Claimed: Faction 3: The Isa Fae Collection

by Heather Hambel Curley

  Strange there were still there this late in the day.

  I turned slightly, glancing across the open expanse of open ground between the barn and the house. In an upper window I could see a figure standing, moving slightly like they were in the process of turning away. Mercy.

  God damn that woman. I headed around the side of the barn: the smaller door to Vaughn’s workshop was in the rear. Somehow his mother always knew when I was around. She didn’t like it—or me. I was perfectly content fucking Vaughn in the shop. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  “Vaughn?” I rapped my knuckles against the rough-hewn wood. “It’s me.”

  No response.

  I knocked again, harder this time. “I was on my way into Distant and thought I’d stop by. You know how much I—“

  The door opened a crack, the hingers creaking with the movement. The sound made me jump: it was noise I wasn’t used to; was it always there? Covered up by the sounds of Vaughn or his brother puttering around the barn, the old gasoline generator, or maybe the cows.

  I turned again, this time looking back at the First Field. The black figures were still there. They hadn’t moved. Or had they? God, the silence was driving me out of my mind.

  I raised my hand to the door and slowly crooked my fingers towards me. It swung open under my control.

  The inside of the barn was dark.

  “Vaughn?” I stepped inside, one hand on the hilt of my knife and the other outstretched. I muttered, “Proferet in lucem.”

  The overhead lights on the barn’s upper beams burst on; a lamp on Vaughn’s workbench snapped on with such force, the bulb exploded.

  It was empty.

  “Vaughn? Everett?” I crept a few steps further inside, trying to look at every corner of the interior at the same time. I could see my memory of the barn in my mind like a photograph. The baler, the big red harvester. The antique plow the draft horse—now long dead—plowed when the tracker was broken. It was all there.

  But the rusted green pickup wasn’t.

  I back peddled to Vaughn’s shop. Tools and a half finished soldering project laid abandoned on his workbench. This wasn’t like him at all, he never left the bench a mess. Shit, he never left anything a mess—his pa used to beat him and Everett when things weren’t put away. He was fanatical about it.

  He’d left in a hurry.

  I slid my hand under the lip of the workbench. His shotgun, always loaded and latched in place, was gone. So, it hadn’t been that big a hurry.

  A feeling washed over my shoulders, something I’d never felt before. It clenched my stomach in a knot, my heart skipped out of cadence. It was time to go.

  Darting out of the barn, I waved my hand out behind me as I ran, slamming the door shut. Something happened to Vaughn and, the way Mercy was just standing at the upper window, she no doubt knew about it. Christ. The hag.

  As I rounded the corner, I slammed into a somewhat smaller person. It threw me off balanced and I stumbled, almost rolling my ankle. “God damn it, Soleil, what part of ‘wait here’ don’t you understand?”

  She held her hand up as if to silence me. “Don’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what?” God, she was so irritating.

  “The static.” Her jaw went slack and she shoved past me; her sudden force was startling. “What happened to them?”

  “You know about as much as I do. The pick up’s gone, so I’m guessing Vaughn and Everett took it.”

  “No, them. The cows.”

  I followed her stare out to the shadows in the First Field. My mouth was dry; I couldn’t swallow. “What are you talking about?”

  “They’re dead.”

  I didn’t look at her. I didn’t have to, I knew she was right. Soleil could sense that kind of shit, if she said the herd was dead, she’d know.

  She suddenly dropped to her knees, digging her fingers into the dusty soil. Her eyes squeezed closed, the soft lines of her brows furrowed down into a frown. “They were afraid.”

  “Soleil.”

  “He came to them, one by one, and bled them. There was so much blood…” A tear squeezed between her lashes and to her cheek. “They were so confused…they trusted him.”

  I turned away from my sister, my heart pounding so hard in my chest that I could feel it thud against my corset. None of this made any sense. We needed to get the fuck out of here. Forget getting laid, forget a field of dead cows. Get the supplies from Distant and curse the farm. Get out.

  And then I heard the static.

  It almost felt foreign to my ears. After all the time at our camp, without electronics or power, this was a sound I hadn’t heard in what felt like a lifetime. But, it was out of place here. They ran the radio on the generator and only for small blocks of time. It was a special treat; it was something they used to hold on to reality, in bits and pieces, and only when they absolutely needed it. I didn’t know where the radio signals came from: obviously, there was some place out there that still had music.

  That music was gone, now replaced with static.

  I closed my eyes, my temples searing in white hot pain. Before, it seemed like Vaughn and his brother just left in some kind of hurry. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  Sliding my knife free from the sheath, I crept up to the house and made my way around the exterior. The static was like a lure, pulling me closer. All the windows were sealed tightly; all but one. The kitchen window was open a few inches.

  I secured the knife and stood on my tiptoes and peered inside. I needed to be higher; I climbed up, bracing my feet against the painted wood siding and scrambled upward. The radio was on the counter, the antenna pointed to the window for better reception. Damn it, I still wasn’t high enough to see what was on the table—

  “Wren!” Soleil tugged on my pants, almost knocking me off the side of the house. “Get down! We have to go. Something terrible happened here.”

  “I have to make sure Mercy is okay, if she knows where Vaughn is.” I reached upward with my hand and forced the window up from the sill. “She blind, Soleil. Show some kindness and…well, mercy. Show mercy.”

  My sister didn’t respond and I didn’t care. I hoisted myself up and fumbled over the sill; once my feet were firm on the floor, I yanked out my knife. “Mercy? It’s Wren Richards. Vaughn’s friend? I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  I glanced at the table as I shifted towards the living room. It was still completely set, porcelain dishes of rotted food at three of the four chairs. The last seat had an empty dish: Mercy always set one for her dead husband.

  I stared at the food, at the moldy bread and rank, mottled meat. They’d been gone awhile. I could see pockets where maggots had churned through the meat, burrowing their way through the place settings and larger dish at the center of the table. I chewed back the urge to vomit. The stench in the house was putrid. The thick milk in each glass, the rotted meat. My eyes watered. God, what happened that they left so fast—and Mercy stayed?

  The living room looked like I remembered, though with a thick layer of dust. Vaughn’s beat up leather jacket was draped over an armchair.

  The smell was worse in here.

  I ran my fingers down the well-worn leather, letting the teeth of the zipper dig into my skin. It didn’t ground me or anything, or give me a spark of intuition as to what happened. It made me feel a little better; it was a connection to him. I remembered the first time he draped it over my shoulders. He’d kissed me.

  “Mercy?” I turned away from the jacket. We weren’t exclusive, not in any sense of the word, but he was special to me. He was Vaughn. I didn’t want to think about what could have happened to him.

  I didn’t want to know what was upstairs.

  Forcing one foot after the other, I gripped the bannister until my knuckles turned white and trudged up the stairs. One, two; the third one creaks and the fifth has a loose nail on the front left side. Somehow, I knew. The warmth I felt for Vaughn, the terror welled up in my chest; beyond all that, I knew what was w
aiting up there. I just couldn’t fathom hot it happened—or what happened next.

  And when I walked into Mercy’s room, I saw her hanging in front of the window, the weight of her body somehow swaying on the end of the rope. Her tongue protruded from her mouth, yellow liquid streaming from her nose and bulging eyes. She’d been blind, but somehow I knew she’d seen this coming. There was no struggle. Even the tiny glass perfume bottles were still lined up on her dresser. Her bed was made, the blankets smooth.

  Anything could have happened here; anything could have happened to Vaughn. The pieces were all there, I just couldn’t put them all together.

  The winds shifted. I didn’t want to know why.

  Four

  Soleil’s breathing was rapid, gasping and frantic to the point I thought she’d hyperventilate and pass out. I wouldn’t have cared; I’d have welcomed the quiet. She had a cyst in her sinus that whistled when she huffed. Irritating.

  I stared at a point between Domino’s ears. They’d pricked upward, turning with every fall of her hooves. She was nervous. Maybe it was radiating off my sister; maybe the horse sensed the dead cows. Whatever it was, it made her skitter back and forth, pulling stubbornly against the harness.

  “We should go back.” Soleil pressed the pads of her fingers against her temple. “Something’s wrong. I can feel it.”

  I jerked the reins to my side and forced Domino back to the right side of the road. “Not an option.”

  “Whatever we’re going to pick up, we can live without.”

  “Are you going to be the one to tell Pa that, Princess? Because I’d love to hear that conversation. ‘Sorry, we ran into trouble and I decided we didn’t need those supplies. They couldn’t be that important.’ Right. Not even for you, Soleil. He wouldn’t take that shit from anyone.”

  She jammed her thumb to her mouth and gnawed on the nail. “I can smell it. I can feel it, Wren, something is wrong. It’s brewing out there,” she removed her thumb from her mouth long enough to motion to the road in front of us, “like a storm. Nothing can stop it.”

  “We weather storms. We’ll get through this. Besides,” I glanced at her, she’d already chewed her nail down to the skin; much further and she’d draw blood, “how much worse could it be, compared to what we’ve already been through?”

  She didn’t respond. Her thumbnail still firmly planted between her teeth, she dropped her free hand to her opposite arm, vigorously rubbing the flesh. I tried to block it out. She was exaggerating; she was building this shit up so she had something to complain about when we got back to camp. My sister was in tune with the universe, it seemed, and right before things happened, she felt it. A shift, an emotion bearing down on the world around her; whatever it was, Soleil felt the vibration. She felt the cold. And when the end had arrived and mankind came to an end, she shivered for a week straight.

  This isn’t like that. I flicked the reins against Domino’s flank. It wouldn’t hurt to go a little faster. She’s just being Pa’s whiny bitch.

  Other than the horror at Vaughn’s farm and the lack of traffic on the main road into Distant, nothing was out of the ordinary. Granted, that was a lot that was strange. But, it was easily explained, wasn’t it? Maybe Vaughn or Everett finally had enough of Mercy’s condescending neediness. Maybe she’d killed herself and they’d fled in fear. As for the deserted road…there was always the chance Soleil was right. Maybe everyone was busy.

  I squirmed on the driver’s bend, adjusting my weight from one hip to the other. If I sat and thought long enough, no doubt I could come up with a hundred excuses and explain away what was happening. Something was wrong.

  But I wasn’t going to give my sister the satisfaction.

  She started mumbling and chanting in words I didn’t quite understand, either because she was pronouncing them wrong or because it was a language I didn’t know. Her eyes rolled up in her head and her eyelashes fluttered. I looked away. Just get Pa’s supplies and go home. When the end had come, she’d been cold for a week. This was different; if something was wrong, we had plenty of time.

  Eventually the farm fields died away; we rode into Distant at the western gate, crossing the stone bridge suspended over Sour River. The water was covered in a yellow and orangey alkaline film—it didn’t surprise me that there were no boats or people in the river. There never was; the water lived up to its name: sour. It corroded metal, it ate away flesh.

  Completely normal.

  Deep down, I knew it wasn’t. And as I guided Domino into Distant, I saw it with my own eyes: it was life had suddenly stopped. The street was deserted; rotted food was still displayed outside a dry good’s store. Maggots poured out of the carcass of a horse still tied to a hitching post. Doors were left open. It was as if everyone in town simply dropped what they were doing and walked away.

  “What the hell?” I tugged on the reins, slowing the horse to a stop outside Renner’s, the importer my father dealt with; a thousand shops in and around Distant and he had to pick this bastard. Renner Sr. may have been fine, but his son, Jerby, was an asshat. Vaughn once broke all the bones in his hands when he’d tried to grope me at a picnic—

  —I bit down on my tongue so hard I tasted blood. Vaughn had disappeared. He wasn’t around to sick up for me anymore.

  “Fuck.” I jumped down from the wagon and dropped the reins to the ground. Domino wasn’t going anywhere: she looked like she wanted to melt into the ground. “What happened here?”

  “They were smart. They left.” Soleil leaned over and slid the reins towards her, gripping the leather straps so hard that I could see the whites of her knuckles. “We need to go, Wren. Not in a minute, not after you get the supplies. Now.”

  Ignoring her, I threw my shoulders back and walked to the front door of Renner’s. It was open; of course it was. It was a store. “Hello? Mr. Renner?”

  Silence.

  I walked further inside, my fingertips balanced evenly on my knife. I was at the ready, but held back enough to look causal. The last thing I wanted was to slice through Old Man Renner’s throat. Jerby, yes. I’d cut him. His dad was by far less repulsive.

  But there was no one in there. The shelves and bins were still somewhat stocked, though all the fresh produce had long since rotted. A few skeins of wool, several bolts of cloth; wooden items, ivory and iron—it was all there. Nothing was amiss.

  I crept behind the front counter, pawing through the scattering of papers still laid across the top. Invoices and orders, receipts and a schematic for what looked like a small addition to the southern end of the building. The dates were meaningless to me—I had no idea what the date was—but it seemed like everything had come to a stop on the ninth. Whatever day of the week that was, in whatever month. They’d left on the ninth.

  Soleil’s silhouette darkened the threshold of the open door. I held up one of the receipts. “The ninth. That’s when the left.”

  “So?”

  “Maybe four days ago? Based solely on the maggots spilling out of the horse out there. It takes about three to five days for them to get that big.” I shrugged, again thumbing through the ledger. “So, it’s not a Sunday. It’s Thursday.”

  “Oh.” She shuffled into the storeroom, her hugging herself and gripping her shoulders as if for security. “What did Pa need?”

  I shrugged, tossing the paperwork back on the counter. “He just said to pick up an order for him. The last time I came, I just said who I was and Mr. Renner got the packages for me.”

  “That’s helpful.”

  “At least it wasn’t Jerby fetching everything.”

  “He’s a letch.”

  I raised my eyebrows. She was right. It left me somewhat speechless; she and I never agreed on anything. “Maybe there’s another room?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe it never arrived.”

  Maybe…yeah, she had a point. Pa no doubt had some kind of tracking system or a calendar so he knew when to send us on a supply run. He’d sent us today for a reason. The shipment shou
ld be here, somewhere, right? “I’ll check in the back. If it was delivered, it has to be here somewhere. And, if it isn’t…we’ll just grab what we can and leave.”

  I walked to the back of the store. Renner’s wasn’t set up like the mega-marts I remembered from before; it was more like the shops I’d seen in articles about the Old West. Stuff crammed on wooden shelves, even more crap hanging from the ceiling. I knew he ran the rails and was able to have goods sent in from outposts around the state—and that was why his shit was so damn expensive.

  There was only one door in the rear, standing ajar and with a hand lettered employees only sign taped, crooked, at eye level. I held out my hand, twitching my fingers to the side.

  The door opened.

  “I don’t think you should go in there.” Soleil was hanging back, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “We need to leave.”

  I ripped the paper sign off the door and crumpled it into a ball. “Is that better?”

  Tossing the paper wad aside, I muttered the command for light; the room was brilliantly illuminated with soft glow. It was all magic: the overhead light socket was bare, the room itself windowless and without lamps. A battered table cluttered with papers and binders was nearest the door. Across the room, in a corner, was an old fashioned black iron safe.

  The door was open.

  Glancing under the table to make sure no one was lurking under it, I entered the room and glanced into the safe. It was empty—except for one piece of folded, yellowed paper.

  I snagged it out and unfolded it, glancing at the carefully scripted words.

  Soleil slid her feet closer to the room, but didn’t cross the threshold. “What it is?”

  “The deed to the building.” I refolded it and tossed it back into the safe. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  She shifted from one foot to the other. “Please, can we debate this later? Let Pa blame me. I just want to go.”

  She was probably right. I wasn’t about to verbalize that to her; I walked past her and back into the main storeroom. “Should we bring something back? I mean, do you have any idea what kind of supplies we needed? He makes us create everything from bark and wet reeds, so I can’t imagine that he’d actually spend money on anything. Nails, maybe? Would some nails calm him down?”