Authors: Matt Darst
He spies Ian talking to the air marshal, a bearded guy sneaking off for a piss behind a pine, a middle-aged couple bickering in whispers. They are the oldest here, the doctor and his wife. Though it’s obvious she’s had some work, she is still a MILF.
More importantly, there are a couple of chicks. Sisters, maybe? Van guesses one is a year or two younger than him. And, man, is she on point. She bends over her duffle.
Dibs
, he thinks.
The other is a few years older. Maybe she’s already served if she hasn’t received a deferral. She’s cute, too, just a little heavier, with glasses, but nice still.
The girls introduce themselves to each other. They smile at each other, shaking hands. No, not sisters after all. Van looks forward to getting to know them.
It’s like a modern day
Canterbury Tales
. Traveling with them will be a character study, with one significant difference: Chaucer’s troop wasn’t in danger of being devoured, at least not by the undead.
Van resolves to get to know these girls sooner rather than later.
Wright orders them all to fall in.
“Fall in what?” the younger girl asks. She’s already braiding the other’s hair, like this is summer camp.
The couple is squabbling over whose decision it was to put their car—they are obviously wealthy—in short-term parking. The bearded guy named Burt pays attention to Wright, but not to his surroundings. He is knee-deep in a patch of poison oak.
Wright’s going to have to start at the top.
“Lean” they are. “Mean?” Unlikely. And a “fighting machine?” Never. Regardless, they will take and obey commands just like any military operation. They cannot afford to be sloppy. Carelessness will not be tolerated. Be vigilant, she instructs, or be prepared for death…or worse. She is not about to become an entrée because someone can’t hold his or her shit together.
They are scared. Good. Fear keeps soldiers on their toes. Fear motivates and guards against complacency. But fear, eventually, paralyzes, and that outcome is always lethal. She will need to be careful with this group, walking the tightrope and hoping for the best.
This and every morning before they move out, they will secure the campsite. Leave no traces. Today it is Van’s turn to discard the debris. Wright instructs him to tie their belongings in the bed sheet, and scale a nearby tree. They hand the bundle up to him, and he secures it in a cradle created by a fork in the branches, approximately 20 feet or so off the ground. They must also bury their waste.
They will follow her in groups of twos, each pair ten paces behind the preceding pair. No more, no less. Wright is first. In time, they will each learn to “take point.” For now, they will watch her and follow her every move. If she halts, they halt. If she hides, they hide. And if she runs…
One person takes up the rear. Today it is Ian. If the person manning the rear notices anything,
anything
, strange or out of the ordinary, he or she must sprint to the front to alert the point.
Conversation and noise will be kept to a minimum, or, if Wright dictates, prohibited entirely. “They” do not lose their ability to hear upon death—at least not immediately—and, although no official study has been released, Wright believes their faculties to be as acute, perhaps better, as when they lived. At any rate, now is not the time to play the part of the control in an experiment. As she did with Captain Richard King, once her lover, she will continue to assume the worst.
She stops them just an hour past noon. A quick head count, and she distributes packets of freeze-dried meat and vegetables. They are hungry and eagerly tear into their rations.
Van gags. “What is this? It tastes like shoe leather.”
Wright sits on the roots of an upended tree, about six feet in the air, where she has a view in all directions, and where she considers that Van probably isn’t far off. She hops down from her roost. “This…would be beef,” she says, taking the morsel from Van. She tosses it back. “The chicken is more of an orange color.”
“That explains what
I’m
eating, then,” Ian offers, holding up a pumpkin-colored stick of chalk.
Burt is sitting at the base of a tree. He raises his hand for acknowledgement, as if he’s in grade school. Wright nods. “How much of this do we have?” he asks.
Unfortunately, they don’t have much. Most of it was left to those remaining on the plane. They will be happy to know, though, that Wright left them most of liver-flavored rations.
Their laughter is nervous and stunted, but it is also a sign that a shared identity may be forming amongst this band of strangers.
And what will they do after that? This is the question from the young brunette.
“Jessica, is it?” Wright asks, and Jessica nods. Things get considerably harder after that. For what they lack in taste, the rations make up for in vitamins, minerals, and carbs.
The rations are basically the same stuff the U.N. airdropped to starving countries in the early 2000s. They haven’t been improved upon too much. They are freeze-dried, so there’s very little scent. The wrapper is biodegradable, but no longer reflective. Once the rations are gone, safely feeding the passengers becomes much more difficult. But there are ways, and Wright will show them.
With that, Wright stands up, checks her compass. She looks over her shoulder, toward a cluster of trees that, apparently, represent “north.” She turns to the passengers. “Mr. Feldman—”
“Please, call me Burt,” he responds.
“Okay, Burt, please collect all of the wrappers. They need to be buried. Cover the area with dead leaves and debris to blend with the surroundings. Anne?”
“Yes?” replies the younger girl, a blonde who Van watches intently.
“Please distribute the canteens, one per group of two, and then the rear.” Wright declines a canteen for herself. “They’ll need to be filled at the next stream. Everyone else: be ready to move out in fifteen minutes.”
They arrange themselves in a circle that evening, head-to-head in a small clearing, Van making sure he’s near the blonde. They are beat. Wright has marched like this countless times before, but even she feels the fatigue tugging at her, as if the Earth’s gravitational pull has been magnified.
There is an amazing light show in the works for those who can stave off sleep and watch the sky for a few minutes more. Streaks of fire, meteors, move west across a chandelier canvas.
Van introduces himself to Anne. He tells her he’s Roger Gerome’s son. That always reels them in.
But this one is different. She’s not interested in his status. She asks Van in a whisper if he ever watches the sky.
“No, not really,” he replies. They continue to whisper as the others slumber.
Anne tells him of comets and meteors, of the Leonids, of the fall of nations, and the birth of kings. She tells him how their destiny is foretold by the sky. She tells him of a saying her mother taught her: “As above, so below.”
Wright hears every blasphemous word.
**
The next morning, Ian’s left foot is sore. He has a blister, and it encompasses both his big and secondary toes. It is pink and full, bubbling even across the ball of his foot.
“Yuck!” Van cries, gagging. “Does it hurt?”
Ian shrugs. “Not so much. It is more uncomfortable than anything.”
“Hey, Anne,” Van mockingly calls. “You’ve got to see this.”
Ian is surprised. He’s already on a first-name basis with her? “Van!” he objects.
“Take it easy, man,” Van says. “She’s out of earshot.” He’s right. Anne did not hear him. She’s busy talking to Jessica. “Go ahead and pop it,” Van urges.
Ian shakes his head. He’s going to wait it out.
Van is unconvinced. “Come on, man, you got to pop that thing.”
Ian glowers. “I’m not popping it. All I need is an infection. Shit, I’ll lose my leg to gangrene or something out here.”
But Van has a first aid kit. “I’ll lend you some antibiotic ointment,” he says.
It is Ian’s turn to be incredulous. “You have a first aid kit? And I’m carrying your shoes? What are
you
doing with a first aid kit?”
Van smirks. “Apparently saving your leg. It’s your lucky day.”
Ian shrugs. “Well, I don’t have a needle, anyway.”
“I’ve got a sewing kit, too.” Van replies. “We’ll sterilize the needle with my lighter.”
Ian’s eyes are wide. “You
have a sewing kit, too?”
Van sighs. “Let’s not go through this again. Better pop it now. Look, you’re my friend and all, but don’t expect me to carry your ass, literally or figuratively.”
The needle’s hot. It pierces Ian’s skin effortlessly with a slight hiss. Pus flows easily from the ingress. The volume of fluid that erupts from the wound amazes him. It streams down his elevated foot. He begs Van, “Do you have something I can wipe this with?”
“I don’t know,” Van replies, rummaging through the first aid kit.
“How about that red shirt?” Ian asks, smiling.
“Funny.” Van finds gauze and tosses it Ian’s way. “That polo is worth more than your life.”
Ian wipes the area clean with some gauze. He digs a small hole, then buries it. He applies Neosporin, and finishes up with a bandage. The polo lives to see another day.
Van and Anne are walking side by side. He dresses nice, she thinks. Of course, his father is Roger Gerome.
She wants to talk about things that girls like. Not dolls, dresses, or the stuff of kids. She wants to talk about him.
But Van wants Anne to tell him more about her. The quickest way to bed a girl is to be a good listener. “Tell me more about comets and meteors and stuff.”
She shouldn’t have said a word to him yesterday, but she senses he is someone she can trust, even if he is a little vain. She’s makes him promise to never repeat a word.
She starts with a quote. Shakespeare. “‘When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.’ Isn’t that pretty? Doesn’t it just make your heart melt?”
What does it mean?
It’s a reference to astrology, using the position of stars and planets to understand people and predict events.
Van laughs. Right. “You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?”
Anne is taken aback. Van wasn’t so damning of her views last night. He wasn’t so cavalier as he held her hand furtively under the cloak of night.
No, he admits, because he was on the verge of sleep. Her voice was a lullaby to him, but her words held no meaning.
She’s hurt. Hurt because of his insensitivity, but hurt more because she does believe. She believes in what her mother taught her. Her mother wouldn’t have sacrificed so much for just an astrological whim or caprice. And sacrifice, Stella Mayberry did...
The inquisition came early one spring morning, nearly fifteen years past. They took Stella Mayberry prisoner in shackles, hecklers decrying her as a witch as they rode away.
Anne was taken to be cared for by the church.
It was one piece of a greater power play, a complex attempt by the fledgling church to consolidate power and eliminate competition for the souls—if not the hearts and minds—of the people.
The ends, if not the means, were defensible.
One of every three Americans polled prior to the New Order believed in the power of astrology. In the years following the plague, that number exploded to nearly one of every two survivors.
The church was losing ground. It needed parishioners, it needed donations, it needed missions. It needed to prey upon public fear to fill the empty pews and the coffers.
The inquisitors publicized their capture of Mayberry and hastily tried her for heresy. Statten prosecuted her himself, accusing her of providing readings of horoscopes and natal charts. Mayberry never denied this fact.
They made the case that her philosophy was sacrilegious. Stella Mayberry practiced divination, predicting the future for a list of clients whose names she never supplied, even as her fingers were broken.
She pled her case, relying on history, and the movement of planets and stars, as well as comets and meteors, to support her beliefs.
She could not work from notes. She could not hold a pen. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t have been able to turn a page anyway.
She did her best.
The ancient Greeks and Chinese trusted astrology to divine their fates. They used celestial bodies, especially comets, to portend disasters.
Disaster: the word itself means “ill-starred.”
Shooting stars are malefic messengers, cosmic wildcards that prophesize paradigm shifts. Consensus exists from Ptolemy to Bonatti. The train of a comet predicts war and desolation: the fall of Jerusalem, the eruption of Vesuvius, the deaths of the Emperor of Rome and of King Ibrahim ben Ahmet, the Black Plague, the signing of the Declaration of Independence (a blow to England’s colonial intentions) the spread of influenza (a term used to describe illnesses “influenced by the planets”), the Civil War, the fall of the Alamo, the United States’ loss of influence in Southeast Asia, the failure of the U.S. automobile industry, fuel shortages, and the rise of the oil cartel in 1973, the end of the Cold War, countless coups and assassinations, extreme weather conditions, earthquakes, and on...
And on…
And on.
Mayberry cited event after event, each meteor falling like a locust leaving desolation in its wake.
Statten and the inquisitors never objected to her lengthy discourse. No, it pleased the court to have every last word on the record. She was doing their job for them. With every breath, Stella Mayberry further sealed her fate.