“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so s-sorry. I’m sorr-ry,” Billy said.
Beth lifted Billy’s head. Her face was calm. The blade was still clutched in her other hand. She smiled and Billy caught a glimpse of how his mother used to look at him before all of this, before the blackout and the death of his father.
“Billy,” Beth said.
Her words were soft like when she used to come and tuck him in at night when he was a child. He was always afraid of the dark, but whenever she came in before he went to sleep he always felt better, safer.
“I don’t care,” Beth finished.
Billy felt the cold steel thrust into his neck. His whole body seized. The pain was quick and he immediately gasped for breath. He could feel the blood spilling from his neck onto his chest. Everything felt warm at first, then cold, empty… tired.
Beth held his gaze the entire time. Her face was twisted with anger. But even with that face staring back at him the last image Billy saw was him and his brother playing in the yard. It was sunny outside, and there was a slight breeze in the air. They were chasing after each other, playing tag.
The pain finally subsided and Billy smiled, hearing nothing but the sound of his brother’s laughter echoing through the field in his mind.
***
Jung didn’t put up a fight. When he saw Cain open the door to his room he thought that was the moment, this man was the one to end everything for him, but he was wrong.
He thought that’d he lost all ability to feel anything, but when he saw his children dead, something inside of him was screaming, demanding to be let out, but it couldn’t escape.
It was trapped deep within him, like a man lost at sea, screaming through the storm to another ship in the distance for help, but no one was able to hear him.
The only emotion that came out was the steady flow of tears tumbling down the side of his cheeks. When he felt Billy’s body collapse next to him he looked down to see blood spilling into the cracks of the concrete.
Jung could smell the blood and feel it sticking to his shirt and arm. Everything was red. He felt himself panicking. The world around him seemed to be folding in, suffocating him until he couldn’t breathe anymore.
He tried to regain control and went back to the sight of his children. He couldn’t understand why they piled them on top of each other. They were discarded like a broken appliance.
Cain was saying something to him, but all Jung could see were Cain’s lips moving. He couldn’t hear their sounds, or what he was telling him. Jung knew it was because of this man’s actions that his children were dead.
But Cain was just the instrument, not the source. The real murderer was Jung. He pulled the trigger on his children long before Cain showed up. It had been there lingering in the back of his mind. He knew the moment would come, but Jung’s one wish was to be dead before he saw it happen.
Whatever God he’d given up on had decided to return the favor, punishing him for his lack of faith and devotion to his family and fellow man. His mind went to the book of Revelation, and the first words he’d spoken were from the very book he’d forsaken.
“Every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all peoples on earth will mourn because of him,” Jung said.
Cain bent down on his knee and met Jung’s eyes, smiling. The blade Beth had used to kill Billy was in his hand still dripping with blood.
“So shall it be. Amen,” Cain said.
The slice of Jung’s throat was quick. The blood drained from him like an open faucet, and Jung’s eyes fixed on his children until the last bits of life vanished from his face.
Cain wiped the blade on Jung’s shoulder, cleaning the red off the silver steel. He tucked it back into his belt and clapped his hands together.
Beth and Joey’s hands were stained red. That was the sight Cain was looking for, there in front of him. They were hungry now, purged of whatever ties to the past they were holding on to.
“Now, the fun begins,” Cain said.
Chapter 8: Six Months After the Blackout
The computer screen on Ben’s desk was the only source of light in the office. His eyes were bloodshot, strained from looking at files for the past nine hours.
Ben leaned back in his chair and attempted to rub the dryness out of his eyes. He looked over at Mitch, who was passed out on the sofa. So far the only thing Mitch offered in the research was the occasional snore.
Through all of the files that Ben searched he couldn’t find anything on either Dr. Wyatt or Mike. Both of them were squeaky clean. Aside from Wyatt’s bumble at the Senate hearing, he hadn’t made any waves.
The only thing he could find on Mike was a speeding ticket under his wife’s name, and their marriage license.
Ben kept staring at the marriage license, studying it. There was something about it that didn’t sit right with him, but he couldn’t place it. He wasn’t surprised that Mike had been married.
Whenever Ben pried into Mike’s past in the interrogation room he’d never get anywhere. Mike wouldn’t talk about anything.
Even if Dr. Wyatt was telling the truth and there was a journal that chronicled what happened and proved Mike’s innocence, why would he give it to him? The man obviously believed he was guilty, but Ben didn’t think it was of the crimes Mike said he committed. There was something more.
***
“You really think this is going to work?” Mitch asked.
“We’ve tried everything else. If this doesn’t get a response out of him, then I don’t know what will,” Ben answered.
Mitch let out a long sigh and then opened the interrogation room’s door. Mike was inside, shackled to the chair and floor, and dressed in orange.
Mike kept his head down as usual and Ben took a seat across from him. Ben laid the manila folder gently onto the table and folded his hands together.
“How are you doing today, Mike?” Ben asked.
The only answer Ben received was the shuffling of chains. Ben opened the file, but made sure Mike couldn’t see the contents of what was inside. He flipped through the pages, just examining them.
“You know we had a friend of yours pay us a visit yesterday,” Ben said.
It was the first time Mike actually looked at him. Whatever secrets Mike was hiding, having an “old friend” stop by was bound to make him nervous.
“Did you ever spend any time in Washington, DC, before the blackout?” Ben asked.
“I don’t have any friends,” Mike said.
“I actually lived there, before the EMP blast. Most of the city was a dump, but it wasn’t without its charms.”
Ben continued to examine the pictures in the file, glancing up every once in a while to see Mike’s eyes glaring at him.
“The monuments there are incredible. It’s a great destination for families,” Ben said.
Mike pulled hard against the chains, but they were so tight that the only thing Ben noticed was the flex of Mike’s arms.
Ben set the folder down, and pulled out pictures of Freddy, Kalen, and Anne. Each picture slid across the table’s smooth surface and stopped abruptly at Mike’s arm.
“Were they in on it too, Mike?” Ben asked. “Did your family help you break into that military base and launch that EMP? Did they even know who you were, what you were planning on doing?”
Mike didn’t say anything. He just glanced down at the pictures. Ben tried reading the emotions on Mike’s face, but it was blank.
“Do they know you’re here?” Ben asked.
“We thought you’d be happy to see them,” Mitch said.
Mitch leaned on the table, his large belly digging into the table’s edge.
“You couldn’t protect them, could you? You weak piece of shit,” Mitch said.
“AHHHHHHHH!” Mike screamed.
Mike snapped and turned on Mitch, but the restraints did their job. Curses and spit flew from Mike’s mouth as he screamed at both of them. It was a stream of adrenaline that lasted for fifteen minutes, t
hen finally subsided with Mike exhausted and slumped in his chair, looking numb as he stared at the pictures on the table.
“Mike,” Ben said, “I don’t think you did any of what you said happened. I don’t believe a family man who was married for twenty-five years at a job you’d been at for just as long would snap like this. Tell me what happened. I can help you.”
Mike’s eyes were red. Ben could see the tears he was holding back, ready to burst at any moment. Ben picked up a picture of his son and held it up for Mike to see.
“What happened, Mike?” Ben asked.
Mike gently grabbed the picture from Ben’s hands. It was Mike’s shoulders that started to shake first, then his arms and hands, and the picture wobbled back and forth. The first tear hit the table, and with the dam now broken the rest of the tears fell like rain.
After a minute of letting himself go he started to regain his composure, drawing in deep breaths.
“Who is he?” Mike asked.
“Who is who?” Ben asked.
“The man who came to see you.”
“He identified himself as Dr. Quinn Wyatt.”
The picture of Freddy fell from Mike’s grip. His eyes darted from Mitch to Ben.
“Where’s the journal, Mike?” Ben asked.
“Whatever he told you is a lie,” Mike said.
“The journal, Mike. What did you do with it?”
“Take me back to my cell.”
It wasn’t going to work. Wherever the journal was, whatever happened, Mike wasn’t going to tell him. Ben called for the correction officer and Mike was escorted back to his cell.
Mitch patted Ben on the back.
“C’mon, kid. You need a drink.”
***
Out of all of the businesses that started back up after the power came back on, the ones that had the quickest success were the bars. People wanted to forget whatever terrible things they did during the blackout as fast as possible.
Mitch ordered a whiskey and coke and Ben sipped on a beer. The bar wasn’t too busy, but then again it was twelve thirty in the afternoon on a Wednesday.
“I don’t know what he’s scared of,” Ben said.
“This place is a dump.”
“He knows he didn’t do any of this, and he’s still punishing himself for it. Why?”
“Hey, barkeep! Where’s the bar nuts?”
“If we could just reach out to his family. Maybe they could help us.”
Ben rested his head on his arm and then felt a nudge in his side.
“Hey,” Mitch said. “You can’t save someone that doesn’t want to be saved, Ben.”
“What’d you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“During the blackout. I know you weren’t stationed in DC. You said you were from Philadelphia, right?”
“Yup.”
“That place was a madhouse. How’d you survive?”
“Hey, it’s the city of brotherly love.”
Ben laughed, and Mitch gave a chuckle. Both of them took another sip of their drinks. Ben placed his beer on the small white napkin.
“Ben, the things that happened during the blackout were bad. People… they lost who they were. I saw people stab each other over crumbs. Fuckin’ crumbs,” Mitch said.
Mitch drained the rest of his drink and slammed it down on the counter. He called the bartender over again and asked for another.
“Did you kill anyone?” Ben asked.
Mitch grabbed a handful of the bar nuts next to him and shoved them in his mouth, then washed them down with another swig of his fresh drink.
“We all did what we had to do, Ben. There’s not a person out there that doesn’t have dirty hands.”
Ben knew Mitch had a point. Everyone was without power for too long. People will stay calm for only so long before they riot. The dependency on technology became abundantly clear when none of it worked.
History books would record this time period as one of the worst in American History. The stories would surpass the Great Depression, both World Wars, 9/11, all of it. It was as if the entire nation lost its sanity with the rest of the world watching, and now we were waking up from the nightmare, looking around at the damage and trying to sweep it under the rug.
That’s why Ben wanted the proof so bad. He had to pull one truth out of all the lies being peddled to everyone. There had to be one beam of light out there.
“I killed someone,” Ben said.
Mitch stopped chewing and set his drink down.
“Ben, you don’t have to—”
“It was in the middle of the day, about three months in. I was on guard at the food bank in DC. You should have seen the lines of people waiting. It stretched for miles. You couldn’t even see the end. We moved on to the emergency reserves at that point. You could see the hunger on everyone’s faces. The food bank was handing out the bare minimum. The tension running through the crowd was thick, and there was this guy, a dad with his family, and they were close to the front of the line. His little girl was crying, and she just wouldn’t stop. He walked up to me, saying that his daughter hadn’t eaten in three days. He begged me to let him cut in line, just to grab food for her. He was even willing to give up his rations just to feed her, but we had protocol. No one could skip, no exceptions. Then other people started pleading, arguing why they should be able to eat first. The guards were outnumbered a thousand to one. If they rushed the gates, then it would have been over. I pulled my gun and told him to get back in line, but he just wouldn’t stop. He kept screaming for me to let him through, and the crowd around him was getting restless. I couldn’t let the chaos break out. I couldn’t let one person destroy what little we had left. I warned him one more time to get back in line and he made a move on me so I pulled the trigger. One shot through the head. The rest of the crowd backed down after that. I can still hear two things from that day when I close my eyes to fall asleep. I can hear the sound of my gun going off, and the screams from his wife, cursing me as she wept over her husband’s corpse.”
Ben took another sip of beer then clutched the drink in both hands as he closed his eyes, letting out a breath that was soft and slow.
“The supplies from Europe arrived the next day,” Ben said.
“You followed your orders, Ben. There was no way of knowing what would happen if you hadn’t pulled the trigger. You knew what you had to do. It was a hard choice, but one that had to be made.”
“Yeah… orders.”
***
Even though Dr. Wyatt volunteered to come to the investigator’s unit, Ben and Mitch housed him in an apartment building onsite. He was impressed with the size of the facility they were able to use. It looked like an old university that swapped housing bright young minds for suspected criminals.
Dr. Wyatt unpacked his suitcase and placed what spare clothes he had into the small dresser at the foot of the bed. There was a TV on top of it, which he didn’t use. He found himself not using any piece of electronics out of habit. He managed to make it as far as he did without it and realized just how much of a time waste it was to spend your free hours glued to a television numbing your mind.
His room was on the eighth floor of the building and he had a decent view of the surrounding area. There were cars moving on the roads, traffic lights changing from red to green, and he could hear the hum of the electrical transformer from the power lines just outside his window.
It was such a different sight than the one he experienced just a few months ago. The frozen cities had been thawed and were now beginning to teem with life again.
Dr. Wyatt sat on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers along the fabric of the comforter. The sheets on the bed were clean, the floor in the room was vacuumed, and the A/C was blasting through the vents.
All of this was brought back for mankind, the same mankind that ignored him, shunned him, and tried to bury him. He started to think that him being there was a bad idea. Even if he had a chance to speak with Mike there was no guarantee t
hat he’d be able to help him, and even if he was able to help him, there was no promise that Mike would accept it.
Every time he thought about it a sour feeling hit the pit of his stomach and spread throughout his body. He reached for his bag and pulled out the bottle of pills he kept with him to ease the stress.
He washed the pill down with a cup of water he filled from the sink and lay down to let the medicine take effect.
No Power: EMP Post Apocalyptic Fiction Thriller Super Boxset Page 144
