Immortality (57 page)

Sarah emerged from the rim of the forest and came into full view of a lake. Directly in front of her was a stone foundation or pier that extended out about fifteen feet into the water and was as wide as a footpath. The pier was abandoned and ancient looking, built from rounded stones and mortar. There were signs of rusted hardware that could have also been from another age. The pier looked like it might have supported a dock at some point in its history, but only a few weathered chunks of gray wood remained. She stepped up onto the pier and walked out to the end of it. She could sense the water was unusually deep. She felt a stray impulse to reach down and dip her fingers into the lake, but the thought of it made her feel uneasy. She looked back toward the shoreline. She saw a sunfish idling in the shallows over a dimple in the sand that was its nest. From there, the rock and sand bottom fell steeply from view like the wall of a submerged cliff. If the lake had been empty of water, where she was standing would have had a terrifying height. Buoyancy of the water a foot below shielded her from the true nature of where she stood. She turned to look back out over the lake. A light breeze whipped up, refreshing her senses. Gnarled trees stood around the lake as great sentinels, with their roots growing directly from its water. At the far side, she could see a boathouse and a paved road but no boats. There was a small parking lot, cast iron barbecues, and picnic benches. On the southern end of the lake was a marsh clogged with cattails and lily pads. In the summer, that air would be thick with insects; but for now it was quiet except for the breeze.

Sarah glanced in the other direction toward the northern end of the lake. Her heart stopped. Barely visible, not ten feet away, was a battered rowboat. The boat was half submerged amid shore weeds and shadows. Its hull was broken. Water filled it to within inches of the rim. The boat’s gray and red wood had expanded and split. On its stern were the words
American Heritage.

Her legs felt weak. Sarah sat down at the end of the pier. She was stunned by the sight of the rowboat. This place was triggering powerful memories. The images took her far into her past. The place was like the spots where she and her family had gone on camping trips when she was a child. She hadn’t thought about those summers for years. She smiled to herself. Once, she and her brother Tim had snuck out at night and gone frog hunting. They had carved their names in a tree to commemorate their great adventure. Tim was at the clumsy age of ten and fell into the lake while stalking a huge bullfrog. Sarah had laughed until her sides hurt and then stripped to her underwear and jumped in with him. They captured no frogs that night and instead splashed and played for hours. Their parents never discovered the escape. To the end, it had been a secret that only Sarah and Tim had shared. Tim was gone; her parents were gone. There were so many empty holes in her new life.

Sarah had calmed to something that passed for normal. The stunned feeling was nearly gone. She picked up a pebble and tossed it into the lake. The water near the shore was as still as if made of glass. Rings traveling out from the pebble were the only flaws in an otherwise clear reflection of trees and sky. Something was odd about how the water pulled on her. It felt as if the bottom extended down to labyrinths leading into the very depths of the earth. Sarah leaned forward to see if anything was visible from the edge of the pier. There was nothing, no plants or fish. She squinted but could only see a slow blending of clear water into something that eventually turned gray and opaque. The water was very deep; maybe hundreds of feet. For a human it may as well have been bottomless. Her focus shifted and she saw her reflection in the water staring back. Her expression was dull. She had a growing sense of a malevolent presence in the depths of the lake behind her reflection. She wanted to lean back from the edge, but couldn’t. An all-encompassing presence of thought was whispering to her from the depths. Slowly, she recognized it as the godlike force that had come for her on Virginia Beach. The living machine was trying to communicate something. She sensed a language, but unintelligible. Alien symbols and diagrams slammed into her mind. The world disappeared into a burning white light.

A bird squawked from a nearby bush. The sound startled her. The sun had shifted its position in the sky by about forty-five degrees. This was unnatural. She had to have been here for hours but had no memory of it. She felt numb from intoxication. What had happened to her? She stood up. Her legs were stiff. Her mouth was dry. She looked at her palms. A deep waffle pattern from the rough surface was embedded in them along with bits of dirt. She slowly backed away from the end of the pier. Her heart was beating so fast that she was trembling. Had the living machine sensed her presence and come to her? Or had she been drawn to this spot because she had sensed it? Sarah turned, intending to leave but instead froze in place. On a tree trunk a few feet away was a carving distorted from years of growth. A swollen circle was cut around the names of Sarah and Tim, chiseled in blocky letters.

This was impossible. This couldn’t be the same place from her childhood. She had to get out of here. Sarah cautiously maneuvered around the tree, unable to pull her eyes from the carving until she was past it. She started to run, fleeing in the direction of the road. Faster and faster, fallen tree limbs and rocks jumped in front of her. Brambles scratched at her. She stumbled but caught her balance. She was panting. She glanced back toward the water expecting to see something or someone in pursuit but saw nothing except quiet forest. She went around a thicket and almost screamed. She stopped dead in her tracks. Standing in front of her was a small group of people. There were three men and two women. Were they hallucinations or real? They looked like normal people, but their presence was unreal. In saner times, they might have been friends out hiking in the woods. They were all dressed alike in thermal vests, various colored flannel shirts and jeans.

“Hi there,” said Sarah.

None of them said a word. All the men were very large.

“Okay,” she said. “Nice day we’re having… I’m just going to be on my way now.”

The man closest to her smiled without emotion. He had small teeth. His eyes were black and cold. Sarah looked from face to face and saw the same cold indifference. From nowhere, she felt a withering blow to the back of her skull. The world was ripped from her.

~

Sarah heard the rustling sounds of wind in a forest and felt a throbbing pain in her skull. Was she dying? Bits of dried dirt were stuck to her lips. She was face down. With difficulty, she rolled over onto her back and stared up. The trees were moving in a breeze. Sunlight flashed between leafy branches. Her head felt broken. Her hands were caked with mud and scratches and blood. Her pockets were empty. Her gun was gone. Her sneakers were gone. Her car keys were gone.

She managed to sit up. There was a heavily weathered shotgun casing on the ground a few feet away; remnants from a long ago hunt. She examined her body and found nothing serious despite a large amount of blood matted in her hair. All traces of her attackers had vanished except for a jumble of footprints. Had they left her for dead? Sarah picked herself up and started moving toward where the Buick was parked. She felt dizzy, but with each step came new anger and new worry – anger at the people that had done this to her and worry that her car would be gone and Ralph with it. Her breathing came faster, painful gulps of air. She imagined Ralph’s body lying by the roadside, shot with her own stolen gun.

“Nooooo,” she screamed.

Birds scattered from the trees in a wild flutter. For a brief second, her mind shifted into a different place. In a vision, she saw herself spilling from a row of bushes and onto the gravel road where she’d left the car. Her knees were skinned. Panic surrounded her. The car was there. She could see the vague outline of Ralph staring out through the rear window.

A branch snapped behind her. The premonition blinked out. Sarah spun around. Her heart leapt into her throat. For an instant, she saw one of her attackers but nothing was there. His image faded into the tangled woods. The queasiness in her stomach grew intense. She clung to a tree trunk and heaved out her insides.

Minutes later, as Sarah stepped onto the gravel road, she saw Ralph staring at her just as in her premonition. She saw him bark, but heard nothing. The car muffled his voice. The realization that she’d envisioned this was sinking in. The emotions of knowing that Ralph was fine should have been overpowering, but instead a peculiar introspection took hold. Sarah walked up to the car and looked inside. She had no keys. Her attackers could show up at any moment and they had at least one gun, her Beretta. She should have been panicked but was not.

A minute later, Sarah smashed a large rock into the side window. The rock weighed at least twenty pounds. The glass shattered into a web of crystals. She pushed in the glass and opened the door from the inside. Ralph piled out. She could tell he knew something more than a broken window was wrong. He stood alert next to her. Every sound caught his attention. She could sense he was a tightened spring ready to explode. A hundred and twenty pounds of Rottweiler was a fearsome protector and friend. She felt grateful, rubbing tears from her eyes.

Sarah fished around in the glove box for her pocketknife. In spite of so many things in this car that sort of worked, it unfortunately had a perfectly functioning anti-theft system. She popped the hood and the trunk. There was small set of tools under the spare tire. Soon, she was cutting and testing ignition wires, trying to figure out which ones needed to be connected to start the car. She touched a pair together. The engine cranked but then died. She tried another pair. Nothing happened. She tried a third combination. The radio in the car started to play. She went back to the pair that cranked the engine. The car started right up. She arranged the wires so that they wouldn’t short out and closed the hood.

Sarah climbed into the passenger’s seat. She started hammering on the ignition-lock with a jack handle which she’d gotten from the trunk. She had to break the steering wheel lock or she wouldn’t be able to drive the car. After some moments of panic and frustration, she had the lock shattered and the steering wheel turning freely. She slid over to the driver’s seat and called Ralph. He piled in. She patted him on the back and pulled the passenger door shut. Her only pair of sneakers had been stolen. Her feet were bare and sore. She felt the rough texture of the pedals as she drove back onto the road. She had no money and nothing except cigarettes to trade for gas. There was a half tank left. She knew it would take some luck to save her and Ralph from walking again.

The sun had almost set. Twilight was spreading. A shiver worked through Sarah’s body. She knew that whatever had been in that lake was real. The living machine had been there when she was splashing in the water with her brother as a child just as it was there now. She wondered if the inhuman intelligence had been doing things to her for her entire life. She sensed that all the death that had occurred so far was only a prelude to something far worse.

As miles of country highway ticked past, Sarah’s inner strength continued to grow. On both sides of the road were dense forests now cloaked in darkness. She felt that she was being galvanized into something much stronger than the sum of her experiences and skills. She would be one of the survivors of these murderous times. She would be a part of something new in a world that would never be the same.

Artie/Alexander was shaken from his sleep by an explosion. The room was filled with daylight. He rolled from his cot as shrapnel and bullets flew through the inside of the Red Cross shelter. People were screaming. Instant mayhem engulfed the room. The shelter had cots for over two hundred. There were injured people lying all over the floor.

Artie grabbed his gun from the new backpack which was under his cot. He crawled his way through the tangle of frightened people and reached the doorway. Sporadic gun fire was going off outside. He opened the door while lying on his stomach and crawled out into the firefight. Gunfire buzzed through the air a yard above him as he made his way up to a cement wall where some fighters defending the settlement were crouched. Bullets were hitting the top of the wall, spraying chips into the air. The defenders fought back with automatic weapons fire. Some were lifting M4 machine guns with grenade launchers over the wall and firing grenades blind. The M4 looked like a meaner, shorter version of an M16 with a 40mm grenade launcher mounted under the barrel like an over-under shotgun.

One of the fighters noticed Artie crouching next to him. He looked at the .357 magnum in Artie’s hand. He smiled a toothy grin and motioned with his head to a wooden crate lying open in the dirt. Inside the crate were brand new M4s wrapped in oil cloths. Next to the crate were boxes of empty ammo clips and metal boxes full of cartridges and grenades shells. A teenage boy and girl who looked like brother and sister were pushing ammo into clips.

Artie took one of the M4s. He looked at the grenades but wasn’t sure how to handle them. He shoved full ammo clips into every pocket large enough to hold them, filled his smaller pockets with loose shells, and then joined the fight. He could tell from the direction of incoming fire they were being attacked from two opposite positions. He couldn’t see who was attacking. He crawled along below the wall until it ended at a dirt road near one of the sources of incoming fire. He had no fear of dying. There was no bravery inside his chest; there was only indifference about his life. Catching a bullet would bring him peace and maybe even reunite him with Suzy. The only thing he wanted more than death was revenge. Anyone attacking a refugee settlement was one of the causes of all this suffering and needed killing.

He took a deep breath and then charged across the road and into waiting tree cover. He was going to work his way around one of the groups of attackers and cut them down. He circled off to the right of where the fire was coming from. The trees were medium height and the ground cover was thick. The gunfire and explosions were so loud that he was not concerned about making noise as he trampled through branches and bushes. At the crest of a low hill, he reached a thick hedge of sticker bushes. Laying on his stomach, he parted some of the bushes with the end of his M4. He could see the attackers. They were gang members, Pagans! Rage boiled up in him. Most were dressed in motorcycle garb. Several of them had tattoos on their faces. Women were fighting alongside the men; one was wearing a police hat. Beside them was an armored Humvee with a heavy machine gun mounted on it. A fat gangbanger with arms the size of hogs’ legs, wearing a vest with no shirt, was standing in the Humvee’s rear deck firing at the fighters Artie had just thrown in with. Loose fat on the banger’s arms was jiggling with the heavy weapon’s recoil. Artie set the M4’s fire-selector to full automatic. He waited until some of the Pagans were gathered near the fat man; then he squeezed the trigger. A burst of fire ripped from his M4’s muzzle, then another; the clip was empty. This was much better than an M16 and far better than his wheel-gun. He’d hit the fat man and another Pagan in the torso and clipped a third in the leg. The injured and dead were lying on the ground. The rest scattered for cover like cockroaches. Bullets started snapping through branches above his head. Artie reloaded and then peeled off one more burst, finishing the man he’d clipped in the leg. They were vermin. He needed to kill more of them. He wanted to kill all of them. He felt a compulsion to charge their position and ruin as many as he could before they got him. The fire over his head increased in intensity. Leaves and branches were falling on him like rain. He retreated backward a few yards to just below the ridgeline.