·       Hi everyone! Stephen Wormwood here, thanks for clicking! Feedback and criticism is always welcome at stephenwormwood@mail.com. As always hope you enjoy reading this and please consider donating to Nifty if you can.

 

·       Please read some of my other stories on Nifty: Wulf's Blut (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dancer of Hafiz (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Cornishman (gay, historical), A Small Soul Lost (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), and Torc and Seax (transgender, magic/sci-fi).

 

 

**********

 

8. PUEBLO

 

**********

 

This is a mean old world

Try to live it by yourself

This is a mean old world

Try to live it by yourself

 

Can't get the one you're lovin'

Have to use somebody else

 

I've got the blues

Gonna pack my things and go

Yes, I've got the blues

Gonna pack my things and go

 

Well, I guess you don't love me

You're lovin' Mr. So-And-So

 

Sometime I wonder why

Can your love be so cold?

Sometime I wonder why

Can your love be so cold?

 

Seem like, to me, you don't want me

I'm just an unlucky So-And-So

 

-      Little Walter

 

 

**********

 

I wouldn't call it suicide... what I tried to do. That word always seemed too dramatic to me, attempted or otherwise. `Suicide'. No, I wouldn't call it that. I just felt... empty. I felt lifeless. I felt like the point was gone. No Parker. No Mexico. No home. No Dad. No nothing. Just me... or at least this empty shell of me. I felt hollowed out.

 

Like what was the point of anything anymore?

 

And then there was the water. Cool and inviting, the biggest body of water I'd ever seen outside of a book, and I just... wanted it to sweep me away.

 

Looking back on it from where I am now – everything had such a cruel inevitability to it. Parker was never meant to be mine – not truly. He was the very fire he loved so much, savage and blistering, pleasing to the eye but too dangerous to touch, fit and bred for the ugliness of our world. I wasn't.

 

What was I?

 

An admirer? A hanger-on? A liability? Maybe I was all those things. I never meant to be. Parker was my sun and all I wanted to be was his earth. I wanted to be his partner – come hell or high water – to tend his cuts, salve his wounds, fill his belly, keep him warm, wash his clothes. I was his. All I wanted was to be his – to support him, to protect him, to love him. I didn't want to be some fucking attachment to him, some star-struck groupie on an apocalyptic road trip – but in the end? That's all I was to him, wasn't it?

 

Wasn't it?

 

You know, until my dying day, I'll always remember that one hot day on the Poudre, when he threw me down on the riverbank and said he'd kill anyone who ever laid a hand on me, then fucked me senseless. Could you believe I was stupid enough to think that was love? That that was him, saying with his cock what he couldn't say with his lips, the same peachy lips he never let me kiss? My most romantic memory of him was nothing but a rough fuck. What did that say about us? About me?

 

The saddest thing though? Parker was right about me. I was weak. If the God of the Theonomists made this world, then he certainly didn't make it for me. I was weak. Yes, I loved Parker, but I also needed him in a way he didn't need me. His survival didn't rest on mine – mine did his. I see that now. I think he knew it all along too. Maybe I was just a convenience? An extra pair of hands to carry his supplies, an extra pair of eyes to watch his back, a warm mouth on a cold night. He didn't need me... but I had my uses.

 

And then came McCullough.

 

Brave McCullough. Tough McCullough. McCullough the crack shot, the tracker, the hunter; a survivor tied down to no one. And a girl too! No guilt in fucking her! She and Parker were cut from the same fucking cloth. From the moment she arrived in our lives I didn't stand a chance. I was just another crossed out name in his Cook Book before he moved on to his next target. Yeah. What happened was inevitable. But it still hurt.

 

It hurt so fucking much...

 

**********

 

"Went down to the river Jordan..." she sang. "Where John baptized three..."

 

Bubbles and black thrashing hands ran through his mind as Jay shot up gasping, his hand pressed against his pulsing chest as a moth-eaten white blanket slipped down to the soggy boxers covering his crotch. It took time for his vision to settle, maybe a few moments, then he looked down at his abs and saw bandages wrapped around them. His left arm was also bandaged too he'd cut it crawling out of the wrecked Silverado. There were other lacerations along his right forearm and shoulder, but some good stitchwork had sowed them up well – almost as good as his dad could do it. And the broken cuffs were gone, nothing left of them save the welts they left around his wrists.

 

"Well, I walked the devil in hell," she sang. "Sayin' John ain't baptize me..."

 

Jay looked to his left.

 

There was a woman there. A middle-aged black woman in a plastic bib and a nurse's smock, dripping with sweat from the hot winds beating at the tent flaps. She knelt over a bowl of bloody water and picked glass fragments, wiping her hands clean with a hand cloth. A used suture kit lay next to her feet - needle, forceps, scissors, tweezers, and a spool of thread.

 

"I say roll, Jordan, roll," she sang. "Roll, Jordan, roll... my soul arise in heaven, Lord, for the year when Jordan roll..."

 

And then she saw him wake.

 

"Hey." Her smile was broad – soothingly so. "Back with us now, huh? Well goddamn, you've been horizontal for half a day, how're you feeling?"

 

He felt drained and lost. But Jay looked down at himself again, alive and patched up, and said a croaky "Better" with a voice raw from coughing. Then he thanked her.

 

"You're welcome," The nurse turned to the tent flap door and yelled, "Hey Trav, get in here, I hear your country-ass hovering outside!"

 

Blades of light cut across the bright orange groundsheet when the tent flap peeled open and a man crept in, broad-shouldered and tall, the sun dappling his neck and forearms. It was a familiar silhouette – the very same Jay saw before he passed out at the reservoir shore; a man in beaten blue jeans, dusty brown sneakers and a grey tweed shirt rolled up to his elbows. He looked older than Jay, but not that much older, early to mid-twenties, maybe... blonde-haired and brown-eyed. The black grip of a Glock 19 sat securely in his hip holster.

 

He smiled softly. First at Jay, then at the nurse. "Thanks for that, Moni. I know you've got plenty of other folks to see to before we head out. Salvatore's been on my ass about it."

 

"Light work," said Moni. It was short for Monique, which Jay would learn in time. "Once I finish my rounds I'll come back and check on him." Then she turned to Jay again. "Don't let him talk your ear off, kiddo. You still need your rest."

 

Once her hands were wiped clean, Moni stood up, packed away what remained of the suture kit for sterilization and left the tent to see to other wards.

 

Jay looked away.

 

There was no real reason he couldn't look the blonde man in the eye – he had saved him from drowning, after all. Jay just... felt guilty somehow. Guilty and tired.

 

The blonde man dropped to his haunches. "Hey. My name's Travis. Travis Wyatt. What's yours?"

 

"...Jay Mixon," said the boy. He gazed at his lap like there was something worthwhile in it except an old white blanket and his own dry, calloused hands. There wasn't.

 

Travis smiled again. "Nice to meet you, Jay. Good to see you awake. You had me worried for a spell."

 

Then some of Pastor Evans' old training kicked in. Jay suddenly felt the absence of his pistol, and the presence of Travis'. He looked for his pack and found it drying in the tent's rear left corner – but he couldn't see his weapon. His clothes were gone, too.

 

"Where am I?"

 

"Pueblo," said the older man. "We were filling our canteens by the reservoir when I spotted you, but our big guy in charge didn't like the look of the thunderheads rolling by the west so we carried you here to our camp. Not to worry. You're safe now."

 

Jay looked on, quietly.

 

"You could've died out there, you know?"

 

Jay bit his lip.

 

"Was... was that what you were trying to do?" Asked Travis.

 

Jay looked away, tearfully. "...I don't know what I was doing."

 

Silence.

 

And then? "Hey? You hungry? I've got some hot water and ramen outside. Might even have a few eggs we could boil? Feel like a bite?"

 

Jay shut his eyes before the tears fell. "...I think I want to be left alone."

 

"...Okay," Travis set his hands to his denimed knees and stood up. "Alright. Well, you do like Moni says and get you some rest. I'll come back and check on you later. Take it easy, Jay."

 

Travis ruffled his hair – sort of like a father would, even though he was so young – then he excused himself and left. The tent flap opened and shut. Light poured in then disappeared. There were people outside. Travis spoke to them. Jay buried his face in his hands so they wouldn't hear him cry.

 

**********

 

There is someone I will come to hate with all my heart and soul. And he is destined to communicate something to me that will chill me to my core. He will say,

 

"At the end of the day, the only thing scarier than nihilism is optimism -- the things you don't believe in can't hurt you, but the things you do always will."

 

Kindness gets you killed in this world. Go ask my Dad. Go ask Ned Creighton. It's a disease, it's a sickness, it's a FUCKING cancer. You should've let me die, Travis, you dumb fuck. I didn't ask you to save me. You didn't need to be a hero. But you were. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you! FUCK YOU!

 

**********

 

Kennedy was an asshole.

 

It was something else Jay would learn over the coming days. He got the first taste of it the first time they met; the noon of the day Travis Wyatt fished him out of the drink. He was asleep at the time, a restless and fitful sleep, filled with dreams of Parker and Hunter and Polk – but he didn't rise until that first strike of a steel spoon to a rusty tin pot. BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG!

 

Jay shot up.

 

"Awake now, Aurora?" He spat. "Sleeping Beauty, hello?"

 

There was another man at Jay's tent flap. Blonde, again. Older, again. But not by much, again. He was shorter than Travis, leaner and skinnier, with surprisingly well-groomed hair woven into a shoulder-length Dutch braid falling across the chest of a faded Dead Kennedys shirt. Sunlight glistened off the diamond stud in his nose. He had no weapons, no sheathed knives nor holstered guns swinging from the belt of his dusted black khakis. And he was a faggot. That much, Jay knew without knowing – almost like he had a radar for it. But he was pretty, too. And that much, Jay couldn't argue.

 

The slightly older man lowered his pot and spoon. His face was sour, scrunched up with annoyance, like he was trapped in a coffin with an eggy fart. "Would you get up? And maybe eat something before Travis flips his shit about it?"

 

The tent flap popped open again. Jay thought it might be Travis, but it was Moni, her plastic bib crinkled and sullied with crusted blood. "Kennedy! Sweet fucking Jesus, will you knock that shit off? I got a broken leg to set not two tents down, the fuck's the matter with you?"

 

Kennedy glowered at Jay as if he hadn't even heard her.

 

"Get. Up." He said, "Everyone pulls their own weight around here, you're not excepted."

 

Jay sighed.

 

"Knock it off," said Moni, sharply. "You don't fool me. Not one bit. Go pull your own weight and help me set Mr. Haberman's leg. Go on, move."

 

The younger boy looked up as Kennedy shot him one last irritated glare through those pale grey eyes of his before he stormed off out of the tent (which Jay was soon to learn belonged to him) on Moni's orders. The nurse shook her head. "Pay him no mind," she said. "He's got a lot of growing up to do."

 

Honestly, Jay didn't even care.

 

He yawned. Felt his belly grumble. He wasn't hungry, but his belly was. He felt weak, but not as much as that morning. The tiredness was gone. The tinnitus plaguing his ears since that grenade that took out Wuhrer and his men was gone. His ribs, bandaged by Moni, still hurt though. But they were only bruised, nothing was broken, he would've felt it if they were. He could move despite them. That was good enough.

 

Moni sighed. "He's wrong to rush you, but... do you think you can walk?"

 

"Yeah," said Jay. "I think so. Why?"

 

"We're probably moving out tomorrow. Salvatore, our... `leader' I guess you could say, he's asked Travis to take a team and scope out the north. If we get an all clear by nightfall, we'll go at sun-up."

 

Jay sharpened. "North? North where?"

 

"I think he said Denver."

 

**********

 

I was kind of stunned when I stepped outside of that tent. I knew the camp would be large, of course. I heard all the banging, chattering, scraping, and hammering between sleeping spells, but... I never expected what I saw. The town of Pueblo would've normally been as dead as any other town in wind-beaten Colorado State – but not that day. That day Pueblo was alive with people. Hundreds of them. The streets were lined with tent after tent, cookfire after cookfire, sleeping bag after sleeping bag. Latrines were dug out of old porches. Teams of folk went from house to house and garage to garage prowling the rotting old homesteads for anything useful, spooling general looted wares (clothes, shoes, tools, books, cutlery, make up, towels, blankets, rope, jewelry, etc.) into a heap at the center of the encampment for the rest of the group to pick at. More important resources – like fuel, ammo, weapons, medicine, viable canned food, and WP tablets – and raw materials (wood, tin, aluminum, etc.) were more closely guarded and bundled into a baggage train of wagons, vans and U-Hauls lulling along the cracked concrete stretch of the US-50. They even had horses.

 

It was one of the biggest camps I'd ever seen.

 

And the people!

 

The Colorado I grew up in didn't overflow with colored folks. Polk only had one black family, the Stanfields, and there were still brothers and sisters of the town who felt they shouldn't be there. I'd never known an Asian person by name my entire life. But that camp – that camp was like a rainbow. Black folks, White folks, Asian folks (South and East), Hispanic folks, Mixed folks. Hundreds and hundreds of them. All working together and pitching in like it was nothing. My Dad used to say that all the big cities were like that, New York, DC, New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia. Why did that feel like such a big deal? I wasn't sure. And at the time, I suppose, I wasn't paying that much attention.

 

When I told Moni that Denver was dangerous, she went and got Travis to warn him. Then Travis came back to the tent to talk to me about it. I didn't want to talk about Denver. I felt sick thinking about it – memories of fire, bullets and blood, explosions, fucking McCullough and Tom Cherry, poor Ned, and Parker... I didn't want to remember any of it. But I didn't want these people to walk blindly into a hell zone either. So, I spilled my guts – about the Foragers, the 55ers, the Republic of Denver and the 2nd Battalion. Not Parker, though. I wasn't ready to talk about him yet. Back then I could barely think about him without crying.

 

"Salvatore will want to hear this," Travis told me. "You okay to walk a little?"

 

I was broken.

 

And I knew it because Travis was kind and for some fucking reason his kindness kept pissing me off. I just nodded though, and kept my thoughts in my head like I always did, nodding along even when my mind was screaming at me to say "No" or question "Why?"

 

But I followed him.

 

Salvatore's tent was an olive-colored two-person canvas with a rolled up sleeping bag and an unused hot plate lodged inside. It sat at a street corner beneath the rusted old sign of a nearby Arby's. The man himself, a squat and beady eyed man hunched over on foldable deck chair, eyeballing an A3-sized map of the entire country paper weighted to the sidewalk by some old soup cans. He was ex-military for sure, he had that stoic air of authority about him, just like Pastor Evans and Ned Creighton. It wasn't hard to see why he was camp's unofficial leader.

 

Two men sat with him, one white and one black, both burly and muscled, both carrying stock-folded Krinkovs. Guards. But they didn't look like the Black Bandanas or the Battalion soldiers or even the 55ers. They didn't look like trained fighters. They looked... normal, somehow. Like a couple of dads on a hunting trip. Was that good or bad, I wondered? Why do I care?

 

Salvatore looked up at us when our shadows fell over his map.

 

"Another stray," He had the voice of a chain smoker, deep and gravelly. "Well. It'll be your job to keep him fed and clothed."

 

Travis told Salvatore that he would, but it wasn't about that, that I had `news' from Denver. Which... wasn't the way I would've put it, but at the time I didn't care. Salvatore eyed me over then asked me to talk. So, I did. And I told him almost everything. I told him about escaping Polk with a `friend' before coming to Denver for supplies. I told him about the Republic of Denver and Ned Creighton and the 2nd Battalion, I told him about the Foragers (which alarmed him the most) and the deal that they made with the 55ers. I told him most of the truth – Denver was a warzone and best avoided.

 

"How do I know I can trust your intel?" He asked. "How do I know you're not working with a road crew to divert us into a trap?"

 

It was a good question.

 

I gave him the only answer I had the energy for.

 

"You can't," I said. "You don't. You guys saved me; I guess I'm just returning the favor. Believe me or don't, it's up to you."

 

It occurs to me now that I must've sounded rude. Understand, at the time, I didn't know or care. I was numb. Someone could've shot a slug through my brain, and I wouldn't have known about it. Salvatore frowned at me, then looked down at his map, arms tersely folded. "If the city's so dangerous, how'd you survive it?"

 

And in my head, I had a stupid answer to that. In my head, I thought, "My boyfriend was protecting me, and we got really lucky." But he wasn't my boyfriend. He never was no matter how much I wanted him to be. I stopped myself. Wasn't it weird and funny and sad how easily his name flew into my head? Even now I see him smiling at me, evilly, as the flames of Hunter Wuhrer's sundered corpse refracted off the dark sparkle of his oil brown eyes.

 

"I ran," I said. "I'm good at that."

 

Salvatore's guards snickered.

 

"And your friend?"

 

He left me for dead, I thought. "Dead, maybe. I don't know."

 

Salvatore sighed, then tossed his small eyes at Travis. "Call off the scout & scavenge. Tell the boys to get an early night," he looked at me. "And leave the kid with me. I want to pick his brain."

 

I could tell Travis didn't want to leave me alone with him. He knew I was vulnerable – and probably the only one who understood what I almost did to myself in the reservoir. And there was no command structure here. Travis had no reason to `obey' Salvatore, but he was the leader all the same. He sighed, squeezed my shoulder, then promised to come back for me later. Then Travis left to brief his team.

 

One of Salvatore's guards grabbed me a spare chair.

 

I took a seat, and he asked me to tell him everything I knew about the city, about Colorado, the 55ers, the Foragers, the 2nd Battalion – weapons, bases, officers, everything. Anything. I told him what I knew. Gave him some rough ideas about numbers. Told him how far the Foragers had advanced – that Buckley was probably under siege by now. Then he asked me if I knew anything about him.

 

I said no.

 

"You ever left the state?" He asked.

 

"No."

 

"You know who we are or where we came from?"

 

I shook my head no.

 

And so, Salvatore pointed me to his map, that huge map of the country spread out in front of him by four soup cans, and with it, the ex-Marine explained to me the fate of our country as best as he understood it.

 

"Everything fell apart when the Occupation ended," he said. "Everything from Idaho to Iowa belongs to the Fifty-Five Thousand Army. Texas `seceded' and became a republic. What's left of the legitimate government broke into two halves based around the Western and Upper Eastern seaboards, the Western US and the Eastern US: two presidents, two senates, two houses of representatives. And the south was taken over by a bunch of nutjob Christian fascists calling themselves the Theonomic Confederation of New America. That's where we escaped from. Some states haven't been taken over yet – Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Illinois, New Mexico – usually where the fighting between the five powers is most fierce."

 

"This is crazy." I said, staring at the map, thinking how much Parker would've loved hearing all this.

 

Salvatore pointed at Nevada. "We're headed for the Western United States. The Navajo Nation is fortified so there's no routes to the W.USA through Arizona or New Mexico. Our only way to Nevada is through Utah. That's where we're headed. You want to come with us then you've got until sunrise to-"

 

"I'll come," I said.

 

The old soldier paused. "...If you come with us, there's no going back, you understand?"

 

I thought of Parker, again. Smiling at me. Calling me Pee Wee. Crawling inside my sleeping bag and yanking my jeans down until my belt danced around my ankles so he could fuck me. I wanted to cry again. I ran scenarios in my head. What if McCullough's dead? What if Parker's hurt and he needs me? What if I followed him and he took me back? What if I went to Mexico and met him there? What if, what if, what if. Worthless thoughts. There was no `what if'. Parker was gone. He left me. He didn't care about me anymore, he was `done with me'. Polk was gone. My Dad was dead. There was nothing left for me in Colorado.

 

"I can use a gun," I said. "My Dad was a doctor; I know a little first aid. I can drive. I can read and write. I can cook a little. Mend clothes. I won't be a burden."

 

Salvatore smiled at Jay then – for the first and last time. "Then you're with us."

 

**********

 

"I was on guard duty the night I learned that Higgs had been let off with reprimand," Ralph Walsh's haggard voice blared out from the grainy recording he'd cobbled together with his dying breaths. Jay held it up over the grave of his wife, Nancy Walsh, marked by a half-withered memorial cross bearing her name. The message made it home. "It didn't take them long to sus out that it was me. Did I do the right thing, Nance? I don't know. They're calling me a traitor, a rat, they're saying I'm sympathizing with the seditionists – none of `em even stopping to question if Sizemore even WAS a seditionist! If I can see it, why can't they? It's all fucked, Nancy. We got the word a few days ago. The brass ordered a full pull-out from Denver, we're to fall back to Fort Carson with immediate effect. Most are going, but... Lt Col Creighton and the 2nd Battalion's gone rogue. They're refusing to leave. They say they won't abandon the people to the 55ers. I respect it, I guess, but if someone as strait-laced as him is breaking the chain of command... what the fuck are men like Higgs gonna do when they're off the leash? I'm so scared for you, Nancy. I swear to God, America is going to hell in a handbasket. That's why I had to leave. That's why they shot me." (a sob, then another) "I think I'm dying, Nancy. I'm so sorry, Baby Girl... I miss you so fucking much! If I can't make it back to you, but this message does? Just know this – I was never a coward, I tried my best, I fucking fought for this country, I fought for you! `Cause I love you. I love you more than anything in this world, Nance. By the Grace of God if I can't see you again in this world, I'll be waiting on you in the next. Goodbye, love."

 

The recording ended there.

 

It took Jay a few hours to find Ralph Walsh's house. The address was crudely carved into the plastic casing of the recorder, probably by the tip of a Ka-Bar, and with everything that had been going on in Denver, the boy almost forgot that he had it. But the name Pueblo kept reverberating in his mind (probably to distract himself from other things). Pueblo, Pueblo, Pueblo. And then he remembered. That was where Ralph was from. The message he always hoped would get back to his wife if he never could. Nancy Walsh was dead, and town was abandoned, but it seemed poetic – and uncanny – that of all of the places in this fucked-up world he could wind up, it was here. He couldn't leave without fulfilling Ralph's last wish.

 

Jay dug a little hole at the base of the memorial cross, buried the recorder in it, and covered it over with fresh earth. He said no prayers because he had no faith – but maybe it helped the Walshes find peace somehow. Who knew? If nothing else it was Ralph's last wish. There was no reason not to honour it.

 

Jay stood upright and dusted soil from the knees of his skinny jeans. They (as well as the blue & white striped tee shirt and air cushioned Doc Martens he now wore) were provided to him by the camp. They'd placed a spare change of clothes into his pack as well (once it dried) along with some rations and a 2nd water canteen for the road. By Salvatore's insistence though, he was not permitted a pistol.

 

A shadow fell over Jay. He turned around and found Travis there, smiling over him, hand on holstered hip. "Hey, kiddo. We're about to move out. Still sure you wanna come?"

 

I'm not sure about anything anymore, thought Jay. But what choice do I have? He spied the sky beyond the Walsh household's cracked tile roof – in the direction of Colorado Springs. Somewhere beyond that stood Denver... or whatever was left of it. Parker and McCullough were there. Together? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe one was dead or both or neither. Jay couldn't say. Wherever Parker was – cruising down the I-25 with McCullough, bound for Mexico or shot to death in a gutter somewhere – his wishes were clear. He didn't want Jay with him.

 

"There's nothing for me here," said Jay. "Lead the way."

 

There was a saddled horse at the corner of 22nd Street, where the sidewalk was cracked into pebbles and weeded over. Travis mounted up, slipped his steel-toed boots into the stirrups, and extended a hand to Jay, hauling him up to the saddle's rear and warning him to hold on tight as he whipped the reins and coaxed the mare forward. They circled back through the Northside neighbourhood, plying around old tree trunks torn from their roots by age-old storms and tornados and left there to lie. The whole neighbourhood was a wreck. Lichen and moss overran the damaged walls of abandoned townhouses. Bushes of thorns and poisonous wildflowers swallowed up whole lawns and gardens. Loose street signs croaked against the hot wind. Forsaken cars, long crashed or parked, withered away right down to their rusted, skeletal frames. Wild dogs and jackals scavenged dumpsters for food. Travis warily kept his free hand near his pistol, but the scavengers kept their distance.

 

"Tell me about the Theonomy," said Jay.

 

Travis smirked. "It took a whole dang day to get those lips of yours good and greased and now you want to go and talk about something as unpleasant as all that?"

 

"Tell me."

 

"...Well, ain't much to tell except it's a Christo-fascist shithole," he said. "Blacks are persecuted, queers are sterilised, Hispanics are deported, and women are their husbands' property. Anyone who questions their authority, refuses to pay their tithes, or practices immoral behaviour? They either get the firing squad or a one-way ticket to the Re-Education Centres. Most never come back. My Mom did, but... only half of her. She was a zombie when they cut her loose. Killed herself not long after that. Bastards."

 

Jay frowned. "I'm sorry."

 

"It's not your fault," said Travis. "They think the Global Fertility Crisis was God's plague on mankind, and they've carved out their little niche of America to `await the coming of the Rapture'. When it got too much we had to leave."

 

"Why not go to the... `Eastern United States?'" Asked Jay. "Shorter trip, no?"

 

The bay horse, a good-tempered girl named Mildrith, whickered. Travis petted her mane as she clopped along the beaten path toward US-50. "Put it this way the Mason-Dixon's pretty much the warzone Denver is. We've had an easier time cutting through 55er territory."

 

"How do you know the WUSA is any better?"

 

"Because it's where Salvatore's from. He was a WUS Marine, fought in a joint naval operation with the EUS Navy to retake Florida three years ago. When it failed, he was captured and tortured, but he got free, threw in with a resistance movement in St. Louis and dedicated himself to getting as many of us out as possible. He says it's safe and I believe him. He's not a nice man... but he's a good one."

 

Then his days are numbered, thought Jay. "I'm glad you got out."

 

He didn't give two shits, but it was a nice thing to say so he said it. And wasn't that always expected of him? To be the nice one?

 

Travis smiled. "Me too."

 

They made it to the US-50 within a half-hour of burying Ralph's recorder. By then that massive camp they'd pitched in the heart of town was packed up and a long, long line of cars, horses, vans, school buses, motorbikes, bicycles, pickup trucks, RVs, wagons, carts, and U-Hauls formed up along the winding concrete stretching from the old car dealership in Northside back down to the I-25 interchange. It took a good while before they found Kennedy's car amidst the caravan; a mud-brown 1985 Buick LaSabre with camping equipment and a red-painted Cannondale strapped to its roof by a tight rigging of cables and carabines. Kennedy peered out of the driver's side window wearing a pair of sunglass aviators and a catty smirk.

 

"Done sightseeing?" He quipped.

 

"Jesus, is there anything you love more than a good bellyache?" Said Travis.

 

Kennedy bit his lip, his smirk deepening. "...I can think of one big thing."

 

Travis rolled his eyes (and flushed) as Jay climbed down from Mildrith's leather saddle. On the way to the convoy the older man had asked the younger if he wanted to ride the first leg with him, but the saddle was hard on his back and ribs – it was too painful. Instead, Jay took the back seat of the LaSabre and threw the pack off his shoulders.

 

"I'm gonna ride up ahead with the scout party. Drive safe, I'll meet up with y'all when we next make camp." Travis took a firm grip of Mildrith's reins. "C'mon, girl. Let's amscray!"

 

The horse and her rider cantered off down the length of the column. Kennedy rolled up the windows to ward off all the dust and exhaust smoke being whipped up around it. And the whole car slipped into a curt silence.

 

Kennedy adjusted the rear view and glared at Jay through it. "...Don't go getting any ideas about you and him."

 

So that's why you don't like me, thought Jay. He almost wanted to laugh but he didn't quite have the stomach for it – imagine him, the `McCullough' of someone else's triangle. "He's not my type."

 

"Oh? Who is?"

 

Heartless bastards, he thought. "...Black guys, I guess."

 

Kennedy laughed. A real one, right from the belly. Jay smiled back mirthlessly through the rear view, then turned to the window as engines up ahead revved, horses neighed, and bicycle bells jingled. And slowly, vehicle by vehicle, that massive convoy of refugees pulled out of Pueblo and made its way northeast.

 

A tear slipped Jay's eye. Goodbye, love.

 

**********

 

`Exiles'.

 

That's the name I ended up giving them in my head. Refugees from Christian theocracy, migrants fleeing tyranny, like the pilgrims of ye olden times. Kinda? Nah. There was no political statement in what the Exiles were doing, hell, half of them were Christians themselves. Moni was a Baptist. Salvatore was Catholic. They were just normal people hounded out of their rightful home by neo-puritanical nutcases bent on securing more control and more lebensraum. Escaping the Theonomy was a matter of survival for them. Their goal felt far less vapid than chasing dreams of absolute freedom in Mexico. There were a handful of `Octovites' amongst the Exiles though, and I even spoke to a few of them, but they all agreed that heading south came with little to no guarantees. Except for Salvatore none of them knew what they were travelling towards, but they were certain it was better than what laid behind them.

 

Let me tell you what I learned about The Theonomy.

 

On the 4th of February 2006 The Occupation collapsed in Georgia. Officially all US military personnel pulled out of the state to bolster the counterstrike against a civilian uprising in the DC Metro area. But that wasn't the truth. The `truth' (as Salvatore tells it) was that the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division, led by Christian extremist Major General Jackson Gadley, revolted. They rejected allegiance to the government, swore a new oath to God and the Constitution in the name of the Founding Fathers, and declared themselves The Lord's Army. Beneath a new banner – the Christian flag – and by Commander Gadley's motto – "It is the will of God to destroy evil!" – they mobilized north to bomb and conquer Savannah, then Augusta, and then finally Atlanta, until all of Georgia was theirs.

 

Gadley occupied the Georgia State Capitol and expelled all members of the General Assembly who refused to comply, publicly executed the millionaire Governor Sunny Purdue for the crime of `Mammon worship', and via a brief televised address he called upon the good and the faithful to rally to his cause and help him build a new "People's Covenant with God".

 

It worked.

 

"Almost all the Southern militias flocked to them," Salvatore would tell me. "By winter 2006 The Lord's Army grew to 110,000 men – almost ten times the size of the former 3rd Infantry Division. Thousands of religious leaders across the country sent them money. Preachers and pilgrims came down from as far north as Maine to be a part of it – `the rebirth of America'."

 

In the summer of 2007, the `Atlanta Convention' was held. Hundreds of religious leaders, constitutional scholars and political scientists gathered to draw up documents of governance, select electors, and establish a provisional legislature under Gadley's guidance. And with the help of the most zealous theologians at his side, Commander Gadley wrote his People's Covenant with God charter, a `scaffold' with which to protect and build upon the US Constitution, and his Eleven New Commandments doctrine, with which to construct a newer, godlier way of life until the prophecy of the Book of Revelations, the Rapture, the Final Judgement, whatever the fuck he called it – was complete. They were:

 

 

1.       Thou Shalt Know No gods other than God.

2.       Thou Shalt Keep and Know Well Thy Bible.

3.       Thou Shalt Cultivate Thy Soul to Prepare for The Coming of the Kingdom of God.

4.       Thou Shalt Pledge Utter Allegiance to the True Constitution.

5.       Thou Shalt Honor Thy Church.

6.       Thou Shalt Honor Thy Protectors.

7.       Thou Shalt Honor Thy Land and the Fruit of its Yield.

8.       Thou Shalt Honor God's Hierarchy of the Races.

9.       Thou Shalt Honor God's Hierarchy of the Sexes.

10.     Thou Shalt Forsake All Carnal Knowlegdes Beyond God's Grace.

11.     Thou Shalt Suffer no Heathen to Live.

 

 

Nothing about helping the poor, I notice. Nothing about `Love thy neighbor' or `He who is without sin cast the first stone' or `judge not lest ye be judged' or `Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'.

 

Hm. Funny, that.

 

With his teachings in place, Commander Gadley took to the radio and called upon fellow states of the south to join him in his crusade against sin and help him `liberate' America from the traitors and apostates in Washington DC. Emboldened Christian mobs flooded the streets of all major Georgian cities and destroyed Jewish businesses, synagogues, mosques, gay bars, brothels, and gynecological clinics. Similar riots and diet Kristallnachts spread like cancer throughout the capitals of the south – Nashville, Montgomery, Columbia, Jackson, etc. – until, one by one, most of the old Confederate States seceded and signed up to the project. Elections were held for a new senate and a new president – Jackson Gadley, by a landslide. And by 2009 a new nation was formed within the heart of the old: The Theonomic Confederation of New America – `The Theonomy'.

 

Polk gone gangbusters.

 

And the Exiles, numerous as they looked, were lucky enough to escape it with their lives. They dreamed of a better life in the Western United States, a safer one, with no militiamen or theocratic overlords to dictate their lives.

 

And that sounded good to me.

 

**********

 

 

• Thanks for reading, everybody! Hope you enjoyed it, comments and criticism are always welcome at stephenwormwood@mail.com, love to hear from you. If you didn't catch the link to the map of America as I conceptualize it in this story, you can find it here https://i.imgur.com/oXAk8tm.png.

 

• Please read some of my other stories on Nifty: Wulf's Blut (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dancer of Hafiz (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Cornishman (gay, historical), A Small Soul Lost (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), and Torc and Seax (transgender, magic/sci-fi).