Monster of the Apocalypse Read Free

sarcasm. By the time they had made the next hundred miles, Lecti was pretty sure that Toshi had caused some sort of problem in whatever group of people she was involved with, and was probably forced to leave. In fact, Lecti suspected that Toshi was a terminal troublemaker. Several things that she said led Lecti to conclude that a change of scenery for Toshi was nothing unusual. The fact that she seduced Deo within the first few days didn’t help.
    Within a mile of his becoming upset with Lecti, Deo stopped and waited for her to catch up. They were back, pointing out interesting things to each other again. As the day warmed and they tired, they became quiet and spoke less. Thoughts of the past invaded Lecti’s thoughts.
    She missed her father and frequently found him in her thoughts. Mother had disappeared shortly after they had wandered into Roseburg when Lecti was five. She had gone out to work a field crop with a party of women, close to term with Lecti and Deo’s younger sibling, and had not returned. It was not an accident of childbirth. That much Lecti knew. When her father and several other men left to search, they did not take shovels to bury a body. They took weapons. They went out to attempt a rescue and came home with nothing. Were there a trail to follow, Lecti knew her father would not have come back until they had returned together.
    Her father took his responsibilities to his children seriously. He comforted them and answered questions as well as he could, never avoiding them, though it sometimes pained him tremendously. Even at a tender age, Lecti realized this and didn’t ask much or often. Sometimes she could not contain her curiosity or her sense of loss or loneliness. Deo never asked much, but he listened intensely.
    Father had never been tempted to take another wife. Women in the community recognized him as a potential mate for themselves, their sisters and even their daughters. He was encouraged by other men. He said it wasn’t in him, and when the community declared their mother dead, he became and stayed a widower.
    The community was led by a man and woman that survived the plagues as one of the very few existing pre-plague couples. They gathered people to them like a garden attracts life.
    Early on the community began practicing polygamy under the guidance of this kind octogenarian with a long beard and a longer staff. It was not a religious practice as much as a practical one. A woman was beaten to death by her husband, a match made when her first choice was married to another. The leader’s wife spoke up, noting that in this new world some men were better suited to be husbands and fathers than others and that women or their children should not be forced into accepting men that could not, or would not, provide them a safe and loving home. It being a small community, and the elderly couple being well respected, the discussion was short. Once it was decided that first wives had to agree, and no woman would be forced to accept polygamy, and that a woman must be old enough to make that decision on her own, the practice was reluctantly accepted.
    The sister of the beating victim had stuck a knife in her brother-in-law’s chest. It had been ruled a justifiable act. She had been living unwed, with her sister and her sister’s husband, and now stood up and in a loud clear voice proposed marriage to a man and his wife that had no inkling of her interest. The man, startled, looked to his wife. His wife made the decision. There were two other proposals over the next week, including a woman that was married to a man that drank too much and a woman that had been cheated on. Three marriages in a week, it was a good start.
    It was becoming a custom to wed couples under the spreading branches of the huge tree in front of the old city office building. A new kind of ceremony, developed under the many limbs, somehow seemed appropriate.
    As the population grew, accidents and disease took their toll. Situations