“So, what do you see is the worst-case scenario?”
We will lose our seat in the U.N., become sanctioned with trade embargos… probably war, it will definitely cause a U.A. bankruptcy. I just don’t understand what Lui is thinking.
“I don’t think she’s playing the long game. But I also don’t think that is the worst-case scenario.”
“What do you think is?”
“I am not sure…but you can only mess with Mother Nature for so long, before she becomes one mighty, pissed off bitch.”
“You’ve got to start preparing Doc. It’s only a matter of time before this goes sideways.”
He gives me a warm smile and chuckles.
“Why do you think I’m living in this crap palace, Malone, just between you and me, I’ll be ready. I will have supplies for seven people for two years. But with rationing we can house ten people if we have to. You know by now who you can trust in the unit. We are all brothers, but we are not all on the same side.”
“Ravani, Crowder, Abram and Weber for sure, I don’t know about the rest.”
“You can trust Garcia…Clayton, Kelsey, Young and Gonzales are loyalist. The Captain is a hard read, all by the book. You will have to wait and see where the chips fall.”
A couple minutes later we see Helen and Edie walking down the hill.
“I thought you said they would be twenty minutes?”
“They must have missed your pretty face, sugar”
I roll my eyes.
“Dumbass”
We are both laughing loudly by the time they make it to the steps. Helen takes in the picture.
“I can see we missed some juicy guy gossip.”
“Like a couple of clucking hens, babe.”
She laughs as she takes Edie inside to put the food on plates.
After dinner I leave, and six hours later I’m back at, Ft. Bragg.
Five weeks later I am back in Natchez, sitting on the porch with Doc and Helen. Not long after I get there, Edie makes her way over, this time she has a fading bruise across her jaw. I raise a finger from the glass of iced tea I’m holding and point towards it.
“What happened there?”
“I spilled a glass of soda on the carpet.”
“Ah…once my dad popped me in the mouth because he spilled his beer. He said I was distracting him. You know, I could make it, so he didn’t hurt you again.”
She looks at me doubtfully.
“I don’t think anyone could make that happen.”
“I could make him disappear, and no one would ever know what happened to him.”
Doc chokes on his beer, Helen just shrugs, as if to say, she’d be down with that. When, Edie realizes what I mean, a look of horror crosses her face, but she quickly recovers.
“No thanks, Mr. Fin. My dad is a jerk, but he is still my dad. I don’t want anything bad to happen to him.”
In that moment I realize how much better she is than me. If someone had offered to get rid of my dad, I would have said, yes please. I sit back in my chair and consider this and can come up with only one way to help Edie.
“I think we need to teach you to protect yourself, just in case things get out of hand.”
Edie is contemplative about my offer and for a minute I think she is going to say no. But then, she looks at me, in the calm and forthright manner, that I have come to see as her personal superpower.
“I think that is a good idea.”
We begin her training that day, with some basic hand to hand combat maneuvers. Over the next eighteen months, I visit Doc, Helen, and Edie every few weeks and teach Edie new skills to work on when I’m gone. She is a quick learner, and she is getting stronger. Edie is an excellent shot and a damn good fighter…but she is a prodigy with a knife. It’s a good thing because the world is becoming an even darker place. It’s strange to me that almost no one seems to notice that the world is falling apart around them.
It’s late September and things are finally starting to cool down in Natchez. Doc and I are sitting comfortably on his porch. I can tell his new prosthetic leg, is working out. He is getting around much easier. Helen took Edie to the store. Their mission was shrouded in secrecy, but judging by Edie’s embarrassed whispers, I assume they went to get her some feminine products. While, the girls are gone, I decide to take the opportunity to talk to Doc about the U.A.
“The early, corn crops yield reports do not look good. Lui, can’t manipulate the situation much longer.”
“How much time do you think there is, before it goes downhill?”
“Well, the wheat crops in the UK produced five percent less, than the last year’s non modified crops, so it was a total bust…Lui, is trying to stifle the corn reports, but it’s futile. The crops are in too many countries she can’t silence them all. If Brazil’s soybean crop doesn’t do well there is going to be hell to pay. By the end of November, the world will probably be ripping apart at the seams. You should know, if things here become insurmountable, there are some good people in Elizabeth. Find the Armstrongs. I played football with Jackson, their oldest son, or the Taylors I went to school with their daughter, Kirra. They are all good people, and I think they know something is coming.”
I hand Doc a piece of paper with their address scrawled on it.
“Burn it after you memorize it.”
Doc chuckles
“I didn’t lose my brains along with my leg Malone.”
His face takes on a more somber expression.
“Not trying to get into your business, but if they are such good people, maybe you should make a visit, and be sure they know what’s coming.”
The thought makes me queasy.
“I haven’t been back since I signed up for service, I don’t know if I can stomach it.”
Doc is silent for a long moment, and I start to think he isn’t going to respond. Then he looks at me with all the wisdom of a man in his late thirties that has seen and experienced more than most people would in three lifetimes.
“Fin, you can’t run away from your demons forever, you’ve got to set things right…time is running short, my friend.”
I have no response to this, because I know he’s talking about more than just warning the Armstrongs and Taylors, and I know he’s right. It is time for me to make amends.
Chapter Fourteen
Homecoming
M rs. Taylor is ecstatic when she answers the door to their home. She wraps me in a bear hug so tight, I could swear it was Mr. Taylor and not the tiny framed woman who was the last face I saw when leaving Elizabeth. She pulls me into the house, and I can tell immediately that something is different. The house is dark and quiet, and while she is clearly happy to see me, there is sadness in her eyes…a hollow, loneliness.
“What’s happened? Is Kirra, okay?”
She gives me a small smile.
“Kirra, is well, she is at Central University with Jackson.”
She takes a deep steadying breath.
“Mr. Taylor passed away three months ago. He had a massive stroke.”
Her eyes well up with tears that she fights back down. I am stunned silent.
“It was just so unexpected; he was so healthy. He went for a run that morning, had the stroke right after lunch, and he was gone that night. He passed just a few minutes after Kirra, got to the hospital.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to comfort her. So, I give her a hug, then, do what I was trained to do. I shut off my emotions and get back to the mission at hand. Still embracing her, I murmur over the top of her head.
“Something, bad is coming…I came to make sure you’re ready.”
She steps back, and looks at my beard covered face, and immediately knows the seriousness of the conversation.
“I’ll call the Armstrongs.”
Twenty minutes later I’m sitting at the kitchen table next to Sidney Taylor and across from Ava and Thomas Armstrong, no longer the battered little boy in need of help, but a warrior with the abil
ity to help them. Over the next two hours I tell them everything I know and make suggestions. Jackson and Kirra need to be here. There needs to be a plausible excuse for both of them to come home. I suggest they fake a pregnancy. Unplanned pregnancy is rare these days, but it still happens, and it would give them a reason to leave school unexpectedly. When we are finished, I stand to go, Ava and Sidney both give me hugs and Thomas shakes my hand. The question is looming, I know he wants to ask if I’m going to see my dad and warn him also, but he surprises me and doesn’t.
“What will you do? Are you planning on staying in service and fighting Lui’s battles?”
“I’m not sure. If I leave, more than likely, I wouldn’t be able to come back here. This is the first place they would look. It really depends on how all this plays out.”
“Take care of yourself, Fin. You can always come back here; we have places we can hide you.”
I give him a nod, though I am doubtful, unless he has an underground bunker hidden somewhere. I think about asking but decide it’s better if I don’t know. The U.A. has ways of getting information out of people.
“One last thing, if you ever come across a man named Doc Love, help him, or let him, help you. He is a good man, and he is an asset. He has extensive medical training. He is one of my brothers from the unit. He will likely be traveling with a woman named Helen and a girl named Edie.”
“Of course, your friends are welcome here, as are you…always.”
I am filled with dread as I make the short drive to my dad’s trailer. Once, I am there I can’t bring myself to go in. I just stand outside in the little clearing in the woods staring at the door. I try to push away all the feelings, threatening to turn me into the scared little boy I once was.
I take a deep breath, and remember who I am now, and knock on the door. There is no answer, so I reach under the brick sitting next to a dead potted plant and grab the key.
I turn it over in my hand. It is a little grimy and damp from sitting under the brick. I close my eyes for a second before I turn the key and open the door.
The house is dark and littered with beer cans and whiskey bottles, nothing has changed. My dad is passed out in the recliner. I look at him, but instead of the fear or hate I expected to feel, all I have is sadness and pity for this man. Someone, wholly broken, who wished for nothing more than death after his wife died, but death would not come. He is nothing more than a sad wasted life. I can’t bolster the strength to talk to him. I find a pen, and grab an envelope containing an unpaid bill, to leave a note.
Dad, I was here, but you were unable to talk. I just wanted you to know that I am okay.
I hope one day you find peace.
Fin
Chapter Fifteen
Afraid of the Dark
Twenty-four hours in the half dead world.
L ucius interrupts my daydreaming, to tell me it’s time to leave. I look at him questioningly, completely unaware of something that just happened, that I should know.
“It is amusing that your propensity, for woolgathering is the same in death, as it was in life
“I find it amusing that you use words like woolgathering, as if you’re vocabulary got stuck in the nineteen hundreds”
He gifts me with a warm smile.
“What’s a few hundred years, when you have been in purgatory for more than two thousand years…Jackson and Kirra are leaving school, we need to go.”
“Oh, is something wrong?”
“I’m not sure yet, but we will soon find out.”
We sit in the back of Jackson’s jeep while Kirra and Jackson hold hands in the front seat. Lucius looks over to me.
“Does it bother you to see them, being so, affectionate.”
I give him a crooked smile.
“Are you, jealous Lucius, or are you asking me if I am Jealous?”
He tilts his head a little higher and looks out the window.
“The latter of course.”
A giggle escapes from my mouth.
“You’re so easy to tease. No, it doesn’t bother me, I am happy for them. Besides, I have grown rather fond of you, Spartacus, even if I can’t touch you. If I were going to be jealous of something, it would be that fact that they have the ability to hold hands…and kiss”
If it were possible for a spirit to blush, I know, he would be. Instead, I see his deep blue aura shimmer around him.
“Sometimes your teasing goes too far, Haven”
“I wasn’t teasing, Lucius.”
We stare each other down for a moment, then, turn away from the fruitless effort of wishing we could show some sort of physical affection. It is the worst part about being dead. We have grown close over the last four years, but we can share no more than words.
We arrive at the Armstrong house, and it is clear Jackson and Kirra, are as much in the dark, as to why they have been summoned home, as we are.
We stand in the dining room, and watch as all the Armstrong’s, and Mrs. Taylor and Kirra, take seats around the table. I can’t help but smile at how grown up Wilder has gotten. My smile fades as I hear that Fin was here. I am devastated that I didn’t get to see him. I look over to Lucius, he turns so he is facing me directly and raises both his hands. I raise mine and watch as our auras collide. We can’t physically feel anything, but the color is so beautiful. It has become our way of comforting each other. After a moment I return my attention to the conversation at the table. Lucius and I listen intently, as they make their plans.
“Do you, think it’s finally happening?”
He gives his head a slight shake.
“I have told you many times, there is no way to know for sure. The world is troubled, but it has seen dark times before.”
Day turns to night and we pass on the information we have learned to the other watchers. There is a strange buzz of excitement tempered with fear. We are all waiting in hopeful anticipation for whatever is to come, that will bring an end to the half dead world. We all want to feel again, but the thought of having to watch all the suffering that will come is overwhelming. There is also a lot of talk about what will happen to us if the keepers of the light are hunted down, as some of the watchers believe they will be. What will happen to us if we can no longer hide in the light?
I stand outside the kitchen window, and watch as the Taylor’s, and Armstrong’s, move around like busy bees. Ava, Kirra, and her mom are hard at work in the kitchen, while Thomas, Jackson, and Wilder haul endless boxes of supplies down to their secret place. I have seen them at this routine countless times, but there is definitely a new sense of urgency tonight.
Even though I cannot feel him, I can sense Lucius come up behind me, and I turn to look into his weary eyes.
“We must go. There is a soul in need of assistance.”
I perk up ready for something constructive to do. I give Lucius an excited smile.
“Let’s do this.”
We move as quickly as we can towards the light in the forest. Dread creeps in as I realize which direction we are moving. We are standing at the edge of the woods, guarded by the light of Mrs. Andrews, my old current events teacher. She is doubled over and breathing heavily…the aftereffect of her nightly run. Lucius turns to me, with concern on his face.
“Haven, you don’t have to come along for this one. I can get him, why don’t you just wait here with Mrs. Andrews.”
We are standing on the precipice of darkness, there is no light keeper any closer between us, and the soul that I can only assume is Mr. Malone.
“I would be lying if I said that I wanted risk ourselves to save Mr. Malone…but there is no way I am letting you go alone.”
“Haven, this mission is one of high risk. I need your head in the game. You know it is unsafe to move through the darkness. We will need to move with the utmost expedience.”
I take one last look at Mrs. Andrews then back into the darkness.
“I’m ready Lucius, I can do this.”
He nods his head slightly, and we are of
f sprinting into the woods. It is eerily still, and I can feel the weight of the darkness closing in around us. We both know there is no way we will make it all the way to the Mr. Malone’s trailer, then I, see a dim light fifty yards to our right.
“To the right Lucius.”
He looks over and veers right, we are there and safe from the darkness in an instant. But the scene before us is so staggering, that I almost run back into the darkness to get away from it. We are at the fort that Fin and I, built. Mr. Malone’s dead body is sitting slightly slumped over. There is a pen in his hand and a notepad in his lap. To his right is a slightly tattered envelope, with a note written on it. I immediately recognize Fin’s, handwriting and read the note. Though it doesn’t say much, it is clear Fin is trying to forgive his Father. Mr. Malone’s very confused spirit is staring at me in awe, I can’t help the rage the flows out of me.
“You don’t deserve this, you know. The darkness should have taken you.”
“Careful Haven, it is not for you to judge. He was given light, though not much, so we must move quickly.”
I begrudgingly accept this truth. Mr. Malone takes in Lucius,’ directive with surprising calm, before he turns to me.
“I know, I don’t deserve any help from you, but thank you.”
“Save your thanks, we’re not safe yet.”
We all move towards the entrance to the fort. Once outside we go towards Mrs. Andrews light which is walking slowly in the direction of her house. About two seconds in, I realize I really want to read Mr. Malone’s reply to Fin’s note. I feel certain, he won’t tell me what pathetic excuse he could have for all the years of abuse he heaped on Fin. Without thinking I turn back towards the fort. Lucius notices a split second too late, to stop me. Once inside the fort, I look over Mr. Malone’s dead body and read Dear Fin, just before the darkness envelops me.
Half Dead World: Book One from the Apocalypse Tales Page 15
