Step by Step/Issue 49

This is Issue #49 of Step by Step. This is the first issue of Volume Nine.

Dark Country
The thrill was alive, burrowed somewhere in the blues of the cloudy sky, waiting to be set free. A cloudy day, birds in this part of the state on their migration. The birds had first come the day after his surrender, and then had come the crows in their place, dark devils with crooked claws.

The gang of crows watched, perched on nearby trees, and sometimes they circled around the muddy courtyard. Were they visiting for the crops, growing yonder under the sun?

He had hoped so the first week.

The crows eyed his flesh.

Fitted with the rags of a white shirt, now dirtied with mud and sweat, Nolan toiled the wet soil with a shovel. Sweat lined his brow, he'd been working through the morning. A sort of unfamiliar hurt shuddered his gut, growing with each heartbeat. It had begun weeks after the first day of work. A hurt, something of lost pride, strength robbed, unsure by what.

Nolan was sure that, after such a long time, his bottom still hurt where it had been shot. It would make for a childish momento, but only now did he realize how dangerous such an injury could have been.

It was the thought about what could have been that now scared him.

Friend of his pa had been shot in the arm, and then the bullet had traveled through it and into his heart. Adrenaline erases thought for action, philosophy for war. Shovel in hand, Nolan continued digging through the muddy ground. A strong rain shower had come last night, breaking the seven month drought.

The drought had scared most people. There had been a handful of fights inside Smith's Ferry, but nothing that had amounted to a real riot. Word had come to Nolan's ears from the others, the squatters, dwellers of the huts in the fields. They'd heard it from the people downtown. Word of the unrest had taken days to travel to the campground. A vast forest and fields of crops and corn separated the campground from downtown like a golden fence, a golden wall.

He thought he could brave it the first week. It was none too popular an idea. The father and his daughter had refused. Then Nolan had asked his owned friends, but they were too tired to give a damn. He blamed their thirst and hunger for them ignoring him. The soldiers of the Guard had refused as well. It was the two of them, and then the two officers, and he disliked their attitudes. He most missed the green youngster of a soldier, Joe, a real needle in the haystack. Poor sucker had lost his shoulder, last time he'd been seen. But he wasn't going to think about that now.

Nolan kept shoveling the mud. Underneath, there would be harder dirt to dig up. He had to block out those emotions, the unfamiliar hurt. This was a new hole that he was digging, third one in a week.

He hadn't had to wait long before somebody tried to brave the golden wall. Nolan had figured that one of the weaker ones would do it, the slaves long indentured, so he was surprised when he saw three men, strong new arrivals, charge the surrounding fields of corn.

The sun had been hot. Their blood had been hot. Malcolm had organized it, and Hector and Gorden, the officer and the private, were playing follow the leader. The three dashed around, zigzagging and taking sharp turns, the wardens going crazy—"Get that sum'bitch. Take them alive!"

Nolan kept shoveling and laughed.

If they hadn't totally hated each other before, then the escape was what did it. He remembered how Malcolm tripped Hector and Gordon by their feet in an attempt to leave them for dead, to buy himself time to escape, the men cursing their disgraced sergeant, from his family to his ancestors, and then they caught up to him and took him down in a dogpile. When the wardens had caught up, there wasn't too much catching left to do.

Hot blood. Nolan wiped hot sweat off his face, passed a hand through his gritty hair, and let out an exhausting gasp of air.

A lot had changed since the first week. The groans and moans of protest had quelled, and the new cows had become accepted into the herd for slaughter. The winter trees, plagued with frost and dry leaves, had disappeared, the trees had grown green with fruit, food had been harvested, and then the trees grew brown with a new winter sun. No more had Nolan heard the growls of the undead. No more, no more.

No more of anything. He really missed television. Would lick the dirt off a boot for a book to read, a Playboy to skim. He knew the closest thing to entertainment was in the nightly quarrels.

Nolan would work a little more, dig a little deeper, kept his heart beating till slumber. Had to finish the hole. Had to finish the hole, and now it was about three feet deep. Had to double that. Widen it a little ways.

As he dug deeper, a little faster, Nolan recalled a memory from childhood. Remembered having a little doggy. Had put him to bed with the bigger dog. Pa had said it would help them bond. Next morning, the little pup stood up to the mutt and had his throat bitten.

Nolan took in a few breaths.

The hole was finished. He could see the dried, yellowed bones of the grave's former inhabitant. Nolan tried to avoid stepping on the bones, and found himself being watched by the eyeless skull. He struggled to remember who it had been. Someone from the first month. A soldier, perhaps, now loyal to the mortal earth.

Shovel in one hand, Nolan bent down and picked up the skull, holding it far so he could look into the eyeless holes. He understood that something was watching him in that skull, a taste of fate, something of legends, of the supernatural.

He set the skull back onto the bottom of the grave.

There were two cadavers waiting for him on the above ground.

Nolan climbed out the hole, shoved the bodies into the grave. Stood upright and told himself he would remember this day, knowing that this too would pass.

He saluted the dead and began shoveling dirt onto the grave. The daylight waned and blackened, decomposing into a nightly sky of thin clouds and dim stars. The campground was composed of a series of low, makeshift huts made from scrap metal and wood. An olive green tent solely stood on the right of the huts. A thin trail, marked by dirt among the high grass, marked the entrance and exit. Thick walls of corn surrounded the compound.

A fire had begun to grow in the center of the huts. The squatters, blind slaves, all of them, attracted to the fire like moths to light. Lyle stood off in the distance, a hole in his gut filling with anger, fear of the fire. Wondered, did that make him a caveman, or Frankenstein, to be afraid of fire.

He loathed the campfire. Loathed it every night. Ever since it had begun to be a daily occurrence the month prior. Last month, there had been a blood moon, the sky bleeding red, and the slaves had grown restless. A certain dozen had grown mad. None of them could sleep without howling to the moon, pleading for mercy, to be freed from their shackles. They were all soldiers, Lyle learned from his ears, that had been booted by the Smith family. Soldiers placed their as garrison, as had been at the high school.

=Issues=