Defending Camp

12

“Tell me who you are,” said John. “This is your last chance. Or I shoot.”

“We’re nobody. We’re not armed. Don’t shoot us, please.”

“There’s no reason to hurt us.”

They were middle-aged men wearing ragged clothing. They had dirty hair and dirty unkempt beards. They looked almost like hobos in the movies, the sort of person that had, in a way, died out a long time ago, those men who would hop trains and travel from place to place with their belongings tied up in a handkerchief on a stick.

“Be more specific,” said John.

They gave their names. John didn’t even listen. He knew that their names didn’t matter at all.

“What’s your story?” said John. “Did you know this man here?” He gestured with his head to the dead man lying there with a stream of blood trickling out of him.

“We don’t know him.”

“But he’s been following us. I think he was after us, not you.”

“So you’re suggesting it was all just a big misunderstanding? That it wasn’t any kind of set up?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. Sorry you got in the middle of it.”

“He almost killed me,” said John. “What did he want from you?”

“The same as everyone else. Food, I guess. Maybe water.”

“Why didn’t you help me?”

“Like we said, we’re not armed.”

“Not armed? Not even a hammer?”

“Nothing.”

“You could have used your hands.”

“We’re pacifists.”

John was stunned.

“Seriously? Pacifists?”

The two men nodded solemnly.

John’s heart was slowly starting to calm down. He’d been pumped full of adrenaline from the fight, from shooting yet another man. He’d lost track now of how many he’d killed. He knew that it simply didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that he was still alive.

“I can’t even believe it,” said John, starting to laugh.

The men stared at him.

“It’s no joke. It’s our belief system.”

“We’re deeply committed to the nonviolence interactions that humankind is capable of…”

“Is that like a religious thing or something?” said John, cutting him off, still chuckling.

“No. Nothing like that.”

“We were philosophy professors,” said the other one.

“Were? How’s that working out now since the EMP? I imagine you’re out of a job now.” John couldn’t stop laughing. The idea of pacifists now was just simply too absurd.

“We’re continuing to develop our ideas and our systems of thought.” He spoke solemnly as if it was the most important thing in the world, developing systems of thought.

“So what would have happened if I hadn’t been here, and that man had come up to you?”

“We would have tried to dissect the situation.”

“That wouldn’t have worked,” said John. “He was a pretty good escalator, if you know what I mean. I’m guessing you would have just run.”

“Basically, yeah. That’s how we’ve survived so far.”

“Sooner or later that’s not going to work.”

“Don’t think we’re not aware of that eventuality.”

“I notice you don’t use the word possibility.”

“Of course not. It’s bound to happen.”

John stared at the men. He knew they were telling the truth. No one could come up with something that absurd without it being the truth.

“Well,” said John. “Good luck with that.”

He turned on his heel, leaving the men there. There was no point in inviting them back to camp. They would be nothing but huge burdens. John tried to imagine what would have happened if one of the camp members had been a pacifist.

Maybe it was the stress or the simple absurdity of the idea, but John started giggling.

“Hey!” called out one of the men from behind him.

John turned. “What? You want to convert me to your particularly useless and dangerous brand of philosophy?”

“No,” came the solemn answer. His voice was deep, carrying well through the darkness. “We wanted to warn you.”

John walked a few paces back towards them.

“Warn me of what?”

There was silence for a moment.

“There are a lot more of them. They’re coming this way.”

“That’s why we’re on the move.”

“Who’s coming? What are you talking about?” said John.

“Men like the one you just killed.”

“Explain,” said John. It wasn’t a question. It was a command.

“They’re desperate. Men and women. They’re not looking for anything but their own survival.”

“Sounds just like me,” said John. He held his handgun at his side, his arm loose. The gun felt good there, comforting, even when he wasn’t threatened in the immediate sense.

“We’re talking about a huge mob. We think it started…”

“In a city?” said John, suddenly getting the idea.

John remembered the huge mob of people in Center City Philadelphia that had almost killed him back before he’d escape the city, when he’d just met that therapist. What was his name? Larry? Lawrence? It felt like so long ago. In reality, it hadn’t been more than a few months.

So much had changed in such a short amount of time.

The masses in the city had been half-crazed, barely recognizably human, and yet so human at the same time. That was what happened to humanity when it was deprived of the essentials. The instincts kicked in, telling the body that it needed to get sustenance. At any cost.

“Yes, we think so.”

“So there’s this big mob out there? And it’s coming this way?”

“That’s correct,” said one of the former philosophy professors, the self-proclaimed pacifists.

John stared at him. It certainly looked like he was telling the truth.

“And what’s your plan?”

“We’re trying to get out of the way.”

“How do you know they’re coming this direction?”

“We’ve been running from them for a week now. Sometimes individuals, front runners, catch up to us. That’s how we know they’re close. That man that you killed, he was one of them.”

“Thanks for the tip,” said John, turning back around.

John didn’t have any reason to doubt the professors. They were the types of people who lived by principles, no matter what. John didn’t agree with their principles, but he recognized that these men contained the sort of integrity that wouldn’t allow them to lie about something like a half crazed mob coming John’s way.

The pacifists, John thought, were grateful that he’d saved them. If he hadn’t shot that wild half-crazed man, the pacifists might dead.

Pretty convenient for them. They didn’t have to get their hands dirty. But they’d gotten what they wanted.

And when people like John weren’t there to fight for them, they just ran.

Well, there wasn’t much point in dwelling on what would happen to them. The answer was too obvious.

John hurried back through the woods, heading to camp.

“John!” said Cynthia, looking up. She’d been staring into the dying flames of the fire, apparently lost in thought. “What happened to you?”

“What? Oh, nothing.”

“Were you attacked? There’s blood on you. Are you OK?”

John had almost forgotten that he’d just killed a man. It was sobering to realize that killing now came so easily to him that killing a man had merely become just one event in a day, so easily forgotten as soon as something else came along to occupy his mind.

“Oh,” said John. “Yeah. I’m OK, though. Not injured. Not really, I mean.”

“What happened?”

John brushed the question away with his hand. “It’s not important. I think we might have bigger problems on our hands.”

He told her about what the pacifists had told him. He told her about his experience in Center City Philadelphia, about what the mob had done. He told her how he’d seen countless mutilated bodies. How there’d been skulls smashed in with blunt objects, how there’d been torsos punctured with anything vaguely sharp, how the mob had roared and screamed together almost like a single organism, a beast that seemed impossible to fight against.

“Shit,” was all Cynthia could say.

She looked back into the fire, seemingly lost again in thought.

“But wait,” she said. “Shouldn’t they all be dead? I thought everyone was dying off. Killing each other.”

“I guess not,” said John. “I think these guys I met are telling the truth.”

“The pacifists? You really think you can trust pacifists?”

She said it while trying to keep a straight face, but her smile broke through before long.

John laughed.

“I may not agree with him,” he said. “But yeah, I think they’re telling the truth. I could see it in their eyes.”

“So why is this huge mob of people still alive?”

“Who knows,” said John. “Maybe they had more access to food wherever they’re coming from. Enough food to last them until now.”

“So they’re coming this way?”

“That’s what it sounds like. What I’m thinking is that even if they don’t come directly this way, we’re bound to get some of the runoff.”

“Runoff? We’re talking about people, not rivers.”

“You know what I mean. Stragglers or offshoot groups might pass by this way.”

Cynthia gave him a serious look, all of the humor dropping away from her face. She could certainly be as dead serious as anyone when lives were on the line. “We’ve got to get ready.”

“I’ll go tell Georgia,” said John. “We need to start as soon as we can.”

“She’s asleep. Wasn’t feeling well again. Decided to head to bed early.”

“Then I’ll wake her up.”