Marc Zicree - Magic Time

In the end, they agreed and gratefully settled into their rooms at the Priory. Under cover of darkness, they spirited Tina into one of the suites. That night, they bathed for the first time in weeks, ate hot food and slept in clean, crisp sheets.

With the exception of Tina, their dreams held no ordeals.

Cal awakened to sunlight glinting through the window and the songs of bobolinks. He stretched, well rested, feeling none of the knots and aches that had plagued him in recent days.

In the clarity of half-wakefulness, his mind drifted over the bounty of Lola Johnson’s garden and how she had felt so certain that the grasping, avaricious ones would pass right on by Stansbury, not give it a second glance-as if she intended not to witness it but somehow to cause it. As she had caused the peaches and pomegranates and sweet potatoes in gardens all over town to swell and grow delectable. As she, if only unconsciously, had brought an equal vitality to her neighbors themselves.

There is a power to the west and the south that caused all this , Stern had said on that fiery rooftop in Manhattan. And everywhere that power had touched, it had sown nightmare and malaise.

Scared and angry and crazy , Tina had added, and that had fit the picture of the merciless force that had shredded the world as conscious and evil-undeniably evil.

But then, how did Lola Johnson fit into that picture? How did this town?

They didn’t.

Floating dreamily, his thoughts flowing free, Cal contemplated the events of recent days, remembered the storm that had come upon New York so suddenly, when his sister had first felt the call that was drawing her, drawing them all, southward.

What if this force were like a storm, and nothing more? A storm might wreck a house if you opened a window and let it in. Or it might nourish a crop to feed a community.

But the storm itself was a force of nature, pure and simple; it held no awareness, no moral sense. It all lay in how it was directed, what channel it was guided through.

By others.

And, if that was the case, then the power that caused all this and the sentience that was scared, angry, crazy. .

Might be two entirely different things.

Which allowed the possibility of Lola Johnson’s channeling that storm to grow and nurture and heal, a benevolent power that worked her will. That might continue to heal even a wayward traveler, a lost one-

Rising with urgency and hope, Cal pulled on his clothes and hurried down the hall to his sister’s room.

But she was unchanged.

Colleen was in the room with her. Cal had noticed that Colleen was growing closer to Tina, a deeper bond forming, one that might well hold anguish for them both in the days to come. Looking at the two of them now, he put on a gentle smile.

“We’re moving on,” he said.

He found Goldie sitting on the veranda, polishing his Springfield musket-a hopeless effort considering that its metal parts were rusted through and the stock was as dessicated as driftwood.

“Where’s Doc?” Cal asked.

“Loading the last of the jackpot from Mama Nature, I mean, Mrs. Johnson. I hope you like plums. Me, I was holding out for eggplant, but I lost the toss.”

Cal settled beside him on the step. “Thanks for bringing us here.”

Goldie stopped polishing and looked evenly at Cal. “I saw it for what it was. You couldn’t. Mama wouldn’t let you.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that out.”

Goldie gave him a lopsided grin. “There’s hope for you yet.” He returned to his polishing, whistling a snappy rendition of “Whatever Lola Wants.”

“Goldie,” Cal spoke tentatively, “for some folks, what happened was a good thing.”

Goldie stopped whistling, though he kept his eyes on the musket. “For some. I suppose, if pressed, I myself could offer a testimonial.”

“What do you think it means?”

Goldie rubbed a spot on the barrel harder, making no change in its pitted surface, glaring at it as if his will could make it resolve into something shining and unsoiled and new.

“What it means,” he answered after a long silence and would say no more.

In the first twenty-four hours of what Shango had come to think of as the Darkness, the National Guard had established a depot in Lynchburg, partly to collect stock from the horse farms in Albermarle County and mostly to render whatever aid was possible to those in the mountain country beyond. In Albermarle County, there was a stockbreeder named Cadiz (or Gadiz or Cattes, the survivors at the Angels Rest Retirement Community pronounced it several different ways), an ex-Reservist and survivalist who was of the opinion that everyone should have been ready for catastrophe and who wasn’t about to let the National Guard confiscate his stockpiles of food and water to feed lazy and inefficient parasites who had not been as prudent as he.

As the days and weeks of darkness and hunger progressed and fewer and fewer messages came down highway 95 from Washington, this had developed into what Mrs. Close at Angels Rest called “a situation”-exacerbated by the usual local politics and personalities-culminating in the cessation a week ago of any visits to Angels Rest by the National guardsmen.

“They didn’t come real often,” the old lady told Shango, pausing in her laborious measuring out of thrice-used tea leaves to flavor the morning’s water rations. “But that nice Captain Brady used to make sure one of his men got up here every few days with something. And as long as he and his men came around, nobody bothered us much.” Beyond the shade of the gallery outside the kitchen, Shango could see the two remaining attendants at work laying out bedding- bright red-and-blue blankets, worn blue-striped sheets-on the unkempt lawn and rhododendron bushes, airing it in the absence of a regular supply of wash water. Beyond, a neat row of brown rectangles under the trees marked where those who’d been on oxygen or dialysis had been buried, the new grass like a mist of pale green velvet. Mrs. Close supported herself on the edge of the table when she got up to start the water boiling on the stove-one of the other residents had converted it from gas to wood-and Shango got quickly to his feet and fetched the heavy kettle.

“Thank you, dear.” She smiled up at him. She was thin as a bundle of sticks, and her hands shook with a steady, constant tremor, as if a motor within were off balance. “Mr. Dean says he saw parties of Mr. Cadiz’s men riding in the woods the day before yesterday, carrying spears and arrows, he said, and wearing those camouflage jackets the National guardsmen wore.” Mr. Dean was the community’s scout, seventy-seven and the only Angels Rest inmate capable of walking more than a mile.

She went on worriedly, “Mr. Dean also says they were riding horses the National guardsmen had the week before. Mr. Dean sometimes gets a little confused about people, but he’s very sharp on horses, so you might want to stay away from Lynchburg. Mr. Cadiz. .” She glanced around nervously and lowered her voice in embarrassment.

“Mr. Cadiz is very prejudiced against-well, he’s said some really awful things about Negroes.” She looked ashamed even to bring the matter up, and Shango was touched by her delicacy.

“And if he’s taken over the National Guard post and has all their weapons, you might want to be careful. Mr. Dean told us some other things, too, about that horrible Douglas Brattle-Mr. Cadiz’s neighbor-who’s writing that book on torture, of all things, and has all those terrible books and pictures at his house. But I think Mr. Dean must be confused about that.”

“About what?” Shango poured the hot water into the community teapot. He was still getting over his shock that the inmates of Angels Rest-a dozen trembling oldsters and the two nurses-had even let him through the gate, instead of locking it and the doors against him, not that either the honeysuckle-covered perimeter wall or the unbarred, ample windows of the old house would stand up to anything resembling a determined assault. The fact that they’d not only admitted him but had voted to share their tiny stores of food and water with him without demanding work in return, made him want to sit them all down and lecture them about the facts of life: don’t trust anybody, make sure you’ve got enough. .