The Event Series (Book 4): Filling in the Cracks

by Thomas Larson

  “Well, you gave me the chance to explore that, and I still want you to put that cookbook together that you have talked about. I think it could be fun to research, but more, when it happens, you, and those who have read it will be better prepared.”

  “Nick? What do you mean when it happens?” I asked.

  He looked over at me and just smiled.

  I found the thought troubling but try as I might I could not get any more out of him. After a few more attempts I gave up and we walked along, it was almost time for me to turn around, I could see the bench that told me I had walked half the route. I usually did an hour, 3o minutes out, 30 minutes back.

  As we started back he asked me why I had killed Lauren off, his wife so easily. I explained that I was always bothered by that. It was really the first one of our group that I killed off. And even though it was not a ‘real’ person each and every character becomes part of a family, part of my world and removing them from the story was hard, some harder than others.

  “I can understand, I think one of the hardest for you had to be Anne,” he said

  “Yeah, that was. But each character had their part to play in the story and their demise, death was important.”

  “I was glad you let Grace and I go together so that we did not have to suffer the loss of each other,”

  “Yeah,” was all I could say, this topic was actually kind of unpleasant.

  “And I loved the change of Sword Master, having Lance release me from the inevitable and stepping up, that was kind of cool!”

  I grunted, remembering how hard it was to write that segment.

  We walked on in silence for a few minutes, I was deep in thought about the deaths, and killings, was it necessary? I knew they were, but still, did I overdo it?

  Ding, Ding, a bicycle bell rang behind me and there was a shout of “On your right”. I moved to the left, and the cyclist passed by. I knew that Nick was gone, he had said his piece, made his peace and was on his way.

  “I will make that cookbook, I promise, I will do my part for whatever is to come. I said aloud as I crunched through the leaves.

  A squirrel raced across the path, acorn in its mouth.

  Revisited

  Coffee? Why do I smell coffee brewing? I mean I when I was still working I used to set up my Keurig to have the coffee ready when I would get up in the morning, but I have been retired for over 6 years. Wait, not just coffee, but bacon too…..WTF.

  I checked the alarm clock 5:24. This is way too early to get up, but I have to know what is going on, why am I smelling this, breakfast? I threw on a robe and stumbled toward the kitchen. As a walked in the lights were on, the smells were wonderful and there was Asuna!

  “Good morning, it’s about time sleepy head,” She smiled.

  I grunted and stood, staring in a state of surprise.

  “So, I think a coffee will get you going,” as she walked over handing me a coffee, black, in my favorite mug. “Come, sit down, let’s eat and talk.”

  As I sat, she placed a plate of eggs, over easy, bacon and rye toast in front of me. Then she sat down on the other side of the table, she also had a coffee and a plate of eggs, her eggs were scrambled.

  I sipped the coffee and stared at her, my waifu, the 2D girl I created. Wait, I guess I should explain ‘waifu’. A waifu is a sort of imaginary girlfriend, generally created by a teenaged Japanese male. It is a character in the art form of manga or anime. But the waifu, unlike just an imaginary friend is held in high respect, not just a fantasy girl that you would have sex fantasies over. No, she is much more than that. In the case of Asuna, I created her for the book character, but there is a personal connection with her. Yeah, I guess I am kind of a teenage male at heart.

  As I stared at her, finally she blushed a little and said, “What?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Ah, oh that, well, I, we have been following the new book, kind of a silly name, Book 4, but the content is good so far, We like where you are going, but you are not doing so well on the deadlines. I thought you wanted to be done by September, then October, now you are talking November. What is going on?”

  I looked at her, it was almost like having a breakfast conversation with your wife, and “I think that September date was a little over optimistic. October, well there was a lot of days working at my part time flagging gig out at the race track. I still think I can make November, but…..”

  “But what?” she said, giving me an intense stare.

  I kind of mumbled, “writer’s block.”

  “Are you kidding me? She burst laughing. “You have written a trilogy, 1500 pages, and another 100 in this book and you’re whining about writer’s block?”

  I stared down at my coffee, I felt stupid.

  She stopped laughing and stared at me, then said, “I’m sorry, but you’ve done a great job, and are almost there, you almost have this done.”

  “I know, but I, I have done the easy ones.” I stammered.

  She smiled at me, and said simply “you know where you are going, but let me share some thoughts, some of us have been talking. There were, are a couple of characters that need to be worked on,”

  “Like who?”

  “Well, you could start with Jimmy, the kid in the mine, or Gary before he was Brother Gabriel, and what about Michelle’s story. You know there are things, stories out there that you can and need to do.”

  I stared at her, she was a beautiful woman, and I know why Tom loved her. Or was that I created her, my waifu, I am not sure.

  I awoke a second time to Ning head butting me, she was hungry, but this time, it was not coffee I smelled, but cat poop. I walked out to the kitchen, it was dark, cold and empty. I turned on the Keurig, and went into my writing area and turned on my computer. Once again she has stepped up, my muse came through for me. I can do this.

  But first, vanilla hazelnut or Jamaica me crazy, which coffee to have. Then to the keyboard, I have a course again.

  A Visit to DMV

  It is no fun. I am here because DMV messed up on my VIN# on the Harley and now I have to correct it to sell it. I hate this place, it is always such a waste of time. You come in, get a number and sit, and wait, and sit some more. The people waiting are loud, and annoying. I drew my number, D 74, and then look at the monitors, the good news is that the D series is in the 40s, the bad news is that there are also the A, B, and C series and their gaps are even bigger which means that the numbers, the lines, are long and with typical state run efficiency, slow moving. I thought I was being smart. I decided to use the Enfield office rather than Wethersfield thinking the lines would be shorter. They may have been, but the ones here were pretty long.

  I don’t know why, boredom perhaps, but I began to watch one of the lines and the DMV clerk. I guess him to be in his 40s, tall and thin with a dour look that was magnified with his squinty eyes and old style black glasses.

  I am sure that he didn’t know it but he put on a display that unfortunately strengthened the stereotype of DMV workers everywhere. He was rude, condescending, and abrasive. He hated his job, you could tell. Of course, my kinder gentler thinking made me think that he was just having a bad day. But in my heart and mind, no it was not the case.

  I looked up, ah, we have hit D-50, and the line was moving. Then a thought hit me, what if I get that guy, what if he is my ‘DMV Savior’. Then, a ray of hope, he was being replaced, a new worker, this could be good, maybe.

  I had watched enough and settled in to the book I was reading on my iPad. It was a book on writing. I figure that if I am doing this writing thing I should probably work to be good at it.

  I felt my chair move as the seat next to me was taken. The person plopped into the chair with a heavy sigh. As he sat there I could hear his heavy breathing. There was a bit of a wheezing to it.

  “I hated these people, all of them, every last one,” he muttered, I think out loud, to himself. “I needed to make them learn, to heed the words, to heed me.”

  That
caught my attention and I turned to look at him. I caught my breath for a second. It was the worker, the DMV guy. He did not have his glasses and without them he seemed to look younger, almost baby faced. He was just staring at the lines, at his work station, talking to himself.

  He ranted on, “When the plague came, I was blessed and I made them bow down to me or they paid.”

  I watched him for a minute, the spittle coming from his mouth as he ranted. I looked down at my iPad, and then back at him. But he was different now, well, dressed different. He was in a robe, a purple robe. He seemed to be sitting straighter, taller now, before he was a hunched beaten man. Now, there was an air about it, a swagger. As he turned toward me his eyes, there was a fire in his eyes.

  “May I help you my son?” he asked.

  “No, no, I am good. I was, I could not help but overhear you talking a minute ago and you spoke of a plague.”

  “Yes, there was be a plaque, a meteor fell and I became a savior of all these low life scum. It was I who raised an army of my selected few and brought peace and a new order to the world, for a while.”

  If I had not seen this guy in his original DMV form I would have just dismissed him as a nut case but there was something else going on here.

  “D-52” came an announcement on the PA system. I looked up and then back at the robe guy. He was back to being the DMV guy, wheezing away, and twitching.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  The voice was different, not the authoritarian voice of the purple robe, it was the abrasive tone of the worker.

  “Yes, and why do you care? No one cares, ‘just give me number plate and get a move at it, I ain’t got all day. No, I don’t have an insurance card!’ all day long.” He sputtered.

  Okay, guess it is more than just a bad day today I thought to myself.

  “You ever wonder how I got to where I did in your story. I guess I can tell you, this was kind of the start.” The voice, and the speaker was purple robe man. “I put up with it for years, 23 years, 4 months and 12 days. I was less than two years from retirement, and then I could be free of them, the state, the union, the governor and most of all the people that walked through the door each day.”

  “Ah Huh,” what else could I say.

  “And then you gave me an out, you freed me, you gave us the plague.”

  “I, what?”

  “You made me, you killed me, nice touch by the way, the little angel thing. I liked that.” He said. “But you never really told the story of how Gary Tuttle, DMV clerk 1st Class, got to be Brother Gabriel, the Pure.” He said, staring at me with an intensity that was almost scary.

  “No, I didn’t, I never thought much about that aspect of it.”

  “Well, let me run the course for you then.” He almost shouted, he was in preacher voice now, a fire and brimstone mode.

  He began with how he had been working the day that the meteor fell. It had at first only been a passing news story about breaking glass and lots of noise over Russia. A day or two the die off started and when it got to the US the DMV told its employees to take a few days off, made them furlough days, which had already been agreed to in their last contract. But he said he saw more to this, God came to him, told him and instructed him.

  “God spoke to you?” I asked.

  “Yes, he did, he told me what was going to happen, that the people would die, and comeback. He told me in a dream. And he told me what my part in the future would be.”

  “I see,” I was a little surprised by this.

  He went on and told how he began by moving, by heading out toward the Berkshires. He somehow knew that the cities, Hartford, Springfield, the close ones would be burned.

  “It was God’s will that they be smitten with fire, the sinners, the lechers and lepers, all burned. I was to move on, to build God’s army, and find the Promised Land the place where his will and works could start over.”

  I listened as he detailed his further movements. He moved through the Springfield area and on to Route 20. It was in Westfield that he met his first couple of recruits. Armand and Grace, they were lost, walking together, fretting, afraid. He spoke with them.

  “Brother, sister, be not afraid, the Lord will watch over you, and be with you. I am his representative, his redeemer, I am Gabriel.”

  And they followed him, his energy seemed to bind them. As they moved on Route 20, more and more joined him.

  “My number was thirty and nine as we neared Hinsdale. Along the way we had some that were not with the Lord, our God and had to be left behind, given to the sinful so that the rest of us could move on,” he told me.

  He went on to say that there was one, Brandon, an almost likeable guy, but he had a sin, a sin that I, I mean God could not accept. He was one who would lay down with other men. We were near Becket when we ran into a group of sinful. We tried to get through them, but in the end there were many and even though we ran the best we could they were catching us. It was Brandon who was sacrificed to them, he was not God material. I smashed his leg with my staff, it crippled him and made him scream. The sinful fell on him, and we were able to get away.

  “If you knew he was not going to fit in why didn’t you just kick him out?” I asked.

  “For just the reason I used him for. He was expendable,” was his answer.

  As I looked at the smug smile on his face I thought, it sounds like Nate and Barry. I wonder how many other leaders had done the same, kept people who really were not going to cut it, and then, sacrificed them. It was cruel in a way, make them feel part of something when all along you had different ideas, they were a Plan B when the shit hit the fan.

  We sat quiet for a minute or two, I almost felt like Brother Gabriel was reliving the moment. Then he snapped back.

  “So where was I? Oh yes, almost to Hinsdale.”

  He said that as they reached the town there were a number of people that were already there, and a couple of the town fathers were still running the place. They loved the idea of some more people because they had supplies, but there were not that many of the townsfolk to keep things going. Then the army showed up. That Colonel, he suddenly was going to be in charge and it was his way or no way.

  Gabriel went on that the ‘townies’ were kind of okay with it. But he had some other ideas. He said he saw the military as a ‘Roman’ army, Caesar’s occupation of his Holy Land. They were going to persecute him and his people. He had to stop them, they were not men of his God.

  As I listened I realized that although he turned into a monster over time he was a believer in his cause, his God.

  “But you killed people, you tortured and killed people!” I said.

  “No, no, I didn’t, we didn’t, we struck down the unworthy, we removed the unbelievers, the tools of the Devil. That was our task, the Lord, My God gave us that task, and the resolve to do it,” was his reply.

  I sat for a moment and thought about this on two levels. As a writer it was good, it added to the story and really made for some good drama. But I also thought about it from the humanitarian side and that was kind of troubling. But then, when you are at the end of the world, I guess you have to play hardball.

  “The path of the Lord is not an easy one and we heap vengeance on those who do not follow his ways.”

  “But you killed innocent people! You locked them in rail cars and they died!” I was a little louder than I thought and I had a couple people nearby look at me.

  “Innocent people? No, they did not accept me, or the Lord God. To do that was a mortal sin, so they received their judgement and just punishments.”

  Clearly this person, this monster was unhinged. As I sat I thought about how it was right to kill him off.

  “Yes, you made me a martyr for my cause, for my God. For that I thank you. I would have killed the Tom character, if the girl, the little angel had not gotten me first. And really, in the end, I think I would have over time sent all my group to the railcars. I saw after my death how they turned on me. The Lord God wo
uld have found them to be false followers and their fate would have been sealed.”

  I wished he would go away, he was making me nervous, making my skin crawl. Although it may have been unwise I closed my eyes.

  “Number 74, Number 74, D-74, you’re up at station 3.”

  I opened my eyes with a start and a snort. I was up, and it was my turn. I walked toward station 3, and……..Gary Tuttle, the sour faced scarecrow. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, I knew it would not go well. One has to love DMV.

  Doc Barkley

  As I came out of the gentle grip of the anesthesia, I felt pretty good. It wasn’t the stuff they used to use that left you with a good buzz, this was more just a relaxed tranquility. I also did not feel really any discomfort where whatever incisions were made to remove my gall bladder were supposed to be. That was a good thing because that meant that they were able to do the procedure laparoscopically and did not have to split me stem to sternum.

  As I lay back just enjoying the moment, I thought about how quiet it was in the recovery room and chuckled. I remembered having colonoscopies and the calliope of escaping gas from my fellow patients. Yeah, me too, it was dueling farts.

  The screen that surrounded my bed drew back and a doctor walked in. I know it wasn’t the surgeon, which was Doctor Raymond, this was someone else. A tall square shouldered gentleman with gray hair. He looked familiar, but then when I was a copper I visited the ER many times, so I could have remembered him from there.

  “So how did it go?” he asked as he peered at my chart, “Any pain?”

  “Nope, I am good, comfortably numb if you will,” quoting a little Pink Floyd.

  “Excellent, and I understand that all went well with the surgery, so that is good,” he said with a smile.

  I closed my eyes, tired, I was kind of tired.

  “Did you ever wonder why so many of the people at the Archive died of cancer?” A voice drifted into my semi sleepy state.

  My eyes flew open, the doctor, I looked at his name badge but without my glasses I could not quite make it out.