House of Gold (25 page)

The Amazing Millennium Diet,
he joked ruefully.

He tried to hunt, and one time, shot a squirrel.

After two days with nothing substantial to eat, he found a dead cat, limp but not stiff, on the white line in the center of the road.

Tastes just like chicken,
he joked blackly.
Sure it does.

He skinned it and broiled it on a spit, just as the Man had taught him with the squirrels and rabbits,
and forced himself to consume the gamey strands of flesh–and with greater effort, willed himself not to regurgitate it.

Mel. Markie. Packy.
With each chew.

Eventually, trading time for calories, he learned to sit in the forest off the road for hours, waiting for a bird or a squirrel, perfectly still, his ankle aching, and he became better at shooting them.

Mechanically, before he came into the
towns, he would shave his whiskers with the blade, using a brook or puddle as a mirror if he was able–
Mel, Markie, Packy
–preparing like an actor before a performance.

Yes, most men had beards now,
he told himself. He knew his clean face made the best impression.

He was physically and emotionally drained almost all the time, but he was still as smart as they come.

Buzz accepted the crude fact that
God had probably made him this way–smart–in order to survive this particular trip. This gave him little consolation.

The living will envy the dead,
an insistent voice sometimes tempted.

He had loved–and still loved–the Man too much to envy the Man's day of glory.

So he cleaned his clothes, and shaved his face, and pasted on a smile as if it were a false mustache before he entered the towns.

The
illusion complete, he would perform his easy-going spiel for the sentry or the mayor or the local strongman or the sheriff, feigning energy and confidence; praying wordlessly before the tabernacle if there was a Catholic church. Then he would adjust spines in exchange for food. Though now he spoke only when necessary to perform the act, and always, he felt a low-intensity jolt when he came out from
the therapy sessions into the sun, or into the moonlight, and the Man was not there waiting for him.

Lately, the rations he was given were smaller and smaller–a chunk of stale bread, a bruised potato, a piece of cheese. But also, on more occasions, there was a piece of fresh fruit, a tomato, a slice or two of newly-butchered venison, a handful of nuts.

Sometimes, even during the day as he walked,
erotic images of his wife would slipslide into his imagination, but he was not aroused. He would make great efforts to picture Markie and Packy in his mind's eye, but their faces had become blurs. Their names became disembodied words. He would try to remember times he had wrestled with them on the pink carpet of the Lakewood house, but he could not conjure up their faces.

He turned northeast on
706, and in a little town called Brandt, he traded his extra five-hundred-round box of ammo and a gold coin for an old, sturdy mountain bike–including two extra inner tubes, a patch kit, and a homemade wire basket large enough for his pack.

It was early May.

It rained less often. The weather had turned. He lost track of the days on the hand-drawn calendar in the little notebook the Man had left
him.

Perhaps because of the starvation everywhere, there was a thinning of refugees on the main roads,-although one time he pedaled right through the center of a gaggle of eight or so in one group– men, women carrying babies, and children.

They had called at him and cursed him, but he plowed forward, wordless, the hardened look in his eyes breaking their column. Who wanted to mess with a crazy
man with a Ruger on his shoulder?

The long, sometimes steep hills were not easy to climb with the bike, so more often than not, he walked it up, then glided down the declines.

He was making better time, not as concerned about what harm might come his way. He was alone and at the mercy of fate. Either the Man's prophecy that he would reach Bagpipe was true or it wasn't. He would find out, he supposed.

Shoot me, or take my possessions, or do whatever,
Buzz thought as he pedaled toward the next wanderer within his sight on the road.
I'll roll right through you.

And so he did. Sometimes it seemed as if these others–many carrying their own psychological scars on their sleeves–did not even see Buzz as he whistled by within arm's reach of their ragged, thin bodies.

Mel, Markie, Packy.
His mantra.

Buzz felt like a machine, and he was. Soul-sick, driven, manipulative, brows furrowed when alone on the road, dreamless.

Lonely. Mourning. Missing his friend more than he missed even his wife or his sons, and feeling guilt because of it.

Then he rolled into the town of Blackstone, off Route 30 in the Catskill Mountains southeast of Albany.

+  +  +

Oberlin. Mark Johnson thrust the shovel into the
pile, and threw a clump of mud onto Maggie's grave.

It was raining. Seamus took the shovel from his father's mighty hand, then followed suit.

"You finish, son," Mark said. "I need to spend some time alone. Pray for your mother, then look in on Meg."

The boy nodded as he began to bury his mother's body. Were those tears on his cheeks, or were they just raindrops?

Have I raised another Johnson robot?

It was hard for Mark to tell, for his son did not speak very often nowadays. Sure, the boy jumped to do anything Mark asked of him. Would take a bullet, no doubt, but he otherwise sat silently in his corner of the shack, pretending to read that stupid paperback.

Accompanied by far-off thunder, Mark lifted one foot after another until he was behind the shack, and raised his hands into the sky, palms
open, the rain pelting his thick, handsome features, running through his bristly auburn hair, down his back.

It's a hard, cold world, Lord.

And so it was.

Why can't I cry?

It wasn't because he hadn't loved her. His love was true, and had been until the end, when her stovepipe breathing came to a halt, and her phlegm-filled lungs had finally been overtaken by the pneumonia that had taken her while
she was in his arms. He was proud of her–the way she fought until the end, for Seamus and little Meggie's sake, despite the blow of losing Angela the week before to the same killer virus or bacteria or whatever it had been.

He let his arms drop, then sat on a wet stump, oblivious to the water. Time to think. Thinking, not bravery alone, won wars.

He couldn't kill what he couldn't see.

His rice
and his gold coins and his aspirin and his hardware had proven-pathetically, perfectly, powerless before the unseen scourge that had destroyed the lungs of his wife and daughter.

His wary foray on foot into downtown Oberlin, that den of witches and warlocks, rifle at the ready, had been a pitiful joke.

The two skeletons standing shift at the college infirmary had actually laughed at him when he
took out the gold coins and asked for medicine...

"Penicillin? Antibiotics? Sure, coming right up,"
they had mocked, making a big show of checking a cabinet and a drawer.
"Oops! All gone! We'll call you when the next shipment comes in. Get it? We'll call you. On the phone!"

Ho ho ho.

A hard cold world like this didn't deserve a woman like Maggie. She had remained soft and warm, inside and out,
to the end, praying, offering it up, making him promise to remain strong, promise to protect Seamus and Meg, claiming to see the Blessed Mother at the very end, mixing her cries of physical agony with those of spiritual ecstasy.

She had died well, like a Johnson. He was proud of her.

Why couldn't he cry?

Because he knew the whole tragedy had been his fault. That bastard Sam Fisk had been right
all along. Mark knew beyond doubt that his own pathetic little insurance policy had been hubris, a miscalculated, insignificant failure.

Mark was not an emotional man, and this helped him bat away the temptation to hurl his anger at Bill White for this predicament. Bill had been sincere in his role as devil's advocate to Sam Fisk's doom and gloom–Bill had given Mark nothing but the straight poop,
at least by Bill's lights.

God have mercy on his soul, wherever Bill was by now–most likely in a grave or praying above one.

Maggie and Angela were dead because of Mark's lack of judgment and foresight, and he knew it. He had gambled their lives on a
bump in the road
or an
ice storm
–to recall those bitter rationalizations that came so glibly to every tongue before the horrors–and had lost.

He
could have sold his house, quit his job, spent all his savings. Moved to Bagpipe. Scratched out a living up there somehow.

Woulda-coulda-shoulda.
That kind of thinking was not like a Johnson.

He rejected all temptation to bellyache.

Taking out a policy for a total collapse had seemed too expensive at the time. Plus, he had felt so smug about the water pump, the rice, the ammo, the coins, the woodstove.

He, the Great Mark Johnson, had been
ready.

Ho ho ho.

Ready for what? Certainly not ready for anything.

Not ready for this.

And in a day or two, no doubt, little Meg, cheated out of the first bloom of her womanhood, would follow Maggie to heaven because of his error. The waterlogged breathing had already begun in the twelve-year-old's lungs.

He could carry her somewhere, looking for medicine. He
was strong. But where? In the rain?

Better to pray for a miracle, which is what he did night and day, to fill the silences. He accepted that Maggie's grace-filled death had been an answer to his prayers–just not the answer he had wanted.

Yet he did not
feel
helpless.

He was too tough, too faith-filled for that.

He
was
helpless.

And so he mourned the only woman he had ever loved, ever married,
ever shared his magnificent body with, ever sacrificed his precious ego for, ever wanted, or ever needed.

He had only the Immaculate Virgin now, and
she
was with his Maggie.

He sat motionless in the warm rain, a breathing statue.

He accepted the plain, undressed fact that losing control was not an option. Maggie's memory would be
defiled
by the mere consideration of giving up or giving in. Seamus
and Meg were
hers,
too, and he owed it to her to do everything–everything–in his power to save them.

He could mourn Maggie proper later–if there
was
a later. And if there wasn't a later, he reasoned in faith, he would be with Maggie, anyway.

So he set aside thoughts about his only true love, Margaret Johnson, and methodically sifted through his own mind, praying for inspiration, looking to find
a way to save Meg and Seamus.

He accepted the reality that he could not expect to hole up in Oberlin indefinitely. His rice and ammo would not last forever (he had already given a portion of both to three neighbors who had asked politely). He could maybe bag another deer, but the game would thin out quickly as others took to the woods in search of protein. Besides, he had no way to store the meat
beyond a few days. He was already out of salt, and was pretty sure that even if he did have salt, he didn't really know how to safely dry and salt meat.

Then there was the security issue. He and Seamus were already standing alternate shifts at guard duty. That kind of thing would wear on the boy eventually. On the other hand, Mark couldn't stay awake twenty-four hours a day. He had already been
forced to shoot one poor sonufabitch–two weeks ago–who had shown the audacity to slither up Mark's driveway, shotgun in hand, at three in the morning. Mark, crouching in a shadow at his cabin window, had tranquilly squeezed off two rounds, and later, buried the corpse in the woods, off his property.

The defensive killing had not bothered Mark's conscience in the least. The intruder had been trespassing,
had a loaded weapon, and the time and manner of his approach had been more than probable cause.

Even before the Troubles, Mark might have shot him. He had shot and killed a drug dealer once during his early years in the Bureau, back when he had worked the streets.

It was getting warmer, and the survivors from the city and the suburbs would be coming out to the country soon enough.

Those city boys'll
be out here three days after they've scraped and scavenged every calorie off the shelves in the suburbs. And the meanest ones'll get here first.

Nope, Oberlin was definitely not a viable long-term strategy, though with the woodstove, the well, and his stockpile of food, he figured they could hold out well into the summer, barring unforeseen security problems.

Barring unforeseen security problems.

There was the rub. It was out of his power to
bar
security problems, all right, and when they did come, they would definitely be
unforeseen.

Mark was a man of wisdom. While he would not hesitate to kill in self-defense, he was also fully aware that those who lived by the sword usually died by it. There was always some bad guy out there with better aim and a bigger gun.

What about New Hampshire?

That was crazy.

Maybe Buzz was crazy, maybe he wasn't,
his most trusted inner voice told him.
There's crazy and then there's crazy. It's a different world now.

It sure is,
Mark thought.

He rejected the foolhardy idea out of hand. There had to be a local option.

What if there isn't?

There just had to be.

Do you mean local–local like this little retreat you set up here in Oberlin that killed Maggie?

So where?
Not here.

He knew the idea of staying here was a temptation he must resist. He could not allow himself to be
lulled
by its familiarity and comforts (yes, for a fellow like Mark Johnson, three daily meals of rice, frigid water from a hand-pump, and a hole out back for a commode was plenty comfortable).