“Who were they?” Huck asked. “And where are my children?”
“We can have Blair and Gordy called down from the party. And…the first question, well, we’re looking into it. ” Claude said. He pointed then to Bishop and Eunice. “Huck…”
“I didn’t do that. The boy arrived injured,” Huck hissed and Bishop scooted away from the intensity of the ire. The boy. Hadn’t Huck known him? Shook his hand every day and sometimes came to their apartment to discuss their futures. He was warm. He was grandfather. He was home. “Who are you?” he asked.
Bishop swallowed.
“Bishop Smalls,” he answered.
Huck looked to Claude, waiting, and Claude pulled out his small control device and did a quick search. Claude read from the screen, “Blake Smalls. Son Bishop. Blake is a botanist and works with our restoration planning teams.”
“Just the two of them?”
The question struck Bishop as important and he turned to see Huck’s face scrunch with scrutiny.
“Mom, Carol, and little brother Benjamin were not invited,” Claude read. He swiped a few more times on his screen.
Huck leaned close, his breath hot and rancid.
“Just the two of them,” Huck said and he turned his attention to Eunice.
Bishop didn’t hear what Huck said next. His brain was stuck on Benjamin. His mom. He’d never had a mom. He’d never had a brother. It was just him and his dad on that helicopter. They’d died, of course, of the virus. So many people had, those stories were nothing new. But then the words rolled and rolled and he heard Claude’s voice say ‘were not invited.’ In an instant, he could see that memory…the one with the expanse of green, the banana chips, and now a face? A woman with a baby. Laughing. A picnic lunch. His father was there. Not invited.
His heart lurched and he thought he might throw-up. He turned to Eunice as her eyes widened and Bishop cleared the loudness of his thoughts long enough to hear Claude finish the roll call of her family accomplishments. They’d all been invited, it seemed. Bishop thought of that Anthony Fisk story—thirteen years old and writing doctoral-level papers on physics, getting on a bus and leaving town knowing that his parents were going to die.
Cheers roared from the tower as the anniversary party rushed onward, undeterred by the secrets Bishop learned. They had survived, they were chosen, they were safe. The affirmations crumbled and Bishop shook his head, his eyes blurry: some people weren’t invited, some people had to choose, they left others to die, they weren’t safe.
Bishop didn’t notice that Claude left the room. He didn’t notice the guards stalk forward. His heart pounded in his ears with such ferocity that he couldn’t hear anything Huck was saying anymore. Instead of trying to listen, Bishop began to cry, and Eunice grabbed his hand.
“You’re beautiful children,” Huck said and stood up. He nodded once. “You will serve as a constant reminder, so don’t ever doubt your purpose here. You were curious. Lost to a wave into the cold ocean on this anniversary night.” His eyes slid to their bag of contraband. “It’s a shame when I can’t keep people like you because of such carelessness…that’s why my most important mission is to keep my towers safe.”
Huck bowed. He waved his hand over the kids and motioned to the guards before taking his leave.
“Get me to the surviving intruder,” he said, rolling up his sleeves.
Bishop squeezed Eunice’s hand and cursed the moment he ever found that stupid swinging panel. At least, he thought in those last few seconds, he’d had a few years of uninterrupted time on the ocean with his best friend.
It was more than most people could say.
The shots rang out and the teens were gone before Huck even closed the door.
Chapter One
The Colony,
formerly Jackson Lake, Wyoming
The Grand Tetons
Twenty-five years after The Release.
LARKSPUR
Every day, Lark disappeared to the Lodge and sat in one of the old leather chairs by the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Grand Teton Mountains to read a book. In the past few years of adopting this hobby, she’d read through the first two bookshelves next to the fireplace and all the books from the old gift shop.
The gift shop was a museum, hardly ever touched in all those passing years, with Patterson and Grafton paperbacks covered in a thick layer of dust alongside yellowed magazines boasting the white smiles and sardonic gossip of the formerly famous.
Once upon a time, the Lodge welcomed wealthy guests and plied them with cocktail hours overlooking the Willow flats, spa treatments with infused body polishes, and grand promises of rest and relaxation. A vacation, as her parents described, was where people paid money to rest and forget their conflict-addled lives in places that catered to extravagance and an allure for the sublime.
Back when people had to pay money and time to immerse themselves in natural beauty. Back when rest was a luxury.
All those people died, though, and lucky for Lark and her family, they didn’t die on vacation.
The Lodge had been long closed for the season when a deadly virus killed the entire world and evil monsters scoured the countryside to capture and murder survivors.
The books and the magazines were all that was left of the Old World stories. They provided a window into a deeply foreign experience, one populated with adventurous heroes and stunning technology. Her mother was a teenager at the time and she’d long given up the habit of remarking on all the things she missed before they went into hiding.
Her parents, founders of the Jackson Colony, were lucky to have built a home among the old hotel.
They converted the 40 guest bedrooms into a maze of housing and built a small community among the cottages from stragglers across the former nations.
When spring thawed the mountain ranges and the people of the Colony emerged from their winter hibernation, Lark watched the snow melt off the mountain in steady phases. She studied the peaks like a calendar—an onward march to summer, where her home sung with striking beauty.
She’d walk under the camouflage canopies, set up from tree to tree to mask the movement of people from the sky, and listen for the distant sounds of trouble while swimming in the Lake. The Colony learned early to stay alert at all times.
Lark was too young to remember the last attacks, but the ramifications clouded her childhood with permeating anxiety. The last time they suffered a raid, people died. The details were often hidden from Lark and the rest of the teens. You don’t need to know, was a common refrain. Lark was in the dark about what happened in the years after the virus but before the Colony.
As a child, she imagined the monsters literally as hairy beasts with claws and sharp tails, drooling and howling.
If anyone in the area sounded the alarm, they evacuated to a designated shelter, and it was those beasts Lark imagined on her tail. The evacuations were routine and rote, a memorized pattern of survival Lark learned to navigate well before she even learned to ride a bike or count to ten or read: when you hear the long gong ring three times, get to your shelter.
With that ever-present worry hovering over her existence, Lark moved through life with one ear listening for the alarm, her mind always plotting and charting escape.
Escape was close if she stayed in the lobby. The hotel was filled with false walls and doors to nowhere, secret staircases, and hidden enclaves. Her childhood was filled with the memories of hammering and yelling, the Colony members working together to create not just a home but a barricade, a frustrating funhouse, an impossible maze.
For her parents, the goal was simple: nothing in and nothing out.
Lark, however, knew the monsters of her imagination weren’t real, and despite all their practicing, preparing, and waiting—the raids never happened.
Not ever again.
It was spring and chilly in the mountains as Lark moved through the lobby, the sun deceivingly warm through the glass. There was still snow on the ground and perhap
s more snow in the forecast. Despite the cold, summer would arrive soon enough and she couldn’t wait for the small bites of freedom those months provided. It was as if the heat, in lieu of the drizzly cold, put a spark of hope back into her parents—who always seemed happier in the summer, when the blue skies arrived and stayed blue and the mountain snow disappeared to reveal gray peaks.
Lark grabbed a new hardback off her shelf of choices and settled down in her chair, eyes glossing over the pages, ears tuned to the rhythm of the Lodge. She hadn’t started her reading habit because she loved a good mystery yarn, although she did enjoy a fun thriller.
No, the books were mostly a cover.
Lark was a spy.
Self-taught and self-proclaimed, she developed a taste for the spying life early and couldn’t let it go. As a small community with a set space, the people who lived in the Colony needed extra diligence to keep their secrets, and the Council never made excuses for the reasons they needed to hold information private. The more withdrawn everyone became, the more Lark saw a need for a vigilante truth teller.
She’d started small: outing crushes, recovering stolen property, mending miscommunications. Inside the Colony’s playpen, she’d roamed with freedom and intention because mysteries were her plaything, and people always found secrets if they were looking.
She was an expert on all things subterfuge and espionage—keen to the changes in the atmosphere, aware. Lark knew more than anyone ever wanted her to off intuition alone and more often than not, her suspicions were corroborated by a bit of digging. She was the finder of lost things, the fixer or ender of relationships, the singular location for news. If Lark didn’t know about it, then it hadn’t happened. If she couldn’t prove it, then it was likely false. The opposite was also true—she had a certain power that she’d earned by being right more often than people cared to admit.
Instead of lying less, people found more creative ways to tell their stories or buried everything deeper than Lark could find.
Spying was a glimpse into humanity, she determined, and since the human race was almost wiped out, it made sense to study people as an art form.
Lark turned the pages of her prop and listened as footsteps drew closer into the Lodge, whispering in hushed and intense tones. To the left of the Great Room was an old Dining Hall equipped to handle a gathering of two hundred or more people, and Lark heard her mother’s voice echo across the empty foyer, barking orders as others rushed around her.
“We have five minutes before the Caretaker rings the alarm. I want us to pull out all the anniversary treats. Everything we have leftover.”
“The cheeses, Lucy?” someone asked.
Lark’s eyes glazed over and the book was a blur before her while she took in as much of the conversation as possible, never moving a muscle.
“All of it. The honey and the fruit. The breads.”
“But Darla was saving that for the…”
“Darla understands diplomacy outweighs any feast she’s promised…”
Lark’s ears perked up at the sound of a third voice, her Godmother Darla.
“Theo’s with him,” Darla called. Her voice was excited and tentative.
“No,” Lucy breathed. Even the helpers went silent. “That’s three weeks early. That’s not right.”
“If he left the post, it must be important.”
“You don’t think…” Lucy said and Lark shifted to hear better, but her mother didn’t finish her sentence. “Darla—”
“Come on, come on,” Darla clapped her hands, taking charge. “Pull out the feast and wait. Grant will escort them here and we can hear his request over some wine and…”
“Let’s just pause,” Lucy said, her voice seeped in disbelief and knowing. “We’re not prepared for this…”
If Darla answered the worry, Lark couldn’t hear. The entire group disappeared into the dining hall, out of sight, and out of earshot. Lark sat up straighter and slipped the book to the floor. She tucked up her legs and curled into a ball to minimize the space around her—and she waited.
Theo was home from his watch post. And he’d brought an unwelcome guest. So, kill the fatted calf and welcome them with jubilee.
That sounded right.
A visitor was a special type of rare and Lark knew she wouldn’t be able to stay on the sidelines for that level of excitement.
She listened until she heard her mother and Darla leave the Lodge arguing about protocols before she waltzed with brisk leaps into the dining hall to scope out the landscape. In the center of the room, their long dining table was filled with the leftover treats of their anniversary memorial; cheeses, breads, fruits. Meat was scarce but some big game survived the virus, and it was a true treat. Lark stared at the small steak bites with her mouth-watering and she stuck out her bottom lip in silent protest.
It wasn’t worth the risk to sneak a taste.
Noise in the Lodge lobby alerted Lark that everyone was coming back into the dining hall. She scanned the tables and located an area behind a low wall near the back, which was obscured from view. With a quick look behind her, Lark stuck out her hand and risked a steak bite before she saw the flutter of activity at the door. She rolled into her hiding spot just in time to hear her father’s voice announce the feast and usher the crowd to the table.
Sitting hunched against the wall, she rested and waited, teasing out the placement of people according to their voices.
After a few minutes, the table hushed.
Lark held her breath.
A strange voice, unrecognizable started first. “I think it’s clear we’re not here on social call…”
Before the man could say anything more, Darla interrupted him. “And while we appreciate your desire to be efficient, you know we open all meetings with a feast. There’s no business without food and drink first…”
“Darla, if I may,” the man tried again. “If it’s not a social call, let’s skip the social niceties.” Lark smiled. She could almost taste Darla’s growing distaste from across the room before she opened her mouth to reply.
“I won’t conduct business with you if you won’t follow our policies,” Darla said. She stood. Lark could hear the table rattle and Theo say, “Mom—” and the rustle of clothes moving toward the exit.
“By all means, walk away,” the man challenged. “It only means you know why I’m here and you’re willing to leave additional information on the table. Your lack of curiosity about this meeting answers many of my questions…so, that was efficient. Darla, I’m not going to drink wine while the world burns…”
It was silent as everyone waited for Darla’s response.
“This is our sanctuary, Elijah,” she replied tightly.
“Your hell,” he said. “And you and I both know this isn’t what you’d imagined…”
Lark heard the tease of the man’s voice, the intimacy of his knowledge.
“Your hell,” Darla changed. “We all made our choices.”
“Well, my hell, along with the freak show prophets, are about to be disrupted,” he answered. “If you want to eat and drink, go ahead. But we eat and drink and talk. I don’t have time to waste here.”
“Is our sanctuary about to be disrupted by you? Or are you coming to warn us about a different threat?”
The room took a collective breath. Lark adjusted her position against the wall and stretched her neck. She hated when people talked in generalities that led her nowhere. Who was this man? Where was he from? She needed more—she didn’t have much and without context, listening was maddening.
“According to our sources, we think you’ve already had a little disruption recently,” the visitor said. He laughed, throaty, a response to the silence. In the middle of the quiet, someone poured a glass of wine. “This is a fine Malbec. How long has it been since I’ve tasted something so smooth?” Elijah asked.
“See what I meant about choices,” Darla said. “I guess I’m confused. Are you the disruption, Elijah? I mean, we already know you
’re not paying an unplanned visit with a recon group hidden in our mountains for the wine,” Darla said.
Lark’s heart skipped.
A recon group in the mountains—what did that mean? The room went still and she knew she couldn’t move or breathe or someone might notice the small out-of-place noise and come investigate—her muscles tightened and she held firm. For one second she wondered if these were the monsters she’d been warned about her whole life.
“Come on, come on,” Elijah said. He set his drink down on the table with a rattle. “Let me tell you a story…”
“Make it quick,” Darla said and she moved back to the table, pulling out her chair with a loud flourish. When she settled, the man continued.
“We lost a convoy a few months back,” Elijah said. “Fifty people, mostly families, after finishing an ambassador call. It was a routine patrol to check on them and organize supplies. By the time my people arrived, the settlement was gone, and my convoy was attacked…”
He paused to let the news settle over the table. Chatter erupted, people breathed out pent-up anticipation. Lark wished for them to all quiet down so she could hear, too. She leaned closer to the fray. She let those words settle: a convoy, ambassador call, disappeared.
“What do you mean?” Darla asked. Everything went still again. “They were dead?”
“The place was empty. They were gone,” Elijah replied. “It was a ghost town….again, I suppose. By our calculations, the camp had grown to 200 and it was like they walked away and left everything behind. There’s an SOS broadcasting from a tent, just a solar radio rigged and left behind, but no signs of a struggle. Spooked my men, right? Because we haven’t seen 200 people vanish before…and these are men that survived The Release, grew up without, scavenging, fighting—and they wanted to get the hell out of there. So, they started to head home. Ten miles down the road, an ambush, and they were overpowered and slaughtered. All but two. By luck, two survived and rushed home…”
The Bedrock Page 2