What the Hand: A Novel About the End of the World and Beyond

by Stockwell, Todd

  Next, the Illuminati set out to emasculate men in the work place and in their own households. Much of this was achieved on the back end of the women’s movement, which began in earnest to right the wrongs of employment inequality and abuse in the family. While this was being achieved, the Illuminati saw an opportunity to implement their plans with media and peer-driven campaigns, attacking mothers and homemakers as somehow inferior to women who had chosen to forgo marriage or focus solely on their careers.

  In time, their agenda served to breakdown the traditional family structure. It was part of man’s nature to lead his family—not in an abusive or tyrannical manner, but as breadwinner, guide, loving husband, and father figure to his children. Most women picked their mates and married on the basis of such traits.

  The women’s movement was important to help protect women from violence and inequality, but after it was hijacked by the Illuminati, it served to distort gender roles to dysfunctional extremes, placing families in chaos. Men began to feel worthless and weak, women unprotected and insecure, and children confused. The divorce rate skyrocketed.

  The Old Earth even had a term to describe the ideal “product” of their emasculation agenda: metrosexual. This was a type of man who cared more about hair products and skinny jeans than family or adventure. Man was evolving from warrior into wimp. A metrosexual wouldn’t be caught dead on a battlefield.

  ***

  Regardless of their efforts, the Illuminati had little effect on our “band of brothers” in this area. Whether the metrosexuals had been raptured or whether they were out waving their marked wrists about, buying turtlenecks and whatnot, was of little concern, except to note there were none among us.

  No, we were always out wandering the mountain, hunting, scouting, searching for Minions, looking for trouble, or at least a minor adventure to serve our masculinity. Each morning, we’d gather our weapons and supplies, bid farewell to the women, and march out of camp as proudly as any soldier off to battle. Danny and the sisters would make fun of our misplaced bravado. But it didn’t faze us, not one bit; such was the disconnection of our masculine world.

  ***

  Speckle also remained behind, always close to the sisters, staring off into space, lost somewhere to a reality where the horror of his wife’s rape and murder remained hidden from his own consciousness.

  ***

  The band played on without him, and I had my friendships with all of them, even Roger, who existed in realms I sometimes couldn’t fathom. Perhaps Howard was my favorite because he and I were closest in age. With Joe being in his late sixties and Billy having just turned thirty, Howard and I landed somewhere between Joe’s fatherly advice and trying to mentor the headstrong Billy and the wayward Roger. Together, we were like some weird family on an extended, generational camping trip gone terribly wrong.

  ***

  Regardless of our positions in the “family,” Howard and I conversed with each other the most often because he liked to debate things, as did I. But the rare thing about him was that he could debate without becoming emotional or angry. Billy and Joe couldn’t understand how we could be slinging such vitriolic verbiage at each other one moment and laughing with each other the next. Billy would have beaten the crap out of me and Joe might never have spoken to me again had I taken such tones with them.

  But Howard didn’t mind at all; in fact, he relished it as I did. I could attack one of his viewpoints, or say something stupid or hypocritical about homosexuals, and he’d fight back, but we would always leave smiling.

  ***

  Homosexuals on the Old Earth sometimes hated Christians for this very reason. They assumed, and often with good reason, that Christians looked down on them as freaks of nature or sexual deviants destined for hell. But they were sorely mistaken. Those spewing condemnations upon them were hardly Christians, but religious fanatics, not unlike the Pharisees, rebuked for sitting in judgment of Christ: “…first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye,” and the like.

  ***

  Howard knew and understood me. He knew how much time I spent pointing out my own faults. When I gave him my opinion, he knew it wasn’t in the spirit of self-righteousness but of mutual understanding, and he never became angry.

  That was the thing that bothered me about some of the liberals I knew on the Old Earth. I wasn’t all that conservative, even in my later years, but try and pick on one of their political or social positions and they seemed to take it personally, all reason eventually tossed out the window in favor of gross exaggeration and outright name calling.

  Howard was different. He may have aligned himself with liberals, for he possessed the great compassion, peacefulness, and insight they sometimes pretended, but he was real, and good, and undefined by any agenda.

  ***

  Still, in the end, it didn’t matter if you were conservative or liberal, democratic or republican, right wing, left wing, socialist, communist, anarchist, or apolitical. The Illuminati ran the show on the Old Earth and we had all played our parts.

  ***

  Often, while Howard and I debated, Joe would shake his head as if we were his incorrigible sons, and after we’d worn ourselves out, he’d impart a few short but impactful words on the subject that usually derailed one or both of our arguments.

  Joe Mellon was a smart man, and he offered the hard experience of a thirty-year police veteran, and more importantly, the wisdom and advice of a man of years.

  He was also an expert fisherman. But he didn’t let on right away. In fact, when I set out to teach everyone how to fish, he watched with amusement, not saying a word, as I sat by the river for an hour before I pulled one scrawny trout. Not until then did he take over, fixing a proper bait, skipping across rocks like a much younger man to a deep and still pool of water, dropping the hook and line carefully, letting it drift just so. Within minutes, his line tugged, and he landed a trout that made my fish look like a carnival prize. He had a good laugh at my expense. They all did.

  I didn’t care. Time and again, in the lakes and streams, he worked his magic. Without his great fishing abilities, we surely would have had to risk more pilfering or starved to death.

  ***

  Those extra raids would have fallen on Billy’s shoulders. Though he was sometimes the loose cannon, Billy was a darn good thief, and while one of us stood watch, he’d slide in and out of the houses of the locals with bags of stolen goods like a buff and tattooed Pink Panther. I warned him of the dangers, but he was fearless and eager for the raids. He would have gone every night, had we not held him back. He, too, saved our lives.

  ***

  “We merry men, we band of brothers,” we roamed the mountains, hunting and gathering, preparing for battle as real men should. And when threat of battle came one late afternoon from a platoon of Minions armed with automatic weapons surging up from the valley below, what did we do? We ran, of course.

  ***

  It was actually Roger who spotted them. For once, he was looking in the right direction. We were—all of us boys—resting and talking nonsense on the mountainside after a long hike—ironically enough—to search an alternate escape route for just such an invasion. It wouldn’t help us that day. The Minions had been spotted too late.

  ***

  Joe had us laughing after informing Billy he would be arresting him for burglary just as soon as we finished fighting the Battle of Armageddon and things got back to normal, when Roger spoke up in an unusually peppy voice.

  “I’m gonna have some fun today,” he said.

  I ignored him because he was prone to non sequiturs, strange utterances which could lead to even stranger conversations I preferred to avoid. But, fortunately, Billy took the bait. “Why’s that, Roger?” he said.

  “I’m going to kill some Minions.”

  Joe looked over at Roger, who was staring intently down the valley. “Maybe some other day, Roger,” he said.

  “You guys
are pussies.”

  “Yes, we’re pussies, Roger. And not particularly fond of slow torture, either,” I said.

  “Plus we need to get back so the girls don’t get mad at us,” said Joe, and he laughed at his own add-on to Roger’s deprecating remark.

  I laughed, too. “Yeah, let’s go, Roger,” I said.

  But Roger just kept staring down into the valley. Billy grabbed his arm to steer him back to camp. “I’ll kill them myself, then,” said Roger.

  That’s when Billy looked down. “Oh, man!” he said.

  “What?” I said, and I moved to where they were standing to peer over the edge. There must have been a hundred of them, spaced about ten feet apart and spread across the valley, carrying assault weapons, moving methodically up the mountain. “Why didn’t you say something, you idiot?”

  “I did,” said Roger.

  Joe was looking by then. “Move,” he said, grabbing Roger roughly by his shirt collar and spinning him around toward the direction of the cave.

  ***

  We ran until Joe lost steam and slowed to a fast walk. It didn’t matter; none of us would have lasted much longer at that pace. We were only about a half mile from the cave, most of it uphill, and even walking, by the time we arrived, we were too out of breath to tell the girls about the Minions. We just pointed back toward the direction we had come. It was enough. The girls began to pack the camp.

  ***

  “How many, Joe?” asked Danny.

  Joe was busy throwing up. “Plenty,” I said.

  Eva and Ida began stuffing the daypacks with bottles of water and food.

  By this time Joe had recovered. “Don’t bother—there’s no time—everything in the hole!” he said.

  I had to agree. We had two contingency plans: hide or run. There were too many of them, and they were too close. There was no time to cover our tracks. They would have caught us on the trails.

  We would bury and cover all traces of the camp, then head to the back of the cave where we could each borrow in one of the many small crevices. It would be risky if they found the cave, but still better than running because they would surely track us.

  The hole we had dug was under a thicket of trees about seventy-five yards from the cave. Fortunately, in preparation for just such an event, most of the supplies were already there, so, even with little help from the exhausted men, the girls made short work of getting the rest of our things hidden.

  After covering and camouflaging the hole, we carefully swept away our tracks with fir branches as we moved backwards toward the mouth of the cave. Once inside, because the floor of the cave was rocky and we moved in single file, Billy, holding up the rear and shining a flashlight, easily wiped away the few traces of our movements, and we made our way quickly to the back.

  Nobody was looking forward to the crevices, which were thin, deep, and pitch black. And though we had periodically swept them out, there was no way to clean every orifice, so the possibility of being joined by rat, snake, or spider was very real. Also, there would be no comforting one another—each crevice just big enough to accommodate one person.

  We were, however, familiar with the experience, as we had drilled periodically, spending ten minutes at a time in our own crevice, which Joe had assigned. Roger, the wild card, was placed furthest to the rear of the cave because we couldn’t risk him opening his mouth or jumping out to confront a searching Minion. The rest of us were spread out, with Billy and I armed, positioned nearest to the entrance to take out any Minions if discovered, giving the others a possible chance at escape.

  Unfortunately, the plan wouldn’t be very effective with so many Minions combing the mountain. Our only hope was that the cave and crevices were dark and deep enough to keep us hidden. And that Roger could keep still long enough as not to give us away.

  ***

  As a boy I’d read a story by Edgar Allen Poe, about this Italian guy who gets revenge on an old friend by getting him drunk and walling him up in his wine cellar. After sobering up, the poor man finds himself chained within a catacomb, while brick by brick his would-be murderer seals him into the upright tomb. He begs the man to release him, but his assailant shows no pity, even tossing in a lighted torch before placing the last brick, as if to prolong his victim’s anticipation of death by forcing him to view the flickering fire, a reminder of his own fading light. I never got over the story. I could think of nothing more horrible than being buried alive. During our rehearsals, I would imagine spending my last bullet to no avail, the remaining Minions, also without mercy, laughing as they shoved rocks and dirt into my hiding place, leaving me to suffocate or slowly die of thirst in the darkness.

  ***

  But that day we could hear the noises of the Minions moving closer to the camp, and all I could think about was getting to my dark hovel before they found the cave.

  ***

  Billy and I signaled to each other that everyone was secure, but before I could turn around, Roger began mumbling about something. “Roger, you gotta be quiet for a bit. I’ll let you know when it’s safe,” I said.

  “I want out of here,” he said, this time loud and clear.

  “Be quiet, Roger!” came Danny’s firm voice from out of her crevice. “We’ve been over this!”

  “There is something in here, Mom!” he said.

  I heard a Minion calling out orders somewhere in the distance outside the cave. “Shut up, Roger—they’re close!” I said.

  “It’s crawling on me.”

  “Shut up!” said Billy.

  Joe poked out of his hole. “What the hell’s going on?” he said.

  “Please, Roger!” said Danny.

  “Shut that kid up,” said Howard.

  “Everyone quiet.” I said, and I hurried over to Roger’s crevice, shining a small flashlight inside. Roger had already scooted toward the front where I could see him fairly easily. He was on his belly, squirming back and forth.

  “Get it off me!” he said.

  “I can’t see anything,” I said.

  “It’s on my back.”

  “Come out a little more, then.” I still couldn’t see anything. “Where?”

  “Get it off me!” This time he practically screamed.

  “I’ll shoot you if you yell again, Roger!” said Billy.

  “Go to your spot, Billy,” I said.

  “He’s gonna get us all killed!” said Billy.

  “Go!” I said. With that he grumbled and walked away. “Where, Roger?”

  “Under my shirt.” This time, when he squirmed a little to one side, I spotted something moving toward his neck.

  “Stay still,” I said.

  “What is it?” said Danny.

  I lifted his shirt slowly, prepared to knock it away with the flashlight. But when I lifted the shirt further it bolted from under his collar and onto his neck where it paused. I recognized it right away, and though it looked menacing enough with its fangs and stiff brown fur, I was relieved.

  I told Roger to stay still again and placed my hand against his neck, easing my fingers underneath the creature’s legs. It took a couple of quick steps onto the back of my hand, which I lowered gently to the floor of the cave, and with a shake the thing sidled away.

  ***

  What was it? It was a killing machine, of bugs and the occasional lizard anyway. It was also capable of eating its own kind. We had encountered them many times on the mountain. It was a California Brown Tarantula, a bit disconcerting in appearance and known to deliver a painful bite when cornered, but unaggressive and otherwise harmless to humans.

  ***

  Still, I wasn’t going to say the word spider. Everyone was already on edge. “Just a deer mouse,” I said, knowing the girls were familiar with the cute little rodent that made its home on the mountain, venturing through our camp on occasion to scrounge for food. “He’s gone. Slide back.” Roger complied, and once he was out of sight, I turned off my flashlight and hurried toward my spot. There wouldn’t be enough time to
cover my tracks.

  I hadn’t gone two steps before I heard voices. They were closer than I thought, but I could still make it because my crevice, though toward the front, was a good sixty feet from the mouth of the cave, just past a curve in the tunnel where it was still quite dark.

  ***

  “Search the cave.” I heard the order just as I stuck my foot in the same crack I’d always used to lift myself high enough to reach the opening.

  Sitting directly across from Billy’s spot, my hole was about eight feet off the ground and about four feet deep, but with very little wriggle room.

  I set my pistol on the ledge of the crevice, except this time, instead of pulling myself up carefully and sliding in slowly and sideways, I jumped off the crack with one foot and dove in head first on my belly, turning sideways and parallel with the opening only after I hit the back wall, and not lightly, with my skull.

  From this position, I could only see the upper half of the opposite wall, just above Billy’s spot, but I only had to lift my head slightly and peer over the fold of rock to view the floor of the cave. I would see their lights when they came, and I could pick them off if I scooted far enough over the fold. I pulled my weapon into my body and with that I felt oddly comfortable in my rocky cradle.

  ***

  The feeling wouldn’t last. I could hear footsteps on the gravelly floor of the cave moving slowly. I began to sweat and shiver at the same time. I should have had the pistol in front of me, ready to fire, but I couldn’t make myself move and continued gripping it with numbing force tightly to my chest. Then I heard more voices.

  “There’s nothing in here,” said someone who sounded Middle Eastern, though I wasn’t positive. He said it like he was trying to sound bored, but I could hear his nervousness.

  “I know, Hodi, but the Sergeant said to check it thoroughly,” said another male voice, this accent purely New York.