Half Past Midnight (23 page)

He sat back down. “I need some advice, or at least someone to discuss this with. The bitch of it is that there aren’t very many people I can talk to about this.”

“I’m flattered,” I replied, “but I don’t know if I’m the one you should be talking to.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Maybe you don’t realize just how many people look up to you nowadays. You’re an example to them. You and Ken and Megan.”

“That was over two years ago!” I laughed. “There have been a lot of other fights like that since then.”

“Not like that one.” Jim shook his head. “You forget who the investigating officer was. I know what you three went up against.”

He pointed his finger in my face before I could open my mouth. “I know that you never faced them all at once! You’ve told everyone who’ll listen, over and over. But I also know that when a known killer held a knife to Megan’s throat, instead of panicking or breaking down, you and Ken worked out a plan to distract the bad guys. And instead of panicking or breaking down, Megan killed the guy with his own knife!”

“Ken did the shooting and drew their fire,” I protested, “and Megan killed the guy. All I did was throw a smoke grenade and run. Of the three of us, I was in the least danger of all.”

The mayor took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Leeland, you’re modest. I can admire that. And it ain’t false modesty, either. You’re good people, and I thank God for sending you and your family to Rejas. But this ain’t the time for it, so shut the hell up, and let me tell you a couple of things about yourself!

“First, Ken told me that plan was yours, and I know you’re the one that trained Megan. And you forgot to mention that fight at the end. Billy told me you took him and his three buddies before they ever got off a shot. Everyone in town knows about that. I made sure that story got around. It was great for the town’s morale.

“Second, that karate shit of yours has spread to where at least two thirds of the folks in town are either training with you or some of your students. You’ve given them the knowledge, not to mention the courage and confidence to defend themselves against armed bandits. That means you’re at least indirectly responsible for saving the lives of a good portion of the population here. Yet you insist on being treated as ’just one of the guys’ outside of class.

“Third, you and your forges have helped keep Rejas from sliding back into the Stone Age. I know you get a lot o’ help from Brad and Mark, but the idea was yours. You’re the closest thing to an expert we have on post-D survival, but you won’t head up any of the committees, even though we’ve asked you over and over. Instead, you insist on being an advisor. You’re one of those people that knows a little bit about a lot of things, and that’s what we need now.”

Though others had told me these things in the past, I still felt embarrassed when a conversation took this turn. So of course, I did what I always did. I tried to lighten the mood with a joke. “So you’re saying I’m a know-it-all?”

Jim threw up his hands. “I give up. I try to get some help, and all I get are your lame-ass jokes!” He stood and headed for the front door. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

“Wait, Jim!” I jumped up and went after him. “I’m sorry, I just… I get uncomfortable… I mean…” I fumbled for a second. “Look, let’s just forget about what a wonderful person I am, okay? You stop telling me about it, and I’ll stop denying it. Meanwhile, I’m happy to help any way I can.”

Kelland stopped and turned around. Then, he nodded and stuck out his hand. “Deal.”

We shook on it.

As we returned to our seats, I asked, “Why me? Modesty aside, what makes you think I can help you with this one?”

“Cheryl suggested you. The first person a man talks to is his wife, least that’s how it is with me. But she told me I should come talk to you. That you had a way of makin’ folks see things they already knew, but didn’t know they knew, or some shit like that. Nowadays, I don’t even know what she’s talkin’ about half of the time. Ever since she started takin’ your classes.”

He beamed with pride. “Too late to stop her now, though. She’d probably beat the hell out of me if I tried.”

He was probably right. Cheryl was one of my better students, one of the few who truly understood that the system I taught was more than a method of self-defense, but also a way of looking at life and attacking its problems. She had shown a lot of faith in me, sending Jim like that. I didn’t want to let her down.

I thought for a moment. “Come take a walk with me.” I walked to the back door and waited.

Kelland stared at me for a minute, then grinned. “Oh hell, this is gonna be one of those school lessons she was tellin’ me about, ain’t it? One of those walks where you make me ’see the light.’ ” He waggled his fingers and rolled his eyes.

“You know, if you would come to the classes ever so often…”

He shook his head. “I got no time. Every time I turn around, somebody wants me to decide how we’re gonna do something, or when we’re gonna do something, or if we’re gonna do something. I barely got time to eat, sleep, and occasionally take a piss.”

“I get the picture.” He was nothing if not eloquent. “So take a break for a minute and walk with me. I want to show you something.”

He stood and smiled. “Lead on, O Great One.”

We walked out back, and I led him to the shelter in which we had lived for nearly two weeks. There, I began my “lesson.”

“I planned a long time before the bombs ever fell about what I would do when and if it ever happened.” I leaned over to open the blast door. “I learned all I could about the effects of radiation, how to build shelters, air filters, water filters, anything related to nuclear warfare. And I learned to prepare for the worst. The way I see it, if you’re ready for the worst that can happen, you can handle anything less with no problems.”

He looked down at the shelter. “Looks like a lot of work went into this.”

“Yeah, it did.” I descended to the fourth step and flipped a toggle switch just inside the entrance. Twelve-volt automobile bulbs came to life inside. “Come on in.”

Jim descended the rough wooden steps into the shelter, and his eyebrows arched. “This is pretty impressive.”

“Like I said, I tried to learn all I could.” I led him down the short corridor lined with simple wooden shelves and benches. “When we first built this, the lights ran off three car batteries that we kept charged with a hand-powered generator. Now we’ve wired in the waterwheel generator, and we’ve got enough power to run just about anything we want, either in here or in the house.”

As if on cue he asked the question I was waiting for. “So, if you’re so hot on always being prepared, why are the shelves all empty?”

“Because of you, Jim.”

“Me?”

I smiled at having so easily caught him off guard. “Remember when you questioned me on the night of the Kindley mess? You called me a selfish S.O.B. and said you suspected we had a stockpile of provisions that Rejas needed.”

“I never said any such thing!”

I stared at him silently until, finally, he amended, “Well, not in so many words.”

“If you recall, it was shortly afterward that we brought a van full of supplies to the town stockpile.” We reached the end of the tunnel and turned the corner into the tiny little alcove where we had put our five-gallon toilet during our confinement. At the end of the aisle were wooden stairs similar to the ones we had descended at the other entrance. I stopped just before them and continued my talk.

“It occurred to me that if I didn’t bring them in, and things got really bad, people would eventually come after them. And if things didn’t get bad, and the town prospered without any help from us, we could probably count on being known as ’the bums that sat there nice and cozy while the rest of the town had to struggle.’ Also, we figured it wouldn’t do much good for us to live through a nuclear war, if we just had to watch everyone else die. You convinced me that it was better to survive as a town than as a family.”

He was silent for a moment as he thought my analogy through to its logical conclusion. “So you’re tellin’ me that I need to give up all we worked so hard for, because it’s better to survive as a country than as a town?”

“Not exactly.” I reached down, grasped a latch under the bottom stair, and lifted. The stairs rose as a single unit, hinged and counterweighted at the top, to expose a hidden room. Our clan, in which we included Ken and Cindy, had worked long and hard to keep it secret. The mayor’s jaw dropped in astonishment when he saw the room lined with fully stocked shelves.

Given a choice between good will and selfishness, I usually tried to compromise. I briefly wondered if his mouth could possibly open any wider. I guessed I could find out if I really wanted by simply telling him about the other two stashes hidden nearby. Nonperishable food items, weapons, ammunition, and tools. “I never said you needed to give up everything,” I told him.

It took several minutes for him to stop laughing long enough for us to begin planning.

Chapter 12
* * August 16 / Year 3 * *

Dans cité entrer exercit desniee,
Duc entrera par persuasion,
Aux foibles portes clam armee amenee,
Mettront feu, mort, de sang effusion.

The army denied entry to the city,
The Duke will enter through persuasion:
The army led secretly to the weak gates,
They will put it to fire and sword, effusion of blood.

Nostradamus –
Century 9, Quatrain 96

We still had eight tankers in town. The USR&D team confiscated half of our sixteen trucks, so the others had been busy for the last two days moving our gasoline and diesel supply back into some of the gas stations in nearby towns. Seventy-five percent of the food stockpile was now hidden in attics, buried in backyards, or otherwise stashed away. Many of our general supplies were cached as well. When our visitors arrived, no one would have any reason to suspect that we had any more than a modest surplus of anything.

So Thursday morning saw most of the people of Rejas lining Main Street as if in anticipation of a parade. I stood with several of the ad hoc committee heads in front of City Hall, all of us decked out in our Sunday best.

Of course, hard work and hard times had reshaped most of us so our Sunday best hung off of us in places where they had once been tight and fit snugly in places where they had previously been loose. The so-called honor guard for the visiting representatives of the reviving U.S. looked more like a group of cleaned-up hobos than official representatives.

The tension poured through the crowd as word radioed in from the roadblock stations. The convoy was headed into town. It was strange, the disparity of emotions I felt at the sight of all of those military vehicles and uniforms. After all the time I’d spent wondering what was going on with the rest of the country, there was a feeling of relief in knowing that at least a fragment of our government had survived and was struggling back to life. Many of the townspeople must have felt it as well, for as those Humvees rolled down Main Street, they cheered and clapped. American flags appeared in the hands of many.

I smiled with the others, but my smile was strained, as were those of many of the committee members. We were the few people in whom the mayor had entrusted the knowledge of how much the government’s struggling reemergence was likely to cost us, if they got their way. And from the looks of things, they had enough troops and hardware to make sure they got their way.

As the Humvees pulled up to the steps of City Hall, Mayor Kelland stepped down to make nice to the muckety-mucks unloading from the first vehicle. I had never been good with uniforms. Belt rankings, I understood, but chevrons and pips were foreign to me. So I strained to hear the introductions as “Captain Brady” shook hands with Mayor Kelland. Brady stood a lanky four inches over six feet and, judging from the way his uniform hung on him, he had been through some pretty lean times recently. Looking around, I noted that none of the other uniforms fit any better. I heard a distinct Boston accent when he introduced himself as the personal aide for “the general.”

It seemed a tank had broken down on the way into town, and the general had elected to oversee the repairs personally, but would follow at his earliest opportunity.

“Meanwhile,” the captain said, “I assume the ladies and gentlemen standing so patiently behind you are persons of some importance, or they would be out with the rest of the crowd.” The man was smooth, a born diplomat.

“’Course, Captain, I’d like to introduce you to my emergency committee heads, and chief aides.” Jim led the way over to us. I noticed how he exaggerated his country accent, playing the bumpkin. “If it weren’t for these people, Rejas would prolly be a town full o’ dead n’ dyin’.”

It was Captain Brady’s turn to make nice; he shook hands with each of us. As he introduced us, Kelland had a little comment about the individual contributions we had made. “This here’s Leeland Dawcett. We didn’t exactly see eye to eye when he first got here, but he’s shaped up real good. He’s a survivalist and has helped us hang on by the skin of our teeth.”

Captain Brady’s eyes seemed to bore into mine for a moment, staring intently, as if trying to memorize my features. “Mr. Dawcett. Your name sounds familiar. Ah, yes! One of the truckers last week mentioned you in relation to… town security, was it?”

“No sir,” I replied. His question seemed ingenuous enough, but his gaze made me uneasy. Up close, he reminded me less of a diplomat and more of a bureaucrat, a definite step down on Darwin’s ladder. “Well, not exactly. I’m an aide to Ken Simms, who is in charge of town security.”

His brow furrowed as if he were trying to recall the conversation. Finally, he shrugged apologetically. “That must be it.” He looked at me for another second, as if he wanted to say something more, but evidently changed his mind. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Dawcett.” And the mayor moved him on down the line, leaving me to wonder what was going on.

After the final introductions, Jim turned to the captain. “If you like, Cap’n, folks have put together a little spread in your honor. I’m sorry there ain’t enough for all o’ your boys at the table, but we have got a bunch o’ volunteers that’d be proud to feed one or two of the good ol’ U.S.A.’s fightin’ men.”