by Ike Hamill
Ned’s life was on display around the attic. She found the jug of water and box of rations that made up Ned’s little kitchen. She found a dresser that probably contained every stitch of clothing that Ned had to choose from. Everything smelled terrible. Ned wasn’t a careful housekeeper, and hadn’t been much interested in hygiene apparently.
Penny found a picture of a young man and woman standing on top of a bluff, smiling. She wondered if it was Ned. She had never met the man. For such a small community, a lot of the people of Fairbanks were a complete mystery. They kept to themselves and never attended meetings. The only people who knew them were their nearest neighbors. Apparently, Ned was one of those solitary types.
“Penny?” Mason asked. “Did you see this?”
She turned and walked to where he stood. The console looked normal.
Mason scrolled back through the commands. Someone had cleared all the logs. Mason hit a button. The cameras showed the exterior and interior of the house. The one in the basement would have told them precisely who had committed the crime.
“Is it recording now?” Penny asked.
Mason nodded. He pointed to one of the camera angles. Outside, they saw the boy who had told them about the noises that had led them to Ned’s. He was standing at the edge of the property.
“This is live?” she asked.
Mason nodded.
“I told him to go home. If this is running now, then we should have video of the butcher leaving, right?” she asked.
Mason frowned. He spun with a realization. “Unless he’s still here.”
Penny shook her head. “We found blood on the outside door, remember?”
Mason smiled an embarrassed smile and nodded. “Right.”
“Find me a video of the person who left that blood,” she said. Penny turned back to the room. She had to step around Ned’s body to get to his little bed. The man had slept in a nest of blankets and old books.
“It was on a timer,” Mason said. “Someone set up a batch of commands to run before the clear command so it wouldn’t happen until several minutes after the command was run.”
“I don’t understand,” Penny said, crossing back over to Mason and the console.
“You see these commands that precede the wipe? Those would take a little while to execute. After they engaged the commands, I think the person ran out of here and got beyond the range of the cameras before the wipe occurred.”
“So there’s nothing?” Penny asked.
“No movement at all, except this,” Mason said. He pointed to one of the outside shots. Mason showed her a shadow. As the video progressed, the shadow disappeared.
“Looks like a person,” Mason said.
“Yes,” she said, nodding her head. “At least one.”
“People are going to freak out,” Mason said. “First that woman’s body was stolen, and now this. The last time we had a murderer on the loose, people ran for the hills. This is going to be terrible.”
Penny shook her head. “It was terrible last time because nobody had any idea who the killer was. This time won’t be so bad.”
Mason looked at her, confused.
“This is clearly the work of the people on Cleo’s list.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because Cleo said that we need to enlist the help of the citizens to find the people on her list.”
Penny moved over to Ned’s body. She lifted his bloody arm and dipped his finger in the coagulating pool. She moved his hand to a clean part of the floor and wrote, “Jacob” in blood.
Mason watched her in silence.
“Go next door and get that kid. Tell him you need him to identify the body.”
“There’s not much to identify,” Mason said.
“He’ll know Ned from the clothes and the smell. Besides, that’s not the point. We want that kid traumatized, and we want him to see Jacob’s name. When word gets around, we’ll have the whole town searching for Jacob.”
Mason nodded and moved for the hatch.
Chapter 15
{Return}
“CAN YOU GUYS LIFT a little higher?” Harper asked. She looked back at Jayden and Andrew. They each held an arm. Harper was carrying a leg in each hand. It probably would have been faster if she just carried the whole corpse, but she didn’t want to get his blood all over herself.
“This end is heavier than it looks,” Andrew said.
They were practically dragging Wyatt’s body through the bushes. Leading the way, Harper felt like she was pulling a sled through mud.
“We don’t have that much farther to go before we get to the road,” Jayden said. “It’s getting late. Maybe we should leave him there and come back in the morning.”
“No,” Harper said. She shook her head as she started moving forward again. “Something could get him in the night. Then all this work will be for nothing. We’ve brought him this far. The least we could do is go the rest of the way.”
She didn’t look back to see if the others agreed with her. She just kept walking.
Jayden was right. It didn’t take too long before they reached the road.
“Taking the road will be a little easier, but it will add a couple of miles to the walk,” Andrew said.
“I say we go straight back through the woods. At least that way we’ll be going back to Kappa Three and we can relax,” Jayden said.
Harper considered the choices.
“What’s that?” Andrew asked.
They all turned. Jayden dropped his grip on Wyatt’s corpse. He looked like he was ready to run.
“Hold on,” Harper said. “It’s not necessarily bad.”
They heard an engine on the road. The noise quieted to an idle and then they heard a voice.
“Harper?” the voice called.
“That’s Jacob,” Harper said. She dropped her grip on the corpse as well. Wyatt’s body fell to the pavement. Harper ran.
She slowed a little when she saw the big red vehicle. She sped back up when she saw Jacob leaning through the driver’s window. He piled out when he saw her. They met in an embrace in front of the hood.
“I can’t believe it’s you. I’ve been going back and forth on this stretch for an hour, just hoping that I would catch you crossing. I had almost given up. Where have you been?”
She pointed back the way she had come. Andrew and Jayden were making their way cautiously towards them.
“We ran into trouble,” she said. She swallowed and looked him in the eyes. “Wyatt was killed. We’ve got his body with us.”
Jacob’s face twisted. He gripped Harper’s shoulders and then pulled her into another hug. Jayden and Andrew finally joined them. The headlights of the vehicle made a warm pool of light around them. Jayden and Andrew seemed unwilling to step into that light.
“This isn’t safe,” Andrew said. “All that noise and heat.”
“Don’t worry,” Jacob said. “I’ve been driving it for hours. It has a device inside that repels the Hunters.”
Jayden looked at Andrew and gave his head a tiny shake. They both backed up half of a step.
Harper turned to them. “You guys go back. We’ll take Wyatt’s body.”
They didn’t hesitate to act on the advice. With one glance between them, Andrew and Jayden turned and jogged into the woods. They were gone in an instant.
“We can’t go back,” Jacob said.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re on some list. I mean, I am, but I assume you are too. Cleo wants to lock us up. I’m guessing she figured out that we’re behind the movement to get her impeached and she wants to put a stop to it.”
“She wouldn’t,” Harper said. “It’s not part of the process.” She stepped away from Jacob and looked down at her feet. “I don’t believe it.”
“They captured Brook and Isaac. Logan ran and I managed to get away in this,” he said, pointing at the vehicle. “They tried to shoot me.”
Harper covered her face with her hands.
> “How sure are you that this thing is safe from Hunters?”
“Completely.”
“Then let’s get in and go away from here. We’ll keep going until we run out of fuel. This place isn’t worth it.”
“Harper,” Jacob said. “Maybe the place isn’t worth it, but the people? If Cleo is willing to do this to us, what else is she capable of? We can’t let her hurt all of those people.”
“Maybe once we’re gone, she’ll go back to being a benign dictator,” Harper said.
“There’s something else,” Jacob said. “We saw something else.”
Harper waited for him to find the words or maybe get the nerve to tell her.
“When we were coming back, Brook saw something strange on the monitor. We pulled over and saw something in the sky. Based on what you and Madelyn told me, I think it was The Wisdom.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Let’s get the vehicle and go pick up Wyatt’s body. It will be dark soon,” she said.
They walked back to the vehicle. Jacob took the driver’s seat and waited for her to get settled.
“It looked like a cloud, perched just outside of the city,” he said.
She put her hand up to stop him. When Harper pointed forward, Jacob got the vehicle rolling.
Before long, he saw the body. He pulled up so that the vehicle was alongside the corpse. Harper jumped out and circled the vehicle to stand next to Jacob.
“There’s a lot of blood,” she said. “It’s going to get messy.”
“That’s okay,” Jacob said. “The owner won’t mind.”
He grabbed the torso and backed in through the rear door while she managed the feet. When Wyatt was respectfully stowed in the back, they got in again. Jacob looked over his shoulder.
“What happened to him?”
“We don’t know,” she said.
“You don’t think it could have been…”
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Jacob said. He began to maneuver the vehicle around. The road was fairly narrow. The forest had encroached on either side. Before he completed the turn, the wheels were crunching through underbrush and limbs scraped along the sides. He glanced at Harper. If they ever had kids, by the time they were his age most of the roads would probably be gone.
“What’s wrong?” Harper asked.
“I was just thinking. When I was a kid, I used to look around at how everything was dirty and falling apart. Compared to the pictures in books, Oslo looked like a complete mess. I always saw it as a thing we had to do. People had to get back on track so that we could clean everything up and make it look nice again. Then, at some point, I began to think that each day was bringing us closer to having no civilization at all.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Harper said. “As long as there are people, there will be civilization.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Jacob said. “That one day there might not be people.”
Harper was silent for a second. When she finally spoke, her voice was cold and flat. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
Chapter 16
{Movement}
“MADELYN,” HE WHISPERED IN her ear.
Her eyes flew open. As she blinked, she saw ghostly lines above. Madelyn moved her eyes back and forth and her eyes jumped between the objects above. There was a pipe, and a vent. If she really focused and concentrated, she could make out individual objects. It was a difficult process, but it was something other than darkness—for that she was glad.
“I can see,” she said. “Barely.”
“That’s great,” Elijah whispered. “Can you move your fingers or toes?”
Madelyn started to answer and then realized that she wasn’t sure. She closed her eyes so she could concentrate. She sensed extremities. She tried to wiggle one.
“Excellent,” Elijah whispered. “Try the other foot.”
“Foot? I thought I was moving my hand.”
Elijah gave her a quiet, breathy laugh. She hadn’t realized how much she missed that easy laugh of his. Nothing was ever too gloomy for Elijah. He had a way of finding the bright side of any situation.
“Elijah?” she asked.
“What?”
“Did I die?” she asked. “I remember dying.”
“Only your body,” he said.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“As far as I can tell, I don’t have anything but time,” she said.
“Let’s get you back on your feet. You still have a lot of healing to do. Once you’re moving around again, we can talk all about how you came to your present situation, okay?”
“I guess.”
“Good, now try to move your left foot again,” he said.
She had no idea how to do that. Whenever she reached out through her limbs, she felt a strange, unscratchable itch inside her body. Madelyn fought through it and attempted to move her left foot.
“That’s your right hand,” he said. “You’re going to have to trust me on this one, okay? Do it again. Good, that’s your right hand. One more time.”
Elijah coached her through all four limbs. At first, she tried to map what he was asking for to what she thought she was moving. Each time he made a request, she would translate that and then move the appropriate limb. It was too confusing. She got it wrong as many times as she got it right. Finally, she gave up on the translation. Elijah was relentless. He kept asking and asking even after she closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep.
“I’ll stop when you get everything right ten times in a row,” he said.
“This is impossible.”
“It’s not. Picture yourself standing over the shoulder of someone else. Every time I ask for a limb, picture how she will move. Then allow yourself to move through her. Don’t think about how it used to be, think about the woman in front of you.”
Madelyn did as he asked. She didn’t have anything else to do, and she really wanted him to shut up. She would have tried anything at that point.
“Left hand,” he said.
Madelyn pictured herself from over her own shoulder. She imagined the woman moving her left hand.
“Try again,” Elijah said.
She tried something else.
“Again.”
Eventually, after she thought she had exhausted all of the possibilities, Madelyn went back to her first guess. She moved what she thought of as her left hand and saw the imaginary Madelyn move appropriately.
“Good!” he whispered. “Perfect.”
Everything became a lot easier after that.
# # # # #
“Ready?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I need energy. I feel empty.”
“I’m going to put a straw in your mouth,” he said. “When you feel it, drink.”
The liquid that came through was sweet and brought a rush to her. It tasted familiar. She had almost figured it out when he took the straw away.
“Ready?” he asked again.
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ll lift you up. You focus on balance, okay?”
She agreed in principle, but when he started to elevate her shoulders, Madelyn begged him to stop. Her body wasn’t ready to try to support itself. She tried to push him away and ended up kicking her leg to the side.
“You have to be quiet,” he whispered. “It’s not safe.”
Madelyn tried to forget about her body. She needed to let him support her, and she needed to let her neck muscles remember how to stabilize her head. To stop thinking about the act of sitting up, she thought about her surroundings. The same ghostly way that she had seen the pipes on the ceiling, she was now seeing the walls around her. It was mostly black, but the edges of things flickered with wispy static. She wondered what exactly was wrong with her eyes.
When Elijah shifted position, she heard the slosh of water again. He was standing in a deep puddle. She scanned through her memory, trying to come up with a
flooded basement with an unfinished ceiling. She came up blank.
“Good?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Not even close to good.” She realized that she was shaking her head. Madelyn looked down at her hand. She imagined the third-party Madelyn standing in front of herself and she flexed her fingers. It made sense once she could see the hand and control it at the same time. She wondered how blind people ever managed to walk without the luxury of seeing the appendage that they were trying to control. Even with just a ghost-image, connecting the idea of her left hand with the nerve endings inside was a million times easier when she could see what she was doing.
“Let’s try walking,” Elijah said.
“You’re crazy.”
“Trust me. You’ve got capabilities that you haven’t even tapped yet.”
“Wait,” she said. “Now that I’m upright, I want to ask a question.”
“Okay?”
“Didn’t you die when the building collapsed? That’s what they told me. Weren’t you dead?”
“Just my body,” he said. He pulled on her arms and she slid over the surface of the table until her legs were dangling over the edge.
Chapter 17
{Blame}
“WE HAVE TO FIND a way out of here,” Brook said. She paced around the cell, tugging on the bars.
“We’ll be fine,” Isaac said. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We went to find people who might have survived the building collapse and we found a vehicle. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“They have some list, Isaac,” she said. “I’m on that list. Even if you’re not, they caught you in league with me and the others. They’re going to treat you as a traitor.”
“Traitor to what? I didn’t do anything.”
Brook jumped up and hung from the bars on the ceiling. The jail was a perfect box fit inside the basement room of the shopping center. Only the key could free them.
“Weren’t you at the meeting the other day? We called for Cleo’s impeachment. This is clearly her attempt to demonize us so she can stay in power.”
