Arkadium Rising (16 page)

"No, I'm betting it'll be dark for some time. Have you guys taken stock? Secured your water?"

"We're working on it."

Marcus nodded, clasped his hands behind his back, and walked over to the sliding door leading to the backyard. Jason didn't have anything to add, but he knew Marcus wanted him here to take mental notes for his next entry in the New History.

"I hope you're doing the same."

"Yeah, we're heading out to Cherrington," Marcus said, turning to face RJ. "We've got family there."

"Because I'm pretty sure that was an electromagnetic pulse—a high kiloton nuclear device detonated in the upper atmosphere."

"You hear that, Jason? We are in the presence of an educated young man." Marcus somehow made it sound like an insult.

"It might not destroy all electrical circuits," RJ continued, unperturbed, "but it could be months, if not years before things get back to normal."

"That whole back-to-normal thing? Yeah, that's not going to happen. Today is the most normal day we'll experience the rest of our lives. Same could be said for tomorrow. We've been blasted back into the Stone Age; most people just don't know it yet. When they do, they'll act like humans do, and it'll be a regression to the mean, so to speak." Marcus paused, flashing a witty smile. "If you want to know my plans, boy, they are the same as everyone left alive: to survive. And I will do whatever it takes to see those plans through, if you know what I mean."

"Why are you here?" RJ pressed, his voice sounding so small coming from someone his size.

Marcus looked ready to cut the charade and assert whatever dominance he felt in the given circumstances. His fists were tensing, relaxing, tensing again. RJ stood firm, returning Marcus's glare.

"Marcus, maybe we should—" Jason was cut off when someone pounded on the front door.

Marcus immediately hurried from the kitchen, reaching the door just before Kylie. "I'll get it if you don't mind."

"It might be my dad!"

"Sure, but it might not be." Marcus unsheathed his knife and arched one eyebrow. "Best to just let me keep us safe, darlin'."

Kylie was about to say something but thought better of it. RJ put his arm around her and made her step away from the door.

"Marcus… wait." Jason knew what the coolness in his brother's eyes meant; things could escalate quickly. Everyone was in danger, including himself, if he didn't intervene.

"Safety first, brother!" Marcus gave him a wink and then opened the door. "Why, hello, neighbor!"

"Hi… we're wondering if you've seen…"

Jason caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man dressed in jeans and a brown button-down shirt. He held a hunting rifle, pointed down, that he tried to bring to firing height when he recognized Marcus.

"Oh no!" Marcus cried out in feigned horror.

Caught by surprise, the man sputtered and nearly fumbled the rifle to the ground. In one fluid motion Marcus closed the gap between them, took hold of the rifle stock, and closed the door behind him. The last thing Jason saw was the terrified look in the man's eyes.

Jason rushed to the narrow window next to the door and peered out. The man was already at his brother's feet. Despite his fingers twitching at his throat and his frightened blinking, he was for all practical purposes already dead as dark fluid streamed from a ribbon-thin wound at his neck.

Marcus calmly picked up the man's rifle, aimed it at the ground and fired.

"Oh my God!" Kylie screamed.

As a whole, the group gathered in the living room, ducked, and scrambled back from the window, cursing and praying in equal measure. RJ's sister—either Donna or Dawn, Jason couldn't remember—ran from the room down a short hallway.

"Forgive us, O Lord!" Linda Dwyer rocked herself from her huddled position in front of the couch. "For our sins are plentiful!"

Marcus noticed he had an audience of one and looked at Jason with a mad gleam in his eye. He hefted his knife as if just remembering it was in his grasp, and without looking away from him, drove the knife into his left shoulder.

"Oh God…" Marcus called out, his voice shaky, frightened. So very different from the conniving strength in his eyes. He winced when he pulled the knife from his shoulder, but just barely. He tapped his fingertips against the front door. "Help me!"

"What happened?" Delaney shoved in next to Jason and saw her beloved weakly knocking on the door. "Oh, no, Marcus!"

She bumped into Jason so hard she nearly knocked him to the floor, but she soon had the door open and Marcus fell into her arms.

"Are you shot? Dear God, not this. Not now!"

Blood flowed from the open wound. Delaney placed her hands over it, at first gently and then with more force. Marcus cried out in pain and his head swayed with dizziness.

"Here, let me inspect the wound." Mandy rushed to Marcus's side and unslung her backpack. "Move your hands, dear…" She unzipped her pack. "Delaney, I need to see the extent of the damage."

"Yeah, right, sorry."

"It's not a bullet wound," Jason said.

"It's not?" Delaney said.

"No, it's a puncture wound."

"He's right." Mandy brought her eyes close to the wound and pressed her fingers around the seeping edge, inspecting it in the uncertain light. "Straight in, straight out."

Marcus gave Jason a quick glance that only he would see and understand.

Tread lightly, brother. Tread like your life depends on it.

"Yeah, that's what I saw. It was all a blur, really. A total blur."

"This is going to sting something fierce, Marcus." Mandy created a divot in a thick gauze pad and then filled it with several powders from different pouches from her homemade med kit.

"What is it?" Jason asked.

"A little of everything. Cayenne to staunch the bleeding, some yarrow root, oregano…" She pressed the poultice against the wound, and then wrapped a bandage around his upper arm to keep it in place. "Don't let that slip."

"Sounds like you're prepping me to be the main course," Marcus said through clenched teeth. "Don't forget the dumplings."

"Quiet, you," Mandy said. From her calm efficiency, she had practiced long and hard for moments such as these.

Marcus looked around at the people surrounding him, judging their reactions. "He said… he said he wanted our supplies. He saw my knife and brought his rifle stock down on my hand. And then I guess instinct took over."

"You did what you had to." RJ sat down on his haunches next to Marcus and placed his hand on his uninjured shoulder. He glanced at the dead body on the front steps, and when he looked back at Marcus, he looked queasy. "Thank you, Marcus. That had to be difficult."

Marcus looked down at his hands, appearing to choke up a little. "Like I said, whatever it takes."

"I better get you some water!" Linda Dwyer said.

"I'd appreciate it," Marcus said, allowing his voice to crack.

A door opened and shut and then Dawn (or was it Donna?) raced into the room. She had a satchel slung diagonally across her chest and a 12-gauge shotgun held waist-high.

"Did I miss it? Where is he?" She noticed first Marcus sprawled on the floor, and then his bloody wound, before finally seeing the dead body on the front steps, his throat surgically sliced from ear to ear. Her face twisted and then she handed the shotgun over to her brother. She sprinted into the kitchen and vomited in the sink.

Jason was the only one present who saw through Marcus's façade. He backed away from his brother, from RJ and Kylie, who were making sure Donna (or was it Dawn?) was all right. Linda looked crazed, Mandy concerned. Eldon looked like a man who had lost his way.

"Time for some more Merlot!" Monique got up with a couple of shambling steps and headed for the kitchen.

Jason went out the front door, doing his best to not see the bloody mess. He needed fresh air. He needed to
breathe
.

When he reached the thick carpet of grass, he noticed the sky above the woods was a bright yellow. Smoke billowed like the breath of a dozen dragons. He heard the crackling of fire and the panicked calls as frightened birds flew overhead. Wind gusted in over the trees, bringing with it the unmistakable smell of burning wood.

"Guys…" he said, still staring in awe at the fire. “Guys…" Jason snapped out of it and rushed back to the doorway and looked inside.

Mandy was busy gathering up her med kit. Delaney was still at Marcus's side, looking at him adoringly. Marcus saw Jason. "What is it, Jason? What's wrong?"

"We need to get out of here. Now!"

1.

The fire in the stone hearth had gone out in the middle of the night, allowing a slow creeping chill to invade the one-room cabin. Jerry Hackford woke at dawn, shivering, with stubborn sleep grit in the corner of his eye. He rubbed at it until it was gone, sending sparks across his vision. As had often been the case since he and Elena retreated to the woods, he'd been crying in his sleep. He pulled himself to the side of the bed, his bones aching and his beard a tangled mess. He stretched his arms above his head and felt a knot loosen midway up his spine. His bare feet searched for slippers that weren't there. His mind was so foggy that he'd forgotten how much they'd left behind eight months and two days… no, make that three days ago. Eight months and three days. Would he ever forget that tragic anniversary?

When he stood he stared for some time at Elena's slight outline under the lightweight sheet, hoping just his mental prodding would get her to stir. No such luck.

Jerry leaned over, tucked the sheet over her shoulder and brushed a gentle kiss on her graying head. He wanted to smile, but it seemed like he'd forgotten how.

Dawn's tepid light fought to warm the cabin's interior. The sun was at just the right angle to reveal the gaps in the log walls. Jerry was lonely without his wife's company, but he was glad she wasn't awake to point out his deficiencies as a carpenter. He'd built the hunting cabin ten years ago on the sliver of land left to him by a great uncle he'd never met. He'd only intended to use it for the few times a year he went chasing after whitetail with his two sons, Cameron and Scott. The accommodations were
supposed
to be rough. At the time, he'd considered the army surplus cots and the roof itself a luxury over sleeping on the unforgiving forest floor.

They'd had a few good years here, he and his sons. They'd come to this sliver of land abutting the state park until Cam declared himself a vegetarian after falling in love with a girl who thought PETA was some kind of almighty religion. He was never the outdoors-type anyway. Cam had gotten an advanced degree in mathematics—a field of study Jerry couldn't wrap his mind around—before moving to Washington DC to work for a political think-tank that switched party affiliations whenever the mood struck. Politics, mathematics, heck, even vegetarianism—Jerry sometimes wondered how he could create a child so dissimilar to himself.

Scott, who looked like a carbon-copy of Jerry in his younger days, lasted a good while longer. They'd both bagged their limit the November before last. And then Scott enlisted in the Marines when he turned eighteen, making Jerry and Elena both incredibly proud and scared.

Eight months and three days ago Scott's Black Hawk helicopter crashed just outside of Mosul, Iraq. Their pride and fear became anger and rage, loneliness and depression. Then came the blur of hosting their son's funeral, dealing with the insurance company, and facing Scott's boyhood bedroom that had in an instant become a museum. Life only started to make sense again after he and Elena decided to take a sabbatical from life. The cabin, off the grid and in the middle of nowhere, would be their refuge. Sure, they both missed Cameron, but it's not like they'd spoken much in the last several years. Besides, he knew where they were.

Jerry pulled on his bib overalls and his work boots as he looked at his wife. "I'm gonna chop some wood. When I get back I'll put on some coffee and make us up some griddle cakes." He tried his damnedest to sound cheerful. "Sound good, hon?"

He waited a beat, but she didn't respond. He sighed, not ready for the fight he knew was on the horizon. Everyone had their own schedules for dealing with death. He brushed his fingers through his beard, flattening it to his chest, ready to start his day. When he stepped outside the sunlight blasted him with its intensity. He didn't understand how it could be so cold inside the cabin. He chuckled to himself. Maybe he wasn't as bad a carpenter as he thought.

He followed a narrow trail through a field of wild quinine and purple coneflower to his wood pile. While he had plenty of aged logs under his lean-to, he'd run down his stockpile of split stove-lengths a month ago, and hadn't been able to muster the energy to resupply it in the meantime. He retrieved his axe from the hook under the canted roof, careful not to touch the razor-sharp blade, and sidled over to the splitting post. His labors over the last several months had created a stubbled clearing in the prairie grass with the flat post at its center. He lifted a log onto the splitting post, tipping it on end. He measured his distance, hefted his axe, drawing it back with both arms. When he brought the axe down, he let gravity do most of the work. The log split with a satisfying splintering sound and fell in two chunks.

Within a couple of minutes he divided those two chunks into sixteen spindly stove-lengths. He stacked the wood on a couple of canvas straps, ready to cinch them up to carry back for the day's fuel, but then thought better of it, deciding he'd better let Elena sleep. He eyed the pile of logs and the empty space normally dedicated to stove-lengths, and then his splitting post. At that moment it looked so much like an altar, like his close proximity to it could somehow bring him deliverance.

He hefted his axe, his muscles already primed for the task.

That lean-to wasn't going to restock itself.

2.

"We should bury that man." Eldon Pointer could have been talking to himself. No one acknowledged him, just as no one had the dead man in their immediate thoughts. Everyone had gathered on the lawn in front of the Thompsons' estate, and everyone was staring at the golden corona wavering above the tree line. All but Eldon.