It was Leena’s turn to shrug instead of speaking.

  “Doesn’t make a fucking difference now, does it?” Matthew asked.

  “It does if you care about your relationship with your father. He lived, Matthew. He has those scars, the ones you like to rip open every chance you get.”

  “I didn’t ask for your intervention,” Matthew replied, dropping the volume of his voice as he realized someone ahead had turned around when he spoke. “I don’t want your fucking therapy.”

  “Fine,” Leena said, pushing a strand of dark hair from her face and tucking it back beneath a dirty scarf. “But once that story is lost, it’s gone forever.”

  “Our entire generation is lost,” Matthew replied.

  Leena had turned to face him when a cry came from the front of the caravan. Matthew placed a hand on his knife and ran toward the leading edge of the group. He felt for the bow with the other hand as the arrows rattled on his back.

  ***

  John waved Matthew closer as he ran through the snow, leaving black footprints of uncovered asphalt in his wake. He pushed through several of the pledges until he was standing next to his father. John’s eyes turned to the guardrail. The remnants of an old roadway sign stuck out of the frozen earth and at an odd angle. But that was not what had stopped the group.

  Matthew moved closer and saw what at first appeared to be a handful of rags clinging to the steel pole. But it was, in fact, one of the scouts he had sent ahead days ago. The boy’s bare feet, blue and stiff, hung a few feet from the ground, his boots missing and certainly on someone else’s feet by now. His tattered clothing wavered in the wind. Matthew’s eyes moved upward. Sitting atop the boy’s shoulders was nothing but a frozen stump of bloody mess and the gray sky behind it.

  “Fuck,” Matthew whispered as he turned away from the decapitated corpse. “The other?”

  John pointed past the guardrail into an open field bordering the trees, where, even from that distance, they could see he was headless as well.

  “That ain’t stopping us,” John said to Matthew.

  “They kill enough of us, it will,” he replied.

  “Call my vice.”

  “Fuck that,” said Matthew. “Let’s keep walking.”

  “We will. But first I want to talk with him.”

  Matthew put his hands on his hips and looked at the desolate countryside. He saw a house, the remnants of a barn, and a corn silo in the distance. He could not be certain, but Matthew thought he saw wisps of smoke coming from the house’s chimney.

  “Fine,” Matthew said, turning to the members standing behind them, several weeping and whispering to each other. “Send for the vice. Tell the founders to cluster and have everyone else draw their weapons.”

  He’s a natural, thought John. A leader of men.

  “Road thieves or the Republic?” Matthew asked his father.

  “This is a message from those trying to keep us from traveling further on the highway.”

  “They stole his boots,” replied Matthew. “Probably thieves like the other cowards we met.”

  “Or meant to look that way to keep us from preparing for the real threat.”

  Alex trotted to where Matthew and John stood. He hunched over, drawing massive gulps of air into his lungs.

  “Care for a pipe, Vice?”

  Alex looked at Matthew but decided not to dignify his sarcastic question with a reply. “The kids we sent ahead to scout?” he asked through a fit of coughing and wheezing.

  “Yes,” replied John.

  “Fuck,” said the vice.

  “Yeah, fuck,” repeated Matthew. “Now what? Maybe we turn around and forget this stupid shit.”

  John glared at his son and shook his head. He used one hand to stroke the end of his long beard. “We’re not turning back.”

  “Why not?” Matthew asked.

  “We’re not.”

  Alex moved between the men, now able to control his coughing. “Listen. Both of you. See that sign up there, quarter of a mile out?”

  John and his son looked to the horizon and then back at Alex.

  “I’m pretty sure that old piece of sheet metal is welcoming us to Ohio. That means that right now, we’re in no-man’s-land. We’re halfway between Pittsburgh and Cleveland on an empty highway and vulnerable from all sides. If we turn back, we got the same length of road to travel than if we don’t. And whoever did this to our boys ain’t gonna stop just because we turn around. I say we keep going.”

  Matthew waved a hand at Alex and looked at John.

  “I want the best knives up front, and I want you and Matthew at the rear. We’re starting into the Great Plains, and it’s going to be really hard for anyone to ambush us now; we’ll see ’em coming. Keep the group tight, and we’ll break near Lordstown.”

  Alex chuckled, and John laughed.

  “Yeah, Lordstown. That’s pretty fucking funny, ain’t it?”

  ***

  “I’m not leaving her side,” Ron said.

  “You are, on order of the pres. Don’t give me no shit, Ron. We need your knife up front.”

  Ron looked at Leena and then pushed his chest outward. “Guess I could better protect the chapter up front. I’m pretty good with the blade.”

  “Thanks, Ron,” replied Matthew as the man ran past him, never looking back at Leena.

  “That true?” she asked Matthew when Ron was gone.

  “What?”

  “That part about his knife, the stroking of his male ego.”

  “The president called for the best knives up front. At this point, that means anyone who carries one.”

  “You?”

  Matthew shook his head.

  “No. Me and the vice stay back here.”

  Leena tried to hide the smile creeping across her face.

  ***

  James and Dino pulled the bodies down and removed their patches. They folded the vests and gently placed them inside one of the packs pulled on a sled by the pledges. The frozen ground held firm, so they used precious firewood to cremate the bodies of the two boys.

  John stood back and watched the flames reflect off the snow in the coming dusk, the oily smoke turning his stomach. He wanted to give the members a proper burial, whatever that might mean in this broken world. But he also wanted the enemy to know that he would not give up. He was coming to Cleveland, and the flames sent that message. The funeral pyre said he would not be stopped unless it was his body burning in the field. He had started the Chapter of the Phoenix decades ago, and if it ended, it would be on his terms and his terms only.

  Chapter 7

  The chapter continued on, crossing the meaningless border between Pennsylvania and Ohio. The momentary sense of accomplishment slid away to reveal the greater feeling of anxiety underneath. They had buried two pledges, and the chapter was not in a position to continue losing their knives. The snow fell in light flakes now, no longer pummeling them with inches per hour but still dropping enough to make the march miserable. Words were few and thoughts of sanctuary even less.

  John decided to keep Matthew up front. He kept his vice at the back of the caravan while he vacillated back and forth in the middle of the group. He thought about what Alex had said about their trip, and now that he was in Ohio, John knew that nothing would stop him from reaching his destination. He hated to use the word “instinct,” as it felt too close to destiny, but John felt the urge to go to Cleveland in order to save something bigger than his own life, bigger than the chapter. He believed the future of the Keepers hinged on his ability to move them to Cleveland, and the fact that he didn’t know why pushed him toward insanity.

  Shouts from the front of the caravan interrupted his thoughts. He squinted and held a hand over his forehead, trying to see the reason for the commotion in an otherwise somber group. Unfortunately, John knew what that meant. There was only one reason for such an outburst: an attack.

  Several of the founders ran from the rear of the group while Alex remained to thwart a possible rear ambush. The old men surrounded John, most holding weapons painted with decades of dried blood.

  “Up front, Pres,” Dino said through ragged breaths.

  “Let’s go. Grab as many of the pledges as you can.”

  John trotted forward, and the founders ran alongside him. He looked left and right, remembering the various altercations over the years. He had fought next to these men for most of his life, and he was willing to give his for them. Some ran alongside the founders in spirit, having already made that sacrifice on some other lonely, forgotten highway of the past.

  “Road bandits.”

  John looked at the young girl who had identified the threat. For a moment, he saw Leena’s face superimposed on hers.

  “How many?”

  “Maybe a dozen,” she replied.

  He nodded and placed a hand on top of her head. “Head toward the back, near the vice. Got that?”

  She nodded. Her stringy, greasy hair bounced as she ran through the snow. Some of the other children followed her in silence. John shook his head, disgusted with the lost innocence and yet powerless to do anything about it.

  “Faster,” he said to his fellow Keepers, knowing they were already moving as quickly as they could.

  ***

  Matthew removed his dagger from the chest of the man on the ground. He had waited until the thief spat his last breath in a mix of saliva and blood before he stopped turning the blade. He spun to see another pledge wrestling with a bundle of ragged cloth. The two combatants stood in stark contrast to the world, covered in white by the fresh snow. The melee would preclude his use of the bow, and that was fine with Matthew. He preferred the intimate violence of hand-to-hand combat.

  Matthew ran toward them, the entire scene playing out in frame-by-frame slow motion. He had found his gift early in life: seeing physical altercations at a speed that allowed him to anticipate the next move and react before he could be struck. He remembered the founders standing around, laughing, placing wagers on him. They would organize the wrestling matches, and he always won. Occasionally, he would misjudge a punch and end up with a bloody nose, but that was rare. The other boys in the chapter realized very quickly that Matthew was not one to engage unless you wanted to walk away with a broken face and a bruised ego.

  He threw his weight into the air as the pledge turned, the attacker wrapping his arms around the boy’s neck. Matthew landed on the back of the attacker, knocking all three of them to the ground and separating the two combatants. He leapt upon the thief’s chest and delivered two fists to his face. The man’s eyes rolled up into his skull, and Matthew’s second punch opened the man’s bottom lip, where blood began to flow over a wiry, filthy beard. Matthew reached to his side and realized he had dropped his knife at some point in the fight. He drew his right hand back. With a sickening crack, he brought the heel of his palm crashing into the man’s nose, driving it into his brain and killing him instantly.

  “Are you injured?” Matthew asked, turning to the pledge, who was staring in abject horror at what he had just witnessed. “Are you fucking hurt?” Matthew asked with more bite in his words.

  The boy shook his head.

  “Good. Then get up and get back in the fight.”

  Matthew stood and scanned the highway. He saw three bodies lying motionless in the snow, two of which were by his own hand. Three pockets of men continued to fight, most of them congregating near the eastbound side of the Ohio Turnpike. He saw two figures running from the battle, one with his arm around the other as they hobbled over the drainage gully, heading for the safety of the woods beyond.

  He felt a burning pain on his right side as another attacker rushed him from behind. The man’s blade had opened the thin skin on his hip but had not pierced any of the vital organs that were inches away. Matthew turned in the air, using the man’s momentum to carry them both to the ground. He landed on something round and hard, which knocked the breath from his lungs. Before Matthew could breathe, the man kicked him in the shoulder. A second kick connected with the side of Matthew’s face. He wanted to lie in the snow and surrender, let the darkness fall over his vision, but his survival instinct would not allow that. Matthew rolled over three times until his shins smacked the side of the guardrail. He bought four seconds with the maneuver, which was enough for his lungs to grab air. The attacker lunged forward, intent on driving Matthew’s skull into the asphalt, but Matthew was quicker. He brought a knee up into the man’s groin. He landed on top of Matthew, crying in pain. The man smelled of onions and excrement. Matthew pushed him to the side and brought his fist down upon the man’s face, feeling his lips burst apart. He rolled on top of the thief, grabbed his ears, and drove his head into the highway repeatedly until the man was dead.

  The wound on his hip and the kick to the face left Matthew disoriented. He stood and leaned back, the guardrail keeping him from falling over backward. He saw several other fights, the double vision making it difficult for him to see exactly what was happening. Matthew turned back and saw John leading the founders past the discarded bags and carts left by the chapter. He saw John approach the melee with his arm up. Matthew stumbled forward, but then the concussion from the fight took hold and forced him back to the ground in an unconscious heap.

  ***

  John watched Matthew collapse. He knew his son was alive, but he had no idea how he knew that. He ran forward as several individual fights raged across the roadway of the eastbound side of the Ohio Turnpike. He raised an arm and led the way, although some of the founders had already passed him and entered the fray.

  Years of road fights had left John with a keen sense of fatal moves. He was not as strong or as quick as he once was, but he fought for survival. The lost generation was left with nothing more than a sense of hopelessness that kept them robbing travelers with little motivation to hone their skills. John regretted each life he took, much in the same way a hunter reflects on the day’s kill. The world was a different place now, and those who reared offspring in the violent woods of the outlying regions, far from the geopolitical reach of the Republic, were left to do so with their own laws and morals. The Keepers had theirs, but not all clans of the wild shared the scrap of humanity that remained inside the founders. As John approached the nearest thief, he shook all pity from his mind and raised his club to an attack position.

  The man snarled through broken teeth, hissing at John more than speaking. The president recognized the feral look in the man’s eyes and wondered if that had been the environment that raised him, or if the man had discovered a batch of meth in the ruins, the last remaining tarnish of civilization that did not die with it.

  “C’mon. One of us is gonna die. It’s the law of the warrior.”

  The man smiled at John and raised a hand holding a curved dagger nine inches long. John glanced at the aluminum baseball bat he used as a club and chuckled.

  “All right,” he said to his attacker. “I’ll take these odds. Your move, cowboy.”

  John felt fights breaking out all around, but did not sense a third party approaching to tip the scales against him. For now, it was only him and his immediate foe.

  The man dropped to the ground in a move that made John hesitate. That hesitation cost him in blood. The man rolled to one side and drew the serrated edge of his blade across the back of John’s left calf. The president screamed in pain and fell to one knee as the blade opened his skin. Using decades of experience to calm his racing mind, John stood on his right leg. He now towered over the man, who had clearly used that move before to end fights. But he had not faced the president before. John pushed the pain from his mind and brought the bat down on the man. The first swing glanced off the man’s skull and delivered most of the blow to the asphalt beneath. However, John quickly brought the bat back to his ear, and the second strike connected with a dull thud on the crown of the man’s head. The skull opened wide, spewing gray matter out and down his face. The man’s eyes stared into the bleak sky as he expired.

  ***

  The vice was disobeying the president’s direct order. He had done so only twice in their time together, and each indiscretion had been the right call. He left several pledges in charge of bringing the entire caravan into a tight configuration, back-to-back and facing outward in case the road thieves brought another wave. He doubted their intelligence and numbers would permit such a sophisticated plan, but underestimating the adversary in this world often had fatal consequences.

  He ran as fast as he could, the years of creeping arthritis making it difficult to do more than jog. Alex pulled his hat off and let the cold air chill his head, hoping to snap out of the fog of confusion brought by the unexpected attack. The founders kept fighting, although he thought he saw the boots of one lying motionless on the ground. Several others appeared to be in control of their fights, and John limped back toward him, using his baseball bat as a cane.

  “I thought I fucking told you—”

  “Where’s Matthew?” Alex asked, ignoring John’s reprimand.

  The president scanned the highway littered with scraps of clothing, dirty footprints, and bodies. He pointed to the guardrail where Matthew lay in the snow before he also collapsed and lost consciousness.

  Chapter 8

  “Damn! I think they took down a few of the thieves.”

  The sergeant held his hand out, waiting for the solider to drop the binoculars into his open palm.

  “Yep. The leader crushed this fucker’s skull with a bat. Gramps can fight,” the soldier said before handing the binoculars over to his sergeant.

  The grizzled warrior pushed his goggles up. He readjusted the lenses with a dial that felt like ice, and then scanned the highway where the fight had taken place. The five-hundred-yard distance was close enough to be viewed remotely, but not close enough to hear their conversation.

  The members of the chapter had broken their circle. About half walked to the guardrail, where they pulled a man upright. He stumbled, and his legs appeared slack, but the sergeant saw his mouth move.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9