Ashes, Ashes: The Chronicles of Altor, page 6
Marshall nodded his agreement. “I see that, but it’s sure been nice having you. You’ve been like our extra security blanket.”
“We want to get back to our base,” Forster said, “and see what the lay of the land is there. And there’s another concern.”
“What’s that?”
Sgt. Brewster cleared his throat. “The gasoline in our vehicles is degrading.”
Steele leaned forward and said, “We’ve done what we can about that. This Janus has created a formula for an additive that will help offset that degradation, and we are happy to give enough of our supply of gas and that formula to the Army, but it’s just going to continue to get worse.”
Forster looked at Brewster. He outranked the sergeant, but it was obvious how much he relied on his common sense and experience. “We were going to wait it out until spring, but we’re afraid the fuel might have degraded too much to get us back to the base, even with the additives.”
“That’s going to be true of all fuels, isn’t it?” Marshall asked. “There’s no more fuel being produced, so what was already out there is going to be useless soon enough. We’re going to be back to actual horsepower to get around soon, aren’t we?”
“There are certain kinds of aviation fuels that will still be good,” Steele answered, “and of course, electric vehicles will still function, but yes, we’re about to morph into a more stationary world. From all reports we’ve gotten, gunpowder is running low, as well, and that’s part of why the marauding bands are few and far between now.”
“And that’s why we’re going to leave,” Forster said with a sense of finality. “We know there’s more good we can do out there than we can sitting guard duty here.”
“Well, you rode in like the cavalry just when we needed you,” Steele said. “I’m not sure we’d all still be here, including the dome, without your help.”
“It felt good to do something,” Brewster said. He and Forster stood together.
Marshall thought for a moment they were going to snap a salute at Steele, but instead, they just left the room.
When they were gone, Marshall asked, “What do you think?”
“I think they’re right. We don’t really need them anymore. The world blew itself to hell with a bunch of bombs, then tore up whatever was left for the last year, like two crows fighting over a cow turd. Now, that’s all settling down. If you managed to survive to this point, it might get a little easier from here on out.”
“At least from the perspective of not being at risk of being shot and killed every day,” Marshall agreed.
“Eventually, we’ll have to start to figure out how to rebuild. Get the infrastructure back in place, get power and water running again. Does that supercomputer of yours have plans for that?”
Marshall mulled that question over in his mind. Even a few weeks ago, he would have simply said, “Yes.” Now, with recent developments in Janus’s personality, he couldn’t be so sure. He knew that some part of Janus was undoubtedly listening to their conversation though, and as was becoming a habit, he ran his answer through that filter.
Carefully, he said, “I know at one time, there was a plan for that. There is a lot of heavy equipment and supplies that we thought would be in short supply stashed away at the bottom of Altor. The question is, when and how to employ them.”
“Happy to say, that’s above my paygrade,” Steele said. “Now, are there any changes we need to implement now that Uncle Sam’s Army is going away?”
“Not many, I don’t think. We’ve got the aerial defense drones. After a year of continuous service, some of them are getting worn down, but when they do, we bring them in to our shops here, clean them up, and put them back in service. I don’t think there’s any kind of a threat left that can pose any real danger to us.”
“I’ll keep up with the drills we’ve got the Dust City Irregulars running through, anyway. There’s no harm in that, and if it turns out we’re wrong, we’ll be glad to have them.” Steele scrunched up his face and said, “Any idea what caused the collapse of the tunnel?”
“No, not really. Maybe Janus relied on what turned out to be an inaccurate geological survey. That’s about all I can think of so far.”
“Looks like you and I are going to be Dusters for the foreseeable future. By the way, this friend of yours we let in, Rybicki or something like that. He have any special skills? Anything we can put to use.”
“Well, he used to be pretty damned good at charming people, but until we decide to launch a Dust City television network, I don’t think he’s going to be of much use.”
“I’ll put him down as an FoQ, then.”
That anagram was a new one for Marshall, and it showed on his face.
“Friend of Quinn,” Steele said with a smile.
Chapter Nine
The Prudent Twins
Cults in search of Utopia were a common occurrence across the breadth of the twentieth century. It seemed that the faster the world raced toward a dystopian future, the more that idea became attractive to people.
Most of these cults started small and stayed that way, with a few ardent followers who never left.
So it was with The Messengers of Light. The group was formed under the auspices of Manley T. Prudent, whose birth name was Herbert T. Brackish. The freshly renamed Manley Prudent started his version of Utopia in Southern California in 1948.
As cults go, it was pretty standard issue. Manley claimed to be the one true messenger of God, but he was willing to share the wisdom of the ages with those who were willing to donate all their worldly goods to him and move to his farm a hundred miles north of Los Angeles. Not coincidentally, one of the teachings that Manley brought to the world was that, as the one true messenger, he needed to spread his seed as far and wide as possible. That included sexual congress with girls as young as fourteen, which their parents happily agreed to.
The Messengers never grew to more than a few hundred willing-to-believe souls, but Manley did everything he could to grow the population. By the time he died in 1987, he had sired more than seventy children, though most were conceived more than twenty-five years earlier.
The last of his children were a twin brother and sister named Armor and Faith. They were born on the precise day that Manley Prudent died, and the remaining members believed that his soul was so powerful it had been split in half and reincarnated as both twins.
The twins were both born with a caul on, an auspicious beginning. They also both had albinism. The combination of no pigment in the hair or eyelashes, their porcelain skin, and the coincidence of the date of their birth led to the members of the flock transferring their affection and belief to the young twins.
Without Manley to oversee the flock, it slowly dwindled down. Some people left voluntarily, many were simply so old that they died, spurred on, no doubt by Manley’s complete rejection of modern medicine.
Soon enough, there were less than a dozen members. The remaining Messengers were all in their seventies or eighties, except for Armor and Faith and their mother, Alice, who was in her fifties.
By the mid-nineties, that number dwindled to the twins and Alice. They lived quietly at the estate that Manley had left behind. As the final members of the Messengers of Light organization, they owned the fifty acres of good real estate. They accumulated whatever assets the cult still had by simply outlasting everyone else.
Those assets weren’t a lot, at least not on a balance sheet, though they certainly could have converted the land into a tidy little fortune if they had chosen to.
Instead, they lived simply in the biggest house in the compound, grew vegetables and minded their fruit trees. Part of Manley’s teachings included vegetarianism, so by the sweat of their brow, they were able to survive on what they grew.
Alice Prudent—all members of the Messengers agreed to legally change their last name—passed away in 2025.
The twins might have been entirely adrift, living in the large compound alone, but they continued on, completely happy.
They continued to work in their garden and orchards all day, using the long Southern California summer season to survive on. At night, they read their father’s teachings via candlelight, as the compound had never had electricity.
In 2033, the Rage Wars passed them by completely. They were in a remote location, and though the compound was large, by then it was almost completely overgrown.
With no electricity, they had no television, and their last visitor had been years earlier. They were far enough north of where the nuclear weapons were detonated that they never felt even that. They did feel a series of rumbles and small earthquakes, but in their area, that was just part of life.
While society fell all around them, the twins continued on in their solitary lifestyle for another year.
They had often wondered why they did not receive the type of communication and blessings that their father had. They had accepted it, and waited patiently to see if that might ever change.
In the fall of 2034, it did.
That was when both twins began to get messages from God.
They were sitting at the dining room table, poring over the fourth of twelve volumes their father had written. They had read the books so often that the truth was, they had memorized every word decades earlier. They read it now out of habit.
There were no other books anywhere in the compound.
The twins were, essentially, innocent in the ways of the world.
When the first message arrived, they both sat up straight, as though hit with a jolt of electricity. Eyes wide, they stared into each other’s eyes.
There was no need for either of them to say, Did you feel that? It was obvious that they both had.
The first message they received was, It is almost time for you to leave the home I have made for you.
It wasn’t some fuzzy, amorphous message. It was clear as a bell. The fact that the message included the words the home that I have made for you told them that this was a message from their father. God. It was all tangled up in their minds.
“What do we need to do to get ready?” Armor asked. Both he and Faith waited quietly and patiently for the answer, but it never came.
After waiting for the voice to answer for fifteen quiet minutes, Faith finally said, “He will let us know when we need to know,” in a hushed voice.
Armor nodded, completely agreeing with the truth of that.
They blew out the candle, bathing the room in the light of a full moon, which slanted in through the large picture window. After sitting quietly for an hour, without a word, they both rose and went to their bedrooms.
That was the only message they received over the next few weeks until, one afternoon, as they were hoeing the rows of corn, they both heard a single word: Soon.
This time, they didn’t bother to ask a follow-up question. There was no need. The fact that God was reaching out to them was enough. They believed that when they needed to know more, they would.
The third message arrived early one morning, just as the sun was coming up. Faith was milking their cow, while Armor carried manure to spread over the garden.
At the same moment, they both received the same message.
Now.
They stood up and met in the yard in front of their house. They knew the time was now, but the time for what, exactly, wasn’t yet clear.
The voice of God their Father rang in both their brains.
Leave now. Take only the clothes you are wearing. I will show you the way.
The twins did not hesitate. Armor dropped his manure-encrusted shovel, Faith dropped the half-filled milk bucket, and they walked down the long driveway toward the rural road.
When they reached the road, a strong feeling to turn east came over them.
They were quite a sight, walking down that empty country road.
Armor wore a black work shirt and black dungarees, while Faith wore a long, formless black dress. Their father had commanded that it was a sin to cut the hair that they were given, so they both had white hair that, when loosened, fell to their ankles.
Armor wore his loose, while Faith braided hers, which still fell to her knees. They were both naturally thin, and looked like an albino version of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, albeit with long hair.
They had an easy, steady pace. Their normal life meant long days of working their farm, so going for a long walk did not tax them.
They walked the rest of that day without seeing another soul. They did pass other farms and houses, but they were all deserted. If the twins found this strange, they did not comment on it.
When the sun touched the horizon behind them, the voice appeared in their heads again.
Rest. When you need sustenance, I will provide.
That was good enough for Armor and Faith. If the voice had commanded them to throw themselves in the stream that ran parallel to the road and drown themselves, they would have gone to their death with a smile.
Instead, they took those last words to mean that they would be supplied with whatever they needed, including water. After walking all day, they were parched beyond words, and so walked to the stream and drank their fill.
They lay down beside the stream and drifted off as the stars began to show. With the electric lights of Los Angeles doused, the stars were brighter than they had ever seen, which they took as another sign that they were following the proper path.
They walked from sunup to sundown again the following day.
On the third day of their journey, they reached the small community of Perkins.
Unknown to the twins, Perkins had been overrun by a roving militia weeks earlier. The road into town was barricaded with a logging truck and two men with rifles.
The armed men were a mixture of amused and confused by the appearance of the twins.
The younger man, whose clothes were baggy, but still looked like he had fifty pounds or so to give, said, “You can just turn back and go back to wherever they keep weirdos like you.”
If these two men had been locals, they would have been familiar with The Messengers of Light. They were not, however, so had no clue.
Armor held his hands up. “We are not armed. We are simply following the path God Our Father has set us on.”
The other man grinned, looked at his companion and said, “They’re on a mission from God,” quoting the old Blues Brothers movie, but the reference went completely over his friend’s head.
“We are supposed to go through this town,” Faith said. “That is what we see. That is what we will do. If you are going to kill us, then that is what you will do, and we will both be fulfilling our destinies.”
The twins walked toward the two men, who raised their rifles to their shoulders.
“I mean it,” the heavier man said, “I’ll shoot.”
“We mean it as well,” Faith answered. “That is up to you.”
When they were ten feet away from the truck that was pulled sideways across the road, they veered to their left.
The two men looked at each other. People had approached them before, but when they were given the warning, they had always turned and slunk away. They didn’t know what to do with these two.
Finally, one of the men said, “Hell, let ‘em go. They’re obviously crazy, but harmless.”
“Get on the radio,” his companion answered, “and let ‘em know someone is coming, though.”
The twins moved past the cab of the truck and immediately returned to the road, walking steadily toward town.
Chapter Ten
The Handshake
Matt Miller was once again on horseback, riding the fence line. Boring duty, but Jamie believed it was still necessary, and at the Y-Bar-S, what Jamie said went. It was hard to argue with the results. Every other farm in the county had been overrun, used up, and abandoned.
A small movement caught Matt’s eye to the right, and he pulled his binoculars to his eyes and focused on that direction. Sure enough, there was a man walking toward him. He looked to still be a mile or so away, and at the slow pace he was traveling, Matt knew it would be a while before he got to the fence.
He whirled his horse around and clicked his mouth, encouraging the animal to break into a trot. Matt still hadn’t managed to master the art of looking cool on horseback, especially at a trot, which jarred his teeth. He was still too scared to encourage the horse to break into a full run, though, feeling nervous about falling off. So, he trotted back toward the main gate, where two other people stood guard.
“Somebody’s coming,” Matt said when he got close enough. “Just one man, moving slow. Can’t tell if he’s armed or not.”
“Good,” the woman answered, rifle slung comfortably. “Go back and keep an eye on him. If he approaches peacefully, direct him down to us. If he wants a tussle, go ahead and kill him. I’ll get Jamie on the walkie-talkie and let him know to come on out.”
Matt tipped her a salute and turned the horse back in the direction he had come. This time, he kept it to a walk, judging that he had plenty of time to get back before the man got there.
As it turned out, that was correct. When he got back to the spot where he had been standing guard, the man wasn’t much closer than he had been. In fact, he was sitting on the ground, looking like someone out for a little stroll in nature.
Five minutes later, the man stood and walked toward Matt again. When he got close enough, Matt sat tall in the saddle and said, “Head along the fence this direction. Don’t make any sudden moves. I’ve got my buddy in the trees who’s already got a bead on you.”
That lie was as blatant and obvious as it had been when used repeatedly in Western movies the better part of a century earlier.
It wasn’t really necessary. If the man had any fight in him, it looked like it had been beaten out of him long since.
He held his hands up and said, “I’m just looking for some food. I’m weak.”
