The Long Night Box Set

by Kevin Partner

  When he was no more than fifty yards away, he saw dim lights moving behind a window in the side of the building. That was where Fisher was watching from. Out of harm's way as he allowed his acolytes to sacrifice themselves for whatever deluded cause he'd attached himself to.

  Or, at least, he thought he was safe. Solly was about to make sure he was wrong about that. But he couldn't simply aim for the moving lights because he might hit someone else and, while whoever was beyond that window probably deserved it, he couldn't be sure. Besides, he didn't want to risk missing Fisher. He had to die tonight.

  A crackle of gunshots from behind him rent the night and he ran on, reaching the wall of the building before running along it until he found an outer door. It was a restaurant and this was the staff entrance. It was open.

  He gagged on the stench from inside, but didn't allow his thoughts to dwell on whether it was rotting food or something else he could smell. As he stumbled in the dark, he was careful of where he put his feet. He was as certain as he could be that they hadn't come in this way, so he had the chance to surprise them.

  Solly reached the inner door of the kitchen and stood for a moment, listening. He could hear voices nearby, excited voices.

  "Are they inside yet?" It was Fisher's voice.

  "I don't know, they should be. I didn't think the troops would open fire, we may have lost many," another man responded.

  "So, they have risen to take their place in heaven before us, praise be to them! Their purpose is to be the forest within which your avenging angels hide themselves."

  "Then let us hope our operatives have not been gunned down. That was not our expectation."

  "Have faith, my friend," Fisher said.

  The other man grunted. "I have my own faith, Pastor, but I prefer to rely more on good planning. But I will be glad when we get confirmation that my operatives are in control."

  "It will be soon," Fisher responded. "And we will have taken the next step in destroying the festering remains of the old world and preparing the way for the new."

  Another round of rapid fire, followed by multiple gunshots. Solly imagined a last-ditch defense and the massacre of citizens and soldiers. He bit down his fear and lunged through the door.

  "Put down your weapons!"

  The two men at the window swung around in unison. Solly immediately recognized Fisher, his face twisted in surprise and rage. The other man was dressed in a black combat suit and stood clutching a walkie-talkie. He brought his other hand up and, without thinking, Solly pulled the trigger and the man dropped with a cry of pain as the report echoed around the room.

  Solly pointed the Glock back at Fisher. "Call them off, Fisher, or so help me God, I'll blow your head off!"

  "How dare you call upon the Lord! Blasphemy!"

  "Call them off!" Solly aimed just to the right of Fisher and blew the window out.

  Now the man was terrified. He lifted the microphone to his lips and called out, "Children of the end times. Return to protect your leader!"

  The gunshots from the forecourt became concentrated on one area. Presumably the operatives the other man had talked of were putting up a fight. Solly knew well enough who they worked for. As soon as he'd seen the black uniform he'd known. The Lee Corporation was behind this attack. It would suit them to sow chaos in areas they didn't yet control and they'd latched onto Fisher's troop of crazies to help them.

  "Tell me, Fisher, do you believe the filth that comes out of your mouth, or is it just another way of controlling people?"

  "What? What do you mean? I am a man of faith!"

  "Last time we met, you were running a community in New York, pretending to be a pastor. How did that work out for you in the end?"

  Solly could see Fisher squinting in the gloom, trying to make out the features of his opponent. Solly stepped a little closer, into the reflected light of the forecourt lights and, after a moment, Fisher's mouth dropped open.

  "You!" he said. "You were with her." His hands dropped to his groin. "She robbed me of my manhood."

  "She intended to rob you of your life," Solly snarled. "I stopped her, though I wish with all my heart I hadn't. Now, in her memory, I will finish the job."

  "She is dead?" Fisher cackled. "And rotting in Hell! But kill me, and my followers will rip you limb from limb. There is no escape, Mr. Nobody. Soon, you will join her in eternal damnation!"

  He knew Fisher spoke the truth, but he had to ask, "Why are you working with the Lee Corporation, Fisher?"

  The pastor seemed surprised by the question. "They…repaired me. My followers begged them to and they agreed. Since then, we have shared a vision of a world in chaos. This is but the latest action of many."

  "And what was their price?" As he said it, Solly knew the answer as certainly as if he'd seen with his own eyes. "They've had the new implants, haven't they? They’ve turned your acolytes into slaves. You sacrificed the freedom of your followers so you could be saved."

  He could see it in the man's eyes. The women who were now rushing back to defend him wore the same implants the Reapers used to subdue and enslave the people they didn't kill. No doubt many believed in their holy mission, but others had walked into danger because it was either that or die instantly at the command of the Lee Corporation in the person of the man who lay dead on the floor at his feet.

  Solly felt pity for them, but none for Fisher. As he tightened his grip on the stock of the pistol, he saw Fisher realize, for the first time, that he was not going to receive mercy.

  Now was the moment for his first revenge. Janice would not have died in vain if her death had led to the extinction of this filth. He hesitated. He was Solly Masters. He was a father, a geek, the sort of man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. No. Not anymore. Now, he was the ghost of vengeance.

  Fisher’s eyes widened just as Solly pulled the trigger and he fell, lifeless to the floor.

  A tiny weight lifted from one shoulder as another, of equal mass, settled on the other.

  Now what? He could hear footsteps running towards the shattered window and cries of fear and anger. He couldn't shoot them and there was nowhere to hide, so he ran back into the stinking kitchen and exploded out of the door.

  His only chance was to make it back to the forecourt and hope that Bryant's soldiers had survived the attack. Something launched itself out of the darkness and Solly felt himself thrown to one side. He cried out as he hit the ground and desperately tried to shield himself from the blows raining down on him.

  Another weight fell onto his body and he could feel nails ripping at his face. He kicked out and one attacker fell backward while he pushed at the other. Rolling over, he got to his feet, but a wail split the night and suddenly he was surrounded by a dozen snarling women, some of them carrying rocks, others having liberated knives from the kitchen. They fell upon him and he disappeared beneath a pile of vengeful, enraged women, each trying to be the one to strike the fatal blow.

  Something heavy slammed down onto Solly's arm and he yelled so loud, he didn't hear the engine roar to a halt beside him. Gunshots, then some of the weight disappeared sideways before another body flung itself on top of him and flailed at his attackers.

  "Ross!" Solly cried as the boy's face appeared out of the mass of hateful bodies.

  A rifle butt swung through the air and knocked the final attacker away. Vivian helped him up, though he fell back again as pain shocked through his arm. "Come on, Solly!" she cried.

  Finally, he was inside the Humvee as Ross hauled himself up into the passenger seat having crawled across the debris-strewn ground. He'd thrown himself from the vehicle to help his adoptive father and now Vivian climbed into the driver's position, and slammed down on the gas to leave the hateful revenge seekers behind them.

  And just as they turned the vehicle back towards the forecourt, a sudden flash split the night and it disappeared in a roiling fire ball. Solly threw his arms up against the light and heat as the Humvee shook violently from the explosive force as it squealed to
a halt.

  "Get us out of here!" he yelled, and Vivian yanked the steering wheel around, forcing the Humvee into a tight turn and heading back towards the main road. Solly cried out as his arm protested at the sudden changes in direction but managed to turn around in time to see a black-tipped orange and yellow cloud rise from the ruins of the forecourt and into the clean night air.

  Bryant and his troops were dead and Solly found no satisfaction in the fact that he'd executed Fisher. Despite all their best efforts and the sacrifices of the defenders, the Lee Corporation had won.

  Chapter 9

  Bella stooped low in the muddy field and dropped a bean into the hole she'd made with her pointy stick. She chuckled to herself, her breath steaming as it rose up into the sky on a chill morning in Tennessee. Al would have pointed out that she was using a dibber to make the hole, not a pointy stick, and that she was returning to a long tradition of working on the land. Her great-great-grandparents had worked the fields of a little Ukrainian village and she imagined what they'd have thought of their descendant as she straightened up and rubbed her back. Slabkyy, in all likelihood. Weak. But, for now, happy.

  She stretched her arms and glanced around her. Other figures were stooping to plant or to dib their holes, industriously burying seeds to provide food for their town in a couple of months. Broad beans weren't to everyone's taste, but they were nutritious, tough and fast growing. And Bella's scouting parties had found several sacks of them on a recent expedition. If life gives you lemons…

  Of course, there were far better things she could have been doing with her time. They had no shortage of labor, and most of those who volunteered were willing to do the dirty field work that was the foundation of their efforts to survive. Bella knew there was no lack of tasks needing her attention back at the town hall, but she'd learned, in the past weeks, that she had to have time for her mind and body to reset and, when the planting had begun at the beginning of March, she'd found it in the fields.

  Her father said she was meshuggeneh for getting cold and wet out here when she could have been warm and comfortable in her office, but he didn't mean it. He knew the price she paid for the burden of running Elizabeth. He was proud of her, though he rarely said so, but she had been stretched to her limits and beyond by the seemingly ever-growing list of problems she faced every day. An hour in the fields was a small price to pay for the sake of her sanity.

  Bella wasn't surprised to see that Josh, who was working the rows in the next block across, had finished before her. Josh was an athletic young man just out of his teens and he surveyed his work looking every inch the son of a pioneer. She was less thrilled that her neighbor on the other side had also finished ahead of her. Amy, a small woman of Hong Kong Chinese descent, had to be in her seventies and, though she was gently rubbing her back, she showed no other signs of the exhaustion Bella was feeling as she approached the end of her row.

  "Ready to get back, Madam Mayor?" Josh called across. He'd wandered into town with the latest influx of refugees from the south and west and had made himself useful immediately. He was now her driver and she enjoyed knowing how much it aggravated Skulls that she spent more time with Josh than him. A little jealousy could be good for a relationship, she'd decided. Childish? Probably. But you had to take your pleasure where you could.

  "Part timer!" Amy called, though she smiled as she did it. "I have two more blocks!"

  Bella smiled back and waved at the woman. "You're a civic hero, Amy. I'll commission a statue for the town square."

  The old woman called something in Cantonese before laughing at herself and turning to the next row of beans.

  Josh drove her back to town in an unmarked Civic. She sat in the back and read through the latest sheaf of paperwork. Civilization could fall, it seemed, but the first green shoots of recovery would be smothered in bureaucracy.

  She focused most of her attention on the population report. The west side of town, which the previous mayor had allowed to decay, had now been almost entirely reoccupied and repaired. The task of scouring the countryside in an increasingly wide circle around Elizabeth was now being run with military efficiency by Skulls, who'd developed those skills to a smaller scale at the little community at the crossroads where she'd first met him. A bald thug with a yellow beard and skull tattoo. Just went to show, you couldn't judge on first appearances. She'd found herself falling in love with him, slowly but surely, even though he was a stubborn ox at times. Now she spent more time with her driver than him and that had to change.

  Her biggest worry was Maddie. The girl had descended into a terribly dark place when Luke had left without so much as a goodbye. Bella knew he'd done it out of love for her daughter, but Maddie saw it as betrayal. The only ray of light was that Al had taken his granddaughter under his wing and involved her in his attempts to get commerce working again in the town. Barter had reestablished itself almost immediately after the disaster, but the community spirit that had fueled people to this point would only last so long. As their thoughts turned from day to day survival to considering their future, an economy would develop, and Bella wanted this to be done in an organized and equitable fashion. They needed to go from commune to capitalist community in one smooth process without revolution or currency collapse.

  So, Al had opened up one of the banks and, with help from a committee made up of an eclectic mix of folk with financial and economical skill, had created a currency that was now the basis of all trade in the town. The Elizabeth Dollar had soon become the Lizzie. The bills of the old world were brought back into service, with the bank determining the interest rate and fixing the value of the new dollar. In the end, Al had found the technical minutiae frustrating and had turned his attention to opening up a trading center in the square outside the town hall where the gallows had once been set up by Mayor Kennedy. A more telling metaphor for the change in the town's outlook would be hard to imagine.

  Father O'Rourke was waiting for her outside what had previously been St. Patrick's church, now renamed Hope Church and open to those of all faiths and none.

  "Madam Mayor!" he called as the car pulled up and Bella jumped out of the back. She was feeling refreshed from her morning exercise and the quick shower she'd enjoyed at the local sports center. It, too, had been repurposed into a community washing facility and the day the power had been restored to that building had seen the biggest celebrations since she'd become mayor.

  "Father," she said, taking his hand.

  "Talking of fathers," O'Rourke responded, waving beyond her toward the town hall, "yours seems to have found his vocation. The market is a huge success."

  Bella looked across at the collection of market booths and smiled. "Folks like to buy things with their own money. They like to earn, and to get ahead. Pop is meeting their baser needs, Brian, and it's your job to balance that. We need spiritual sustenance as much as we need food. In the longer term at least."

  "Indeed. A starving man will take a loaf of bread over a prayer, but as soon as he has been fed, he looks to the meaning of things. There has to be a purpose, Bella."

  They wandered between the Gothic towers that stood on either side of the double front doors and into the interior. It was now a bright day in early spring, and sunlight streamed through the ornate stained glass windows onto rows of wooden pews placed between limestone pillars.

  "We've taken down a lot of the decoration," O'Rourke said. "I don't want anyone to walk in here and feel unwelcome."

  "How do you manage to hold services for everyone?"

  O'Rourke gave a quiet chuckle. "Oh, I'm quite creative, believe me. The Christian denominations share enough to make it possible to have a unified service for them, but we also have general celebrations that have, shall we say, a very light touch. And other faith groups are welcome to hold their own services with their own leaders. I trust you found last Sunday's service palatable, though it was largely Christian in nature."

  "I wear my religion fairly lightly, Father, believe me. Perhaps
even more so since the Long Night, but let's not dwell on that for now, it's such a nice day."

  The priest's face dropped. "I'm afraid I am going to have to darken it a little."

  He led her into a small room off the south transept and gestured her into a chair before fussing with a coffee maker.

  "What is it, Brian?"

  "I hear whispers, Bella," he said, handing a mug to her. "I believe our community has been infiltrated."

  "By who?"

  He sat down in the chair opposite her and sighed. "I'm only hearing rumors, you understand? But someone is agitating. The message seems to be that you're going about it all the wrong way, that having people working in the fields is turning folk into Amish or winding back the clock. Folk don't want to be peasants, that's what I hear."

  "Surely it's better to have food than not?"

  O'Rourke shrugged. "Of course, but they seem to think there's an alternative to growing our own."

  This was too much. She'd expected to face huge challenges in turning Elizabeth into a viable community in this chaotic world, but she hadn't anticipated that laziness would be one of them. These people had survived the greatest catastrophe to befall humanity and she, and her colleagues, had shown them a way forward, a plan for a sustainable future. But it was too much work.

  "What possible alternative can there be? We're gathering supplies from further and further afield. Skulls has raided the outskirts of Memphis, but the deeper he goes, the greater the resistance. The time will come when we'll have to rely on what we can grow if we want fresh food and then, eventually, if we want any food at all. There is only so much left out there, and as it gets scarcer, people will get more and more desperate and violent to protect what they have."

  The priest put down his cup and sighed. "You're a wonderful mayor, Bella. Heck, you're a wonderful person. But you suffer from one fatal flaw."

  "And what's that?"

  "You think most people are fundamentally good, that they will come together to look after the community as a whole. But, in truth, most people only think of themselves and if they can get ahead by stepping on someone else, you better believe they'll do it. Your father's market, much though I welcome it, is one example of that."