They will come to you sometimes while you sleep, you will see their faces, hear their voices as they softly call out your name
October 20th 2217. Saddlerville 10 Miles.
The last 22 years had not been kind at all to what was left of Old Church Road, another 10 miles of potholes in front of him, and what seemed like a million behind. Another ten miles of walking towards what, he didn’t know, would there be people there? Would he find shelter? Would he find hope? Or maybe Saddlerville would be like any one of a thousand other small towns he’d gone through that had been long since abandoned by people who could no longer find comfort in the arms of a dead or dying community.
Maybe it would be just another in a long string of ghost towns, haunted by a life-long since buried in a past that seemed more and more distant with the turn of each and every new day. Now there were too many holes left in this world to try and fill. Society trying to cling to fragments of memories. Somehow it made sense-one could suppose, for people to try to rebuild, to hold together whatever was left, whatever they could salvage from the ashes of a nation without a governing body. All that remained were pockets of civilization now, one giant patchwork quilt that lay spread across a scarred landscape with nothing to go on, each making up the rules as they went along.
He turned back towards the sign and began walking again, the rain stopped and streams of sunlight made their way through the thick gray storm clouds. He heard the strange noise, it made an odd popping sound that echoed through the woods. He heard it once, and it slowed him-made him turn to look to the tree line alongside what was left of Old Church Road. When he’d heard it the second time, he stopped altogether to listen more carefully than before.
There were soft cursing sounds, and then silence, and then somewhat closer than before-the sounds of muffled heavy boots falling against wet sod and leaves. Feet running, now towards him. He turned his back around a large pine tree and ducked out of sight, just in time to see the three men dressed in dark gray battle fatigues carrying guns, the one in the lead giving them hand signals. They looked in several different directions, kneeling down in the wet grass, eyes searching in almost a panicked state through the afternoon mist and fog. before all three finally rose to their feet all at once.
“Well congratulations boys! We’ve managed to lose them, we should have followed the west fork back there along the trail. They haven’t even been through here.”
Another two emerged from the trees. The first looking at the leader shaking his head frantically.
“They didn’t back track either, somehow they lost us in the woods. Shall we go back to the beginning and start again, sir?”
“No- it's getting to be too late for that now. Wrap it up, let's get back to the horses.”
He looked around slowly for any sign of whoever- or whatever they were tracking, before circling his forefinger in the air, making an odd little sweeping motion before they all ran down the road and disappeared around the bend. Now his curiosity had gotten the better of him, and he found his feet almost involuntarily moving down the path, heading deeper into the woods. “What in the hell were they up to in here?” he followed it deeper and deeper, to where the trees grew taller and taller, and he could no longer see the sky.
The sounds of rushing water beating softly against rocks filled his ears, and he knew that he was near a river. It was getting late in the day anyway, time to stop for a rest. He gathered wood, built a fire, made a shelter. He sat by the fire at the water's edge and whittled away, until he heard the snapping of twigs in the woods behind him.
He would let them get closer, gathering more clues as to who it might be, before he made a move on them. They stumbled around, pretty big, definitely an adult, rather clumsy on their feet-probably a male. Finally, he rose to his feet and removed the long black leather coat before producing a pearl handled long blade. He stared into the thick underbrush, following the sounds with his eyes as they drifted back a bit deeper into the trees. Moving slowly forward, He could make out a figure some thirty feet in.
“Look, you can stay in there all night for all I care- or you can come down here and share my fire, I’ll be getting some fresh fish pretty soon here and I’ll be having dinner. You are welcome to join me, just as long as you don’t try anything.” He said.
They appeared in the clearing some twenty feet from him. Small. Frail. Thin framed, and quite dirty. It was hard to tell what color hair they even had because of all the dirt. Could have been blond, could have been brown, but definitely not black. They wore a dirty long sleeved shirt and ragged old blue jeans that were ripped in several places. And a pair of old sandals strapped across dirty feet. And most telling of all were the thick coke bottle glasses, and when they finally got close enough to actually see-Mars could tell that the person was female. He stared silently up at her, before motioning with his long knife to a tree stump by the fire. He returned his attention to the spear that he was whittling.
“I had assumed from all the noise you were making that you would be somewhat larger.”
She didn’t answer.
“Do you have a name, or am I going to have to make one up for you?”
“Ari. My name is Ari.” She said.
“Ari. That is a very pretty name.”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m Mars. It is nice to make your acquaintance, Ari.” He said, extending his hand to her.
She sat down on the tree stump.
“So. What kind of name is Mars?” She asked.
“It’s Southern. I believe so anyway.”
He reached into his pack and pulled out a red apple and threw it to her.
“I would imagine that you are pretty hungry; so that should do until I can spear us a couple of fat trout from that river. You sit tight, Ari. I won’t be long.”
He always carried a bar of soap with him for whenever he would have occasion to camp near fresh water lakes and rivers, and Ari bathed in the river-at his insistence, while he fished for dinner. After a great deal of trial and error, he managed to spear them four brown trout and already begun removing the guts and heads when she came back to camp fully cleaned and looking as fresh as a mountain breeze.
They sat and ate fish and talked long after dark, and she told him that she was seventeen years old and that she was originally from a small place called Clarksville, Pennsylvania, and she had been alone and on the road since she was fourteen. And he told her that his name was Marston Alan Michaels, and he was originally from a place called Decatur, Georgia, and people had always called him Mars. Because he was always considered by most people to be- well, different. They exchanged small talk until finally he could no longer hold his tongue.
“You know Ari, when I was out on the Old Church Road I saw five armed men searching the woods for something, they seemed rather desperate to find whatever it was, they were looking for you weren’t they?”
She lowered her eyes and nodded.
“I had the distinct impression that they were looking for two or more people.” He eyed her carefully.
“There were, two of us, but we split up back at the first trail fork, went our separate ways.” She said
“Who were those men?”
“It was a five-man hunter team. They go out on horse back almost daily looking for drifters and people too little or too weak to fight back. I was on the road for almost a year when they forced me to go with them. I- that is, we escaped from one of the labor camps in Saddlerville two days ago, they held me there for over a year against my will. I couldn’t take it anymore."
Her eye lay fixed staring into the fire as she recalled the ordeal, Mars leaned forward listening even more intently than before. Her words were troubling, the more she talked, the more the sadness echoed in her voice.
"They make the camp people work all day and sometimes at night, harvesting fields, feeding animals, building fences, digging holes. All they gave us to eat was half rotten fruit and vegetables, and we were lucky to get that. Sometimes they take the younger ones back to a place called the ranch I’ve heard stories that the girls they took there and even some of the boys were raped and beaten sometimes to death. It's a horrible place.”
He leaned back against the log, staring into the fire, letting her words roll across his ears as if he were carefully examining each and every one.
“You know Ari, after the world changed when it did, there were a lot of lost hopeless people, wandering across what was left of this country. There were no more rules to live by, the only real laws were the ones that people made for themselves. I’ve been all over, and you know what I have discovered?”
She shook her head no.
“That there aren’t, but two kinds of people left in this world, there are people who will help someone in distress, they do it because it’s the right thing to do mostly, because they want to. Human dignity didn’t just stop because the world stopped, that isn’t a right that we gave to one another as human beings, human dignity is a God given right Ari. One that God and only God has a right to take from us. And then there are those people that are of a lesser caliber, that would strip away your basic human rights simply because they derive great pleasure from inflicting pain."
She listened quietly, slowly shaking her head from side to side.
"They impose their will on others simply because they believe that they can, and most often do get away with it. The frail, the weak, they are the easiest prey. And when faced with a strength, and resolve that they are not familiar with, these people are more easily exposed as the cowards that they truly are. They will run and hide when faced with a terrible resolve. Such challenges fill them with a great fear, for they are cowards and are unjust.”
He took a piece of fish and slowly rolled it around in his mouth as he stared into the fire.
She sat quietly with her legs pulled up to her chest. His eyes slowly rose to meet hers.
“Now. You take my coat and cover up with it, because I want you to get a good nights rest. And when the morning comes, you are going to take me to see this Saddlerville. I would very much like to see it with my own eyes.”
~Scratch.. A.B.T. Copyright © 2011~
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