Unknown (24 page)

Mood: Thoughtful
 

Breakfast found Billy and I sharing a meager meal of meat and cheese supplemented by splitting the orange I'd been given. Neither of us felt like speaking. I can only guess at the night Billy had to go through, but mine consisted of too little good sleep, with what little sleep I managed interrupted by nightmares of a village torn to shreds by the mongrels of war.
 

What were we to do? We do what we could, which was to try surviving the next week a day at a time. My farm was well away from the main settlement, so theoretically it would only be given a passing sweep. Then again between possible survivors looking for a place to find shelter, and the fact they would likely shoot Billy on sight I just can't see home as a place to weather this storm. Billy talked, spoke of the survivors, their hopes, their ambitions, how like us they are. She asked why they were maligned by humanity. We are both God's creatures even if her race was a product of mine.
 

Stop.
 

Lamenting over the situation will not change the facts that stare me in the face. It was time to break camp anyway and get going, granted at this pace we'll get back a day ahead of the deadline. Even so time is critical, particularly when I haven't the slightest clue how to keep us alive long enough for any possible future to last more than a few days.
 

No you damned spiteful spirit. You would not tear my hearth and home from me. It's all I've got. I will have a home to return to. I don't' care how many times visions of returning only to find that we had been deemed 'casualties of war'. Stop with these maddening visions. I have work that needed doing.
 

I felt Billy lifting me from where I'd fallen. Didn't realize how little sleep I had gotten, or how disoriented my thoughts had made me. Had to keep my mind clear and calm. I was lucky and hadn't hit any rocks, but what of next time?
 

Mid-Day
 

I called a halt when the sun reached its peak. No sense tiring Star out, and for that matter my own legs were sore from where I'd been taking turns with Billy waking beside while the other rode. Star might loath Billy's presence, but he was a well-trained horse and so tolerated her.
 

More meat and cheese as the horse grazed and watered from a nearby pond outlined the high points of our mid-day rest. Billy looked concerned, can't say I cannot blame her really. She knew I wouldn't leave, just as she knew that staying all but amounted to a death sentence unless Deus reached down with His merciful hand to shelter us.
 

Most of our rest is spent just holding each other's hand. There were no words in this moment, nor were there acts of Love or Passion. There was just her and I lay curled against each other, and that was enough for the both of us. We simply enjoy the contact of the other's skin. Then by unspoken agreement it ended and we had to take to the road again.
 

Late Afternoon
 

We were within sight of town. Billy said she can hear gunfire. I heard nothing and tried convincing her she was just stressed and had too much time to dwell on things. I don't believe it either, but we advance anyway. No sense in letting fear keep us here if there was something that could be done.
 

Deus Mercy. Everyone in the Hall, and many outside were dead. The survivors had kept going on about a shootout that escalated into mass hysteria as others, just arriving from patrol, thought that we had come under attack and fired blindly into the den of noise. Stupid... stupid waste.
 

Date: 23 May
 

Mood: Unglued
 

What was I supposed to say? How was I supposed to feel? I mean it seemed the moment I left some madness gripped everyone within the hall. Survivors could be found, sure, but none capable of giving any sort of account of events. All of this troubled me greatly. Arguments I could see, especially if my father announced they were sending a negotiator out. Tempers would flare, and doubtlessly a few people would pull weapons they kept despite laws against weapons in public buildings. Mass murder though? Never. I could have never thought this would happen.
 

The point where this broke down was how a few people railed up by an unfavorable course of action could translate into the murder of eighty and the wounding of another thirty. Right now I'm seated at my father's desk penning my thoughts down while those trained in medicine examines the dead for possible clues.
 

The only thing that came to mind was some sort of contamination in the food. Time to examine them for this or that was something we didn't have. Unless several people had half eaten out brains, or were harboring strange or things that should not be there I just could not see the Doctors being useful outside of calming the now panicked population.
 

There was still my announcement unmade. I wasn't sure if I should tell the survivors or not. There was no way how they would react to that on top of what happened here. Maybe we could still weather this if we buttoned down.
 

Hours later
 

Nothing yet to neither confirm nor deny my privet theory of food poisoning induced madness, and no new cases of people turning violent so with that somewhat good news out of the way let me reiterate the bad news. Our central government was completely gone, as were a number of people who would have otherwise acted as defenders. I was still confused, I didn't know what the rest of us would do, and pacing and worrying wasn't going to fix any of it.
 

What interrupted my thoughts was a rather slight gholem maid of my Father's; named China. She never seemed to make eye contact and was only inside the office for a few moments before she placed a saucer on the desk along with a glass of tea as she backed away, bowing as exited.
 

Sandwiches are a good 'quick' meal, and when the meat for this sandwich is ground beef mixed with onion and peppers? OK so its more a case of meat-loaf between bread slices but you have to admit, it was satisfying. She was such a thoughtful woman. I hoped China will be all right now that father is gone. The woman practically raised me, how could I not have sympathy for her? That went double when one considered my father had a somewhat old-fashioned approach to treating gholem. To him they were to serve, be used, and treated however people wished. He tried to amend that bigoted train of thought with '...and shelter and care for them better than you would have yourself cared for', but he rarely treated China, or Gina, Jason, or any of the others better than furniture.
 

I'd taken a walk; sandwich in hand, to talk to the doctors looking the bodies over. It seemed all of those that were examined had eaten the same thing, though none remains un-eaten to test they're assuming, by way of injuries and descriptions of what happened, to be some sort of fungus, possibly ergot. I don't know what either does really but apparently whoever did this stuffed it in their meatloaf. I remember that thought clearly because it had collided with thoughts of poison, madness, Death.
 

I remember my sandwich fell from my hand, all appetite left me as my body began convulsing. It couldn't have been long enough for any sort of poison in the food to take hold. Once I was done voiding I promptly fainted. What happened after this was one of the odder I'd had in recent memory.
 

Restless Dreams
 

I was in a windowless door-less room. What light there was seemed to emanate from just beyond the corner of my vision, and never revealed itself no matter which way I turned. I realized I was clothed in a dull gray jumper and ill-fitting slippers. Fits I suppose, prison clothes for a prison cell. Get on with it.
 

If you insist.
 

Between eye blinks the wall in front of me went from being blank and featureless to having a simple arch in the center just wide enough for me to walk through.
 

Look.
 

To my right was a painting, its colors washed out and faded, depicting a childhood scene of me as a small boy, my father, and a faceless woman. This, I suppose was meant to depict my Father's habit of having a different 'girlfriend' every few months. There, slightly behind and to the right of my father was China. Instead of her usual blank expression was one of unbridled rage, and instead of a serving tray, or tea set, or whatever, she held a knife, blade pointed downward, and aimed at the center of my father's back.
 

I always had my suspicions China resented her position in our family, and she was always either evasive if I asked when other people could potentially hear her answer, or downtrodden and resigned when it was just her and I. I think she understood that I didn't follow in my father's footsteps with how I treated her or any of the other Gholem I've run across, but
didn't want me acting on her behalf. Till I was in my mid twenties I could scarcely stand up to the man, and even then there were just some things I couldn't force.
 

I felt my head turn to the left. Here I saw a painting of China and me, still as a child, on a nature walk. This image seemed faithful to my memories. China happy and content, one of the few times I remember her genuinely smiling and me running around whooping and in general acting the loon. OK I get it; my subconscious was trying to tell me that China was taking revenge against my father. Can we skip the walk down memory lane?
 

As you wish.
 

Blink once I'm in the endless hallway of paintings. Blink twice and I'm back home reclining in my easy chair listening to Bruce Sanger and the Midnight Orchestra. China was seated by the radio mending a shirt. For several long moments we were like this, I watching her work with the silence broken only by the sounds of Nu-Swing, USwing, then she spoke, never looking up from her work.
 

"It doesn't matter what I say." She rocked slightly, her face showing faint traces of laugh lines around the eyes as she looked up from her work at me. "And I'm simply a product of your imagination, but for what it's worth I didn't poison your lunch Julies."
 

I smiled at her. "Nana." Somehow it felt right to call her so, after all she did use the name she'd always called me by when I was a child, "Why?" she frowned slightly then I added, "I mean I know why you did this to Father, but what of everyone else?"
 

Her scowl deepened, lining her face further, "Child, if you knew what I had to endure for the past twenty years you wouldn't need to ask." I could imagine the worst, but decided not to voice my fears. When I didn't answer she continued, "Think about it Julies. I was barely fed, surrounded by people that wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet in me if I even thought about fighting back, and then there was you." she trembled, seeming to age with each word. "I kept quiet because I didn't want you to grow up resenting him."
 

I reached out to put a hand on her shoulder and recoiled when I felt instead of the soft warmth of life I'd always remembered, little more than skin draped cold bones. She really was aging in front of me, and dying. "You'll wake up soon Julies, and I know that you feel that even with your father gone that you should stay." She gripped me with now skeletal hands and, even as she died she spoke. "Save yourself, take Billy with you and go. Nobody will blame you for running, for my sake and for your family name GO!” The last word died when her body dissolved into a pile of dust at my feet.
 

Back in the Land of the Waking
 

Eyes opened, I grabbed the first thing in reach, only to have my hand swatted away. I fumbled repeatedly till my vision cleared, showing China's face.
 

"He's awake." China, seemingly eternally in her youth, alive and well, filling my field of view while she knelt over me. "Billy, get over here." I couldn't move, something digging into my wrists. "Lay still." She smiled at me as a mother would while comforting her child. "Shh, we'll have these off in a moment." I heard something being untied and felt whatever was digging into me loosen. "When you collapsed you started seizing, then clawing at anyone who came close before going limp. They say you'll be fine, but they wanted to know what happened while you were gone."
 

I told her, in-between sips of water to get the taste and burning out of my throat, about what the Gholem that were attacking us had gone through, and their belief that under our town lay a vault of wonder weapons. She shook her head and sighed, "There's no choice then," she stated matter-of-factly, "We have to evacuate. They'll kill half the slack-jawed idiots that try putting up a fight, and then the army will kill the other half because we've seen too much.
 

I felt weak, but still was strong enough to stand. I didn't like it, but both the Dream-china and the real thing were women of practicality. If she said we had to run then I wasn't going to argue with her. This was my home, and I would come back in a month or two after it'd settled down, but there was no going back if I were dead.
 

Looking to Billy then to China I nodded. We had preparations to make. Well, Billy and I did, China was acting in my father's place for the time being. Unusual given the general sentiment about her kind, but everyone left knew that she knew the man's reasoning better than any of the others. So when she said that he would have wanted everyone to scatter and return come autumn they listened. This would mean we would miss out on the harvest season, but the way things were looking, it was either this or die.
 

There were, of course, counter-arguments. People like me who felt they had to stay regardless of what happened. China and others that were in favor of leaving then returning made a simple and effective argument. 'You can die here a week, or twenty years from now. It is your choice. We are not abandoning this place. We're simply getting out of the way of something that will trample everyone into the ground.'