Free Marching As to War: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel by Justin Watson

to my
feet. Confused, I didn’t know which way to run. The guards were shooting up
into the sky. Then there was a flash, and I felt something hit me all over, all
at once.
    Next, I was laying flat on my belly, my face in the dirt. I
felt the earth heave, then heave again, and again. I
curled up in a ball, my hands over my ears. I don’t remember thinking or
feeling anything except fear. Perhaps I was screaming. I just tightened myself
into a fist.
    The heaving stopped. My ears were ringing, but I could still
hear someone close by shrieking. The sound of pain.
    I could see nothing, nothing but a cloud of choking dust and
smoke. Then I put my head down and let everything disappear.
    When I came to, I rolled over and got to my feet. I wasn’t
hurt, but I felt slow in the head. Stunned. But the
smoke and dust had cleared enough for me to see. The front of the building had
been turned into rubble. Some of it burning. A group
of men placed another man, bloody, twisting, and screaming, on a plank. They
carried him down the hill.
    Pieces of paper were scattered all around me. I picked one
up. One side of the paper had two drawings. The top drawing showed a woman with
a baby walking toward the door of a house. She was walking away from what I
guessed was government soldier. He wore a black uniform with the old American
flag on the sleeve. Below this, the words: CITIZENS - STAY IN YOUR HOMES.
    The bottom drawing showed another soldier pointing his rifle
at a man whose hands were raised over his head. Under this, MILITIA – DO NOT
RESIST.
    On the other side of paper was a picture of the old flag with
the words, RESTORING THE GREATNESS OF OUR NATION.
    Jane ran up to me. She said, “You hurt?”
    “No, just got knocked around some. You?”
    “Not a scratch.”
    “What about the others? Riley?”
    “Safe.”
    Jane picked up one of the papers. She looked at the drawings
for a moment and flipped it over. “The airplanes dropped these. What’s it say?”
I read it to her. She said nothing.
    I looked around the camp and saw many little groups, all
gathered around someone who could read. The last few papers fluttered out of
the trees. We stood there for a while, quiet. I said to Jane, “This’ll be worse
than anything since the Plague.”
    “May God forgive them,” Jane said. “I’ll never.”
    “Jane, you sure you want to do this? You sure you want to go
to war?”
    “You don’t understand,” she said. “I was born for this.”

CHAPTER 11
    I heard a voice behind me say, “Hey.” Turning, I saw an old
man, a tangled white beard halfway down his skinny chest. He said, “Which way,
son?”
    “Yonder,” I said, pointing through the trees to a crowd of
men sitting on the ground waiting for the prayer service to begin, waiting to
be sent off to fight. The old man squinted in that direction, maybe having
trouble seeing that far. “Obliged,” he said and limped away, using his rifle
for support.
    Nobody had told them to come. In the days after the attack,
they would just arrive in ones and twos. Most were men who had done their time
in the militia. Others were men who had drifted home, deserted. Now they had
come back to fight the Government, no questions asked. Their courage made me
proud. Was courage enough? But that was about all we had.
    I went and found a place among the men sitting on the
ground. Winslow, Jackson, Campbell, and Reverend Maxwell sat on benches down in
the front. And then there was Jane. She sat at Winslow’s side. She looked
better in the new britches and coat Winslow had gotten made for her. The men
around me gawked at her.
    Maxwell stood and told us we would begin by singing David
Winslow’s favorite hymn. He didn’t have to tell us what it was. Although we had
pretty much stopped singing it when he died, the words came back to us. We
sang, “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, / With the cross of Jesus going on before. / Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe; / Forward