Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

We closed the last of those huge graves on August tenth amidst a confusing blend of emotions. Sorrow and grief for the dead mixed with relief, anxiety, and hope for the living. The townsfolk seemed drawn to the gravesite, coming in a steady stream to pay their last respects. When we finally finished covering that final, massive interment, an impromptu crowd of hundreds of mourners gathered. As Ken shut down the last dozer, the still, unnatural silence was deafening. No motors, no voices murmuring, no traffic noise in the background or power lines humming-only the sound of the wind through the trees broke the quiescence of the moment.

Then someone began to sing.

It was a hymn, of course. Anguished and mournful, and yet expressing a hope and a faith so poignant and beautiful as to be painful. Tears formed in my eyes as I looked around, searching for the source of that fine baritone. I was an avowed agnostic and had been for years, but at that moment, I envied that soul his faith in what was to come. I looked at the sea of faces gathered there at the burial mound as more and more people joined in until it seemed the very sound of their voices could wash the pain and fear from my soul. I wept openly, as did most of the others present.

I don’t know how long I stayed there listening as they sang hymn after hymn. Individuals came and went, but the crowd itself had become a living entity possessed of an angelic voice that would not be silenced for many hours.

INTERLUDE

During the next several weeks, the town of Rejas went through many changes. Weather patterns settled down, so we weren’t constantly worried about hot winds or rain. We no longer sunburned as easily, either. The ozone layer had evidently begun to replenish itself.

We discussed the subject around the barbeque grill on several occasions. Having no television or radio meant that we usually spent much of each night in deep discussion of recent events and, since the stove no longer worked, the grill out back had become our regular gathering place in the evenings. The general consensus was that it had probably been a pretty simple process for Mother Nature to manufacture the O 3once she no longer had to compete with industrial pollutants. Of course, none of us really knew for sure. It was yet another thing we would probably never know.

Of Rejas’s seventeen Ham radio operators, all but two had lost their radios to EMP. Those huge antennae had collected much more than they were designed for, passing the pulse on to the delicate circuits of the radios. The two surviving radios had been disconnected and disassembled for repairs on D-day. They were connected to a couple of generators that had survived, and so far, they could talk to one another, but hadn’t picked up any outside transmissions. The operators said they couldn’t tell if that was because there simply wasn’t anyone left with a transmitter, or if there was some kind of atmospheric interference left over from D-day that prevented it.

Chief Kelland relaxed the roadblocks around the town to allow “qualified” refugees to settle into some of the newly emptied homes, and the survivors in many of the smaller surrounding towns trickled in to take advantage. Small towns soon became ghost towns, and scouts reported more and more of the neighboring municipalities were nothing more than empty buildings. Some of the inhabitants joined us in Rejas, and some moved elsewhere to try and find friends or family in other parts of the country. But no one seemed to want to stay in a small town anymore.

Those who came to Rejas were allowed one day to fill out the good old “Assimilation Form” and three days to settle in. Five days after they passed through the roadblock, they were to report to the community labor pool, located in the parking lot across from City Hall. Failure to comply resulted in Kelland and his “boys” visiting the offending party. If they had no reasonable excuse, they were unceremoniously railroaded out of town. Rejas had no time for freeloaders.

Assuming they did follow the rules given when they passed the roadblocks, then during their settling-in period, their forms were examined to see if they had any critically needed skills or supplies. If they did, they or their supplies were sent where needed. It was considered the price of admission.

If they had no skills or supplies, they paid for their new homes with menial labor until someone in a more skilled field needed a trainee. Not many wanted to spend the rest of their days as a grunt, so trainee positions were highly sought after. Commerce was all done in barter, and if you didn’t have goods to trade, you had to have a needed skill.

Trainees were selected primarily by prior experience, and secondly by the amount of time they had served in the labor pool. But exceptions were made if necessary. For instance, to help construct and run a forge, I needed someone with a strong back and arms.

The man I selected had obviously been a body builder before D-day and had the physique I felt would be necessary, but he had only been in town for a week. His name was Mark Roesch, a pre-D criminal trial lawyer. There wasn’t much demand for lawyers anymore, so he went into the pool. When I picked him for my trainee, it raised protests from Brad Stephenson, an older man who had been in for two months. Two months was longer than anyone else, so he would normally have gotten the next shot at an apprenticeship based on this seniority.

Stephenson was in pretty fair shape himself, as anyone would be after two months at hard labor, but he was still not in the same league as Mark. I tried to explain that the job required a lot of strenuous activity. I didn’t want to come right out and say it but, with his age, I was afraid he might not be able to handle the work.

“Take us both, then,” Brad pleaded. “I’m sixty-two years old, and I’m not getting any younger. I need to learn a trade that’ll help keep me alive, and there isn’t much call for accountants nowadays.”

Seeing my hesitation, he pressed his case. “I might not be able to swing a hammer all day, but I can pump the bellows as well as the next man, and I guarantee you I’ll work till I drop if you just give me a chance.”

I ended up taking both of them with the understanding that the one who performed best would keep the job, and the other would go back to the pool. I had no doubts as to which one of them would stay on, but I wanted to give Stephenson a fair chance. Both of them worked their tails off, and I fully expected them to develop a competitive animosity but, to my surprise, they quickly formed a tight friendship.

They further surprised me one morning a week later when I came back from teaching my self-defense classes and found that they had begun construction on a second forge. Brad explained their logic. “This way, if you get loaded down with work, between the three of us we can have both forges running and get twice the work out in nearly the same amount of time. Mark can run you and me both into the ground, but you and I can take shifts on the second forge and keep up with him that way.”

I thought for a second and nodded. “Whose idea was this?”

Mark gestured to Brad. One thing I had noticed about Mark, he didn’t talk unnecessarily. I got the impression that something had happened to him on the road to Rejas, but I hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t offered. Everyone had a pre-D story. Most of them dealt with the deaths of friends and loved ones.

I had also learned that everyone dealt with their losses in their own way. Mark had turned to reticence and was comfortable with things the way they were for the time being.

I turned to Brad, who grinned affirmation. “Guess you figured I couldn’t afford to send you back to the labor pool this way, right?”

His grin lost some of its confidence. “Well, the thought did cross my mind. But I figured it was a good idea any way you look at it.” Then he got serious. “Look, Leeland, I know you said you only have time to teach one of us, and that you were only going to keep the best worker. And I know that I’m an old man who’s never going to be able to keep up with you two on those forges. I agreed to those conditions, and I’ll stick to that agreement. But I would like to stay and learn the trade. Just because I’m older doesn’t mean I can’t help you out.” He laughed. “Hell, just cut my salary to whatever you think I’m worth.”