“Is everyone here?”
Finally, Franky speaks up. “I think Fiona and Patrick went out to check on the fiddleheads. But other than that, yeah.” Just as he says it, I see Fiona and Patrick come in the door, looking concerned. Everyone watches them as they find a seat.
Eric looks around and then nods and sits down. Everyone else sits down too. Even the children are quiet. You could hear a dust mite scratch its ear. Eric looks around and then turns toward Randal. “Go ahead,” he tells Randal. Randal looks around nervously. I can tell, probably all of us can, that he would rather do this in private, but Eric doesn't do things like that.
Eric doesn’t do anything in private meetings. He makes all the decisions right in front of everyone, and if anyone has objections, they can make their point immediately. Eric changes his mind sometimes. If enough people want him to, he always does. People say he thinks too much, like I already said. But then again, Eric is still here and they stand when he comes in and when he tries not to be the one to make decisions, people come to our house and practically beg him to keep doing it.
“Well,” Randal says. He clears his throat. “You remember the groups I was telling you about?”
“Which ones?” asks Eric.
“The ones down south that say they’re the United States of America, what’s left of it.”
“The Gearheads and the Stars?”
Randal nods. “Like I told you, they both claim to be the rightful government of the United States. Each of them say they want to start it up again. With voting and Presidents and Congress and all that.” Randal licks his lips and then rubs at his nose with his sleeve and looks around at us. “They say it’s time to rebuild the country.”
“I remember,” Eric answers. “They aren’t the first.”
Randal looks back at Eric like he’s embarrassed. I notice one of his legs is jumpy. “Well, there can’t be but one United States.” He smiles, like he’s made a joke, but no one’s laughing, so the smile falls. “It’s war,” he says finally. “There’s a war down there.” Eric sits back in his chair. He’s thinking. So are all of us. The idea doesn’t seem to land, just teeters among us: war? Randal continues. “It started about two weeks ago, down around Boston. Little place called Danvers. There was a group of Gearheads that went down there to try to talk this community into joining them instead of the Stars, but they were already with the Stars. I guess there was an argument or something. I don’t really know. There are conflicting stories. Anyway, someone shot.” Randal shrugs. “They haven’t stopped shooting since.” Eric still doesn’t say anything. He’s thinking. Randal’s leg us still jumping around. The rest of us just watch, like this is one of our plays.
Most of us know about the Gearheads and the Stars, from Randal, mostly. We think it’s crazy to bring a country together. You can’t even travel from here to Portland without fear of getting shot or robbed. Out here, in the boondocks, there aren’t many people. Down south, we know, there are a lot more. They’re organized in all sorts of communities, most of them a heck of a lot larger than we were, at least according to Randal. The thought of them killing each other is disturbing.
The Gearheads are led by a guy named Jerome Brown. When the Worm hit, he was part of the U.S. government, somehow. Not someone real important, like the President or anything. Someone way down the line. Randy says that he calls himself President Jerome Brown, and they believe that the future is all about learning. They have schools where people practice mathematics and learn engineering. Randy says they want to rebuild the world. If I remember right, they’re centered somewhere in New Hampshire and, according to Randy, they have a lot of guns.
The Stars are the other major group. They’re in Boston. The guy in charge of that group is President Ramon Barber. Randy says these guys are more military. He says they have some kind of link to the old U.S. military, and Barber wants to unite the whole country all the way out to California, as crazy as that sounds. They’ve got guns too. I mean, their whole thing is guns. They even have tanks, I guess, though you’re a fool to trust rumors and that doesn’t sound likely. There hasn’t been any useful gasoline in years. Kerosene, gasoline, diesel, all of it just went bad a few years ago. How can they run tanks without fuel?
“How far has the fighting reached north?” Eric asks finally.
“There’s been some problems in Portland,” Randal answers. There’s a couple gasps at that. It’s awful close. Randal sniffs again, tries another faltering smile and then clears his throat. “Portsmouth’s a mess,” he says. “A goddamn mess.”
“I didn’t think they’d come that far north,” Eric says, thinking aloud.
“They didn’t,” Randal answers. “Not until the war. But now everyone has to take a side. It’s like a disease. And it’s moving fast.” He looks around at us. “I came back here as soon as I could, but sometimes it was like the war was moving faster than I could ride.”
Eric sits back, still thinking hard. His eyes are distant as stars. I look around and see everyone watching him, waiting. But I know that Eric doesn’t have anything more to say. I know that absence in his eyes. He’s thinking too hard to mind what’s going on around him. He doesn’t realize that people are waiting and they need to hear something. He’s too concentrated on the problem. I swear I can see the machine in his head grinding away at the problem. I don’t like when he does this, when he can’t tell what people need.
I stand up. “We’re safe enough out here, aren’t we?” People turn around, surprised to hear my voice. Some of them might not even recognize it. Like I said, I don’t talk much. But I can’t let Eric just sit there like that. I sit back down quick enough though.
Randal looks up at me. He clears his throat. “Truth is,” he says. “I don’t know.”
Then it’s like something broke. Everyone’s talking at once. Then the talking transforms into something more like shouting and people are standing up and Randal stands up too, and I can see by the way he keeps glancing at the doorway that he wants to make a dash for it. I realize that I made it all a lot worse with my question. I should have kept quiet like Eric. I should have waited.
But it’s too late for that now. People are scared. It’s in the air like a stench. Even Franky is shouting now, trying to get people to calm down. But it’s no use. Soon it’s all chaos and I hear someone else crying and I look over and it’s Artemis. She’s sitting and shaking and covering her face while the people all around us are shouting. I have a feeling nothing is real, like I’m suddenly surrounded by strangers.
I begin to think about war, really imagine it. Not far south people are shooting at each other and killing each other. They are dropping in the streets. They are burning in their homes. They are dying. And it’s coming here. I’m eyeing the door too, just like Randal, like an animal searching for an escape, when I hear a long whistle. I look around, half-thinking that war had come already and the whistle was just the beginning and then there’s another set of whistles, fast and loud. I look down at the stage.
It’s Eric. He has a whistle in his mouth, shining silver. His arms are up in the air and he’s waving them to get everyone’s attention. He blows the whistle again and keeps on blowing until everyone is looking at him. He stops waving his arms and takes the whistle out of his mouth. He makes a calming movement with his hands and everyone looks kind of ashamed and we sit down, first one, then several, then all of us. There’s a moment when there’s nothing but the sound of people settling back into their seats. Finally when it’s quiet, Eric takes a deep breath.