“You going up there?”
“No,” I said quietly, pointing toward the base of the hills. “Over there.”
I was worried they would follow, or worse, go ahead of me.
He looked at me funny, and then shrugged and took a step toward me. I moved back, thinking he was going to grab my backpack, but he reached out…and hugged me.
“You take care, you hear?” he said as he squeezed me.
I stood there, my arms at my sides while he squeezed me again.
“Okay then,” he laughed, releasing me. “Be safe.”
Mute, I watched him walk back to the front of the truck and get in it. They drove off.
I hadn’t noticed it, but tears were streaming down my face.
Putting my backpack on, I looked up the road rising into the mountain. It was getting dark, and I was going to have a hard time finding my way. It was the new moon, and there would be no moonlight tonight to help light my walk. I began the walk home, my heart heavy, but glad I would be back with Lauren and Luke soon.
There was something else, something I’d been pushing into the back of my mind. It was Lauren’s thirtieth birthday today. I’d wanted desperately to bring her back something, a gift of some kind, a gift of rescue and freedom from the pain and fear, but I was coming back empty-handed. Worse than empty-handed, but at least I was coming back.
I hope everything’s okay up there.
Despite the pain, my pace picked up.
Day 36 – January 27
THE GLOW ON the horizon mocked me. It was nearly ten at night, and we were on the front porch of Chuck’s cabin, staring at Washington twinkling in the distance. Just a few days before, it was shining like a halo of salvation, but now it had become a beacon of despair.
“I can’t believe it,” said Susie quietly, staring at the horizon.
I handed her my phone.
“Look at the pictures.”
She shook her head.
“I’ve seen them. I mean I can’t believe this has really happened.”
Luke was still up, and he was playing by the fire we had burning in the pit out front. He was poking a stick into the flames and then holding its tip up into the air and admiring the new spark of fire he’d created.
“Luke,” called out Lauren, starting to get out of her chair. “Don’t—”
I gently grabbed her arm, urging her to stay seated. “He needs to learn for himself. Leave him. We might not always be here to protect him.”
She was about to disagree and push me off, but then stopped halfway up, staring at Luke. She sat back down, still carefully watching him but keeping quiet.
The night before, I’d gotten lost trying to find my way up the mountain in the dark, even with my headlamp. Everything looked the same, and in the end I’d curled up in the open, piling leaves around me as insulation, waiting for the sun to rise. It had rained again, pouring down on me. Somehow I’d dropped off to sleep, and when I’d awoken I was barely able to move, my arms and legs nearly paralyzed with cold.
When I’d stumbled into our makeshift camp in the woods at twilight, Susie had almost shot me. They were expecting a rescue convoy, helicopters and hot food, but all they got was me, half-frozen to death and delirious. I’d been dangerously hypothermic, exhausted, mumbling about the Chinese, spewing nonsense.
We’d quickly gone back to the cabin and started up the woodstove, and they’d curled me up in front of it on a couch under some blankets. Susie let me sleep until the late afternoon. The first thing I did when I woke up was talk with Lauren, tell her how much I loved her, and then I played with Luke on the couch for a while, trying to imagine what his life would be like.
They wanted to know what had happened, but I’d asked for a little time to myself, to process, to think how best to explain that there was no help coming, that we were on our own.
How to explain that maybe we didn’t live in the United States anymore?
In the end, I’d asked them to come out on the balcony and showed them the images on my phone. There were a lot of questions, but I didn’t have answers.
“So they just let you go?” asked Chuck.
He wasn’t healing very well, and being out in the woods for two days had made things that much worse. Susie wasn’t able to get all the buckshot out of his arm, but at least it was the same arm as his bad hand. The whole thing was in a sling.
“Yeah, they did.”
“So you saw our military, our police there? And nobody was doing anything?”
I thought back, remembering my walk in. Everything that I’d seen before had taken on a new meaning once I’d seen the Chinese army base. I was replaying everything in my memory, trying to tease out details of things I’d seen but perhaps not understood.
“Our police were there, definitely Americans who were directing the stream of refugees. I saw some military on the road, but I think they were Chinese.”
“Did you see any fighting?”
I shook my head. “Everyone looked beaten, like it was already over.”
Luke was finished with his stick and ran up the stairs and jumped into Lauren’s lap.
“So no bombed-out buildings? It was all intact?”
I nodding, trying to remember if I’d seen anything.
“How could they have just given up without even a fight?” said Chuck angrily.
He was having a hard time believing it. Not that he didn’t believe me, but he couldn’t fathom how it could be over so quickly. I still couldn’t believe it either.
“It would be hard to fight back if the Chinese incapacitated the military’s communications and weapons systems electronically.” I’d thought about it too. “We’d be reduced to cavemen trying to fight back against a modern army.”
“So Washington just looked normal?” asked Lauren, cuddling Luke, trying to get her head around it. “Did you go to the Capitol?”
“No. Like I said, I was scared. I think they were funneling us into a detention camp. I didn’t think I would make it back.”
“But there were people, Americans, just walking around. Driving around?” said Chuck.
I’d described the people I’d seen on the streets, some of them walking around as if nothing had happened. I told them about the cowboys that had driven me up here.
Susie sighed.
“It’s hard to imagine, but I guess life goes on.”
“Life went on in occupied France in the war,” I said sadly. “Paris gave up without a fight too. No bombs, no fighting, just free one day and then occupied the next. People still went out and bought baguettes, drank wine—”
“It all must have happened when we were in New York,” said Lauren. “It was over a month that we were isolated. It explains the strange way we didn’t get much information, the way things happened.”
It did explain everything.
“So we were right,” she added quietly, talking about the night in the hallway when we’d all guessed what had happened. “It was the Chinese.”
There was no snow anymore, but it was still winter, and there weren’t any bugs or crickets singing in the dark forests. The silence was nearly deafening.
I sighed.
“No matter what, it’s better that we got out of New York. It looks like they’re going to let it rot.”
“Bastards!” yelled Chuck, standing up from the chair we’d set him down in. He was waving his good fist at the bright smudge on the horizon. “I’m not going down without a fight.”
“Calm down, baby,” said Susie softly to Chuck, standing to wrap her arms around him. “No fighting for now.”
“We’re barely surviving,” I laughed grimly. “How are we going to fight back?”
Chuck stared at the horizon.
“People have done it before. The Underground, the Resistance.”
Lauren looked at Susie. “I think that’s enough for today, don’t you?”
Susie agreed. “I think we should get some sleep.”
Chuck’s head sagged, and he
turned for the door. “Tell me when you come to bed, Mike, and I’ll come down and stand watch.”
Lauren leaned down to kiss me.
“I’m sorry I missed your birthday yesterday,” I said quietly.
“You coming back safe to us was the greatest gift I’ve ever had.”
“I wanted so much—”
“I know, Mike, but what’s important is that we’re together.” She kissed Luke and stood up, cradling him in her arms. He was asleep.
I sat silently. Looking up at the doorframe, I saw someone had stuck the Borodins’ mezuzah on it.
“Who did that?” I asked, pointing at it.
“I did,” Lauren said.
“A little late, don’t you think?”
“It’s never too late, Mike.”
I sighed and returned my gaze to the horizon.
“I’m going to stay down here for a while,” I said to her. “Is that okay?”
“Come to bed soon.”
“I will.”
With everyone gone, I sat and stared at the glow of Washington in the distance, rolling through the images of my trip there and back in my head. To the rest of them, I’d been gone only two days, but to me, it seemed like years. An eternity had passed in my mind, and the world had changed.
I sat quietly for an hour or so, the anger was boiling up inside me. Finally, I stood up, turning my back on Washington, and walked inside.
Days 37-41 – Last Days of January
THE WEATHER HAD turned overcast and soggy again—miserable weather for going outside, but good weather for fishing.
“They must have had no choice,” said Susie, still trying to understand what had happened.
We were descending to the Shenandoah River, down the mountain and into the valley toward the west. A fine mist hung in the air.
I hope it doesn’t start to rain.
Anything that got wet would stay wet for days. Fog stretched into the distance between the trees. There were only two other cabins on this whole side of the mountain, and we kept away from them on a wooded trail as we wound our way down.
“Maybe you’re right,” I replied. “Maybe this is what war looks like now. I wish I’d been better prepared.”
Modern warfare—over before the first shot was fired.
My mind couldn’t help cycling back, remembering what I’d read about the cyber-threat, damning myself for not taking it seriously. I should have done so many things differently, protected Lauren and Luke better. It was my fault.
We reached the river and walked along it. The track was muddy, and I looked for other footprints. None looked fresh.
“You can’t prepare for everything,” said Susie after some reflection. “And maybe this is better.”
The skin on her face was waxen, paper thin and translucent even in the gray light. It was flaking off in chunks near her scalp. She caught me looking, and I quickly shifted my gaze.
“Hey, can we eat that?” I asked, wanting to change the topic.
Brownish, oval pods were hanging from a collection of bushes just off the trail.
“Those are pawpaws,” said Susie. “Surprising the squirrels didn’t get those.”
We walked over to the bush, and she pulled them off.
“They’re spoiled, though. These fruit in the fall.” She put them in her pocket anyway.
“So what do you mean, maybe this is better?” I asked as we collected the rest of the spoiled pawpaws.
“I meant that a cyberattack is better than being incinerated by a bomb.”
I said nothing, following along behind as we made our way back to the river. I wondered how the Borodins were doing, what had happened to the captives—if they’d let them go, or if they’d starved to death.
Susie bent down and pulled on one of the fishing lines we’d set in the bushes. She shook her head, and we advanced to the next one. Tall, thin birch trees rose up out of the banks of the Shenandoah. Yellow leaves carpeted the forest floor. We passed by a small set of rapids that gurgled and bubbled. In the pool at the end of them we’d set several lines. The survival guide on my phone said such pools were a good place to fish.
“Maybe we should just surrender,” said Susie.
“To who exactly?”
“The Chinese?”
“You want to walk sixty miles to surrender?”
“There must be someone we can talk to.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
After the attack on our first day here, we were too afraid to go near any other cabins. Through the trees we could sometimes see people, but we would stay away, keeping our distance.
“There’s always hope, Mike,” said Susie, as if she was reading my mind.
Even if we did give ourselves up, where would we go? Would a Chinese prison camp be any better? I remembered the streams of refugees I’d walked with through Washington. Where had they all been going? My mind filled with vague images of old war movies, of concentration camps in steaming forests in Vietnam. It was safer to stay where we were. We had to hide, survive, and do what we could.
“They’re going to leave eventually,” she added, thinking what I was thinking. “They have to. There’s no way the UN or NATO would allow them to stay.”
We reached the collecting pool at the bottom of the rapids, and I stepped out onto a rock and reached down to pull on another line. It felt heavy, like it was stuck, and then it began pulling back.
“Hey! We got one. It feels big!”
Catfish in the Shenandoah could get up to twenty or thirty pounds.
“See?” said Susie, smiling. “There’s always hope.”
I pulled the catfish up out of the water, and it dangled helplessly in front of us, trapped by something it didn’t understand. I should have been better prepared. I shouldn’t have let this happen to my family. As the fish spun on the line, I glimpsed into its eyes, and then grabbed it by the tail and smashed its head against a rock.
Days 42-48 – First Week of February
THE FOREST CAME alive in the light of the full moon.
Moving slowly, silently, I crept through the trees. Tiny creatures scurried in the darkness, and an owl hooted, a haunting bark that echoed in the cool air. A carpet of stars hung above me, visible through the bare branches of the trees. The stars didn’t seem distant; they felt close, as if I could climb to the top of the trees and touch them.
The night cloaked me.
I’d become aware of the cycles of the moon. Asleep in our room, I could feel it in the same way I’d become aware of the sky, of the changes in air pressure and the winds that signaled a coming rain. Just weeks ago my senses had been numb, divorced from nature, but I was changing.
I was becoming animal.
The violence we’d seen shouldn’t have surprised me. Humans, by nature, were violent. We were the apex predators, each one of us alive only because our ancestors had killed and eaten other animals, outcompeted everything else to survive.
That stretched back through time, through my human ancestors, to my protohuman ancestors, and then even further back. Each and every one of those animals that I’d descended from, in a long line all the way back to the beginning of life on Earth, had survived by killing before being killed. I was the last in an unbroken string of millions of killers.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that humans were violent.
Technology couldn’t revert, but humans could, and they did with startling ease and rapidity when the trappings of the modern world melted away. The tribal animal was always there, hiding just beneath our thin skins of lattes and cell phones and cable TV.
In my dreams during the days I was trapped in the dingy, lice-infested hallway. Lauren would float before me in her bubble bath, clean and untouchable. And always, there was the baby, slippery and cold. During the days, I slept away my hunger, but with the setting sun and rising moon, my hunger and anger returned.
The full moon had awoken me. I felt it dragging me outside like an invisible hand, the hai
r on the nape of my neck standing up. It led me down to the Baylors’ house with a knife in hand, ready to slash and kill.
But nobody was there.
I took the forest path down and around the mountain, toward a cabin I’d seen through the trees on our walks to the river. I’d been returning there, night after night, to watch, to prepare my hunt. The cabin’s roof glowed dimly in front of me, and I crouched in the woods, waiting.
In one of the windows I could see a lit candle, its flame flickering hypnotically. A man came into view, his face reflected in the light of the candle. Is he one of the ones from the Baylors’? I couldn’t tell. He looked out the window, directly at me, and I held my breath. But he didn’t see me, couldn’t see me.
He was talking. Someone else was there.
When I’d gotten up once during the day, I’d passed by the mirror in our room and was stunned by the reflection. Someone else was looking back at me—sunken cheeks with a shaved stubble of hair atop a withered head, ribs sticking out with skin that hung in wrinkled sacks from my arms. I stared at a prison camp victim, and only my eyes were my own, staring back in shock.
The rising moon each night gave me strength, fueling an anger that simmered inside.
Why should I give up? My grandfather had fought in World War II. Who knew what horrors he had to survive? My grandmother said he never talked about the war, and I was beginning to understand why.
The man in the window leaned forward and blew out the candle.
I gripped the knife in my hand, a razor claw for killing, and with my tongue I felt my teeth, the sharpness of my canines. I’d never mentioned to anyone that the kid, the cowboy who’d driven me back here, had hugged me when he’d said good-bye. The sad look in his eyes, it made me angry.
I didn’t need pity.
Crouching in the dark, with my thoughts urging me into the cabin, I thought of that young cowboy again, of his tenderness with me.
Looking at the cabin, I imagined them sleeping inside and I began crying.
What am I going to do? Kill them?
Maybe there were children inside, and even if there weren’t, what had these people ever done to me? What was I thinking? My stomach spasmed painfully with hunger. Quietly, I began to back away, stealing into the night.
CyberStorm final Mar 13 2013 Page 31