Harmonic: Resonance (24 page)

I was afraid to voice any doubt in the plan, in part because I didn’t want to believe such a now obvious oversight could have been made and also because what I was about to explain could strip us all of any remaining hope.

“Randall? We need to talk. I think we may have a problem,” I said.

I explained my fears to Randall and Gary, and my fears were realized in their expressions as they listened. I was not wrong. It had been an oversight, an expectation of a physical enemy. No allowance had been made for the stealthy ingress of a demonic scout beyond the reaches of physicality. With a house full of those
things
waiting on the verge of our world, we wouldn’t stand a chance—all of our preparation would have been for nothing.

“That’s why the soldiers were keeping them in the camps, holding the people in there as bait, so that
when
they manifested, they would have had somewhat of a chance against them,” I said, remembering Powell’s words.

Gary looked over at Randall. “So what now?”

Randall was staring down at the breakfast bar, at the latest play drawn in permanent marker over several sheets of paper. He shook his head.

“Pack animals prey on the weak, right?” I asked.

Gary looked up with a frown, not liking where I was going.

“They won’t find an easier meal than me. If I can draw them outside—”

“They’ll kill you,” Gary snapped.

“They’re going to kill us all anyway. At least this way, some of us might make it through,” I said.

“What about Haley? If they go after the
weakest
of the group, it’ll be the injured and the young.” Gary glared at me, but it wasn’t anger in his eyes.

“I’ll take her out with me,” I said.

“What? What exactly are you—”

“Listen,” I said, cutting Gary off. “We move the generator out into the middle of the wire and cut a path through the wire from the generator to the front door. I’ll hook up the wire to the generator and wait out there until the creatures materialize, then turn it on, and fry any that are touching it. Then it’s up to you and Randall to kill the rest.”

I looked over at Randall. “You said that the more of them that we can stop at the fences, the better chance we’ll have against the rest.”

“You can get enough power through the wire to kill them?” Randall asked.

“Enough to kill a
man
. If I can wire up several of the large tank capacitors, and if we can keep the system charged, then I can release it all at once on a switch. It’s a one-shot deal though, and after that, we may not have power or lights.”

“We can set up oil lamps as a backup for when the lights go out,” Gary said. “I don’t want to face those things in the dark.”

“Once it’s set up, all I have to do is wait in the middle of the web and flick the switch.”

“A fly waiting in the middle of a web, trying to catch a spider,” Randall said.

“Not
one
spider,” I said, “tens, maybe hundreds.”

42 | Superimposition

Beyond the initial reprieve, the creature sightings multiplied exponentially over the following days. Some of the creatures appeared now as more than mere shadows: bull or ox-like, but with long claws that made them all the more grandiose and imposing, terrifying in a way that not even the wildest
bull
ever could be. They moved on all fours, loping to a stop after short bursts of speed, rising up on hind legs to sniff at the air, trying to find the scent of their prey. While we worked to prepare, they stalked and circled around us, our world remaining out of reach, but readying itself to offer its
old
inhabitants as a sacrificial gift to the
new—
a gift to the successor of the throne at the top of the food chain.

Day by day, they became clearer, sharpening into focus, phasing into our world as our remaining time ticked and faded away. Time sculpted new layers of detail over the translucent form of our enemy—thick rope-like veins that patterned the surface of their thick, muscular necks and shoulders, protruding muzzles with viper-fish-like teeth longer than a human hand, curved horns to impale, and hooked talons to clamp onto, or into, flesh. These creatures seemed to have been made to catch, kill, and eat. They were hunters, demons, monsters. On hind legs, the brutish figures stood seven or eight feet tall with their forelegs seemingly functional as arms with built-in weapons to disembowel.

The mental collage, created previously by piecing together myriad translucent profiles, was terrifying. The emerging and evolving reality of what was slowly manifesting was far worse. The creatures became increasingly restless, flinching as they passed through the wire and obstacles in our world. I remembered the burns and shocks received from making physical contact with the N.L.D., for us
and
for them, and how the sensation grew stronger in the few days before the N.L.D. were declared
no-longer-dead
. The creatures were at our gates and would soon be upon us. They would not be expecting us to clothe them as the N.L.D. had, but they would be expecting us to
feed
them.

***

The stage, on which we would make our stand, was set, and all preparations for the fight had been made. Our final preparation was not for the coming battle, but for what would possibly be our final meal together. There’s nothing gourmet about non-perishable food, but Gary somehow fashioned a version of tuna casserole, using up one of the small, waxed cheese wheels we had agreed to save for a special occasion, sliced and layered with packaged pasta and canned tuna, and cooked in foil on the propane grill. Following the casserole was an assortment of canned fruit: peaches, pineapple, and pears. It all tasted better than anything I could remember. Afterward, we thanked Gary for the meal and said goodbye to each other in as many ways as we could without saying the word
goodbye
.

I retired to my bed to dream for possibly the last time in this world. Haley climbed into bed and curled up next to me, wrapping herself in my good arm. I kissed her forehead and pulled the cover up over her shoulders before blowing out the candle and letting the darkness consume the looming shadows.

***

I awoke to Randall standing in the open doorway, extending an oil lamp into the room. “Good morning,” he said, instinctively speaking in a low whisper so as not to wake the sleeping girl, although fully aware she could not be roused by sound. I wasn’t sure if he could see my face by the dim light of burning oil, but I offered a smile.

I pulled my arm from under Haley, pulled on my boots, and followed Randall out into the living room.

“Morning, Emily,” Gary said in a somber tone.

“Morning,” I said and offered him the same thin smile as the one he wore below worried eyes.

“You don’t have to do this. We can take our chances together,” Gary said.

Randall looked over at Gary, almost certainly thinking the same thing as me, that
together, we had no chance at all
, but he said nothing.

“We could put a few cans of tuna out there instead,” I said, hoping to break the tension.

Gary frowned.

“We all know that this is how it has to be. It’s what we’ve been preparing for. We’re out of time. They’re almost here,” I said.

Gary nodded and, in a defeated tone, asked, “Do you want some breakfast before you go out there?”

I shook my head. “I have everything I need waiting for me outside.”

Gary pulled the front door open, but before I could step outside, he put his arms around me. “Good luck, Emily.”

Randall joined us at the door. “May God be on our side,” he said.

“I hope so.” I moved away from Gary and into the preacher’s waiting arms. With my eyes closed, I prayed for Randall’s God to help us and to keep us safe.

“We’ll send Haley out when it’s time,” Gary said.

“We’ll be together again when this is all over,” I said and turned to the open door.

One look outside sent a quiver through my bladder and turned my legs to rubber. I closed my eyes to the writhing sea of death beyond the threshold, took a deep breath, and limped out into the morning sun with my face held upward to bask in its warmth.

I stopped a few feet from the door, opened my eyes, and let out a shaking breath as I lowered my gaze. They were all around me rushing in a frenzy, a chaotic melee of teeth and claws. The creatures lashed out at one another, pounced, grappled, and bit at one another, and all in absolute silence. For a moment, I stood, shaking, but frozen to the spot. I had stepped into Haley’s world—all but one of my senses described a vacuous hoax of serenity, while my eyes relayed a contradictory scene of erratic violence. For them, the war had already begun. They were fighting amongst themselves, battling for the scraps, for us.

They no longer seemed deterred by the burn or shock from objects in our world, perhaps they had grown accustomed to it, or accepted it as part of the bargain, the way a bear willingly suffers the sting of bees for the satisfaction of honey.

The thin path, edged on both sides with barbed wire, led to the generator. In front of the generator sat the makeshift bedding, blankets, food and water, ammunition for the 1911, and the bag containing what supplies I had packed for myself. The provisions were enough to keep my body going until the end, which would be hours, days, or perhaps still even weeks away. In the bag were the provisions needed to keep my heart and mind going. There was a photograph of Dad with his arms around Sam and me, the three of us standing together in front of Dad’s truck. I wondered who had taken the photo. It was long after my mother died, and we rarely had visitors at the house, or at least any that I could recall, although now, it all seemed so long ago. Any time before the first wave seemed like a lifetime ago. Perhaps it
was
another lifetime.

I started the generator then leaned on it for support as I lowered myself to the bedding. Standing at each side of the bedding were layers of rubber mat, tied in place to act as insulation against the wire and to prevent accidental contact when the switch was thrown. While lying on my side, the rubber walls provided shade from the sun, and would hopefully shield against the cold breeze at night, but above all, the rubber walls would protect me from the massive electrical surge when the capacitors released their charge.

The two-stage trigger was a double light switch, wired in series inside a plastic junction box. Both switches would have to be thrown to complete the circuit, eliminating, or at least reducing, the chance of accidentally tripping the switch and wasting the charge. A strip of duct tape covered one edge of the cover plate as a quick reference to which was the
On
position. Even in the pitch black of night, the tape would function like Braille.

I leaned forward to peer around the mats. From a low angle, the wire resembled a sagging bedspring, fitted with barbs and razors to prevent monsters from hiding underneath. Around the perimeter of the web were glass jars, filled with a volatile concoction of household chemicals, gasoline, and dissolved Styrofoam, and each jar was tethered to the web by a loop of wire. Randall had said the mixture was a type of homemade napalm, that when ignited by the current, the jars would explode spraying anything within a six-foot radius with a sticky liquid fire with an appetite equal to that of any Hellhound.

In the dirt below the web, vapor-barrier or cut strips of tarp lined carved moats. Each trough had been filled with gasoline, kindling, and whatever else we could find that would burn. Along the sides and around the back of the house, Randall and Gary had set up homemade claymore mines, wedged into the dirt and rigged up to tripwires or simple battery-powered pressure plates. The shells were made from old food cans, wrapped in duct tape, and inside, lining the bottom third of each can, was a thick putty. The rest of the can was filled with nuts, bolts, screws, and nails, which, according to Randall, would be sent at speeds great enough to rip clean through whatever set it off.

Within a split second of tripping the second switch, there would be chaos—a Hellish frenzy of fire and flying shrapnel, a deadly fireworks display that would either prolong or terminate our time on this earth. In those few seconds after tripping the second switch, we would send as many of those creatures into our version of Hell as we could.

43 | Bait and switch

By the time the sun reached its highest point, the frenzy seemed to have settled. The horde was conserving its strength, resting behind the hypnotizing shimmer of gasoline fumes. The subtle wave of evaporating gasoline and its intoxicating odor worked in tandem to sing a soothing lullaby and to paint over the scene, transforming the creatures into sleeping lions, basking in the afternoon sun with the hot air visible and rising from the dry Serengeti plains. The scene was serene, tranquil, and somehow euphoric despite the heavy ache and pressure behind my eyes and despite the seemingly fading knowledge of what was really behind the veil of distorted air.

Once the recent dose of painkillers metabolized, the pain moved from behind my eyes to behind my ears, but my eyes still wanted to close. I could no longer smell the fumes, but my lips tingled with the gasoline’s aftertaste, and I was beginning to feel sick and dizzy.