Keywords: none Rating: PG Classific: S Spoilers: Millennium (US7) did not happen. Summary: "I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy," These words he did say as I boldly stepped by. "Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story - I'm shot in the breast and I know I must die." - The Cowboy's Lament (aka Streets of Laredo) Francis Henry Maynard 1876 In the Streets of Fire - A Gunman's Lament by Martha marthalgm@yahoo.com I honestly thought that it was just the fireworks. One big-ass party had been planned for down at the Washington Mall to ring in the New Year. Concerts, dancing, food - just like every other First Night celebration that was going on all across the country - to be followed up by fireworks at midnight. We - Langly, Byers, and I - had slightly more important activities planned for the evening. Like making sure that tomorrow did come. That there were no power interruptions, phone service was still at our fingertips, ATMs didn't clam up, and any nuclear missiles that hadn't been decommissioned and dismantled didn't accidentally launch themselves. And I would be most grateful if the student loan that I finally finished paying off in 1975 didn't come back to haunt my credit report. I thought that they were just running behind schedule. Until I heard the sirens. Until the ground started rumbling and I heard the explosions. In the days leading up to Friday, December 31, 1999, reservists from the Army and Marine Corps had been called up to active status to shore up the National Guardsmen who had already been put on alert due to Y2K concerns. Each state allowed FEMA offices to open in cooperation with its own emergency headquarters. The warning of letter and package bombs, increased security at airports and border crossings, the confiscation of bombing materials and the arrest of a smuggler with connections to terrorist groups all led to make people in a lot of cities very nervous. We played right into their hands. Langly's greatest fear was that, should the computers and power sources shut down leading everyone around us to panic, we would be trapped in our headquarters. Never mind that it would offer protection, shelter, and a base with a certain amount of security. He had been tagging equipment for those last few weeks, trying to determine what he could or could not fit into the van. Under the cover of darkness that last evening, he began loading those essentials - network hardware, communications equipment, food, water. To humor him, Byers packed clothing and protective wear; I gathered the weapons and ammunition. When the phone lines went dead right after midnight, we just thought that all that blustering by AT&T about how compliant it was would be reflected by a sharp drop in its trading price when the markets opened the following week. We barely noticed when the electricity was cut as we had most of the place hooked up to our own generators. When the TV screens went blank, we blamed the cable companies and tapped into a satellite resource to splice in the CNN feed. When we finally got an image to appear, the Atlanta newsdesk - which should have been showing its coverage of midnight festivities - was in a panic with two news anchors handling two frightened callers on the air. We couldn't figure out why CNN was airing what we thought were two obviously hysterical drunks until we heard the same rumbling explosions coming from their locations and the alarm in the voices of the staff who were usually off-screen and silent. The feed went dead right after Wolf Blitzer stated that something very wrong was going on. We were out the door and in the van within five minutes. Langly may have taken great pains to determine what we would have with us but as soon as he crawled into the driver's seat, he froze with the keys in his hand. We had never discussed just how we were going to get out of the city. Byers ruled out heading west - we would never get through the crowd that had gathered at the Mall and the bridges leading to Arlington and Georgetown. If we headed north, we'd run into the panic in the Maryland suburbs. South and east, we decided, and then cut back to Interstate 95 in southern Virginia. After that, who knows? Maybe by then we would have some ideas as to what exactly had happened and who we were dealing with. Langly drove while I navigated. Byers was in the back picking up what he could on one of the radio scanners. About two hours into our journey, we learned that we had just missed a military roadblock on the Beltway and that the North Carolina National Guard had shut down I-95 at its Virginia border. We had already made the westerly turn towards Fredericksburg and decided to keep going towards Charlottesville and make our way to the mountains. The night turned into New Year's Day. Tomorrow did come but at a price. We all cursed a hundred regrets that we should have stayed put, but we couldn't return to the unknown. And so the search began to find a new home. Most of the offshoots of the local militia in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia were gathering in the Nantahala National Forest according to a mishmash of broadcasts that we were able to pick up that first day. We debated amongst ourselves as to whether we should join up with them - Byers wanted the safety and security of the numbers while Langly thought that we would be shot on site as possible infiltrators. I had hoped that some among that crowd might have heard of us and that we would be allowed to contribute to their effort - whatever that ended up being. And so we drove. We would not know until the second day that several Metro stations - Union Station, Rosslyn, and Metro Center - had been bombed, effectively cutting that service into and out of the District of Columbia. These were the explosions that I had initially mistaken for the fireworks. The roadblocks on the Beltway were to keep key military and government officials out of the city; the ones who were not in on the coup were at home celebrating while the victors were manning the offices. There went the holiday weekend. Trying to find the usually visible public authorities who could always be counted on to go to the airwaves to feed the media frenzy was futile as scores of people were suddenly rumored to be as nonexistent as the traditional media sources. Satellite communications were severed, making short-wave radio the new hot thing to have this season. On the third day, we buried Langly. My one solace in all this is that he never saw it coming. In Nam, it went unspoken that you would always hear the bullet that was meant for you - the `thttt' as it leaves your enemy's weapon, the `swoosh' as it glides through the air, the `thump' as it hits your chest. You have this confused look on your face as the bullet proceeds to play pinball with your ribcage and yet somehow you never hear your own screams until just before everything goes dark. Where that bullet came from we may never know. Probably snipers on the lookout for people just like us. We had pulled off at a picnic overlook and backed the van down one of the worn tracks so that it couldn't be seen from the road. We were just watching him walk towards the bathrooms to fill up one of the water jugs when, all of a sudden, he collapsed between two picnic tables. Byers made the first move towards him, and it took several seconds for the events to register before I up and tackled him and held him down while we listened for any advance of the attackers. Probably the longest two minutes of our lives passed before we felt secure enough to make a dash toward where Langly had fallen. His heart had stopped beating. Thankfully his eyes were already closed. Deliberate or not, the bullet caught him just above the right ear. If he had been walking just a bit faster or slower, it would have missed him and continued on. We didn't know if we had any time before being surrounded so we had to move quickly. We bundled him up and laid him out in the back of the van and sped off. Towards sunset, we pulled over near a mile marker with no other distinguishing factors. While Byers prepared the body, I searched for a suitable burial spot. I found a small culvert about twenty yards away from the road, just deep enough so that we would not have to do any digging. Byers carried Langly over his shoulders, wrapped up in the blanket that we had to place under his head to catch the blood. I picked up a number of pine branches to lay over him in a feeble attempt to protect him from the elements. We decided to spend the night in this place - we just couldn't make ourselves leave. Not yet anyway. Once during the night, I awoke to hear Byers crying. But I did not mention this to him, as I know that sometime during that same night, he had heard my anguish. Funny, all along I thought that Byers would be the first to go. He had the intelligence and a sharp analytical mind but for sheer think-quick-and-keep-your-head-down instincts, Byers was the one who lagged behind the pack. And yet there he still was, removing all identifying markers from the clothing and emptying all the pockets, even taking Langly's glasses. On the fourth day, we met up with one of the smaller militia camps. Langly was partially right - they didn't trust us at first sight and kept us separated from our van and under guard for several hours. But desperation and resignation to what they saw as the New World Order will make strange bedfellows between paranoid small town folk and those who broadcast the existence of what fuels that paranoia. Byers lent a hand with making sense out of all of the `news' reports while I began to compliment the current Information Center with Langly's equipment inventory. We learned of a gathering to be held the following afternoon where several of the other smaller militia camps were to meet and share information and strategies. We all loaded up into a number of pickup trucks to keep the traffic on the roads down to a minimum. I saw Byers pass by, sitting in the back of one of the first pickups to head down the road. I was toying with the idea of taking the van but, in the unfamiliar territory and narrow roads, I nixed the idea and climbed into the car of one of the stragglers. We didn't notice that anything was out of place until we rounded that last curve. A number of the pickup trucks were either turned over or had run off the asphalt - their former passengers scattered on the road, in the field, leaning against the mountain rock, many of whom were motionless. The low-lying mist made it difficult to pick out Byers in the crowd but I had little chance to focus before my companion sharply U-turned and headed back up the mountain road. I screamed that we had to go back and get our friends, but the guy grabbed my arm and held me close to his side. Gas, he whispered, and then let go so he could keep the car on the road. And then I realized that that was no mist that I had seen. It was almost dark before we returned to the meeting place with additional ammunition and flashlights and the several gas masks that had already been unpacked. It went unspoken that taking the entire box would have been a wasted effort. I found Byers just after sunset. Alive but just barely. Alive but not for long. He had managed to crawl away from the road and was lying face up in a bed of dead leaves. The rash on his cheeks and hands and the shallow breathing led to one conclusion: some variation of smallpox, it seemed, and fast acting by the looks of the bodies I had come across while searching for him. The Consortium scientists appear to have succeeded in their refinement. Sarin gas would have been my guess as to their first choice, but it was too cold in the mountains - it would have dissipated too quickly. The use of a smallpox strain would allow any survivors to infect others and thereby dwindle the resistance forces. It really was the smart choice, if you didn't think about it too long. How he recognized me in that mask in those last moments, I'll never know - by then he must have been blinded. He spoke a few sentences of those anxious minutes a few years ago when he was in that clinic with Mulder and he was fighting his way through the dark hallways to escape. I think that he was imagining that he was still in there - plastered against a cold wall, barely able to breathe, and dodging the authorities in an effort to make it outside. And then he whispered Susanne's name, and the only sounds I heard after that were the leaves crunching underneath my knees and hands as I fell to the ground beside him in my grief. It was difficult to simultaneously breathe and cry in that gas mask, and I deliberated for a number of minutes as to whether I should just tear it off and risk ending it all right then and there. But in the end, I was too afraid to do this to myself. I had to keep trying - they would have told me to on ahead. There might still be comrades out there who could use my services. I took a old quilt that had been stored in the car and covered Byers with it. I found a number of rocks to anchor the edges and piled the leaves over him. After determining that most of the group had perished in the gas attack, my companion and I went back to the campsite. Those who had stayed behind began to pack up and make plans to move on to a new home come sunrise. I loaded up our equipment and moved the van further up the mountain road, just in case any ground troops would make a sweep through the area, and I slept on the empty bench seat that I had no one to fight over with. When I woke the next day, the sun was just peaking over the mountain ridge bathing my face in warm light. It hurt to move too quickly, to make it outside to relieve myself. I noticed that my hands appeared cut and scraped, and then I remembered my activities of the previous evening. It was not until I caught myself in the reflection of the van windows that I noticed that my face was covered with a rash, the same one that I had seen last night on so many of the dead and dying. Apparently, my companion and I did not escape the effects of the gas but had caught just enough to make us sick and contagious and quite possibly enough to kill us. I should have stopped by the campsite, to warn the others, but I had no idea as to how much time that I had left. I drove down the road I so carefully climbed last night and made my way to just short of the carnage of bodies and metal. I paused for a moment, my hands gripping the steering wheel, and searched for the strength to make the final move from that seat. And when I finally did, I packed a few personal items to take with me. Down the slope a bit. Back to where I buried Byers. The sun is just about to set beyond the next mountain range. My fingers are so very sore from writing most of the day, my eyes burn, and the water in my canteen is almost gone. The temperature will drop drastically once twilight comes, but I know what lies ahead for me. If death does not come in the night, my pistol will hasten the inevitable, and I do not think that I will be in any condition to back out this time. And so here I sit, passerby, to warn you not to dwell too long in this place. I do not know if what they dropped on us has dissipated or gone dormant. Take these notes, such as they are. I have made a diagram of where we left Langly, along with the last-known addresses of his family. I've included Byers' addresses as well, but I do not know how to get in touch with Susanne other than through email - if the internet is still up and running, please try. I would not want her to worry needlessly. As for me, the only child of an only child, I know for a fact that there are no relations who would still wonder about me. But if you should find yourself in the area and wish to undertake this task, notify either Fox Mulder or Dana Scully, both agents with the FBI (should it still exist), of my fate. Tell them that I love them both very much. Tell them that I couldn't continue, not without my companions. Tell them that I hope that they will understand. Melvin Frohike January 6, 2000 =========================================================== =========================================================== But, Mom, all the big kids are doing it. A lot of good dark and doom, TEOTWAWKI-type stories have come out recently, and I wanted to try one, with just the boys of course. end