Refuge (standard:fantasy, 5088 words)
Author: Saxon Violence	Added: Dec 04 2012	Views/Reads: 5368/2245	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Years after an Apocalypse, Tree stumbles into something like a Twilight Zone Episode.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


He hadn't noticed the “Bead Necklace” around his neck in many years.
Perhaps only children got them—or perhaps he still unconsciously 
practiced wiping his neck with his shirt every few moments—the way he'd 
done quite consciously as a child. He realized that he hadn't even 
thought about “Bead Necklaces” for many, many years, as he nervously 
wiped the front of his chest and neck with the sissy-ass white “T” 
shirt. 

The crickets and the bullfrogs and the nighthawks, along with Tree's
ragged breathing and thumping heart, made a surprisingly loud backdrop. 
The cadence seemed to be constantly speeding up, just like the suspense 
music on a scary TV Show. 

Tree knew that it was an illusion, nothing could continue to accelerate
forever, and the beat had to be slowing down to get room to speed up 
again. There was a name for that particular auditory illusion... 

Not the Doppler effect—something else—Tree cleared the thought viciously
from his mind. 

It didn't matter. Here he was in a situation positively dripping with
menace, and he was walking down the center of the street, and 
woolgathering about bead necklaces and auditory hallucinations. 

He moved over to the sidewalk. He resolved that whatever might attack
him; he'd stand and fight. He would neither flee nor cower. He saw a 
small white stone—round and smooth. It was bigger than a golf ball, but 
smaller than a tennis ball. He made a deep swooping pick-up of the 
stone, like an outfielder snagging a low ground ball. Now he had at 
least one weapon. 

Knowledge of books of privy lore—evil books on witchcraft and sorcery,
that he'd read long ago flooded into his consciousness. As an adult, he 
found Carlos Castaneda ridiculous, not to mention sacrilegious, but he 
remembered the first two or three steps of the Warrior's defensive 
posture. 

He dropped into an exaggerated “T” stance. He pulled his weigh forward
so that he could tap a rhythm with his back leg. Since he seemed to 
have fallen into a magical World, he couldn't see any great harm in 
adopting a magical posture. 

Then a realization galvanized him. No time to stand playing Brujo under
the streetlamp. This road was starting to look familiar. Yes, he hadn't 
been here since he was a small child—and then only a half-dozen times. 
The house had been torn down shortly afterward. They'd even relocated 
the streets, and renamed them. 

He might be the only person still alive, who had been inside that
house—and his well ordered memory had a real good idea of the layout 
inside. Even if one or two others remembered this place, there was no 
reason to search for him there—and besides, his memories would almost 
certainly be more detailed. That would give him a huge home field 
advantage. 

There was a chest high chain-link fence around the house—just as he
remembered. As he stepped through the gate, he felt with absolute 
certainty that he had suddenly become both much harder to find, and far 
more formidable. 

The feeling increased fourfold as he stepped up onto the screened-in
front porch. He reached above the lamp, and located a key. Opening the 
storm door made him relax the slightest bit. As the key turned in the 
tumbler, and the front door opened... 

As Tree stepped into the small front room, he realized that nothing
could attack him here. Nothing could even sense him while he was here. 
He was invisible. He was invincible. He was perfectly safe here. Tree 
shut the door and relocked it. He would have been no less protected, if 
he'd let the door swing wide open—but his inherent neatness caused him 
to close it. 

There was a small bedroom to the right. Tree quickly got himself a set
of pajamas—though he wasn't a pajama wearer—a big terrycloth robe and a 
couple towels. He stopped long enough to put all of his sweaty clothes 
in the washer—even his white Converse tennis shoes. The washer and 
drier were on the west wall of the kitchen, just like he'd remembered 
them. 

The big claw footed porcelain bathtub, in the bathroom to the left, was
also precisely as he remembered it—but there was a difference. There 
was also a stand-up shower in the leftmost corner of the bathroom. Tree 
filled the antique bathtub with water as warm as he could stand it. 

He soaked and scrubbed himself for a good long while in the tub. Then he
got out of the tub and shaved, brushed his teeth and cut all of his hot 
water soften nails as short as he could trim them without making them 
bleed—and most of his toes, and a couple fingernails did bleed, showing 
that he'd trimmed them just enough. 

Then he stepped into the shower and rinsed any lingering soap from his
long soak off of himself. 

There was ham and Swiss cheese in the icebox—also lettuce, cherry
tomatoes and cottage cheese—not to mention black bread. Best of all, 
there were sixteen ounce Double Colas in the old returnable bottles. 

Tree helped himself to a hearty repast—eating two very thick ham and
cheese sandwiches, along with plenty tomatoes and cottage cheese. He 
drank two of the Double Colas, and got into the cookie jar and grabbed 
a big handful each of chocolate chip and Fig Newtons. He threw his 
clothes into the drier and went to bed. 

The sun had been up for awhile when he woke. He made himself a lazy
breakfast of ham, chocolate cake and ice cream and coffee. He sat in 
the vibrating leather recliner, and watched the old black and white TV 
shows. When his attention wandered, the plots seemed to become more 
ridiculous and obscure. Finally, he drifted off to sleep in front of 
the old black and white set... 

And when he awoke, the set was displaying various fractal functions in
full Technicolor—and the screen had grown to five foot on the diagonal. 


Tree realized then, that this place was real. And the renewed vigor he
felt as he washed, ate, slept and bathed were also real. And he was 
both invisible and invincible here... 

But in some ways, he was bringing his own context with him to interpret
something almost impossible to grasp in its raw abstract essence. He 
could stay here as long as he wished—but past a certain point, his 
metaphorical batteries would be just as charged as they could get. 
There wasn't much part in staying past that point... 

Anyway, the way would always be open to come back here, and even to
create other Refuges. He wondered what he might create next time, when 
he'd have just a bit more control over the process—though he'd still be 
rather befuddled the next time he spun a Refuge out of... 

Well, out of whatever in hell he'd used to fabricate this Refuge. 

He hung around until dusk. He donned thermal underwear and black jeans.
He put on black Cowboy Boots, a black “T” shirt, turtleneck sweater and 
long black leather coat. He had a black Stetson with little Silver 
Conchos with small turquoise centers. 

Tree rifled through the dresser drawers—his dresser drawers, he
supposed. He found a Nickel-plated 70 Series .45 Colt. The grip safety 
was pinned. The stocks were stag. The 1911A1 had high profile sights 
and an ambidextrous thumb safety. 

The Pistol was fully loaded, but hammer down—just as he'd have stored
it. He thumbed the hammer back and upped the thumb 
safety—“Cocked-and-Locked”. 

There were four extra magazines—and Tree ended up with three extra .45
Cartridges. He placed them thoughtfully into his watch pocket. 

A little more digging turned up a Smith and Wesson Model 64—a .38
Special. He wondered briefly why he had a .38 and not a .357 Magnum. A 
four inch Model 66 .357 would have been every bit as compact. The 
revolver was round butted and the hammer was bobbed. It had round-butt 
stag grips with a silver colored Tyler “T” grip adapter. There were 
only eleven rounds of .38 Special and no speed loader for the Revolver. 


He found two Buck lock-back Knives in leather belt sheaths, and a
somewhat smaller Buck without a sheath. There was an old nickel-plated, 
pearl handled Colt .25 auto. He found a whetstone and a big Bowie with 
a shoulder rig. 

He slipped the .45 inside his black jeans, on his right side. The .38
went similarly on his left. He slipped the small Buck into his left 
pocket, put the two large Bucks in their Belt Pouches, on his belt—one 
on either side. His extra .38 rounds went into his right front pocket. 
He donned the Bowie. 

The .25, his whetstone and a few other miscellaneous knick-knacks went
into the pockets of the leather duster. There was even a gold pocket 
watch and a couple pair of nail-clippers in his possibles—and an old 
Silver Dollar. 

As he stepped outside, he noticed that it had turned Winter, and it was
bitterly cold, with just the slightest bit of snow falling. There were 
trade-offs, but he thought that—all things considered—he preferred the 
cold. At least there was no river of sweat running between his 
butt-cheeks. 

He wasn't sure exactly what the weapons actually were—some kind of
Medicine or Juju. He was reasonably certain that they weren't real 
Weapons. 

He started out wide-awake and well rested. He hadn't gone far though,
when he started to feel sleepy. Tree believed that it was far too soon 
for hypothermia, particularly as warmly as he was dressed. He started 
feeling disorientated, and too tired to take another step. 

Tree got into his pack. He laid out a doubled over ground sheet. He
managed to remove his coat, and roll up in his wool blankets. He used 
his pack for a pillow, and pulled the long Black duster over top of his 
two blankets. He fell asleep, still wearing his white goatskin gloves. 

He fell asleep rather quickly, and as he slept, he dreamt. 

******************* ****************** ************ 

Tree watched himself in his dream. 

When he'd been a little boy and watched “The Three Stooges” on TV, he'd
been fascinated by the idea of having two constant companions 
everywhere he went. 

As a man, he'd realized that he didn't make friends easily and that in
the modern World, friends who'd stick with you no matter what, were all 
but non-existent. It hadn't bothered him, because by then he'd become a 
very solitary person. 

But in his dream he had two constant companions. One was a huge black
man—six-foot eight and once built like a strongman. The other fellow 
was only five-six and slightly built. Mostly Caucasian, he had touch of 
oriental blood. He'd taught a half-dozen martial arts before things had 
went to hell in a hand-basket. 

***************** *********** ******************** 

It was cold, maybe in the twenties, with a weak but very steady wind.
Tree wasn't really dressed for the weather, but the clothes that he 
wore were all that he had. 

His jeans had been patched at the knees more than once and there were
holes in the crotch area where his legs rubbed together, even now. 

He wore an old army surplus m-65 jacket without a liner. He was wearing
an old brown blanket as a cloak over it, but the blanket wasn't 
wool—some cotton and polyester thingy he'd scavenged—and it was worn 
thin to boot. The soles on his work boots were coming loose and finding 
new boots or a good cobbler seemed equally improbable. 

Tree spotted a place where a big overpass on the interstate had
collapsed. It seemed to have created an artificial cave, hemmed-in on 
three sides and partially blocked from the front too. 

“Let's check that out,” Tree said. “We need to get out of the wind.” 

“It won't do no good, unless we get some grub soon,” The big black man
said. His name was Jordan. 

“The cold will kill us quicker,” Tree said. 

“Armed men waiting in ambush could kill us quicker yet,” Steele
observed. 

So they went into the bunker as if they were doing a house-clearing
exercise, but there was no one inside. That was just as well, since 
they had less than a hundred rounds of ammo between them. 

They might have been cold and exhausted and weakened by a very sparse
diet over a long time period, but they'd learned how to work together 
as a well-oiled team. 

Jordan and Steel moved some pieces of concrete to further block the
front of the bunker. Then they scavenged for firewood. 

Tree used a wrench and broke three seats loose from some of the cars
stranded and long since abandoned on the highway. He worked with 
practiced efficiency. He pried open each glove-box and trunk with a 
small pry-bar while he was at it. 

He turned up an old cargo pad and lots of miscellaneous paper that would
be good for tinder. Miracle of miracles—someone had went off and left a 
Smith and Wesson Snub-nose .38 and a box of ammo in one of the 
glove-boxes. 

Why someone would abandon a perfectly good Weapon was beyond him.
Perhaps the old lady was driving the old man's car when it stopped and 
she didn't believe in Guns. 

Tree shrugged. He'd never know. He wasn't even too disappointed to find
the box half empty. 

Jordan helped Tree bring the three car seats into the bunker. They may
have been too short for Tree and Jordan to lie down to sleep with any 
degree of comfort—but they could sit comfortably without being on the 
cold ground. They were also perfectly capable of sleeping while seated, 
since they'd become used to very rough living for a long time now. 

They also had several floor mats of both rubber and carpeting, to spread
wherever they might do the most good. 

They had two ancient cans of spam and a can of porkin' beans to share
between them. They warmed the cubed spam and the beans together over 
the small fire and placed a very precise measure of the ersatz soup 
into each man's canteen cup. 

Since the roof was so high, ventilation was of no concern so long as
they didn't make the fire unreasonably large. Tree wouldn't have minded 
turning the bunker into a sweat lodge, but the paucity of good 
clean-burning firewood would keep their fire modest. 

“Well, that's the last of the grub,” Steel noted. 

“Are you going hunting later?” He asked Tree. 

Tree nodded affirmative. He could move through the woods like a ghost
without the other two tagging along. And he would leave the 1903A3 
Springfield—that he only had seven shots for anyway—and his small pack. 


He didn't like to be separated from his gear, but things were very
tenuous at the moment. He could move faster and farther without the 
gear and if he didn't score something soon, they'd be in a very grave 
situation. None of them had any fat reserves left to draw on. 

Steele handed Tree almost half of his meager share of the food. 

“Think of it as an investment,” he told Tree. 

Tree hated to, but his hunger made it too hard to refuse. He ate the
soup Steel had given him and paused to savor his meal and the warmth 
briefly, before throwing himself back into the maelstrom. 

He drew the Ruger six-and-a-half inch .357/9mm Blackhawk Convertible. He
had the 9mm cylinder in, because that was the only ammo that he had for 
the Gun. 

He liked his Guns shiny and he almost always put some sort of custom
grip on them: Stag, Horn, Bone, Pearl or at least an exotic wood. 

The Ruger had been scavenged and while he valued it's ability to digest
a wide range of ammo—.357, .38 Special, .38 Super and 9mm, it wasn't 
truly supposed to, but it would even fire the old .38 S&W 
Cartridge—though one wasn't likely to see much of that old obscure 
cartridge in dire straits. 

But he'd have preferred the four-and five-eighths inch barrel—the Gun
seemed too big for its power level—but it was what had come to hand. 

He removed the cylinder and shook the six 9mm cartridges into his hand.
He had seven more in a pocket. He gathered the thirteen cartridges into 
his hand and gestured to Jordan, who carried a beat-up Browning 
Hi-Power. 

“They're only jacketed hardball,” Tree apologized as he handed them to
Jordan. 

“What about you man? You're the one going out into harm's way.” 

“I got these,” Tree said as he loaded the .357 cylinder with the +P 158
grain .38 Special cartridges. 

He found that he had two full loads for the big Gun, five in the little
hideout and another five for it. He had three of the .38 +P cartridges 
left over. He handed them to Steel who carried a six-inch Smith and 
Wesson Model 19. 

Ammo was scarce and valuable enough that Steele was grateful, even for
three extra rounds. 

************** ****************** ***************** 

Tree had a thirty-pound bow that his father had bought him. It was heavy
enough for small game, which was all Tree reasonably expected to 
encounter. 

He could have killed a deer with the bow, should the situation arise.
For that matter, he could have killed an elk or moose with it too, but 
elk and moose weren't realistic possibilities in that area. 

He shot a rabbit not twenty paces from the friend's bunker. 

A winter rabbit would be lean, though perhaps not as lean as an early
spring rabbit. At any rate, it wouldn't go far between the friends. 

Most serious Survival experts laughed at the improbable tales of Tom
Brown. Tree didn't think much of the man either, but he'd picked a 
couple useful ideas out of the man's ravings. 

Pick one woods animal and study it incessantly. When you really know
almost everything about it, you will also know a lot about the plants 
and animals that it eats as well as the animals that prey upon it. 

Brown said that he'd studied the wood-mouse. Tree had little use for
field mice and he wasn't a pure naturalist interested in myriad trivia. 


He'd picked the possum to study. Possums are plentiful. They're not
particularly hard to hunt. They're big enough to make a hearty meal for 
a small family. 

Tree couldn't pull possums out of his rear-end when there weren't any,
but he could find a possum in a half hour, in places many naturalists 
would swear that there were no possums anywhere for miles around. 

Tree had a big possum within a couple hours and he hadn't even had to
risk an arrow to kill it. He hadn't gotten started back good, when he 
ran across a couple more. Things were starting to look up a little. 

Then Tree noticed a big black Dog following him. It had long ears like a
Bloodhound, but Tree had never heard of a black Bloodhound. 

The Dog undoubtedly smelled the blood on Tree and he was obviously
hungry. Tree could see every rib on the big Dog's chest. 

The Dog had more meat on him than the three possums and the rabbit put
together—but Tree had promised himself that he'd never eat a Dog. It 
wasn't that he was squeamish about the flesh. It was a matter of 
respect for Dogs. They were too high an order of being to be eaten. 

On the other hand, Tree had no intention of being eaten by a big Dog
either. He didn't think that the big Dog would attack him though—but he 
kept a watchful eye on the Dog just in case. 

Tree reached a decision. He squatted on his heels and rummaged through
his battered pack. He dug out the rabbit. He hadn't gutted the rabbit 
yet, because the entrails would make great bait for traps. 

Tree reached inside the rabbit and extracted its liver. He pitched it at
the big Dog. The Dog ran away, but came back shortly. He smelled the 
liver suspiciously and then gulped it down. 

He threw the Dog the heart and lungs. Tree liked rabbit liver and heart,
but he didn't eat the lungs. When the Dog gulped down that, tree threw 
him the kidneys. He didn't eat kidneys either. 

The big Dog ate the head and the entrails in short order. He'd
thoroughly crushed the skull between his great jaws before swallowing. 
Tree hoped there were no bad prions in the rabbit brain—at least no 
prions that were bad for Dogs. 

Finally Tree tossed him the body of the rabbit one quarter at a time. 

“There's nothing left but the hide,” Tree told the Dog. 

He walked away leaving the hide behind. Tree had never learned to remove
the delicate rabbit skin without tearing it. He'd given up and simply 
accepted that the hide would come off in several ragged pieces. 

The big Dog quickly finished the ragged fragments of the hide and took
out after Tree. 

Tree drew the big Ruger and watched the Dog warily. He seemed friendly
enough. He crouched down and wagged his tail when he drew close to 
Tree. He sniffed the fingers of Tree's left hand while Tree aimed the 
Revolver at his head. 

The Dog licked Tree's hand several times and before Tree could say,
“Yay! Nay! Or Hey!” the big Dog leapt upon him and licked his face. 

When Tree came walking in with three big possums, a quart of American
Beauty Berries and a giant black Dog, the others merely dig a double 
take and shrugged. 

************** ****************** **************** 

Perhaps it was that big dinner of fat roasted possum and cattail roots
that caused Tree to sleep so fitfully. 

As he awoke, for a moment Tree had a feeling of duality. He was both
lying asleep in the middle of an odd artificial place's simulated road 
and he was asleep in the bunker—but not around the fire where the other 
two drowsed, but way back in the back. 

He chose to wake in the bunker. He had to return there eventually. 

Might as well be now, Tree thought. 

********************* ************** ************* 

“Why are you sleeping back there?” Jordan shouted. He was laughing
uproariously. 

“I'm not sleeping,” Tree said. 

“What are you doing back there then,” Jordan said in a tone that implied
that he was playing along with a good joke. 

“Whacking fair on all these gifts that I've brought you,” Tree
responded. 

It was no longer a joke when Tree came out and handed Jordan a new
custom Scout Rifle in .308 that had been built on a small Mauser 
action. 

He also had a brand new Browning Hi-Power for Jordan and a S&W Model 19
with a six-inch barrel like Steele's. Both the Handguns were built to 
Tree's often-stated preference for Bright Nickel and Stag grips. 

He had an S&W Model 28—a bigger, sturdier framed .357 for Steel,
six-inch like his first .357. He also had a Bright Nickeled S&W 39 for 
Steel—it was a lightweight 9mm. It only held 8+1, but it would let the 
man use 9mm ammo, should that be the only ammo available. 

The Rifle he gave Steele was a twin to Jordan's. 

Jordan had been getting along with a really tired M-16 and Steel had
been using a beat-up SKS. 

There was much more—warm wool clothing all-around, a nice wool blanket
for each man, a new ALICE pack, an unused Western Bowie, a razor-sharp 
Buck lock-back, a straight razor and mini-strop for shaving. 

There was new boots for everyone, more ammo than any of them could
carry, concentrated food, vitamins, first-aid stuff and drugs—including 
aspirin. 

They sat down to roast a huge fat ham over their fire—and they each had
their own fruitcake for afterward. 

“Where did all this stuff come from?” Steele demanded. 

“Don't really know. All I can tell you is that I dreamed about all this
stuff very vividly and then a voice told me that it would show me how 
to take it back with me. Weird,” Tree said. 

“Can you do it again?” 

“I think so, maybe. But since I have no idea when or how that I can do
it again, if ever—We better use this stuff wisely.” 

“Where is your Dog?” Steele asked. 

“Did one of you let him out?” Tree asked. 

“No,” They both answered at once. 

“Well I didn't. How did he get passed that barricade without whoever was
on guard seeing it? It would be a hellacious climb for a Dog, even a 
giant Dog like him,” Tree said. 

“I wonder,” Tree said. 

“What?” Jordan asked. 

“The Bible says to be hospitable and to share with guests. It says that
many people have entertained Angels that way unaware... 

“But I never heard tell of an Angel taking the form of a Dog...” 

“All Dogs are Angels, put here to watch over us,” Jordan opined. 

“Non-sense. Tree cached all this stuff here and then led us here to
retrieve it,” Steele said. “And I must say, he should have led us here 
much sooner. Damn, we've almost starved or gotten killed due to lack of 
ammo a dozen times, while he's being clever.” 

“First off, this roadway didn't fall till after the collapse. Why would
I stash all this stuff under an overpass before the collapse? 

“Assuming that I somehow accumulated all this stuff, since the
collapse—when was I away from you two long enough to stash it?” Tree 
argued. 

“Well then, Steele temporized, you stumbled on someone else's cache.
I'll even give you this: maybe you did it while sleep-walking.” 

“We checked this bunker out. Come with me to look. There aren't any
signs of digging,” Tree said. 

They all crowded into the rear of the bunker to look. As Tree had told
them, there were no signs of digging, or secret passages or whatever. 

When they went back into the front part of the impromptu bunker, they
all stared in open-eyed amazement. 

Jordan frantically dug into his pack and got out his journal. 

“I had lost count of the days, but it is friends... 

“Today is Christmas morning...” Jordan said as his voice trailed off. 

There in the front of the bunker, someone had managed to erect a
Christmas tree with an old-fashioned crèche in the ten minutes—probably 
less—that they'd been gone. 

It was covered with old-fashioned ornaments and candles in special
holders—as they'd done before they'd had electricity. 

There was a single Christmas card taped to the wall. 

“Merry Christmas friends!” was all it said. 

The signature—in the same Gold-Leaf as the rest of the Message was a
Giant paw-print. 


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