My head throbbed, and the noose squeezed every vein from the neck up like a balloon. I felt like my sinuses were going to pop my eyes out of my head. A quick breath. Then another. The world spun.
A shot rang out again, snapping the rope above me in two. I dropped, the full force of my limp body collapsing to the ground in a heap. I couldn't move.
My vision returned. Tolbert. Running towards me, his sniper rifle still smoking. People's feet shuffling all around me. More gunfire. Rapid fire. Screams. Hands grabbing my armpits, lifting me up. Dragging me. Reynolds clocked Tolbert on the side of the head, dropping him, then fired a round just as Bill grabbed him from behind. I tried to stand up, to check on Tolbert, but numb legs couldn't respond. Up ahead, Bill struggled in a death grip with Reynolds. Something fell out of Reynolds' outfit. A small ball. A grenade.
Bill yelled "Grenade" and the crowd went even more nuts. He stuck his foot out behind Reynolds and flipped him over. Reynolds didn't let go. They both fell right on top of the grenade. I pushed myself up on the curb just in time to see Bill and Reynolds' bodies lift up with the explosion, ever so slightly. They stopped struggling. Bill rolled off of Reynolds, clutching his blood-soaked gut. He looked at me. Tossed something my way, something that made a metallic sound when it landed. Keys.
Tommy appeared from behind me. He ran screaming, "Bill." My hands were unlocked from the cuffs. Louie squatted down next to me. "You ok?" he asked.
"Wish you. Had a health pack," I said.
He knelt down beside me. "Stay with me. Stay down."
"Your folks. Would be. Proud. Luigi." I whispered.
He smiled. "It's Louie," he said. "Just Louie."
More gunfire. Tommy rocked Bill's head in his hand. I fell back against the curb, breathing in the sulfur, the smoldering ashes of a city destroyed by hate. But I was breathing.
Louie looked up at someone behind me. A foot appeared and kicked Louie aside. I was again hoisted up. All this shuffling made me stronger - more awake. Now it only took a second to realize I was staring into the face of Reverend Hill.
He twisted me around to look at him. For an old guy - a REALLY old guy - he had quite a bit of fight in him. He threw me against a wall. "You caused all of this!" He screamed in my face. "You and your father. This is working out just as you planned, isn't it?"
He grabbed my throat with hands that felt like broken glass. I winced in pain. But the look on his face - the look of sheer terror at seeing everything he's built his life around destroyed - well, it made me smile.
That really pissed him off.
He punched me square in the jaw. Hurt like hell, but I doubt he'd be busting any bones soon. Except maybe his own. He grabbed my hoodie, which was little more than a tattered rag by now. My cross bounced out. I grabbed it.
"Don't call upon Him," Hill said. "He will not save you. He has no need for people like you. Salvation cannot be found in that cross."
I slide the knife out. "Yes," I whispered. "It can"
With a quick snap of the wrist, I whipped the sharp black blade against his throat, deep across the jugular. A dark red sprayed out in a pulse, then trickled to an ooze as the Right Reverend Hill looked at me, watching the world go dark.
It felt good. Best cut I ever made. He collapsed in front of me in a puddle of his own dark life. There was no splitting of the heavens, lightning from on high, no sound of angels weeping.
I looked around. No bouncer guy coming to kill me, no Reynolds hoping to torture me. Just people. Lost, no longer organized people. A mob is like a cancer; it doesn’t take long to kills its own host. This mob was dying. Some folks cried and folded into themselves right where they were.
I felt my legs giving way. They'd had enough. Louie caught me from behind, lowering me down. I could barely breathe. My swollen throat felt like a balloon had lodged in the airway and expanded by the second.
I wanted to close my eyes. I wanted to rest. But the pain wouldn't stop, and the breathing, although it was tough, was still going. My body was rebelling and refusing to let me die. I couldn't get a fucking break.
Then I remembered why. Marilyn. He shot her. The motherfucker shot her.
My wrists uncuffed, I pulled myself up, which made the sore throat worse. I stumbled off the curb towards the truck where Marilyn lay on the ground. Ashley held Eve as Tolbert tried to patch Marilyn up. I collapsed to my knees beside her, took her hand. "Marilyn, it's Adam."
Her breath was short, raspy. She looked up at me. "Hey."
"Hi."
Tolbert held a big patch of white in her chest. "Bullet made a clean exit, inches from the spine. She'll be ok if we can just keep her from bleeding out. Hold this while I roll her and patch the back."
I pressed down on her chest with the patch. She raised a hand to cover mine. "You get him?"
I nodded, tears coming through again. "He's dead. People seem to be waking up." A crowd surrounded us. Tolbert sat her up and put another puffy white patch on her back. Marilyn half groaned, half screamed as he did so, then collapsed into my arms.
"Careful," I whispered. A gurney suddenly appeared from the crowd, pushed by a guy and a woman. They fumbled around with it, then got it lowered.
Tolbert looked at me and positioned himself at Marilyn's shoulders. He nodded, I nodded. Then "One, two, three." and we lifted her up. An easy swing and she was on the gurney, which then sprang up to rolling position. Tolbert took the head of the gurney and pushed Marilyn away. I grabbed his arm. "Thanks."
He smiled.
Eve, still in Ashley's arms, reached for Marilyn, and said, "Mama?"
I looked at Ashley. "Go. Keep Eve with her. I'll be right there."
I looked around to make sure everyone was ok. Louie stood beside me, Tommy behind him, still crying over the loss of Bill. People lie scattered and dead in the street. Military personnel ordered people to clear out. A first aid tent rose up. No electricity, but the atmosphere was electric. People really were waking up. This wasn't going away. The lights were never coming back on. We have to adjust. Just like Dad said.
The crowd parted and in the midst of a pack of soldiers I saw the tall profile of the President. Next to him, walking towards me, was my father. He ran the last way and I collapsed in his arms, his presence giving me the permission I needed to finally fall to exhaustion. "I'm not losing you, too," he said. I smiled. He wrapped my arm around his shoulders and carried me forward to the medical tent. Louie and Tommy cleared a path.
It's hard to give an award to biggest pain in my body, but if I had to I would've given it to the head. The pounding nearly drove me insane. I wanted to kill someone, like that would ease it somewhat.
"You're suffering from hypoxia," my dad explained. "Bad enough with the oxygen levels being where they are, but to be hung by the neck, that didn't help."
I chuckled as I struggled to breathe. I was a wheezer. "Where are we going?" I whispered.
"To a hospital. You need oxygen and ibuprofen to reduce the swelling or your throat will close up entirely."
I nodded. Fine. Rest. I could use it. "What happens now?" Louie asked him. We both knew what he meant. The world. What happens to the world?
"We organize. We adapt. We move on. We're humans. That's what we do," he said with a smile.
Up ahead was a horse drawn cart. The smoke from the fallen Sears Tower still hung like a fog over the city. Soldiers arrested those still wanting a fight; the President had rallied the troops to our defense. Most people were exhausted and just camped wherever they could find room. Thousands of them. All homeless. How many more across the county?
We had a lot of work to do.
As I limped away towards the carriage, Tommy handed my cross to me. "Here. Found this."
I stopped. Looked at the metallic skull with the ruby eyes. Looked at my dad. I turned and threw the cross as far as I could down the street.
Fuck it.
Epilogue
One month had gone in a flash since the final battle. In that time, Preside
nt Douglas returned order to the city, survivors buried the dead, and the temperature stabilized. But the atmosphere continued to deteriorate. Going out in the daylight was suicide. The sun would fry your skin in minutes, heat stroke would soon follow, then death. Temperatures during the day hovered around 120 degrees. At night it bottomed out to 20 or so. No real wind. Only an occasional rain or snow storm.
But the planet was dying. Trees and plants withered. Birds fell from their nests and the carcasses of animals lined the streets and cluttered the woods. People stayed in their shelters or homes to keep away from the constant reminder of death. The human race survived, but could we carry on? Could we force our own evolution?
Marilyn made a good recovery, although her lung had been punctured, and so she required oxygen almost constantly. Tommy and Ashley hooked up for good as boyfriend and girlfriend, and they looked good together. Marilyn and I took them and Louie under our wing, although I wasn’t old enough to be their father at all. Tolbert found his wife, and they went off on their own, somewhere back east. I have no idea why or where. The others treated me like a father, and I loved them all like a family, which was a feeling I’d never thought I’d have.
But my dad and I still had work to do. At night I’d follow the stars and worked with him to plot our new position in the solar system. It wasn’t easy with twentieth century non-powered telescopes, but I did what I could.
Religion didn’t die out; priests still held Sunday mass, Muslims prayed to Mecca more fervently, Jewish rabbis still held to the Sabbath. But overall everyone tolerated each other more. We had lived through this religious battle, but no one knew exactly how many wars across the planet were still going on.
Food ran low in Chicago, and a makeshift police force put thieves in jail right beside the remaining evangelicals who tried to carry on Hill’s work. President Douglas tasked my dad with the food recovery effort, but my dad knew the truth: the planet surface could no longer grow anything. In a matter of years, the Earth would be a desolate wasteland, and would remain so until the magnetosphere patched itself up. Years, maybe decades, maybe even centuries. No one could tell.
Dad came up to the roof where I was studying the stars one night. “Winter’s coming. With the lake effect the temperatures are going to be inhabitable. We’re going to have to leave,” he said.
I looked at him. “And go where?”
“Mammoth Caves, Kentucky. Remember? Warmer climate, extensive cavern system that was probably exposed even more by the earthquake. We have to find alternative ways of growing plants. We can do it underground. Filter out the sunlight, build an ecosystem underground, but it’ll take time, and brains, and leadership.” He came over to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I need you with me on this.”
I nodded. Marilyn came up behind me with a glass of water. “That’s the last of this batch. We need to filter some more,” she said.
“Cleaner water underground,” my dad said. “Are you with me?”
I nodded, drank the lukewarm water, and smiled. Phase I of the new world had ended. We had discovered who we were as a human race and we came out unified and together. At least here in America. I thought of that book I read, and one of the quotes that stuck with me. "Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?" Jack Kerouac had summed up the question that our country had constantly faced and now had to answer again. Now that we knew who we were, where did we go from here?
I wrapped my arm around Marilyn. Mammoth Caves, apparently.
THE END
About the Author
I live in a small town in Eastern Pennsylvania, with my wife, son and two daughters (when they’re not in college). I also share my living quarters, for some reason, with three Irish Setters, a cat, and a red-footed tortoise named Sally. In addition to Under a Broken Sun I’ve also written The Timepiece Chronicles, Dealing with Dudes and Chicks, and several other screenplays that currently reside in the “where are they now” file.
I’ve dedicated this book to my family, because without their love and support I’d be wishing I had written a book while my ass becomes one with the couch, but I’d like to take this opportunity to thank several other folks: Mom and Dad for making me (hope it was worth giving up your Christmas, ma. Sorry); my critique group for giving it a read, especially Christine Danek, Ilene Wong, K.M. Walton, and Kelly Lyman; Shawn O’Ferrall for introducing me to Willy Porter and his amazing rendition of “You Stay Here”; Tom Bogush for showing me what it means to be a fighter, a humanitarian, and the most benevolent dictator this side of the Pacific Ocean; Deb Quinton for her amazing graphic design skills and my sister Kelly for latching on to this wonderful woman and making her a wife; and finally to my own wife, Anne….for everything.
In memory of Patrick M. Sheridan – a gentleman, an Irishman, and an author…
…and one helluva dad.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Under a Broken Sun Page 25
