued. “And then I knew I was happy. I had a place here, and I had someone who loved me the way I am. What more could anyone want?

“But I guess… I guess there were people who hated the idea that someone might be happy. Or just not like them. They’re gone, but they took Sondra with them. And now… now I… I don’t know what I’m gonna do with myself.” He sank to the pavement and sobbed.

The preacher reached down and laid a hand on Cody’s shoulder. “Sondra was a hero, in the old sense of the word — her courage was superhuman, and some might say her ability with a gun was also superhuman. But she was also a hero in the sense that she was the one who saved the day for our community. Not just yesterday, but in the first days after chaos swallowed most of the human race.

“But there was more to Sondra than that. We honor her today not just for her heroic deeds, but for how she loved this community — and especially the love she had for her young groom. Had she lived, she would have no doubt been the mother of a new nation — as this young man may be destined to be the father of nations. So today, we consign the remains of Sondra Lucado-Sifko to the earth, along with the weapons of her enemies as befits a hero fallen in battle, but her soul has risen to join her Maker… and her memory will be before us, always.”

Cody stood. “Amen,” he muttered, and shuffled back to the others.

Delphinia worked her way from the back of the circle and approached the coffin. Her hood hid her face, but her slumped shoulders betrayed her sorrow. She looked down at Sondra and caressed her face, brushing back a wisp of hair a stray gust of wind had pushed out of place.

Caitlin, standing with her Jenn-mom, watched the Strange Lady. She looks so sad, she thought. I thought she didn’t like Sondra. But… I’m sad too. She must have been special, for Cody to love her like he did.

Delphinia removed her hood and ball cap; her golden hair cascaded to her shoulders. She looked at Cody, and he was lost in her eyes — a deep blue that could drown the world. Without realizing, he found himself approaching Sondra’s makeshift coffin again.

“Sondra,” she said, still looking at Cody across the freezer, “you were the first wife of the Father of Nations. Even though you bore no children, your deeds, your love for this young man, and his love for you, will be remembered through the centuries to come. Your story will be the root of legends for the new age.” Her voice rose, carrying to them all. “Thus says the Oracle: remember Sondra, all of you. Tell your stories to each other, and let them grow as stories do. Men of this place, remember her strength and bravery, that you do not claim such qualities as yours alone. Women of this place, do you likewise and strive to be like her. All of you, remember her love and devotion. Thus will you honor her memory.” She paused and looked down; Cody thought she was finished, but then she raised her face to the skies and sang. As at their wedding, it was breathtaking: a pure and clear soprano soared over them. Again, many swore that they heard it accompany itself.

True and brave, our fallen one,
Her final race has now been run
Take heart, all you who stand and mourn:
Her spirit has rose unto the Son.

She has gone, and we are left
We all mourn, we stand bereft
Our love, our light is gone away,
Taken by the cruelest theft.

In Heaven with her Father, dwells
Our fallen one, whose deeds we’ll tell
And as we mourn our loss below
We know with her soul all is well.

Rejoice, all people! Lift your face!
Our Sondra’s in a better place!
We shall see her once again,
When on Earth we’ve run our race!

continued…

Monday, December 13, 2010 2 comments

White Pickups, Episode 65

Contents

The Bobs tended a small fire in a corner of the vacant lot across from a QuickFill. A warm front came in with the night, but the air was damp and “warm” is a relative term in January. A small hillock sheltered them from the wind and direct observation, and the surrounding weeds gave them at least an illusion of cover. Neither spoke for a long time in the dark. A colony of peepers in a nearby creek or pond began singing of springtime. The fire popped and hissed, smoke smelling of treated wood and trash. The wind, perhaps, made a scuffing noise — a noise one could imagine made by a black-clad youth, carrying a loaded pistol and a mind for vengeance — but imagination wasn’t the Bobs’ strong suit. In fact, Jared was the only one of them who’d had much imagination at all, for what good it did him.

“Did we do the right thing?” one of them said finally.

“You mean not staying and getting shot down like the others?”

“Yeah.”

A long pause. The peepers sang. Finally, “Yeah. We did. That guy was nothing he said he was.”

“False prophet.”

“Led astray.” The silence took over again, broken only by the peepers.

“Someone on their side knew what they were doing,” the first one said after a while.

“Jesus, yeah. Sucked us right in.”

“And that skinny queer again! Where’d he learn to shoot like that?”

“At least I got that sumbitch.”

“Yeah. Y’know, I was thinking: they prob’ly figure we’re halfway to Oklahoma by now. We could slip in and take ’em tonight. Go big, or go home?”

“We have to find some ammo first. Maybe tomorrow night. With their sharpshooter gone, we might have half a chance. I wonder who he was.”

She was my wife, you worthless fucks.”


“No!” Cleve rasped at the others, gathered at the gate. Several people had heard gunshots toward the freeway, and Cody was nowhere to be found. “Stay here! Those other two could be frickin’ anywhere. If Cody’s out there, Tim and I will find him!”

“It’s dark!” Kelly looked wild-eyed. “We can help look, they’ll never see us!”

“Hush, child,” Elly said; Kelly glared at her. “Cleve’s right. We get a bunch of folks runnin’ ’round out there, Cleve and Tim won’t know who’s us. Those bad men just have to stick together, and they can shoot anything else that moves. Who knows what’s goin’ on out there? You gotta know how to not be seen —”

“Sssh!” Tim hissed. Under the wind, they could hear a rhythmic clacking noise, approaching the gate. “For God’s sake, get out of sight!” Cleve and Elly slipped into the shadows along the guardhouse; the others dived into the bushes on either side behind the gate. The noise drew closer, then stopped.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said. “It’s me.”

“Shit!” Johnny gasped, standing. “You okay, Cody? Where the hell were you?”

Cody joined them, carrying an armload of guns; his jacket and face were covered with something, hard to see in the wavering flashlights. “Takin’ out the trash,” he said. “These are Sondra’s trophies. I want them buried with her.” He laid the guns at their feet.

“Cody!” Tina snapped. “What happened?”

“There were two left,” he said. “I took care of them.” He glared at the others, challenging them.

“What?” Kelly gasped. “You could have been killed too!”

“So what?”

Kelly gaped for a moment. Tim rescued her: “Where were they?”

“I figured they’d go back toward the freeway, so I just hiked up the road until I smelled smoke. You know all that lumber across from the QuickFill?” There was no humor in Cody’s smile. “We left the barricade out there in the vacant lot, and tossed the busted ramp over there too. That’s where the assholes were camping out, in the far corner. I kinda figured they would be. They were using the lumber for firewood. I heard ’em talking about getting some more ammo and coming back tomorrow night, they weren’t paying attention to nothing else.” He smirked. “They thought Sondra was a dude. So I took out the trash, and I was gonna dump ’em in a truck, but they would have just dropped through. I laid ’em out where they were, puked my guts out, then I got a shovel from that gravel place up the street and threw some dirt over ’em. Then I pissed on their grave.”

“Cody!” Tina gasped.

“What the hell, they’re dead anyway,” Cody said. “Like they had a right to say anything. I’ll get rid of the other assholes the same way, so don’t go lookin’ for them in the morning.” He turned away, then turned back. “Well, I guess that’s it. After I’m done, I’m goin’ to bed. Not that I’m gonna sleep much. I guess I was supposed to be alone all along.” He turned and walked away, disappearing into the night.

“You want some help?” Johnny called after him. “Y’know, we can do this tomorrow.”

“We’ll be scraping ’em off the pavement by tomorrow, the way the damn’ trucks keep running ’em over,” Cody called back through the dark. “Yeah, I guess you can help. I was gonna drag ’em all down to the vacant lot. You got any better ideas, I’m all ears.”

continued…

Monday, December 06, 2010 10 comments

White Pickups, Episode 64

Contents

Sondra watched the sky, hurrying clouds gliding above the bare trees, knowing she was missing something important but not caring to grasp it. Suddenly, Cody’s twisted face replaced Sondra’s view of the sky. “Oh God, Sondra, oh God oh God, hang on, Rita’s coming, oh God —”

“I’m okay, Cody,” she whispered. “I just don’t remember getting down off the guardhouse. What’s the matter?”

Cody started crying. “They shot you, Sondra! Oh God, there’s blood everywhere, just hang on —”

Shot? She tried to think around Cody’s freak-out. She took out the preacher, the dangerous guy with the deer rifle who spotted her too late, Mr. Mirrorshades… and did she shoot that guy closest to Cody or not? She was on the guardhouse… and now she wasn’t. And what about Rita? It must be bad, she thought, Cody’s really freaking out. I should be scared… it should hurt. Am I dying? She felt the barest twinge of fear, but it was gone before she could catch it. She raised her arm; it felt heavy but she touched Cody’s lips then took his hand. He gripped it tight in his. “Are they gone? What about everyone else?”

“There were two left, the ones that shot you. They ran off. I tried to shoot them first, but I missed. I totally suck. Everybody else is okay. Cleve got ‘winged,’ he called it, but he bandaged it himself.” As Cody said his name, Cleve was there, kneeling at her feet, looking worried. An apparition, she ignored it.

“Good. I need to rest, Cody. Stay here.”

You stay here. Don’t leave me.” He kept talking, but it faded into buzzing as light seemed to shine from Cody’s anguished face and she closed her eyes…


Hi, cara.

“Dad? What are you doing here?”

I’ve been here all along. I was afraid something like this would happen.

“You were really here then? I thought you’d drove off.”

Nope. Just drank myself to death. I think that’s what happened, anyway. I looted me a couple cases of prime quality bourbon, the stuff I could never afford, and next thing I knew I was here.

“But I—? Oh God, no. I’ve gotta get back, Cody’s already freaking out!”

There’s no going back to the mess that guy made, cara. He was using hollow points.

“I… can’t I at least tell him good-bye?”

A pause. Yeah. But you don’t have much time. You — both of you — deserved better than this. He really loves you, you know. More than anything. I want you to tell him something…


The buzzing sound faded back to Cody’s voice. “Oh please God, let Sondra hang on, just a little longer, oh please —”

“Stop,” she whispered, and mirabile dictu, he did. She could barely see him — it was darker than it should have been — but that wasn’t important now. “Dad said I don’t have much time.”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah. He’s going to be all the way there for me now. He said to tell you, Revenge is a dish best served cold. But throw away the leftovers.”

“What?”

“That’s what he said. You’ll figure it out. I believe in you, Cody.”

“Sondra, I love you, Sondra. I don’t want to live without you. I wish it was me there, not you.”

“I love you, Cody.” She shivered a moment. “But don’t —” She gasped as a spasm clamped her mangled guts.

“Don’t what? Sondra! Sondra!” She tried to force the words out, but the buzzing and the light came back…


“— push the world away… damn.”

Sorry.

“I needed more time!”

Yeah. Like seventy years, at least.

Before she could respond, she felt a tug on her arm — her right arm, now as dark and feeling as her left. A small, silent boy held her hand in both of his, looking up at her. His hair was jet black, and hung down nearly into his eyes; his complexion was olive like her own. Those eyes were big and round and dark… but luminous —

“Well, hey there,” she said, blinking. “Who are you?”

Looks like I almost had a grandson.

“Grandson? You mean — oh, crap. I was a few days late, but —” she sighed. “Yeah, I guess I knew, but I was pretending not to.” She looked down at her son. “Poor guy, you never had a chance, did you? You look just like Cody, too.” He said nothing, just held her hand and watched her with the same bright and solemn gaze.

He’ll get his chance when he’s reborn.

“Reborn? Is that what happens to babies who don’t make it?”

Yeah. Souls have to be tested. It’s time to go now. Your granmama is waiting for you.

“Oh, her too?”

Yeah. She had a heart attack the night of your first gunfight.

“I’m glad she didn’t drive off, anyway.” She took her father’s hand, and the three of them walked away.


“I’m so sorry, Cody,” Rita said, holding his hands in hers. He looked terrible, but wondered if she looked much better — the last few hours had been some of the worst of her career and life. The frenzied ride to the guardhouse, hearing Cody’s wail and knowing she was too late; she and Cleve loading Sondra’s lifeless body on the backboard and riding it back to her clinic, Cleve’s siren wailing… her clinical detachment broke several times through the afternoon.

Now, they sat in office chairs in the clinic, Sondra’s body lying covered on the exam table above them. A pair of oil lamps pushed back some of the gathering night and masked some of the clinical odor. “Please, believe me: even if we’d had a fully-functional trauma center here, with the best surgeons standing by, we couldn’t have saved her. She was…” Again, the droning voice of a certain pathologist at Grady began running through her head, as it did during her brief autopsy: Victim was struck by two gunshots to the abdomen. Exit wounds and extensive organ damage consistent with high-powered rifle, using soft-point or hollow-point ammunition. Damage to spinal column means Victim would have felt very little before expiring from blood loss. A final note: Victim’s uterus was swollen, consistent with early stage pregnancy. Test strip confirms diagnosis. “She was just so torn up.” She dared not say much more; Cody was already on the edge. No telling what he would do if she told him Sondra was pregnant.

Cody shook his head. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I panicked. I just started shooting at those guys, didn’t take the time to aim or anything. If I’d done it right, they wouldn’t have had the chance…” He took a deep, shuddering breath, but he’d run out of tears hours ago.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Rita said, squeezing his hand again. “You did the best you could. When I was stitching up Cleve, he told me all of you did a lot better than he’d expected. He said most soldiers never fire their weapon at all in their first battle. If you have to blame someone, blame the people who came here to kill us all just because we aren’t like them.” Cleve had also said Sondra should have stayed down and used the roof for cover, but that was something else Cody didn’t need to hear just now.

“Yeah.” Cody stood, turned to the exam table. For a moment, Rita thought he would lift the sheet, but he only put his hand on the table. He looked down, hair covering his eyes. “I know you did what you could, too. You’re not the bad guy here.”

“And neither are you, Cody. Remember that.”

“I know.”

Neither spoke for a moment. Rita stood to join Cody at the table. “Take care of yourself, Cody. I won’t try to tell you to get some sleep, or eat anything, but you’ll need to do both sooner or later. Preferably tonight.” Cody nodded, and Rita hugged him, wondering if anyone would sleep much tonight. He felt wooden in her embrace, but after a moment reached up and patted her shoulder.

“Thanks,” he said. “I gotta go now. I got stuff to do.” He slipped free and into the dark before Rita had a chance to ask him what he had in mind.

continued…

Monday, November 29, 2010 5 comments

White Pickups, Episode 63

Our soundtrack for this episode: Skillet’s Hero.

Contents

Hunkered down on the guardhouse roof, Sondra shouldered Johnny’s carbine and waited. Clouds skidded east, racing from the afternoon sun. Some of that wind filtered down to the ground, hissing through trees and chilling her face, making her glad for the jacket. Pilfered from one of the smelly houses, it almost perfectly matched the color of the shingles on the guardhouse. With any luck, the bashers — if it were really them — would never know she was there.

Just like we did it in practice, her dad said. He’d talked to her before, that first Saturday when the bashers came, but she had never told anyone about it — not even Cody. She sighted down the barrel, then lifted it away, thumbed off the safety and worked the bolt.

“Locked and loaded, Dad,” she whispered.

Good. What’s the motto?

“One shot, one kill. Don’t waste ammo, you might not have time to reload.” She had another full clip tucked into the back of her jeans, cold against her back, but didn’t expect to need it.

“There they are! Get ready!” Cleve called to the others, hunkered down in a ditch just inside the fence. She couldn’t see the bashers yet; most likely, they were working their way around either the burger joint or the LubeJob place across the street, using bushes, trees, and buildings for cover. Stay down, her dad said, it’s not your time yet. Cleve, Tim, Johnny, Cody, Charles, and Max were both the foot soldiers and the bait. She worried about Cody — he’d never been in a gunfight — but she’d only been in one, and both she and Cleve had told him what to expect. She and Cody of course had told each other to be careful several times. He had Sondra’s revolver, and could use it, but the bashers would have to be crossing the street before he had a chance for more than a lucky shot. Her friends had more handguns than rifles, so they were both slightly outnumbered and outgunned, but they had a “fairly defensible position,” as Cleve put it, and Sondra was their little surprise…

The bashers didn’t wait to cross the street before opening fire. Bullets and buckshot thumped into tree trunks, spanged off the iron fence, rattled through the branches. Tim and Cleve returned fire, popping up to shoot then moving; the others stayed down and waited.


Only two? Frank thought. That’s the nigger what shot J.D. all right. Is that other one the skinny dude? “It’s them!” he yelled.

“Their settlement is devoted to destruction!” Worleigh shouted. “Destroy all they have, and spare not any one of them, but kill man and woman, child and infant, and all their animals!”

“Not gonna happen,” Sondra muttered. The gunfire continued from both sides. She eyed the shouter through the trees: tall, thin, white-haired, a ridiculously long chrome pistol in one hand; the other clutched an enormous book, probably a Bible, to his chest. He, and that one guy with a deer rifle, seemed like the two most dangerous men on that side.

Bide your time, her dad said. It’s a good trap your friends are setting. Let the enemy spring the trap, then take ’em down.


Frank looked around. Something smells here. If they had any sense, they’d give the skinny queer a rifle and a sniper position. Maybe he got AIDS or something. Then he saw a line of trucks approaching from the freeway. He caught Worleigh’s attention and pointed; Worleigh looked and nodded. Maybe this would work out after all…


Tim stopped firing; Cleve fired his sixth shot and ducked down. “The time is now!” Worleigh shouted. He stepped away from the tree that he’d used for cover, and off the curb. Let ’em commit, then take him first, Sondra heard. But that book is good as armor. Cut off the serpent’s head.

“Right. Then the rifleman.” She looked through the trees and saw a line of trucks approaching. The bashers were watching them too — they were going to use them for cover, all right. They might not realize that bullets would go right through them…

Now. The attackers started across the street as the trucks passed, some running to the left turn lane, others taking their time. Sondra rose, kneeled. Pick your target, pull the trigger.

She fired. The white-haired dude sprouted a third eye; he fell back and stumbled over the curb, firing one shot into the air from that gigantic pistol; the recoil threw him to the ground.

Sondra’s friends heard the carbine bark to their left; the shouter fell and lay still. “Now!” Cleve yelled to the others; they all peeped over the top of the ditch and began shooting.


Frank saw Worleigh go down, looked around, finally saw the skinny dude seem to emerge from the guardhouse roof with an old rifle as more of them popped up across the way. He pointed, the muzzle turned ever so slightly, and Frank froze. He could only stand pointing at the guardhouse and think We’re fucked.

Steven screamed and clutched his leg, his shotgun hitting the pavement. He grabbed up his gun, balancing on his good leg, and fired blind at the embankment. He dropped to the pavement to reload.


Pick your target, pull the trigger. The rifleman spun and fell short of the left turn lane.

Rushing to the left turn lane, Jered saw Worleigh on his back, Frank dropping, Steven’s bloody leg. Two dead, one wounded, just like that — and now there were seven enemies shooting from cover, and them out in the open. We’re in for it, he thought. Damn that preacher anyway. He dropped prone, a few feet from Steven, and started shooting at the embankment. Will stood confused, pointing his rifle every which way but not firing. Ray-Ban shot, racked, shot again.

The Bobs saw Frank pointing, saw the sniper on the guardhouse. Go-Big Bob racked his shotgun and let fly at the guardhouse; Go-Home Bob took aim with his rifle, ducked as a pistol round whizzed past his head, took a quick shot at the embankment, took a quick shot at the guardhouse. Go-Big Bob racked and fired again. Shot rattled through the bare tree limbs, thumped into the siding, shattered the window below her. Sondra ignored it.

Pick your target, pull the trigger.

A shotgun-toter fell next, his mirrored sunglasses tumbling across the pavement. Three of the remaining five were shooting anywhere and everywhere, spraying the landscape with lead. Cody stood and emptied his pistol at the two firing in Sondra’s direction, ducked down cursing to reload.

Pick your —


Go-Big Bob’s shotgun clicked; he turned and ran. Go-Home Bob emptied his rifle at the guardhouse then followed.

Retreat!” Jered yelled, “Get to cover!” He and Steven got on their feet and backed up, trying to cover each other, Steven on one leg, Will just standing there. A rifleman stood, fired, Will dropped. The nigger finished Steven. Jered turned and ran — right in front of a pickup. His rifle banged into the grille as the truck ran him down, then fell through and clattered to the pavement, torn from Jered’s hand. The truck braked for a moment, then rolled away, dodging the other bodies in the street.


Cody slapped the cylinder into place, popped up, looked around. “It’s over?”

“Yup,” Johnny said. “The two you were shooting at ran.” They all moved to stand together at the fence, watching the bodies in the street. None of them moved. A truck swerved around the bodies and ran over a cheap pair of mirrorshades that had tumbled away from their owner. The crunch seemed to put a period on the hostilities.

Cody gave a relieved sigh, then looked at his watch. “Jeez. Two minutes? It felt like an hour. Is everyone okay?”

“I got winged,” Cleve said, wrapping a strip of cloth around a bloody left arm. “Hurts like hell, but that’s a good thing. It’s what you don’t feel that’s bad.”

“Good… I guess,” Cody said. “Sucks you got hit, but good it’s not bad.” He turned to the guardhouse. “Sondra! Come on down… Sondra!”

Tim jogged over to the guardhouse, then sprinted away. “I’m getting Rita!” he yelled over his shoulder.

continued…

Monday, November 22, 2010 4 comments

White Pickups, Episode 62

While most of this story seems to want Skillet as a soundtrack, for this episode it’s Thousand Foot Krutch’s Smack Down.

Contents

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

“Whoa,” Tim said, swerving. “Watch that crosswind.”

“Yeah. Last thing I need is to tangle with another bike again.” Palmer hunched his thin shoulders against the wind. “Damn, it’s cold out here. If Cleve wants these patrols so bad, he oughtta be out —”

“Hey!” Tim barked, braking hard; Palmer shot past him and stopped, looking back. “Look down there. Is that…?”

Palmer slipped their handheld radio out of the water carrier and thumbed the TALK button. “Laurel? Can you hear us?”

“Just,” Sara responded. “What is it?”

“Possible sighting. We’re on Satellite, south.”

“Yup,” said Tim, looking through the binoculars. “Eight men, on foot, all armed.”

“Possible?” said Sara.

“Confirmed now. Tim says eight armed men.”

“Stand by.” A minute later, Cleve spoke. “Don’t try to make contact. Stay out of shooting range, but keep ’em in sight as best you can. And stay in touch. I’ll tell the others to get ready up here.”

“Should we let ’em see us?”

“Not unless you’re sure you can get away quick. You guys are fast, but you can’t outrun a bullet.”

“Right. Palmer out.”

“Laurel standing by.”

“You still see ’em, Tim?”

“Yeah. We need to put some more space between us though.”

“What if we have to duck off the road?”

“Hope some of those offices are unlocked.”

“Should be. The world ended on a weekday, after all.”


“We’ve been marching for a day and a half,” Ray-ban griped. “That smoke don’t look any closer.” Hiking up I-85, they had first spotted a large smoke plume late yesterday afternoon. They camped in an office building and pushed on at first light. As they drew nearer, around noon they cut over to a four-lane road paralleling the freeway. Street signs identified it as “Satellite Boulevard.”

“We’ll get there well before dark,” Frank assured him. “Just keep —”

Worleigh, in the lead, stopped and raised a hand; the others paused.

“What is it?”

“A flicker. Something reflected the sun up ahead. But it’s not there now.”

“You think it’s them?” Will hefted his pistol.

“Perhaps.”

“So much for surprising them, then,” Bob grumbled.

“Gowd-a will give us the victory regardless,” Worleigh said. “But be wary, and be prepared to join the battle.”


“I’m comin’ out to the QuickFill,” Cleve said. “Save some time if you need backup.”

“Thanks,” Palmer replied. “Tim thinks they might have seen us… they’ve spread out some.”

“Don’t let them get close enough to shoot!” Cleve snapped.

“Roger that. Palmer out. Tim, give me the binoculars a minute.” He took them and looked. “Oh… shit!”

“What is it?”

“It’s them!” Palmer yelled into the radio; he dropped the binoculars and Tim had to catch them. “Cleve! It’s them! The same bunch from that first weekend!”

“What? You sure?”

“Yeah. Remember the one with the mirrored sunglasses? He’s one of them.”

“There’s plenty of people had mirrorshades.”

“Who carried guns around? There ain’t that many people left, remember.”

“Yeah… he may or may not be the same one. Come on back… no, wait. Stay out of shooting range, but make sure they see you when you round the corner off Satellite.”

“What, you want us to lead ’em home?”

“Yeah. We’re gonna settle this. Today. Meet me at the QuickFill. Cleve out.”


“Too far for a good shot,” Frank said, sighting the riders down the detached scope of his deer rifle. “Too much wind, too gusty to compensate… hey, they’re stopping again. Something ain’t right up there.”

“Gowd-a stops them,” said Worleigh. “Thus they lead us to their lair.”

“There they go again,” said Frank. “They just hung a left at the intersection up there.”

“Why don’t we take a shortcut?” asked Jered, pointing to an office park entrance to their left. “With a little luck, we might get around ’em.”

“Worleigh paused a moment. “That shall be as Gowd-a wills. But your idea is good. If they plan an ambush, we shall come at them from an unexpected direction.”


“They’re going off the street!” Palmer said into the radio, peering around a pedestal. “They ducked into that office park about a half-mile down.”

“Get on up here to the QuickFill then,” said Cleve. “Pronto.”

Tim and Palmer slipped through the truck traffic and met Cleve on his police bike. They had found the bike in Norcross; it had blue lights and a police radio, and the brackets were easily adapted to the ham radios they were using. Cleve turned on the blue light and started up the street, Tim and Palmer close behind; trucks slowed and bunched up behind them. “Does that office park back into anything on this side?” Cleve asked them as they rode.

“They can walk across a strip of landscaping and they’ll be in the office park we just passed,” said Tim, pointing at the entrance behind them. “It’s like they’re taking a shortcut. How would they know where to go?”

Cleve pointed at the sky ahead of them. “Smoke signals, probably. They’ll be at the gate in half an hour, an hour tops. Sooner if they run, but I don’t think they’re in that big a hurry.”

“So do we have enough time to get ready?”

“Yeah. Everyone’s already on alert. We can be ready in ten minutes.” Cleve thumbed the mike clipped to his shirt collar. “Sara. Tell Johnny and the others to get in position. Our old friends might be back for a rematch.”

“Oh God.”

“Yeah. We’ll take ’em, but it won’t be pretty. See you in about three minutes.”


“So much for getting around ’em,” Charlie said, pointing at the smoke rising from down the street. “It didn’t go far enough.”

“Don’t matter,” Frank said. “We’ll go behind the buildings on this side of the road. They won’t see us ’til we’re there.”


“I’ll be safer up there than you’ll be,” Sondra told Cody behind the guardhouse, one hand on the stepladder, the carbine on her shoulder. “They’ll all be looking at you guys over there in the ditch. If they see me at all, it’ll be too late. For them, anyway.”

“Yeah,” said Cody, not sounding at all convinced. “Just be careful, okay?”

“You too.” They kissed, long and deep. “We’ll have some fun tonight, okay? All night.” She grinned, let him go, and mounted the ladder.

“Love you.”

“Cody!” Cleve yelled. “Shake a leg!”

“Yeah, yeah!” Sondra gets off on this, he thought as her boots disappeared over the eaves. She turned, waved, and blew him a kiss. He grinned and jogged away to join the others.

continued…

Monday, November 15, 2010 2 comments

White Pickups, Episode 61

Contents

Monday, January 9, 2012

Frank looked under the bandage on Will’s arm. “You’ll live,” he said. “Pour a little peroxide on it every day or so to kill the germs. My Aunt Mina swore by that stuff: ‘Keep you from gettin’ the infection,’ she always said. Bob-wire scratch, skeeter bite, cut your hand in the kitchen, didn’t matter, she’d be gettin’ out the peroxide.”

“She ever have to deal with someone gettin’ shot?” Will scowled, the strain in his voice matching the stink of his fear and pain. “That sure as hell didn’t go off as planned.”

“As planned? That was pert-near a disaster!” Jered was right. They had surprised a group of a half-dozen or so gang-bangers, walking toward them on the street, but only managed to drop one before the others scattered for cover and returned fire. Outnumbered and outgunned, the 'bangers put up a lot more fight than they had seen from victims sleeping or ambushed. Both sides started carefully retreating, but Will caught one in the arm — fortunately, not his shooting arm.

“Nay,” said Worleigh, scowling more than usual. “Think you that Gowd-a would keep you from the test? It is now that He shall see whether you are fit for His service.”

“I never said nothin’ about quittin’!” Jered protested. “But there’s a lot more of them than us, and you’d think He’d give us a little protection, right?” Will said nothing, but glared at Worleigh and rubbed his bandage.

“We have passed through the first fire,” Worleigh intoned, looking down his patrician nose at Jered and Will. “William, are you still able to do battle?”

Will nodded. “Sure. I shoot one-handed anyway.” He patted his .45.

“So one of theirs lies dead on the ground, and our army is yet intact. Is that not sufficient evidence that we are under the protection of Almighty Gowd-a?”

Jered looked down, saying nothing.

“Yeah, we’ll get ’em,” Steven said. Frank always wondered about Steven, how such a big guy could end up with a squeaky voice. “We’ll move on, give ’em time to forget, and take ’em out later.”

“Y’know, I always heard God helps those what help themselves,” Frank said. “I think Steve’s right. We need to let this area simmer down a little bit. It’s like deer season — you hunt one place too much, the deer get skittish. And some of these deer shoot back. Let’s move around some. I’d like to check out that block in Highlands we hit back when the sh— this all started, maybe get a little payback for J.D. and Thurman and the others, y’know?” Worleigh glared but said nothing, as the others nodded or grunted assent. “Yeah. Who’s got that map anyway?”

“I got it,” said Jered. He dug into his backpack and produced a folded packet, handing it to Frank.

Frank opened the map and pored over it a moment. “Yeah. It’s far enough to get some distance, close enough we can get there this evening. Anyone got a problem with that?” He looked up at Worleigh.

The preacher looked like he’d swallowed something unpleasant, but finally nodded. “Very well,” he said. “We shall see what there is to see.”


“If they ain’t cleared out, they sure like to sleep early,” Jered said, rejoining the others a block away. “I even walked up the street a ways, you think that woulda brought someone out for sure. I wanted to call out, but I didn’t.”

“Remember not what I said, the day Gowd-a placed me in your path?” Worleigh’s smile had a hint of mockery. “They have fled this place.”

“Damn, that’s right,” said one of the Bobs, ignoring the preacher’s glare. “Where’d they go, then?”

Worleigh nodded up the street, toward the on-ramp. “They took the expressway to the northeast, as I said that day.”

Jered nodded. “Prob’ly in DeKalb or Gwinnett, then. Lots of subdivisions up that way, they coulda just moved into one and took it over.”

“That’s a lotta ground to cover, buddy.”

“Yeah, but their smoke should give ’em away, just like the other places. They prob’ly didn’t get too far off the freeway.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” said Steve, waving his shotgun. “Let’s go get the sum— let’s get ’em! We get the drop on ’em this time, we’ll take ’em for sure.”

“The hour grows late,” Worleigh said, gesturing toward the setting sun. “Let us take shelter for the night, away from this desecrated place. Then we shall deal the judgement of Gowd-a as He sees fit.”

Near dusk, they found a five-story apartment building and camped in the lobby. There was an unpleasant smell in the place, and a restless Will looked around for the source. He found some interesting things on the third floor: pock marks in the cinderblock walls at either end of the hallway; bloodstains on the floor at one end; a broom and perforated blue dress in the hallway; the corpse of a woman in #308, face down on the bed. Worleigh said a few words over the poor woman and they all thought that right and proper. This and other apartments yielded up their canned food, and once darkness fell they cooked supper in the lobby fireplace.

“What do y’all think happened to her?” asked Go-Big Bob, pointing up.

“Looters, probably,” said Jered. “She was maybe doing a little laundry, sweepin’ the floor, and heard some kind of commotion out in the hall. She had the broom and the dress in her hands and stepped out to see what was what, and got herself shot. She got back inside and died on her bed.”

Go-Home Bob scratched his head but said nothing. There were a lot of holes in that story — like why was all the blood at the end of the hallway and not in her apartment? if they were looters, why hadn’t the place been ransacked? For all they knew, it could have been ol’ Joseph getting hisself shot there — but if he said anything, they’d ask so what do you think happened? and he had no idea. For a moment, he wondered if she’d painted the pictures on the walls of her apartment, then pushed it out of his mind. It wasn’t important.

continued…

Monday, November 08, 2010 4 comments

White Pickups, Episode 60

Contents

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

“We need to be careful about when we practice from now on, too,” Cleve said. He and several others sat in the dining nook of Cody’s old house, on the other side of the sliding glass door from the firing line.

“And cut wood, too,” said Johnny. “People ain’t gonna like that, though. We can’t cut enough firewood for everyone as it is, let alone put any extra wood aside!”

“Me neither, but I’d rather be cold than dead.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe we do everything we do now if the wind’s coming out of the west or south,” Sondra said. “If there’s trouble down toward Atlanta, the wind should carry the sound the other way.” Cody nodded.

“Maybe.”

“Then again,” said Tim, “maybe we’re making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe someone downtown had a kerosene heater get away from them. Or something spontaneously combusted. Or it was just a big bonfire. Right now, all we’re going on is a plume of smoke and something a cr— a mentally ill woman said.”

“You really believe that?” Cleve gave Tim a doubtful look.

Tim thought a moment and sighed. “No… but I’d like to. That preacher talks around the subject, but he thinks there’s more to what she says than he lets on.”

“I think she’s just crazy myself,” Sondra said, looking grim. “But we know there’s trouble out there. Sooner or later, if it doesn’t find us, we’ll find it.”

“Yeah, but we can’t put everything on standby until it happens — it might not happen for months. Or years. And Johnny’s right, people are already complaining about not having enough firewood. We can cut back on target practice, sure. Cody could use a little more practice, but so could I. I got a bit rusty since September.”

Is this what being a leader’s about? Cody thought. Sitting around, chewing on all the problems, and trying to figure out how to get past them all? He grinned. It’s like the skate park: you drop down the quarterpipe, slide the rail, ollie the blocks. You can land it or faceplant, but either way you do it all over again. Aloud he said, “Okay, maybe we stop doing target practice for a while, but we still cut wood unless the wind’s blowing straight down the freeway. I guess we can spend the time we’d have been here helping cut firewood. That might make the others happier. Hell, I wouldn’t mind havin’ some more firewood myself. The only time our place gets warm through the day is when the sun’s coming in the window — me and Sondra put on our black clothes and lay on the carpet.”

Johnny laughed. “You mean you got any clothes besides black ones?” The others laughed with him.

“Hey, I still have that cream dress I got married in!” Sondra said. “I might start wearing it when it warms up some. Besides, doesn’t swinging that splitter get you warm?”

“Ha!” Cody laughed. “By the time you’re almost warm, you’re worn out from swinging it!”


The preacher had insisted they stay near last night’s fire and “keep vigil” — in other words, lie in wait and shoot anyone who followed the smoke, whether driven by hope of loot or plain curiosity. They’d shot a couple dozen through the day this way, dragging the bodies into a building. By evening, no targets had shown up for a few hours and Worleigh finally called off the “vigil.” They retreated to an office building a few blocks away to make camp.

They ate a cold supper by lantern light, blinds drawn to shut away the world outside. As Jared finished his can of pork and beans, his forehead began itching. He rubbed it without thinking much about it, then looked at his grimy fingers. Looking up again, he caught a glimpse of something in Ray-Ban’s sunglasses. “Hey Ray… hold still a minute.” He peered into the warped mirror of the lens.

“What is it? I got something on my face?”

“No, something on mine.” He rubbed his forehead again, then walked into the bathroom and shone his flashlight into the mirror. The smoke and grime of last night’s work, and the sweat of today’s, must have mixed with the oil that Worleigh had dabbed on his forehead. Whatever it was, it was making him itch. He cleaned his face with a wet-wipe, and that helped with the itching. He looked in the mirror again.

He saw it best while shining the flashlight across his forehead from the side. The crosses had raised low welts, and what he saw in the mirror gave him a chill:

666

Jared shook his head — it was just a weird coincidence. Had to be. What would Worleigh say about it? he thought, and suddenly guessed: The opposite of what you saw in the mirror, of course. You are faithful to the work of Gowd-a — amen? The preacher was already cranking up his evening “lesson” — Jered could hear him all the way in here, and Worleigh would probably watch for anyone trying to dodge it.

“Amen,” he muttered, and pulled his hat on. The hat covered the marks well enough — but the real mark was already inside him and all of them, and they would carry it to their grave.

continued…

Monday, November 01, 2010 6 comments

White Pickups, Episode 59

Contents

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Go-Big Bob had misgivings about Worleigh’s plan — mainly because he was the one who would get shot if anything went wrong — but he’d signed up, for better or worse, and he was more afraid of the certainty of looking like a coward than the possibility of death. Go big or go home, after all. But the clouds above reflected his mood: low, grey, and a little uncertain. It seemed like a miracle in itself that Worleigh knew of a liquor store that hadn’t been looted — in downtown Atlanta, no less! — although it looked as if someone had left abruptly; there were empty food containers strewn about and the back door was standing open. A street vendor’s food cart was another seeming miracle, and the two together made the bait. The cart made plenty of noise as he pushed it down the street toward the presumed gang-bangers, bottles clinking and wheels rumbling. The trucks parked along the curb whispered their invitations — Nothing to fear. Nothing to worry about — but they too were part of the plan.

At last, someone stepped out and saw Bob… or rather, the cart. “Hey!” Bob ducked, pushed, then darted between two parked trucks. The cart rumbled down the street a few more feet before slowing; Bob dodged onto the sidewalk as the gunfire started. “That’s right!” the sentry yelled, “You better run! Whooooooo!” He fired a couple times more into the air before Bob ducked around the first street corner he reached.

He stopped for a moment, felt himself over — no holes but the ones he’d been born with — and started jogging back to his companions. A moment later, he heard the sentry whoop and heard more voices, fading as he turned this way and that around each block to confound any pursuit. He nearly jogged right by the others before they called to him, making him jump.

“Shit!” he gasped. “That about scared me worse than the shooting!”

“Tame your tongue!” Worleigh snapped. “Have they taken our gift?”

“Sounds like they did. The first one sure sounded happy, and I heard more coming.”

“It is well, then. Let them drink their fill, then we shall smite them in their tents.”

“They don’t have — never mind.”


They edged closer as evening fell. As they drew within three blocks of where Bob had abandoned the cart, they could hear the revelry in full swing. While (and after) Bob was delivering their Trojan Booze-Cart, others scoured nearby shops for various items. They took turns dressing: black shirts and pants, moccasins or slippers, balaclavas. They painted random lines and spots across their exposed faces, and each took a long knife and a pistol. The night dragged on, and they took turns dozing inside.

At last, the party noises faded and died. “This is a night for cold steel, not hot lead,” Worleigh told them, laying aside his long chromed .410 revolver, “but keep the other at hand in case you need it. Do not scruple to spare any of them, for they are devoted to destruction — man, woman, and child — and do not defile yourself with the females or any treasures of this place. When you have finished your holy work, we shall purify those dwellings with fire.”

“What about their guns?” Frank asked.

Worleigh thought a moment. “Guns you have, but the Lord shall provide ammunition. Take only what you can carry easily, and do not spend time looking for such. Only take what you see as you do your work.”


Sleeping sentries were the first under the knives; few if any knew what happened before finding themselves in the afterlife. A stumbling drunken youth wearing gang colors was set upon and perforated before he had a chance to make much noise. On a cold night, few were out by choice. With the streets cleared of the living, they paired up and went through each building, knifing anyone they found. Dogs barked, but none of the victims woke or gave it any thought before it was too late; most of the dogs were small enough that they were simply set on and stomped or stabbed to death like their masters. Frank ended up shooting a larger mongrel, but by then there were few survivors; recreational gunfire was such a part of life here that once again none of the remaining living even awoke for it. At last, as the sky began to lighten with the coming dawn, the eight of them gathered bloody and panting around the now-empty cart.

“It is well,” said Worleigh, picking up the gas cans they had left at the corner. He lifted a finger into the air. “The wind is behind us. We can pour out half on the first building on each side, and the wind will carry it down the street. Save a little in each, that we may use it to start the fire.” He gave one can to Jared, who crossed the street and splashed the gas around the lobby, propping the front doors open. Ray-Ban did likewise on the other side.

“The holy fire shall purify this defiled place,” said Worleigh, pouring the rest of the gasoline into two water bottles. He twisted a strip of rag for each bottle and inserted it, then handed the bottles to Frank and Steve. “Now light these, and cast them in.”


Palmer’s voice crackled over the radio. “Smoke! Down toward Atlanta!” he said. “You can see it from the overpass.”

“Anyone else out there?”

“Just Tim and me.”


“What is it?” asked Cody, standing on the overpass and watching the plume of black smoke.

“Nothing good,” said Patterson.

“An ill omen,” Delphinia said. “Be watchful, lest the fire descend among us unaware.”

“What? You’re saying someone set it?” asked Palmer. “How could you know that?” Delphinia only shook her cowled head.

“She might just be jawbonin’,” Cleve said later, “but all the same, I think it’s smart to start taking precautions. Nobody rides alone, for one thing, and nobody rides unarmed. We need to start patrolling, just in case. And we need to be ready to defend our home.”

continued…

Monday, October 25, 2010 4 comments

White Pickups, Episode 58

Contents

From the diary of Ben Cho, winter 2011–2012, condensed:

The first post-Truckalypse winter was rough on all of us, and it was fairly mild weather-wise. There was plenty of food — Johnny was right, we had to eat a lot of venison just to keep our gardens from getting overrun by the deer — and that was one complaint, those who were predisposed to be vegetarians were SOL. There were dry spells and wet spells, but mostly we had enough water to go around.

The big problem was heat: even with a mild winter we couldn’t cut enough firewood to keep up. We found a few kerosene heaters and passed them around, but the kerosene was getting stale just like whatever gasoline we hadn’t treated. Rita had to treat several cases of carbon monoxide poisoning because people didn’t know (or think) to leave a window open, and after that, a lot of people decided they would rather be cold. Jason got the sewage digester working, but we use the gas for cooking rather than heating. We moved the cooking facilities into the clubhouse and let the waste heat warm up the Laurel Room, which helps some. Our outdoor kitchen won’t go to waste though, we covered it for the winter and we’ll use it when things warm up again.

Rita was busy through the winter, and not just with bad kerosene. The flu went around, and everyone got some kind of bug at least once. People scoured the houses, in and out of Laurel, for liquor…

Worst of all, some unfinished business came back to haunt us.


Part IV
Winterkill


January 1, 2012

“Happy New Year, Sondra… hey, you okay?”

“Yeah. Drank a little too much, maybe. I feel a bit queasy.”

“Tell me about it. I should’ve stuck with beer, that whiskey knocked me on my ass and smacked me over the head just to make sure.”

Sondra rolled out of bed and ducked into the bathroom — nearly everyone had converted their bathrooms to composting toilets, both for emergencies and to avoid that trip outdoors on especially cold nights — and stood eyeing the toilet, hugging her robe tight to her. “Hey… if I puke, is it gonna mess up the fertilizer?”

“Um… I don’t think so. But if you gotta do it, you gotta do it.”

A pause. “I think it passed… thank God. Maybe some water will make me feel better… can you get me a glass?”

“Sure.”


The Bobs insisted on calling their group “The Magnificent Seven,” which annoyed Frank for no reason he could understand; their whistling the theme song all the way down I-75 was an annoyance he understood well enough. The survivors of that ill-fated gay-bashing weekend after the Devil’s Rapture — Frank, Jared, the Bobs, Ray-Ban, Steven, and Will — spent their New Year’s Eve in the smelly remains of a luxury hotel near one of the US41 exits, drinking the liquor they had looted and hoarded for this night and playing poker for huge amounts of worthless dollars. Frank paced his drinking, and was able to snuff the lanterns and find a soft bed after the others passed out at the poker table or in moldering lounge chairs.

Bleary, stiff, and hungover, Frank got them moving around mid-morning — “Happy New Year, assholes” — and marching down the I-75 breakdown lane once again. The pickups seemed to slow as they passed the men — one began to pull over ahead of them before seeming to think better of it and moving on — and all of them whispered their siren song as they went by: No more pain. No more weariness. Come to us. All were grateful for the clouds, keeping the sun from pounding their heads even more.

They spotted Worleigh, standing on the overpass, long before they reached him. He stood motionless, watching them approach, the gigantic Bible tucked under his left arm as before. He wore what appeared to be a genuine trenchcoat, buttoned against the biting New Year’s breeze.

“Well met,” he greeted them as they mounted the overpass. “Faithful to Gowd-a, faithful to the task He has set before you.”

“What task?” Frank said.

“The eradication of those who have spit in the face of Gowd-a by their abominations, and of those whom He hath marked of old as unworthy of His grace,” Worleigh replied. “If you would take up His sword and smite the evildoer this day, kneel now in prayer.”

They knelt — Frank and one of the Bobs a little more slowly than the others — and Worleigh began: “Our Father in Heaven, we present ourselves to you this day, a living sacrifice, pure and holy —”

Ray-Ban stifled a snicker, thinking Alcohol kills germs… I guess that makes us pure.

“— ready to stand as your army in these days of Tribulation. Strengthen our hand as we do Your will. Amen.”

Several others repeated the Amen, and Worleigh continued: “Now lift your faces to Heaven, and be anointed with oil. This day, you are to be marked and sealed to Gowd-a’s holy purpose.” They looked up, and Worleigh removed a small bottle from a pocket of his trenchcoat. He dipped a finger in the oil and flicked three hurried crosses onto each of their foreheads, repeating, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost-a,” for each of them.

“Arise, soldiers of Gowd-a,” Worleigh said, and they stood. “I charge you this day: do not waver in your purpose, do not turn back from the task set before you. For it is written: He who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of Gowd-a. Seven years shall we labor, and do the work of Gowd-a, then shall we be taken up to sit at His mighty right hand in the Eternal Sabbath.”

“Sure,” Jared said. “But how do we find out who we’re going after? And how do we tell the good guys from the bad guys?”

“All of Gomorrah is dedicated to destruction,” Worleigh said. “As it was with Noah in the days of the Flood, and Lot in Sodom, Gowd-a has surely brought out His faithful few.”

“Yeah,” Ray-Ban said, “but how do we find ’em? This Gomorrah is an awful big place, and there ain’t that many people left in it.”

“Look,” Worleigh said, pointing south. “What do you see?”

“Lots of buildings,” Jared said.

“And… smoke,” said Frank. He grinned.

“Verily,” Worleigh smiled. “The smoke of the evildoers precedes their journey to Hell.”

continued…

Monday, October 18, 2010 2 comments

White Pickups, Episode 57

Contents

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Cody stopped waking up early on Christmas morning when he was twelve, but he was awake now. He never thought about it, but if pressed he might have said that he’d stopped believing in Santa even before then, and even if he did get up early the presents would have to wait for the parents to get up, eat breakfast, et cetera et cetera, and they loved to drag it out. The dark had an early-morning feel to it, though. As always, Sondra lay next to him, breathing softly. Contrary to what Jennifer (and those on either side) thought, they didn’t make love every night — but it did help to warm things up in the small bedroom, and they’d gotten used to sleeping naked under all the covers.

Sondra was a heavy sleeper, but he was careful reaching for the digital watch on the nightstand anyway. 6:12 a.m.? He grinned. He was excited about this Christmas alright, but this morning he was giving the present. But not just yet… let Sondra sleep a little more. He waited, even dozed a little. When he next checked the watch, it was 6:58. Good enough.

Good thing she usually sleeps on her back, Cody thought. He hadn’t given much thought to what he would have done if she wasn’t. Slowly, carefully, he eased himself under the covers until his head was at her waist. He bent over and began kissing her thighs and in between. Sondra’s breathing grew a little heavier, a little faster as he continued, and her legs eased apart a little. Cody climbed over her leg, now kneeling in between as he delivered his present.

“Codyyyyyyyy,” Sondra moaned, pushing herself into his face. He continued to work, one finger joining his tongue. “Mmmm,” she said. “Don’t stop… mmmm.” Her breathing quickly grew ragged, then she gasped, cried out, and grabbed Cody by the arms, dragging him on top of her and inside of her, yelping with pleasure until one of the neighbors started pounding on the wall as Cody came with her.

“What brought that on?” she said after a while, still under Cody.

He grinned. “I wanted to give you something special for Christmas.”

“You beat me then… I got you a wind-up watch for when the batteries die in your digital.”

“That’s okay.” The grin disappeared. “Oh… shit!”

“What?”

“I wasn’t wearing a condom!”

Sondra thought a moment. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I don’t think it’s the right time. Chances are, nothing will happen.” And even if it does, she thought, it’s just an early start.


One winter tradition that had already established itself was a community breakfast, especially on cold mornings like this one. Instead of firing thirty fireplaces, they used methane-fueled cooktops to make breakfast for everyone — usually pancakes and oatmeal, with “bacison” (smoked portions of venison cut into thin strips like bacon) when they had it. It helped to warm up the Laurel Room, along with a large kerosene heater they’d looted from the Lube Job garage across the road.

The kids bolted their breakfast, then Ashley hopped onto the dais next to the big TV. “Excuse me, everyone,” she said. “We’ve been working on a Christmas play, and we’d like to, um, perform it for you now.” There were many approving mutters and even a little applause at this. “Um, thank you. Go ahead and finish eating, and we’ll get ready.”

After a few minutes of hurrying props into place, Ben and Lily came out, dressed in robes. Lily had stuffed her robe to make herself look pregnant, and even waddled a little.

“Are you alright, Mary?” said Ben. “We’ve been walking a long way.”

“I’ll be fine, Joseph. We’re almost there, right?”

A large cardboard cutout of a pickup truck, painted white of course, approached. “You can ride to Bethlehem!” Caitlin’s voice came from behind the cutout. “And everywhere else, too!” Some of the adults laughed. Others scowled.

“We’re fine walking!” Lily said. “Now go away!” The “pickup” backed out, and Sheldon stepped on stage.

“I’m sorry,” said Sheldon. “We have no room in the inn.” His delivery was a little wooden.

“But my wife is about to have a baby!” Ben said. “What can we do?”

“I guess you can sleep in the stable,” said Sheldon. “At least it will be warm and you can sleep in the hay.” He turned and walked off. “Mary and Joseph” crossed to a cradle stuffed with straw; Lily reached under her robe and withdrew a baby doll, which made some of the audience chuckle, and laid it in the cradle. Ashley, dressed as an angel, swooped onto the stage and sang “Gloria” off-key, arms extended as if flying. Off to the side, Delphinia smiled and hummed softly, somehow pulling Ashley into tune.

The three of them exited; Sheldon entered wearing a toy crown. “Who are these people who ask where the king is?” he asked the audience — in contrast to his innkeeper, he nearly chewed the scenery as Herod. “I’m the king! I’ll go to Bethlehem and take care of this!” He turned and exited, as Ben and Lily entered from the other side, Lily carrying the doll.

“Well, now that the baby’s born, I guess I’ll find a job here in Bethlehem,” Ben said.

Ashley, still in the angel costume, swooped in. “Arise, Joseph, take your family and flee to Egypt! Herod wants to kill the baby!”

“Oh no!” Mary said. “Let’s go!” They turned and exited, as Herod stormed on stage again.

“Fled to Egypt, did they? I’ll catch them!” he yelled.

The cardboard pickup entered behind him. “You’ll catch ’em faster if you ride,” it said.

“Good idea!” Herod ran behind the pickup and it crossed the stage, passing Mary and Joseph who watched as it went by. After a moment, the audience began laughing and applauding.

“There goes Herod,” Lily said. “I guess the angel will tell us when it’s safe to go back home.”

The other three walked back out. “The end!” Ashley said, and everyone applauded. “Lily wrote most of the play, but we all helped. Miss Elly and Miss Delphinia helped us with the costumes.” Elinaeya nudged Cleve and pointed as the audience applauded; Cleve smiled as the actors bowed and shucked the robes right there on stage. Of course, “Herod Drives Off” became an instant Christmas tradition.

continued…

Monday, October 11, 2010 2 comments

White Pickups, Episode 56

Contents

Friday, December 16, 2011

Rita grinned at Sara, holding up a blue-tipped stick. “These test kits don’t do too many false positives.”

Sara swung herself off the exam table and danced a little jig around it, not caring that her pants were still on the floor. “We did it! We did it! I can’t wait to tell Tim!” She suddenly stopped and hopped back onto the table, looking a little embarrassed. “How long, do you think?”

“Since you conceived? Three weeks? It’s kind of hard to tell, and it’s not really all that important. But I’d guess you conceived on — or pretty close to — your wedding night. So call it… oh, September first of next year for a due date. And congratulations, Sara. I know you wanted this. How will Tim take it?”

“He knows I wanted this, and I think he did too. At worst, it might take him a little while to get used to the idea, but he’ll be happy. I guess we won’t know if it’s a boy or a girl for a while.”

“Maybe not until it’s born. Even if we had an ultrasound here, and power to run it, I never operated one myself. Only assisted.”

“Oh. What kind of nursing work did you do before?”

“I was working at a clinic in Chamblee when the trucks came. But before that, I did some ER work at Grady. That’s the experience I keep thinking we’ll need most — but I hope I never do. Oh, you can get dressed. I think we’re done with the exam for now.”

“You’ve done a little emergency work already, I guess.”

“I had to put seven stitches in Graham’s forehead when his axe handle broke that time, and there’s been a few flu cases. Setting Stefan’s broken leg was the closest thing to a real trauma we’ve had so far. But all in all, I much prefer giving good news to expectant mothers.” Rita smiled. “This is the best part of my work. That, and teaching the children. One or more of them will have to take over from me some day.”

“I never thought of that.”

“I think about it all the time. It can be a burden, being the only one with such a necessary skill.”

“At least you can do something about it.” Sara pulled her pants on. “Maybe that’s what it was like for Cody at first. That boy was about the only one of us here who could deal with all this when it happened. Johnny and some of the others have stepped up, so he’s not having to carry it all anymore. But he was our anchor when it was just five of us.” She smiled. “Speaking of Johnny, how are you two doing?”

Rita returned the smile. “Well enough. Perhaps we’ll have our own news sooner or later.” They laughed together. “That day — when we met — I woke up thinking it would be the day I went to find my own place. Then came the dogs, and Johnny and you and the others rescued me — and so I did find my own place. Here, with all of you.” Her eyes grew bright for a moment. “Every day I pray to God, thanking Him for putting me in your path.”

“You know everyone here is grateful for you being here too,” Sara said, hugging the nurse. “I remember one day, we were all talking about things we needed, and one thing was medical expertise. And here you are!”

“I’m here, Rita — oh. Sorry, I didn’t know you were busy. Hi, Sara.” Ashley stood in the doorway, looking only a little uncertain.

“It’s okay, Ashley,” said Sara. “We’re pretty much done. Are you helping Rita today?”

“Yeah.” Ashley smiled. “It’s my turn today. The other kids got school. But I’ll have school Monday, and Sheldon will be here. It all works out, I guess.”

The women laughed. “Ashley, why don’t you double-check the schedule and see if we have any appointments? I think Stef is coming in to have his leg checked out after lunch. If anyone walks in, just tell them to have a seat and I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

“Okay.” Ashley ducked back into the front office.

“Looks like you have your successor lined up already,” Sara grinned.

“Perhaps. Ashley is…”

“Not much bothers my foster girl, does it? She took to Tim right away, thank God. She’ll make a wonderful big sister.”

“And she could grow up to become a wonderful medic, if she wants. She isn’t squeamish about blood at all, and she was a big help when I had to stitch up Graham. You don’t find too many children like that. Or adults, for that matter.” Rita smiled. “But still, I try to teach the other children as much as they’re ready for — after all, it might be Ashley who needs help one day. Or me.”


Later that afternoon, Stefan boosted himself onto the exam table, propping his crutches on one side. “Six weeks…” he pointed at the crutches. “I hope it’s ready to walk on.”

“Maybe,” Rita said, poking at the cast. “Have you been staying off it?”

“Hardest damn’ thing I ever had to do… but yup. Okay, I forgot once or twice, but it reminded me quick!”

Rita nodded. “How’s it feeling? You taking pain pills for it?”

“Not even one a day.” Stefan looked proud of himself.

“Yeah,” Palmer said. “But what did you put Tim on? He’s walking around with such a goofy grin! You got any more of that stuff?”

“Sorry,” Rita laughed. “Can’t help you with that — Tim got a big dose of Impending Fatherhood this morning!”

“Oh, how wonderful!” Stefan said, and Palmer nodded. “A baby will be nice! Now if that Sondra upstairs would follow suit…” They laughed; Cody and Sondra could be noisy. Palmer and Stefan cheered them on some nights.

“Looks good, Stef,” Rita said. “You can start putting weight on it ‘as tolerated.’ That means if it hurts too much, stop. I don’t want you upping your pain meds, because I don’t want to have to deal with an addiction, okay? You also need to start doing some exercises to rebuild your leg muscles — you’re gonna hate it, but you’ll suck less when you get back on a bike.” Stefan gave her a sour look. “I’m sure you won’t like the next thing I have to say either: you’ll have a cast for six to eight more weeks.”

“That long?” Both Stefan and Palmer looked horrified.

“That’s the minimum,” Rita said, “but I don’t expect it to be much longer since you were in such good shape when you broke it. We’ll figure out how to do an X-ray at the end of January to see what’s going on in there, but I think you’ll be okay for light riding just in time for things to start warming up. If everything’s good after a couple weeks, we’ll try a walking cast and you can start using the exercise cycles, with resistance as tolerated. You let me know if you have any trouble, right? Palmer, you’ve been a big help with his recovery, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“No, thank you. If more people cared about their life partners as much as you two do, I wouldn’t have had so many health issues to deal with back before the trucks came. Which reminds me: why did you guys never ask the reverend to marry you?”

Palmer laughed. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Back before, we were advocating for equality and we’d have done it to make a statement. But now? Any couple — at least the ones here — are all equal. We don’t need a ceremony to prove it anymore.”

continued…

Tuesday, October 05, 2010 2 comments

White Pickups, Episode 55b

Contents

“I guess so,” said Caitlin, still a little wary.

“Are you okay?” Ashley looked at him.

He scratched his head a moment. “I ain’t been okay for a long time. But right now… I kinda feel okay. So what’cher names? I’m Stevie. Stevie Bolighter.” He let the girls introduce themselves, then said, “Pleased to meet’cha. I’m a little messed up in the head, so if I say stuff I shouldn’t, I’m sorry. But I think I’ll be good for a while.”

“What happened to you?” Lily asked.

“A lot of stuff. But you could boil it down to one thing: Vietnam.” He pronounced it to rhyme with ma’am. “You know what that is?”

“A war,” Caitlin said. “My great-uncle had to go there, but he didn’t talk about it much.”

“He probably didn’t want to scare you. It was a scary place. You never knew just who was your friend and who wasn’t. Then the things you see…” he closed his eyes for a moment. “Stuff little kids should never have to know about. But the kids there had to live in it. Or not…” He wiped away tears. “Sorry. It’s tough.”

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Lily said. “If it makes you sad.”

“I dunno. If I’d talked about it when I got home, maybe I wouldn’t be so messed up now. The preacher there says stuff like that, if you keep it bottled up… Anyway. It’s the old story. Couldn’t keep a job, couldn’t stay married, couldn’t run away from the memories. I started doin’ drugs in ’Nam, and kept doin’ ’em when I got home, until I couldn’t afford ’em. Then I took to drinkin’.”

“So how did you stay away from the trucks?”

“Yeah, the trucks. I started seein’ ’em before most people did, I think. I guess they talk to everyone — they talked to me for sure, but it was just one more voice in my head. They said I could forget all the things I’d seen, but the drugs were supposed to do that for me and they didn’t… so I guess I didn’t trust ’em.

“Somewhere in there, I met the preacher-man. He already had this crew with him, and he said he could help me get one more chance to get my life straight. I hope so — if the world’s already ended, I guess we’re… nah.”

“What?” Lily prompted, but Patterson stepped over. “Hey Stevie,” he said. “Can I borrow the kids for a minute?”

“Sure,” Stevie said, waving a hand. “C’mon back in a few, girlies… there were some good times too. I’ll tell ya about them, okay?”

“Sure,” Ashley replied; Patterson ushered them into the kitchen where Delphinia and a black woman stood at the counters.

“Hey kids!” the black woman greeted them a little louder than was strictly necessary, especially in the kitchen. “I’m Elinaeya Gowans, y’all can call me Elly if you want. So y’all ready to help us make some Christmas cookies?”

“Yeah!” Caitlin grinned, stepping up to the counter. “What do we gotta do?”

“Well —” Delphinia suddenly departed with a smile for the girls. “One or two of ya can take over for Butterfly Lady there. She just keeps flitterin’ in and out, in and out, like she can’t stand still for a minute, it’s about drivin’ me crazy! And that’s a short trip!”

“We can do her stuff,” Ashley said, “I guess. What was she doing?”

Elinaeya laughed. “Confident, ain’cha? But you’re right. She was rollin’ the cookies in the powdered sugar. You two can manage that, right?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Me and this little redhead are gonna make you some more while while you’re working on those.”

“Where do they go in the oven?” Caitlin asked.

“They don’t. It’s some kind of no-bake recipe that Butterfly Lady found in a cookbook. She got me to help, and now she left us to do the work. Yeah, it’s a little strange, but when the oven ain’t working you gotta do what’cha gotta do, right?”

“What are they for?”

“Supper tonight, of course! Some of these guys —” she jerked a head toward the two men playing checkers — “have a sweet tooth like you wouldn’t believe. They sure won’t last until Christmas!” She laughed her loud laugh and opened a drawer, handing Caitlin a spoon. “We just scoop out a spoonful and roll ’em, then put ’em on this here plate. When your friends are ready you can carry the plate over to them and bring back the empty one.”

Caitlin nodded and they got to work. It was easy, and her mind started wandering. Had the strange lady touched the side of Stevie’s grey head as she floated by? It happened so quick, Caitlin wasn’t sure if she’d seen that or not. I think she’s a witch… she looked over her shoulder at the others, as Lily giggled at something Ashley said. Was Ashley right?

“Hey,” Elinaeya gave Caitlin a gentle poke. “You awake?”

“Sorry. Just thinking.”

“’Bout what? You gotta boyfriend?”

Caitlin blushed as Lily giggled across the kitchen, “She wishes she did!”

“Hey, redhead. Nothin’ wrong with that,” Elinaeya patted her shoulder and lowered her voice. “I can relate. You just lookin’, or you got your eye on one on particular?”

“Yeah. But he’s married.” Caitlin rolled another cookie, smashing it a little.

“Oooo. Yeah, that’s somethin’ you don’t want to get in the middle of. At least the man I’m lookin’ at ain’t attached.”

“Who is it?” She looked at her flat cookie, rounded it up and scooped another.

“That fine cop who busted me back before all this truck voodoo came down.” She laughed. “Hey, at least he treated me well enough after he busted me. Didn’t rough me up or talk nasty or nothin’. Y’know, I wouldn’t mind just movin’ right out of this house and right in with him!”

For the first time, Caitlin smiled. “Well, why don’t you ask him?”

“Ha! It ain’t that easy. If it was, you and me, we’d already have our catches. I’m sure when he looks at me, he sees a dirty smelly homeless woman. I ain’t exactly a prize.”

“So? Everybody’s dirty now. There’s no water for the showers, and it would be freezing cold even if there was, so everybody’s a little smelly. You’re not that different from anyone else, anymore. You talk a little loud, but my mom said I talk too much too.”

Elinaeya laughed loud and long. “You know what? You’re right! Maybe I could do somethin’ with this hair, put a leash on my loud mouth, and catch me a man!”

Caitlin giggled. “Your hair isn’t so bad. It sticks up some, but you should see Miss Jennifer’s hair in the morning sometimes!” She turned. “Hey, you guys want to help me fix Miss Elly’s hair when we’re done with the cookies?”

continued…

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