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Durham library as I found it. Word Press.com
Before leaving the barn, we moved Mira to the back seats lying down and threw some clothes over her to disguise her. She was fast asleep from the wine and food. We did the same with the twenty crates we brought back; all piled in the front of the trailer under a tarp. It was ten-thirty and most of the men would be asleep. The guards at the first sentry post were sleeping too, with one barely awake, who just waved us through. The same with the guard at the parking lot. Even the general’s light was out. We parked and carried the woman to the room I’d been using and set her on one of the cots, Tom taking the one beside her and I on the floor between blankets. No one noticed us. So little had happened here in the last six months, complacency had set in, like a strong sedative. I was just as weary and wanted a bright morning to stir things up.
When sunlight woke us, my first order of business was to see the General with Tom and tell lies. Mira was just waking up and we told her to stay in the room. There was a bathroom at one end where she could wash up. I told her we’d bring food and new clothes shortly.
The General was at his desk and enjoying a rare cup of coffee, which put him in the best of moods. He looked like the figure in a coffee commercial.
“Well how’d it go boys. I heard you got in late last night”.
“Yes we did and found a few supplies, but best of all, an ally. This man Tom is perfect for our mission. We didn’t get far because we found a stray, who co-operated and showed us quite a few interesting things, which we spent half the day gathering up and bringing home. We have to question this person some more, and I’d like to do it in your presence. We’ll get lots of information if we just let this person talk. But we all need a little breakfast first.”
The General rang his bell and an orderly brought three trays to my room. I sent Tom back to handle that.
“What kind of things”?
“Give me half an hour and I’ll show you. You’ll be surprised”.
I left straight for the Cherokee and brought up a case of Bourbon and the box of cigars, covered over by some of Nancy’s clothes for Mira. She’d taken a quick, cold shower, found my scissors and trimmed her hair. In Nancy’s clothes she looked quite presentable.
We walked into the office and the General was surprised to see a woman, stood up in fact to greet her. He was doubly surprised when I laid open the box of whiskey and cigars on his desk, saying they were all his, thanks to our guest, and plenty more to come.
He was amazed and overjoyed at this unexpected gift, looked straight at Mira, and said: “thank you young woman, from the bottom of my heart”. He opened the cigar box clipped one and sniffed it.
“See what good comes from patrols. Tom and I are going on another today but we’ll be back early. Would it be alright if the men had a little celebration this evening. Thanks to our friend here, Mira, we were shown a stash of beer and cigarettes and would like to share it in honor of our new guest. Also her hand needs looking after”.
“Sure, how much beer did you find”?
“Forty cases, and cartons of cigarettes, one for each of your men”.
“My God”! was all he could say, rather loudly. “This is Christmas”.
“All thanks to her” I said. “Treat her well. She has only one request and that’s for Tom to be transferred so that they share a room together. He found her and she trusts only him. She told us she’d be scared living in a camp with six hundred men without him. She’s had a hard time out there, abused, and considers him her guardian. Could you arrange some quarters for her and Tom outside the gate, in one of the buildings across the street”.
All the while she sat timid as a mouse, silent, hands folded in her lap, overawed at meeting a General in uniform, and proving my point.
“Sure, right away. I was going to have him here anyways so you don’t have to pick him up when you go foraging. And if you keep this up we’ll all be rich. I’ll take her to the doctors personally and make sure she has every comfort. Now you two boys be off but don’t get in trouble”.
“We’ll need the trailer”.
“That’s what I like to hear” he said.
I was thinking fast and realized how much more we could accomplish with more people. The lethargy of this place astounded me. There were a dozen things I wanted to do. Yesterday I brought back enough booze to put this camp in party mode for a week, exactly what I didn’t want. The bishop hadn’t even returned to see me again. This stalemate to the South, for two years, put everyone in a stalemate phase, doing nothing, while the rest of the world was dying.
We found the garage just as we left it, the jeeps sitting as they were two days ago and probably the same a year from now, another sign of total slumber.
We unloaded the boxes from the trailer in a corner behind the last of them. No one would find them as no one even came down here. As I cleaned up the back seat I saw the books I’d brought for Nancy and myself. This reminded me I had to see her before we left.
A walked in the room with a stack of them in my arms, almost reaching my chin. The doctors and scientists there looked very surprised. As I set them down beside her bed, one of them ran up and asked me: “where did you get those”? The others gathered round.
Nancy was just waking up with the commotion. I stacked a few of the books on her nightstand and insisted she read the Mark Twain first. The older doctor came in, admiring the stack.
“Where did you find those”? He asked.
“I found you a whole library. Your coming with me today and pick out your most literate scientist with the widest range of interests. He’s coming along. We’re bringing back a library here, a good one”.
“That’s great”, he said with enthusiasm. “I’ll get Sheila. She’s the smartest. We’ll need to change. Just give us a few minutes”.
Just then the General came in with Mira while the doctor rushed out the same door, not even saying ‘Hello’.
“What’s that all about” he asked.
“We’re going book hunting today and two of them are coming along”.
Then I turned to Mira. “Two questions. You broke your hand trying to open a door, lift a heavy latch or something. Did you get it open? What’s in it”?
“No” she said, “it was jammed. I tried to lift it but couldn’t. Then I found the bar to use as a lever. But it slipped and broke my hand. Then I gave up”.
“Well what was in that room, so important to you”.
“It was our leader’s private stash room. He let nobody in. But I thought there might be food there. He kept papers and things he found in it. He was the third last to die and told us he was working on the gas problem. He was really smart”.
“You’ll need to draw me a map to that room right now”.
One of the female doctors, already unbandaging her hand pulled out a pad and pencil from her pocket and handed it to her.
“This is complicated” she said. “It’s hidden in the tunnels, at one dead end”.
She drew a series of lines, marking the entrance we first went in, then a fan of others branching out and crossing lines and turns, then a squiggle marking which path to take. It was hardly legible.
While she was sketching away I turned to the doctor.
“How many vaccines do you have on hand and how many more do can you produce each week”?
“We have over ten thousand in storage. But we took a break as there was no one to take them. Our lab at full capacity can make five hundred a day”.
“Start making them again, starting today. We’ll soon need all you can produce”. She started to salute me like the general, but caught herself, her arm half-way up, as he was standing right there.
Then Mira handed me her note. “You’ll know the door when you find it. He put one of those red contagion flags on the outside”.
I asked the doctor to place Mira’s bed next to Nancy’s so they could talk.
But I had the other question to ask.
“When you found those apples how far West did you go”?
“I don’t know but it took two hours to walk there”.
That’s all I needed to know and off we sped, as the doctors were already in the back seat.
On the way to the Exeter camp, I asked Tom what sort of commander he had and how many men.
“One hundred he said, and he’s the nicest captain you’ll ever meet”.
“I’m starting to see a pattern here” I said. The areas right outside your perimeter, perhaps ten miles out, are now vacant and safe, except for a few strays. We could occupy those lands without a problem and probably find many more useful things, just like yesterday, a full library and all that loot. The inland gangs were scared to come near Church territory and left that slice alone, like another ‘no man’s land’. So it won’t be looted much. And now, with diminished numbers, they’ve retreated even further back, who knows how far”?
“It’s one big plum to pluck. Why didn’t you do it already and advance your posts”?
“We’re running out of gas” he replied. “All sorties have been called off, and we need what little we have left just to get to town and back once a week. We wouldn’t have been allowed to go out yesterday if it wasn’t for your Wrangler.”
It was starting to run low. I had twenty gallons in the back, just enough to get home if I left soon. But I thought of this whole army doing nothing because of the lack of one item. I knew I had two thousand gallons at the farm and decided right then to go there tomorrow or the next day, for other nagging reasons. And I’d bring some help for them, some people and soldiers to protect them and help out, leave them there, I just didn’t know who yet. Then I’d bring the gas back in some tanker.
But still, that would be a drop in the bucket, enough to make some short expeditions and used up in weeks. With all these ideas going through my head we pulled up to the gate.
“Introduce me to your Captain then go collect all your gear. You’re moving in with Mira today”.
I was shown to a small office, sat down and talked to the commander about this zone being empty and rich, perhaps even in gas. He listened eagerly. It was a plan and he hadn’t heard one of those in a year, just sitting idle like everyone else, and bored. This spiked his interest, his imagination, got him thinking. I could see it in his face. His eyes widened.
He knew who I was and where from. When I told him I could make a quick drive home and get him some gas he said he would provide me with everything he had and use all his assets to explore these areas. He was dying for a mission.
Tom came in with his duffle bag. I asked the Captain for one more soldier for a day or two, to guard the scientists, who’d be busy pilfering the library all day. Tom and I had other things to do.
I also told him we’d bring him some presents for the loan. But he didn’t need that. The idea of a mission and gaining territory and occupying it was the best gift I could possibly offer him, an agenda, a job, something to give him purpose each day and command.
He stood up, shook my hand and said ‘thank you’ with the deepest sincerity. Then he snapped his finger at his guard outside the door and told him to go with us.
“But what about the Church” he asked reluctantly?
“I talked to the bishop, and he gave me ‘carte blanche’ to make sorties and spread our influence West, inoculate everyone who agrees to be peaceful, even relocate them on our expanding territories, start farms and add to our numbers. He even agreed, at my request, they wouldn’t have to wear white and pledge to the Church for a time, until they felt like one of us and wanted to join. So they’ll be under your command more than his. If there’s anything you can do for this small influx of people, you might want to start today. If there are any abandoned farms close to your camp, walking distance, you should have a few men clean up what they can for occupancy”.
This delighted him to no end. “This is great news. But why wasn’t I even told”?
“They probably didn’t have the gas to spare a car. Look, they've been the cause of this lameness all along and the Bishop is a good man. I sense it. But it’s our turn to get busy and get results. I know you have walkie-talkies with a range of five miles in good weather. But get your men to set up a telegraph line to the General in Manchester and all your posts along the way, then down to the last one in Providence. Most of the poles are still standing. They probably even have telephone wires on them you can still use. All you need to do is patch some and direct it. Then you’re in constant contact. I can’t believe you haven’t already done this”.
“But we have no men who know telegraphy or how it works”.
I turned to the soldier assigned to me. “One of your jobs today is to gather up an armload of books on the subject to bring them back. If you can’t find them have one of our scientists help you. They’re there”.
“There should also be some museums in town or on campus with old pieces of telegraph equipment. Give me another man to go find them and bring them along too, a smart soldier, everything he can find”.
Then I told the Captain one last thing. “When we have the equipment, you train the operators and spread them out. Ask for volunteers with some aptitude. Things are going to change at a lightning pace. I’ll make sure of that. And every man you have is going to be busy, starting today. Have a team walk the whole line and re-string the wires. We’re living in the nineteen hundreds again and we have to use their methods. But it’s all so simple, the telegraph, charged by a battery, and we have hundreds of those. With Morse code and the vaccine we’re going to win this whole continent back in a year, sea to sea”.
“I see why they call you the ‘Prophet’. I’ll get right on it. It’s been an honor meeting you”. I told him I’d bring back lots of beer.
As we walked back to our car he followed us into the yard. To some fifty men just sitting around he called out loudly: “Time for some action boys, snap to, we’re going to war”. A few cheered. “And there’s a party tonight with cases of beer”. Now they all cheered.
Everyone had a good day finding what we needed most. The soldier sent to find old telegraph equipment came back with a full suitcase and the other, many books about it. It took another trip, after reading some manuals, to finally match the right equipment but they had it up and running in five days, between Exeter and Manchester, six operators slowly learning Morse code. We didn’t have the current for Short Wave radios, or rather the gas to run generators. That was a ways off, but not far.
The scientists were happy in their searches, carrying armfuls of books to the trailer. I was in the tunnels with Tom. It took an hour to find, Mira’s sketch being a bit off, but we pried the door open.
It was a tiny room, the walls covered with maps and charts, one table and chair with some open books on it, full of charts and tables, pictures of pipeline equipment and routes on maps covering the Northeast. Obviously the man was educated but we couldn’t figure out what he was up to. So we took everything and parked it in the jeep.
It was past three. I took the soldier done with his book search to the tunnel containing the booze and had him load up thirty cases of beer and boxes of cigarettes before it was full of science books, those two emptying whole shelves. He fit them in, joined by his friend, both drinking a few while they worked.
While they were all busy Tom and I unhitched the jeep and drove West down some back roads till we reached the orchard and behind that a farmhouse. It looked inhabited. We called but no one came out. That was another day’s work. It was already late afternoon. We drove back to base one, dropped off the beer and cigarettes then drove home, where another party blossomed with our own stash, Mira smiling as she handed out cigarettes in the central courtyard, each soldier thanking her profusely. But I could see she was uncomfortable around so many men, after all she’d been through. I couldn’t even begin to fathom it.
