Sole Chaos

by William Oday

He raised his hand. “Gloria, stay over there! Lower your weapons. She’s one of us.”

  “Is that you up there, Henry?” the woman yelled.

  “Sure is. Didn’t recognize you without the apron on and the hair pulled up in a bun.”

  “No time for baking since the world ended.”

  Marco followed Stuckey across the street, both of their heads on swivels, scanning up and down the street for possible threats.

  Stuckey got to her while Marco stopped a few paces back, making sure to keep a space between them in case anyone hidden along the street decided to start trying to pick them off. He kept watch, not liking how exposed they were.

  Oscar stood up on his haunches on Marco’s shoulder, his nose sniffing and long whiskers twitching in the air.

  Chief Stuckey held the woman by the shoulders. “Gloria, what happened?”

  Marco saw that her cheeks were streaked with tears.

  She choked back a few sobs and answered. “It’s Mayor Okpik. She’s…”

  The chief waited a few seconds while sobs overtook the woman. “What? What happened to Linda?”

  The woman wiped away snot dripping from her nose. “She’s dead, Chief. Murdered.”

  19

  They followed the woman two blocks south and then a block over to Center Avenue. Henry had left his perch on top of his store to join them. There at the intersection was confirmation of the story she told.

  The arm of a traffic light arched out over the street. Like all the other traffic lights in town, it hadn’t worked since the EMP hit.

  But someone had found another use for it.

  Mayor Okpik hung from a rope tied to the pole. The noose visible beneath her long hair and lifted chin.

  Gloria pointed up. “I told you! I told you! Someone murdered her!” She stumbled and Chief Stuckey caught her.

  “Why don’t you sit down on the curb?”

  The sobbing woman nodded as the chief guided her down. “I bake muffins. I make lattes. I watch Netflix every night. I’m not made for this end of the world nightmare!”

  “Take it easy,” the chief said as he returned his focus to the dangling body ten feet above.

  A gust of wind whipped down the street and the rope creaked as her body swayed. The wind died and she swung like a pendulum coming to rest.

  Chief Stuckey shook his head. “Marco, help me get this down.”

  Marco surveyed the situation. They didn’t have a vehicle. They didn’t have a ladder. How was he supposed to help get her down?”

  Stuckey slowly circled beneath her, shaking his head as he watched the swaying slow to a stop.

  What must he be thinking?

  Feeling?

  Losing his entire police force.

  Now losing the mayor.

  The man was tough as nails, but nails could be bent over in half with enough hammering.

  Marco slung his rifle around his back and hurried over to the vertical base pole of the street light. “Hold on,” he said to Oscar. Taking a deep breath because he knew he wasn’t healthy enough to be doing this, he then did it anyway.

  He shimmied up the pole with Oscar riding along and then rotated out to the overhanging arm. Clinging underneath with his hands and legs wrapped around the pole, he made his way out to her. He glanced down to see the chief studying the road below the body.

  He stood and looked up, his gaze shifted past the body to Marco. “What are you doing up there?”

  “I’m going to cut her down like you asked.”

  Stuckey’s lips pursed together in a tight line. “I want you to help me get this scene down, as in on paper and in our minds. We don’t have cameras or forensics or anything like that, so the old fashioned way will have to work.”

  “You want me to leave her like this?”

  Stuckey squeezed his eyes shut. “I want to understand everything we can about this crime scene before we disturb the evidence. And then, yes, I want to get her body down.”

  “Sorry,” Marco said, feeling like the new kid on the first day of school. He shimmied back and climbed down to the street.

  Stuckey was studying Okpik’s toes that weren’t far above his head. He reached up and held her foot. “Feel this.”

  As much as I didn’t want to, I did as instructed.

  “A little warmer than the ambient air temperature,” Stuckey said. He twisted her foot and the rest of the body followed along like a solid piece of wood. “A body loses heat at one or two degrees per hour after death. Rigor mortis peaks from eight to twelve hours.”

  Marco kept his mouth shut and listened. His first lesson in homicide investigative work.

  “Look at the pavement below the body.”

  I did and saw nothing unusual.

  “No blood or body excretions. She was killed somewhere else. Maybe ten to fourteen hours ago. Late last night, probably.”

  Marco nodded because he had nothing useful to add. He’d seen plenty of animals in various stages of dying, death, and decomposition, but he was no homicide detective.

  Stuckey pointed at her ankles. “See there? The bruising and discoloration around the ankles. She was bound when she was alive and blood was circulating.”

  Stuckey spent the next fifteen minutes going over every detail as Marco and Henry stood guard, eyes scanning the street in both directions. The chief spoke out loud as new observations occurred to him and Marco did his best to commit them all to memory.

  At the same time though, he wondered what the point of all this was. It wasn’t like the legal system was operational. There would be no trial with a jury of peers to decide innocence or guilt. That was the old world, not the new one.

  The new world didn’t offer the same comfort, conveniences, or complex realities that made modern life possible.

  It was far simpler and more direct than that.

  Someone had killed the mayor.

  Probably that madman from the hospital, or someone in his gang.

  Either way, the only justice that would find them was whatever people like him and Stuckey could dish out.

  A life for a life.

  Killing for killing.

  Marco accepted that, but he wondered if Stuckey did. Was the chief too attached to a concept of law and order that no longer functioned?

  After Marco cut her down and Stuckey had spent another few minutes going over her clothes and body, they finally covered her with a sheet Gloria had found in a nearby laundromat.

  Henry turned away and spat brown juice onto the pavement. He turned back and sniffed. “What’s our next move, boss?”

  Chief Stuckey stood with his arms folded across his barrel chest staring down at the thin fabric draped over the still body. “We’re going to kill the man that did this to her.”

  Henry nodded. “Okay. And how are we going to do that?”

  “We need more guns and more people to use them.” Stuckey pivoted to Henry. “Can we use your gas station on the north side of town as a meeting point?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good, because I’ve already been telling everyone to meet there.”

  Henry’s brow lifted, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I want you to go to every person you know in town. Pass along a message that we’re going to meet there three hours after sunset. Only people you’re absolutely sure about. And tell them to keep quiet. Fifteen or twenty trustworthy citizens with rifles and a plan ought to be enough.”

  “You got it,” Henry said before spinning on his heel and heading off.

  “Hey, Henry,” Stuckey said.

  Henry looked back over his shoulder.

  “Be careful. These people mean business, and I need you alive.”

  Henry spat a glob of brown juice onto the pavement. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t die easy.”

  20

  DR. YONG misted the leaves of what was undoubtedly the most precious orchid in the world. It was a clone of the famous Shenzhen Nongke Orchid which had gone for over two hundred thousand dollars
at auction many years ago. And the odds were high that the mother plant and whoever tended it were vaporized when the nukes dropped six days ago.

  That made this one priceless.

  It was the last of its kind.

  Not altogether different from Zhang.

  He gently stroked the stem as most people might pet a cat. No pets were allowed at Project Hermes, but that didn’t remove the innate desire to care for another creature.

  He often spoke to it as other people might speak to a pet. Promised it treats if it behaved well. More liquid molasses if it stood strong and tall.

  Within the cycles of his daily life, it and Hari were the only two entities that he truly connected with. One was perhaps the greatest scientific mind to have ever lived and the other was a plant. An admittedly rare and beautiful plant. But still, a plant.

  A psychologist would’ve had a field day with that information. But the only person who knew of his affection for the plant was now dead.

  Zhang swallowed hard as he touched the underside of a leaf. “Perk up, now. I’m back and I’ve missed you too.” It hadn’t been long at all for him, but had been over a decade from the orchid’s point of view.

  He released the leaf and it drooped again.

  The plant probably felt abandoned and alone.

  Just as he did.

  With Hari gone, even the company of his priceless pet plant wasn’t enough to lift his spirits. He was well and truly alone.

  He’d lost his wife and child so long ago that he sometimes wondered if they were real or figments of his imagination. After his part in the Tiannenman incident, he and his pregnant wife were supposed to get out of the country.

  He’d made it, but she hadn’t.

  He would’ve wilted into listless despair were it not for Hari. Their shared passion for quantum physics had brought them together and the bond had become unbreakable after he’d accepted Hari’s invitation to join Project Hermes.

  Hari had always led, and Zhang had always followed.

  But no more.

  Hari was dead. Killed by a short-faced bear thousands of years ago. And Zhang was powerless to do anything about it, even though they had the technology to change history. Hari had proven that by saving him.

  A part of Zhang wished Hari had left him to die in the distant past. The pressure of the present was too great. Everyone at the project looked to him for leadership. For direction.

  Him.

  Zhang shook his head in disbelief.

  He was not a leader. Not a long time ago when his actions made him lose his wife and son and not now when the future of the human race depended on his steady hand.

  Zhang misted the leaves again, watched a water droplet race down the contours and drip to the dirt below. It was one of the few plants allowed to grow in soil. And only because this was his personal plot to do with as he pleased.

  The rest of the vast underground cavern was dedicated to growing food for the facility and hence the process was far more utilitarian.

  Zhang stood and noticed the creeky ache in his knees. It was always worse down at the lower levels where the humidity was higher, and worse yet here at the gardens level where the walls dripped with moisture.

  He gazed out over the endless tracts of carefully divided grow plots. Silver spiderbots moved back and forth, up and down over their individual plots, ceaselessly caring for every single sprout under their domain.

  The cavern was the size of several football fields. The massive aquaponics system that grew fish and plants in a symbiotic self-sustaining cycle was a marvel of modern engineering. It didn’t offer all the luxuries one might wish for, but it provided all of the necessary nutrients and calories to feed everyone at the facility.

  That had been one of many key features that allowed the facility to exist on a small island while remaining virtually unknown to the locals after more than ten years in operation.

  Being buried deep underground helped, too.

  “Dr. Yong, are you there?”

  The tone was clipped, almost panicked.

  Zhang grabbed the phone in his coat pocket. While the nearest EMP that went off high in space had decimated the surface below, the hardened infrastructure of the underground facility had protected it for the most part.

  “I’m here.”

  “Doctor, we’ve got a live feed from Bravo Team. We need you up here. Now.”

  “On my way!” Zhang said as he broke into a jog back toward the security door that led to the elevators and the administration level hundreds of feet above.

  He arrived in the operations room breathing hard and dizzy from exertion. He really needed to get more exercise.

  Get any exercise, for that matter.

  There just wasn’t enough time in the day.

  He stumbled inside and grabbed a desk for support. The largest screen on the opposite wall showed a feed from one of the soldier’s helmet cams.

  The view whipped back and forth that didn’t help Zhang’s vertigo.

  “Do we have an audio feed?”

  One of the techs seated at the array of desks answered. “We’re trying to lock it down.”

  The view settled and focused on a nearby time gate. The shimmering kaleidoscope hovering in mid-air had become a familiar sight since he’d returned from his own misadventure into the past.

  But he still found it mesmerizing.

  A tear in the space-time continuum.

  A window to another time and world.

  The latter hadn’t been conclusively proven or disproven yet. But it was unquestionably a window to another time.

  Audio crackled through the air causing Zhang to flinch.

  “It’s a massacre!” a voice screamed. “They’re wiping us out!”

  The view bobbled, and whipped left and right as the soldier scanned back and forth and then returned his attention to the time gate.

  Another soldier appeared through the shimmering fabric.

  Zhang recognized him. Captain Whitaker.

  He had another soldier slung across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He hurried forward with one hand stabilizing the injured soldier and one hand holding his rifle.

  He looked into the camera, or rather at the soldier wearing it. “Inez, get back through the gate! We’ve got wounded and heavy contact on the other side!”

  “Sir,” Inez’s voice cracked with terror, “I can’t go back. Those monsters are going to kill us all!”

  Whitaker eased the wounded soldier to the ground. He jumped up a second later and his face filled the screen. Spit flew from his lips and his eyes burned with fury. “You will move out this second or I will put a bullet in your head. Do you copy that?”

  The view blurred with vibration as Whitaker shook Inez by the battle vest.

  “We’re not leaving anyone behind!” Whitaker shouted into his face. He spun Inez around and shoved him toward the gate.

  The view bounced up and down, with glimpses of Whitaker to the right, as both soldiers ran back to the gate.

  As they arrived, a half-dozen soldiers sprinted through.

  Whitaker grabbed the nearest soldier. “Where is everyone else?”

  “Dead, Sir! Dead! Those invisible things got ‘em! And they’re coming for us!”

  The soldier broke free of Whitaker’s grasp and sprinted away from the gate.

  The view on the screen followed him a second and then turned back to the gate as the crack of rifle fire split the air.

  “Contact! Fire at will!” Whitaker shouted.

  The view returned to the gate as something blurred through.

  The ground in front of the gate seemed to waver and shift like a reflection through water. A patch of ground shifted and a dark lizard standing four feet high at the shoulders and at least twenty feet long appeared. It’s jaws opened and a long tongue flicked at the air.

  Its head turned toward the closest soldier.

  And it disappeared.

  Not completely. Not invisible. More like camouflage
. But far better than the most adept octopus hiding in a reef.

  Rifle fire went off like a string of firecrackers.

  The ground on the path to that soldier wavered and shifted and then it looked like the ground swallowed the soldier.

  The shape of the lizard briefly appeared on top of the soldier as its jaws clamped onto an arm and ripped it off. The part of the lizard’s body next to the soldier shifted and turned the mottled green of the soldier’s fatigues.

  Zhang stared in horrified silence.

  And wonder.

  He’d never seen an animal that could camouflage itself like that. The ability of the octopus was perhaps the closest. But it couldn’t vanish like that. And it couldn’t move so fast or tear a man to pieces.

  The sound of gunfire drowned out the screams of the dying soldier as the lizard tore him to pieces.

  The view shifted back toward the gate and a huge area of the ground seemed to come alive.

  Captain Whitaker appeared in view. His eyes were wide and unblinking. “Keep it together, son!” He looked over his shoulder and the view on the screen followed.

  The shifting ground in front of the gate settled.

  An odd clicking sound echoed back and forth. Then the scene changed.

  Another massive lizard appeared. Then another. Then another.

  The clicking continued as more and more appeared.

  In less than a minute, twenty lizards materialized in the wide space in front of the shimmering gate.

  “Oh God. Oh God. We’re all gonna die!” Inez shouted.

  “On me!” Whitaker bellowed. “Regroup!”

  The remaining soldiers retreated to his position as the hunting pack of lizards started forward.

  Gunfire erupted as they blurred into cover.

  Seconds later, a nearby soldier screamed as a lizard took him down.

  The sound of gunfire was soon replaced by the shrieking of dying men.

  Of men being eaten alive.

  A blur knocked Whitaker to the ground, even as he fired his rifle up into the beast. But it was no use. The creature tore the soldier’s throat out even as its own chest exploded into a fountain of blood.

  “Noooooo!”

  The view shuddered with an impact and spun in dizzying circles as the helmet rolled across the ground.