by Riley Flynn
“That was your newspaper outside?” Alex asked, his pride knocked down a notch, wanting to change the subject.
“Probably,” said Cam, eyes travelling around the room. “How’s that word puzzle looking?”
“It’s out on the log pile.”
“Then let me finish her off before y’all start up any fires. Hard to get hold of those nowadays.”
Timmy and Joan were sitting quietly, watching the conversation. Alex hadn’t told them about the newspaper. Not yet.
“You crossed everything out. Why?”
“I made my own adjustments. Don’t want people finding those things in a hundred years and believing the lies.”
“Lies?”
“Just doing my bit for the future generations.”
Cam bit at a fingernail, his lip curling.
“Don’t taste so good, huh?” Timmy asked. “How long you been out there? Or in here, rather.”
“Three weeks, just like I told you.”
“Just checking. Got a bit of mud on you.”
“Spend a night in the forest, friend. You’ll find out how dirty it gets.”
“You were out there last night?” Alex asked. “After we arrived?”
“Yep. Heard y’all coming, packed up and went out for the night. Been keeping an eye on you, though.”
“You didn’t introduce yourself.”
“You’re packing heat. Ain’t got anything of my own. How was I to know how you’d react?”
Joan rapped her knuckles on the table, attracting everyone’s attention.
“Listen, Mr. Cameron. We’re going in circles here. I think it would be best for everyone if you just took a moment, collected yourself, and started at the very beginning. We have plenty of time.”
The man nodded. His shoulders sagged, and he took a deep breath.
“Any chance of a drop of water first?”
Alex fetched a bottle. Not one of the sealed ones. One they’d topped up along the way. He handed it over but kept hold of the power bar. Cam took a long, satisfied drink. Half the bottle drained, he smacked his lips.
“Okay,” he said. “From the very beginning?”
“As near as,” interjected Alex. “We don’t need your whole life story.”
“Really, my friend? You’re missing out.”
He handed back the bottle and adjusted himself in his seat.
“I’ll take it back about a month. Not sure whether you guessed it, but I was military. Nothing too fancy, nothing too important. Forever a private, making up time for a misspent youth. Anyhow, we was out here, a whole bunch of us. My unit and more. That many of us, local boys mostly, we knew something was happening. They don’t get us together like that unless things are about to blow up.”
“So you were stationed out here? Or they moved you here?” asked Alex.
“I grew up round these parts, but we was up in Philly. They picked out the ones who knew the area well. Seemed pretty much everyone was being sent back to where they was from. Me, I got sent back here. Wasn’t too unhappy about that. Not at the time.”
“Four weeks ago? A month? People were already getting sick,” said Joan. “You didn’t think that was suspicious?”
“Ma’am, I don’t know what you think life is like on base but they don’t tell us grunts a whole lot. We didn’t notice nothing until they moved us. Then people started noticing the mail was slowing up. Comms were down. You know, weird stuff like that. Didn’t matter, though, cause we had to ship down here.”
“You’re both believing this?”
Timmy turned to the others as he asked. Alex shrugged. Joan sat stoically.
“Whatever.” Timmy clicked his tongue. “What were you doing here?”
“They told us we were helping. And we were. At first. Going round houses, talking to sick people. Couple of little towns in our area. After a few days, we really noticed how many people weren’t answering their doors anymore.”
“How many of you were there?” asked Joan. “How many towns were you covering?”
“We was on base, ‘bout thirty clicks from here. We covered about forty towns, I’d say. Various sizes. Sounded like other units were doing the same thing. Must have covered the whole state. Probably same in the other states, too.”
“So how come you’re out here?” said Timmy. “This isn’t any army base, I know that for damn sure. Got cold feet?”
Cam looked down at his feet, the first time his eyes had dropped since sitting in the chair. He cupped one hand inside the other, clutching it tight. He looked up.
“I tell you,” he began, “you ain’t never seen the dark side of living till you gotta move a body. A warm one. Then another. Then another. We was moving more bodies than we was talking to people. Everything was strange. Trying to help, still, but it was clear we weren’t doing nothing. Higher ups kept giving us these injections, some for us, some for the civs. Our ones seemed to work. Sometimes. Depended on which batch. Always a different number on the vials.”
“They’ve got vaccines?” Joan leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Do they work?”
“Not too well, ma’am. Plenty of my friends started getting sick, too.”
“Don’t call me ‘ma’am’. Joan is my name. Vaccines might make people sick to start with. Please, carry on.”
“Sure, Miss Joan. Beg your pardon. Sure, some of us started to get sick. But it wasn’t just to start with. Suddenly, there wasn’t enough of us to help out the people. They moved us around. Got us working in a new place every day. They’d set up these huge camps. Drove all the sick people up there. Locked ‘em up, pretty much. Left them to die. Didn’t try no more vaccines, just left ‘em in there. Running all sorts of tests.”
“They had camps? Where?” Alex moved around to the table, standing next to Joan. The tips of Cam’s clenched fingers had turned white. His voice grew hoarser as he spoke, always staring at the floor.
“Sure did. They filled up pretty fast. Most folks didn’t stay too long, if you get what I’m saying. Soon enough, we were just burning bodies. That ain’t what I signed up for. No one wanted to help anymore. We just cleaned up. That’s how they put it. Cleaning up. Let me tell you, I smelled those bodies. I stood in that smoke. I ain’t never gonna be clean again in my life. Never.”
“So how come you’re in the woods? Deserted?” Timmy scratched at his nose and rubbed his gray eye.
“People weren’t too happy with the camps,” said Cam. “Some of them wanted to get out. See, not everyone died. Some of the folks never got sick, some folks managed to heal themselves. Not many, but some. Bit like the two of you, I see.”
Cam motioned at Timmy and Joan, pinching his finger and thumb into a circle and holding it over his eye.
“Yeah, I know the signs,” he continued. “Anyway, some of these people weren’t too pleased. They wanted out. But the folks in charge, they said no. Couldn’t risk the infection, they said. They wanted to examine them, in my opinion. Get ‘em under the microscope. Anyway, things got heated. Eventually, us grunts are standing there, guns pointed at all these civs who just want to get themselves home. It didn’t end well.”
“You shot them?” Joan’s voice was raspy, hardly even a question. Almost a statement. A gravelly breath.
“Not me. Some could, though. Plenty people died. Weren’t just a simple gun-down. Big fight. You ever tried to shoot someone when they’re right next to you? It’s hard. Those unarmed civs, they got loose. Overran us. It was a massacre. In all the confusion, I blacked out. Found myself outside the base. I didn’t want no part of that.”
“You got out? You didn’t kill anyone?” asked Timmy.
“I didn’t sign up to shoot Americans. Those were my people. They just wanted to be free. They weren’t sick. Whole military changed these last few years. When I signed up, it was flag, anthem, the whole parade. But shooting civs? Americans? People I’d grown up near? I couldn’t do it. Tried to help my friends. Trie
d to help everyone. But it was chaos. My mind shut down. Found myself outside. So I headed for somewhere I wouldn’t be found. Remembered this old place, belonged to a friend of mine. Been here ever since.”
“So those guys we saw,” Alex said, “they were looking for you?”
“I don’t know. All I know is: you hide out for a few weeks, you learn to be real quiet. You’ll see.”
“What are they doing out here?” Alex continued.
“Beats me. I was only a private before and they didn’t tell me nothing. They’re telling me even less now. You ask me, though, I say they’re searching for something.”
“For you?” Alex asked. “They’re searching for you?”
“Maybe. Maybe something more important than one missing grunt. Those fellas weren’t the end of it, neither. They’ve got some serious skin in this game.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” asked Joan.
“Plenty of money out there for them that’s willing to do certain things. Plenty of money to be made.”
“How do you know? Which people? How are they making money, exactly?”
Cam raised his finger to his lips.
“Listen,” he said. “Should be here any time now.”
He sat quietly, his finger firmly in place.
“What the hell does that mean?” said Timmy, rising up from his seat. “What the hell, man?”
“Wait a second,” said Alex. “He does this.”
“He’s done this before?” said Timmy.
“He’s usually right,” admitted Alex. “Just listen a moment.”
Together, the room sat and listened. First, there were the sounds of the forest, same as they ever were.
Then, they stopped.
Subtly, shifting into the void, entering the familiar vacuum, came a noise. A constant, whirring shriek. A banshee cry, beginning on the edges of their hearing and rising, higher and higher.
“Now,” Cam said, “I think we should step outside.”
Chapter 11
No one hesitated. They followed Cam out of the cabin, through the door and on to the porch. As Timmy nearly stepped out into the forest, Cam held his arm.
“Hold it there, my friend.”
The noise – that faint whirring screech lurking on the edge of hearing – grew louder. Given the calmness of the forest, this mechanical intruder felt so much louder. It howled and wailed from far away, appearing all around them, though never really raising itself above the volume of a scrambling ambulance four blocks away.
An unnatural scream, raining down from the sky.
Cam jerked his head upwards, directing their eyes to the holes in the roof of the porch. The rot and the wet had set into the awning, leaving pockmarks and cracks as big as dinner plates. Through the gaps, Alex stared upward. That same gray sky, not a cloud to be seen.
“What is it?” asked Timmy, his impatience unmistakable. “What have you brought us out here for? We can hear from inside the house.”
Alex stared. He stepped around the porch, turning his eyes up through hole after hole. Always the same flat expanse, always empty.
“Just keep watching. You’ll have to trust me,” Cam told them, leaning up against the wall, picking at a dirty nail with his teeth.
Lowering his eyes from the roof of the porch, Alex stepped back into the cabin. The rifle, he realized, had been left sitting nonchalantly on the side. They’d all heard the sound together, all suddenly enraptured. He hadn’t thought twice about leaving the firearm unguarded, even with the stranger around.
“I saw something!” Timmy squealed. “Right there, up in the sky!”
The rifle was still there. It hadn’t moved an inch. Alex could hear Timmy’s excited footsteps bouncing up and down on the floorboards.
“What was it?” asked Joan. “I can’t see anything.”
“Up there, right there!” Timmy was pointing up. “Watch real close.”
Trying to follow his friend’s finger, Alex couldn’t see anything. Cam, he noticed, wasn’t looking up. Instead, he was watching their faces.
“I don’t see it, Timmy. You’re going to have to be more specific.” Joan clipped her words.
“Just keep watching. You’ll see it. A flash. Is that really what I think it is? I’ve only see them in videos online.”
Cam nodded slowly.
“Precisely that, my friend.”
Joan stood exactly where Timmy had been. Her glasses were off, her eyes bunched tight.
“I still don’t see it,” she said. “Timmy, tell me what I’m looking for.”
“You’ll know when you see it, Joanie.”
Just an endless gray expanse. That was all Alex could see. He stared, trying to match the distant hum and buzz to the emptiness above. Trying to find a partner in the heavens for the mechanical cry.
Then he saw it.
A flash of light.
A glimpse.
There it was again.
Through the hole in the roof, Alex stared hard at the same spot in the sky. It had been there. Right there. Two flashes of light. The sun glinting off something. It showed him where to look.
“Oh, I see something,” said Joan. “It looks like… I don’t know what it looks like.”
Like a plane. Alex could see it now. Almost the same pale color as the sky itself, he could trace the outline. Once he knew where to look, it stood out. A bulbous, misshapen plane. Miles above. Flying over the forest.
“It’s a drone,” Timmy explained. “One of the older ones. I’ve only seen them on the internet.”
Cam nodded in agreement.
“Someone’s up there. Searching for something.”
“For you?” asked Joan.
“Wish I knew,” Cam replied. “Wish I knew.”
“For us?” asked Timmy.
Alex watched the drone moving through the sky. It seemed to be slow. But, he knew, it was simply so high that any kind of movement seemed glacial. He might be struggling to spot the machine up in the air but it would have no such problem spotting him.
“Those things are meant to be used in warzones, right? I thought they were for missile strikes.”
Even as Alex asked the question, he turned away. Nothing good to be gained from staring at the sky all day. He stepped inside the cabin, and the others followed him in.
“We used to use them a lot in the Middle East,” Cam told them. “But that’s mostly satellites these days. Thing is, those things are designed to stand up to hell. Gun shots. Rockets. Even got some of them that can take an EMP. Ever since folks started shooting them down, we made ‘em stronger. Soon enough, they was too valuable to risk in the field. Been sitting gathering dust ever since, I think.”
“But why are they here?” said Timmy.
“Beats me. I been worrying about that for days. Nobody out here’s going to shoot one down, that’s for damn sure.”
“You think they could spot you? You think they’re tracking you?” Alex asked the question.
“I did at first. Got real paranoid. Saw that thing, heard it coming. Got worried about heat signatures and night vision. Put out the fire, got my whole body covered up in mud. Didn’t want to be spotted.”
“You know that’s an urban legend,” sneered Timmy. “Doesn’t actually do anything.”
“That’s all well and good now,” Cam told him, “but you hear one of those things coming and you’re ready to believe anything.”
“Doesn’t work though.”
“They ain’t found me, that’s all I’m saying. I’m still here.”
Timmy muttered to himself. Cam had returned to the chair in the middle of the kitchen, sat down, and seemed to be inviting questions again.
“Here.” Alex handed Cam the power bar. “How long have they been passing over?”
“Three days they’ve been passing overhead. Thought they’d caught up with me. Then you folks roll up. Thought my days were numbered.”
Cam unwrapped the bar and bit into it. Alex watched him closely. Th
e man was still coated in dirt and mud. If he’d fled the night before, worried about machines in the sky, the night in the woods must have been wretched. But, still, something seemed strange.
“You’ve been in this cabin for weeks, then?” Alex asked.
“That’s right, sir. Don’t remember how long exactly.”
“Then how did you get that newspaper? The date is recent.”
“That’s a good question.” Cam talked through a full mouth. “Those boys, the ones in the trucks you saw, they’re liable to drop stuff every now and then. I went out, kept a close eye on them.”
“You wanted to be hidden but followed them around? That doesn’t sound sensible.” Joan was seated again, cleaning her glasses as she spoke.
“You gotta know where your enemy is. Makes sense to keep tabs on him. One day, found a paper out left behind. Trust me, they were long gone. So I took it. Been trying that word puzzle ever since.”
“What have they been doing?” asked Alex. “You must have seen them do something?”
Now the man shifted uneasily in his seat. He finished the bar, taking his time to eat. Finished, he handed across the empty wrapper to Alex.
“I kept my distance. Never got too close. Not close enough to see them working, for sure.”
Alex took the wrapper, trying to look the man in the eye. Cam avoided his gaze.
“What I don’t understand,” Timmy said, changing the subject, “is how those drones were even working. Don’t they need some internet connection? All our other tech has been fried.”
“Now, that I can answer.” Cam seized on the question. “I did some training on those things. Bombed out of the class, you know, never my thing, but I learned how they can take a hit. Not just physical, neither. You can run them off a local connection, provided you’ve got the right tools.”
“Right tools?” Timmy continued, his interest piqued.
“Sure,” Cam answered, happy for the question. “Portable satellites, computers, radios. Can run the entire thing with batteries from the ground, would need a connection. All American made, too, never had to rely on that Chinese crap in the military. That was one of the attractions, I guess.”
