Apocalyptic Organ Grinder (8 page)

Tanner Kline lifted his head from the ground as his body was wracked by a fit of coughing.  Water gushed from his eyes and nose with the force of projectile vomiting as his fingers clawed at his throat as if he could scratch open an airway.  Gasping for breath, he struggled to sit up and realized he was shivering so violently that his teeth chattered against each other.  Drenched from head to toe, his face and tattered suit were coated with gritty sand and a chill radiated from within him as if his skeleton were made of ice.

Blinking away the tears in his eyes, he looked at the world through a shimmering veil.  Dark trees blurred the horizon and he heard the rushing waters of the river behind him. There was another noise as well, so faint that he at first thought it was simply a remnant of the nightmare clinging to his mind.  Cutting in and out of the river sounds were the slightly off-key notes of a barrel organ, cranking through a song that Tanner’s grandfather had taught him years ago: 
Blue Danube.

Tanner attempted to stand but a jolt of agony blazed through his leg.  With a sharp cry he fell to the ground again and lay there, panting, as he waited for the pain to subside.  When he felt as if he could move without throwing up, he crawled across the shore, inching his way toward a mass of driftwood that had become snagged in the exposed roots of a tree.  His trembling hands wrenched pieces of timber free until he found a forked branch that was about the right size.  Snapping part of the lower half over a rock, he placed the Y-shaped crook in his armpit and used the makeshift crutch to help him to his feet.

Now that he was standing, Tanner could see lights shining through the cluster of pines up river.  The organ music had stopped, but he was certain it had come from the same direction .  He was just as sure that the soft glow in the distance could be nothing other than a Settler community and he gritted his teeth through the pain as he hobbled toward it.

He would have his story to tell Shayla after all.  She’d undoubtedly cried herself to sleep by now, her mind inventing myriad horrors to explain why her daddy hadn’t come home.  Nightmares would surely follow, but within a matter of days she would be in his arms again and he would chase all the bad dreams away.

The thought of nightmares gave Tanner pause as the image of the boy rose like a ghost in his mind.  He saw the silver chain as clearly as if it had been overlaid upon reality.  The velvet coat and red hair.  The gash in the neck grinning up at him, mocking with smug condemnation.

He was a Spewer
. 
Plain and simple.  It had to be done.  For Shayla
.

He also realized that someone would have found the body by now.  And they would not be happy.  As he stood there, thinking about that poisonous little bastard, the entire Spewer village could be scavenging the riverbank, searching for the child murderer who’d eluded them.

It’s not murder . . . it was self defense.

Still, unless he wanted to risk falling into their hands again, he had to get his ass moving. 

Weaponless and alone, Tanner Kline trudged toward the light.

XII.

It had been three days since Tanner Kline drug his battered body to the gates of the community he came to know as Knoll.  It was smaller than most settlements he’d visited in the past, comprised of five buildings pieced together from logs and various scraps of wood.   The structures themselves lacked any real foundation and most leaned to one side so precariously it looked as though their tin roofs were about to slip off.. 
 
All in all, it was standard Settler architecture with the buildings clustered around a courtyard.  The ground in this common area had been trampled underfoot so often that only sparse clumps of grass were able to push their way through the hard-packed earth.  The entire community was surrounded  by a wall that had once been mounds of  Old World refuse;  covered in dirt and seeded with grass it was the singular feature from which the community took its name.

Though the earthen wall was so high that Tanner had to scramble up the ramparts just to glimpse the forest and river beyond, he could still see the remnants of the Old World city from the courtyard.  The crumbling towers rose in the distance like a forest of trees that had been snapped in half;  ivy clambered over most of them so thickly that their steel skeletons were no longer visible, except for the occasional flash of sunlight glaring off the windows hidden beneath the leafy vines. 

Earlier in the morning, Tanner had seen an eagle take flight from the top of the tallest structure and his eyes now scanned the blue expanse of sky, watching for the black speck of the great bird’s return.  If he’d had his antique rifle, he was sure he would’ve been able to drop the creature mid-flight if it soared close enough.  It would be nice to present the half a dozen residents of Knoll with a token of his gratitude before setting out for home.  They’d welcomed him into their homes as if he were one of their own, shared their meager supplies, and helped nurse him back to health.  Though his leg was still surrounded by an anklet of purple and green bruises, the swelling was mostly gone, thanks to their care.  It was tender and warm to the touch, but within a day or two it would be healed to the point that his limp would be a thing of the past.

As he searched the sky for signs of the eagle, his eyes came across a column of black smoke to the south.  The smoke curled into the heavens like a roiling pillar of soot attempting to poison the sky.  It mushroomed out at the top, stretching dark tendrils towards clouds that seemed to instinctively flee from its touch.

Four, five miles tops. 
Tanner thought. Something about the smoke made Tanner feel as if the outer walls of his stomach rippled.  Pressing his hands against his belly, he realized his palms were so clammy that they left moist prints against the green tunic one of the settlers had given him.
Too small for a forest fire, too large to be burning brush . . . something’s wrong
.

As soon as the thought passed through his mind, it solidified into certainty.  Hadn’t Roger, the old man who played the barrel organ, said something about another community up river?  Tanner was sure he had;  and even though he’d never personally been there, he was just as positive that the smoke was coming from that settlement.

For some reason, the image of that Spewer bitch sprang into his mind like a cougar pouncing from a cliff .  He saw her eyes, smoldering with a hatred that felt as though it could direct a concentrated blast of pure incineration at her chosen target;  with her  teeth clenched so forcefully that the veins in her temples bulged, her hair blew in a hot breeze like tongues of flame.

Shaking off the chill tingling his spine caused the vision of Lila to dissipate like the fog at dawn.  Yet the residual feelings of unease left by her apparition remained and Tanner limped across the courtyard far too slowly for his liking.  He wanted to run, to stand atop the grassy mound and scrutinize the forest for the slightest indication of danger.  Because of his injury, however, he was forced to hobble forward at a pace that reminded him of the three-legged races they sometimes held in his home community and he longed to feel the comforting stock of his rifled pressed against his shoulder.

Jayme, the unofficial leader of Knoll, stood atop the grass wall in a wide-legged stance.  His long hair fluttered in the wind as he raised a pair of field glasses to his eyes.  Even though the wall was several feet taller than Tanner, the Sweeper could still see the man’s body stiffen.

“It’s them, isn’t it?”  Tanner’s voice was tight and gruff, but Jayme never looked away from the smoke in the distance.  “The Spewers.  It’s those filthy beasts.”

“Can’t be sure.” Jayme finally mumbled.  “Pretty sure the smoke’s coming from Willowglade.  But maybe a cook stove got out of control and . . . .”

“No.  It’s them . . . it’s
her.
” 

The rest of the community had filtered out of the buildings and clustered behind Tanner silently.  A man named Ashton stepped forward and placed his hand on Tanner’s shoulder.  The man’s bushy eyebrows lowered, as if he were taking mental stock of their guest, and with pursed lips, he stroked his beard. 

“You were a Sweeper, yes?  In your home community?”

Tanner tilted his chin and straightened to his full height, ignoring the extra discomfort subjected upon his ankle.

“I
am
a Sweeper.”

“Fair enough.” The man nodded.  “Not sure if you’ve noticed yet, but ours hasn’t returned since yesterday evening.  It’s not like Charles to go this long without checking in.”

“I’ll go then.” There was no hesitation or doubt in Tanner’s voice as he blurted out the words.  “Where are your guns?”

The conversation had captured the attention of Jayme, who looked down upon the gathered crowd like a shocked god.  “Don’t be a fool, man . . . .”

“I will lay down my life so that others might live.”

“
I’m not sending you out there!
”

The force of Jayme’s words struck Tanner like a physical blow to the chest.  He blinked up at the man and noticed how the field glasses trembled in his hand.  Studying the deep lines etched into the Jayme’s face and the ashen pallor that leeched color from his flesh, Tanner realized the leader of the community was terrified.  He’d seen something out there.  Something which had shaken him so badly that his confidence had crumbled like the buildings standing against the skyline.

“We . . . we need you here, Kline.  In case … well, in case something happens.”

The man’s unease was not lost on the people who looked to him for guidance.  Their silence was shattered with a nervous babble of chatter, gasps, and a half dozen questions asked simultaneously.  Even Ashton seemed taken back by the outburst, his jaw dropping open as he stood with his hand on Tanner’s shoulder..

Pulling away from the man, Tanner scuttled up the embankment on all fours, using his hands and knees to ease the strain on his injured ankle.  The worn tread of the sandals covering his feet slipped in the dew-slick grass as his fingernails raked ragged furrows into the earth in an attempt to keep from sliding backward.  Halfway up the small hill, he kicked the shoes off in a flurry of movement and was then able to reach the summit in a fraction of the time it’d taken him to arrive at the midpoint

While the sides of the embankment were covered with grass and clover, Knoll’s missing Sweeper had beaten a dusty path into the top of the  ridge with his ceaseless patrolling.  This dirt stuck to Tanner’s wet soles like gritty sand and protruding stones dug into his heels as he teetered to his feet.

Up close, the head of the community looked like a man who’d glimpsed an inevitable future and wished he hadn’t.  His pupils were dilated to the point that the green irises surrounding them were nothing more than thin rings.  He somehow looked slumped and tense at the same time, as if his body couldn’t decide whether to fight with everything it could muster or simply lay down and await death.  Though it was still early enough in the day that most of the assembled citizens donned long sleeves or shawls, a tang of sweat wafted from Jayme’s body.  He tried to meet Tanner’s gaze, held it long enough for his left eye to twitch twice, and then apparently found something of intense interest on his hands.  He held them at chest level and turned them back and forth in front of him, as if comparing the callused mounds of his palms to the scrapes and scabs on his knuckles.

“I’m just a moisture farmer, Sweeper.” He said softly.  “These people look to me for protection.  For guidance.  I’m … I’m just a moisture farmer, ya know?”

The statement hung in the air like an admission of guilt and neither man said a word, allowing the implications to sink in.  Finally, Tanner placed his hand on the crook of the man’s elbow and squeezed so softly that it almost seemed as if he were testing the ripeness of a fruit.

“So be it, moisture farmer.  Stand down.”

Jayme’s head snapped up and a shadow passed over his face.  Tanner had seen the same look when weeding recruits from potential Sweepers for communities who’d lost their own.  It was an expression of conflicting resolve and shame, of someone who wished they had what it took to protect their settlement but was also too keenly aware of his own shortcomings.

“Sometimes,” Tanner whispered, “being a leader means knowing when to hand over the reins.  There’s no disgrace in that, friend.  I’ll protect your people as if they were my own.  I give you my word as a Sweeper.  But, more importantly … as a father.”

Without another word, Jayme slipped the strap of the binoculars over his head and handed them to the man by his side.  The moisture farmer’s head wasn’t nearly as broad as Tanner’s and the Sweeper struggled to adjust the old field glasses to accommodate his own eyes.  The mount hadn’t been cared for properly and the mechanism was stiff, but as Tanner applied downward pressure while simultaneously lifting the sides, the span begrudgingly widened.

The rubber cups surrounding the eyepieces were hard and brittle, causing the bruise on Tanner’s cheek to ache;  but this was a manageable pain so he slowly swept the binoculars across the landscape.  At first he saw nothing but trees and field, marred by magnified scratches on the lenses.  Except for the dark smoke curling above the forest, it could have been just another peaceful Summer morning.  Tracking across a field of wildflowers brought his field of vision to the riverbank – and  it was there that he saw what had had caused a once-proud man to deteriorate when faced with his own limitations.  For what Jayme had seen, and Tanner now watched, was a young girl with a tear streaked face running as if a pack of wild dogs were on her trail.  She was dressed in the traditional, long sleeved smock of a girl whose body had just started down the path to womanhood and her mouth opened wide, releasing a scream whose power was robbed by distance.

Tanner’s jaw tensed as his training rushed to the forefront of his mind. 

It’s begun.

There was no denying it now, no chance that the smoke on the horizon was an accidental fire or anything other than all out war.  For the terrified girl was covered in fresh blood.