by Chris Capps
"Rosario," Sugarhill said, "You'll lose your license over this. That much I promise."
"You're a little bit of both, maybe. You're inside watching the sky go black and you're outside watching the life inside you die. But stay with that thought. How long do you linger on it? How long can you stare into those glassy eyes and watch the flies crawl into your nose? How far do you get? Seconds? A minute?"
"Seconds," Jessica said holstering her pistol again, "What are you getting at?"
"It's there, dead in front of you and then it's gone. We don't think about that. And you know I don't think we should either. But what if that thought didn't leave? You remember seeing Rind's face dead. Tell me you've tried to talk to him the same way since then. You remember it, that frail smoldering body. That's what made him go bad. Molly has him, and there's nothing he can do about it. I guarantee he's in a cell or wherever you put him right now trapped with that image. And it's driving him crazy."
"What about Molly?" Sugarhill asked, "She didn't have to start killing herself. Something turned her. Made her a monster."
"Yeah," Rosario said, "Maybe. I think about it, and I ask myself what I would do. I'm there, in the middle of nothing, and I see myself. Only I'm not in a mirror. What would I think? What has legend told us all that a duplicate is there to do? It's evil, knowledgeable of something beyond sinister. It's our darker selves. And in that chaos of the moment she kills it. One of them wins. And then it goes from there. What would that murder do to you?"
"You're speculating a lot," Jessica said, "You're a man of science. You need more evidence for what you're saying."
"Sure I do," Rosario said holding out his hands defensively, as if disarmed, "But you know I think I might not get a chance to see it all. And I need some kind of truth to keep me going. Some kind of truth. That's what it is." He grinned, picking up a glass from his desk and tilting it back into his mouth, "Doesn't even matter if it's true."
In the distance they could hear a scream split the night, followed by more gunfire.
"I'll take some of that," Sugarhill said taking one of Rosario's glasses and holding it out to him. The old man poured a hefty three fingers into the mayor's glass, and Sugarhill drank it down.
"What did she say? What did she tell you?" Jessica asked.
"She said she didn't know what was going on. The other Mollys tried to kill her and she escaped. More than that she just asked questions. She doesn't know anything. Not what year it is, not what's going on, nothing. She's a photograph from ten years ago. Before Molly went bad. She's food for them. That's what they eat. They probably wouldn't eat anything else if you offered it to them. They certainly could have brought food to be duplicated, but they chose not to. They need things this way. But make no mistake. They're exterminating us."
"Well, they're doing a damn fine job of it," Jessica said with an odd sort of humorless smirk. Rosario looked at her nodding gravely,
"Yes," he said' "Sadly I have to agree. She killed the fire department first, it seems. That's near perfect logic if her intention was to burn the town. But she hasn't touched the windmills. We still don't know what her ultimate plan is, though. We don't know what she needs to happen after we're gone. It could be anything. Anything at all."
"You don't think it's the tunnel, do you doctor?"
Rosario wondered about that, leaning back with his hands behind his head,
"I've been imagining an army of a thousand Mollys repairing what they had given up on fixing a hundred times already, finally breaking through and appearing in DC. Maybe her operation grows in that time. Maybe it's not a thousand, but a million. Can you imagine?"
"Only too well," Sugarhill said, casting his eyes down.
"It would never work, though," Jessica said, "Everyone with a working knowledge of the tunnel system was pulled back to DC, back to Earth before the tunnel shut down. We don't even know the basics of it."
"One person did," Clayton Sugarhill said as a chattering sound spilled into Rosario's living room from outside, "Does. I don't know if he's dead."
"Sugarhill," Jessica said, mustering the calm in her voice as best she could in that short silence that followed, "What the hell did you just say?"
"Someone from the original project," Sugarhill said, "He knew a little bit more than the rest of us."
Jessica didn't say anything. That was impossible. They had been living for nearly ten years without hope of ever leaving. Had Sugarhill known the whole time that there was some chance of escape? She turned to look at the well dressed man sitting next to her in a small office chair. Clayton had his hands up over his brow, pulling them down in pale white streaks and smiling a self hating smile. He dared his eyes to look back at her. Rosario said,
"I don't understand. Everyone involved in the project left."
"Not everyone," Sugarhill said, "There's one man who might be able to do it. If he was given enough time. Say a couple centuries."
Rosario couldn't help it. He started chuckling to himself. The other two were staring between them in a tense threatening silence. As Rosario poured himself another shot of whiskey, Jessica stood up and picked up one of the near empty bottles of quickly coagulating blood and looked like she was about to smash it into Sugarhill's head.
"Seriously?" she said, "This whole time."
"Only two people knew about it. Not even Newmann's wife knew the method they used. But Mark helped in the design of the facility. He needed to know the complexity of the whole thing. I don't even know as much as he does. And he doesn't know much. There was no way he was going to pull it off. His job was to write it all down and bury it. I would tell the next mayor and he'd tell the one after that. It was pure fantasy to try to get something that complex up and running in our lifetimes with what little he had to go on. But we were thinking of our grandchildren - and the ones after that."
"But centuries, you said," Rosario whispered leaning in toward the mayor, "Centuries and he might start to understand."
"Him living for centuries wasn't a very likely scenario back then," Sugarhill said through clenched teeth, balling his hands into fists, "There was no way to know this would happen."
"Well he might just live for centuries now," Rosario said boring a hole into Sugarhill's skull with his glare, "And if Molly finds out about this, you can guarantee she'll get him on the project."
"He's probably already dead," Sugarhill pleaded, "You have to understand he only understands very little. He knows enough to get the project started at its most basic level."
"But give him a hundred years researching it," Rosario said, "And he might get lucky."
"What exactly does that change?" Sugarhill asked, "And why would that even matter? It's not like Molly knows about this. And she's probably killed him off already."
"Sugarhill's right. This changes nothing. What we need to do is set up a defensive rendezvous for those in the town. We'll need a facility large enough for everyone to be able to
hunker down. Something big enough for everyone that's left that won't burn down."
"The hospital immediately comes to mind," Rosario said, "She's big enough to hold everybody. Not just the sick ones. This place was originally planned to get a lot bigger. Plus we can treat the wounded there."
"What about the tunnel facility?" Sugarhill asked, "It's closer to the edge of town. More people will be fleeing in that direction anyway. And there's something else there. There's a hollow wall in the tunnel facility where Mark Newmann's notes should be."
"Good," Andrea said, picking up Rosario's CB microphone, "We'll meet up there. First we need to contact everyone, though."
She clicked it on, moving the dial across the wide band into the general chatter. There wasn't much of anything. Whether it was because everyone was dead or because they were all away from their radios, she didn't know. Rosario said,
"You won't be able to do much with that. I've been trying to get a hold of people all night."
Rosario already knew that something was terribly off.
The radio was always alive with people looking to chat or arrange meetings for later. Earlier in the night he had considered that the machine might have chosen this moment at all times to stop working. But then as he checked the wires in its back and heard the crackling spark of static, he had realized that there was something else to it all.
Nothing was happening by accident now. Molly was in complete control of it all. The fact that he hadn't been visited, hadn't lost his window to the outside world, it was all on purpose. She had plans for him.
Rosario picked up his coat and pocketed his revolver on the way to the front door. Without a word, Jessica and Sugarhill had risen too, each aware that it was time to leave. Outside, the sound of screaming spilled in through the screened in porch. Some horror was playing out beyond the fog in the deep heart of night. It was when they reached the patrol car and Rosario saw a severed hand in his front yard that he shuddered, and finally spoke,
"Where are we going?"
"Safe house," Jessica said, "Sugarhill's safe house."
***
Molly and Felix had set up a simple camp in the woods just thirty feet from the tracks. Because of the frequent chattering and footsteps they heard, they had descended down a steep incline into a small grove surrounded on all sides by thick and gnarled brambles. They sat now next to the bag in the darkness waiting for the sun to come up.
Neither of them had dared light a campfire, as it would be seen immediately. They just sat in the leaves and the dirt next to one another. There was an uncharacteristic chill in the air. Despite the unchanging seasons, midnight in November was bound to chill the bones of two travelers caught in the middle of the forest anywhere. Molly had the simple wool blanket they had packed wrapped around her shoulders. Her gaze was fixed, but she was listening to the surrounding area, waiting for the snapping twig or the whisper that would seal their fates.
"They look like me," Molly said as she broke off a small piece of bread from the loaf they were sharing, "But they're not."
"You don't seem like them at all," Felix said, trying to reassure her, and breaking off a chunk of bread for himself, "But you need to think like them for a moment. You need to try to figure out what could have caused all of this. What can we do to make them stop?"
"I'm no one special," Molly whispered, pleading at him with her eyes, "You need to understand that. I'm just an overwhelmingly simple girl with no ambitions or malevolence. When I find a spider in my house, I put it outside rather than kill it. My best friend is my brother. And he's as harmless as a fly. My god. He's probably old now, isn't he?"
"I imagine so. Older, at least," Felix said, "Do you know where he'd go in an emergency like this?"
Molly shook her head. Inside, a tremendous sadness was welling up in her. The thought of missing decades of growing up with Willard, watching how he would have grown without her protection was too much. When they had first arrived here, they had been alone, depending solely on each other. And as good a man Willard tried to be, he still made mistakes. He needed guidance from someone who knew better - someone who cared about him.
She remembered the carousel. Two years before they had signed up to enter Cairo, Willard had impulsively suggested they travel to the state fair. It was a dreamlike place. And in the center of it all she had seen the carousel. It had been spinning like a top, a mysterious vast monolith with flashing lights and chaotic music. The horses on it were all lined up, spinning like a tornado of pure distilled purpose.
They were right to spin the carousel, those horses.
Willard and she must have ridden it nearly a dozen times, at her pleading. Something had happened to her in that spinning world of laughter, something that just stuck into her mind and stayed with her forever afterward. It was a thought that she couldn't have translated to anyone else. A deep spiritual satisfaction with the world combined with the horror of those wooden beasts screaming with hollowed open mouths, and staring forever at the flashing spectacle. The last few times she rode it, Willard had grown bored with it. It was too simple for him. He had wanted to play some of the games that boys play, eyes all glitter at the promise of stuffed trophies.
But she had stayed at the carousel. That was her place.
"Your brother is probably okay," Felix said.
"No, I'm sure of that," Molly said with a nod, "But he's older than me now. I don't know how I'll ever be able to live with that fact. I've always been his older sister. I've always protected him. And now it looks like I need protection. Only I haven't even looked for him."
"For what it's worth, you've got people protecting you," Felix said, "I'm here for now."
"That's worth a lot," Molly said, "For now, at least. Does it sound crazy that all that I can think about now is a carousel from kinder times? Do you have anything like that? Just a memory or a thought that doesn't make any sense. Something that's somehow deep in you and it sticks with you your whole life."
"Sure I do," Felix said craning his neck and looking up at the tracks, "Seeing that monster earlier today will probably stick with me for a while."
"No, I meant something different. It might just be me. I remember things like that carousel like it's a religious experience. I've heard music that way too."
"I'm sorry," Felix said, "I don't have anything like that. I've had a pretty mundane life, past week excluded. I hang out with my brother, sometimes pull shenanigans, grow distant from my parents. It's pretty par for the course."
"You get along with your brother?" she asked.
"More or less," Felix said now slowly rising to his feet and dropping his voice to a whisper, "Someone's coming up the tracks."
Molly froze, her fingers clutching the bread resting in the lap of her skirt tensely as she looked up into the darkness of the tracks. Her eyes were trying to see into the darkness that Felix was gazing into, but she couldn't make out anything. Even the silence seemed hollow and lonely.
"You sure?" she asked, her own voice barely a whisper. He nodded. She leaned forward and grabbed his hand, pulling him down toward her gently. He crouched, still watching the tracks as she said, "Thank you for this."
Something about her was pretty, sitting leaning against the tree in that rare and honest terror, looking into the blackness all around them. She glanced back at him, massive whites in her eyes turned a gentle blue in the fog screened moonlight. His heart thumped once when she looked back, a resigned smile on her lips. She was just as scared as him. She had just as much reason to want to live. And he squeezed her hand,
"I think it's that pilot Chance Cooper."
"What makes you think that?" she asked. He just shook his head, looking back and letting go of her hand. He left the rifle behind, but carefully crept up the tracks to where he could now hear footsteps slowly moving toward them. They weren't nimble and carefree like the Mollys. They were slow, careful. And there was talking too. Two male voices. One of them Chance Cooper, the other - - was it his brother?
"Mike!" Felix called out, cupping his hands around his mouth, "Move this way fast!"
The footsteps stopped, froze for a second, and then started running down the tracks. On his back Mike was carrying a canvas sack. More supplies to keep them going. When he saw Felix he dropped it and hugged him.
"You okay?" Mike asked, "Where's the girl?"
"I'm fine. And she's down in the woods. Hey Chance."
"You Felix?" Chance asked, reaching across and shaking his hand, "I guess you know who I am."
"Why aren't you at the lumber mill?" Mike asked.
"We can't go there," Felix said, "It was overrun. There are a lot more of them than we thought at first."
"I noticed," Mike said, "Chance and I have been walking along these tracks for a while now. We've been passed many times, but I don't think they saw us."
"Did you say the mill's overrun?" Chance said, "Well where the hell are we gonna go?"
Mike and Felix shared a look, one that neither of them could have explained. It was an understanding in a single moment that
everything they had known about the town was going to be left behind. In that stoic second, they made their decision.
"We're leaving all of this," Felix said, "There's a whole world out there we can explore. If there's one island there might be more. We'll stick to the land and avoid them. But we can't be here when those things take over."
"We can't be the only ones to have made that decision," Mike said, "We might run into some others out there in the woods."
The three of them stood, waiting for a second to pass before moving back to get Molly. She was sitting with her back against the tree, still tense as before. She was terrified. Felix reached down and picked her up by the hand gently,
"We're heading off into the woods. We need to get away from here."
"Let's head in this direction, though," Chance Cooper said, eyeing the girl uneasily, "This side of the tracks."
"Fair enough," Felix said.
"Why this side?" Mike asked, "What's over there?"
The island. Mike saw the truth in Chance's terrified face. He had been in captivity for days, had been interrogated by the Sherriff for hours on end as they tried to determine where the source of all these strangers were coming from. There was a nervous tic in Chance's hand, his thumb twisting along with his shaking head as he pointed away from the tracks into the woods. No. He was trying to lead them away. He was terrified of it. He didn't want anyone to see that place.
"You do remember where the island is," Felix said.
"No," Chance said, "I'm not going back there. Nothing's worth that. We're going away from this place. You said so yourself."
Mike reached down to where Molly had been sitting. The rifle was still there, resting against the old tree trunk. Without pointing it at Chance, he simply raised it in his hand and said,
"Take us."
"Don't make me go," Chance said on the verge of tears, "I can't see myself die again."
It was a strange sort of unspoken insight, but deep down everyone knew that Chance wasn't actually afraid to see himself die. Sure, that was one of the many unpleasant things at the island. And of course if he did see himself it would haunt him for a long time afterward. But there was something in those words. Don't make me go. That part was true. More true than the rest.
