by Joel Varty
“He says the power might not ever come back on.”
“There’s no way the government would allow this.”
“Someone will do something about it. They have to.”
“How in hell am I going to bring in my crop?” That’s the man on the porch. He’s red in the face now.
“And what about my cattle?” This is another man from the group, stepping forward up onto the porch. “I’ve got nigh on two-hundred head that need to be milked twice a day, and another three-hundred Angus out to pasture – how am I gonna look after these animals?”
Jonah just stands there. The voices continue getting louder and angrier and I start wondering just why they’re angry at my uncle specifically. If they were to know what I did, they might have good reason to be pissed off, but really, how could they blame a power outage of such a large scale on a lowly journalist from the city?
Jonah catches my eye for a second, and he gives me a secret smile before raising his hands to quiet everyone.
“I have enough fuel to get a few farms through the summer,” He says quietly. “But you can’t have it for free. We have to put together a plan to get us through the winter.”
“But it’s not even summer yet!”
“Where did you get all the fuel from?”
“I told you he had something to do with it!”
Uncle Jonah looks past me to a rough-looking man in ragged clothes coming up from the barn. He stinks like old stale manure, though I can’t tell whether the smell is newly acquired or not. He stops beside me and crosses his arms. He leans a bit towards me and says “Don’t worry, he always gets everyone mad before they start to see things his way. Just wait for a few minutes and something unbelievable happens. It never fails.”
The arguing amongst the crowd, having paused momentarily, continues on in earnest, and it seems from here that these folks are as much angry with each other as with Uncle Jonah.
I look sideways at the man next to me. “What kinds of unbelievable things?”
“Well, first there was the time he tried to jump an old Land Rover over a blast hole. That’s when I first met him – as he climbed out of the hole just before it was flooded, that is. And then he finds this old church hidden behind a brick wall, but only some folks can get in – myself included – and he comes up with this plan to get everyone out of the city, only some folks just seem to disappear, and there aren’t that many left, but those that are left just up and follow this crazy bugger over to some other church where he sits everyone down and gets some old lady to say prayers. Really nice, I thought. So then while that’s happening he smashes a hole in the floor and gets everyone to go down in this tunnel he finds.
“While everyone is down there he comes back up and ‘BOOM’ a forest of oak trees just erupts right out of the city itself. Wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. And then he comes down in the tunnel – it went under the river you see, where they couldn’t find us – and he finds this stone door at the other end which falls right on top of him and smashes into a thousand pieces. He was dead for sure.
“Only he didn’t die. We pull him out of there and while everyone comes through and goes their own way, that old lady lays a hand on him and ‘BAM!’ He’s back.”
I look at this nut for a second, trying to split my attention between him and the fools trying to blame Jonah for their troubles. “Just like that, huh?”
“That’s right, my boy, just like that.” He turns back towards the house. “You just can’t help but want to hang around the guy. And do stuff for him, you know? Stuff that’ll help.”
Against my better judgement I hold my hand out to the man. “My name’s Aeron.”
“Herb.” He grasps me with a firm grip and then places his other hand over top – as if to somehow seal a bond between us. The closeness of the grip means I can’t help but to look into his eyes, which I can now tell are much younger than the rest of him.
“He’s my uncle,” I say, pointing over to the house.
Herb nods. “So you must be Ruben’s son.”
“Yep.”
“Sorry about your dad.”
“Yea.”
“What about your mom?” he asks, clearly struggling to find something to remind himself that I’m not his problem.
“She died the year before last. It’s just me now.”
“Cripes, that’s awful. How old are you? You don’t look much more’n a lad right now.”
“I’m almost seventeen,” I say, a bit more defensively than I intend to.
“Well, that’s nearly a man’s age, I guess.”
I try not to puff out my chest, but I think I do a little bit anyways. It feels good to be confirmed of my status, even though I know I don’t need the word of a filthy bum to do it.
An increase in the tone and anger level of those over by the front porch, arguing about the fate of the world, draws both of our attentions. One of the men takes a swing at Uncle Jonah and misses only to hit the man across from him, who promptly returns the favour. Jonah steps in front of the third man’s punch and takes it directly on the side of his head. This farmer, whose burly arms and weathered hands look to have seen a lot of work over the years, pulls his hand back in pain. A stream of blood pours down Uncle Jonah’s face, but he doesn’t even blink it away from his eyes.
I’ve never seen a man more focused.
The group of men pause for a second before erupting loudly into their arguments again. One of the men – he doesn’t look like a farmer – from the edge of the mob reaches into his back pocket and draws a blade with a black handle. Without hesitation, Herb launches himself across the yard to intercept him. The man, taking a direct approach to Uncle Jonah, notices Herb at the last second. With the knife cocked back in his right hand, he straight-arms Herb out of the way with his left, striking with his fingers pointed straight at the older man’s windpipe. Herb drops like a rock, but that leaves Jonah with enough time to raise a hand in self-defence.
The two men run right into each other, and I can see the short blade stick straight through Jonah’s left hand. The farmers immediately scatter and dive out of the way, scrambling to avoid the confrontation. With his right hand, Uncle Jonah slaps the other man hard on the ear with the flat of his palm. The blow drives his would-be assassin back a couple of steps.
Before anything else happens, all my thoughts are abruptly cut off by the distinct sound of the pump-action on a twelve gauge shotgun from the door.
My Aunt Rachel stands in the doorway, holding the long weapon tucked into her shoulder. I can remember her skeet-shooting with that precise stance, leaning slightly forward in anticipation of the kick-back. My eyes flick from her, standing in the doorway, to the man across from Uncle Jonah, with a spray of red blood and gore splattering from the back of his head.
Wide eyes and instant silence meet the loud clap of the shotgun’s blast and the thump of the body on the ground. I stand in place like a frightened child, wringing my hands together, feeling suddenly cold.
After several seconds, Uncle Jonah is the first to speak: “I think the twenty-two would have been enough to put him down, honey. There’re only a few shotgun shells left.” He walks over to her and holds his hand out with the knife sticking directly out of it, handle up. There’s blood all down his arm, his head, and even flowing from his other hand where he smacked the other fellow on the ear.
The group of farmers, which somehow seems like a larger group now that they’ve all spread out, begin to get to their feet and stare at the dead man on the trampled grass. Aunt Rachel lowers the shotgun into the crook of her arm and grasps Jonah’s wrist, hovering for a second over the knife handle, as if wondering how best to extract it. Before she can do anything, Jonah grabs her other hand with his own, grimacing in the pain that his voice did not betray earlier.
A small voice adds itself to the tableau. “Mummy?” It is my little cousin Gwyn, only two years old, peering out of the doorway of the house. “Why there thunder? W
hy there thunder?” It almost sounds like a song the way he drawls it out. Still no one speaks. No one moves, except the small child, curious to see why his Mommy and Daddy are standing holding hands so strangely with everyone watching.
“Daddy cut his hand, Mummy?” He turns and runs back through the doorway, yelling at the top of his voice, “Jewel Jewel Jewel Jewel! Daddy need a bandaid! Daddy need a bandaid!”
Chapter Twenty-Two – Visitations
Ruben
In my mind’s eye, I can see the future. I can see what I have created. I can see the damage that it will do and the lives that it will affect. I can see that I have changed this world, and not necessarily for the better. I know I have probably killed myself with this discovery – and most likely my entire blood family – for after me only they hold the key to the activation of the formula.
It is Aeron for whom I have the most pity – how will he every forgive me?
I sit in a nearly empty room. I have destroyed every hardcopy of every bit of research I have done in the last eighteen months. Only a few tables, a lamp, a propane torch, and my laptop now furnish what used to house my entire research department. I stare almost bemused at the screen in front of me, and one small icon in particular. It represents a computer file with all the information that matters.
The file is encrypted and compressed with several layers of authentication and mixed encodings. Jonah will be able figure out the passwords and various formats, but I almost hope that he doesn’t. I highlight the file and my cursor pauses ever so slightly over the Delete action on the context menu. I can’t do it. It has the power to save life as well as take it away. Please Jonah – please be kind to my memory.
I click the Send action and the attachment is quickly whisked into and out of my email outbox as it is sent to Jonah. I then double click a special batch file that I have created to delete every item on my hard disk and overwrite it with random data. While it is running, I pick up my mobile phone and dial Jonah’s home line. I know that I can speak for twenty or thirty seconds before the call is traced.
And I know they are onto me. The power in the building shuts off before the call connects, and the only lights in the room are the screen of my phone and the monitor of my laptop which has switched over to battery power. The hard drive has been completely erased and thirty percent of the space has been randomly overwritten.
“Hello?” Rachel picks up the phone. She always sounds so suspicious when the incoming number is listed with my name. She should be.
I don’t have time to be polite. “I need Jonah right away, Rachel.” There is a crackle of static as she passes the phone over.
“Jonah,” I say – looking at the computer screen while I speak – fifty percent of my data now overwritten with random ones and zeroes. There are footsteps and voices in the hallway outside. “I can’t talk long. Go check your email right now and then unplug your Ethernet cable.”
“Huh?” He replies. Seventy percent overwritten – I need about another minute to completely clear it off before nobody will be able to recover it.
“Just do it now, you’ll know why soon.” I hit the “end” button on the phone and immediately toss it on the floor and turn my little butane torch on it.
The door bursts open, and I get one last glimpse of the laptop - only seventy-five percent complete. Not enough to find it, I think to myself in the everlasting moments of my impending doom. Only enough to guess.
And that is my last thought as the men break down the door. Oddly enough, I do not hear the sound of their weapons as the bullets tear through my limbs, or the hiss of the liquid nitrogen as my laptop is quickly frozen so that all moving parts will seize up and any data still in memory might be forensically retrieved. It will provide a nice challenge for them. But I don’t really think about any of that.
Rather, I am perplexed by the sound of the wind as it whistles through the trees, as if I am not in a high-rise building in this grey city, but in a dense forest of trees that block out all other structures and dominate the landscape.
As my blood drains out and, by the grace of God, is ignored, my last thought is of the three acorns I lost last week. And of the small boy who stole them from me, along with a sample of the formula. He now has the last of it...
I hope.
…
Jonah
The wounds seem to cling to me like parasites – sucking at my will with their tenacity. Rachel stares hard into my eyes as she holds my shoulders – trying to stop me from turning back to the re-assembling crowd of farmers, neighbours and assorted strangers. I give her a wink that is meant to tell her that I am okay, but with blood stinging my eyes, it just makes me look more pathetic.
“I’m alright,” I say to her softly, trying to make it sound believable. “I just need to get some things straightened out right now.”
With that she releases my shoulders and reaches down to usher the kids back indoors.
The crowd is gathered tightly around me at this point, all with wide eyes and searching glares. Among them is Aeron with his arm around Herb’s shoulders, helping the older man struggle to his feet.
“I thought we had a bit more time, but it looks like we have to act now.” A slight pause while they digest the fact that an assassination attempt has just been thwarted, and moreover that I have been expecting such an event. But why had I expected there to be more time? That is the question they should be asking, only they aren’t – they are silent in their fear, or their fury, or both.
“Don,” I call out. “You and Ted have the biggest operations around here, but I have the largest fuel stockpile. The diesel tanks are around behind the barn where the silos used to be. There’s seventy-five hundred litres in there, so you should have enough to do at least part of this year’s harvest, if not all of it. Use the no-till seed drill and get what you can of the fuel while it lasts. Oh, and it’s an underground tank, so you’ll have to use a hand-pump. Sorry.”
Still no reaction, from anyone. Just stares. I can feel the blood hardening into a crust in my hair and down my shirt. I feel faint. Just a few more minutes – they won’t argue with me now.
“We have to distribute the fuel and harvest from everyone evenly through the best storage facilities in the area, but it can’t be all in one place.” I point at Herb, “My friend Herb here is a top-rate accountant and he will be organizing the cataloguing, storage and distribution of all livestock, crops and other resources in the area.
“This is the one chance we have to get a head-start on the hard times to come. There is no more fuel to be had from this point on. There is no more electricity – none. All the things we have relied on in the past are gone.”
“What the hell happened?” Aeron is the speaker – and I can tell that his question is meant more for the other’s ears as for his. He knows something. “Why is this happening?”
I take a break and pick tenderly at the flap of skin on my scalp, which is starting to itch more than hurt. “I don’t know, exactly. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” I trail off, continuing to repeat myself.
One more thing to say. Another deep breath.
“Ted – I need my dad’s horses back from you.”
That shakes his tongue loose.
“Why? Those are my horses – I’ve been feeding them!”
“I don’t care.” I have no more patience left for explanations. I keep seeing an old black man standing just beyond my vision and I wonder if I really have run out of time. “Just bring them over. Go now.”
I don’t wait for an answer. I don’t look at the body on the ground. I don’t even look at Herb, who has now been placed in charge here. I can feel Aeron’s eyes on the back of my head as I turn around, I can feel him saying to me: Wherever you’re going, I’m coming too.
…
The next morning, the sun shines down on the little valley with a farmhouse and barns and its hidden fuel tanks. I wonder, as I step outside into the light, whether the day will come when the suns
hine, too, will fail.
Seven horses that I haven’t seen in too long a time make their way through the yard, led by a Ted’s daughter Courteney, herself riding a nice-looking bay gelding. She pulls her mount to a stop in front of me. Gwyn holds tightly to my hand whilst trying not to show his fear at the stamping of so many hooves.
“Are those the horses, Daddy?”
“I think so, Gwyn.”
“Are you gonna ride them?”
“Maybe just a couple of them.”
“A couple? What’s a couple?”
Aeron stomps out of the house and loudly onto the porch. The horses don’t spook at the noise, but the big grey stallion tosses his head and rolls his eyes. I pick up Gwyn and hold him onto my hip with one hand while I approach the grey.
“Hi, Mr Truth,” says Courtenay. “Dad says I’m supposed to leave these here on one condition only.”
Gwyn and I both reach out our hands slowly to the grey. He stands his ground and doesn’t acknowledge us, his eyes rolling over to the porch where Aeron is sulking as conspicuously as possible.
“And what sort of condition should I need to comply with in order to have my stolen animals returned to me?”
“You need to let me come with you,” she says. “Wherever you’re going. And Dad says to tell you that they weren’t stolen, merely looked after, and that you owed him one year’s boarding fee.”
“You’re making this up,” I reply, not completely un-amused by all of this. “Your daddy wouldn’t let his little girl get that far out of his sight.”
She doesn’t respond right away, her eyes downcast slightly.
“That’s why I have to go.”
I look back at Aeron, who has perked up noticeably on the porch throughout this conversation.
“Aeron,” I call back towards him. “Could you and Courteney take these horses out to the paddock? Make sure you stay with them for a while so they don’t try to run off.”
Aeron comes up beside me and looks several times from me, to the horses, and the young girl who has caught his wandering eye.
