The Last Tribe (13 page)

Rebecca’s parents died one day
before their 20
^th
anniversary.  They passed within an hour of each
other.   Rebecca moved into the Johnson’s house before settling in the model
home.  The genius girl anticipated and planned for every aspect of the rapture except
for one small thing. 

The disease that killed her
parents, destroyed the world, and took away everything in Rebecca’s life delivered
a cute boy her own age.

Greg and Rebecca were on their
third day together. 

Most of what Rebecca told Greg was
true, she just framed all of her planning and ingenuity as her parents’ ideas. 
By day three Greg realized there was far more to Rebecca than her being a bright
or even very bright 13 year old.

“What grade were you in, you know,
before all of this happened?  I was a Sophomore, well, I was about to be a
sophomore.  I came up to school early to take some prep classes and attend baseball
camp.  Anything to get out of the South Carolina heat.”

“I was a senior.”  She replied.  Rebecca
had a new rule.  Never lie to Greg. 

“What?  You’re only 13.   Are you
some sort of genius?  Well, I can tell you are a genius, but are you one of
those Doogie Howser type kids?”  Greg was shocked she had not told him she was
a senior.

“I guess, I mean, I was going to college
after Christmas.  Wow, it’s weird to say ‘was.’  Even after all that’s
happened.  I still think of college as a future thing.”

“Where were you going?”

“I had yet to decide.  I got in
everywhere I applied.  I think it’s because I am a bit of a Doogie Howser, but
I’m old enough to not be a freak.  It’s not like I’m 8, and colleges don’t want
me on campus because my parents have to stay with me.  At 13 I can navigate
college on my own.  At least that’s what I thought.”

“Where were you leaning?”  Greg had
not thought about college or where he wanted to go.  He had ideas, but his
opinion changed monthly.

“Maybe you can help me decide. 
That could be a fun game for us.”

“Well, right now I want to talk
about you going to Dartmouth College with me.”  Dartmouth was in Hanover, New
Hampshire, and Greg was anxious to get moving.  Rebecca was resistant to
leaving Concord.  They would not split up the team.  One of them had to give.

Rebecca folded the sheets on their
couches.  She folded every morning.  Keeping her living area clean was
important.  She stopped folding and frowned.  She wanted to stay with Greg at
this house or possibly travel further south.  She did not want to drive north
in New England in November. 

“We have to figure this out, don’t
we?  You and I have to make a decision about what our next step is, whether we
stay here for the winter or move, and if we decide to leave, where are we
going?”  She liked to lay out equations, if then statements when possible. 

“My family is alive.  They are
coming for me.  It was too crazy when I spoke to my dad, but when spring hits,
he’s going to come up to New Hampshire, my entire family is coming.  I have
three uncles and two cousins.  If things calmed down sooner, they might be in
Hanover now.”  Greg said this to her a dozen times in the last three days.

“Greg, I know this is hard to
understand, but do you know how crazy you sound?  You have to face reality. 
It’s you and me and maybe a few other survivors somewhere else, but your family
is dead.  I’m sorry.  I don’t want to be mean, but you can’t keep making
decisions based on an idea that has no basis in reality.” 

“They weren’t sick.  I’m not sick. 
They lived, I know it.  They are coming for me.  They may be  waiting for me up
there.  Either way, I have to get to Hanover.”

“My parents died and I’m still
alive.  Surviving doesn’t mean anything.  Greg, they’re gone.  You said it
yourself.  Your mother was sick.  You know that means the rapture was in your
house.  Think about part of what you just said.  Do you really think they would
stay in Hanover and not come to get you at school?  That they would just wait
for you up there?  Come on, even you have to realize how crazy that sounds.” 

Rebecca was stuck.  Greg was going
to Hanover.  She knew it.  She was not attached to her current setup, but it
made more sense than moving north to a small town in the middle of nowhere. 
She had food, water, wood, a fireplace.  She knew the area.  She could hunt or
trap in the woods by the barn.  She was comfortable, at least in the short
term.  Hanover was an unknown.  Could they find appropriate shelter?  How bad
was the looting?  Were supplies available?

She worked through the pros and
cons of leaving her house, her safety net.  If Greg was going to commit to a
new life, he had to be convinced that his family was dead.  The only way to
convince him was to have them not show up in Hanover next year.  Greg was now the
most important thing in Rebecca’s life.  Staying with Greg superseded everything.

“Look, Rebecca…” he started.

“Shush, I’m thinking.”  She put her
hand up to stop him from talking.  She knew the facts.  She was formulating an
opinion.

“Did you just shush me and give me
the hand?  Are you serious?”  He grinned.  He had gotten to know her in the
last three days, and he liked her, a lot.  He was not in love with her romantically,
but as a person, she was one of the best he had ever met.  Rebecca was funny,
practical, whip smart, and compassionate.  When she held him by the barn during
his meltdown, she had true empathy for him.  Greg was weak when he arrived at
her doorstep.  Rebecca opened her doors to him.  Gave him food.  Shared her
supplies.  After three days together he trusted her implicitly.  He would walk
through fire for and with his new friend.

The shushing was new.  She was
forward with her decisions, Greg noticed, but she was never as domineering as
she had just been.

“If we go, we have to go in the
next two days.  It’s November.  I don’t know how there is not snow on the
ground already.  There might be ice on the roads to Hanover.  Snow means we are
stuck here until spring.  We have to decide how we are going, which car we
take, and what items we take.  If we go, you and I have to realize, we’re up
there until May.  Do you even know where in Hanover we are supposed to go?”

Greg could not believe she was
agreeing to go.  He was struck dumb.

“Are you kidding me?  You don’t
even know where we are supposed to meet?  Just ‘Hanover’?  It’s a good thing
you are cute, Greg Dixon, because you are not impressing me in the smarts
department.   Let’s have some breakfast and start making lists.  I guess we can
just find a house when we get up there.  I’m glad we aren’t meeting your family
in ‘Boston’ or ‘New York City.’”  She teased.

“What’s with the one eighty on
going?”  He was finally able speak.

“If you say your family is going to
be in Hanover in the spring, well, we have to be there.  Now is the last chance
we have to travel.”  She was lying, something she vowed never to do to him.

“I don’t believe you, but I
understand.  We’re not separating, and you know I have to go.  It’s okay if you
don’t believe my family is alive.  I’ll believe enough for the both of us.  You
get me up there and keep me alive until spring.  That’s your job.  Don’t let me
do anything else stupid, like uprooting two people who are safe with ample food
and shelter and move them to an unknown place based on an idea that is most
likely insane.”

“Let’s make some lists.”  She said,
looking at him and putting her hand on his shoulder.  “I hope I’m wrong about
your family.  I’ll keep you alive until the spring, and I’ll try to keep myself
alive too.”

They smiled.  In three short days
they were best friends.  Like two kids transferred to a new school at the same
time, stuck in a place with no other friends, they bonded.  They knew how lucky
they were to find and like each other.  Greg considered finding Rebecca to be
the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him.

Greg moved the barn blanket hanging
above the portico and stepped into the cold kitchen.  It was his turn to collect
eggs for breakfast.  Their house had an six foot privacy fence around the
backyard, but Greg was able to see a wild turkey two yards over.  It was
walking in the grass looking for food.

“Rebecca!”  He yelled. 

She came through the blanket door
quickly.  “What’s wrong?”  She was scared he saw other people, bad people. 

“Look at that!  It’s a turkey.  Do
you think we can get it?  I’d love to have fresh turkey.”

“I do not think we can catch that
turkey.  First of all, despite what you probably think, that is a bird with
wings that can fly away if we try to grab it.  If you want to look very dumb,
you can try to catch that bird.  I’ll make breakfast while you do.”

“I specialize in looking dumb,
particularly around you, smarty pants.  I bet the breakfast dishes I catch
it.”  He did not like being told he could not do something.  He also felt dumb for
thinking turkeys could not fly, though he did not admit it to Rebecca. 

“Deal, and good luck.  I am going
to enjoy this.”  Rebecca went back through the blanket door to put on a
sweatshirt.  She wanted a front row seat for Greg’s hunt.

Greg turned and went into the
garage.  He looked around for a hoe or scythe or something he could use to
whack the bird.  He settled on a hoe, but it was one that was hollow in the blade
area.  It looked like a metal trapezoid on the end of a long stick.  Rebecca’s
father loved the tool.  It broke up topsoil in his garden.  Rebecca brought it
over from her house to start a garden with in the spring.

Greg believed he could get the metal
trapezoid around the turkey’s neck and yank quickly to snap it.  He might behead
the bird altogether.  Worst cast he would try to hit the turkey with the hoe. 
He was a baseball player and would use blunt force.

He thought about using a gun, the
pistol from his pack.  Rebecca had several guns too, but they were nervous
about attracting other people with the sound.  He considered throwing something
heavy at the bird, a baseball bat or an axe, but he did not see such a tool
available.  Rebecca did not have an axe in the garage.  She found all of her
firewood already chopped.  Greg wished he had a baseball or a lacrosse ball,
but neither were available.

Greg needed to hurry.  He held the
hoe, practiced the snare and jerk, and decided it was his best option.  The
side door of the garage creaked open and he walked outside.  It was cold. 
Rebecca was right.  They had to leave this week or winter was going to make
their decision for them.  The garage door opened outside the backyard privacy fence. 
He walked towards the turkey, blocked by the fence until he got to the end of
his yard where he could see the bird.  It had not moved.  It was pecking the ground,
oblivious to him.

Greg took the obvious approach.  He
walked towards the bird slowly and steadily.  When he was close enough, he
would bring the hoe down on the bird’s head.  The turkey was about 25 yards
away from him.  It was big from the kitchen window, but even larger up close. 
Greg guessed it weighed at least 35 pounds.

He was five yards closer, walking
slowly, nice even movements, five yards closer.  The bird looked up., flapped
its wings, and flew away. 

Greg did not want to turn around. 
When he did, Rebecca was doubled over laughing at him through the window.  She
opened the kitchen door to get the eggs.  “Now that, that was funny.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a clown.  At least
I’m trying.”  He knew he looked foolish.  He deserved the ridicule. 

“That promise to keep you alive? 
It’s going to be tougher than I thought.”  She laughed harder.

Greg laughed at himself as he waved
her off.  He walked back with his head down and his shoulders slumped.  “Now we
know there are turkeys near here.  Maybe we can catch one.” He thought to
himself. 

“I will clean up breakfast.  Big
man hunter no catch food.”  He joked loudly as he came through the kitchen
door.

“I took it easy on you.  We’re
doing soft boiled eggs for breakfast, no pan to clean.  I sliced some of your
bread from last night.  I did not realize how much I missed bread, and I am
still in awe of your bread making skills.”

A pot hung over the fire.  Greg saw
six medium eggs cooking in the water.  There were slices of bread waiting to be
toasted.  “I wish my turkey catching skills were half as good.”

Rebecca made breakfast while Greg
thought about catching a turkey.

“When did you know you were a
genius?”  Greg asked.

“I don’t know, I mean, school has
always been easy for me.  I’m not a nerd.  I’m a regular kid.  I like the same
things kids our age like.  I just do well at school, and puzzles, and
planning.  If you want to know when everyone else realized, I guess it’s when I
was in kindergarten and I was reading Harry Potter, all of the Harry Potters in
a week.  There are a lot of kids that read books in kindergarten, but I was
tested, and I skipped to third grade.” 

“I completed grades in about half
the time.  I couldn’t skip the work.  My parents were very adamant about making
sure I read and did all the same work as other kids.  I had to read the
required books, and take the required exams.  It created a time constraint to
moving up in grades, but I was about to finish high school.  This was my last
semester.  I was going to be done before Christmas, but I couldn’t start
college until a new term began.”  She looked at the pot as she spoke.

“I get the work wasn’t hard.  Was
it hard being 13 and a senior?  Has it been 7 years since you took classes with
kids your own age?  It must have been tough.”  Greg thought he understood.  He
felt out of the loop when he came back to Charleston after his first year at
Hightower.  He hung out with his brothers and family because his social
structure was gone.  It was one of the reasons he went to baseball camp early
and returned to where he belonged.

“It’s all I’ve known.  I don’t know
if it was more difficult or not.  School is hard socially, whether you are me
going through what I had to deal with or you dealing with whatever you had to
deal with.  There are bullies and mean people all over.  I might have been
insulated more, adults paying special attention to me because I was younger.  I
don’t know, I never had it different.  You know what I mean?”