Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

“Thanks for the tip, Mike.”

“I hope it don’t come to nothing!” The Sergeant noticed Midge, Barbara, and Sam getting out of the Brinks and started toward a soda fountain across the street. “Hey—you kids! Get back in your truck.”

“Why?” asked Sam, swinging around.

The Sergeant nodded to a group of youths who had gathered at the entrance of the trucking center, and were starting to jeer. “Want to mix it with those bums?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” said Sam.

“Do like the Sergeant says!” ordered Jehu.

Sam cursed, Barbara scowled, and Midge grumbled, “I only came on this trip to get a fudge sundae!” But all three climbed back into the Brinks.

The dealer was tallying the lobsters while Jehu and the Sergeant went to the police cruiser, and returned carrying a small money chest between them. After they had stowed it in the back of the Brinks the Seregant dusted his hands and hitched up his belt. “Think I’ll go and break up that gang of young loafers!” He walked toward them and they responded first by shifting their insults from us to him, and then by piling into their autos and roaring away.

The Sergeant came back and got into his cruiser. “Gotta go into Augusta now, Jehu. Don’t hang around town, and have a safe trip Home. Radio the station if you run into trouble.” He raised his hand and drove off.

“Wish there were more like Mike,” said Jehu, when I joined him. “He’s been a good friend to the Settlement for a long time. We ain’t got too many friends left no more. Maybe he’s our last friend in this damned town.”

“I’d like to pick up some stuff from the hardware,” I said. “Mind if I take off for half an hour?”

“Sure! You don’t look like no Believer. And we’re safe enough here in the loading bay. These truckers are out of town and they’d beat shit outta anybody who tried to jump a track. Even ours! But don’t hang around. I want to get out of this dump.”

I promised to be quick and looked into the cab of the Brinks. “Midge, I’ll fetch you a pack of sundae.”

“Me too!” Barbara and Sam showed their residual youth.

I promised to bring them all sundaes and walked around the warehouse to emerge at the side of the square. Dressed like a trucker nobody took any particular notice of me. I bought the items I wanted in the hardware at the end of Main Street, then walked back toward the loading bays. There was a bar on the comer, and I hesitated. I hadn’t tasted bourbon since our arrival in Sutton Cove, and God knows when I’d get another chance.

Although it was early afternoon, the place was full of drinkers; noisy evidence of Standish’s commercial stagnation. The drinkers along the bar were complaining about the Government, the drinkers standing grouped at the window were looking at the Brinks on the far side of the square and exchanging absurd and scurrilous stories about what went on at Sutton Cove.

Stories that Believers were polygamous, which was absurd. Descriptions of supposed sexual orgies in obscene and fantastic detail. Rumors that the Settlement was kidnapping children, when there were few children around to kidnap. These were men and women who had started to realize that something terrible was happening and were looking for scapegoats. The Believers at Sutton Cove filled the bill, as far as this part of Maine was concerned.

The stories circulating among the watchers in the bar followed the same hate-raising pattern as the slanders which in the past had been aimed at Jews, Mormons, Catholics, Quakers, Masons, Protestants, and almost every minority which claimed superiority and appeared better off than their neighbors. Rumors listened to with excitement and passed on with eagerness for the same conscious or unconscious reason; to raise a sense of public indignation which might later justify burning the homes and looting the property of the minority concerned. And the hatred behind that desire was fueled by more than common resentment. It was fired by the fact that the Sutton Settlement still contained fertile women.

Even ordinarily decent people were looking for targets on whom to vent their anger at the impending collapse of their civilization. Most of them had realized by this time that the real fault lay with frightened and incompetent governments. But the Federal Government was remote and still too strong and brutal to attack. The Settlement, on the other hand, was nearby and apparently defenseless.

The more I listened to the talk in the bar the angrier and more alarmed I became. By the time I had finished my bourbon I had heard all the lies I could stomach. I myself was no Believer, but I knew they were a moral, hard-working, and decent group of men and women, even if their own view of the future was essentially selfish and they believed they were the elect. More important, they were raising a crop of youngsters with decent manners and some morals. Children who might grow into self-reliant civilized adults, capable of rebuilding the kind of free and strong society which the United States had once been. Or which I hoped it had once been. Anyway, whatever the truth about the past, the kids in Sutton Cove were a notable improvement on the kids I had encountered elsewhere in America, and particularly the examples of arrested social development hanging around the square.

I left the bar, stopped at the supermarket to pick up the sundaes I had promised the three child-adults in the Brinks, and made my way back to where the group of truckers were still smoking and talking. They were talking about neither the Settlements nor the Government, but about how many women they had managed to lay during their last trip. And how much easier it was to lay a woman now that the bitches didn’t worry about getting knocked up.

Jehu and the dealer were exchanging receipts. I stooped to examine the axles of the trailer and called Jehu over. “That bearing ain’t goin’ to last until we get her back to the Cove.” He squatted down beside me. “Mister Gavin—it’s always been like that. No call to get clutched up.”

“It’s not the axle,” I growled. “It’s those damned townies. I stopped for a drink in that bar across the square and the talk was turning ugly. As they get smashed they’ll start pushing each other to start something. We should fade right now. And with this thing trailing astern we won’t be able to move fast or back up.”

He saw my expression and nodded. “Mister Goodson,” he called, “I’m going to leave our trailer here. Ask Joe Clarke to come over tomorrow and fix the axle, will you?”

“Sure, Jehu! Sure!” The dealer was too nervous looking at the louts to look at the axle. The Sergeant had chased them off, but they had seen him driving out of town and were now returning to bait us. “Have a good trip home. Better wait a week or two before you come up again. Maybe I’ll be able to persuade one of my drivers to bring your trailer down to you.” And he scurried off toward his office.

I helped Jehu unhitch the trailer and swung into the cab as he jumped into the back of the Brinks. Barbara had the motor running and was behind the wheel. Some of the louts had brought their old autos to the square and were waiting outside the entrance of the truck-park. The truckers were still talking about women. Their only interest in law and order was maintaining it inside the trucking center.

“There’s trouble!” I muttered to Barbara.

“You call that trouble?” She gunned the motor and spoke over her shoulder to Midge and Jehu. “Close up and strap down. Heavy weather ahead!” Then she sent the Brinks rolling toward the exit.

A rock bounced off the armored windshield and a car swung across the road to block our way out. “You want me to radio the Sergeant?” asked Midge from the back.