James Axler - Homeward Bound

"Gettysburg," Ryan said, tasting the word on his cold lips. "Heard of it. Old books. So the Union came the way we did, from the north. And the Rebs... that the right name? Yeah, the Rebs came up from the south, yonder."

Doc Tanner smiled gently. "You'd have guessed so, Ryan. Oddly it was just the opposite. Lee came to Gettysburg from the north, and General Meade from the south. Old Snapping Turtle Meade. That's what he was called. When I was a young tad of a boy and we played Rebs and Yankees, we'd all be our favorite generals. I was Jeb Stuart."

There was no sign that morning of the madness that swam just beneath the surface of Doc Tanner's shaken mind. He was logical and coherent, pointing out as best he could how the battle had swung backward and forward during the three days, using his silver-topped cane to indicate the hills and folds in the rolling ground around them.

"Thursday, November 19, four months after the battle, a lot of big men came here to dedicate this cemetery as a sort of national monument for the fallen."

Unseen by either of them, Jak had left the wag and walked through the grass to stand behind them, hearing what Doc had been saying.

The boy began to speak, nervously at first, then with growing confidence.

"'Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that... all men are created equal.'"

"Abe Lincoln's Gettysburg Address!" Doc exclaimed. "How in tarnation d'you know that, my snow-headed young companion?"

"Pa taught me. Said his pa taught him and his pa before that. There's lots more. Can't recall it now. Bit 'bout the world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. Meaning the men got chilled. And it ended with something about resolving that these dead shall not have died in vain. That..." The boy shook his head, the long white veil of hair swirling around his face in the dawn breeze. "Can't..."

Doc Tanner took it over, his rich, deep voice filling all the morning, reaching to the far-off rivers and hills like an Old Testament prophet.

"'That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'"

It was a solemn and moving moment. Ryan glanced back and saw that Lori, J.B. and Krysty had all gotten out of the wag and were standing close together, listening to Doc's recitation.

"If I was much given to crying," Doc said, "I would shed tears now for the mindless and overweeningly stupid men who forgot those words of Lincoln. The men, now long dead, who took a dream and flung it into the abyss. The men who took the United States of America and turned it into the Deathlands. I could weep for it, my friends. Truly, I could weep."

There is a point where the old states of Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia all come together at notorious Harper's Ferry. The wag coughed and spluttered its way into Ryan Cawdor's home state, now a scant sixty miles from the ville of Front Royal. The closer they drove to his birthplace, the quieter the one-eyed man became. He sat alone on his bunk when he wasn't spelling Jak in the driver's seat.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that the sec wag wasn't going to make it the whole distance to their destination. The farther they traveled, the rougher the engine sounded, devouring more and more gas.

They stopped for the night, about thirty miles from Front Royal, and Jak dipped a long stick into the tank, holding it angled to the orange beams of the setting sun to try to see the gas level.

"How much?" Ryan asked.

"Not 'nough," the boy replied.

"In the cans?" J.B. asked.

"Drier than an old woman's tits. Guess 'bout ten miles. Mebbe fifteen."

They all looked at Ryan. "You recognize where we are?" Krysty asked. "Ring any chimes from boyhood?"

He shook his head. "Never hunted much north. This trail don't seem much used. Main tracks were south and west of here. Old 1-81 was the wide one. Pa had trouble with guerrillas coming from the mountains to the west. Shen raiders. They used that interstate with fast wags. Light armor. Stole horses and cattle and women. Surely missed the stallions and the seed bulls."

"But you believe we may be somewhat in the immediate vicinity of your ancestral home?" Doc asked, scratching his chin, his mind immediately wandering off the subject. "Why, 'pon my soul, I declare that I have a dire need of a shave, my friends. Forgive me while I go to attend to my ablutions." The old man vanished toward a slow-moving stream behind the wag.

Ryan shrugged. "I guess we got to be close. Can't say... Fireblast! I don't think I'm doing right bringing you along on this."

Krysty clucked her tongue and moved closer to him, but he shook his head.

"No, lover. I mean all of you. If'n Harvey once finds out I'm within a hundred miles, he'll put the dogs out after me. After us. And he must be able to call on... mebbe a hundred sec men or more. As well as having every bastard village and hamlet for twenty miles around under his heel."

"Wouldn't be here if'n I didn't want to be," J.B. replied.

"And me," Lori insisted defiantly. "We'll killed your brother together. Shan't I?"

The others laughed at the girl's serious face, Ryan finally joining in.

"Okay, friends," he said. "But when my brother has us roasting over a slow fire, don't any of you put the blame on me!"

Jak caught some trout and roasted them over a slow fire of hickory wood, the scent making everyone's mouth water. The fish were delicious, the tender flesh all but falling off the slender bones.

"What's time, J.B.?" Jak asked, laying back on a shelf of thick moss, legs crossed, his stark white hair spread out behind him like a bride's veil.

"Twenty-five of eight," the Armorer replied, checking his wrist chron.

"We should be moving on," Ryan said, belching appreciatively. "Those fish were double-ace. Hardly ever get fresh eating. Did you have self-heats and spun soya in your day, Doc?"

"What, may I ask, do you consider to be 'my day,' Ryan?"

"Before the long winter, course."

"During my time in the 1990s, I found the quality of cuisine execrable."

"That mean it was good, Doc?" Ryan asked.

"It means it was shit, Ryan." The old man grinned. "Tinned and frozen and packaged and freeze-dried and irradiated and processed. Little better than these appalling self-heats. But remember that my time was also back in the late 1800s, before I was so cruelly trawled forward as part of Cerberus."

"What was food like then? In real old times," Jak asked.

"Ah," Doc sighed. "Like those trout. All food was fresh. Well... most food was fresh. Chicken and mutton and beef and turkey. Salmon and trout and bass. Vegetables from your own garden, with no having to take a rad count first. Cream so thick I swear you could cut it with a knife. But what is the merit in such talk? Let us enjoy the occasional marvelous food like these tender fish."

"Had good food as a kid, back at the ville," Ryan said. "Cooks made me a special sort of a pie with apples and oranges in it. Called it 'Master Ryan's Surprise,' they did."

"By the three Kennedys!" Doc exclaimed, leaping to his feet in dismay.

"What the?.." Ryan said.

"Your name!"

"What?"

"Your name," Doc repeated. "Your name is Ryan Cawdor. We all call you by that name, do we not? Indeed we do."

Ryan didn't understand. But he was used to the occasional way Doc's synapses disconnected and produced only babbling. Krysty also stood up, eyes lighting up as she realized what Doc was trying to say.

"Ryan!" she exclaimed.

"You all lost your jack, lover? What's all this about?.."