* * *
The teens were out patrolling as usual. I’d told Sam it was important that no sort of bug swarm invaded the festivities. He’d nodded, given me his blank look, and left me wondering as always.
Sam stood with me now, his bland expression giving away no more than I could get from his strange, eerily smooth mind. I still had no confidence that I was fooling him in any way. The best assurance I could get that I wasn’t killing Abby today was that I also had no evidence Sam cared at all about Reverend Bob—other than as a threat to the kids Sam seemed to think were under his care. If Abby was one of those, and not so much the prisoner Bob wanted me to believe she was…I knew of no other exceptions to Sam’s loyalty to his peer group. But I couldn’t be sure.
Either way, I had to keep moving. I couldn’t risk us all by talking openly to Sam. Even if he was more Bob’s creature than I felt him to be, maybe after Bob was gone we could come to a new arrangement.
I’d managed to strip about two-thirds of the inhabitants from the high school. I’d hoped Bob’s guards would come out of their wing, but hadn’t been optimistic about it. And they hadn’t.
I looked around in satisfaction at the happy faces getting ready for a welcome feast. I wasn’t leaving any of Tim’s injectees, or the more volatile citizens I could cajole into accompanying us, back here at the school.
I needed them farther out.
I set up small groups along the highway to the north, telling them the arrival of the Pennsylvania refugees would be a sort of parade and their job was to welcome the newcomers.
When we were all set up, a couple of hours before dusk, I sat on a rock and fidgeted.
Then I got the word via Sam that our guests were a couple of miles from the point where I’d planned a rendezvous.
I took my welcome party, composed mostly of people Tim had injected and who were ideally less likely to be wholly Bob’s creatures, and headed out.
* * *
At what used to be Bob’s church, where we’d first met the Pennsylvania group’s advance scouts, I called a halt. We strung up a nylon banner with the words “Welcome to Henge!” between a couple of telephone poles—we’d found it in a supply closet in the school, and I figured it was a nice touch.
We’d brought plenty of food and water, and I figured the smell of cooking stew would help to project our friendly intentions. Also, it gave me an excuse to pull a couple of hundred people out with me. Over half the human population of Henge was either with me or strung out along the road. I’d left a few troublemakers, including McDermott, back at the school. If I could get Bob overextended, and get him to lose focus on his immediate surroundings…
“They are coming,” Sam told me suddenly. “We are watching. Fifteen minutes.”
“Make sure everybody stays back,” I reminded him. “And no bugs.”
He didn’t respond, his eyes unfocused. I patted him on the back. “You with me, man?”
He turned his face toward me, but his eyes still didn’t focus. “Sure, Ash.”
I looked at the kid, then turned away. Maybe, after tonight, we could try something else with the young ones. Something other than sending them out to live by themselves, in tunnels. I wanted to work that out with Sam, if I could. In spite of everything, I liked him. He looked out for his people.
They’re our future, I found myself thinking, and my face twisted. There was more than one way to interpret that.
Well, we’d do what we could. Pretty soon everything would be different around here, one way or another.
* * *
“There!” Tim said a little later, jarring me from a less-than-pleasant reverie.
I turned. He was right.
“Everybody stay put,” I told my people, and started walking forward.
As I got closer my steps slowed. Not one of the newcomers looked as if they had physically changed. My lips twisted. Not one. How many of their people had they killed?
Or had they? “Bring the teens in closer,” I told Sam, who was following along and staring at me. “I need to know who’s in the woods.”
I stood in the center of the road, doing a mental inventory of the people in our welcome party.
* * *
BLAM!
I flinched and stared into the woods to the left of the road. Gunshot!
The newcomers started to huddle together. Then one of them started shouting orders and they all moved to the left side—toward the gunshot—and I could see them preparing to defend themselves—which might have meant attacking us—and at the same time I saw flights of birds barreling out of the woods to the north.
“Damnit!” I yelled. “Somebody get that white flag up!”
Then I turned to Sam. “I said to hold back. What…?”
His eyes swirled. His mind was agitated. Maybe a little lost. “They’ve shot us.” His eyes focused on me. “A girl. She found a scout in the woods and let him approach. He smiled. Then another saw them as they were about to speak. And fired. The swarm will come.”
“Damnit!” I said again. This was all happening too soon. I’d wanted Bob here, barely awake…
“Pull the kids back, Sam!” I yelled over my shoulder as I strode forward. “Back!”
But I could see more teenagers moving through the woods, and the bugs were starting to swirl even at our distance. The newcomers were cursing and swatting and lighting torches, waving them in the air to ward off the bugs.
Part of my mind thought that was a good idea—the torches—and I wondered if it meant they’d run into the bugs before.
Five more newcomers crashed out of the woods. “Abomination!” one was yelling. “This is a trap!”
I swallowed, noting that several in my party were about to start shooting—and I had no idea why the newcomers hadn’t opened fire yet. I’d wanted this confrontation, I’d wanted the visitors’ minds whirling out of control when they got a good look at our less-standard citizens so Bob would have to stretch himself, but it was still too early. Too early! Bob wasn’t here!
But then I felt Eisler approaching and realized Bob would be awake soon.
If I could find a way to keep people from getting killed, for just a little longer…
I took the white flag in hand, ordered—and pushed—everyone to stay behind, and started walking slowly, right down the middle of the road, to where the newcomers had been before they dove into the woods.
“This is not a trap!” I yelled. But then I heard more gunfire and hesitated. What were they shooting at…?
And Eisler suddenly joined the party I’d left behind. I could feel his mind trying to grasp and control our group, trying to pull us all back toward the high school.
That wouldn’t work at all. I tried to incite more excitement, more anger, in our crowd…and heard a bullet whiz past my ear.
I turned and ran back to the group, hating myself for what it was about to do…but then I jolted everyone I could reach, both sides, and ducked and rolled into a ditch on the east side of the road as I heard more shooting begin.
There was no way I could control this. No way to contain it. And no way to hide that I’d been messing with people. When Bob showed up…
And he was suddenly beside me in the ditch.
“They attacked?” he asked.
“Not at first,” I told him. They saw one of the kids and got excited. One of their scouts shot her. Then the bugs started coming.”
Bob seemed to be absorbing all this, formulating some plan…I wanted to try to inject him with the syringe Tim had given me, but he was three feet away and paying too much attention. “Chief Eisler fanned the flames,” I said suddenly. “It was calming down until he got here. Maybe you could get him to calm down?”
Bob turned his red eyes to me, glaring, then looked to where Eisler was directing our people, gathering and moving them back toward the school. Martha, at Eisler’s side as always, was helping to direct the group while Eisler slowly turned to stare in my direction.
I saw the bugs thic
ken near the newcomers and shouted at Sam. “NO! Keep them back! We want to talk!”
Simultaneously Eisler—or Martha—sent a group forward down the road, firing steadily as they went, as they began to retreat with most of our people in an organized march.
I felt something different next to me, and gave a quick glance. Bob had disappeared.
Meanwhile I heard more yelling—the people Bob had sent toward the newcomers were mostly down, lying on the road or dragging themselves along it, still moving toward the newcomers. And…the woods were burning. Smoke rose from both sides of the road, and I heard screams.
The torches, I realized. They’d been lit to keep the bugs off but now—
“Fall back!” I heard from ahead of me. “Get on the road!”
And I realized: the smoke was dispersing the swarm. Had they deliberately lit our woods on fire while standing in them?
“Abominations!” I heard one of the newcomers yell again. How had he gotten so close?
Down the road on our side I see Bob grab Eisler’s shoulder and spin him around. Eisler yells something at him, and while they're busy I send out a push. To Martha. And Tim, who's moved closer to Bob and Eisler, apparently checking a bandage. And then I send a white-hot spike of rebellion right into the center of Eisler’s brain.
Bob spins around, roaring, and knocks Eisler across the road and into the trees. Martha leaps onto his back, pistol in hand. Did she just shoot him? I wonder. I push her again. Harder.
Bob slams her over his head and down to the road. He's bleeding. With all the noise I can't be sure but it looks like she’s shot him at least once.
Then Tim takes two quick steps over to Bob as he throws Martha, syringe in hand…and injects Reverend Bob with enough poison to kill six people his size. Bob picks Tim up, slams him down next to Martha…then staggers.
Time stops. Bob’s mind goes still, then lashes out in all directions. Eisler, running back from the trees where Bob had thrown him, grabs a shotgun and fires…missing both Bob and Tim, but hitting his wife in the torso.
Eisler staggers over to Martha as I run toward them. He lifts her head in his arms, raises his head and howls.
Bob falls to one knee. He turns a bloody face toward me. Tim drags himself up and raises another syringe, but Bob knocks him into the trees. Someone—I don’t see who—fires a shotgun. And Bob’s nearly-headless body falls into the ditch beside the road.
Eisler roars again, picking up his wife, and staggering down the road toward the newcomers. Everybody around him—everybody but me—flies into a frenzy. I duck back into the woods.
Eisler, mad with grief and rage, passes by. I feel our people dying. And the swarm is back, focusing on the newcomers, the bugs now ignoring the smoke and roaring flames.
I reach Tim. He’s alive, but barely. Moving him might be dangerous but I can’t leave him out here. I sling his body across my shoulders and start trotting south down the road. Away from the newcomers. And I reach out with my mind, to all the people Eisler has whipped into a frenzy, to pull them back from the flames if I can.
Behind me I hear Eisler scream “You did this! Ash! YOU did this!” and I hear his shotgun roar.
I feel a sting on my lower back and Tim’s body jerks, and I realize at least some of Eisler’s pellets hit him. Hoping he’s still alive—I can’t sense much of anything from him anymore, and anyway I’m still focused on pulling our people back—I stagger off the road to the east. Maybe the fire and smoke will hide us? I feel Eisler give up on invading my mind. But that just makes his control of everybody else around him stronger. He roars, and people start dying faster.
And there’s nothing I can do about it. Eisler’s mind is strong, a force too powerful for me to stop. And he has his hooks into the minds of so many of the people from Henge. And right now, Eisler is insane.
All I can do is hide my mind from him.
But while I do that, I head through the woods with Tim on my back. I’m desperate to gather whoever I can, whoever is far enough from Eisler that he can’t completely take over their minds, and move them away from the conflagration.
I see Sam standing not far from the road, watching me as the flames come nearer. He says nothing. I feel nothing from his mind. “Pull the kids back, Sam!” I yell.
After a moment, he inclines his head. I don’t know what it means. But I have hope.
Nothing I can do about him now anyway. I need to save as many people as I can, then get to Bob’s underground den and find Abby. If she’s even still there.
I run. Behind me I hear Eisler screaming, and feel his rage, but from the sound he’s not moving this way.
There’s a crashing in the woods ahead of me, and something more than twenty Hunters come bounding past me as I head toward the high school. I don’t know what they were doing out here, but they leave me alone.
I stagger along, carrying Tim’s body, and eventually decide I’m far enough from the fire and commotion to put him down.
He’s dead, though. The center of his body is a wet, pulpy mass of tortured flesh. And…something, maybe one of Eisler’s shotgun blasts—though I’d only heard or felt the one—has destroyed Tim’s face. I sink to the ground.
A while later I realize darkness has fallen. The full moon glows over bits of bone and worse where Tim’s features had been.
I kneel next to him for a while, wanting to say something over his body but unsure of what it should be. Finally I rest a hand on his shoulder, bow my head, and speak.
“I’ll find your daughter,” I tell his corpse. “And mine. And the rest of our families, if I can. And I will do what I can for all of them.”
It sounds…weak, to me. Also a bit implausible.
But then my head comes up. I’ll do it. For my friend, for myself, and for all of us who are left. Family or not, I’m done with letting people die.
Enough. Of. This.
I stand, nod in a final salute to my friend, and move away in the darkness. There are people I can still save.
* * *
My name is Jacob Ashton, and I have been elected mayor of Henge. At least…in the daytime, and here on the mountainside where many of us now live. Eisler’s people have also moved out of Henge proper, but mostly to the north. The town itself decays further by the day. I wish I thought it would ever be rebuilt. It was never much of a place, I realize. But it was home.
We have been fighting skirmishes with Eisler’s people for months, and although numbers dwindle on both sides the ferocity of their attacks seems only to increase with time. Ours, too. It cannot end well.
The…polarization…has continued. Most of our group sleep very heavily through the night. Many cannot wake at all after the sun has set. Eisler’s people appear to have the opposite problem. Though I don’t know whether the Chief has developed fangs or a thirst for blood—Bob may have been unique in that—I do know that Eisler hunts our people every night.
I don’t sleep at all anymore, and a few others remain awake with me, but all our people are much stronger by day than by night. And so we hide our people when and where we can. And during the day, we hunt.
Eisler’s people are good at finding us. And we find them too. We set traps and prepare ambushes. So do they.
Unfortunately this means we are slaughtering each other. I don’t know how to stop this. I have tried to surrender myself, hoping Eisler would be satisfied with my death, but…
I fought once for the freedom of choice, the freedom to think and decide as individuals, as we all once did. Before. And we won that battle—Reverend Bob, the strongest of us all, is gone. But more and more, as we huddle together or scatter in fear on one side or the other of what used to be our town, our thoughts merge. Not in everything. But in some things there is little choice remaining.
In short: my people will not let me go. They hold me close.
I no longer expect any sort of rescue or resolution from outside Henge. We have seen no travelers, no new people of any kind, for several months. We are not
certain there are other survivors. At all. Anywhere. I try to tell myself that the world is a big place, that there may be people somewhere who will survive all this. Somehow. It may even be true.
I have asked those of our citizens who are still capable of writing to record their stories. We are storing many copies of each, though I don’t stress that aspect when I talk about it. I tell them it’s for future generations, but…since the changes began, none of us have produced any new children. Maybe we can’t do that anymore. It is strange.
But maybe things are better, somewhere. Maybe there are people who have held on to more of their humanity. Maybe someday, possibly long after we are gone, they will discover our records.
I do not think we will be here, ourselves, much longer. Though a few may survive, and perhaps they will find a way to breed. Perhaps their descendants will be a free people, again. Someday. They may be people of the day, or people of the night, or people who live in both. I don’t really care. I just hope they will exist. The trend so far hasn’t been in that direction.
I had some hope that the Hunters would scatter, or move away, and continue their apparently uncomplicated lives. But…they’ve been assimilating instead. One by one, so many of them join us by day. Others join Eisler’s people by night. Maybe some will remain independent, but again: the trend does not look good for them.
And so I speak to you, Future Reader. Whether you will ever become real is not something I can decide. But I do have one hope remaining. One wish I still hold tight.
Remember us, if you can. Remember our town, where the end of old-style humanity may have had its beginning. Remember our families, our friends, and our struggles to survive. And bear in mind that we have all been pushed beyond our limits.
We were mostly good people, once. And we did what we could as the world burned down around us.
I hope you will do the same.
I hope it works out better for you than it did for us.
The Secret: A Thriller Page 22
