Troop of Shadows

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  At least she had Sam.

  “He’s on a better planet now, right, Sam?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  She could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Time heals all gunshot wounds?”

  “Well, not all of them. I think Fergus is an example of when it didn’t.”

  Dani barked a sound...a hybrid laugh-wail-sob.

  “I’m just so sad.” Salty tears and slimy snot crept into her mouth. She pulled up the hem of her t-shirt to wipe her face. “Gross.”

  “Yeah, you’re no beauty contestant right now. But you’re gonna be fine. I promise.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because this is true love. You think this happens every day?”

  “Nice reference,” she said, with a shaky smile. “I loved The Princess Bride.”

  “What’s The Princess Bride?”

  Chapter 48

  “You know there’s going to be hell to pay, Steven,” Marilyn said from the sofa in Steven’s living room. “Not only did we act in direct violation of what the town decided in the vote, but now we have more mouths to feed.”

  She sipped her coffee, which must have been nirvana in a cup judging by the way she was savoring it. Despite her words, she seemed pleased at what they had accomplished that day. It made him feel good to see her sitting there, enjoying the French roast he hadn’t shared with anyone else. It also made him feel good to have earned her approval and admiration.

  “And you know who’s going to be the biggest problem...”

  “Natalie,” they both said in unison, laughing.

  There it was again — that transformative smile.

  They kept their voices low so they wouldn’t disturb his guests upstairs. Julia and her fellow travelers took precedence over the people who had slept there the night before. He didn’t feel too badly about that; it wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of other beds in Liberty.

  He was exhausted but happy, which was strange considering the day’s events. He’d killed people today, but when he searched his feelings, he found no remorse or guilt. He sipped his coffee and gazed at Marilyn, not as the former friend of his wife, but as an intelligent, compassionate, interesting woman.

  He knew that Laura, wherever she was, would approve.

  ###

  “I’m worried about Thoozy,” Julia said to the orange cat curled up at the foot of the bed in Steven’s guest room. “He might have had a mild stroke or some other kind of heart event. First thing tomorrow I’m going to visit him.”

  The old man had been taken to Liberty’s hospital, along with the Hays women. She supposed he was in good hands, but she still fretted about him. Something happened the night before in the motel; he’d barely been able to wake up the next morning and they’d practically carried him to the Land Rover. She realized she’d become fond of the old guy. She enjoyed his cheerful disposition and quick mind. She wished Logan felt the same way, but he was jealous of anyone who took her attention away from him, including Steven and Jeffrey.

  Well, he would have to accept that he had to share her now. She could hear Logan’s snores from her nephew’s room down the hall.

  She smiled. They’d made it. She was with what remained of her family, and they would start rebuilding society together. Even though she’d sacrificed her equipment and notes, she would still be able to conduct research, and she was excited at the prospect of having so many survivors gathered in one location. Knowing what she knew about them from the past year’s work, it would be a fascinating study.

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling safer and happier than she had in a long time.

  ###

  Logan was worried, but he was also tired. He thought he’d pressed the pillow against the Thoozy person’s face hard enough and long enough to make him dead. His chest was no longer rising and falling. Thought he was dead when he slipped out of the old man’s motel room and back into his own last night. But then, the next morning, when the old man was still alive, he began to worry. Would he tattle to Julia? So far he hadn’t. Logan thought that was a good sign. Although the Thoozy person wasn’t saying much of anything now. Maybe when he got better, he would tell Julia about the pillow. Or maybe he wouldn’t remember. Or maybe he thought Logan being in his room was just a dream.

  There was just no way of knowing. At least until the Thoozy person started speaking better. If he ever did.

  Logan frowned when he thought of the nephew person down the hall and the brother-Steven. He hated the way they all looked at each other and also the way they all looked kind of alike. Like he and his mother did. There was that other girl too that looked like them. He really hated the Dani person. Something about her and Julia having the same colors bothered him a lot.

  The Bad Thoughts began talking in his head then. He was very sleepy, but he listened for a while. When he fell asleep, he was smiling.

  ###

  “I’m so proud of you, Pablo,” Maddie whispered, lying next to him in the dark. The house they found to stay in smelled stuffy, but there’d been no bodies. After an inspection and light cleaning earlier, they’d moved in. Amelia and Jessie shared a room on the other side of the small ranch house, but there was a third bedroom for Jessie whenever she was ready to sleep alone. In the meantime, Pablo knew Amelia didn’t mind the company; she seemed quite attached to the strange little girl.

  “Aw, shucks, ma’am. Tweren’t nothin’. Just doin’ my job.”

  Their laughter was tinged with a dose of manic relief. It had been an extraordinary few days, and they’d managed to not only survive, but perhaps find their future home. Not in Oklahoma as they’d planned, but here in Liberty, Kansas. Maddie wanted to stay for now, and he would deny her nothing. Her wound was healing nicely, according to the local nurse, although he put more credence in Amelia’s assessment. There was something off-putting about the heavyset woman with the perpetual smirk. Thankfully, there had been no other psychic events since that day in the car. He’d noticed that Maddie’s beautiful smile had turned a bit mysterious, but he would discover why only when she was ready.

  He watched her fall asleep in the moonlight with the smile on her lips, then saw it fade away as dreams took over. Breathy moans escaped her, and every few seconds her body twitched...like Bruno’s when he dreamed of chasing rabbits. He lay motionless beside her until she became still and her breathing slowed, indicating a dreamless, restorative sleep.

  Soon after, he followed, a protective arm draped across her waist.

  Epilogue

  A crescent moon cast its meager light on a neglected wheat field somewhere in what would be considered the Midwest by the few remaining indigenous people. If anyone cared to calculate the exact longitude and latitude, they would discover the location was the precise center of the land mass formerly known as the United States, which resided in the continent of what had been called North America for a few fleeting centuries.

  Many hundreds of feet beneath the wheat field, the light in the cavernous space resembled that of the moon’s larger, more vibrant cousin, the sun, but not during the peak hours of its daily journey. Rather it was akin to that quality of daylight just moments before the glowing orb sank below the horizon. The inhabitants preferred the warm, golden illumination of simulated twilight over a harsh, glaring noonday brightness. The light, and other technology in the dwelling, was powered by a process similar to what the surface dwellers would have called cold fusion, but which they referred to as something else entirely.

  The chamber where some gathered now, after months or years of residing on the exterior of the planet, appeared welcoming to them. It was home, unlike the place they had just left, which was often unpleasant, being subject to the whims of Mother Nature and the capricious behaviors of the current human population.

  Below, all was as it had been for a span that numbered many tens of thousands of annual earth cycles. The gathering was perhaps more animated than usual, due to the excitement of the r
ecent excursion by some. Soon though, it would be time for those individuals to enjoy the deep sleep while others who had just awakened would take their place on the surface. Although some might forgo sleep and return again immediately if they had the desire — to mentor, to watch, to study, and on the rare occasion, to recruit.

  “No newcomers this time?” a man with enigmatic eyes and an easy smile said to the others. He spoke in a language that was heard soon after Pangaea had broken apart into many continents.

  “Not yet. There is one who must gain some growth and knowledge before she joins us.” The woman was small, as they all were — as all their brethren had been when they lived above. Humankind had recently grown taller. “She is the reason this rascal is still with us.” She indicated a man next to her with hair like flames and bright blue eyes.

  The man kissed her on the mouth while the others looked on with affection.

  “A healer, then?” said the man with the mysterious, almond-shaped eyes.

  “Oh, yes. Quite special, that one. She just needs to marinate a bit longer.” The woman smiled. Her translation of marinate into their language was a humorous word choice in the context.

  Everyone nodded and smiled with her.

  “So you’ll be going back up?”

  The woman began unbraiding her hair and removing the infernal clothing the surface dwellers expected. In moments, she stood naked before them, as did all who dwelled there. Only the ones who were in transition — either about to go up or having just returned from there — wore the required garments of the present time.

  She seemed saddened by the question and shook her head.

  “No, this time was arduous. Perhaps even the worst. Look at all the gray in my hair! It’ll take a century in bed to catch up on sleep, I think.” She winked at the man next to her. As with marinate, the meaning of the translated word bed was similar to that of the surface dwellers in some ways, yet also profoundly different. Their beds were more analogous to something found in a hyperbaric chamber than to the furniture slept on by those above.

  “What about the girl then?”

  “She’s in good hands for now. I’ll inform the next ones to go up as to her location.”

  The others all nodded in understanding.

  “Your decision is made?” she asked, turning to the man beside her.

  “Yes, my dear. Your time above was longer than mine. There is business I must attend to, women to fondle, and an ocean to witness. I’ll be back soon enough, though. Try not to miss me,” he said, then grabbed the woman and pressed the full length of her body against his.

  She giggled with delight, then kissed him long and thoroughly.

  The others dispersed. Many discarded their clothing as the woman had, while others did the opposite and began to dress themselves in apparel acquired for the purpose of journeying above.

  By the time they were ready, the crescent moon sat much lower in the night sky. The eastern horizon was beginning to blush with shades of lilac and pink. The small group took a moment to gaze upon the laboring sunrise, then after affectionate hugs and smiles, they walked away in separate directions.

  ###

  Harold’s body shivered from the chill of the marble floor. The only warm place in the building was in front of the British Academy’s baroque fireplace. If he’d been cognisant of how cold he was, he would have thought longingly of his sleeping pallet, which was positioned on the plush carpet near the hearth so as to catch the warmth emanating from the smouldering, crackling mahogany furniture.

  But his mind was on matters far more important than creature comforts.

  He pondered the chiseled verbiage in front of him. All seven Urak tablets were spread out, linearly, on a library table located in an archive room of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, housed in the British Academy building in the St. James district of London. Also on the table lay piles of books, most open to specific pages, along with Harold’s own papers: his research from the prior year, conducted without benefit of the internet nor the BISI’s superior reference materials, and utilizing photographs rather than the tablets themselves.

  Until now.

  The anthropologist’s mouth was agape in a manner decidedly undignified for such an accomplished and respected scientist. If any of his peers could have seen him, they would know he had discovered something monumental. Dr. Harold Clarke was as stoic as he was brilliant. He’d been almost as famous for his reserve and use of understatement as he was for his intellect. Everything in the world of anthropology interested him, but nothing so much as written language...the older the better.

  Before Chicxulub killed off most of humankind, he was considered the world’s leading expert on ancient logophonetic languages. How fortuitous that he’d been one of the two men to uncover the artefacts at the dig site in As-Samawah. His American colleague had also grasped the implication of the double helix chiseled onto the fourth of the seven tablets before him. As Harold had been, his colleague was careful to keep his theories grounded in science and not conjecture. Sadly, neither his associate, nor the handful of experts who would have comprehended the significance of what he’d just achieved were present to witness the final deciphering of previously unknown cuneiform signs.

  With this final breakthrough, he now understood their message; secrets grudgingly given up, like those wrestled from the locked diary of a madman. The analogy was rather appropriate since the artefacts before him were a journal, of sorts, authored by a tribal shaman or wise man. His tired eyes scanned the tablets again, then focused on his scribbled notes:

  The One came to me (appearing) as he had before

  (wearing) the face of the People but not Of the People

  And said

  Brother your toil and hardships may end

  If you wish it to be so

  (It is) your choice as one of the (Exceptional?

  Singular?) to decide your fate

  Remain with your (common? low grade?) brethren here on the surface of the Mother

  Or follow Me below where you shall know Life

  Everlasting and the Knowledge of the (cosmos)

  For it shall come to pass as it has for (millennia) that the Mother shall cleanse (herself) of the (current? extant?) People and start anew

  (With the help? assistance?) of We from below

  A New People will (inherit) the Above Ground

  As before We shall (unclear, but perhaps something like ‘wipe the slate clean’ or ‘start over’?) and with the (magic? power?) of (symbol for the double helix here) we shall again create Some who are (improved? superior?)

  They and their children will (inherit) the Mother Serve Her and serve their Brethren

  Know this Brother the Bright Star (you see) in the night sky will return thrice then once more (Sumerian symbols for the number twenty) Mother cycles will pass and Great Pestilence will come to the People And the Mother shall be cleansed of all but the (the same word from before, exceptional or singular)

  So it shall come to pass as I have said

  Know this

  We are You and You are We

  Not Gods

  Not (divine? celestial?) beings

  We are (Keepers? Shepherds?) of the Mother and

  (Keepers?) of the People

  And we are also the People

  These were the words the One spoke to me

  As (wise man? shaman?) for our (village) I fear I may not leave my brothers though they are (common? low grade?)

  The Bright Star fills me with (fear? dread?)

  Harold shook his head at the words his own hand had written, disbelieving yet confident of his translation, despite the modern English language fillers. Astronomy was not his forte, but the British Academy contained reference materials on all core science subjects. It had been easy to count back twenty years to a significant astronomical event that would produce a ‘bright star in the sky’...the Hale-Bopp comet, of course. The comet appeared every 2,392 years, so the tablets’ author must have live
d almost twelve thousand years ago.

  More importantly, if he was correctly interpreting the Urak tablets — and he felt with every fiber of his being that he was — they told of a superior humanoid race (shepherds of the People, and we are also the People) that lived underground, and utilizing genetic engineering, had orchestrated the demise of humanity, manipulating human DNA to self-destruct at a predetermined time twelve thousand years in the future.

  As monstrously inconceivable as all that was, Howard found the paramount question to be not what? Or how?

  But why?

  ###

  “I don’t understand why we can’t just stay here,” the boy said in the petulant tone of a tired teenager, which he was.

  The dark man’s gaze swiveled toward the youth. A magnificent grin spread across his face, revealing teeth that gleamed like perfect strands of pearls against skin of midnight marble. The smile was still in place when the man swung his fist, knocking the boy to the ground. Blood jettisoned from a nose that was certainly broken.

  “Because, you belligerent, bellicose boy, there is a reckoning I must tend to. A settlement of accounts, so to speak. I suspect she’s in Kansas by now, if I understood her ‘Dorothy and Toto’ reference. And I’m sure I did. Stupid girl. Truly, she’s not nearly as intelligent as she thinks.”

  His army of recruits numbered close to a hundred now. No longer were the ranks filled mostly with youngsters who had been drawn to his charismatic leadership and were susceptible to promises of respect and power in the new civilization he would carve out for them. Hardened men and women they'd encountered along their way north had joined as well. People with a taste for violence and the subconscious need to be told what to do.

  Pliable, pliant putty, they are.

  The man’s smile remained as he gazed at the eastern horizon, where the watercolors of sunrise were edging out the cobalt and gray. He estimated how many days their journey would take them, which was precisely how long he must wait for his reckoning.