The Sound

by James Sperl

  Clashes came to an immediate standstill. Fighters abandoned weapons to clamp their hands over their ears, as people by the dozens dropped to the ground to form ineffectual balls with their bodies.

  Andrew grimaced from the burning in his ears. He had never experienced pain like this before. He remembered Naomi. Disregarding his personal well-being, he reached for the baby to press his palms over the girl's delicate ears, but Valentina had beaten him to it. With Naomi's tiny head tucked under her chin, Valentina pinned one ear to her chest and plastered her hand over the child's other exposed ear. Her own ears vulnerable, Valentina screamed from the intolerable pain.

  Just as suddenly as the sound began, it stopped.

  New Framingham stood in deathly silence.

  People raised their heads from their protective positions. Eyes sought out one another in dazed befuddlement: What the hell was that? But the larger question—the more pertinent question—was the one Andrew read on the face of each person who, not moments ago, had been ready to take a life: What happens now?

  Unbeknownst to him and to everyone else, someone was prepared to answer it.

  “Do you hear the sky?” an amplified voice bellowed. “Do you hear its rage?”

  Andrew whirled around at the sound of the voice. His numbed ears struggled to recover, the voice sounding as if it came from the other side of a cinder-block wall, but even in its muted state, it still managed to cut effectively through the silence. He scanned the parking lot in search of the owner—he didn't have to look far. Standing atop the cab of a semi truck, awash in no less than three spotlights, stood a person of intimidating stature.

  He donned all black, his jacket and hoodie the color of deepest night, but the most disturbing aspect of his orchestrated appearance was the skull-faced mask he wore.

  Andrew stood. He glanced at Valentina, who shrank in fear at the sight of the figure. She drew in her knees and lowered her head in subservience. A percolating fury rose in Andrew. He didn't need to see the scarred face beneath the mask to know who was speaking. He knew instinctively.

  Travis.

  “People of New Framingham,” Travis said into an electric megaphone, his voice carrying across the stilled lot, “the universe has spoken. Heed its message.” He waited until all eyes were on him and extended an arm in a grandiose gesture of authority. “Your town is lost. Why continue to fight when your efforts are in vain? We are in control now. But there is hope for you.” He paused for dramatic effect then said, “Lay down your arms. Leave your weapons where you stand, and you will be allowed to walk away unharmed. No questions asked.”

  Heads turned in curious deliberation. No one moved.

  Andrew understood their hesitation. The promise of safe passage was a difficult concept to sell, particularly when so much unnecessary carnage surrounded everyone. But the chance to survive was a dangling carrot no sane person could resist. Andrew could almost hear the gears of reason churn in the minds of those who would rather live than risk death over what had been a senseless battle. Andrew, however, was far from convinced of the offer's sincerity. Rather than relinquish his rifle as Travis suggested, he did the exact opposite and tightened his grip on the AR-15. He double-checked that he had switched it to “fire” mode.

  “Some of you see me standing up here,” Travis continued, “unarmed and unguarded, and think that you might try a risky action against me. Some of you may believe that if only you were able to put a bullet through my skull, right now at this moment, that this will all come to an end. That my people will simply crumble from lack of a leader.” He paused for effect and paced the limited space of the truck cab's roof then stopped. “You should think very carefully about your decision. For not only will you suffer unimaginable horrors if something should happen to me, but if you continue to wage war against us, I promise you, as sure as I am standing here, every last one of you will die.”

  Travis's threat dripped with potency. If anyone in the crowd considered taking a shot at him, they had been given a lot to think about. His pledge to violence if something should happen to him relied on guilt as a byproduct of the potential massacre of hundreds—no one wanted that level of blood on their hands. If someone killed him, another wave of unrelenting murder was all but assured.

  But Andrew didn't buy it. Any of it. Travis was more than just a leader to his people. He was godlike. If he fell, down they all went like a house of drug-dependent cards. He didn't care what empty threats Travis spewed. There was a reason why the idiom “cutting off the head of the snake to kill its body” had become so trite—it was steeped in truth. Andrew wouldn't let Travis's words deter him. He took a pair of stealthy steps forward.

  “Andrew!” Valentina hissed at him quietly, her eyes bulging with terrible fear. “What the hell're you doing?”

  Andrew looked back at her and placed a finger to his lips. She reached for him, but he was already out of arm's length. What he was about to attempt required him to be closer, and engaging in a thoughtful discussion of the pros and cons of such a decision—with Valentina no less—was something for which he didn't have time.

  “But everything we have is here!” a brave voice called out from somewhere in the darkness. Andrew was in awe of the man's courage. “If we leave then we'll have nothing!”

  Travis seemed to consider this before replying. “You will have your lives. A chance to rebuild. A chance to live. Surely that trumps all other concerns.”

  Andrew walked forward slowly, casually. He looked around nonchalantly to see if anyone gave him a second look, but all eyes pinned to Travis.

  “How do we know you'll keep your word?” the voice asked. A distinctive murmur from the crowd accompanied the question.

  “A fair question,” Travis said. He nodded agreeably and stared into the battlefield, where vehicle fires raged and bodies littered the ground and soaked in shimmering puddles of blood. “The world is a perilous place with many reasons to doubt. We all know this. We've all called into question what we think we know. Who we think we can trust. Safety is an illusion measured only by each person's ability to survive. And much has been lost. Many...have been lost. But I say this to you: There is still one thing left that unites us, an unwritten code we all abide no matter the severity of a situation: and that is honor. Honor is all we have left. Without honor, then we are lost. All is lost.” Travis faced the location where the voice originated. “Honor is what I can offer you by way of my word. So let me repeat my proposition to you all a final time.” He turned toward the parking lot then passed his eyes over the remaining fighters collected on the rooftops.

  “On my honor, if you do not lay down your weapons, anyone who remains will not live to see another sunrise.”

  * * *

  It smelled like dirty linoleum. An earthen scent of well-trod ground combined with notes of gear oil and something once baked now rotten. And talcum powder.

  Talcum powder.

  Clarissa forced open her eyes into narrow slits. Fluorescent light pummeled her, the effort to pry her eyes fully apart requiring tremendous effort. She stared at the well-worn casters of a chair. A blue pen lay beside a dented trash can. Dust bunnies drifted listlessly over the floor.

  I'm on a floor, she thought.

  She placed a palm down on the cool tile and pushed. She saw a drawer and the seat of a chair. A file cabinet.

  A desk.

  Awareness flooded her senses. She sat upright and looked around, ignoring the timpani-like throb that pulsed in her temples. Yes, there was a desk. An office chair. A printer and a computer. There were images and pictures and signs and posters, all of happy children, and all of which she remembered from her brief time on the job. Rapturous joy engulfed her.

  Holy shit! she screamed internally. We did it! We're in the daycare!

  Her excitement was short-lived—she didn't see Dustin.

  In a panic, Clarissa searched around her. Had he made it out of the Nothing Place with her? Bounding to her feet, Clarissa twirled three-hundred-sixt
y-degrees. Still no Dustin. Dread clung to her like a second skin.

  Had he survived the detonation? Had the explosion even happened? If he was still alive, Clarissa knew just where to find him. Setting her mind on Rosenstein, she rounded the desk and charged for the door, but her world was set askew when she tripped over a pair of feet. Careening to the floor, she landed painfully on a hip. She twisted to see what had caused her fall and discovered Dustin's crumpled form unconscious on the opposite side of the desk.

  “Dustin!”

  Clarissa scrambled over to him. She hugged him and kissed his cheek, swiping hair from his face.

  Dustin roused. He winced and shielded his eyes with a shaky hand.

  “Clar...Clarissa?”

  “Yes. It's me. I'm here.” She took his hand. “We made it out. We're here.”

  Dustin's eyes peeled open. He sat up and looked around in stunned wonderment. “We did it?”

  Clarissa nodded in a flurry of gleeful head bobs. “We did it. You and me.”

  A half-smile crept onto his lips, but it was quick to leave. “We did it,” he repeated. “But...how did we do it?”

  “You gave me the idea,” she said. Dustin sat up further and frowned. “When you told me I teleported over to you. If those things could pull us from our dream state into a physical world then why couldn't we do the same thing? That place was essentially a staging area, a place of heightened consciousness inside colliding planes of existence. For those creatures to take people, they relied on our inability to control our thoughts. But Donna's wonder drug leveled the playing field. In a way, she's partly responsible for helping us save ourselves.”

  “You'll forgive me if I don't send her a thank you note,” Dustin said wryly.

  Clarissa shrugged and grinned. She slipped a dangling lock of hair behind Dustin's ear.

  “And the daycare?” he asked. “Why here?”

  “Because it was the one place I knew both you and I could fully recreate in our minds. I don't know. It just seemed like we could increase our chances if we both focused our mental power on a single location.”

  Dustin shook his head. “Amazing.”

  “Plus,” Clarissa went on, “coming here seemed like a better alternative than returning to Rosenstein.”

  He puffed laughter. “Yeah, for real.”

  “And it gives us an advantage.”

  “An advantage?” He sat up and leaned against the desk. “What do you mean?”

  “If we're here,” Clarissa began, “then we can't be at Rosenstein. Which means when Donna and her goons come back to check on us...”

  Realization bulged Dustin's eyes. “We'll be gone. They'll think we failed.”

  “Exactly. So as far as they're concerned, we no longer exist.”

  Dustin smiled broadly, but it died in an instant. He looked to the floor. “I'm so sorry I got you into all of this. I had no idea who Donna was. What she did. You could've been killed because of me.”

  Clarissa snatched up Dustin's hands and wrung them tenderly. “No. You listen to me. This had nothing to do with you. My friends and I would've found and confronted Donna whether I'd met you or not. So strike that nonsense from your mind.”

  “I still feel bad.”

  “Well don't. We're alive, and the folks responsible for taking us think we're dead.”

  Dustin gazed at her for what seemed an eternity. The moment crackled with electricity. Before Clarissa knew what happened, he had leaned forward and kissed her. It was brief but packed with so much passion she thought her head might explode. He drew back uncertainly.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I just thought if there was ever a time for a first kiss it was now.”

  The fireworks Dustin had used to distract the creatures in the Nothing Place didn't hold a candle to the ones taking place in Clarissa's heart. Upon waking in the daycare, she had thought no feeling so wondrous as surviving a near-death experience. It turned out to be only a runner-up.

  “No apology necessary,” she managed to say.

  “There's...there's just one thing. With Rosenstein, I mean.”

  Clarissa frowned. “What thing?”

  “If they think we're dead and that we failed, won't they just continue taking people and putting them in that place?”

  It was a valid question, but Clarissa thought she had an equally valid response. “I suppose they could. But now you know what Rosenstein does, who they are, and what they're capable of. People know you here. They trust you. They would listen to you if you told them what's been going on.” She scooted on her knees closer to him. “But you may not have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Clarissa hesitated. “Do you think we did it?”

  “What, destroyed that thing?” She nodded. Dustin thought about this. “I don't know. I mean, it sure felt like we did.”

  “Me too.” She smiled victoriously. She had never felt so sure about something in her life. The fact that she and Dustin were still alive to talk about what happened was proof enough for her that they had been successful. She had played by the Nothing Place's rules and beat it at its own game. It was over. “Me too,” she repeated.

  She wanted to kiss Dustin again. Badly. Her mind and body swam in a sea of euphoria. She felt kinetic and alive. She wanted to hold onto the feeling for as long she could and float in its magical embrace for all of eternity. But reality, as it so often did, brought those dreams to an unceremonious halt.

  Clarissa sat up.

  Dustin frowned. “What is it?”

  “Listen,” she replied, turning and facing the entrance.

  Dustin followed her gaze. “I don't hear anything.”

  “Exactly. Why is it so quiet?” She climbed to her feet. “Weren't we under attack when Donna took us?”

  A memory flashed over Dustin's face. He scrambled to stand beside Clarissa. Both looked through the store's front-facing glass into the darkness beyond. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but once she was able to strip away the glass's interior reflection, Clarissa stared onto a scene of immeasurable destruction.

  Fires burned at multiple locations around New Framingham, cars, trucks, and other vehicles spread scattershot over the parking lot. Bodies lay all over the ground, but it was the people who remained that lured Clarissa toward the exit. Some stood motionless in rapt attention while others walked forward, transfixed on something out of sight. She scoured the darkened landscape for the source until she happened upon a lone figure standing atop a semi truck. Doused in rooftop spotlights, the black-clothed individual gestured animatedly to a crowd of passive onlookers.

  Clarissa's legs wobbled. She pushed through the interior exit doors.

  The scene was clearer on this side of the glass, the carnage indescribable. So much had happened that she hadn't been here to witness, so much violence and death, but whatever battle had raged, something brought it to a commanding stop.

  She heard a voice now. The words were indiscernible, but she knew they came from the person on the truck. Dustin followed Clarissa, as she shouldered open the exterior entrance door and stepped outside.

  The smell hit her immediately, noxious odors of burning fuel and freshly-spilled blood. She gagged and slapped a hand over her nose. No one so much as gave her a second glance; everyone was too mesmerized by the man in black to notice or care.

  As if in a trance, Clarissa turned toward him. His voice was different from how she remembered, it now raspy and guttural, and though he had taken great pains to create a new visual identity, he hadn't shed his distinctive mannerisms. It didn't matter what outfit he chose to reinvent himself with—Clarissa would have recognized Travis anywhere.

  She walked toward him, his voice crystal clear in the stillness, and homed in as he finished saying, “...you do not lay down your weapons, anyone who remains will not live to see another sunrise.”

  * * *

  The moment was a tripwire of tension. No one seemed sure what to do.

  Wary eyes panned over one anoth
er, some people taken to turn cautious circles where they stood, yet no one made the first move to abandon their weapon.

  Inferno relished their despair.

  He reveled in the smug grins plastered over the faces of his invading force. He took great delight as they jeered and heckled the residents, taunting them with aggressive movements, as they struggled to make an impossible decision. His followers were eager for another go-around, another chance to spill blood and wholly embrace that most primal—and instinctual—aspect of man: to kill.

  Still, no one caved.

  Inferno became impatient.

  The drive to New Framingham brought him clarity. His words to his followers had inspired him to a different purpose. At one time, he had been a person amenable to reason, someone open to consideration and understanding, violence a last resort. But no more. It was obvious to anyone left to wander this miserable planet that the Sound was a perpetual death sentence that would never end. All mankind had to look forward to was its tortuous bleating and the promise that soon more lives would be snuffed from the world. And for what? The not knowing was the most excruciating part. Where did the people go? Why were they taken? The questions were ones asked by every person in the world on a daily basis.

  But something had happened. The Sound that had just ripped through the heavens was different. To Inferno, it seemed desperate. Final. As if the sky had just screamed out. It was impossible to miss the flash of brilliance that followed. The combination of it plus the noise had the unmistakable air of conclusiveness. It was the sole reason Inferno's campaign had come to a standstill. People's fear had suddenly been thrown into doubt. They felt it, the undeniable sensation that a cosmic shift had just occurred, and rushing to fill the void was that most counterproductive of feelings: hope. If Inferno didn't intervene, he would lose control. That he could not have. Not before he found Clarissa.

  “I understand your hesitation,” he said to the defiant crowd. “You do not know me or what my followers and I are capable of, but make no mistake: if you have not disarmed yourselves within five seconds, every last one of you will be slaughtered. After we finish with you, we will find your children. We will find your elderly and all those who remain and take pleasure in butchering them for our entertainment. Their deaths—their blood—will be on your hands.”