The Footsteps of Cain

by Derek Kohlhagen

  The thought of losing the ability to converse with the only other humans they’d ever found was crippling to Samuel’s already tenuous optimism, and he slumped down in his chair. What was more, he now felt his childhood terrors coming for him. He could feel the acrid saliva from those snapping jaws dripping on his neck, the heat of that rotten breath in his ears.

  “Naturally, I’d ask that you keep this information to yourself,” Gorman cautioned. “Knowing about the loss of New Haven...it could be something to drive the people back into despair.”

  “Of...of course, father,” Samuel said, his head...his world...spinning. He stood, preparing to leave, and then he turned. When he spoke, his words sounded muted to him, like he was moving his lips and forming the words, but for some reason hearing them a thousand miles away. “Is there...anything else?”

  His adopted father rose as well, and came around to place an arm on his shoulder. Gorman gripped him firmly, with purpose, like he was trying to supply Samuel from his own significant-but-still-limited strength.

  “I hate to ask you,” he said, “but anything you can remember from your childhood ordeal...anything at all...might help shine more light on New Haven’s sudden silence. Search your memories...the ones that carry the most pain. If you happen upon any illumination, I’d appreciate you coming back and discussing it with me. It could make a difference.”

  Samuel nodded. “I will,” he said.

  Gorman wrapped his arms around him. “Thank you, and I’m sorry.”

  The embrace broke, and Samuel managed a half-hearted smile. Then, he turned and left the room, a somewhat weaker version of himself.

  * * *

  Chapter 7 – Gorman

  Gorman watched his adopted son go, his concern mounting. Samuel didn’t deserve the burden he’d been given. None of them did.

  He often thought about the gleaming spires of the enormous cities of their legends, purported to be still out there in the Wastes, albeit hollowed out, now. Silent. He ruminated on what it might have been like to be a citizen there before the fall, living in abundance and comfort. Gorman imagined gardens that stretched on forever, entwining themselves between those lofty towers in a state of harmony between man and nature. Unconcerned with their basic needs, the people of that utopia of the past would have had the freedom of other pursuits. Art. Philosophy. Science.

  Love would flourish, unhampered by the choking weeds of the enduring specter of annihilation. He thirsted for such things, for his people, for his adopted son.

  For himself.

  Gorman sighed wistfully, and again gazed out the window. Then he froze.

  Just outside, perched on the window sill, was a bird.

  The animal looked at him, unblinking...silent. Its feathers were jet-black. Gorman felt the deep malice in that unnatural stare, like the thing resented every beat of his heart, every breath he took. When he looked in those coal-black eyes, he felt he beheld the very mind of evil, itself.

  Then suddenly, in a flurry of black wings, it was gone. Up it flew, and out of sight.

  Gorman had watched the bird for only a few seconds, but the chill it had given him lingered for far longer.

  * * *

  Chapter 8 – Samuel

  The walk to the machine shop wasn’t far, but it seemed far longer now that Samuel had met Gorman and learned the news of the existence of New Haven. Samuel’s mood had plummeted. He again felt the groping, vice-like hands of his nightmare clutching at him, strangling his will to deny that this new information was anything but the beginning of the end. Memories of a home lost long ago poked and prodded, up from the depths of his brain, flipping from one to the next like a tragic slide-show he had long tried to suppress. He couldn’t recall everything about his life as a boy, living with his subsistence-farming family out in the dying barrens, but he could recall enough:

  His mother, delight dancing in the crinkles around the corners of her eyes, just as the labor had set itself into the calluses of her hands.

  Flip.

  His father, his real father, with his long beard and constant instruction. The man didn’t smile much, but not in a way that made him distant. Samuel had gotten his love of machinery from him, and spent countless hours tinkering away with him on that old junk-heap of a truck he kept, when everyone else stared and wondered why he didn’t just trash the thing.

  Flip.

  His two brothers. Alex. Rudy. They were boisterous and loud, as Samuel had also once been. When they weren’t helping their parents, they would play their improvised boyhood games, drilling out whatever joy they could from the joylessness of the Wastes.

  Flip.

  His childhood home, built by his mother and father, unimpressive on the outside but filled with richness and laughter. It was but one in a small cluster of similar, meager dwellings, an oasis in the desert where the only useful occupation was to farm cooperatively to live until tomorrow.

  Flip.

  Mr. and Mrs. Henderson next door, all smiles on the outside, but when the sun went down they could be heard yelling at one another through the walls. Their only daughter, Isabel, who squealed in delight when she played with him. She was the first one to make him think, really think about girls, with her tanned skin and bouncing hair.

  Poor Isabel. She was always so sad when she was called home for the night.

  Flip.

  His flashing memories took a dark turn, and Samuel cringed, inwardly.

  Darkening skies. The deafening roar of ten thousand wings, beating away the light of the sun. His family, rushing outside and looking upward in alarm along with their neighbors, fearing what they did not understand.

  Flip.

  The monsters came. They fell from the sky, raining down in a black swarm. There was no resisting them, no way of fighting them. Samuel had never seen so much blood, when the killing began. They took Mr. Henderson’s head clean off, right out in front of his house. Mrs. Henderson didn’t seem to notice...she seemed to have completely lost her mind. She had Isabel in her arms, Isabel who was thrashing against her mother’s grip, seeking escape and screaming like an animal.

  Flip.

  Mrs. Henderson calmly walking toward the monsters, holding her only, struggling daughter out in front of her, like an offering. Samuel couldn’t be sure, but he thought he remembered her singing something simple and childish, like a nursery rhyme. He didn’t hear it very long, for the monsters fell upon them both, and Samuel was forced to look away.

  Flip.

  The monsters were inside his house, which was burning now, like the others. His father bellowing from the living room where he had gotten trapped trying to buy his family time. His mother shoving keys into Samuel’s hand, and pushing both he and his brothers out the back window, begging them to run, to get away however they could before she was yanked back into the house. Her final shriek was the loudest, most horrible thing he’d ever heard, before or since.

  Flip.

  The monsters, getting Alex and Rudy before they could even reach the truck. Samuel was sitting in the driver’s seat, a boy where a man should be, holding the door open and yelling for them to hurry, even as he knew they weren’t going to make it. The monsters were too close...too fast. He remembered the blood streaming down his brothers’ faces, the look of shock in their eyes when they realized they weren’t immortal, after all.

  Flip.

  The truck roaring to life, the truck that he and his father had spent so much time oiling and buffing, the truck they had fed from the ancient gas wells nearby, under the EZ Stop. Working on the truck had been little more than a hobby to the both of them, he and his father; today he would depend on all those long hours of idle maintenance to save his life.

  He was frightened out of his mind, but his father had taught him well, and Samuel worked the gas, shifter, and clutch with an even rhythm as he had been told. The needle on the speedometer worked to the right; twenty, thirty, forty...sweat and tears poured down his face. He flew down the old dirt road, out into t
he great, gray nowhere.

  Flip.

  The truck, heaving violently. They were on it. He didn’t know how, but they were. How could they move so fast? Impossibly strong hands peeled back the steel skin like a piece of fruit, trying to get to him, the soft pulp inside. Samuel leaned forward and down, and then he was screaming like the others, because he knew they were going to get him, too. He was going to die.

  Flip.

  One last ditch effort. He wrenched the wheel back and forth, try to dislodge them from the straining vehicle. The speedometer topped out at sixty-five; the old truck found its limit.

  But then, it started to work! One fell off, tumbling into the plume of dust behind him. Then another. A hand grazed the back of his neck, scratching, scratching. The truck struck a fortuitous bump and bucked, and the hands disappeared as the last one slammed down on the the bed and plummeted off the back, clawing for any handhold on its way and finding none. Fire and smoke filled his mirrors, filled his brain. His thoughts were of panic and speed.

  Flip.

  He was desperately thirsty and hungry. The valiant truck, his savior, had succumbed to starvation days ago, and he had been forced to leave it behind. His legs were weak, and the dehydration had left his mind aching and cloudy. His footsteps were a long, slow process of him falling down.

  He was tired. He wanted to sleep...for five minutes or forever. He didn’t even feel it when his knees struck the dirt, or when he sprawled forward onto his face. He didn’t remember closing his eyes; the darkness took him too quickly. There he lay for a hundred, a thousand, a million years.

  Flip.

  The sound of a motor...the squeak of the brakes next to him. He figured he was dreaming, and his abandoned truck had found him again like some long-thought-dead pet, and it was about to nuzzle him and lick him awake.

  Good boy...good boy, Rusty.

  He was being lifted up and gently placed on something soft. There was the sound of the motor again, and he was moving, bouncing along in an irregular cadence he felt only for a moment, before the blackness slammed down again.

  Flip.

  His eyes opening, surprising him. Everything hurting. There were needles and tubes in him...an even beeping sound coming from a machine by his bed. The soft light above him darkened, and he looked up into a kindly face surrounded by long, chestnut hair streaked with silver, with a beard to match. In time the silver would dominate the brown, but the man would wear the same, gray dress robes, because pretense drew his disdain.

  The slide-show ended. Samuel wasn’t prone to religious affiliation—certainly his repulsion to Tristan’s preaching supported that—but if anything could instill faith in an otherwise faithless man, it was the miracle of being found by Gorman that pivotal day in the Wastes, on the edge of death. He should have died out there. The almost-nonexistent chances of being happened upon by a man out on a scavenge mission, on that spot of all the millions of spots, still boggled his brain.

  He’d made sure never to take it for granted. The demons of his past were going to prod him with their barbed spears. That was something he accepted...something he was working on. Samuel was just thankful that, through love and guidance, Gorman had given him something to counter-balance them.

  Samuel looked up and saw the machine shop rising around the slanted horizon of the Dome. The exterior of the enclosure could have blended perfectly with the shantytown outside, if not for its remarkable size. Oxidized steel paneling had been welded haphazardly together to cover the outside walls and roof of the dilapidated structure, and a few windows could be seen where they had been cut out to allow some air in and refresh the musty interior.

  Kelly Prince stood outside by the makeshift door, her arms crossed and her shoulders tense. The events of the morning could still be clearly seen in her nervous posture. Samuel felt for her.

  She looked up when she heard him approach, her face relaxing.

  “Sam! I’m glad you’re here. How did it go with Gorman?”

  He braced himself, guilty that he could only tell her so much of the meeting. “As well as can be expected, considering the load of bricks I just threw on his shoulders. He’ll know what to do, though. He always does.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How are you doing?”

  She gave him a weak smile. “You know me, boss. Always ready to go.”

  Samuel nodded, and felt an unexpected warmth bloom in his chest. He chalked what he was feeling up to mere admiration for her...she who seemed to be always able to press on despite the unending stream of stifling situations that sought to weigh them down. He was so convinced that what he was feeling was just innocent respect for an associate, that he only unconsciously noticed the afternoon sun playing in the errant wisps of her marvelously disheveled hair.

  “Yeah, I know you,” he said. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure this out.”

  She smiled again. Samuel took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He was stalling...wasn’t looking forward to entering the shop and getting to the ugly business of informing everyone that one of their own had been lost. Samuel knew they would have questions, and he was already anguishing that he would not be able to satisfy them.

  “Did you find everybody? Are they all inside?”

  “Yes. It took some time tracking down Cameron, but we eventually found him skulking around the mining level.”

  Samuel blinked. “What was he doing in the Dome? I don’t remember scheduling anything in there, today.”

  “Me neither. I asked him, and he said something about going over some numbers in hydroponic output, over in the dead sections. He’s been pretty interested in them lately. He said he was in the mining level taking an inventory of parts he could repurpose for the farms.”

  Irritation burned Samuel’s cheeks.

  “He can’t just do whatever he wants, without telling anyone. He should know that.”

  Kelly shrugged and gave him a knowing look.

  “You know Cameron.”

  He scowled. “Yes, I do. I’m starting to get sick of him going off on his own. He needs to remember that we work together as a team; I don’t need any more of this solitary hero crap.”

  He immediately regretted saying it, for losing his composure. The notion of Samuel complaining about a team member, especially to another technician, could be devastating to morale if the word got spread around. There was something about Kelly that disarmed him...made him want to say too much. She was the last person he could think of that would go around spreading rumors, and his tongue was loosened around her as a result. He made a mental note to be more careful.

  He heard a commotion inside the shop, and sighed again. He couldn’t delay it forever.

  “Well,” he said, “I suppose we should get this over with.”

  He gave her a gentle, reassuring squeeze on the shoulder, although whether it was for her, or himself he didn’t know. He gripped the door handle, pulled, and they entered the machine shop together.

  * * *

  Chapter 9 – Samuel

  The shop had been put together at the outset of the team’s reconstructive endeavors, eight years ago. It had served to provide the technicians with a centralized location at which to meet and discuss their progress of rejuvenating of the facility, and store the few machine tools that had been recovered from the Dome’s mining level that had provided a much-needed boost to their work. Huge arc-welders, HIL (high intensity laser) cutters, grinders, and personnel lockers lined the perimeter of the shop, and here and there scraps and shavings of metal could be seen glinting in the dirt of the floor.

  Whenever Samuel entered the shop, he expected the normal, cacophonous clatter of work being done...the high whine of metal being cut, the sparking of the arc welder...but as he and Kelly passed through the door, another sound came to his ears; one he was already half-expecting.

  His team was gathered in the middle of the space having a heated argument, seemingly all yelling at once at a befuddled Henry Goodwin, who had his hands raised i
n a placating gesture that appeared to be largely ignored by the others. Henry was surrounded by five people, beset on all sides by their collective verbal assault.

  There was Ethan Tramble, the eldest of them, wizened and crotchety. His gnarled index finger was thrust up into the air, making points.

  There was Nicole Mathers, belly swollen with her first child. The pregnancy was the first for herself and her husband. Samuel tried to be happy for her, but he had a hard time ignoring her inevitable absence from the team, once the kid was born and her time was limited. Her hands were out, palms up and pumping, and the blood vessels in her neck were straining.

  Aiden Reed stood stoically with his arms crossed, coolly interjecting his curt, probing interrogation with as much precision and skill as he used in his hands.

  Seth Feron stood with the rest, an impish grin on his face. He wasn’t bothering with any demands or questions; the look on his face said that he was having enough fun watching the others yell at one another.

  Finally, there was Ronny Baselton, his spectacles swiveling from one speaker to another. His jaw was nervously working up and down and his thin, oily beard was quivering, but he wasn’t actually saying anything, himself. Occasionally he would shove his glasses back up into place with a quick, furtive flick of a finger. He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  Samuel only counted five. He wondered where the other one was.

  “Yes, I know, all your questions will be answered as soon as Samuel gets here!” Henry shouted over the din of the crowd, doing his best to deflect their questions. “I can’t get into specifics until then! Please, you just have to be patient!”

  A flurry of responses hammered back, and then a voice rose above the others, wheezy, like an old set of pipes. It was Ethan, who had been working with Seth that morning in the sub-levels.

  “Come on, Goodwin, what the hell is going on? Where’s George?” Ethan was saying.

  “George is dead,” a raspy voice interjected. Samuel sought the speaker with his eyes, even as he knew who it was.