Glimmer of Hope: Book 1 of Post-Apocalyptic Series, Page 2

  As Nathan and Luke came into view, a middle-aged man helped a frail figure with long gray hair stand from a stool. Nathan recognized the middle-aged man as Billy Fox, the Red Sticks’ chief, and the ancient man on his arm as their spiritual leader, Chicoca. Nathan also recognized Susan Rivera, Jasper Timmons, and the small girl nearby from their journey through Indiana into Kentucky together. He was a little surprised at how tall the girl had gotten and guessed she was close to eleven or twelve years old.

  The drum abruptly stopped as Nathan and Luke drew near.

  “Be welcome,” said Billy Fox, nodding to them both.

  “I didn’t know this was going to be such a big affair,” said Nathan.

  “Of course it is a big affair,” said Chicoca with a toothless smile. “Today, three hundred years of prophecy comes to fulfillment.”

  “And your raiding comes to an end,” said Luke.

  Billy Fox chuckled. “Raiding is a strong word. We protect these lands and punish those who do not respect our rights. How is one supposed to respond when others steal and take from you?”

  “Be that as it may,” said Nathan, “you agree to respect the territory of the Jackson Purchase and the former lands of the West Tennessee Republic.”

  “And in exchange,” said Chicoca, leaning forward, “you agreed to recognize the Creek Nation’s permanent rights to their ancestral lands as we have outlined.”

  Nathan pictured the map in his office with the Creek Nation boundaries that encompassed South-Central Tennessee along with parts of Northern Alabama and Mississippi. This had been a bitter concession to make, but Reggie Phillips had convinced him it was their best path. “We need a break from war,” his friend had told him, “and there will be war if we do not give our new friends what they already feel is rightfully theirs.”

  There was an air of expectation, and Nathan realized everyone was holding their breath, waiting for him to speak.

  “Yes,” Nathan finally said, “the government of the Jackson Purchase, which includes the tributary lands of the West Tennessee Republic and the Pennyrile Communities, does from this day forward recognize the Creek Nation’s ownership of these lands. It is—”

  Nathan was about to go on with his prepared speech, but he was interrupted by a tumult of war whoops, spinning horses, and gunshots. The lines of horsemen had disintegrated into mad riders racing off in all directions and joyfully bouncing into each other.

  “I guess it was a big deal, after all,” muttered Luke.

  A grinning Billy Fox beckoned them forward. “Come inside and be welcome; you are our guests and friends.”

  Nathan and Luke followed him into the large teepee-style shelter, along with Susan, Jasper, and the little girl. Nathan was amused to notice that the last three appeared to now be a family unit. Chicoca was seated in a large chair, which was obviously the place of honor, while the others sat around another small fire on wooden stools or cross-legged on the ground.

  A woman handed Billy Fox a long smoldering pipe. “We will smoke this to seal our commitment to peace with each other.”

  “I always thought that was just a Native American cliché,” said Luke. “You guys actually smoke peace pipes?”

  “My people have always sealed peace with sacred smoke,” said Chicoca, accepting the pipe from Billy who had taken a long drag. “We believe that anyone who breaks such a peace is cursed in the afterlife.”

  Nathan looked over at Susan Rivera and studied her carefully. She appeared to have taken on a mantle of gravity and power that had been lacking the last time they had met. She returned his gaze with neither friendship nor hostility.

  “I see you remember Susan Who Saw The Fire,” said Billy, handing the pipe to Nathan.

  “What fire?” asked Luke.

  “The fire that rose over the ashes of Fulton,” said Susan. “The fire that your son brought back into the world once again. The fire that was the sign for the Creek to stop making war.”

  “Oh, that fire,” said Luke.

  “I suspect that’s an improvement over your old Creek name, isn’t it?” Nathan asked. “Susan Who Brought the Fire From the Sky?”

  Susan didn’t answer, but he noticed a tightening around her jaw line.

  Nathan took a long puff on the pipe and found it fairly mild with a hint of cherry. He passed the pipe along to Luke and looked at Susan. “But the war isn’t totally done, is it? Part of the lands you recognize to the south you don’t yet control.”

  “We hope to reassess control without resorting to war,” answered Billy. “Regardless, that is not your concern. It will not be war against you or your people. Between us, there will be peace.”

  Jasper leaned over and whispered in Susan’s ear. She looked at the little girl who was staring hard at Nathan. “She remembers you from before.”

  Nathan smiled at her and leaned forward. “Hello, there. Do you remember me?”

  She just stared back without speaking.

  “Don’t take it personal,” said Billy Fox. “Little Lion doesn’t speak much.”

  “Little Lion?” asked Luke. “That’s a cool nickname.”

  “It is not a nickname,” chided Chicoca. “It is her true name. One that recognizes her spirit and heart. Names are important, one of the things the white man never understood.”

  “Well, we understand the need for us to get along,” said Nathan. “It is a time for war to be over. It is a time for peace.”

  “No,” said the little girl.

  Everyone looked at her in surprise.

  “What was that?” asked Susan.

  The girl stared hard at Nathan and then around at them all. “This will not be a time of peace. This will be a time of death and darkness. Both are coming…almost here.”

  At that moment, the pipe in Jasper’s hands went out.

  Chapter 2 – The Guide

  Horace “Trailer” Smiley looked back to make sure the pot-bellied man and his son were still there, pulling their large handcart down the gravel road.

  How is it possible for anyone to be pot-bellied anymore? he wondered.

  “You sure this is the way?” the man asked again.

  Horace just looked at him. He let his nearly seven-foot-tall, muscled frame do the talking for him.

  The man looked away and continued to pull.

  They were nearly to their destination anyway. It was getting around Memphis’ smoking ruin that was the problem. After that, they could get back on the main roads and make better time, even if that did mean paying more tolls.

  Trailer knew all the roads and best paths. He knew where it was safe to sleep and where it wasn’t. He knew which water soothed your parched throat and which made you slowly wither from the inside. He knew which police were fighting against the chaos and which were looking for an opportunity to kill you for your boots. In short, Trailer was a guide, and his immense size meant that those he guided tended to suffer less harassment than on their own.

  Most of his life, his size had felt like a curse. Trailer had grown up in central Tennessee and, naturally enough, been exceptional at basketball and earned a scholarship to the University of Kentucky. It was in his first year that he blew out his knee and had to sit out the rest of the season. The surgery was a success, but he was never the same again. Some of it was the painkillers, but mostly he had just lost his heart for the game.

  At least now people didn’t walk up to him and ask why he wasn’t playing in the NBA. At least now he didn’t have to explain how he was such a screw-up that he had missed his chance. How he had been forced to drive a semi truck all over his home state to keep himself fed. He found this ironic considering the nickname Trailer had attached itself to him nearly a decade before he started hauling them for a living.

  Nobody asked that sort of question anymore, and Trailer was grateful for that. N-Day had some positive outcomes.

  He had stumbled into being a guide afterwards. People were afraid to travel and with good cause. Nevertheless, there were fortunes to be
made in trade. A box of light bulbs you found in your cellar could be traded for enough corn to feed your family for a month. Trailer’s hulking frame and knowledge of the byways and roads meant he was a natural for his new career.

  But it was dangerous. He had agreements with most of those who manned the tolls and roadblocks, but there were other dangers. Road gangs and militias still roamed about. He had barely avoided being conscripted into the WTR Army on several occasions. And then, you had to worry about getting scalped by Indians.

  Who would have thought that would be a post-apocalyptic concern? he wondered.

  He heard the slow clop-clop of a horse on the gravel ahead. Trailer held up his hand, and the man and boy behind him froze. Creeping forward around a bend in the road, Trailer saw a thickly built man leading a horse loaded down with wood. The man carried a worn ax over one shoulder.

  The man stopped as well and stared at Trailer, his horse stomping tiredly behind him.

  “You’re a big one, ain’t ‘cha?” the man said, lifting the ax to hang down beside him.

  “That’s what they tell me,” Trailer answered, resting both hands on the end of his own stout cudgel.

  “You plannin’ to rob me?” the man asked without apparent concern.

  “Nope,” answered Trailer. “Are you planning to rob me?”

  “Shit,” the man laughed. “Rob you? I couldn’t even reach you. Besides, it don’t look like you have much worth stealin’.”

  “Looks might be deceiving,” Trailer added.

  At that point, the pot-bellied man and boy pulled their handcart filled with valuable Kentucky tobacco up behind Trailer.

  “Ah, I see. You a guide?”

  Trailer nodded. “Anything up ahead I need to know about?”

  The man spat and shook his head. “Open path. Tyler Creek flooded last week, but it’s only marshy now. Anything up ahead I need to know about?”

  “Just that Memphis is still smoked.”

  “Damn shame,” the man said. “I used to love to go down to Beale Street for the blues and BBQ.”

  Trailer nodded. He missed those things as well.

  “All right then,” the man said, putting the ax back on his shoulder and tugging on the reins of his horse. He nodded at Trailer as he passed.

  Trailer turned to look at the two beside their cart. “You’re supposed to stay back when we meet anyone until I say it’s safe.”

  The pot-bellied man guffawed. “We could tell it wasn’t no highwayman. Just a woodcutter. As a matter of fact, we haven’t seen much of anything of concern this entire trip. I’m starting to think we could have done this trip without you.”

  “Think what you want,” said Trailer. “The payment is the same whether it’s a milk run or we have to fight our way through.”

  “How far from the Border Market?”

  “Couple of miles. Figure we’ll find a place to camp once we get there. You should be able to sell that tobacco at a good price in one day. Then we can head back.”

  The man rubbed his face. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to need you on the way back.”

  They always think that, thought Trailer. They see the path and think they know the way. I’ll probably see their bodies in a ditch soon.

  “I’m not sure about that, paw,” said the boy.

  “You shut your mouth,” the man said, and turned back to Trailer. “I’m still willing to pay you half of what we agreed to. That seems fair given that you’ll only be taking us halfway.”

  “We had an agreement,” said Trailer.

  The man licked his lips nervously. “I’ll give you two pounds of prime tobacco.”

  “You’re not giving me shit,” Trailer said. “I earned what I earned, and two pounds isn’t enough.”

  “That’s more than fair. Two pounds is half of the four we agreed to.”

  Trailer lifted up his cudgel and laid its tip on top of the cart’s load of tobacco. “As impressed as I am by your superior math skills, we had a deal. It’s not good business to go back on an agreement.”

  “But it should make no difference to you.”

  Trailer sighed. “The difference is that I have no business down here. My next job is up in the JP, bringing people down. Why should I walk north for no pay when I can walk north with you two for full pay?”

  “Because we don’t need you,” the man said, lifting his chin.

  Trailer fought the urge to crack the man’s skull. The old Trailer, drunk and high on pills, wouldn’t have hesitated, but those days were a distant memory.

  Instead, he poked the man in the chest with the cudgel for affect. “I tell you what...you give me three pounds right now, and I’ll walk away. We’ll all be good.”

  “Three pounds? The full two-way trip only costs four.”

  “You should have been an accountant, my friend.”

  The man shook his head stubbornly. “I won’t do it. Why should I?”

  Trailer pushed forward on the cudgel, leaning the man back against the cart. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to beat you senseless and take the whole lot.”

  “But that ain’t fair!” the man wailed.

  “You went back on our deal.” Trailer smiled. “Believe me, you’re getting off lucky. A lot of guides would kill you for that. You’ll still make a huge profit and enjoy prosperity back home...presuming you make it back home.”

  The man hesitated for a few seconds, but then, with a curse, he turned and starting digging through the trailer. Finally, he turned back with several tightly packed bundles of dried tobacco and handed them over.

  Trailer hefted them experimentally and found the weight satisfactory. He then lifted the bundles up to his nose and inhaled deeply. “Good stuff.”

  “Where will you go?” the boy asked.

  Trailer turned to him with a smartass reply, but saw the boy was just curious. He had determined long ago that the lad was good-natured, but not playing with a full deck.

  “Been thinking about that for the last minute,” Trailer explained. “I learned as a driver you never want to make a trip with an empty load. In my line of work, that means going too far without someone to guide. Mississippi is probably the best bet to pick travelers up to take north. I hear the rice harvest has come in. Plenty of people will be wanting to go north to trade it.”

  The pot-bellied man looked at him in astonishment. “Tunica? You’re going into that hell-hole? You’re plain crazy.”

  The same thought had crossed Trailer’s mind. After N-Day, most of the levies around the Mississippi River had broken with no one with the manpower, technology, or inclination to fix them. This had resulted in vast, shallowly flooded fields. Someone had gotten the idea to plant rice just as plantation farmers had in centuries past, and it had flourished. It wasn’t long before Arkansas raiders were coming across the river to steal and murder from the fledgling communities. Soon after, strong warlords had moved in to take over the fields. They provided protection, at an extraordinary cost, to all the sharecropper farmers. These warlords and their retinue had grown wealthy off the rice and the backs of those they were protecting.

  Tunica had since sprung up in the middle of these plantations as a hub of trade and vice. Gambling, prostitution, homemade alcohol, and drugs abounded, as well as unchecked violence. Trailer had been there before, but the experience had left its mark...literally. He rubbed at the knife scars on his arm. Trailer had thought he was going to die that night, and after escaping, he swore he would not go back. It was an oath he had planned to keep.

  He also knew he would have to pay a ‘toll’ from his tobacco to the local sheriff right away to avoid any institutional trouble, but he didn’t see any other good option. It was never easy to find a fare to guide, even in such a dangerous world.

  Trailer pointed down the road they had been traveling. “Continue on this road for a quarter of a mile. When you get to a blacktop, turn left and follow it on into town. The market will be in the middle by the courthouse. Gives the guards at the
town edge my name and they’ll let you pass.”

  “You’re leaving us?” the man asked.

  “Good God, man,” said Trailer in exasperation. “Isn’t that what you wanted? What have we been talking about for the last ten minutes?”

  “I said we didn’t need you on the way back. You could at least take us the rest of the way in.”

  Smiling, Trailer shook his head. “I got places to be. Tunica is where I have to get to now, thanks to you. Besides, anyone who can make it from the Mississippi border back to the JP without a guide certainly doesn’t need my help walking into a peaceful town.”

  “But we had a deal,” the man protested.

  Trailer laughed and turned his back on the two. He began walking back up the gravel road they had come. There was a trail up ahead that would cut over to the main state highway leading south and be much better time.

  “Fuck you, nigger!” the bellied man screamed after him.

  He just lifted his hand and waved behind him. It was good to see that some things didn’t change, even after the apocalypse. The warm sun shined down on Trailer, and he began to whistle.

  “Hey, mister,” the boy called.

  Trailer stopped and turned around to see both of them staring at him. The man with a red face, but the boy’s calm and curious.

  “Yeah?”

  It took the boy a few seconds to spit out his questions. “How come you’re not in the NBA?”

  Trailer turned around and began cursing under his breath as he walked.

  Chapter 3 – Letting Go

  President Reggie Phillips could only stare in at the ravaged and partially burned WKPO studio. In the last months of Ethan Schweitzer’s presidency-turned-dictatorship, he had ordered the radio station shut down. Evidently, those that executed his will had done so with a great deal of vigor.

  What stunned him more than the sight of the station was the sight of Tim Reynolds, who had run the station for nearly twenty years. After N-Day, they had collaborated on weekly news broadcasts to calm residents and disseminate information. It had been a huge hit among the JP residents and even those outside their borders. Reggie had gotten to know Tim quite well and found him to be eternally positive, tireless, and with an ever-present smile upon his expressive face.