Welcome to the FEBRUARY 2007 issue
Full Circle
By Lee Dresselhaus
“What do you miss most?” Kenneth
idly tossed another small log onto the fire in front of him as he asked. The
three others sat and stared into the bright bed of coals. The two fires behind
them burned well, bracketing them with their warmth and safety, so Kenneth let
them alone and seated himself with the three other men.
“Why do you do this?
You know this annoys the hell out of me,” Jack, next to the youngest at forty,
asked, his eyes flicking briefly from the fire to Kenneth’s worn, bearded face.
One of the others, Charles, grunted what could have been a piece of a laugh but
never looked up from the fire.
The fourth and youngest
at thirty-five, William, didn’t say anything. But then, he never did. Carefully
laid out near one of the fires was the fifth man, William’s uncle, Robert. He
was mercifully unconscious and wrapped in all the blankets they could spare.
“No, really,” persisted
Kenneth, unwilling to stop the game, “what do you miss most?”
Charles spoke up, more
willing to play than Jack, “You mean now? Or in general?”
“Yeah, right now, at
this very moment.”
“Peace and quiet,” said
Jack.
“Come on. Play the
game.”
“Oh, all right.
Electricity. I miss electricity.”
“Yeah, me too,” Kenneth
agreed, “and everything that went with it. Computers, TV, radio. I think I miss
music most of all.”
“I thinking of central
heat, actually,” Charles said, blowing a cloud of steam into the frigid night
air and watching it disappear as it spread out between the stars.
“Good choice,” laughed
Kenneth.
“Fingernail clippers,”
said Jack, staring at his dirty, broken nails and warming to the game a bit.
“Football,” said
Charles and the three nodded in agreement.
“Women,” Jack chimed
in, “I miss women.” Whenever they played this game Jack, at some point, always
said he missed women the most, so Charles and Kenneth had no reply other than
to tell him to shut up, like they always did. It usually ended the game but
Jack would invariably bring them up. They no longer joined him in his wistful
memories of women. Whatever could be said about women had been said long ago,
and many times. The death of law that had provided the protection of civilized
society had been hard on women. Any who were left were in the fortified
settlements, fiercely protected by the men there. Rovers like themselves seldom
found one. William, the silent one, still said nothing. He stared into the fire
and kept his thoughts to himself.
Somewhere in the night,
close, a dog barked, then another, and another. All four men glanced nervously
out into the darkness, then three of them, Jack, Kenneth and Charles, stood and
put more wood on the three fires that surrounded them in the embrace of a
fleeting, flickering security. William didn’t move from the fire, but he
reached behind him and unslung the double-bladed logger’s axe that was strapped
to the back of his heavy coat. As the other three began to bring more wood into
the circle of fire for later use, William began to sharpen the axe, the rasp of
the file soothing in the night. It was a good weapon if the dogs were to come.
Earlier they had
dragged more wood close to their camp of the night, a large pile of it. Now
that they had heard the barking of dogs the three older men rose and headed for
the pile. They might need a higher fire before the cold night was done. They
didn’t ask for William’s help getting the extra wood. William didn’t say much,
in fact he rarely spoke at all but he was a powerful, vicious killer and a
remarkable hunter and they needed him just the way he was. There was no
resentment of his silent stillness. They could get the wood themselves.
There was more barking
from the pack of dogs, this time further away and the men relaxed somewhat. It
seemed that the pack was moving away from them in search of easier prey. The dogs
weren’t as bad as they had been back then, in the beginning of the end. At
first, after the cities collapsed and the human population became thinner, then
thinner still, the dogs had been a huge problem. What had been the beloved pets
of just about everyone had gone feral. The pocket breeds and the weaker strains
quickly died out, and the heartier breeds intermingled in packs, becoming
predatory. And isolated humans had no immunity from them despite the many
thousand-year history of their relationship. After those thousands of years the
dogs had gone full circle, back to where they had come from. But now,
twenty-five years after the beginning of the end, the packs had thinned and
run-ins with them were as infrequent as run-ins with the occasional wolf pack
that once again roamed the land.
But tonight the men
were taking no chances, so the fires burned high.
There was a soft groan
and their attention turned to the fifth member of their group, Robert. He lay close to the rear fire, wrapped in
all the blankets they had. The four men knew he wouldn’t live another day, and
might not live until morning.
The huge range bull had
seen to that.
They had successfully,
silently stalked the brown and white spotted yearling heifer and she never knew
they were there until two of William’s arrows slammed deep into her side. She
bellowed in agony and ran into a thicket. They heard her crash down, thrashing
for a moment, then she was still and they knew they had her. All caution was
lost as they charged into the thicket after her, their axes and hatchets held
at the ready for the killing stroke, the utter luxury of young beef and full
bellies on their minds.
The bull had been in
the thicket.
He was huge, lean and
spotted, with curved horns with one tip broken off in some forgotten battle.
The dogs hadn’t been the only things to go feral after the beginning of the
end. Range cattle, those that survived the first two or three seasons without
human attention, had also gone wild. And now, several bovine generations later,
this bull had the same duties as his fierce ancestor, bos primegenus, the first bull. His duty was to protect his herd
from all who would attack it. The herd was his, he had earned it through
battle. With his size and power he had no fear of the cougar, or the packs of
dogs, of even of the great bear that now roamed his range, so the human with
the axe meant nothing to him for he was a warrior.
He charged with all his
power and hooked the screaming man with his wicked horns, then tossed Robert
over his head. The others retreated, fled, and could only watch from a distance
as the bull stomped and gored the life from one of their own. Then, finally
satisfied, he rumbled his great challenge again and trotted away, his tail
high. William didn’t even waste his arrows because he knew they wouldn’t bring
down the bull at that distance and that he would only carry them away with him
when he left. And they were precious, those razor tipped arrows.
“Guns,” said Kenneth,
looking at the dying man in the firelight, “I miss guns.”
“Yeah, guns were nice,”
agreed Charles. Jack also grunted his agreement and they sat again, thinking of
guns. They had long ago used the last of the ammunition they had for their guns
despite hoarding it carefully for as long as they could. They had to use a lot
of it at first because of the dogs and, for the first years, other packs of
rovers like themselves who would kill them to take what little they had. Those
rover packs, like the packs of dogs, slowly died off as well leaving only a
scattered few. Early on, at the beginning of the end, they could still find the
odd box of bullets here and there but now, after twenty-five years, most had
been found by others or, when they did find some, they no longer worked having
been rotted by time and weather.
The empty cities were
off limits because they still contained pockets of the disease that had caused
all of this. The rare times they met other travelers, tales were told of
friends or relatives who went into the cities and never returned. Or that had returned
carrying the disease, and all those they returned to died with them.
They would always wonder who had done it, who
had brought it all crashing down.
No one knew who had been responsible, which
group or individual with a cause. Someone had created and released the plague,
the disease. If it had been their intention to destroy a great society, they
succeeded. If it had been their
intention to win, they failed. The plague swept across the world in a matter of
days. The great cities, because of the density of their populations, became
nightmares of death. There was no cure and to contract it was invariably 100%
fatal, and it spread like wildfire. The governments tried to contain it by
isolating the cities, cordoning them off to die, but it was too late. People
had fled when the disease first became known, taking it with them to other
areas and these, too, died. One by one the governments collapsed and died with
them, and within a month the cities were reeking, massive piles of death, the
only living things the starving dogs that now fed on the corpses of the dead.
Charles, Kenneth, Jack,
the silent William, and the dying Robert, who was William’s uncle, had been in
a fishing camp when it started. It was a family and neighborhood outing, a
summer ritual for the boys and their mentors. There were three others with them
then, now long dead, one killed by the dogs, one, the oldest, died when his
heart just gave out and they had no way to help him. And one by two passing
rovers for his gun and boots. They killed them in return as one sat, trying to
pull on the boots and the others rummaged through the stolen knapsack. Those two were the first they killed and
they were sickened by it, but it got easier as time went on and now they would
kill without hesitation to protect themselves.
They had listened in
shock to the radio as the cities died. William had been ten at the time, and
they shielded him from the horror as best they could, but it was pointless.
Even the radio eventually died because there was no voice left to give it life.
Small, isolated
communities survived a bit longer, but those who accepted strangers, offering
their help and kindness, soon died too for the strangers carried the disease to
them. The only pockets of humanity left would now kill a stranger on sight, and
if they still had guns and ammunition left they would kill one as far away from
their gates as they could. They would leave his body where it fell, food for
the dog packs that often circled the settlements, which were now fortified with
walls of logs like in times long past, like sharks.
A year after the
beginning of the end, it was over. They couldn’t know it, nobody left alive
could, but over four-fifths of the world’s population was dead.
A bit at a time they
began to run out of things, food at first, then other things like clothes and
tools as both wore out. They scrounged what they could from the occasional
deserted house or small store. But they were fearful of the disease so they
stayed away from the bigger dead zones where more goods, unbelievable
treasures, were bound to be. In a small dead
town they found a long deserted sporting goods store. It had been looted
years before and all the guns and ammunition were gone so they had no hope of
replacing their rapidly dwindling supply of bullets. But they found a case of steel arrowheads and a box of fiberglass
arrow shafts. There were no bows left, but after much trial and error and with
the help of a dusty survival manual they found on a long forgotten shelf they
learned to make their own. It wasn’t a good one but they kept trying. The next
one they made got better, and the one after that was a killing weapon. It was
shortly after that they laid their useless guns, now nothing more than an
encumbrance, on the ground and walked away from them.
And William, then
thirteen, discovered he had a special skill. He became the archer.
The dying man, Robert,
groaned again, tossed slightly in his blankets, then was silent, the wheezing
of his labored breathing stopped. They glanced back at him but said nothing.
They knew then he was dead. The bull had done his duty well.
There was nothing more
that could be done for him so they took their blankets from around his body,
leaving him wrapped only in his own, with which they covered his face. In the morning they would bury him beneath a
pile of stones so the dogs or the wolves couldn’t get at him. It was the best
they could do for him. There were no tears and there would be no prayer. God
had left long ago.
The sun rose clear and
cold that morning and one at a time they rose, stretching and coughing in the
cold morning air, their breaths clouds in the early cold. They found that
William had already buried his uncle before they woke. He hadn’t shown emotion
about his Uncle Robert but then, he never showed any emotion about anything,
and they didn’t expect it and weren’t surprised.
They
ate what they had left of the chunk of heifer that had cost William’s uncle his
life, then packed up their supplies for the trip north. They’d found evidence
of the herd a few days before and had begun to follow its huge trail. The herd
had gone north, a day or so ahead, and if they could catch up with it and stay
with the herd they would survive because the herd would mean everything, from
heavy coats to hand sewn boots. And food that would see them through the
winter. They had wandered off the trail of the herd to look for farm houses
that had been left unlooted. That’s when they had stumbled across the wild bull
and it had cost Robert his life. It was a mistake they would not make again.
They
picked up their weapons, William his bow and heavy logger’s axe, Jack his heavy
spear and hatchet, Kenneth his two axes and the extra bow and arrows, and
Charles his heavy hammer and his spear, and they set out on the trail of the
buffalo that had returned to their annual migration, now undisturbed. And
victorious. The herd, still small when compared to the millions of a past time
but growing each year, was the only thing that mattered now, and they knew it.
There would be no more searches for the treasures of the past.
Like
the dogs and the buffalo, they had gone full circle.
“Ice
cream,” Kenneth said as they started out, “I miss ice cream. And coffee.”
“A
hot shower. And driving a fine car,” said Charles, once again caught up in the
torturous game despite himself.
“Women,” Jack said
with a sigh. He began to laugh when the other two cursed him, “I miss women.”
With
the silent William leading they followed the buffalo.
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