Of Sudden Origin

by C. Chase Harwood

  The kid had been nervous the day before. He didn’t want to worry his mother, but then the boy reminded him that his mother never worried about him. She came home to sleep and was out the next morning. The most the exhausted woman would do is make them meals in advance while bitching about her life; how hard the two preteens made things for her. That memory set the kid’s mind at ease and he was able to enjoy the hike. Heck, the way the boy figured it, they’d be giving his mom a break. They walked quietly, saving their voices for a distance beyond earshot of other homes and passed the apple juice back and forth and stuffing their hands into the bag of cereal. The sky behind them began to slightly brighten and within an hour they could see well enough to douse the flashlights. Half an hour further brought them to the fence. They had found the gate on their last trip out – the location clearly marked on Dad’s map. The boy’s daddy had been the commanding officer overseeing this part of the Terminus Zone - Captain Stewart Dean it said in bold print in the upper left corner. They assumed correctly that the gate was for maintenance and inspection; a way to get to the second fence.

  There was a dirt road, which on the town’s side of the fence followed its length as far as the eye could see. They had watched an Army patrol truck drive by on their first visit out. The driver seemed bored, barely looking out west as he cruised slowly along. The gate had a keypad lock on it. The boy pressed the digits to match the numbers that had been hand written on the map. He’d read them a hundred times. The gate’s electronic lock clicked, and when he gently pushed, it swung open with ease.

  The second fence had no gate. Any maintenance could be done from the settled side only. The tops of both fences were thickly crowned with heavy gauge razor wire, but the boy had done his research here as well. The survival books had a solution for everything. They set down the one heavy duffle bag that they had carried between them. The boy unzipped it and drew out two thick lengths of rope. Attached to the end of each was a homemade grappling hook that they had fashioned from a couple of hand held garden tillers. The kid had the better arm, so it was agreed that he would make the tosses. With a spin of the hook to get some momentum, the kid heaved it high and they watched it sail over the fence. A straightened wire coat hook was passed through the fence to retrieve the swinging tiller, which the boy anchored into a triangle of the wire fencing. The kid tossed the next one over about three feet to the right of the first. The boy anchored this one as well and then they each put their weight on the ropes, slowly compacting the razor wire above. They tied off the first and then did the same with the second, effectively flattening out the razor wire and creating a gap roughly three feet in width. At the bottom of the duffle bag there was a small sheepskin rug, rolled and tied with a strap. The boy pulled it out and slipped the strap over one shoulder. They gave each other a look. The time had finally come. They were going where no one went. At least not for the past ten years, when the boys had just been toddlers – before everything had changed. The boy started climbing first. Despite the weight of his pack, the fence wasn’t much of a challenge. He and the kid had been training for this - scaled many other fences. At the top, he clipped himself to the fence with a carabineer attached to the webbed belt around his waist. This gave him the luxury to remove the sheepskin from his shoulders and unfurl it with both hands. He then gently laid it across the compacted razor wire. It was then a simple matter of finishing the climb, stepping over the top and climbing back down.

  When the kid set his feet down, joining the boy on the other side, the boy raised his hand and accepted the high-five. The young lads looked around them as though they had just stepped onto another planet- and for all practical purposes they had. As far as they knew, for the ten years after the Terminus Zone fence was completed, not a single soul from the Seven States of America had set foot on this ground.

  As the weak sun threw the black forest’s thin shadows across the great rocky plain, they laughed with nervous delight at this first small accomplishment. According to the map, it was twenty miles to the river called the Hudson. They had a long hike ahead of them.

  The land beneath their feet had once been part of the same blackened forest that abutted the boy’s home. When they built the terminus, thousands of men had cut the forest down, leaving nothing but stumps out to the horizon. The felled trees had been collected and stocked for future use, but according to his daddy’s map, the clearing had not been for timber, but rather the removal of that which could provide cover.

  As they marched, they left the recently thawed lake named Whaley to their right. The terrain was hilly, and at the peaks the breeze was quite cold. The spring, as they still called it, lasted a mere two weeks in July before ushering in the anemically short summer. It often tricked people weary of nine months of perpetual winter. They would sally forth, wearing improper clothes and soak up the forty-degree weather with a tease of sunshine lightening the permanent cloud layer. A sudden cold snap would catch many a fool unawares. The lads were not fools. They’d brought plenty of warm gear.

  They hiked for a couple of hours until they saw a great road. It was like one of the highways on their side of the fence, but in deep disrepair and clogged with thousands of old hulks. Like the stumps behind them, abandoned vehicles filled the horizon. A road sign still showed Highway 84. They planned to follow the road to where it crossed the wide river. This was the point where the map became critical: the highway, as a natural path for foot travel, had been mined. The map offered the way through. Only by hugging the inside shoulder of the westbound side could they avoid tripping the explosives and leaving their disappearance a mystery at home. At various points, they would have to cross to the outside shoulder as the minefield crisscrossed the highway with the intention of avoiding any discernible pattern. Before stepping onto the road they paused for lunch. They had planned out their provisions so that there would be eighteen pre-packed meals. They planned to hike for five days: two to the river, one to walk its shore, and two to go back; returning as explorer heroes, the first to report back on the lands past the Terminus Zone. The boy brought his digital hand pad to memorialize it. The first interesting shots were the ones of the dead highway.

  After giving themselves a short time to digest, they marched on, agreeing on three hours more. They’d made it fifty yards when they found shocking evidence of the decade old disaster: human remains lay scattered amongst the cars and trucks; more along the sides of the road. Bones were strewn about in a haphazard fashion and the lads found themselves staring in fearful wonder. They hesitated only for a moment before resuming their pace, discussing their lessons at school, trying to correlate this scene with that which they’d been told. The kid was more frightened than the boy, and had to be convinced that these bones were almost as old as them and certainly weren’t coming back to life.

  They found themselves poking through the detritus that was the remains of so many lives. Furniture and clothes, toys and electronics; some of it what the lads knew from their own world, but also many things that neither of them recognized for their function. Their hike had become a stroll, the stroll a casual wander, each lad showing off to the other some form of rotting artifact – a smorgasbord of curiosities.

  They chose to set up their tent beneath an underpass and a faded sign that read Shenandoah Road. The trees, this far away from the Terminus Zone, had been left alone and while most still bore the blackened trunks of a long ago inferno, some had sprouted the hints of the short summer of growth. They ate by a small campfire, the warm embers helping ward off the growing night chill. They were quite tired by the time they rested their heads. It had been a sleepless night before, followed by a strenuous day and as young people without the weight of the world on their shoulders tend to do, they slept hard and with ease.

  The lads awoke on the lighter side of dawn. The air was quite cold and they watched the steam of their breath rise to the top of the tent while they waited for full consciousness to return. They ate their breakfast quickly, accompanied by
a light lavender cloud layer. With the mighty river only a few hours away calling them, the perpetual graveyard that surrounded them held less interest. They picked up their pace and the kid was chattier now as they passed a big burned out high school. At lunch they entered a town called Fishkill and were amazed at the depth of destruction. The remnants of a couple of motels greeted them first, followed by a mall turned to rubble. The boy took pictures as they ate and then they moved on.

  A sign read Down State Correctional Facility and pointed toward an immense facility, a network of geometric looking buildings surrounded by multiple fences, not unlike those that bordered the Terminus. The open land between the ruined buildings and the fencing was covered in a sea of what looked like bleached white coral, but not coral: thousands upon thousands of human skeletons. The lads stared dumbly at the sight, cement-like fear replacing the ignorance and bravado in their veins. Only the sign above them fortified their resolve. It told of the bridge that lay ahead: the Newburg-Beacon Bridge. Just one mile more.

  They walked as far out on the bridge as they could; perhaps thirty yards. The structure was really two bridges, one for the westbound traffic, and one for the east; both jutting over the water in mangled amputation. The boy pointed out the melted and twisted steel at the edges and explained that the bridge had been demolished so that whatever roamed on the far side could never enter the Seven States again. Over there, beyond the water’s edge, the black forest continued. Bits of green sprouted here and there, but otherwise the landscape was just as dead as on their side.

  They took the shore road north until they reached the town of New Hamburg, from there they would make a right and follow the county roads back toward home. As they walked, they hadn’t really accounted for the view of the river to be obscured. The eastern shore had been built into a great fortress wall. Since perpetual winter froze the river for much of the year, it began with a concrete barrier that was at least thirty feet tall. Should snow drifts build themselves so high as to offer a ramp, the wall was backed up with a quadruple deep fence system, the spaces between laden with land mines. The shore road had been cleared of any broken down vehicles, and since the wall gave them little to look at, the boys made quick time to the town. When they arrived they found the wall cut the small town in half, reducing their ability to explore it the way they had hoped. A big house on a hill attracted their attention. It had a long curving driveway off a street called Conklin. Unlike the surrounding houses, it was intact with a roof of bright red shingles so they headed up the hill with the hope of a view.

  The house was large and though weathered, the windows were intact. Every other house that they had passed had either been burned or damaged in some fashion, with most windows smashed out. There was an expansive lawn area that had long ago turned brown and which still had a thin layer of melting snow on it. While standing at its western edge, the lads had a commanding view of the river and the lands beyond. They could see a big bluff, where smoke appeared to be rising up through the black trees. The boy turned and looked back at the house. Something in one of the big picture windows caught his eye. Movement. His heart gave a leap as he pointed it out to the kid. There was nowhere to duck and hide, yet they both found themselves instinctively crouching. The kid gave the window a harder look and saw that the movement was mechanical. They cautiously crept forward until they could get a good look inside. A camera attached to a beefy looking tripod slowly panned across the view. The boys turned to look back across the river. As they did so, they didn’t notice the camera change its trajectory, instead, coming to rest pointing right at them. They spotted other electronic gear inside the room and agreed that they should check it out further, see if there was an unlocked door or window.

  On the backside of the house they noted a few struggling weeds breaking through the gravel topped circular drive. They tested the first floor windows and doors and found them to be securely locked. Frustrated, the boy suddenly got impulsive and tossed a rock through a kitchen window. Why not? Every other window in town seemed to be broken. They ran several yards away and turned to watch. After two minutes and nothing, they stepped back to the window. The boy reached in, flipped the lock and they both pushed the stiff casement up and open. After clearing the bigger pieces of glass they slid inside.

  They were greeted by moldy doors and dark corners as they crept forward, passing through a formal dining room, stopping short of the living room. The roof wasn’t in as good shape as it had appeared from the outside. There were several places where leaks had destroyed floors, furniture and cabinets. There was no electricity out here of course, but something was making the equipment work. They could hear a quiet electrical hum followed by a sound of a winding motor. The boy called out a hello, but got no response. They peeked further and spotted the camera slowly scanning back and forth. A second camera panned back and forth as well, the search patterns overlapping. There were also huge binoculars mounted to a tripod of its own.

  The boy called out another hello. With no response, they relaxed. The kid walked up to the big pair of binoculars and put his eyes to the glass and focused on the bluff on the far side of the river. He could see the smoke well now and there seemed to be movement. He adjusted the focus knob slightly and things became sharper. Then he saw something queer, something not right, and he gasped stepping back. He couldn’t speak at first, his psyche trying to sort it all out. The boy pushed past him to have a look for himself. There were men on the far side of the river. They were dressed in heavy furs and had long shaggy hair. Some were tall, others not, but all looked fit and strong. They seemed to be building or maybe repairing a dome shaped shelter made from logs, branches and mud. It didn’t seem too unusual, just somehow ancient. Like the people he had learned about who lived on this land hundreds of years before. Then he looked a little harder and saw what the kid had seen and he felt his throat constrict. The men had an odd gait, as though walking on tiptoes. They had long tapered ears that seemed to swivel on their own. Then there were the eyes: large dark eyes, like those of an owl. One of them stretched his jaw and a mouthful of sharp shinny teeth caused the boy’s heart to skip a beat. He took a quick breath. The kid told him to stop looking - but he couldn’t - something compelled him to keep staring. One of the men… things… stopped doing his work and turned around to face him, his great owlish black pupils intimately staring, as if separated by a few yards rather than a couple of miles. The boy let out a small cry as he felt his mind fill with a jumble of confusing images and sensations. He could smell the man over there, the fire, the forest; could hear the movement of the others. He could see the house that he himself was standing in. It was just a dot on a chopped top hillside, but the red roof gave it away. Then something else entered his mind – it wasn’t language, but communication nevertheless – it said to him, COME. COME. COME. BE HERE. COME. It became urgent and the boy felt his whole body filling with it and suddenly all he wanted to do was run out of the house and down to the river. He would scale the fence, climb the barrier, swim across the frigid river – he had to! COME. BE HERE. COME. BE HERE.

  The boy turned from the binoculars sporting a thousand yard stare. The kid now crying, trying to stop him. The boy pushing right past, heading back to the kitchen, the window. Outside, with the kid pleading, pulling at his sleeve, the boy yanking his arm away and beginning to run. COME. BE WITH US. The boy began to sprint. Nothing mattered but to get to the other side. The kid gave chase, but he was quickly winded as his friend, his brother, ran faster. The kid didn’t give up. He screamed over and over for the boy to stop, but the boy ran through the town, down the river road, right for the blown out bridge.

  The kid watched in amazement as his friend sprinted to the end of the bridge. The kid was about to be left alone - out here – the boy jumped. The kid ran to the edge of the bridge screaming no! Then his mind was filled with an odd sensation, a warm buzzing, and he had to look, wanted to look, was compelled to look at the opposite shore where the smoke rose, and at the
small dots that were the odd men – an overwhelming feeling - COME HERE. BE WITH US. Staccato images flashing through his head – His friend, the boy, swimming away toward the distant shore. Then a high pitched whine. Small cc engines behind the kid – skidding tires on gravel – two men on motorcycles – black fatigues, their heads covered in some kind of crazy helmet, the front the same as the back, no way to see out. One dismounted and grabbed the kid, pulling him toward his idling bike, the kid struggling, screaming that he wanted to be over there, gloved hands slapping over his mouth, his eyes – a visor slightly raised, a gruff, but kind voice, offering reassurance.

  The kid was returned to his home, the hand pad taken away, his trembling mother taken aside, instruction given: They’d been camping in the local woods. The boy got lost. There was no further explanation, just a stern warning to never do such a thing again, that their home would be watched, their conversations recorded. They were to speak no more of the boy or the land beyond the Terminus Zone. To do so would mean permanent removal. No second chances – erased from the earth. But, what about the boy? They said the boy was dead. But you’ll say he ran away.

  And the kid thought about it, his friend, the boy; he did run away. Who could say he was dead?

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