by Elle Cross
I knelt at the window and slowly pulled myself up so that I would be able to look down to the tree line below.
The figure was as clear as day to me standing in the shadows. He raised an arm at me. I waved back.
This was odd.
And I should be nervous that there was a stranger in the woods, but somehow it made me feel relieved. Like I wasn’t alone.
This interchange was the most conversation I’d had with anyone in a long time that personally involved me. Like he was talking to me and not just coming at me because I was a preacher's daughter. Like that was all I was and all I would ever be.
I wanted to take those shackles off, just a little. I was always the preacher's daughter, or Dr. Lena Bishop’s daughter. I was never truly myself.
Yet, come to think of it, it wasn’t like I knew who I was in the grand scheme of things, either. Maybe I needed to change that.
How?
Well, I could start with what I did know about myself. I was the daughter of a preacher, word mage, and monster hunter. I was also the daughter of an herb witch and renowned scientist. I was a burgeoning track star when things like school still mattered. And I was a crack shot, and not embarrassed to admit it.
But what else? It wasn’t like I’d been able to finish my formal schooling, so I couldn’t take after the science stuff that my mother did so well. Nor could I do the herbology stuff, though I’d done my fair bit of coaxing and pleading with the plants so they wouldn’t die on me. Sometimes that worked.
I should be more concerned that none of my talents had manifested even though they should have by now. I’d be in the last years of college if the world hadn’t crumbled apart on me. My talents should have already been apparent.
I figured that since I was still standing and alive, that should count for something.
The next morning during chores, I noticed a pungent smell as I was reinforcing the circle, especially back by the chicken coop. I decided not to worry about it, since the scent was familiar—but I couldn't quite put a finger on it.
The fencing here was still nice and strong, but I didn't like that something was trying the little hole on another part of my fence line. Something that had tried to wear down these wards from the outside.
I squelched down the bit of panic that threatened to overwhelm me and reminded myself that I was here and alive.
At least there wasn't a breach.
I didn’t have to worry about people scavenging or poaching my property. Not yet.
But what would happen if people did finally manage to get onto the property? What would I do?
This was what the media had feared and were now too dead to the world to finish broadcasting. This was it. That there would always be a bunch of people who would want more and more regardless of the lack.
I headed into town again after my chores, leaving as early as possible to make the most out of the daylight. I brought my pack this time, even wrapping Dad’s scriptures in an oiled cloth and slipping it inside.
I had protein bars and med kits. That was good enough for now. I was coming back.
I didn't expect a welcome, but all the same, the town seemed awfully quiet and empty. Chills crept along my skin. I meandered through the market and most of the stalls were ransacked.
I started to see people as I neared the square. Injured bodies and desperately fearful, tear-streaked faces gathered here. Babies were inconsolable against their mothers’ grief.
What the fuck? This place was supposed to be so happy. It was happy. The entire time I was here yesterday, there were jovial people in the streets, some passionately so.
And now...
It was as if death had come calling.
Reapers. I was sure of it. Reapers had come, and without my dad to preach them away, they had been able to cull the town.
But how?
"What happened?" I looked at one blank face after another, but words didn’t seem to register through to their skull.
These townsfolk were lulled into a sense of security. They were used to a preacher predicting trouble in time to call off any Hellfire that could come our way. But nope. Not this time.
Damn.
I ran toward the church, desperate to see my dad. I nearly stumbled into Ms. Zorah sitting on the front walk, silently rocking a child.
"What's happened to my dad? Any change?" I asked her.
Surprisingly, she heard me and responded. “No, no change or movement at all,” she began in her faraway voice. “Well, not until he got violently ill in the middle of the night.”
Why would he get violently ill? Poisons? I kept my thoughts to myself, not wanting to break the spell of a shell-shocked Ms. Zorah.
“I couldn’t say why. As immediately as it happened, it stopped. And then they came.”
“Who came? Reapers?” I asked.
“No. A pack of Skolls. Someone left the gates open…” Her voice trailed off and she stopped talking. From one breath to the other, she continued her rocking and humming again. There was something about the way she held the child, the way the child was not moving, that sent chills raking down my body.
Skolls. I was surprised there was anybody left alive. They ate anything in their path. Maybe they had help from that wolf pack Mayor St. Clair had mentioned. The ones they paid tithes to.
I slowly backed away from that haunted sight, not brave enough to face it, and ran to the church. I didn’t stop running until I was by my father's side. "I did it, Dad. I found that missing page. But you're gonna need to wake up. I can't figure this out on my own."
I pleaded with him, but he still didn't stir. I didn't know what to do. I unfurled the piece of paper, staring between it and my father, trying to make sense out of both.
Someone came out of the wing below the church, bounding toward me. His name leapt to mind finally. Kirby St. Clair was oddly jovial, a mood that clashed with what I’d just waded through at the town square. He saw the piece of paper and pointed to it saying, "Oh, fun!"
I blinked at him as if he were a little unstable, fluttering the paper between my fingers. "This is fun?"
Kirby blinked. "Oh, I guess you don’t know Morse code?"
I blinked at him. "Is that some sort of secret code or something?"
"Yup, one of the most popular in the twentieth century. It's a series of dashes and dots to make up letters and therefore words."
I blinked, fascinated by this system of communication. "What would be the point of Morse code, though? Seems a trifle tedious to just talk in dashes and dots."
Kirby smiled. "Here, let me show you." He curled his fingers into a fist and rapped his knuckle against the floor of the stage, a couple of feet from my dad’s head. He tapped out a syncopated rhythm that was kind of interesting to hear. "I just spelled out your name."
He looked at me expectantly, so I nodded. “Clearly, the only people who would be able to understand this would be the people who knew the code.”
Kirby nodded his head, the halo of his curls bobbed with him. “Exactly! You don’t even need electricity to use it, though that’s a popular way. During the old wars, they used to use radio waves. Easy way to keep top secret things, well, secret.”
The dawning of understanding warmed me. “So you're saying that the reason they used to use Morse code was to be able to communicate without worrying that there was someone listening in on the conversation?”
Where and what was my dad communicating? To whom, and why?
I turned Kirby, his face sweet and genuine. "Can you help me decode it?"
He lit up in a smile. "I would love to."
I followed Kirby down to the church basement. He led me through a maze—a hoarder's treasure trove of forgotten toys and signs for a rummage sale and trunk-or-treat. We ended up in the back of the basement, which I thought was just annexed classrooms and whatnot. I had a vague recollection of going into one of those classrooms when I was younger. Images of creating art pieces and sketches while I learnt about history from a chil
d's perspective.
He opened one up and it was like a mini library. Where the outer maze was just filled with junk, inside this annex was a treasure trove of books.
"Whoa. These are more books than I've seen in a long time."
I knew there were things such as libraries. There were even digital ones. But those all went away and all I had were my parents' memories of the things. Of course the few books that my dad had couldn't really count as a library either, but he hoarded them whenever he found them.
Even if it was a book he didn't care for, he still kept it for the paper. He'd pulp it and create new books. "We gonna write our own, Soli," he'd tell me.
We never got the chance.
Kirby thumbed through one of the bookshelves, and it was a reference book. “Waste not, want not! This is what you need, I think!”
He brought the book to where I sat at one of the many donated tables, and opened it to the page he’d wanted me to see. There in front of my eyes was the chart for International Morse Code. Each dot-dash combination was given a letter or number. My heart soared to see this.
“Oh Kirby, this is perfect!”
“Right on,” he answered back. “I’ll letcha decode your letter message there. Gotta help clean some things up.”
I waited until he was gone completely to start transcribing. Whatever guilt I felt for not helping the town clean up after the attack was mollified by the fact that the sooner I saved my dad, the sooner they’d all be protected. Plus, he was a gifted healer—recovering Dad would be helping the town a hundredfold.
I finished my transcriptions, and was left with gibberish. None of the letters formed words, and then there was just a series of numbers written across the bottom. What the hell?
I scanned the sheet again and cross-referenced the chart more carefully, and I still came up with the same result. I buried my face in my hands. That was how Kirby found me when he checked on me again.
“Whoa, sorry, is this a bad time?”
I looked up and gave him a weak smile. “No, I was just frustrated is all.” I emphasized that by closing the reference book he’d given me. “Thank you for finding this for me. It sort of helped.”
Kirby took it and placed it on the shelf. “Sort of? Oh no! How didn’t it help?”
I bit my lip, weighing out if I should trust Kirby with what my dad had given me. I decided to show Kirby, for one, because the message was meaningless, and for two, he didn’t have to know that my dad gave it to me. As far as he knew, it could just be a silly game.
“Here. The message I’d wanted to translate turned out to be nothing.” I finished with a lame shrug.
A bright smile broke across his face, the freckles on his cheeks blooming. “Well, what did you expect? A straight message? That would be too easy!”
I launched my eyebrow up at him. “What do you mean? Too easy?”
“Well, you didn’t think that someone who had gone through the trouble of coding a message in something like Morse code would make it easy? They encrypted it, like a cipher. That’s how I’d do this thing, at any rate.” He wiggled his fingers at the limp paper in my hand.
I blinked at him. “So you’re saying…?”
Kirby tsked and rolled his eyes playfully. “I’m saying there’s some kind of encryption there, Sols! Haven’t you read your histories? Countries during war time always did stuff like this. Secret message. Codes. Code breakers. A stealthy spy that defies all odds to help his or her country win. It’s epic!”
I didn’t know Kirby well, but his infectious laughter actually rubbed off on me. “Well, you just made my day, but also made it worse at the same time. Because now, how am I supposed to decrypt this message?”
“Have no fear, secret agent, I think we got something special in the back just for you.”
I giggled at him playing at being a store clerk, grateful that he didn’t pry about the game or why it was so important to me. “After you.”
Kirby called to me from the depths of the church basement. "Hey, Sols, I think we got something here! Help me move this."
“This” was a bit of a bookshelf. Behind it were all kinds of typewriters and other office type things organized in a room. This place was more spacious than I would have assumed.
"Whoa. What is all this?" I said in awe.
My fingers trailed over the beautiful letters, the metal of the keyboards. I pushed the lever of one and heard the ding and report. I only vaguely remembered my typing classes in school and they were all on computers.
Man. Computers.
"Why did you all keep these things?"
Kirby shrugged. "It wasn't like it was on purpose. It was the church's, collected for their mission or something. We just organized it."
I turned to him. "You just organized it?"
He shrugged again. "What else you gonna do during the apocalypse?"
He had a point.
"So, what did you want me to see, Kirby?"
Instead of answering me, he got up on a stool that he placed in the area that we had cleared and then reached up to the boxes on top of the shelf. I didn't even see those, I was so enamored of the typewriters.
I could only imagine the words that my dad could make with those.
A pang ached in my chest. My dad wasn't going to be making any words the way he was right now. But he would. He had to.
Whatever Kirby got down, it was relatively heavy because he had to steady himself. I helped to grab it and it was way grimy from the dust.
He put it on the table and took the cover off. Inside was a peculiar machine that looked almost like a typewriter but wasn't.
"What is this?"
"This? Was an interesting donation to the church. It's an Enigma."
My forehead scrunched. "Yeah, I guess it's a puzzle?" I didn't know where he was going with this.
He rolled his eyes. "No, that's what it is. An Enigma." He pointed to the machine and I actually focused on the fact that there were words and things, picking up on fine detail.
And there in the corner. Enigma.
"Ah." Then I waited a beat. "So, what's it do?"
"Here, help me lift it out of the box." He did so and I slid the bottom out of the way. "This here was how they used to like make codes and stuff back in the day. I mean like before the Before. Like, during the war stuff that we used to learn about in school."
I did my best work for my parents because my mother wanted me to follow in her footsteps in herbology and witchcraft, and my dad, well, he of course wanted me to know the word.
Me? I just wanted to spend time with my friends and I knew the way to do that was to do well in school. Unfortunately, histories were my worst subjects.
"Okay, refresh my memory? I didn't retain any information when I was in school because we were told that the technology would always be there as reference."
"Oooh, your dad was a preacher; it must have broken his heart to hear that."
"Is a preacher. My dad's not dead." I said it in a flat tone.
Kirby was instantly sorry, cheeks flushing red. He swallowed. "So, anyway, remember how they needed to find a way to create secret codes so the enemy countries couldn't overhear anything, so they made these. They were both code makers and code breakers. Each machine would function slightly differently, but it’s basically a simple substitution cipher. Each letter would represent another letter. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.” He said, pointing to the Enigma. “Your dad would know about these, though. He asked about them a while back."
A crop of goosebumps rose on my skin, but I kept my cool and just nodded. I wanted to say Yes, that was what it was.
"But if there is a code machine, wouldn't there be a code...like I don't know what I'm trying to say." I snapped my fingers. "Like, if I wanted a coded message, there needs to be a person receiving the message, and the ability to decode the message, yes? So there are too many pieces missing, I think. Because even though there is this machine, which I think is awesome, by the way, we need a.
..what are they called? Like the thing that tells you what the coded message is? Does that make sense?"
Light dawned in Kirby's eyes. "Ah, you mean a key!"
"Yes, that's what I was thinking. We need a key!"
"But hey, at least you have two of the three pieces, right? You have the message and the thing to possibly unlock it? Maybe?"
I still felt like I was missing more than that, but I nodded anyway. "Yeah, I guess. There's this at least." I still felt like we were starting from zero, though. Considering all the possible ciphers that could create this Morse coded-message into letters, it was near impossible.
Of course it would be something like this. Word puzzles wrapped in more word puzzles. My dad was a word mage in truth. He just wore a preacher suit as icing on the cake!
I chose not to be discouraged, though. I bit my lip, trying my luck on something.
"Do you think it would be okay to borrow this machine? Maybe I could figure out the key at home, and don’t want to keep going back and forth?"
He shrugged. “I don't see why not. No one was using it, clearly. It was all caked over in dust.”
I blinked. The box was all caked over in dust, and yet the machine was well-oiled and maintained still. Which could mean something, but I kept that to myself. I also looked to the typewriters. They all were in various states of wear, of course, but the one that interested me was the one that I'd initially been drawn to. The one with the smooth gliding arm that went ding.
I looked again. It was loaded with fresh ink and dirt-free. Well-maintained like it was ready to be used at any moment, whereas the others were weren’t. This one sang to me.
"And this is the typewriter? Maybe I can type up what the code said and then go from there."
Kirby shrugged. "You need help bringing them over? They're kind of heavy."
I shook my head. No one knew where we lived. Dad enchanted the paths we walked so that they was hidden from sight. I'd put the Engima in my pack, carry the typewriter with its cover on, and walk between the blessed stones that marked the path up the mountain.
