Jubilee Year: A Science Fiction Thriller (Erelong Book 1)

by Gerard O'Neill

“I’ve seen photos of the Gwabegar camp,” Darren said, breaking the silence. “It’s got fences topped by razor wire, guard towers, and dogs patrolling the place. They have proper hardboard shelters too. At least that’s better than tents?”

  “I don’t get why they would want to put everyone in town in a place like that,” Storm said.

  “It’s a cleanup,” Darren said. “Think about it. If the endgame is total control, it’s far easier to deal with a small population than a large one.”

  Darren fell quiet for a few minutes.

  “I think they want to improve the bloodstock. Like farmers do with their cattle and sheep herds. They want to refine the gene pool by removing the weakest characteristics.”

  “You mean they want to kill us?” Storm asked.

  He didn’t need the answer. It didn’t matter whether they had gas chambers in the camps or not, the end result would be the same. But Storm was genuinely interested in what Darren thought was happening.

  “Not all of us,” Darren said. “My guess—they’re weeding out undesirable qualities.”

  “That’s—fascist!”

  “Yeah. Fascist is right.”

  “There’s a turnoff coming up,” Storm told him, pointing to the gravel road that was coming into view.

  Edge Of The Wood

  The astronomer watched the ambulance came to a stop fifty feet from the front of the old and battered RV. His spirits lifted when he saw Storm behind the steering wheel. His attempts to bring Franchette back from the depths of her despair had left him exhausted. It had all been to little avail.

  She had continued to slip further into herself with each hour she stayed inside the RV. She had barely moved from her seat beside the back window, staring through the glass and seeing nothing.

  “This will be handy,” Michael yelled, slapping the side of the ambulance.

  It was nothing more than a display of bravado, a show of enthusiasm.

  “Darren found it—I picked up almost everything on Franchette’s list,” Storm said as he jumped from the cab, excited to see the others had made it.

  Michael climbed inside the ambulance and peered into the back. “I’d probably have gone for something a little larger, but it should do the job.”

  He didn’t ask about Storm’s dad. It could wait. He was just happy to see the boy back.

  Storm tried not to stare at Michael. The astronomer was looking gaunt. And yet so little time had passed since they had last seen each other.

  “There were masses of birds above the forest,” Storm told him.

  “Yes, they made a hell of a racket when they took flight,” Michael replied.

  “Do you think there’s a shower of rain heading our way?” Darren asked staring up at the rippling cloud mass.

  Michael frowned. “No, something else.”

  He had been watching the undulations the past two days with a sense of foreboding.

  “A good part of all that water up there is evaporated ocean, and the usual dust, gas, and ash from all the volcanoes going off around the globe. But the way the clouds are churning around up there—I think that’s a result of something going on with the magnetosphere. It’s reacting to something big and powerful heading our way. We need to be on the road early in the morning.”

  “It’s a little like we are in the eye of a hurricane,” Darren said as watched the swirling mass.

  “It would have to be a frigging big one!” Storm exclaimed.

  Michael was eager to change the subject. He pointed to the RV.

  “You two must be hungry. We ate sandwiches earlier. If you don’t mind stale bread, there are some leftovers inside.”

  Matthew was under the front of the RV when they walked up to the steps. He gazed up at Storm with a grin, wiping a smudge of axel grease across his forehead as he brushed a lock of hair from his eyes. He tossed the spanner in his hand aside and wriggled out from behind the tire.

  “Hey, man. So you do read maps, after all,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s good to see you back.”

  “Is your uncle inside the RV?” Storm asked.

  Matthew’s face fell. “He wanted to stay behind.”

  “Why did he want to do that?” Storm asked in astonishment.

  “He wants to stay put on the land where he was raised,” Matthew said quietly.

  “What about Aunty?”

  “She’s here,” he said. “Uncle told her to stay with us because she has a lot of knowledge about the caves and the surrounding area. We would get lost without her. Lucky for us she couldn’t argue with him over that.”

  Summer came running from the RV and launched herself at Storm with a screech.

  “Hey, bro!”

  Storm gave his sister a hug and waved over her shoulder to Stella and Penny standing together in the doorway of the camper van. He saw Franchette standing behind the two women, a hand to her mouth as though she was trying to remember something she lost.

  “Champ! Storm found you!” Summer shouted when the dog jumped out the open window of the ambulance and licked her face.

  “Champ found me,” Storm called back to her as he walked to his mother.

  “Where’s Pete?” She asked, searching his face for the answer before he could reply.

  Storm put his arms around her. “I couldn’t find him, Mom,” he said, giving her a squeeze. “Darren told me a train came through Coona with the Army on it. They did a sweep of the town during the night and cleared it of everyone they found. It looks like they took everyone to Gwabegar.”

  “The military camp?” She asked, her eyes tearing up.

  “He’ll be fine, Mom,” Summer said, putting her arm around her mother. “He will be, won’t he, Storm?”

  “Of course. Dad’s tough as nails.”

  Storm put his arm around his mother’s shoulders and hugged her once more. “Don’t worry. We’ll all be back together.”

  “No, he won’t be coming back,” Stella said wiping her tears away. “He’s gone. We will have to get used to that!”

  “Mom?” Summer stared up at her. She turned to Storm for reassurance, but he could not meet her gaze.

  Stella was the strongest person Storm knew, and part of her strength came from an unfailing ability to acknowledge the facts before most others so much as saw them. She acted with absolute certainty, and sometimes she was a little too quick off the mark. He knew she put up a hard front to protect herself from life’s mortal blows, and he tried to comfort her, but it did little good. She had made up her mind, and the thought he would never see Pete again left him shaking inside.

  After they had eaten the remaining sandwiches he walked back to the ambulance with Darren. Later, as he listened to the snores from the opposite stretcher, he thought about his dad.

  As if he sensed Storm’s thoughts, Champ jumped onto the stretcher and curled into a ball in the valley between the pair of legs.

  The warmth and the weight of the dog comforted Storm and soon he was unconscious to the world and what moved around it.

  Oblivious to the proximity of the orbiting giants in the mini-solar system, still hidden from the eyes of Earth’s greater population by the planet’s quickly diminishing plasma bubble.

  Facing Nemesis

  “I want to ride in the ambulance with you,” Penny told him. “I’ve had about as much as I can take of being cooped up in the RV with my mother—the way she’s been—she doesn’t talk to me.”

  “How is Franchette?” Storm asked.

  “Not so good,” Penny told him. She wasn’t going to fall to pieces in front of him. That wouldn’t help at all, she thought.

  “She might be having some kind of nervous breakdown,” he suggested.

  “Oh, God,” Penny exclaimed. “I hope not.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and forced a smile to her face.

  “You could at least act a little disappointed we won’t be traveling together, you know?”

  “I am!” He protested. “You know we need our doctor to
have her act together, and you’re the one who can best help Franchette to get back to her old self again. Don’t you think?”

  Penny smiled. “You’re right. Sometimes I think you’ve been in the world longer than I have.”

  Storm smiled. “There’s only a few years difference between us. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Are you sure about that? Because sometimes you make a big deal of how much older I am.”

  He shook his head. “When I do that, I’m just being an idiot.”

  She pressed her lips against his.

  He pulled her close, but he felt her body stiffen.

  “Hey, do you hear that,” she asked, turning her head.

  They found Stella and Matthew standing side-by-side behind the RV, staring across a deep-sloped ditch. The wide shallow trench lay between them and the first row of trees in the wood, an old firebreak grown over with weeds.

  At first, Storm and Penny thought they were looking at grass and weeds moving under a shifting breeze. But it wasn’t the currents. The ground was alive with more snakes than either of them would ever want to imagine in one place.

  “Look at that one over there! It must be five feet long!” Stella exclaimed.

  “Good thing we are on the bank and they are not,” Matthew said.

  Stella gave a whistle. “Never seen snakes do anything like this. Are they migrating?”

  “Nah,” Matthew replied with a frown. “It looks more like they know something’s up, just like those birds did yesterday.”

  “Woo-woo-woo!” Storm hollered. He leaped aside as a baby serpent wriggled over the toe of his sneaker.

  “One is heading up the steps of the camper van,” Summer cried out.

  Storm threw a stone at the serpent as it ventured up toward the open door. The rock hit the metal step with a clang and the animal fell to the ground to slither unhurt behind a tire.

  Storm turned to Matthew. “Did you see the one that went over my foot?”

  “A baby red-belly,” Matthew informed him. “They’re leaving the forest for open ground. Best to not stand in their way.”

  Satisfied they had witnessed the worst of the snake exodus, they gathered inside the RV to eat.

  The group shared a hurried breakfast together: cereal floating in long life milk followed by lukewarm instant coffee. After a few attempts at conversation, they ate in silence. There was little to say. No one could know for sure what lay ahead, but each was determined to summon the strength necessary to face the days ahead.

  Franchette sat alone inside the camper van, staring through the window. She refused to answer the invitations to come and join them around the crowded table. Occasionally she glanced their way as if to check they were still there with her, but most of the time she continued to gaze through the glass, preferring to remember a time already long past.

  Storm looked up at Stella who sat beside Michael in the cab of the RV.

  “Don’t worry about us, Mom. We’ll be right behind you all the way. Best to keep an eye on your driver though. He looks like he’s about to fall asleep.”

  “You are a cheeky pup!” Michael said, leaning across Stella. “Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately?”

  Stella reached out the open window and stroked Storm’s hair.

  “Darren seems a nice man, but be careful,” she said, her smile gone. “You’ve only known him a short while. You can’t be too careful.”

  “I dunno. I think I trust him. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have taken him here with me.”

  “I mean be careful in general,” she repeated. She leaned further out the window to cup his chin in her hand. “I want you to set aside those glasses you like to wear. You know the ones with the rose colored lenses—just for the time being.”

  Storm didn’t laugh.

  “Don’t worry,” he nodded.

  She grabbed his arm. “Did you say that he asked to come with you?”

  “Yeah—” Storm said, feeling uncertain all over again.

  Stella’s instincts were usually right, even if he didn’t always agree with her point of view.

  “He showed me the ambulance, Mom. He didn’t need to. He could have driven it away himself.”

  Stella gave him her most comforting smile. “When the you-know-what hits the fan everyone finds out they need others, don’t they?”

  “Time to go!” Michael called.

  Storm slammed the door shut and walked to the ambulance. He saw that Darren was standing by the ambulance and gazing at the horizon. He looked like he was lost in his thoughts. Probably remembering someone he once knew, Storm thought.

  As Storm drew close, he saw Darren was staring at something intensely in the distance, and he turned to stare at the two vehicles that were traveling down the highway toward them.

  Darren glanced back. “They’re really moving, but I think they are going to spot us. We are stuck out in the open.”

  Storm hollered for Michael to turn off the engine of the RV. They waited. The two armored vehicles painted in full desert camouflage roared by the clearing.

  “Did you hear someone shout?” Storm asked Darren.

  “Maybe,” Darren replied, his brows knitted together. “You know they’ll be looking for stragglers. People like us.”

  “They were Bushmasters,” Storm said. “Four-wheel drive infantry mobility vehicles. They could be just moving troops.”

  Darren glanced at Storm. “Troop carriers?”

  “Yeah—” Storm began. “I think they’re coming back.”

  He had heard the turbocharged six-cylinder diesel engine rev as the driver shifted through the gears. One of the trucks was turning around.

  The Bushmaster swung into the clearing and came to a stop on the side of a rough stretch close to the highway. Before the engine had switched off a soldier had jumped from the cab, and more of them sprang from the back.

  The first man to hit the ground was tall and lean with blond hair, and even at a distance, Storm saw the man was fresh cheeked. He looked no older than Storm, but it was clear from his demeanor, he considered himself to be in charge.

  The soldier did not bother to exchange greetings as he strode toward the ambulance.

  “How many of you are there?”

  “So what rank are you supposed to be?” Darren asked, ignoring the question and pointing at the stripes on the man’s shoulder.

  The soldier touched his stripes. “Corporal,” he replied.

  He pointed to the ambulance and RV.

  “Are there people inside the vehicles?”

  Darren gazed around and noticed Storm had disappeared. He turned back to the corporal.

  “In the RV there’s a total of five women and one man,” he said carefully.

  The corporal eyed Darren a moment longer before he heard a cab door open, then he turned his attention to the RV.

  “Tell them all to step out of the vehicles!” He yelled at Michael.

  The soldiers fanned out across the broken ground, their assault rifles at the ready. Their eyes were on the figures beside the vehicles and on the dark line of trees surrounding the clearing. They could almost taste the resistance in the air.

  Michael walked up to the corporal. “Michael Boulos.”

  “Corporal Sean Cameron,” the uniformed man replied.

  The two men continued to eyeball each other.

  “Sir, are you in charge of this group?” Corporal Cameron asked in a brisk manner.

  “I suppose so,” Michael replied.

  “Can I ask you what you are doing out here?”

  “I was going to ask you the same question,” Michael said.

  Michael had decided he did not care for the overbearing manner of the corporal, so he was bloody well not going to mince his words.

  “I ask the questions,” the corporal replied briskly. “You answer!”

  Michael stared at the soldier. “Like hell, you will!” He bellowed. “As if you’d even begin to know the right questions to ask in the first place!
You are little more than a kid.”

  Cameron hesitated. “Sir—you need to do as I ask, and at the moment I am asking. You know, it is very lucky for you that we came across your camper van. There’s an army camp not far from this place. You will find shelter, water, and food there.”

  “We are on our way to somewhere safe. I would appreciate you not holding us up any longer. Tell me, though—what kind of shelter are you talking about?”

  “Hardtop houses,” the corporal said, his back stiffening.

  Michael shook his head. “They’re not going to be anywhere near substantial enough to be called shelters.”

  “From meteoroids you mean?” The corporal asked him. “The area where we have our camp has never been hit by a meteoroid.”

  Michael stared at the man in disbelief. “You really are young.”

  He looked past the corporal as the second carrier pulled to a stop beside the first.

  Sergeant Terry MacKay stepped out of the cab and hammered on the side of the Bushmaster with the edge of his fist. Eight soldiers dropped to the ground from the rear.

  As the troops grouped at the back of the truck, some glanced up at the darkening cloud mass above, and they were not comforted by what they saw.

  MacKay scanned the RV and ambulance, taking in the expressions on the faces, looking for signs of potential trouble.

  “Corporal, find seats for the oldest in the back of the Bushies. The youngest can sit on their bags on the deck as usual. Check no one’s armed. We don’t want any surprises.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” the corporal said.

  MacKay pointed at the ambulance. “This vehicle looks useful. Assign two of your men to it.”

  The sergeant turned to Michael. “Are you the leader of this group?”

  “Yes, I am Michael Boulos.”

  The sergeant didn’t bother to shake the offered hand.

  “Hey, you!” Cameron gestured to Darren who was still standing beside the ambulance. “Get over to the RV with the rest of them.”

  But Darren was frozen to the spot. He found himself suddenly stricken with the turn of events and unsure quite what he was going to do next.

  “Move it, man!” Cameron barked at him and watched Darren walk quickly to the RV.