Shadows of Empyriad (The Empyriad Series Book 1)

by Josi Russell

  Everyone out here skirted the law a bit. Even Sol’s mom. She had been a doctor back in Shoreline, and when she came out to Liberty, she found that the single doctor in town, Doctor Jalloh, had little experience with surgeries. He had come out to the ranch to ask for her help, but the Leadership wouldn’t recognize her license, so she couldn’t work with him in the clinic. That left people traveling hundreds of miles to Creed for the complex surgeries that she was an expert at. And the hospitals there were so overloaded that the waiting lists for those operations were very long.

  Molly said it had to do with power more than procedure. She said the Leadership liked controlling where and when people could get medical services. After a couple of people had died while waiting for operations, Jalloh had talked her into taking on some of his patient load on the sly. Now she saw a few patients a week in a sterile operating room they had hidden in the barn.

  A few late calves were nothing compared to that. Sol didn’t want to imagine what Damen would do if he discovered what Molly was doing.

  “How long’s he in for?” He asked.

  “Six months. We’ll see if Hanna can run the ranch on her own with all those little kids.”

  It didn’t seem likely to Sol. But it didn’t seem likely that she’d have to, either. The people of Liberty were good at helping each other out in a pinch.

  Trenton cut in. “Damen’s easy to get around. He knows I’m making money. He stopped me the other day to ‘remind’ me about the regs for having a license. If you pay him, though, he conveniently forgets about the regs.” Trenton suddenly looked around, as if someone might be listening.

  “Still,” he said, “no need to mention where you got that banner, right, Shoreline?” He waited for Sol to agree before he slipped into the darkness between two skimmers.

  Sol turned to Mezina. He could feel her smooth arm against his. She ran her fingers across the new banner but drew them back when Sol flinched.

  “Sorry.” She said, sympathy in her eyes. “What did you get?”

  Her touch had driven the dizziness out of his head. “You’ll have to come see it tomorrow if you want to know.” He said, teasing her.

  She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Maybe I will. But if I do, you’ll have to give me a ride in that antique machine of yours.”

  Sol glanced into the dark, in the direction of his old truck. “Maybe I will.” He hoped he’d get a chance to.

  Mezina left with several of her friends before the night was over. It turned out to be a good thing, because when Sol tried to fire up his truck he found that its battery was dead. He had to hook it up to the little solar charger he kept in the back.

  “Don’t fry it!” Juice called, and Sol shot him a wry look. He had only done that once when he’d crossed the cables accidentally. It had taken him an entire month to earn a new battery from Uncle Carl. He was careful this time, though, and the truck roared to life.

  By the time Sol made it home, his arm felt charred. He couldn’t see it in the dark, but when he touched it, the skin felt just the same as it had back in the field.

  He parked the truck out by the barn and threw up before he went inside. When he saw that the light was on in the kitchen, he flipped the seat forward and rooted through the junk back there. Finally, he felt fabric. He pulled a jacket out and put it on, gritting his teeth against the pain.

  His mom, Molly, was at the kitchen table sewing the binding on a quilt. Her small, tight stitches showed her skill with a needle. She made a lot of quilts. She said that stitching them kept her in practice for stitching people.

  She smiled when he came in, but he saw the tightness in it and heard the strain in her voice. She was trying not to be angry.

  “How was your day?” she asked.

  Sol tried to give her a smile back. “Any day above ground . . .”

  “Is a good one.” She finished, smiling for real. They rarely connected in that easy way anymore, and it felt nice. He relaxed a little.

  She tipped her head to the side. “Is it raining?”

  “No, why?”

  She gestured at him. “Why are you wearing that?”

  He glanced down. The jacket.

  She stood and crossed to him, running her fingers across the collar softly. Sol pulled back involuntarily, trying to think of a good reason he would be wearing a jacket on an eighty-degree night. She looked hurt, maybe a little lost. He felt frustration growing as he fumbled for an excuse. Why did she have to care so much? Why couldn’t she just let him run his own life, like the other guys?

  She spoke softly, but her words were like a sharp slap, “I miss him, too. Still.”

  She wasn’t prying. She was grieving. Sol looked again at the jacket. It wasn’t his. It was his father’s. It must have been stuffed behind the seat for a long time. Suddenly, he didn’t feel angry at his mom. He remembered for a second how he used to feel like they were the only two people in the world who could really understand each other, like his dad’s death bonded them in a way no one else could ever truly feel.

  The ache in his shoulders, the pain in his arm, and now the memory of his father’s loss, overwhelmed him. Sol stepped back toward her and hugged her. She encircled him in her arms, and he laid his forehead on the top of her shoulder. Her golden hair brushed his face. He thought about how those same bright tones lightened the tight curls of his own hair. She clasped his hand, and he saw their fingers intertwined: hers pink and his warm brown. Together they looked like a banded seashell. As lonely as he sometimes felt, as different from everyone else here, he was still hers. Seeing it, feeling her arms around him, gave him a home. He let himself, for one minute, feel safe and simple again.

  Just then he heard the growl of his uncle’s crawler outside and flinched involuntarily. Uncle Carl was coming across the fields from town.

  “Shhh.” His mom held onto him a little longer, “don’t panic.”

  But Sol couldn’t help feeling trapped. He had to get out of here before Uncle Carl saw him. He would have a different reaction to the jacket.

  “I have to go to bed.” He said, pulling away, but trying to be gentle.

  “Honey,” she started.

  Sol didn’t make it. Uncle Carl’s voice stopped him before he could cross the room.

  The squeaky screen door swung open, and the big man filled up the room.

  “Sol, you want to tell me what this is?” he tossed a letter on the table.

  Dread filled Sol. This wasn’t how they were supposed to find out. Dorene at the post office had said she’d hold the letter for him when it came. Uncle Carl was never meant to see it. Now, through his already chaotic thoughts, he tried to think of a response.

  “I—just—I,” he reached for the letter, glad that the table was between him and his uncle.

  “You just what?” Uncle Carl’s voice was sharp.

  So was his mother’s, “Easy now, Carl.” She looked at Sol, “What’s this all about?”

  Sol breathed out and tipped the letter toward her, showing her the return address: Terrene Park Service, Yellowstone Global Park. She gasped a little, and her eyes narrowed.

  “I need some extra work.” He said pleadingly. “I need some extra money.”

  “For what?” his uncle’s tone was incredulous, “I feed you, house you, clothe you, I even gave you that old truck to get you around. What could you possibly need money for?”

  Sol couldn’t tell the truth, but from the look on his mother’s face, she had guessed it. “It’s probably a rejection anyway. All my friends have gotten rejected.”

  Uncle Carl’s head jerked up a little. “What friends have even applied?”

  “Juice, for one,” Sol said, but Uncle Carl didn’t stifle his derisive laugh. Sol searched, “And Briian.” That was a lie, but he didn’t think Uncle Carl would check it.

  That calmed things for a moment. Uncle Carl ticked his chin toward the letter. “Well, open it, then. If you’re rejected, all we have to talk about is why you’re messing with that
bunch. If you’re accepted, then we’re done talking.”

  He left the threat hanging there, and Sol’s hands shook as he tore open the envelope. Getting this job was his only hope. It was his chance to get some money scraped together. It was his way out.

  The letter was short, and when he looked up, he willed himself not to look happy. He bit the inside of his lip to stop himself from involuntarily smiling, but Uncle Carl saw the truth anyway.

  Uncle Carl swore. “You’re not doing it.”

  There was a time, when he was younger, that he would have just accepted it and gone to his room to cry. But Sol was growing more desperate. “But it’s just for the summer,” he said, pleading.

  “I said no.” Uncle Carl’s voice bounced around the kitchen.

  “Hold on,” Molly said. “Let’s not make a unilateral decision just yet.”

  Sol’s gaze found hers. “It’s just for the summer.”

  “What would you be doing in there?” she asked, and the tremor in her voice told Sol that she was more scared than angry.

  “Just driving supplies in. With all these aliens being put in the park, they need food and clothes and blankets. There are donation centers all over, and the Park Service has big warehouses in South Edge and Sunset, but they don’t have enough—” he stopped before he said the word “Rangers” and rephrased, “people to haul the donated stuff into the villages.”

  “Why would they even choose you?” Uncle Carl said gruffly. His deep distrust of the Rangers made his voice sharp.

  Sol held the letter a little higher. “It says here it’s because of the truck.” That made sense to him. Yellowstone was protected by pre-Terrene War technology, and it was impenetrable. Before the war, when money was flowing and tech was at its peak, the major parks had been surrounded by imposing fences topped with a massive anti-aircraft field called the BlueSky Field. Since nearly everyone had flightcraft, the BlueSky kept people from flying over the fences and getting inside. It also prevented air travel inside the park. According to the virtual tours of the Park that he’d been required to watch in school, the Rangers all used ground-contact vehicles called spiders to get around. The vehicles looked like their namesake, with a small cab and cargo area in the center and eight arching, articulated legs. They had small pads that cushioned the impact of their feet as they walked, doing little more damage than a human footprint.

  “They’re not taking down the BlueSky above the park, so skimmers and haulers and spinners aren’t any good. Only low-impact, ground-contact vehicles are allowed. I put those L-I tires on the truck last fall, and I mentioned that on the application.”

  He thought for a moment that they might fold. But Uncle Carl dispelled the thought pretty quickly. “No. Now go to bed.”

  Sol felt his breath come faster. No? Just no? “I’m not five years old anymore. You can’t just say no and tell me to go to bed.”

  He had said the words before he realized it, and Uncle Carl was halfway around the table before he could get his next words out.

  “I want to do this. Please.” Sol was trembling, but he tried to look like he wasn’t.

  Molly had moved, swiftly as always, between them. She spoke over her shoulder to her son. “Why? What could possibly make you want to go in there after,” she paused, unable to say it, “after everything?”

  “I just need to—”

  “Son,” she said, and her voice held a pleading note, “bad things happen when you are in places you shouldn’t be.”

  It was something she’d said before. To him, certainly, and also to his father. She’d said it the day Timothy Brooks died, and Sol heard now the same desperation he had heard in his mother's voice that morning ten years ago. He had known then that something was wrong by the sound of it. Now, as he looked at her, he couldn’t stop the memory from coming.

  "Timothy, please don't go," she had said. Sol had watched as his mother reached for her husband, had seen her hand, the shade of the sky at dawn, on his father’s deep umber arm.

  His father had turned back towards her, gentleness in his eyes as he spoke, "Honey, somebody's got to go out and speak some reason."

  "This isn't your fight. We're going home to Shoreline tomorrow, and they can work it all out after we leave."

  "But it's ridiculous. These people aren't being treated fairly." Tim had run an agitated hand through his hair.

  "The government agencies don't care about fair. They haven't for a long time. Nobody's been able to do anything."

  "I have to try," Sol remembered his father throwing him a reassuring smile.

  Sol's mother was agitated too. "Tim, you don't know how ugly these things can get. Somebody could get hurt."

  Sol remembered how his father had pulled his mother into an embrace. "I know. That's why I need to go out there. Carl's going to have some trouble staying calm. He's your brother, Molly. We need to try and help him if we can." Sol remembered his mother’s gold curls tangled against his father’s black hair like the moon at midnight. Sol remembered feeling safe when they were together and wanting them to stay there. But Timothy had stepped away from her. In one fluid movement, he swept his glasses off his face and polished them on the tail of his shirt. Sol remembered him doing that a lot. "I think if we could just have one open conversation between the ranchers and the Rangers, we could work out a compromise."

  Molly's eyes had brimmed with tears. "I love you, Tim. Because you're optimistic and intelligent and compassionate. But I don't know if you're very wise." She turned from him, taking several steps around this same little kitchen. "There are no conversations. They don't talk to each other." Sol remembered seeing her hands clasping and unclasping. "I just wish we were back home on the coast in Shoreline. This is why we live our lives hundreds of miles from these Western mountains and these turf wars that have always torn them to pieces." She stopped, taking a deep breath, and Sol had watched her compose herself. He remembered feeling scared, seeing her like that and knowing the deep undercurrent of anger that had been flowing through Uncle Carl and his neighbors the last few days. Molly had stepped forward and kissed Tim quickly. She had taken Sol's hand. "I know you're going to go, and I sure hope Carl appreciates it. I'll get packed, and when you get back, I want to go home." His father had smiled at her, his eyes large behind his glasses, and she had spoken again, "Please, Tim. Be careful."

  Uncle Carl’s voice pulled Sol back to now, to this night, to the dim kitchen, back to his aching body and his burning arm and the chance of getting out of here.

  “Listen when she’s talking to you.” His uncle’s voice was a threatening rumble.

  “Okay. I know. I’ll be fine in there. It’s just a job.”

  “Fine like Tim was fine?” Uncle Carl spit out the name, and Sol saw that it hurt his mother to hear it.

  Sol responded before he thought. “This isn’t about my dad. Not everything is about him.”

  His mom turned toward him, one hand stretched behind her, toward her brother, holding his seething anger at bay, for now. But her own eyes snapped with fury.

  “Sol, don’t pretend to know anything about that.”

  “I’m not pretending. I do know about it.”

  “You can’t,” she struggled. “You can’t ever know the real horror of it.”

  Sol’s secret spilled out before he could stop it. “I do know. I was there.” He stopped speaking. He had kept that information from them for a decade, and now it had fallen out like a rock from a torn pocket. The revelation hung heavy in the air between them.

  “What?” Molly managed.

  Sol kept talking, wanting to explain. “I just had to know where you were going, and if he was all right. I caught a ride with the Anders’ out to the pasture.” His words were coming easily now, and the two adults had gone quiet in a disbelieving, horror-stricken sort of way. He felt himself talking faster.

  “I—I heard the cows first. It wasn’t how they usually sounded. They sounded scared and hurt. Their bawling echoed off the rocks all aroun
d the valley. I thought people could probably hear them all the way in town.” Something twisted inside Sol as he remembered. “I’ve never heard anything like that sound. Then I heard the people shouting. It was so loud. I looked up over the cab of the crawler and saw everything.”

  He dropped his gaze to his shoes. “It smelled awful. Like rotten meat. And I remember seeing why. All those dead and dying cows were lying along the fenceline. I remember how their hides were cracked open. I thought they’d been whipped.”

  Sol’s mom was looking at him like she wanted him to stop talking. But when he faltered, she nodded slightly. “Go on,” she said, “what else did you see?”

  “I remember there were other cows, still alive, but scared. I remember all those Park Rangers with their attack dogs and their guns. I didn’t understand why they were standing between Uncle Carl and his cows. I remember there was a line spray-painted across the dirt and rocks.”

  “I asked Luke Anders next to me what was going on. He looked so scared. He said those were your cows, Uncle Carl, and that the update to the fences around Yellowstone was meant to keep people out. The new update made the fence zap anything within fifteen feet of it. Luke said that the Rangers were claiming a twenty-foot easement around the park now—where that line was painted. When I asked why that was bad, he said that meant that twenty feet of everybody's land along the park boundary had been taken just like that. And he said that the Rangers were claiming that now that there was an easement, your cows were on their property. Luke’s mom jumped in to say that they were going to shoot the rest of your cows right there.”

  “I asked him about the stinking carcasses, and he said they were zapped by the fences. Just zapped."

  Molly was nodding. “The new fences were so powerful they just split the poor things right open. People, too, if they got too close."

  Now that he was talking, Sol couldn’t stop. “I just remember all the shouts and threats.” Sol gestured at Uncle Carl. “I saw you didn’t have a gun, and I was scared. Your fists were doubled up like you were going to hit someone. You were shouting at the Rangers.”