Storm Front

by Riley Flynn

  Swinging the oxygen tank, Krol hit it against the padlock holding the barn doors closed. The old iron crumpled and fell apart. The chains hung loose.

  “Take this,” Krol offered his hand toward Alex. “See for yourself.”

  There was no good choice, Alex knew. He had insisted on the truth from Krol. He had insisted on seeing everything. Now, he had everything he wanted. All he had to do was step inside. He took the lighter, opened the lid, and spun the wheel with his thumb.

  A flame sprang into life. The truth waited inside the barn.

  19

  Alex stood and stared into the darkness. The rank smell of death flooded out of the open barn door. The flame from Krol’s zippo lighter flickered in the wind and failed to illuminate the gloom ahead.

  He had to step forward. He knew he did. As much as he hated Krol, as much as he wanted nothing more than to reach for a gun and end the man here and now, Alex knew he had to find out the truth.

  This wasn’t about Eames. This wasn’t about the sick man who’d been led away to the barn. This wasn’t about Levine or Krol or Joan or Timmy or Sammy or anyone else. This was about Alex and the truth.

  Once he knew the truth, he would know what to do. Avenge Eames. Kill Krol. Find justice. Alex didn’t know what the future held, but he knew the truth would guide him in the right direction. Once he discovered what was inside the barn, he was sure he would know what to do next.

  Breathing deep, inhaling through his nose and trying not to retch, Alex prepared to take a step.

  “Stop!”

  Alex heard pounding footsteps behind him. He turned and saw Jamie running toward him, hurling her body between him and the open barn. She rolled as she landed, pushing herself up on to her feet and blocking the entrance.

  “He can’t enter. He can’t.”

  Her eyes looked beyond Alex, over his shoulder. She was talking to Krol, he knew. Pleading with him.

  “Jamie, he must. Stand aside.”

  “No!” she howled, squaring her legs and preparing for a fight. “It’s not safe. He can’t enter. He’ll kill us all.”

  Alex cracked his knuckles. He’d been waiting to finish this fight for weeks. If going through Jamie was the only way to find the truth, then so be it. He didn’t have to say anything.

  “Step aside, Jamie.” Krol’s scratching voice reverberated from behind the mask. “We cannot keep people in the darkness forever.”

  “But the infection–”

  “He enters at his own risk, Jamie. Step aside. Stopping him makes us no better than Levine.”

  Even as she flexed muscles and tensed her one arm to strike Alex, Jamie held her ground. Then, with one last, longing glare at Krol, she stepped aside. The sound of her footsteps echoed through the courtyard, glancing back only a venomous stare. A threat delivered with the eyes.

  Alex was left alone again in front of the darkness. He stepped forward.

  The wind played with the flame, changing its shape. But it didn’t die.

  The barn was a place Alex knew well. He’d lived on this farm for years. With a pencil and paper, he’d be able to draw the inside of the barn exactly from memory. The darkness hid it now, but memory helped to fill in the blanks.

  It had been one giant room. Alex’s dad had never bothered to do much with the floor. It was the bare earth, dusty and muddy, even with a roof over its head.

  There was a loft up above, where they kept hay and empty sacks. There were tools and workbenches lining the long walls. There was even a den at the back, a small room with a coach and an old TV where Alex’s dad and any hired hands might sit at the end of the day and drink beer and smoke cheap cigarettes.

  Eames. Alex could remember the man sitting in one of those chairs, howling with laughter at a news channel. The man had taught Alex to see the funny side of events. Even the darkest stories had a funny side, he’d said. You just need to know where to look.

  The memory only made Alex angrier. He’d hardly known Eames at all, he realized. Didn’t know the man’s birthday or whether he had kids. But he hadn’t had a second thought about handing over the house keys after the funeral. He’d been a stupid, lost kid, wheeling around in every direction, desperate for control and something certain.

  Eames had been a part of the furniture around the farm. An essential part of Alex’s upbringing. He’d been dependable, simply by always being there. It felt good to make sure that he had stayed on the farm.

  Even when the entire Early family had departed, having Eames stay behind felt familiar, a universal constant. Something Alex could set his watch to.

  Now he was dead and buried inside the barn. Alex held the lighter a little higher, trying to see.

  Alex could feel his eyes adjusting.

  The first things Alex saw were the walls. Shadowy outlines in familiar places. Lines and shapes discovered by the light. The room was empty, he could feel it. The breeze blew in through the open door and swirled the still, fetid air around his face.

  Taking a step forward, Alex’s sneakers brushed across the dirt. Eames had left the ground just as his father had. Raw, ready for the wheels of a tractor.

  Alex took another step. And another. And another.

  Soon, he was standing ten feet inside the barn. His eyes were seeing more than shadows, now. The old rusty tools hanging on the wall. The workbenches, long forgotten.

  Taking another step, Alex felt his knew knock against something hard. He stopped, lowered the lighter, and examined the obstacle.

  It was a camp bed. A collection of steel pipes and a sheet of canvas spread between them. A short table sat beside it with a half-empty bottle of water. It was used. The plastic crinkled. It looked as though it had been filled and drained a great many times, gripped tight in a great many thirsty hands.

  This is where they left people to die, Alex thought. The sick man they led to the barn. Dumped him on a camp bed and gave him just enough water that the virus would kill him quickly. Is that merciful or vicious? Alex couldn’t decide.

  Standing up again, Alex took another step. The floor fell away in front of him, he could see. The once firm and hard ground gave way to a shallow darkness. Again he leaned down. He saw shovel marks in the ground. A hole a few feet deep had been dug in the floor of the barn.

  Alex didn’t have to look for long. He knew it was a grave. Finding the edge, he began to walk along the edge. It was long. Seven feet wide but seemingly spreading from one side of the barn to the other. Plenty of space inside.

  As Alex approached the far wall, he noticed bundles of cloth in the hole. Wrapped up toes peeking out, bodies clothed in fabric and hurled inside. They were laid out like anchovies in a can. He reached the far side of the grave and looked up, following the shape of the first body placed inside.

  The face was still visible. It was Eames.

  Older, grizzled, with blood all over his face. But it was Eames.

  Alex felt a rage rise up inside him. A new kind of anger, a forceful, devastating fury. He felt able to reach out with his bare hands and snap the world in two, to rip to shreds all his enemies and salt the earth behind them.

  But he didn’t move. He didn’t fight. He didn’t run through the barn door and try to kill Krol.

  Had he done so, Alex knew he wouldn’t have been able to stop punching until he could feel nothing but bloodied ground beneath his fists. In that moment, he felt as though he could punch his way through the man’s face, through his skull, and pummel it all into the dirt.

  But he didn’t move.

  Alex closed his eyes and breathed in the rotting air.

  This was the world now and he had to adapt. Slowly, holding the lighter low, Alex walked the length of the grace. He counted through the bodies as he went. He hit double digits and ended at eighteen. The final body belonged to the man who had arrived not so long ago.

  No one had bothered to throw dirt over his body. The cold had kept him intact. Alex saw the man’s face: gray skin and mottled forehead. The virus had taken
him.

  This was the new world. A world of sickness and death. A world for the likes of Krol and Levine. These were interesting times and Alex knew that blind rage would not steer him along a steady course.

  Carefully, Alex walked out of the barn and flicked the lighter closed, extinguishing the flame. Krol was waiting outside. He had barely moved.

  “Bury them.” Alex said the words with an expectation that he’d be obeyed.

  He threw the lighter across the courtyard and it landed at Krol’s feet.

  “Bury them tonight. All of them. Properly.”

  “We cannot.” Krol bent down to pick up the lighter. “The risk of infection, the cold ground. The barn is the only solution.”

  “Bury them!”

  It was a shout. It had started deep in Alex’s gut, picking up righteous anger all the way up his body until it had torn out of his mouth. Krol staggered to his feet and took a step back.

  “Bury them now, Krol.” Alex stepped towards him. “Bury them right, or so help me…”

  “You have reacted badly to this. You must understand. We had no other choice–”

  “I understand perfectly.” Alex shouted again. “This is who you are. A blight. A plague. You will bury those people tonight. They’re rotted out, no disease left on them. Burn them first, if you have to. But do something.”

  The courtyard was silent. Back in the farmhouse, far away, the baby began to cry.

  Everyone stopped to listen. Alex, leaning into Krol, paused and listened to the howls. Those around them, on the porch and by the stables, held their breath. They all stopped and listened to the baby as it cried and cried. Before long, Finn joined in the lament.

  Together, the child and the dog announced their pain to the world.

  Everything fell heavily onto Alex in a moment. The death, the destruction, the suffering. For months, he’d fought life and limb to get to his old family home. The world had fallen apart all around him but there had always been a purpose. It had almost been like an adventure.

  But not anymore. Eames’s dead face loomed large in his mind. One of hundreds, thousands, millions. All of them dead. Now, men like Levine and Krol ruled over tiny fiefdoms. A country, brought to its knees. Alex had no idea what was happening outside of a two-mile radius. But it must be the same across the entire country. All of America, reduced to nothing more than mass graves and weeping.

  Even if these were interesting times, they felt cursed in their own unique way. Haunted. Alex had never felt more bitter.

  “Timmy, Cam.” Alex turned to the porch; he knew his friends would be standing there. “Let’s go.”

  He didn’t know where. Not yet. Both men nodded. They might not have seen what he’d seen, but they seemed to understand. Alex started to walk toward them.

  “Alex,” Krol called from behind him. “Alex, wait.”

  For the first time, there was uncertainty in the man’s voice. Even behind the mask, which stripped every atom of humanity from the man’s speech, Alex could hear a quiver and a tremble. A note of doubt. He turned to face Krol.

  “Alex, listen. Come with me. We can talk this through. We can mend this. I can tell you everything.”

  A hand stretched out in front of Krol. A begging, pleading hand. The oxygen rattled through the mask. The wind blew between the buildings but Alex couldn’t feel the cold.

  Alex knocked the hand aside and turned to walk back to the house.

  “Tell it to the dead.”

  20

  Alex was followed by Timmy and Cam. They left the others standing out in the cold Virginia night. No one spoke as they hiked up the stairs, toward the crying sounds and the howls. They would have time to talk soon enough.

  Together, Alex knew, they had to come to a consensus about what to do.

  He didn’t knock on the door. Instead, he turned the handle and found Joan inside, waiting.

  “I was watching through the window.” She spoke softly, cradling her child.

  “We need to be quick.” Alex was glad she had been watching. “But none of you know what I know.”

  The packet of open diapers sat on the bedside table. A candle burned in the corner and Finn, as he did every day, sat beside the bed. Alex patted the dog on the head and listened to the tail dust the floor. They had to think fast. They had to act fast.

  As he filled in his friends, he gave them the cold, hard facts.

  The Instruments of the Passion, a cult based in Athena and led by Daniel Levine, had offered them the opportunity to live on a militarized church compound as they awaited the rapture. Smoke rose up over the town as they burned the bodies of their enemies and the furniture they ransacked from empty homes.

  Krol had been with them once and now occupied the farm. He and his people had killed Alex’s old friend, Eames, and taken the house for themselves. In the barn, bodies were barely buried. Every time they found out a new truth, it only uncovered more questions and lies.

  Even if Eames had turned the gun on himself, Alex knew who was responsible. Krol, he told himself. But deep down, in the darkest depths of his soul, he blamed himself. That’s what made it hurt so much more.

  The virus worried everyone and no one all at once. Krol claimed to be worried about infection but seemed more scared of Levine and his believers than the Eko virus.

  Sammy was gone. Maybe dead. Maybe escaped. But it didn’t matter. She had been happy and Alex had been able to move on.

  Somehow, Alex had convinced all three of his friends to travel with him to this farm. Where he’d promised them safety from the collapse of the country, they’d found themselves in a fierce war between two terrible groups. What they did next was anyone’s guess.

  “It’s not a case of picking sides,” Alex said as he finished his recap. “There’s no good guys here. Just us, caught up in all this mess.”

  “You’re hurt, Alex.” Joan tried to reach out and pat his arm; the baby’s head prevented her. “It’s hard for you to look at this objectively.”

  “Of course I’m hurt.” Alex held on to the side of his head, worried that the rage would rattle him apart. He tried to talk calmly and softly, not wanting to disturb the baby. “That was my friend in there, Joan. In a shallow grave. And these killers have been living here – in my house – for months.”

  “Yeah, man.” Timmy looked tired. He stood by the window, watching out. “They’re no good. But, like, you don’t want get obsessed with them.”

  “I think we’re pretty far gone past obsessed now, Timmy.” Alex tried to keep calm. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “We’re just saying, Alex. Think about it.” Joan allowed him a moment to think. “This is a good place to live. You were right. It’s perfect in every way but one.”

  “That’s a pretty big ‘one’, Joan.”

  “You’ve always hated Krol. But, in truth, things haven’t been too bad here.”

  “I’ve always hated Krol? Of course! How could you like him? The man is a monster.”

  “And yet he’s helped keep us warm and fed. Timmy – look at Timmy – is so much healthier now. I’ve had this baby. That wasn’t easy, I can tell you. Nelson, Reni, Jenna. They’re good people, Alex. It’s almost like you just haven’t given them a chance, even when we’ve asked you. You’ve just ignored us. All of us.”

  He knew Joan’s words had weight to them. But it hurt to admit it.

  “What about Jamie?”

  “She can be a bit cold, I’ll grant you.”

  “She hates me!”

  “You hate her.” Joan snapped back. “Sometimes, we need to learn to put aside our personal dislikes. For the sake of our lives. And our friends’ lives.”

  “And Levine?” Alex couldn’t believe what his friends were saying. It sounded like they were happy to stay with Krol. “Levine’s never crossed us and his people have never done us any harm.”

  “That’s not true, man. You know that. You told us how creepy they were. How much you didn’t trust him. I’ve never met them and
I get this evil vibe from them the whole time.” Timmy said his piece and turned back to the window. “Krol and his folks are doing what you said. They’re all masked up, wearing their protective gear and burying the bodies.”

  “They are?” Joan voice dripped with surprise. “There we are, Alex. They want to make peace.”

  “His people are fine, I’ll grant you. Maybe even Jamie. But Krol. We can’t let him get away with this.”

  “With what?” Joan’s patient, slow, methodical voice was starting to grate.

  “With all this! Everything he’s done.” Alex was standing now, pointing out the window into the night. “Stealing, murdering. He has to be stopped.”

  Timmy and Joan shared a look.

  “Hey, Alex, man? You don’t worry that you’re too into this, like, ever?”

  “What?”

  “We’re just saying… I’m just saying… You’ve been different ever since you got back here, you know?”

  “Different?” It was enough to slow Alex down, to make him think. “Different how?”

  “I don’t know. Angrier. More driven. I haven’t seen you like this. Ever, man.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “No, think about it. You’ve hardly talked to any of us. You’ve hardly talked to the dog – I thought you wanted to train him up? You’ve barely seen Joan and her baby…”

  “That’s not true. It can’t be. Cam?”

  Alex looked around the room for his other friend. Cam had been silent the entire conversation so far. He stood by the door, his foot in place to stop anyone who might try to force it open. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully and delivered them slowly.

  “I don’t like Krol much, no sir–”

  “Thank you!” Alex offered empty hands up to his other friends, trying to force the words on them.

  “Let me finish.” Cam’s voice stayed calm. “I don’t like him much but I don’t like many people. I admit, the man’s into some weird things. I seen him praying. Heading out to the barn late at night. Heading out in those cars, coming back with the suspension sitting heavier every time. I notice these things. I feel bad for the lot of them but I know I could feel a whole lot worse.”