He walked out into the living room, Elizabeth standing by the window, watching the sun rise, Ben nuzzled against her, nursing.
She did so look like her mother as she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him contentedly, that Madonna-like face all new mothers have when nursing a child.
“Morning, Daddy.”
“How is he this morning?
“Hungry little devil.”
“Get something on a little more presentable than that old bathrobe; you’re going into town with me now.”
“Why?”
“Just do it; wake up Jen and tell her to get moving as well.”
He walked outside; the air was chilled, the sky overhead clear. The trees were really leafing out now, though farther up the slope of the mountains it was still winter and Mitchell was still snowcapped.
Strange, a year ago today. Precisely a year ago.
He walked round the side of the house and saw a fresh tulip beginning to blossom. He snapped it off and placed it on Jennifer’s grave.
“Good morning, my little angel,” he whispered, and looked back to the window where Rabs sat gazing down protectively.
Next to her grave was another, smaller. Very little had been buried there, but he felt he owed Ginger that for her sacrifice. Elizabeth had found a faded ceramic dog and placed it there for Ginger shortly after Ben was born.
“Dad, what is it?”
Elizabeth was outside, holding Ben. “Just get in the car.”
The old Edsel, the miracle machine, was still running, though just barely, the rings going. He turned it over and it revved to life, black exhaust blowing out. Their remaining stock of gas was increasingly contaminated.
Jen came out, helped by Makala. The two had indeed bonded over the long winter; the starving winter it was now called by those who had survived it. Jen was failing. Though she stood proudly straight a year ago, osteoporosis was taking over. She was developing cataracts also but could still see well enough to at least read, which had become her source of comfort during the long cold winter months spent next to the fireplace.
The firewood. Though he argued against it, students made sure the house was supplied… and provided extra rations for Elizabeth as well.
Jen got into the back alongside Elizabeth, and Makala climbed into the front seat. He backed out and started towards town.
“What the hell is it?” Jen asked a bit peevishly. “Did someone get a bear?”
That had happened three weeks ago and had been the cause of an actual celebration in town. Bear stew, enough to feed a thousand when some of the precious dried corn and apples were mixed in.
A thousand, 960 actually, was the number now, at least as of yesterday afternoon.
The starving winter, as Kellor predicted, had taken down most of the rest of the survivors. The months of cold, increasing solitude as already weakened neighbors died away, fires going out, the weak far too weak to crawl out, bring in wood, and relight the flame… curling up and then just going to sleep. The death rate soared once more.
Just yesterday, at the town council meeting, Makala, now head of public health, had raised the terrible issue of burials. It had broken down by February. There were too many dead and too few left with the strength to bury them. It was estimated that hundreds of homes might now actually be morgues, the entire family dead. A hundred or more bodies were lying in the graveyard, decaying.
The decision was made to burn them, the grisly task to be seen to by those who would accept triple rations as payment.
That now was a horrible irony as well. With so many dying during the long winter, there was now actually enough food to see the rest through to summer.
John drove down Black Mountain Road, the road that had been his daily commute for so many years. There was no longer a guard at the gate, too few left to man it, along with the outposts and barricades. At the intersection to Flat Creek Road he had to take a turnoff. The ice storm of two months ago had dropped dozens of trees in the town, the next block still impassable; there was no one with the strength to clear the trees.
The First Battalion did still have strength, but he had kept them strictly to other tasks, to be the army, guarding the passes throughout the winter and guarding the food supplies. Their survival rate had been just about the highest. Black Mountain had lost close to eighty percent of its population in exactly one year, the college just over sixty percent, including the casualties from the war. Part of it was the resilience of kids in their late teens to early twenties, part of it the strict discipline, created by Washington Parker, continued now by Kevin Malady, and the slow, heroic sacrifice of President Hunt and his wife, who died from starvation, a month after the battle, so that “our kids” could have another meal.
That memory had stayed with them, bonded them, inspired them.
And as for the bonding, the campus chaplain had to perform eight weddings and a couple of the girls were coming close to due… and like Elizabeth, two of them would be mothers who lost the fathers in the war.
Cutting around the fallen trees, John pulled back onto Black Mountain Road, continuing in towards town. A number of houses had burned during the winter and were gutted-out shells, others just abandoned, all within dead. The few with life still inside had yards already planted with this spring’s “Victory Gardens”; there wasn’t a lawn to be seen.
The town was quiet, more a ghost town now, but still had some survivors and many of them were heading down to the center of town, some of them nearly running. They all looked like survivors of a death camp, skeletal, children lanky, with swollen stomachs, nearly every man bearded, nearly all in clothes several sizes too big.
John drove faster now, heading down the center of the road, the sides filled with debris, broken branches from the storms, cars abandoned since the first day.
And as he came around the bend to the center of town he saw them and at the sight of them Elizabeth, Jen, and Makala all let out a shriek, screaming so loudly that Ben burst into tears.
John pulled into the town hall complex, not even bothering to find his parking slot. Hundreds were gathering, some even running.
He got out of the car and looked at them….
A Bradley armored personnel carrier was at the front of the column, fluttering from a pole strapped to its side… the flag of the United States of America.
Behind the Bradley was a column that stretched back down the road for several hundred yards. Humvees, a couple of dozen trucks, five 18-wheelers, another Bradley, most all of them painted desert camo, all of them flying American flags.
“Here he is!” someone shouted, pointing towards John.
The cry was picked up, the people of his town parting as he slowly approached, eyes clouded with tears as he gazed up at the flag.
An officer was standing in front of the lead vehicle, surrounded by nearly a dozen of his own troops who should be back at the gap, the First Battalion of the Black Mountain Rangers, talking with soldiers decked out as soldiers as John remembered them, Kevlar helmets, a mix of uniforms, though, some desert camo, some standard camo green, a few in urban camo. And yet it was his kids, his soldiers, who looked to be the tougher of the two groups, lean, hawk faced, eyes dark and hollow, weapons slung casually, the regular infantry obviously a bit in awe of them, especially the girls, who seemed as tough as the guys they were with.
The lead officer next to the Bradley, John could see the star clipped to his lapels, was actually in his dress uniform, as if to distinguish him, to make him stand out clearly.
“Here’s Colonel Matherson!” And at his approach the soldiers of his own militia came to attention and presented arms. And to his shock, the
GIs standing around them with all sincerity came to attention and saluted.
