Under a Broken Sun

by Kevin P Sheridan

  They looked at me, expecting me to contribute. I wanted to. I wanted to rip my cross off from around my neck, and drop it in. Bury it and my cutting forever. But the need to cut now was greater than it’s been since this whole thing started. I had become a drug addict needing a fix. But that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want to get rid of it. My dad never knew about my cutting. If he did, and saw me get rid of it, maybe he’d be really proud.

  I wanted to do it in front of him. And I needed to believe he was still alive.

  23.

  A fresh cut on my right bicep, and another twenty miles under my feet. Another small town in Ohio, but closer to the western edge. Closer to Indiana. Closer to Chicago.

  Bill went to check out a house, while the others and I collapsed on the front lawn, staring up at the stars, our breath floating like smoke in moonlight. We stayed quiet for a long time. The day before we’d buried our past; closed the door on the memories of our former life, lowered in the grave with hardly even a marker to demonstrate that they ever existed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Tommy. “For killing your dad.”

  He didn’t say anything, just nodded.

  I looked up at the stars, Ashley and Tolbert looking with me. “Which one’s the North star?” Louie said.

  Ashley pointed to a bright star, “There. The tip of the constellation Ursa Minor.” I tilted my head. Ursa Minor was in the wrong position. Very wrong.

  “What?” Ashley asked.

  “That’s not right.” I stood up and studied the town in front of us. "Tell Bill I'll be right back." I ran down the street to the single Main Street we passed on the way through town. Next to the post office stood an old-fashioned school-like building, like the kind they had in the eighteen-hundreds. The words "Margaret Atwood Memorial Library" spread in an arc across the top.

  I tried the front door – locked. A quick kick to the door jam and it flew open. Guess nobody wanted to loot the library.

  I went to the astronomy section. Ashley came in behind me. “Adam?” I hardly even heard her. Using the lighter to scan the titles I quickly found the book I needed. I knew the binding of my dad’s book like the back of my hands. I used to rummage through his library like this as a kid, looking for…what? Something to make me as smart as him, I guess. Maybe then he'd...

  I found his book and pulled it out - The Basics of Astronomy by Dr. Roger Dawson. One of dad’s first. I grabbed one of those short nubby pencils and ran outside, then flipped the pages until I saw the photo. Figure 1 – how to read the horizon. I remembered this section well, all about the stars and their appearance on the horizon just before dawn for every time of year. What it meant. Where things should be. I drew some calculations in the book - rough, but given what I knew about the distance of Ursa Minor from Earth, and the position it should've had at this point in our rotation...

  Right now, things weren’t where they should be. “It’s tilted,” I said, pointing to the big dipper.

  Ashley squinted at the constellation, now a bit lower down in the predawn sky, barely discernible. “Huh?”

  “Look at the photograph?” I showed it to her.

  “Yeah. So?”

  I closed the book and stuck it in my backpack. “The Earth’s shifted somehow,” I said, leading her on.

  “That’s bad?”

  I looked over at her. “Yeah. Very bad. I don’t think Dad knew about this when he sent me the note.”

  We ran back to the yard.

  I explained to them why the Earth’s tilting was so dangerous. Everything we know about the weather – climate changes, seasons, life, everything was based on a delicate balance of our relationship to the sun. Dad used to constantly remind me how lucky we are that absolutely everything happened exactly as it should’ve for man to be around. I remember once, when I was about thirteen, asking why that doesn’t prove God exists.

  He grew angry.

  “Because the nature of the universe is randomness. The idea of God is not random. Yet random things continue to happen,” he scowled.

  “Like mom?” I asked. Mom had only been dead for a year or so.

  He never answered. I remembered that silence, barking at me like an order to leave him alone.

  I didn’t tell them all that, some things are hard enough to remember, let alone retell. But they got the point about the Earth’s tilting. Things were going to be permanently different, and not for the better.

  “So, the southern hemisphere is more pointed away from the sun?” Tommy asked.

  “During their winter, yeah. Then we will be. This is gonna be one fuck of a winter.”

  Bill came outside. “Looks good. C’mon. Time to bunker down. In the basement. It’s finished and cooler.” We stared up at him, like a pack of starving dogs on their death bed. "Uh, what'd I miss?" Bill said.

  We filed inside. Louie looked up at me and said, “We’re not gonna make it, are we?”

  Tolbert walked by and shook his head no. I don’t know if Louie caught it, but I just said, “I’m sure as hell gonna try. How about you, Luigi?” He smiled. The weird little shit loved it when people called him that.

  We hunkered down for a good rest, Ashley on the couch, me on the floor, but I didn't care. When you push your body as hard as we did, comfort loses its value.

  I started to drift into a guarded but welcomed sleep. Just as my body began shutting down, a rattling noise upstairs woke me up. I scanned the basement, still dark despite the rising sun, and saw Bill already staring at the ceiling, crouched, walking towards the basement stairs with a shotgun in his hand, ready.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  He looked at me, held a finger to his lips, then pointed above. Footsteps scuttled above us. Then a voice. I looked at the others – still asleep. Even Tolbert. I thought for sure he and Bill would be playing army by now, but they seemed very different, despite their shared military history.

  Bill crept up the stairs, and I grabbed an automatic and followed. Bill didn’t seem to mind.

  At the top of the stairs, he inched the door open and peered through the slot. Clear. We snuck out. The door let out a tired moan as we opened it, freezing us in our tracks. The footsteps and talking in the other room stopped cold.

  We heard whispers in the next room. “He oido algo”, we heard. Spanish?

  Another voice, deeper, said, “Estas loco. No era nada. Dejalo ir.”

  The footsteps began to walk away, and Bill led me out into the kitchen, then into the family room. Two Hispanic looking kids walked towards the front door.

  “Freeze, motherfuckers,” Bill said, pumping the shotgun for emphasis.

  The guys did what they were told. Raised their hands, turned to look at us. “Where you from?” Bill asked. They seemed unarmed.

  The one on the right had his hair spiked up in a faux mohawk, the one on the left had a baseball cap on with a slight turn.

  Their eyes wide, they backed up to the front door. “I said freeze,” Bill said. But I knew he wouldn’t shoot them. Unarmed teens? Probably just looking to survive like us?

  They knew it too. They bolted out of the door and leaped down the steps.

  “El hijo del diablo! Esta aqui!” One shouted as they ran away. “Esta aqui”. Over and over. I never learned Spanish, but I knew ‘diablo’.

  They knew who I was.

  The others ran up behind us as Bill and I bolted to the front porch. The kids ran straight away from us. Tolbert came behind me. “Shoot ‘em!” He shouted. “They know us – they’re gonna tell everyone.”

  I raised the gun and peered down the barrel. “Shoot them!” Tolbert said again.

  Bill came to my defense. “They’re unarmed.”

  Ashley: “Jesus, Adam, don’t. Don’t be like them.”

  I lowered the gun. Tolbert ripped it out of my hands, raised it and fired two quick bursts.

  But only one kid fell. The other disappeared around a house, still shouting his news about Diablo. The gunshot bounced forever across th
e landscape.

  Tolbert threw the gun. "What the fuck are you doing?" I shouted. He walked back in the house. I looked at Ashley, who seemed, like me, to know real fear of Tolbert.

  I picked up the gun and followed Tolbert inside. "What the fuck was that, man?"

  Bill came in behind me. "Not smart soldier. Now everyone will know we're here."

  Tolbert turned to me. Not to Bill, but to me. "They were gonna tell everyone where we were. You heard them."

  "So you get to shoot them in the back?"

  "You wanna live, or not?"

  "Stand down soldier!" Bill shouted. His voice echoed louder than the gunshot. Tolbert stood in front of me. Ready to go. "You too, Adam. We will not fall apart like this."

  Tommy came in panicking. “How did they know? How the hell did they know it was you? There’s no communication, nothing but word of mouth.”

  “Here’s how,” Bill said. He bent over and picked up a sheet of paper with blue writing on it, and a picture of my dad with his arm around me. I knew that picture. Bill read the words on the paper: “He has come again, to lead us into battle with Satan and his minions. The location is Chicago, not Jerusalem as we thought. The temple is to be rebuilt there. Follow us to Chicago. Help us defeat Satan and his army.”

  I grabbed the picture out of Bill's hand. My dad looked about as far removed from Satan as a man could be. He wore a tweed jacket, a smile, and a thick black mustache and beard. His arm around me meant he loved me and that we were a great, happy family. I was eleven, I think. Mom was still in the hospital, but the publisher insisted Dad needed to get this shot for the book before it went to print. He yanked me out of the hospital, because they thought a family shot would help sales of the book. We posed for about a half-hour, Dad's smile full of love and joy for the world. Utter bullshit. After the last photo the smile came off with the makeup, and we went back to the hospital.

  Looking at that picture now, I forgot my beef with Tolbert. I remembered which book that appeared in; his first. I reached into my backpack and pulled it out. Flipped it to the back and showed everyone the picture. Bill nodded. “Well, that explains that. The dangers of being famous.”

  Louie took the sheet from Bill. “But how did they make copies? No copying machines work.”

  Bill took the piece of paper, and oddly enough, sniffed it. He smiled like he had some memory of that smell. “An old mimeograph machine. Every school has one buried in its supply closet somewhere, I bet. You hand cranked it, and it churned out copies. Haven’t seen one of these in a long time.”

  “And the writing?” Louie asked.

  "Typewriter,” Bill chuckled. “Yup, we have been thrown back into the good old days." He looked at Tolbert and me. "You two ok now?"

  I headed back downstairs, but Tommy stopped me. “You guys hear that?”

  I listened. Nothing. We all looked through the door. Then I heard it. A low rumbling, like a bass guitar on an awesome stereo. Throbbing. Tommy came out of the door and looked to the left. Little wisps of smoke-like dust drifted up beyond and amongst the trees far off in the distance.

  “Those are horses,” Tommy said. “Lots of them.”

  “That kid couldn’t have gotten that far in so short a time,” I said.

  Bill came up beside me. “We must’ve been right on top of them. They heard the gunshots.”

  “They’re coming from the north,” Tolbert chimed in, startling us. “Doubling back.”

  I looked at Tolbert. “They know we’re here.”

  We couldn’t retreat. We had to get behind them again, and keep going north while they looked for us south. By the time they learned that we didn’t fall back and run away, we’d be in Chicago.

  But we’d need cover or we’d fry. How did they do it? How did they get so many horses to run so fast in this heat?

  No time to figure it out. We gotta get out of the house. We can’t make a stand here,” Tommy said.

  Bill looked at me, and I knew: the fight had to be here. “No," I said, looking at Bill for support, "we go out there and we’re in the open, vulnerable to the sun. We stay here. We have to fight."

  Bill nodded and dropped open his backpack, handing out ammo. "Lock all the doors," he said while he held out the clips of ammo. "Open all the windows. Take a position on each side of the house upstairs. I’ll take the north. Tolbert, south. Tommy west, Adam, east. Ashley go with Adam, Louie come with me. You’ll be ammo runners. If someone’s out and we need to share you get it to them. Understood?”

  I ran upstairs to the east end. The house faced east, so I had two bedrooms to choose from. I picked the one that seemed like a guest room - empty, stale, everything in its place. I had no idea where the others went.

  The hoof beats grew louder. I set up my backpack, pulled out any ammo, and Ashley and I loaded the clips. I had two extra clips and a box full of rounds. But that was it.

  “Here they come,” I heard Bill yell. I ran to his room – the master bedroom with a window looking to the north. He saw me and said, “Tell the others not to fire until I do. We want them to get close. Get them in range."

  I looked behind me; down the hall. “Where’s Tolbert?” I asked. Bill shrugged. “No windows up here facing south. Must’ve gone downstairs.”

  I looked back at the oncoming horde. There must’ve been fifty horses of all different types and colors. Each one ridden by a person covered in white – some sort of white sheet covering their whole body, with a white hoodie or scarf wrapped around their head. On their faces sat oxygen masks. They looked like clones. Not one face among them.

  They slowed their horses down to a trot. One rode ahead of the others. When he got about twenty yards ahead he stopped his horse. The others stopped behind him. He took off his mask.

  “Hello in there?” he yelled. I looked at Bill, who never took his eye off the site of his rifle.

  “Hello?” the guy went on. “I’m Colonel John Reynolds, United States National Guard. We have reason to believe you’re harboring a known criminal in there. We need him. He can come out willfully or he can be extracted. The rest of you will be unharmed and free to go about your business. We just want Adam.”

  When he said my name my stomach froze. To hear your name when you’re famous is one thing. To hear it when you’re hunted is another.

  “What’s the charge?” Bill shouted.

  “Murder. He shot and killed an innocent boy in cold blood.” Tolbert. That son of a bitch. Why did he have to fire?

  “What if it was self defense?” Bill shouted.

  “Well, bring Adam out and we’ll see to that. Make sure he gets a good trial. This is still America, as I recall.”

  Bull. Shit.

  The colonel went on. “Who are you?”

  “Captain William Finnegan, Hundred and first airborne. Adam Dawson is in my charge. I can’t release him to you, Colonel.”

  Colonel Dickhead rode forward. “Captain Finnegan, you are a soldier of the United States army. You will follow the command of your superior officer.”

  Bill looked at me, gritted his teeth, and turned back to the window. “It is an immoral order that I cannot obey.”

  “We have tear gas. Weapons. We will take the house by force-“

  Bill got angry at that, yelling “I have children in here for Christ’s sake.”

  “Yes,” Colonel Reynolds said, smiling. “And we must take them. For Christ’s sake.”

  There was a rumbling downstairs. Windows being broken. Two quick bursts. A struggle and someone being dragged out. Tolbert.

  “Get your fucking hands off me!” He shouted. Two soldiers in their creepy white uniforms and gas masks pulled him outside. He struggled with every step, but they held firm, M16’s hanging from their backs. Ashley burst into the room, followed quickly by Tommy and Louie.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” she asked.

  Bill cocked his firearm. “Goddamn it,” he yelled. “You fuckin’ nutjobs leave that kid alone. We will fire.”

  I r
an to the other window, crouched low like Bill and pointed my gun out. A twenty-two like I had wasn’t going to do any real damage, but I didn’t intend on missing. “Let him go,” I shouted.

  “Fair exchange,” Colonel Reynolds said as he grabbed Tolbert away from the other two. “This one for Adam. You have ten seconds.”

  “Tommy,” I said, barking at him to wake him out of his stupor. “Get the fuck back to the other side. They may try to flank us.”

  Tommy bolted.

  “Louie, take Ashley and go. NOW!”

  Louie took Ashley’s hand, but she shook it off and walked towards the window.

  "Go!" I shouted. She just put a hand on my shoulder and watched outside. Louie did the same.

  “Time’s up,” Reynolds yelled.

  Reynolds handed Tolbert to another white-clad Whackjob who pushed Tolbert to his knees. He brought out a pistol and held it to Tolbert's head. Insanity.

  "Stop!" I shouted. "I'm coming out."

  Bill looked at me in shock. He grabbed my arm. "Don't do it."

  I couldn't say a thing. I just turned, climbed down the stairs, and walked to the side of the house where Reynolds stood.

  I felt hands the size of basketballs grab my bicep and squeeze tight. A plastic zip tie was thrown on my wrists and pulled tight. Tolbert stood up.

  On his own. Freely.

  "Adam, I'm sorry. They've got my wife somewhere. I didn't have a choice."

  A chill encased my stomach as I watched him look away. He couldn't even look me in the eye. This whole time I knew. I didn't listen but I knew. "You sorry motherfucker. You're one of them. This whole time. You fired on purpose to let them know where we were."

  Another hand gripped my shoulder. I turned and saw the grim face of a rubber oxygen mask and white hood hanging low over it. The head exploded in front of me as the guy flew sideways.

  I looked up at Bill firing from a window. Aiming at Tolbert, who was nowhere to be found. The white-clad army split up and fired back. Bill disappeared behind the window as bullets ripped wood apart into tiny splinters. I screamed, unable to do a damn thing to help.