Children Of Fiends - Part 2 A Nation By Another Name: An Of Sudden Origin Novella

by C. Chase Harwood

  Plimpton smiled as he watched the girl peanut vendor turn to walk up the street. He was proud of that sight. His army, his robotic army, had made it so that girl could live and safely partake in the new country’s commerce. He noticed that she clutched one last bag of peanuts and he called out. “You there. Peanut Girl. Can I buy your last bag?”

  Tillie turned at the voice and was astonished to see the councilman quickening his step to catch up with her. She was at a loss for words, but stopped all the same.

  “I haven’t had a roasted peanut in at least… a decade.”

  Tillie found her voice, but noticed her legs trembling. “I… I’m afraid I may have crushed some. You, you may just have it, sir.”

  “Nonsense. How much is a bag of peanuts?”

  “Two dollars, sir.”

  Plimpton waved to Hanson who had pulled the carriage to the curb. “Hanson, I need two dollars. Buying this beautiful young lady’s last bag of peanuts for the day.”

  The street was mostly empty. The growing dusk meant near total darkness as streetlight bulbs were scarce and the energy better used elsewhere. The driver set the brake, hopped down, and fished out some bills from his pocket. “Seems I have but a fiver for small bills, sir.”

  “I can make change,” whispered Tillie.

  Plimpton took the newly minted Shore bill and exchanged it for the peanuts. “No, you keep the change. How old are you, my dear?”

  “Seventeen, sir.”

  “Lovely. You are a lovely seventeen-year-old girl. Envy I have for the lad you finally choose.”

  Tillie blushed and stared at the ground, completely taken with the handsome leader. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “Oh no, no, no. Lord I am not. Servant I am. We are a nation of equals, my dear.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Plimpton turned to his driver, “Shall we, Hanson?” Hanson simply nodded and opened the carriage door for the master. Plimpton turned back to the girl and removed his hat. “A good evening to you, Miss…?”

  “Jarvis. Tillie Jarvis.”

  “A good evening to you, Miss Jarvis.” Plimpton turned to his carriage. Tillie stood in awe, and for a moment she forgot all about the new and terrible world. A handsome prince had deemed to speak with her. It was just like every book about such things that she had ever read. Her heart was light as a feather. Then Plimpton turned back. “Why Hanson, being rude we are. We need to offer this young lady a ride home.”

  A shadow fell across the footman’s eyes and he grew stiff as he held the door to the closed cab. “Sir, I’m sure Ms. Jarvis must be going a different way.”

  Tillie dared not speak. She looked inside the sumptuously appointed cab and felt her feet grow lighter as her heartbeat swelled with sudden anxiety. To ride in the councilman’s carriage? Her family wouldn’t believe it.

  “Nonsense,” replied Plimpton. “It’s growing dark. Despite the total safety of our streets, a gentleman wouldn’t leave her to walk alone.”

  The next day a ten-year-old boy found her in a drainage ditch about three miles outside the city center. The coroner would determine that she had been raped and then strangled with her own panties. The city’s chief constable would reiterate to the press that the murder rate remained very low: just twenty-three in the decade that The Shore had come to be, and that everything would be done to find the perpetrator. “Such viciousness should not exist in a society that has faced and overcome the scourge that was Cain’s.” What he didn’t mention was that seven of those murders had been similar to this last one. Nearly every year there had been a rape killing like this. In his heart he knew it was the same perpetrator. What he had now was the means to do something about it. Various Sentinel patrols had gone out from The Shore over the past year. They had gained valuable knowledge about the surrounding countryside and had also brought back valuable goods and technology. The constable finally had a lab worthy of the term. At the very moment that he was speaking to the press, the newly created forensics lab was looking at the DNA of a killer who had no compunction against leaving his semen within the victim.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Up River

  We passed a vast field of weathered towers piercing through the waves where once the nation’s largest offshore wind farm existed. The machines had been long ago dismantled and brought north to keep up with the demand of a country that owed its civilized existence to uninterrupted electricity.

  As we entered the Chesapeake, Captain Dean kept The Ginger Girl as far from land as he could. The city of Norfolk lay in black ruin to our south while the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula could just be made out to our north. As we angled toward Hampton Roads and the mouth of the James River we had no choice but to get closer to shore. A tattered flag (really just a few ribbons) still flew over the battlements of Fort Monroe. As the waters narrowed, Dean had to tack closer and closer to the shore. Like collapsing gravestones in a forgotten cemetery, the deeply weathered homes and commercial buildings offered a testament to a once thriving existence. Only rugged shore birds gave life to what was otherwise complete desolation. It wasn’t until we reached the remains of the James River Bridge that we saw any evidence of the Exodus. The bridge had been destroyed in a fruitless effort to restrain the surge of infected people that came from the South. Many of the healthy had been cut off, and rust heaps stuffed with the tattered remains of a hastily packed-up lifetime, dangled amongst the mangled ruins of the bridge. So the felled concrete and steel wouldn’t shear off our keel, we tacked up and down the eastern side of the wreckage until we found a point that seemed safe enough to cross. Once crackling electrical lines, still held aloft by a series of tall rusty towers, allowed for our masts to slip by. At historic Jamestown, the remaining river ice began to thicken along the shore and became substantial at the narrows approaching Claremont. Captain Dean decided that we would drop anchor there with the hope that the coming winter’s ice wouldn’t completely cover the river at its center, thus allowing the possibility of reclaiming The Ginger Girl upon our return.

  With the loss of one of the whaleboats, we were anticipating having to make at least four trips to get the rest of the way up to Richmond and the Old Dominion Train Museum. With 22 people and all of our gear, the 20-mile slog up the icy river would be a multi-day event. As luck would have it, there were several mansions on the shore to our north, each with its own private dock. A perfectly protected thirty-foot motor yacht was held aloft inside one of the boathouses. With little effort Seamen Naoto Kitta and Marshal Blakely got the engine running - and to our tremendous luck, there was plenty of clean fuel. We towed the whaleboat with the power yacht holding the ship’s company and all of our gear with ease.

  It was only when I could relax and write down these words that I really considered the dead vegetation. Perpetual winter had killed off every deciduous tree. Only the conifers remained robust enough to deal with the extreme weather and poor sunlight. We’d gotten used to dead trees at home, but here, where memories were of a gentle countryside filled with leafy greenery, the landscape was simply sorrowful.

  The river was fast moving due to the summer meltoff and –

  “Colonel?” MacAfee looked up from his journal at Eliza. She stood eating some kind of fish biscuit and held one out for him. “Cookie just made these up using the oven in the galley. They’re good. He’s using up the last of the fresh fish.”

  “Thanks.” MacAfee bit into the offered biscuit and smiled at the flavor before grimacing. “Food is going to be boring from now on – nutrition bars and whatever we can scrounge.”

  “Whatever we find sounds interesting enough.” She took note of his journal. “May I ask what you’re writing?”

  “A log of our mission. The president felt that a record should exist. Actually, it’s more than a log. He asked me to make notes on our observations, the state of the countryside and what not. Even more important since we lost the radios.” He nodded at the crew, who without much to do, stood along the rails
and stared at the passing shore. The twins were staring too. They had been good to their word and stayed out of people’s heads. Already, most of the crew had taken to not wearing their helmets. They could be felt and occasionally one could taste something they ate or have a sudden flash of what the two were seeing. It was unsettling, but they were getting used to it. MacAfee said, “So odd to look at that shore. Those homes, docks, towns – time almost stands still. So much up north, at home, already different. For your pucks… I can’t imagine what they think.”

  Eliza said, “They are thinking that there were so many of us. They know the history. They know how it was. We have shown them videos from before. But now they are seeing it.”

  As planned, Dean brought the cruiser along the vast pumping array that had pulled water from the James River for the Contex Power plant outside of Richmond. It was a coal fired plant and the last available satellite image of it showed a long line of coal cars sitting along the plant’s rail spur. The plan was to drop a team led by Hernandez to confirm that the coal cars were mobile and ready for the engine farther up river. It was decided to split the twins so that each party could benefit from their theoretical protection.

  MacAfee joined Hernandez and Sergeant Green on the riverbank in full battle gear. With them were Jamesbonds, Wen Blakely, Abner Lee and Maggie Tender who had sim-trained for the coal car operation. At 50 years old, Abner was everything MacAfee could hope for in his stereotyped image of a salty dog sailor, right down to the man’s thick whitening beard and leathery skin. Maggie, on the other hand, was about the last person that he would have taken as a seaman. Surprisingly attractive, she spoke with a gentle voice and carried herself in the slump shouldered manner of a woman who was trying to hide her womanhood rather than display it. Other than her appropriate clothing, the only giveaway that she worked at sea at all was her hands. They were strong hands with thick calluses, sharp tendons, the skin red and chapped. Then there was Hansel, a gangly creature. Each time MacAfee looked at one of the pucks he felt his heart slightly seize with surprise. Hansel was human looking after all and a brief glance would inform the peripheral vision as much, but he was only human in the way that the Greek god Pan looked human. More than once, he had asked himself if the Ancient Greeks had been on to something. The pucks weren’t some chimera of goat and man, but their gait, built for extraordinary speed, was of a hoofed animal. And those faces, like something from a Grimm Fairytale. Demons walked the Earth. That’s what the headlines had read, before they finished the Terminus, when the country was almost lost. He felt so very grateful for the Terminus. If his countrymen saw what he was looking at right now… He’d been told about how the FNDz bacteria had invaded the human genome, inserting itself via something called horizontal gene transfer into the living DNA of people, rewriting the code and forever altering the evolutionary future of the infected person’s offspring. Seeing those offspring up close only served to crush his understanding of science and reinforce his understanding of the unseen world. MacAfee offered up a brief prayer.

  Hansel wasn’t happy about leaving his sister’s side, but he was also excited. It would be the first time being away from her. He decided to try an experiment and close his mind off to her as he stepped ashore. She blasted him with several primal pleas for attention that only served to make him smile as he remembered that it wasn’t that long ago that he would close her off all the time to punish or tease her. She rarely did it to him, and when she did, it made him feel bad. That didn’t stop him from doing it again today. Today was about Hansel being on his own – or at least without his sister.

  Dean was also geared up. Besides wanting to get a lay of the land, the notion of waiting around on a cabin cruiser while people were exploring the shore was not something he was willing to accept. Sanders would handle overseeing the base. As Dean stepped down the gangway, Eliza stepped to the rail. “Captain?” He paused. “I know I’m overstepping, but wouldn’t it make sense for you to stay here, with your ship? We don’t know what might be out there. If there’s trouble, wouldn’t your leadership be better served here?”

  Dean jerked a thumb at the boat and spoke over his shoulder. “Not my ship, Ms Sherr.” He knew he was being an ass, but he was still irked by her stubbornness about protecting herself. Now she was talking prudence? Heck with her.

  The team marched away and KK, the remaining soldier, set up a perimeter guard with Bill Wall and Tom Murphy. With little else to do, the rest settled in to wait.

  The shore team followed the pipe system that led from the pumps, while their heads-up displays offered a map showing a short hike of about a mile along an icy trench. The trench led directly beneath Interstate 95 and like another snapshot of time, the major highway remained clogged with the relics of mass hysteria.

  As the scout team left the road behind them, Dean was reminded of his younger days as a volunteer firefighter and shuddered at the memory of a rural honky-tonk where he had spent many a boozy night. A band without a permit for its pyrotechnics had accidentally set the building ablaze. In their panic, the patrons all rushed for the exits as one. Until Omega caused all such events to pale, Dean and the other firefighters witnessed one of the most surreal acts of mob mentality in American history. Perhaps 24 people had tried to run out of the club’s front door at once. They had instantly clogged the exit with too much massed flesh and had become wedged in a way that no one could move an inch forward. All they had to do was agree to step backward to untangle themselves, but in their terror to escape the flames not one could gather the sense to do so. As more people bunched up behind them, those wedged in front screamed and pleaded with the firefighters to pull them free. It was hopeless. No amount of tugging would dislodge them. Dean and his compatriots watched in horror as the flames took the people from behind, burning their legs and backsides while their arms, heads and chests remained in fresher air. Putting a hose on them only proved to prolong their agony, the water unable to reach the flames inside. This scenario took place in several of the building’s windows and also at the back door. Scores died horribly by only getting halfway to freedom. Such were the Interstates during Omega.

  As they walked, a mountain of coal that had been dug out of the hills of West Virginia more than a decade before began to appear. This was the first time that the group had moved as a team outside of the sim and Hernandez was pleased with their pace. They had been trained after a fashion to be jumped at any moment (the sim had them fighting Fiends and their kids nearly the whole way). It was nerve racking and she checked in with each of them separately by using the com-link built into their helmets. So far everyone was holding up.

  The weak summer sun fought through the clouds just enough to cast shadows behind four huge idle smoke stacks. A vast train yard held five parallel rows of tracks filled head to tail with empty coal cars. When they reached the main line, a long row of cars snaked for a quarter of a mile to where they remained hooked up to a rust covered engine. Jamesbonds climbed to the top of one and confirmed that eight cars beyond the Transfer station remained full. It was exactly what they had hoped for; more than enough to get them across the country. The diesel engine, on the other hand, was a wreck. The weather had not been kind these many harsh years and a fuel line had become detached allowing the diesel to flow out and seep into the ground. Even if they had the battery capacity to start the big machine, the empty fuel tank made it a heap of useless metal standing in their way.

  “Piece of cake,” said Wen. “The thing is parked right next to this side line. We detach it, and back it out of the way with our steamer, hook up our coal and off we go.”

  “I like your optimism, Marshal,” said MacAfee. “Let’s go get our steamer.”

  “Even the weather is nice, sort of,” said Maggie Tender, which took Dean by surprise because the woman had never spoken out loud in front of him.

  Thirty minutes later they were back aboard the cabin cruiser and heading up the James.

  A ruined Richmond dredged up a ce
sspool of bad memories. Only a handful of hearty birds provided any relief from the mournful landscape. They tied up between the shore and one of the railroad trestles that spanned the tracks across from Old Town Manchester to the city center. The same scout team disembarked and followed the tracks past a large oil storage facility. They checked the tanks, found them to be empty, then stopped cold when they noticed that the rusted tracks nearby had a fresh sheen on them, the only explanation the passing wheels of a train. Someone had come down here and salvaged the oil. MacAfee felt certain that he’d know about any such mission. If it was the Delmarva raiders, they were set up better than they thought. Speculation was pointless, but they kept their guard up against more than just zombies. Wen said, “Shit. Pardon my French. You think they took the engine?”