Harmonic: Resonance (6 page)

We stopped at a gas station on the outskirts of town, but without the tools or knowledge required to bleed gas from non-powered pumps, we resigned to filling the acquired gas cans with gas siphoned from the tanks of parked cars at the station.

The preacher suggested we fill up the truck with food and meds on the way. His manner and tone implied there would be no stopping on the way back from the church to the house. It appeared that Gary’s talk of wolves had made the preacher question his faith, but for now, it was only his faith in people that had been shaken.

We idled at the corner grocer and loaded the truck bed with cans, dry packaged goods, and flats of bottled water; the money I had left at the cash register was still there, untouched. From the clinic where Powell had seen his first ghost, I grabbed all the pill bottles, first-aid kits, syrups, bandages, and whatever else would fit into the remaining space in the back of the truck, while the preacher brought out the last of the food.

Every unseen bump in the road was realized and punctuated with a loud
shuck
sound as thousands of pills, packaged pasta, and bottled water jumped in response to the debris-strewn terrain. When we neared the church, I slowed the truck, and the preacher said to turn off the headlights so as not to draw more attention than was gained by the sound of the truck’s engine. The radio, that now played nothing more than white noise, was powered off and displayed the time; it was eleven after three in the morning, but I didn’t expect the people inside the church hall would be sleeping.

“Wait outside; if I’m not back in ten minutes, then leave,” the preacher said.

I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off.

“Keep the engine running, and if anyone but me comes near the truck, just drive on. I don’t want to believe that people are as bad as Gary says, but I’m not willing to stake your life on my optimism.”

He got out of the truck without letting me respond, and I watched him move in the moonlight to the fire exit we had used for our escape. He pulled at the door, stopped, and searched his pockets, and after a slight hesitation, he carried on around to the front of the church and out of sight.

At twenty-five after, I climbed out of the still-idling truck and made my way to the front entrance of the church. The blue-tarp staging tent had been blown, or torn, down, and the remnants of it hung limp from a two-by-four, lag-bolted through the mortar between the old bricks of the church wall. The blue sail appeared gray in the moonlight and flapped noisily. I hadn’t noticed the night’s gentle breeze before seeing its effect on the tarp, but it now caressed the stubble surrounding the stitched wound at the side of my head and found its way under my hair and down the back of my neck.

The cold shiver completed its journey down the length of my spine as I turned and reached for the door handle. The door burst open while my hand hovered inches away, and a black shape stood, silhouetted in the doorway against the candle light from inside the hall. My body was frozen to the spot, but my heart and stomach jumped in sudden terror.

“I thought you would have left.” It was the preacher’s voice, but there was something different in his tone.

I breathed a shaking sigh. “Did you find her?” My words bounced over the beat of my thumping heart.

The preacher stepped forward into the moonlight, his face appearing as a monochromatic mask with sparkling highlights that traveled slowly down the weathered gray of his cheeks. He shook his head. “Let’s go,” he said.

I leaned to see around him, to see inside the hall, but he moved to obscure my view, shook his head again, and said, “Don’t.”

The drive back to the house was accompanied by a silence so dense it seemed to swallow my questions before they reached my lips. The preacher had not found Margaret, but what he had found had changed him somehow.

12 | ... to the converted

The fireplace flames danced around a mentally projected image of the blackened man who had entered the church on a stretcher; somewhere in the back of my mind, I could still hear his lipless, gargling scream. I enjoyed the warmth from the fire, but the flickering beauty of flame had been exposed as a facade, a trap, a siren beckoning those ignorant of its true nature and destructive capability closer, while it tongued the air like a viper trying to smell out its food. Fire will eat until there is nothing left, feeding on anything that will burn, and stealing the oxygen from the space around it to fuel its insatiable needs, and anything that will not burn is used as a platform to reach its next meal.

“Want me to bring in more wood?”

I turned and waited for Powell’s face to materialize as the bright after-image between us slowly faded from yellow to green, to red, to nothing. “It’s fed for now. How’s Sean?”

“He’s okay. Haley’s in there with him.” He shot a glance past the breakfast bar, separating kitchen and living room, and added, “Has he said anything?”

I shook my head. “Not a word. I don’t know what he saw last night, but it must have been something terrible.”

“This whole thing must be hard on a preacher. He’s probably got more to think about, or re-evaluate, than all of us. The rapture is supposed to take the living straight to Heaven, not deliver the dead back to earth,” Powell said.

Gary cleared his throat, readjusted his position in what used to be my dad’s favorite chair, and resumed his subtle, yet steady, snore.

“How did you sleep?” I asked.

Powell shrugged. “Better than I have in a while, but that’s not saying much.”

“What you said before, is that what you think this is, some kind of rapture?” I asked.

“I’m just thinking out loud; I don’t know what’s going on. If Haley’s mom doesn’t have a clue about what’s happening, then what chance do we have of figuring it out?”

I nodded slowly as the realization set in, that perhaps we would never know the how and why but be left with only speculation in the midst of the resulting chaos and confusion. “I’m going to fire up the generator, then you can help me cook breakfast,” I said.

Powell offered a smile. “I’ll go and check on the preacher.”

***

With the generator fueled up, it sputtered and roared to life on the second pull, and after a slight adjustment of the choke, it settled into a low rumble. On my way back around the house, I stared down and over the fields. The town was out of view behind several hills, but thick black clouds marked its location in the yellow sky above. The black smoke clouds drifted up and across, seamlessly joined to the airborne marker of the next town over, and possibly farther. I wondered about the scale of destruction, if the fires had raged everywhere, ravaged the whole country, perhaps the whole world. I wondered too about the ghosts. Had they appeared everywhere? There were no ghosts at the house, not my mom or my dad. I wondered about Sam, if he’d made it through the chaos, hoping, beyond my realistic fears, he was alive and safe somewhere, but knowing there was little safety to be found while at war. Applying my newly gained knowledge of the behavior of a frightened mob, and imagining the situation amplified by automatic weapons and a preexisting hostility that was never truly explained by the media, was enough to extinguish all but the slightest unrealistic hope of my brother's safe return. Perhaps our dad was there with him, watching out for him, or perhaps Sam was now sharing a dream in the afterlife with Mom and Dad.

When I returned to the living room, Gary was awake and flicking through the television channels, each one displaying the same static snow and hiss. “Do you have a radio?” he asked.

“My alarm clock,” I said. “I’ll go and get it for you.”

“Thank you, Emily,” he said. “Hey, look, I’m sorry if I came across as an asshole yesterday. I just, well, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think you’re an asshole; you tried to help everyone back there, you helped us get out,” I said. “You did what you could.”

Gary winced and looked away. “Yeah, I guess so.”

His reply seemed insincere, and even though I believed what I had said, that we had all done what little we could, it would never be enough to suppress the guilt of having left so many to face what we had escaped.

The expression on the preacher’s face on the way back from the church had hinted at the severity of the situation. In my periphery, I had watched him wipe tears from his eyes and wondered if what he’d seen in the church hall was what had been left of the carcass after the wolves had fled.

***

When I returned to the kitchen, my stomach growled in response to the welcome smells of cooking food. “I grabbed some of my dad’s old clothes for whoever needs them, if they fit.” I put the pile down on a stool and set the alarm clock down on the oak surface of the counter.

“And here’s the radio you wanted, Gary.”

“Thanks,” Gary said and took it to the nearest power outlet.

“You started breakfast,” I said, through an uncontrollable smile.

Powell turned and raised his eyebrows. “Beans, canned tomatoes, and pan-fried hash browns.”

“You had me at anything but watered-down stew,” Gary said over his shoulder as he continued to skip from one radio station to another, each zipping from static to more static.

“Figured a decent breakfast would raise everyone’s spirits, no pun intended,” Powell replied.

“Are you okay, Preacher?” I asked, turning my attention to the end of the breakfast bar where he sat with his head down, seemingly oblivious to all around him.

He looked up from his hands and stared through me. His glassy stare focused somewhere a thousand miles behind me, his eyes framed by deep red and swollen lids. “Randall.”

I frowned and opened my mouth to speak, but he continued before I could ask the question.

“My name is Randall. I’m not worthy to be called a preacher.”

“Is this about Margaret?” I asked.

The preacher’s eyes refocused on mine as he nodded slowly. “Margaret and the rest of them. I hope this is not a test, if it is, then I’ve already failed.”

Powell placed a plate of food and a fork down in front of the preacher. “You need to eat something,” he said. They exchanged a glance before the preacher picked up his fork, and Powell set to serving the rest of us.

Haley and Sean joined the four of us a few minutes later, and although all the stools were full, we ate in relative silence. We each enjoyed the best meal we’d had in some time, and each dealt quietly with our own internal demons. I glanced around at each of their faces. They were all cut and bruised, even the preacher. Although his wounds were below the skin, they were still easily seen and would probably take much longer to heal.

***

“Do you think someone will come to help us?” I asked, looking eagerly around the living room at the rest of the group and awaiting their response.

Gary met my stare. “Eventually, the Army maybe. If the fires broke out everywhere though, then they’ll have their hands full for a while. Small towns like ours won’t be a high priority. Think what’s going on in New York, London, or any major city, Jesus—sorry, Preacher,” Gary shot a glance at the preacher, but Randall didn’t react to the blasphemy, nor the name. He remained lost in his own thoughts.

“Think about what Hong Kong must be going through,” Gary continued.

“We should make a few more supply runs, to make sure we have enough to last until they
do
get around to us,” Powell said.

Gary nodded. “We should pick up weapons and ammunition too.”

Each of us looked back at him, even Randall. He had everyone’s full attention.

“This house is lit up like a Christmas tree, you’ll be able to see it for miles at night. Seeing as it’s the only place with power, you can bet people are going to head this way and try to take what we have,” Gary said.

I wished that I had not eaten all that food with the sudden bout of nervous energy now trembling in my gut. “Would it help if we blocked up the windows?”

“It wouldn’t hurt, but people are going to see smoke from the fire or see the truck on the way back here one day. It’s going to happen, it’s only a matter of when,” Gary said.

“There’s a shotgun in my dad’s closet and a couple boxes of shells, buckshot, I think,” I said.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help,” came an unfamiliar voice.

I turned as Sean continued in a steady and even tone. It was no longer the frantic tone of a frightened man trying to fight back a malicious mob, but of a gentle and loving father, a tone that reminded me of my own father.

“I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for Haley and me. If there’s any way I can repay you, all of you, then let me know,” he said.

Haley held on to her father’s hand as he said his piece and as I daydreamed of my own family, my father, and Sam. I thought about how close Haley had been to losing her father, and the sadness of my own loss crept up into the back of my throat. If we had accomplished nothing else, we had saved Sean and his daughter from the church and whatever madness had followed the gunshots as we drove away.

The look of horror on Haley’s face snapped me awake and away from superimposed memories. I watched her terrified eyes and traced her gaze to Gary’s lips as he continued to outline plans for arming our group and defending the house with lethal force.