Half Past Midnight (17 page)

“A homicidal maniac wouldn’t be surprised to find one of his victims was dead. He wouldn’t give details on where the bodies were and how he took them by surprise, and he sure as hell wouldn’t drag one of them back to the hospital. All of your bodies are right where you said they’d be.

“I don’t think you’re lying.” He swung his legs off of the table and leaned toward me. “’Course, I don’t think you’re tellin’ me the whole truth, either. There’s the matter of a cabin full of supplies my boys found in that clearing by those bodies.”

Leaning on the table, he queried, “Why would a person as much into survival as you say you are leave all of those supplies when you could’ve just loaded them in your van and taken them with you?” There was obviously a lot more to Chief Kelland than first met the eye. “Maybe ’cause your van was already full?”

Ouch!
And he was just getting started. “And what happened to the weapons those hijackers had?”

Uncomfortable, I tried to answer that one. “The two survivors must have taken them.”

He shrugged. “Could be. But I don’t think so. You’d have been stupid to leave them there,” he drawled. “I think you got ’em. I think you got all their weapons. And I bet if we search y’all’s place real good, we’ll find that you folks have been hoardin’ enough food and supplies to last you a long, long time.”

No,
uncomfortable
wasn’t a strong enough word.
Scared.
That was the word. In this post-holocaust version of Rejas, Texas, just how serious an offense had hoarding become? Through a very dry mouth, I asked, “Why would you think that?”

“Because most of the boxes y’all left in that cabin were marked as food. You left the food and a good selection of tools and supplies. That tells me you already had a van full of that kind of stuff. By the way, the food in that cabin went into our community food supply.”

Was that what he was after? Our food and supplies? “You’d need a warrant to search the place.”

“Says who?” He smiled. “What are you gonna do? Call the police?”

He had me with my own words. Kelland leaned back and raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Don’t worry, Mr. Dawcett. I ain’t sendin’ my boys out there. Hoarding ain’t a crime out here. Not yet, anyway. I just want you to know you ain’t hidin’ near as much as you thought you were.

“See, I’d rather have you workin’ with me than against me. Especially seein’ how the last bunch that went up against you ended up.”

“I didn’t do it by myself.”

“Yup.” He pulled another sheet of paper out of the file on the table. “Kenneth Simms spent six years as a scout in the U.S. Marines. I got nothin’ but respect for a man who served in the Gulf.”

“Is that why you called him a nigger?” I couldn’t let that slide.

It didn’t seem to faze him. “Nope, I did that just to piss you off. I figured you shared a shelter with the man, broke bread with him, and spilled blood with him. You wouldn’t go through all that with someone you didn’t trust and care about. I figured if I made you mad, maybe you’d slip up, give something away.”

The man was a lot smarter than I had ever given him credit for. But he had all but told me that he no longer thought I was a cold-blooded killer. “Look, Kelland, what exactly is it you want from me?”

He stopped for a second as if considering the question. “Well, at first I wanted your ass in jail. More than that, I wanted you hangin’ from a rope.” He gave me that infuriating grin again before he continued. “I thought I had me a killer on my hands, the likes of which we ain’t seen since the Reverend Jim Jones. Now, though, I think you just have a talent for bein’ in the wrong place at the wrong time. I guess you really did me a favor out there at the Kindley’s place, gettin’ them boys like you did. No tellin’ how many others they’d ’ve killed if y’all hadn’t stopped ’em.”

He paused only a second before surprising me again by standing smoothly and extending his hand for me to shake. “So I want to thank you. And I want to apologize for the way I treated you. I had no call for it. And most of all, I want you to think about somethin’ you told me yesterday. You told me you weren’t city folk anymore, that you’re Rejas folk now. Well, Rejas needs help, all the help it can get. Think about that.” Somewhat dumbfounded, I shook his proffered hand.

“I trust my gut, Mr. Dawcett. I don’t like you much; you’re too selfish for my taste. But you’re no cold blooded killer, either.” He waved at the door. “You’re free to go.”

A very sobered individual, I walked to the door. During the course of the last few minutes, I had grown to respect the man that I had before despised. He had given me a new perspective on things. I reached for the knob, then stopped. Staring intently at the doorframe, I spoke again. “Something I didn’t put on that questionnaire.”

Turning to face him, I took a deep breath. “I’m a self-defense instructor. Or I was. Anyway, I’d be happy to train any of your men that are interested.” I grinned weakly. “No charge.”

“Looks like you probably know what you’re doing in that area, too.” He returned the grin. “I’ll pass the word to my men. It’s a start, Mr. Dawcett, it’s a start.”

* * July 5 * *

The next day Ken, Megan, and I found ourselves answering questions for Mr. Fred Morgan, the top reporter for
The Rejas Chronicle
. He was also the editor and owner. Truth be told, he
was
The Rejas Chronicle
.
The Chronicle
, it turned out, was a small mimeographed newspaper, not much more than a few sheets of paper stapled together, mostly consisting of announcements and official notices of the goings on of what was left of the town government and where they needed work. Ours was just the type of story
The Chronicle
needed, Morgan told us, to break the monotony. Readers were tired of reading nothing other than where volunteers were needed and who had died in the night.

“’Justice Triumphs over Evil,’ ” he exclaimed enthusiastically, his hands tracing imaginary headlines. “It’s just what the doctor ordered!”

We were surprised to find that news of our battle had spread so rapidly, even more surprised to find that we were considered heroes by half of the town. As I showed him to the door, I asked how he had found out about everything.

He chuckled. “You kidding? I’ll bet y’all hadn’t been out of the jailhouse five minutes ’fore Kelland had a runner over to see me and give me most of the details. Said it might give folks a little bit of sunshine in the middle of all the gloom that’s been goin’ ’round.”

Kelland had again surprised me. I shook Mr. Morgan’s hand before he left.

The next day, we all got a kick out of reading about our incredible victory over a veritable army of marauders. Then I sobered as I read the notice beneath the story.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR BURIAL DETAIL
Death toll nears 1,000. Rejas City Council to begin using emergency mass graves. Volunteers please report to Jake Olson, Rejas Sanitation Dept.

Ken and I volunteered our backs and Ken’s digging equipment for the excavation, and so the next couple of weeks were filled with a hectic, morbid activity. Amber only made it home sporadically, as the hospital was unbelievably overburdened, and she was often simply too exhausted at the end of the day to make the drive home. After the fifth day, on her second trip home since she had left, she said there were rumors circulating that they would soon have to implement a triage program and offer a euthanasia alternative to those victims with little or no hope for recovery. Two days later, the rumors proved to be true. The death toll had risen to more than nine hundred fifty and showed no signs of slowing down.

Burial detail was a gruesome but necessary duty if we wanted to minimize the spread of disease. Everyone knew it. Everyone hated it. Everyone did it.

We worked in staggered teams of ten, one day on burial duty, two days on search detail, two days on pickup duty, and two days off. Standard operating procedure for search detail was to knock on the door and hope someone would answer. If someone were home, we would introduce ourselves, explain what we were doing and why, and ask if they had any pertinent information on any of their neighbors. Then, we would mark their mailbox with a white X.

If no one answered, we would have to break into the house and search it, hoping it would be empty. If empty, the mailbox got a green X. If we found a body, a red X went on the mailbox and the door, and we made note of the address.

The following day’s pickup detail would take the “red list” of addresses, don their gas masks, and pick up the bodies. When finished, they would mark over the red Xs with yellow circles. The circles indicated the house was empty, but still a potential health hazard. Then they would deliver those bodies, along with any picked up from the hospital, to the current burial site. It was a hell of a way to meet people, but I found myself gaining many close friends as we worked side-by-side loading and unloading our gruesome cargoes.

This went on for two more weeks. Finally, all of the homes in the area had been searched and cleared, and the number of fallout deaths tapered off at the hospital. The total death count for the first month after D-day tallied two thousand, nine hundred eighty-nine, nearly a third of the town’s population.

There would have an even greater number of deaths had it not been for a swift education campaign mounted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As soon as the first explosions occurred, giant flashbulb brilliance in that clear June morning sky, the Rejas Mormon Church had begun passing out flyers describing the effects of nuclear weapons and their aftermath. People were told what to expect for those next few weeks and warned to stay indoors and seal up their windows and doors as airtight as possible. The flyers described various methods for sealing the home against fallout, inspecting, cleaning, and preserving foods, symptoms of radiation sickness, and other items of interest for the times ahead.

The ward bishop personally went to the mayor to volunteer the services of his entire congregation. It was unfortunate that more people hadn’t paid attention to him. Many, if not most, of the deaths might possibly have been avoided.

The mayor himself was one of those deaths, though whether or not his could have been avoided was debatable. He had been seventy-nine years old and in poor health to begin with. The combination of age, radiation, and the strain of the current situation proved to be too much for him, and we laid him to rest in the last of the communal graves on August seventh. On August eighth, the search teams reported that the last of the homes in the area had been searched and marked, and the ninth marked the end of the flood of deaths from the hospital.

We closed the last of those huge graves on August tenth amidst a confusing blend of emotions. Sorrow and grief for the dead mixed with relief, anxiety, and hope for the living. The townsfolk seemed drawn to the gravesite, coming in a steady stream to pay their last respects. When we finally finished covering that final, massive interment, an impromptu crowd of hundreds of mourners gathered. As Ken shut down the last dozer, the still, unnatural silence was deafening. No motors, no voices murmuring, no traffic noise in the background or power lines humming—only the sound of the wind through the trees broke the quiescence of the moment.

Then someone began to sing.

It was a hymn, of course. Anguished and mournful, and yet expressing a hope and a faith so poignant and beautiful as to be painful. Tears formed in my eyes as I looked around, searching for the source of that fine baritone. I was an avowed agnostic and had been for years, but at that moment, I envied that soul his faith in what was to come. I looked at the sea of faces gathered there at the burial mound as more and more people joined in until it seemed the very sound of their voices could wash the pain and fear from my soul. I wept openly, as did most of the others present.

I don’t know how long I stayed there listening as they sang hymn after hymn. Individuals came and went, but the crowd itself had become a living entity possessed of an angelic voice that would not be silenced for many hours.

* * INTERLUDE * *

During the next several weeks, the town of Rejas went through many changes. Weather patterns settled down, so we weren’t constantly worried about hot winds or rain. We no longer sunburned as easily, either. The ozone layer had evidently begun to replenish itself.

We discussed the subject around the barbeque grill on several occasions. Having no television or radio meant that we usually spent much of each night in deep discussion of recent events and, since the stove no longer worked, the grill out back had become our regular gathering place in the evenings. The general consensus was that it had probably been a pretty simple process for Mother Nature to manufacture the O
₃
once she no longer had to compete with industrial pollutants. Of course, none of us really knew for sure. It was yet another thing we would probably never know.

Of Rejas’s seventeen Ham radio operators, all but two had lost their radios to EMP. Those huge antennae had collected much more than they were designed for, passing the pulse on to the delicate circuits of the radios. The two surviving radios had been disconnected and disassembled for repairs on D-day. They were connected to a couple of generators that had survived, and so far, they could talk to one another, but hadn’t picked up any outside transmissions. The operators said they couldn’t tell if that was because there simply wasn’t anyone left with a transmitter, or if there was some kind of atmospheric interference left over from D-day that prevented it.

Chief Kelland relaxed the roadblocks around the town to allow “qualified” refugees to settle into some of the newly emptied homes, and the survivors in many of the smaller surrounding towns trickled in to take advantage. Small towns soon became ghost towns, and scouts reported more and more of the neighboring municipalities were nothing more than empty buildings. Some of the inhabitants joined us in Rejas, and some moved elsewhere to try and find friends or family in other parts of the country. But no one seemed to want to stay in a small town anymore.