The Echo

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Well,” Franklin said. “There are really only three possibilities.”

Jorge barely listened to Franklin. He half suspected the old man’s paranoia had finally shifted from eccentricity to full-blown borderline schizophrenia. Under normal circumstances—if, say, Franklin was a fellow farmhand—Jorge would simply nod in noncommittal agreement and then avoid him whenever possible.

But here in the Blue Ridge Mountains with the human race nearly extinct, Franklin’s deranged and peculiar genius might even be an asset.

After all, there are no head doctors around to declare him a lunatic.

Willard, one of the local farmhands who had been raised in the rural Tennessee Mountains, was fond of his Friday evenings, when he’d show up with a glass jar of clear homemade liquor. He’d sing off-key about old drunks outnumbering old doctors, mangling the words into incoherent chunks of wildcat wailing and blubbering.

The last time Jorge had seen Willard, the old drunk was a crazed Zaphead who had attacked Jorge in a barn loft. And now Willard was beyond the need for doctors.

Franklin passed his pair of binoculars to Jorge. “Look down yonder,” he said.

They were sitting on a rocky outcropping, with a commanding view of the surrounding mountains and the deep valley trailing away to the foothills in the South. Jorge looked through the lenses in the direction Franklin had pointed. An oily column of smoke rose in the valley from beside a twisting gray ribbon of road.

“Probably some Zappers having a weenie roast,” Franklin said.

Jorge wasn’t that interested. Rosa and Marina wouldn’t have had time to reach the valley, even if they had managed to round up the horses they had turned into the wild. So the fire might as well have been on television for all he cared.

“What are the three?” he asked.

“What’s that?” Franklin took back the binoculars and scanned the valley again.

“The three possibilities.”

“Well, they could have been taken by the Zapheads. Or they could have been taken by the soldiers. Or they could have left on their own, for another reason.”

“There was no sign of a struggle. Rosa would have fought.”

“That’s what I figured. She seems a little feisty.”

“She’s a good wife. And a good mother.”

“Yeah. And Cathy…who the hell knows what kind of mother she is.”

“But why would they leave? They had food, shelter, and security.”

“You want to know my theory?” Franklin shifted to the left to survey the adjacent ridge. The trees at the peak had already lost their leaves and were gray-brown sticks mixed with stunted jack pines. The slopes still bore swatches of deep scarlet, pumpkin, and brilliant yellow where the autumn wind had yet to scrub the limbs clean.

Jorge was afraid of Franklin’s theory, because it might confirm some of the dark worries he harbored deep inside. But every moment of uncertainty was another moment that his family was in danger.

“You think it’s the baby?” Jorge said. He touched his pocket where the scrap of paper bore those waxy words: “He’s mad”

“You seen the Zaps on the trail. Even when they attacked us, they weren’t real serious about it.”

“You shot them. No wonder they attacked us.”

Franklin lowered the binoculars and glared at him beneath iron-gray eyebrows. “Are you on their side now? Because this is us against them, and there are a lot more of thems than uses.”

“I’m not on anybody’s side but my family’s,” Jorge said. The plume of smoke in the valley had grown large enough that it was now visible to the naked eye.

“Well, I can respect that. But don’t go running off in the heat of battle next time. If we can’t trust each other, we don’t have a chance.”

Jorge recognized both the immediate need for survival and the long-term idealism in the old man’s declaration. For all his paranoia, Franklin was ultimately an optimist—a man who had high hopes for his race’s potential but had been continually disappointed.

“If the baby caused them to leave, where would they go?”

Jorge hadn’t been as repulsed by the mutant infant as Franklin had been, but now he belatedly assigned sinister motives to its behavior. What had compelled its mother to risk her life to save it? Indeed, why had he and Franklin rescued them when they were pursued by other Zapheads? And why had Franklin even allowed the creature into the compound, given his own hatred of the Zapheads?

But it’s just a child. A strange one, but an innocent child nevertheless.

“She might have decided to take the young’un to them.” Franklin squinted up at the eastern horizon where the sun staked its claim on this side of the world. “Maybe Cathy got changed herself.”

What if Marina and Rosa changed? Could I still love them? What if I’M changing?

“You think people can still catch the sun sickness?” he asked.

“I think you can be sick on your own.” Franklin stuffed his binoculars in his pack and shouldered his rifle. “We’d best get moving. I don’t want to lose these tracks.”

In the forest, they had located three sets of footprints, one of them smaller than the others. The mud didn’t reveal a distinct direction, but it was the only clue they’d found. Franklin figured the group had followed the easiest path down the valley. Even though Rosa and the others might have had a head start of as a much as a full day, the infant would slow them down.

As Jorge followed Franklin back to the trail, he wondered again why Rosa hadn’t left a sign or message. Secrecy wasn’t one of Rosa’s traits. But then, what man really knew a woman?

Franklin took the trail in great strides, erect and alert, while Jorge often fell behind, ruminating on the horrible possibilities. His obsessive thinking was counterproductive, but he couldn’t seem to break free of the anxiety and depression. To further complicate matters, he had killed a man.

Not a Zaphead—a man.

Even though he considered the murder an act of self-defense, he had crossed into a moral territory he never knew existed. And no amount of rationalization could bring that young soldier back to life. They hadn’t even taken the time to give him a proper burial, instead dragging the corpse into the woods and covering it with leaves, where the scavengers would soon find a feast.

Jorge was so fogged by his guilt that he nearly ran into Franklin when the old man stopped suddenly.

“What is it?” Jorge said, as Franklin slowly raised his hands into the air.

“Getting old, that’s what,” Franklin muttered. “Getting too goddamned old for this.”

That’s when Jorge saw the men on each side of the trail, aiming semiautomatic weapons at them.

Jorge considered going for his rifle, and then realized if Franklin hadn’t bothered to resist, their situation was indeed grim.

“Well, well, well,” one of the soldiers said, stepping out of the concealment of the bushes. His khaki sleeves were rolled up to the three stripes displayed at his biceps. A half-smoked dead cigar was jammed in one corner of his mouth, and he spoke around it. “You must be the notorious Franklin Wheeler.”

Franklin kept his arms raised. “I didn’t know I was notorious. I would prefer ‘legendary’ or maybe ‘visionary.’”

“You can’t become a legend until you’re dead. But maybe I can help you with that.”

Jorge mimicked Franklin by lifting his arms in the air, careful not to make any rapid movements. The two young soldiers behind the sergeant were nervous and wide-eyed, the tips of their weapons shaking as they pointed them at their new prisoners.

The sergeant nodded at one of them, and the soldier stepped forward and seized Franklin’s rifle first, and then Jorge’s.

“Who’s your buddy?” the sergeant asked Franklin. “One of your prepper militia?”

“I got out of the militia business,” Franklin said. “They tended to get their asses torched by the government.”

“Now, Mr. Wheeler, I’d say we’re past all that, wouldn’t you?”

Franklin grumbled as the soldier took his backpack and searched him for weapons. “You at war with the Zaps now?”

“He’s clean, Sarge,” the soldier said to the sergeant. Jorge didn’t think the kid was any older than nineteen.

“Check the Mexican,” the sergeant commanded.

“I’m an American,” Jorge said, drawing a yellowed grin from Franklin. The soldier removed his pack and patted his sides and down his legs before stepping away and lowering his weapon again.

“So, where are you fellows off to?” Sarge said, striking a wooden match against his belt and lighting his cigar. “Deer hunting?”

“We’re looking for my wife and daughter,” Jorge said.

“Are they Zaps?”

“No, they’re Americans, too.”

One of the soldiers laughed, and Sarge shot him a menacing scowl. “Okay, smartass. You’re trespassing in a militarized zone. Under the Patriot Act, you can be confined without trial on suspicion of terrorist activity.”

“This ain’t no military zone,” Franklin said. “It’s a national park.”

“It’s the birth of a new nation, Mr. Wheeler. New laws, new boundaries. You citizens don’t know it yet, but as soon as the war’s over, we’ll set things right.”

“Christ,” Franklin said. “It’s only been six weeks since Doomsday and already the dictators and tyrants have climbed on the top of the heap like cockroaches at a garbage dump.”

Jorge didn’t care about old or new laws. He was desperate to find Rosa and Marina, and every second wasted might lower the chances of finding them. “Have you seen three women and a baby?”

The second soldier, a thin, Asian-looking man with his khaki cap turned around backwards, said in an accented voice, “I wish we’d have seen three women. I haven’t been laid since June.”

“You’re a liar, Huynh,” Sarge said. “Unless you don’t count your hand.”

“What do you want with us?” Franklin said. “We’re not any threat to you.”

“That remains to be seen,” Sarge said, stepping up to Franklin and exhaling cigar smoke into his face. “Somebody was shooting out in the woods yesterday, and it wasn’t military-grade weapons. In fact, it sounded a lot like those little peashooters you two are carrying. Pop pop pop.”

Franklin blinked away the smoke but didn’t draw back from the sergeant’s aggressive stance. “So I shot a few Zapheads. That’s not a crime, is it?”

“Well, maybe I’ll put you in for the Bronze Star. But I’m more concerned about a couple of my boys that went missing.”

The sergeant moved until he was in Jorge’s face. The officer smelled of old sweat, booze, and gunpowder. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“No, sir.” This was no harder than ignoring the stares and taunts of the rednecks down at the feed store. Jorge had long ago learned how to hide his true feelings.

The sergeant relaxed a little at the “sir,” obviously feeling that Jorge was beneath serious consideration. But he mistook compliance for weakness, as did many of the gringos Jorge had endured—and survived—in the last few years.

“Really, Sergeant,” Franklin said. “Don’t you think we have bigger problems than whether some of your boys turned tail and ran?”

Sarge moved with such sudden ferocity that even his own men gasped and drew back. He slapped Franklin on the side of the head, driving the old man to his knees. “You didn’t respect the old laws, but you’re sure as hell going to respect the new ones!”

Jorge rushed forward to help Franklin but the sergeant put an elbow in his chest and shoved him away. The Asian soldier jammed the muzzle of his gun into Jorge’s back.

Franklin spat blood. “Let freedom ring.”

Sarge tossed away his cigar and pulled his sidearm from its holster. Jorge feared he was going to shoot Franklin, but the man twirled it by the trigger guard, gripped it by the barrel, and whipped the butt onto the crown of Franklin’s head with a loud crack.

Franklin dropped like a rock. Sarge motioned to the two soldiers. “Grab him and bring him back to the bunker.”

“Damn it, Sarge,” the Asian said. “Why couldn’t you have beaten the hell of him after we got him back to the bunker?”

“You want to be next?” Sarge’s cruel sneer was enough to spur the soldiers into action.

Apparently the new law is whatever this man says it is.

Sarge waved his pistol at Jorge, motioning him along the trail. “I got a feeling you’re not as hardheaded as Wheeler. So I suggest you get moving.”

“But my wife and daughter—”

“They’re Zaphead bait by now.”

“I can tell you where McCrone is.”

Sarge got interested in a hurry. “McCrone? How did you know his name?”

“He begged us to help him. I wanted nothing to do with him. I know better than to take on the U.S. Army.”

“Damn straight. At least somebody here remembers the Alamo.”

The army of Santa Anna had actually besieged the Alamo to suppress a revolution by unwelcome illegal immigrants from the United States, but Jorge didn’t think Sarge would appreciate the history lesson. “He said he was running away.”

“Where he is?”

Jorge looked the man in the eyes, which were smoky gray and flecked with ice blue. “I killed him.”

Sarge narrowed his eyes, studying Jorge. Then he slapped his own thigh and gurgled out a laugh. “Goddamn it, Mex, I almost believe you.”

“The other one is dead, too, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Damn.” Sarge wiped his mouth with his sleeve, annoyed and impatient. “Zapheads must have got him.”

The soldiers helped Franklin to his feet. A large red knot appeared on his skull, a trickle of blood trailing down to his ear. He was barely conscious and clearly suffering a concussion, but the soldiers propped him up and hauled him down the trail.

Sarge pushed Jorge after them. “Get moving.”

“Why don’t you let me go? I’m no use to you.”

“You’re guilty of crimes against the state. We’ve already had one breakdown, but things are different now. This time around, we’re doing it the right way.”

Jorge wondered why the sergeant didn’t kill them both on the spot. But he also believed if he resisted, he would be killed, and then he would have no hope at all of finding Rosa and Marina again.

Even a slim hope was better than none.

So he marched.