Harmonic: Resonance (17 page)

***

After breakfast, Haley passed a note, asking if she could come with us to the ridge to search for her parents, and neither of us could find it in us to refuse her. Powell took the rifle while Haley and I took turns with the binoculars, scanning the yard and sweeping the lineup as far as was in focus through the glass.

The train arrived empty and left filled to capacity with those brought out from the buildings. Those at the front of the lineup shuffled forward, filtered through the gates, and spread out across the yard. I scanned each of the new faces in the camp before handing the binoculars to Haley.

A while later I felt her tug at my shirt. She handed the binoculars back to me and pointed down at the column of people. I traced the line through the glass but couldn’t see what she wanted me to.

“What did you see?” I asked.

She flipped to a new leaf in her notepad and wrote in large letters—
Kyle
.

“Kyle?”

Haley nodded, took the binoculars, and scanned the line, lowering them every few seconds to make notes on her pad. She handed the pad and binoculars to me.

He’s in the lineup, just behind the man in the red shirt and cowboy hat.

I followed the column, studying each group for the man in the red shirt. The man she had described now stuck out like a plastic buoy in dark water. I continued tracing the line back from Haley’s beacon, slowly and meticulously studying each group, and there they were—Kyle, Kate, and Owen.

I relayed Haley’s instructions to Powell and waited. A smile spread across his face. “Sean and Sarah are there too, and Sam and Abby. We found them.”

“Do
you
want to tell her?” I asked.

He touched Haley’s shoulder and told her to look past the lineup at the group sitting on the ground just behind Kyle. I gave her the binoculars and surely gave away the surprise with an uncontrollable smile.

When she saw them, she bounced on the spot and then threw her arms around me.

“So now what?” Powell asked.

“I don’t know. Do you think that we should go down there?”

“The train has already been and gone. They’re not going anywhere today or tomorrow by the rate they’re moving people through. We should wait a while and think about what we’re doing,” Powell said. His tone held a note of caution.

“What do you think is going to happen?” I asked.

“Do you have any ID on you?”

I shook my head.

“Me neither. If they catch us down there, they might put us in with the N.L.D. With all that
civil disobedience will not be tolerated
stuff, we might not be able to leave. Without ID, we have no way of proving who we are. We might as well tell them we’re Bonnie and Clyde.”

“So what do you think we should do?” I asked.

“Maybe wait until dark—one of us stay with Haley and the other go down and let Sean and Sarah know where we are. They might want us to bring Haley down to them; they might want us to wait. Hopefully, they can let us know what’s going on down there,” he said.

“Hopefully they know more than we do.”

***

We surveyed the camp—the column of people as they sat or shuffled along, and the soldiers as they worked to repair vehicles and equipment. From our position, we couldn’t hear the generators, but we could see the spotlights growing bright as the generators were brought back to life. As the sun set behind a distant ridge, the people gathered around campfires for warmth.

The spotlights bathed the area with yellow light, turning the airborne dust into a luminous fog and striping the plains between long, moving shadows that swelled from the feet of the stragglers searching for something to burn. Beyond the falloff of generated light, the campfires created a glowing trail that shrank to a line in the darkness. Closer to the gates, the bright yellow smoke from each fire plumed and connected over each group to form a series of ghostly archways, supporting the dissipating canopy above.

Our plan to wait for nightfall no longer held any advantage. Anything within the reach of the spotlights shone like a beacon, and each of the long shadows narrowed like an arrow, pointing at the feet of each of those glowing beacons. The cloak of darkness had been removed, and with it, so had our chance of reaching Sean and Sarah without being seen.

“What now?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t get to them without attracting attention from the soldiers. I can’t come from the back of the lineup either. People will think I’m trying to skip ahead—I’ll get lynched,” Powell said.

“What if I go down there and say I’m looking for my family?” I asked.

“I’d like to think people would be decent and understanding, but I don’t believe it. Besides, if the soldiers catch you trying to leave the lineup, then we’ll be in an even worse position.”

“We could wait for another power surge,” I said. “One of us could make our way down to the plains tomorrow, while it’s still light, and I guess, just wait until the power goes out again.”

Powell looked at me. “Could be a long wait.”

“What other choices do we have?” I asked.

“You’re right. I’ll go down there, and you stay with Haley.”

Before I could explain the frown on my face, he added, “If I get stuck in the lineup, Haley has a better chance with you.”

The flitting thought of leaving Haley quickly disassembled my rebuttal. “Okay, but what if you
do
get stuck?”

“If you see me get stopped or stuck, wait until morning, then find a working vehicle, and take Haley back to your house. As soon as I can get away, I’ll head back to you.”

It seemed impossible to weigh the consequences against any possible gains, but the plan itself was simple—wait for the next power surge, wait for Powell to make contact, and hope he and the others would come back to us. If anything went wrong, Haley and I would begin our journey home and pray we would see Powell, Sean, and Sarah again.

We explained the plan to Haley without explaining the risks, only that if Powell gave the signal for us to leave, then we would do so, and he and her parents would meet us at home.

She struggled to write with only the light from the moon. The scrawled message asked why we had to wait for the blackout.

“People might think I’m trying to jump ahead in the lineup and get mad at me for it,” he said, leaving out the innumerable other threats and concerns.

Haley sat for a moment, locked in her own thoughts, and then she nodded solemnly.

Powell gave her hand a squeeze and asked, “How’s the book?”

Haley’s face changed as though controlled by a switch. She smiled and scribbled in her pad.

Powell leaned in close to read the message. “Good, and you’re very welcome. Maybe we can find some more books for you on our way home.”

The look she gave me was one I’d seen before when she had asked if Powell was my boyfriend. I smiled back at her, similarly comforted by the loving, lullaby quality of the word
home
.

***

The cans simmering on the grill had all come from Powell’s pack. He said he needed to pare down and reduce the pack’s weight for the arduous return climb, but part of me wondered if it was to preserve what food Haley and I had left, for
our
return journey, if Powell failed to make it back. The meal was big enough to feed double our number, and while we ate, I couldn’t help but think it might be the last time the three of us would eat together.

After breakfast, we returned to the ridge and settled in the shade beneath the trees. Haley postponed her adventure with a group of siblings and a talking lion and raised the binoculars to her eyes.

“So what are we going to do when this is over?” Powell asked, as he searched through the scope for a safe route down to the plains below.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know anything about farming or gardening?” he asked.

“Oh ...” I started.

“What did you think I meant?” Powell asked with a smirk.

“I thought you were asking me out on a date,” I said with a smirk of my own.

“What would you say if I did?” he asked and turned to face me.

Haley dropped the binoculars into her lap and tugged impatiently at Powell’s shirt, pointing down at the camp.

“What is it?” He brought the rifle up and put his eye to the scope.

While Powell panned the rifle from left to right, Haley scribbled in her pad and then turned it to face me.
There are animals in the camp and the army are shooting at them.

I frowned at her message. “What's happening? She says there are animals down there.”

“I don’t know
what
they are. They’re just shapes, shadows. The people in the camp are running scared, they’re going crazy.” His frantic tone trailed off to a whisper. “What the …”

“They’re shooting people.”

“What? Why?” As I took the binoculars from Haley’s lap, I heard the delayed report of gunfire.

“They rushed the gate and soldiers opened fire,” he said in disbelief.

“They’re shooting people in the lineup? Are Sean and Sarah—”

Powell interjected. “They’re not shooting people in the lineup. The people aren’t rushing the gate to get
in
. It’s the people in the camp trying to get
out
. They’re being shot for trying to escape.”

Through the glass, the crowd was a blur, turning in every direction amid swirls of kicked up dust. I fumbled at the focus wheel to widen my view and watched the crowd part, dissipate, and regroup like a school of fish sharing the water with a predator. At the camp, the soldiers were backing away with their weapons trained on the fence. The brief burst of light from each muzzle was translated a second later as an echoing
crack, crack, crack.
The wall of people inside the camp slumped against the bulging mesh, while others clambered over the dead, climbed the fence, and fell limp before reaching the barbed wire. Through the blur of tears, I watched the dirt around the camp’s perimeter darken with the blood of the trampled dead.

“What are they doing? Why aren’t they trying to get away from the soldiers?” I cried.

“They’re trying to get away from whatever those
things
are, and whatever they are, they’re worse than being shot.”

I wiped my eyes and returned to the chaos inside the camp. I caught sight of dark shapes darting between people as they ran, trampling and falling over each other to get away. The
animals
were unclear. Some were nothing more than distortions in space, and others gave the impression of stalking cats or their pouncing shadows. My heart thumped quickly in my chest, and my eyes began to sting with tears.

“It’s madness. What are they?” I cried.

“It’s the next wave,” Powell said. “Take Haley and go back to the house. I’m going to get the others.”

“What? You can’t go down there,” I blurted.

“Whatever they are, they’re going to manifest here the same way the dead did. Right now, they don’t seem to be inflicting anything but panic. That is going to change. We have to move
now
.”

“I’m not leaving you,” I said.

He took a hold of my shoulders. “I’ll grab the others and get the hell out of there. Take Haley and try to find a vehicle that works and meet us back at the van.”

He took the shotgun from his pack and strapped the rifle in its place. “Take this and use it if you have to. If we’re not there by the time you’ve transferred the supplies from the van, don’t wait, just leave, and we’ll meet you back at the house.”

“I’m scared, Powell,” I said.

“I’m scared too, but we have to do this now. Grab your stuff and go.” He pulled on his pack, got to his feet, and began his descent, scrambling and hanging onto tree limbs as he climbed and slid down and out of sight. I took Haley by the arm and told her to follow me and that everything would be okay. Though my tone was unreadable to her eyes, my expression surely exposed the blatant lie.

32 | Jack and Jill ...

Between the van that still held our supplies and the place we had chosen as our vantage point over the camp, there had been no working or serviceable vehicles. Our only choice was to continue on, following the road up and around the cliff—past the camper we had used to shelter us against the cold night air and farther along the lifeless road. For every few hundred yards traveled came the reward of another wreckage, although most were dismissed at a glance. Of the vehicles that passed visual inspection, some were missing keys, and the rest made no effort to obey the key when turned.

We came upon a truck, the same make and model as my father’s. The keys hung from the ignition, and even with the hood up, some sentimental part of me took it as a sign from my dad, and I allowed myself to hope. I climbed up onto the driver’s seat and turned the key. Nothing happened. My hopes and my heart sank. For a minute, I sat, leaned forward with my head against the steering wheel with my eyes closed. When I opened them again, Haley was there, standing at the open door with a joyless, sympathetic smile, a reminder of my lie that
everything would be okay
.