“Nothing?”
“No newscasts, no emergency broadcasts. Completely dark. Which is weird, because even though it’s a different type of signal, it’s still a digital signal.” Brandon said. “But that doesn’t matter. We’re all alone.”
“What about websites? News? Anything?” Jem asked, perplexed.
“Nothing’s been updated since Tuesday. Drudge Report, Yahoo, all of it. Nothing’s changed,” Brandon answered. “The sites are still up, right? Like, the DNS servers are still online.” Sensing Jem’s confusion, he stopped himself for a moment to collect his thoughts. “The engines are on. But no one’s behind the wheel.”
Jem chuckled. “Yeah, not a car guy either, but I understand the analogy.” He let the information settle in his brain, though it was hard to comprehend. How could it be that the entire world was just gone? Or, he hoped, perhaps there was simply a communication cutoff.
“Is it possible we’re just seeing old stuff? Like, it’s not updating? I’m not great with computer terminology, but what’s the word? Cached?” Jem asked.
“Theoretically? Yeah, that’s a possibility. But, hey,” Brandon said. “We’ve got Netflix! Now, tell me. What’s going on with you?”
Jem stared at the television screen, still transfixed, but also ruminating on the prospect that Decker was not only completely cut off from the outside world, but that the outside world may not even exist.
“Have you heard anything about a woman murdered last night?” Jem asked.
“Heard about it? Bro, she lived right across the street from me! Wait. You didn’t…” Brandon cocked his head and furrowed his brows.
“No, no, no,” Jem said, waving a dismissive hand. “But, back up. Across the street?”
“Yeah man. Cop cars all over the joint this afternoon. Yellow tape, everything. Some detective even came and asked me if I’d seen anything. I decided to come back up here to get my mind off things. I’ve got a cot back there. I feel better when my hands are busy.”
“Did you?” Jem asked.
“Did I what? Feel better? Yeah, I feel fine,” Brandon said.
“No, did you see anyone?”
Brandon shook his head. “Well, I saw a guy leave early in the morning. Tore out of there quick in a Lexus. Told the police about it and all.” Leaning in, he narrowed his eyes. “Why are you so interested in this? Did you see something?”
Jem pursed his lips and looked away from the young man’s intense inquisitive stare. Finally, he said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I don’t think I believe it myself. But, I saw a vision.”
“A vision? Like a psychic?” Brandon interjected.
“No, not like a psychic. You may just have to see it for yourself, but just outside the city limits, there’s this…” Jem gathered his words, “fog.”
“Fog?”
“But it’s not even fog. It’s a giant cloud, out just beyond the city limits down Highway 280. When I drove up to it, I felt like my head was going to explode. But that’s when I saw it,” Jem said. “This vision, I was in a hallway, and there was this little boy and he was screaming. And then I saw the woman on the bed. She was dead, and a man in the bed with her. The little boy kept screaming bad man, bad man.”
Brandon listened intently, not sure if he completely believed this story and his disbelief was probably written all over his face because Jem held his hands up.
“I know, it sounds insane. Even now, describing it to you, it sounds insane to me. But I know what I saw. And tonight, when I got home, a police car was in front of my house. The officer got out, threatened to arrest me for leaving the meeting, which ended up an execution. When he stepped in the light, I saw him. It was the same man in the bed with the woman. It’s the chief’s son. He killed that woman.”
“Are you sure you weren’t just hallucinating?” Brandon asked. “I mean, you said you had a headache? Maybe it was like some kind of pain-induced mind thing.”
“I wouldn’t have come to you if I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. The only thing I could think was that you’d have some way of calling out of Decker. Some cell phone technology that we could use.”
“Yeah, but we can’t. I’ve tried everything,” Brandon said. “Check this out.” Brandon grabbed a laptop from his workbench and opened the clamshell, the word Thinkpad emblazoned in chrome on the device’s matte black lid. “This thing runs Linux, and I can sniff out Wi-Fi networks broadcasting in a ten-mile radius.”
Jem watched as the young man typed in the computer’s command-line interface, lines of code and commands that made him wish he’d paid more attention in his technology classes at Saint Mary’s.
“Okay, so I’m going to extrapolate the Wi-Fi signal and send it through the speakers. You’ll be able to hear it,” Brandon said. At first low and rising in volume, Jem listened. Through the computer’s tinny speakers, the waves came through like a pulse. Jem cocked his ear to the Thinkpad. Quick, low and bassy, these pulses came through in a pattern. Jem counted them, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one. After a pause, the pulse repeated and Jem felt his head begin pounding again. Like his hangover headache and the sharp pain he’d felt at the fog, the headache came back.
“Turn it off,” Jem asked, rubbing his temple.
“Whatever this is, it’s a pattern. I counted the pulses. It’s a Fibonacci sequence. It’s not natural.” Brandon said as he shut the laptop’s lid. “But it doesn’t matter. Like I said, we’re all alone.”
“Maybe we’re not alone,” Jem said. “Maybe the fog is blocking the signals. It’s keeping us from being able to communicate outside of the town. We need to alert the outside world that there’s some really scary, despotic stuff happening in this town and more people are going to get hurt.”
“Look, man,” Brandon said, “I don’t know. I came up here because I specifically didn’t want to get involved. I just wanted to spend some time alone and not deal with all the commotion in my neighborhood. And, yeah, I figured out how I can get my Netflix shows, but that’s about it.”
“What if we can prove that the chief’s son did it?” Jem said. “Wouldn’t that be worth it? To not only catch the murderer but stop his father as well? Look at what the chief is doing to this city! There’s a man hanging on the steps of the courthouse, for Christ’s sake!”
“What do you want to do? Go to the station downtown and walk up on Chief McMillan and be like yo, your boy murdered that chick?”
Jem had a flash of clarity. “You’re a tech guy,” he said.
Brandon shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah. What about it?”
“I bet you’re into all the technology stuff. Not just phones, but the computers and video games and everything. At my house, we’ve got automated lights. My wife loves that stuff. The door locks, electric window blinds. What about you?” Jem asked.
Brandon lit up. “Oh yeah, man. I’ve got it all. Lights, tv’s, everything.”
Jem gave a wry smile. “One of my favorite things at our house is the video doorbell. You said she lives right across the street from you. So, what about cameras? You got any cameras?”
“That’s the one thing I don’t have,” Brandon said. Jem slouched in his chair. He thought he’d cracked the case and the means to prove it.
Before Jem gave up, however, Brandon interjected. “But that woman, across the street? She did. I set them up for her.”
CHAPTER 26
CHRIS | 8:19PM
PICKING HIMSELF UP off the ground, Chris fumbled for his weapon in the grass. His stomach shot with pain from Taylor’s knee plunging into his groin. He was in shock, both from Taylor knocking him to the ground and the writer’s words. I saw you. With that little boy.
Chris finally mustered the constitution to yell “Stop!” but it was no use. Taylor had run to his vehicle and tore out of the driveway. For all Chris knew, the writer was on his way out of town.
Or worse.
He was on his way to the courthouse, to the police station. He would tel
l his father about the woman, the boy and everything. When he’d come to after his last experience with the fog, he was determined to find that little boy. He knew that, to destroy the fog cutting their town off from the rest of the world, he would have to sacrifice that child to it.
But he also knew the truth. He couldn’t risk anyone else knowing what he’d done to that woman on Lynn Drive. Watching Taylor’s Grand Cherokee speed off down Gardener Lane, Chris ran back to his own vehicle. He knew what he needed to do. Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, he lurched his head back and, with as much force as he could muster, slammed his nose into the steering wheel. The bridge of his nose hit the top of the wheel and blood spurted from it, gushing with an intensity that he didn’t predict. It flowed down the front of his shirt and he could taste the warm liquid on his lips.
In the seat next to him was a black baton, metal except for the rubber grip. He grabbed it, his nose still pouring blood, and taking it in both hands, and pounded away at his right eye socket. The metal stung against his skin, but he kept beating at his face until he could feel the skin swelling so much that it pinched his right eye nearly shut. He looked at his handiwork in the rearview mirror. His face was a bloody, pulpy mess, dark scarlet stains from his nose to his chin, the eye socket red, with a gash of its own.
Finally, after he was content with this, that he’d be able to convince his father that the writer attacked him— “right there in his front yard,” he’d tell his father. “When I confronted him about leaving the meeting, he attacked me.” Which wasn’t necessarily far from the truth. So he was stretching it a little. But the writer did accost him, did tackle him to the ground. Did run off in his vehicle.
His father was right. Outsiders had no place in this town. Outsiders didn’t have the same love for Decker that men like his father did. Chris remembered when Taylor moved to town, how it was such big news. He remembered his mother and her gossipy group of old ladies gushing on and on about the famous author, how they’d see him at Central Market. How one of them always kept a copy of his book The Fort in the Woods in her purse just in case. To Chris, however, the man seemed aloof, off in his own world. Not belonging in Decker. Never belonging. Not like him, though. Because, finally, Chris belonged. He’d sacrificed that woman and he was born again into this new man, full of life and energy, and no outsider was going to stop him now. And once he found the child, he’d be the hero that lifted Decker out of the fog.
Chris pulled the shifter into drive and started back downtown, where he’d get an arrest warrant for Mr. Jeremy Taylor. He’d see to it that his father had the man arrested and hanged. Yes, hanged on the front steps of the courthouse just as he’d done with the man who’d pulled his gun at the grocery store earlier that day. He nearly giggled at the thought of the outsider’s feet dangling above the concrete steps, his eyes bulging from their sockets.
Chris McMillan knew the look of strangulation all too well.
It didn’t take long for him to get to the station, but the blood from his nose had caked up and clotted very nicely, making his self-inflicted wounds look even worse than what they actually were. He pulled into the parking space on the backside of the courthouse and walked down the ramp to the police unit inside. He stumbled, haphazardly to his father’s office and dramatically fell into the doorway.
“Dad,” he started.
The chief looked up at him and nearly jumped out of his chair. “Jesus Christ, kid!” he exclaimed. “What the hell happened?”
“He attacked me, Dad,” Chris said.
“Taylor did this to you?” Chief McMillan crossed the room and, putting his shoulders on his son’s arms, gave his son a once-over. The kid’s nose was caked in blood and it had stained the front of his uniform, turning the dark shirt an ugly brown. His right eye was nearly swollen completely shut, with a large gash on the cheekbone that oozed blood and fluid.
“Pulled up to his house, and I confronted him, just like you said. Told him that rules apply to outsiders just as much as anyone else. He didn’t like that. He attacked me. I did my best, but he ran off,” Chris explained, making sure to force each word out painfully. And then, to twist the knife, “I’m sorry, Dad. I wanted you to be proud of me.”
The older man put his hand around the back of his son’s head and patted him. “I am more than proud. But let’s get you cleaned up.” As he straightened Chris’s collar and patted his son down, ruffling off any grass that hung on to the fabric of his uniform, Chief McMillan grabbed the handheld radio off of his desk and flipped it on. The black plastic brick came to life with a crackle. “Barnes, come in.”
After a few moments, young officer Barnes’s voice came through. “Yes, chief?”
“I need you in my office,” the chief said. His voice was cool, calm—calmer than Chris had anticipated. It reminded him of the day his mother passed, succumbed to the cancer that had eaten away at her for over a year. The elder McMillan came home from the hospital early that Sunday morning after having spent the night with his wife in her hospital room.
The man fell into his recliner in the living room, sank into the cushion, his eyes closed and head tilted up. Chris, who had passed out on the couch woke up to the sound of the man’s breathing.
“What’s wrong?” he’d asked of his father.
The man didn’t answer, silently rocking the brown leather recliner for what felt like an eon. Finally, breaking the silence, he said, “She’s gone. Early this morning. No more pain.”
The way he’d said it, Chris knew there was pain in the man’s voice, but there was something else. Resolve? He didn’t know. His heart fell out of his chest and his head swam in a tumultuous rush of emotion. He’d felt it all at once—pain, sorrow, anger, and loneliness—as his father rocked in the recliner, his eyes closed and his head held to the sky.
Now, Chris understood. The man felt the weight of their household on him, the weight of going on without his wife. How could he have been so selfish not to see it then? His father’s resolve, silent and calm. Keeping the weight of the world from crushing him. His father’s voice held the same resolve now.
Brad Barnes walked into the office, took one look at Chris and nearly did a double-take. “What…” he started. “What happened?”
“Barnes, take Chris here to the infirmary. Get him cleaned up. Might get him some painkillers. His adrenaline is going now, but after it wears off, he’s going to feel it,” the chief said.
Brad Barnes, however, continued to stare at Chris’s bloodied and beaten face, disbelieving that the writer—a man who, despite being a semi-famous and well-known figure in Decker, generally kept to himself and out of the public eye—had attacked the chief’s son.
As he led Chris to the infirmary, which really was a refashioned storage closet that now housed not much more than a first aid kit and a medical table, Barnes kept glancing sideways at Chris’s face. “I’d hate to see what the other guy looks like,” he said.
Chris scoffed but didn’t say anything.
As they walked down the hall, they passed a little boy sitting on a bench, alone and swinging his feet as they dangled above the linoleum tile. Noticing them approaching, the little boy looked up to see the two officers. He perked up and pointed at Chris, screaming. “Bad man! Bad man!” he repeated over and over.
Through his one good eye, Chris didn’t need to look twice. He’d seen the boy before. In his vision, in the fog, he’d seen the boy in the bedroom of that woman.
“Daddy!” the little boy yelled again. “Bad man is here!”
CHAPTER 27
JEM AND BRANDON | 9:01PM
“ARE YOU SURE THIS IS GOING TO WORK?” Jem asked Brandon. “If it’s just cached information from the internet, how do we know that the system backed up the data?”
The two of them had driven across town in Brandon’s vehicle, back to his house on Lynn Drive, across the street from the scene of the murder. Yellow police tape fluttered in the moonlit darkness, but the house and surrounding neighborhoo
d was deserted, empty. Quiet. Waiting in the passenger seat of Brandon’s pickup, seat lowered but keeping his eyes above the window line to keep watch, Jem could hear his heartbeat in his temples, pounding heavy and quick.
After a few minutes, Jem watched as Brandon ran across the yard, a white device, no larger than a football with cords dangling to his knees, cradled in his hands. He jumped into the car and plopped the device between them. “Got it,” Brandon said as he put the vehicle in drive and headed back to the TechMedix shop.
The entire drive, though only a few minutes, felt like a hundred miles and Jem was certain that they’d see flashing blue lights behind them at any moment. “This thing has NOS,” Brandon had told him, pointing at a switch on the center console. Still, Jem just hoped they wouldn’t have to use it.
Despite his fear and paranoia, they’d driven back to the TechMedix shop without any issue. Brandon had kept to the side streets and residential alleyways, keeping the lights off and engine as quiet as he could.
Now, Jem sat at the workbench opposite of Brandon as the kid fiddled with the device and his laptop. He was amazed and slightly confused at how this whole system worked.
“I hope so. All the data is uploaded from this link device,” Brandon said, answering Jem’s question. “So, the cameras capture data and it’s loaded on this device as it’s uploaded to the cloud servers. Even if we’re only able to see cached data, hopefully it uploaded before the vanishing occurred.”
After a few minutes of typing, Brandon clapped his hands. “Alright, I think I got it. The admin password was left to the default, so I was able to log in,” Brandon said. Without looking up, he pointed at the television hanging on the wall at the head of the workbench. “I’m going to bring it up on that screen.”
Jem turned and watched as the device’s splash screen loaded and a menu popped up, offering things such as “Settings” and “Camera Setup”. Brandon clicked on the menu for “Recordings.” A list populated, the most recent from that morning.
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