by James Davis
Chapter Eighteen
Eye of the Storm
The Rages wrapped dark and deadly arms around the deserts of Castle Valley, blotting out the midday sun, swirling dust into the heavens faster and faster until it cut like glass everything it touched. Harley drove north, pushing the pickup he had begun to think of as his own as fast as it would go, but the storm already encircled him, trapping him in its baleful eye.
What used to be called State Route 10, back when roads lead to somewhere worth going, made a meandering path through the deserts of Castle Valley. When it was built the road cut through a number of hills that looked very much as the colonies of monstrous ants. Driving through these cuts on a blustery day, which was an everyday kind of day in the spring and early summer, cross winds would pummel your vehicle and try to rip the steering wheel from your hand. Flying through these same cuts at more than 90 miles an hour while fleeing hurricane strength winds was something else entirely. Harley cursed as the truck was thrown first to the right and then the left and ended up off the road, its nose buried in the soft embankment of a hill.
He threw the truck into reverse and started to back onto the road, but when he looked out on the valley and saw one and then two and then three tornadoes touch down he thought better of it. He put the truck in park, hunkered down and decided to wait it out. If there was a safer place to be while the storm raged, it was beyond his reach.
Before the Rages, when the world did not seem so intent on humanity’s destruction, tornadoes were almost unheard of in Castle Valley or anywhere else in Utah. They were an oddity and seldom had any real strength to them when they did touch down. Of course, so were swarms of locust, rivers of blood, disease, pestilence and any of the other highlights of the apocalypse, but they were all fairly commonplace now. The world was ending and humanity thought they were living in paradise. Harley reclined his seat and pulled a beer out of the center console refrigerator.
“Welcome to the future.”
He caught a glimpse of Orrin pass in the big truck. They had unhooked the cattle trailer and were crawling back toward the city. They did not see Harley half buried in the side of the hill and he raised his beer in a silent toast as they passed. The storm continued to rage; the wind still howled, and the rains came down in horizontal sheets that blurred his vision. Thunder rumbled across the desert like some angry beast. The Wrynd would be hard pressed to make it through and he counted himself lucky that the wind had pushed him off the road within the cut of the hillside. It offered more protection than he would find anywhere else on the road. Sometimes, even the damned had a good day.
He fell asleep to the sound of the thunder and the wind and the rain hitting the windshield and dreamed of his mother and in his dream he was a little boy again and when he smiled it seemed like it was real. They lived in a singlewide trailer in Kayenta, AZ., and his mother worked at the Conoco convenience store in town, where they still sold gasoline but mostly natural gas. He remembered they had a dog; a yellow lab Harley named Spot for some ridiculous reason only a small boy could understand. The dog loved everyone except Harley. Spot would snap at him whenever he tried to pet him and he wondered now, some 32 years later while sleeping in a dead man’s pickup with a storm raging around him and people looking to kill him, if the dog hated him because he had named him Spot. He didn’t think so. Harley’s mother told him he had a way of bringing out the worst in people and he guessed the talent extended to dogs as well.
His father was a roughneck for the gas fields in North Dakota. He would come home only rarely, but when he did Harley remembered his mother would smile and be happy and he would be happy as well because his father had been kind to them and would bring them presents. He remembered a baseball his father had brought him and a glove to go with it and even though he couldn’t catch or throw very well, his father took him outside and tried to teach him and laughed because he said Harley threw like a little girl. Come to think of it, he guessed he had.
But then came fusion and there was no more need to go to North Dakota because nothing was being done there. But his father left anyway. He knelt on the ground outside of their trailer and took Harley by his skinny arms to say goodbye for the last time. He remembered there was no lawn in the yard, just dirt, everywhere was dirt, dirt and rock and little else. His mother had planted an apple tree, but it had died and it stood like a skeleton in front of the porch.
“I’ve gotta go Har.” He said, holding onto his skinny arms. He had called him Har all the time and would laugh and say “Har Har Har” and Harley would laugh back. Wade was his name. His father’s name was Wade. Sometimes he forgot that, but he remembered in his dream. He had the most unusual eyes, Harley remembered. They would change colors, sometimes green, sometimes brown, sometimes gray, depending on whether he was happy or sad, angry or glad.
“Why do you have to go?” Harley had asked and he wasn’t crying because even then he did not cry, even when the dog bit him, even when the bigger boys beat him at school, he did not cry.
“For work. I need to go for work.”
“But Mom says there’s not any work anymore ‘cause of the fusion.”
“I’ve still gotta go. Gotta find something.” His father had said.
“Will you come back?”
“I will. Will you watch after your Mom for me?”
“I will.”
They had both lied.
Before Harley’s father left (whose name was Wade), he reached behind him and pulled a pistol. It was a 9mm. He held it before Harley as an offering. “To protect your Mom. Do you remember how to use it?”
Harley nodded and took the gun and his father left and never came back. The first thing Harley did with the gun was kill the dog. He was nine.
Then came the Energy Wars and even though the war never came to America you heard about it often enough and he remembered his Mom watching the news on an old fashioned television in the front room. Even when he was a boy she had been suspicious of technology and didn’t even own a computer.
He was 13 when the United States passed the Right to Income law and he remembered the awe and wonder he felt when he learned that RTI extended to anyone 14 and older. He would be old enough in a year. He would have an income. He would be free. The day after he received his first RTI funds he packed his bags and told his mother goodbye. She was getting ready to go to work when he came into the front room; the pack strapped to his skinny back and his father’s pistol tucked in the back of his jeans. She was going to work even though she received her RTI funds every week. It was more than two weeks’ worth of pay from the country store she had started working at when the Conoco closed down. But she was going to work anyway. He remembered thinking she was a crazy woman, his mother.
“Will you come back?” She had asked him. She didn’t look surprised that he was leaving; he thought she almost looked grateful to be done with him.
“I’ll come back.”
He had come back, but not for some time. He made his way to Phoenix, which was in the midst of a construction boom, transforming into a Hub and he rode his first HSP train east, hopping from one rail line to the next until he ended up in Minnesota. The Minnesota Hub was as close as he could get. All of North Dakota was being returned to the Wilderness. The Exodus had begun and everyone was moving to a Hub. He walked the rest of the way, catching rides when he could and spent the next year crisscrossing the state, looking for any sign of his father (his name was Wade). He never found him.
When he saw his mother again he was 17 and his mother looked like she had aged 20 years in the three he was gone. There had been a man living with her and he saw the bruises on her arms and he pointed the gun at the man’s head. He left without argument. He had seen her twice more since then; the last time was four years earlier.
“She’ll be dead soon enough.” The voice was a harsh slap in his dream and his dark eyes opened. They were bloodshot and weary. The voice sounded like the rasp of Orrin and even though it had only been a voice in a d
ream he knew it was telling the truth. If his mother still lived in her trailer in Kayenta, she would be dead soon. The Wrynd would either push her to a Hub or devour her. And his mother would not be pushed.
The storm still raged outside and Harley popped his last beer and drank slowly. He was hungry, but there was no food. He smoked a cigarette instead, cracking the window just enough to let the smoke out and a bit of the wind and rain inside.
His thoughts turned to the old man and the animals who had rushed to his rescue and he puzzled for answers but could find none. The world was a marvelous place, he knew. Man could do so much. You could replace one body part for another with a simple visit to a Medprint. Bad heart? No problem, just print another one and a quick surgery later you were on your way home, good as new. Didn’t like the world the way you saw it? Slip into the Link and create your own world in the digiverse. You could request to live at any Hub in the world or even the Wheel circling the planet and you at least had a chance of getting a relocate permit. Even if you didn’t, what did it matter? In the digiverse, you could live there without being there. Humanity had solved most of its ills and if the world had turned against them, it was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. But despite all of that, despite all of the wonder and glory at mankind’s fingertips, there was nothing Harley had seen or heard of that could describe what the old man kneeling on the pavement of SR-10 had done.
He flicked his cigarette butt out the crack in the window. It would be nice to have some answers and since he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, he could at least see if he could find some. He slipped on his eyeset and entered the Link.
Chapter Nineteen
An Answer to Humanity
He linked to the digital version of the Provo City Park he had visited while at the Hub and sent an invitation to Marshal Tempest to join him. He didn’t expect that she would. He sat on a park bench and listened to the classical music softly playing in the background.
There was no one else at the park and he watched as a gentle breeze swung the swings and whispered through the trees. He liked it here, even though it wasn’t real; it was a nice place to visit. He gave himself a book to read, an old fashioned paperback novel, a Louis L’Amour western and he enjoyed the feel of the paper in his hands. His mother used to read him Louis L’Amour novels before putting him to bed. He had been thinking too much of his mother and shook the memory away.
He read the first chapter before he was bothered by anyone and when he looked up he saw Marshal Jodi Tempest walking toward him from the playground. She wasn’t wearing her uniform. Instead, she wore a simple pair of shorts and a sleeveless shirt and he admired her long legs and trim body. Her hair was down and flowed over her shoulders and he wondered two things at once: the first was why she had chosen to appear to him in such a manner and the second was why had he chosen to be alone most of his life? The first he hadn’t a clue, the second was because in general people annoyed him, even beautiful people.
Jodi sat on the bench beside him and smiled as she surveyed the empty park.
“All alone Harley?”
“You’re here.”
Jodi nodded. “But why sit in a park without any people? You could have fillers at least; it wouldn’t be so depressing.”
“I can’t abide fillers.”
“Can you abide anyone?” Harley was silent for a moment and Jodi laughed. “I’ll take that as a no.”
“Thinkin’ on it.”
“Why did you call me here Harley?”
Harley leaned forward and let the Louis L’Amour novel dissolve away. He clasped his fingers and let them touch his dry lips. “I was thinking about balance.”
Jodi leaned forward as well and turned her head to look at him. “Balance?”
“Balance can be a difficult thing to restore once it’s lost.”
“Agreed.”
“I was just wondering when you have Wrynd still using their linktags and using scyes and pulse weapons and driving vehicles how that might upset the balance in your Federation.”
“I was wondering the same thing.” Jodi’s eyes looked troubled.
“It is your territory, isn’t it Marshal?”
“It is.”
“Well, you have the makings of a lunatic army in the Wilderness, in case you didn’t know. They’re quite intent on killing me actually, which may be of no concern to you but is a mild one to me.”
“I understand.”
“But that isn’t the biggest problem with balance you’re facing.”
“What is?”
“You’ve got Gandalf running around out there as well.”
“Gandalf?”
Harley stared at her. “Never mind. I think you know who I’m talking about. I think you know what he did to Orrin and his mad zombies.”
“Is he the Gray Walker?”
“No. He’s something else.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Just am. I think I saw something of the Gray Walker’s out there, at the end. If it was, then I don’t have much interest in meeting up with him.”
“What do you think they are? The Gray Walker and this old man?”
“Something beyond the Federation’s legionnaires and even their mighty Marshals. What I saw of them is beyond anything in any version of reality you claim to control.”
“Are they a threat?”
Harley shrugged. “Maybe they’re an answer.”
“To what?”
Harley looked at Jodi, at the curve of her arm next to his. Their arms almost touched. “To us.”
“Us?”
“I met a young man on the trail who told me we were rotting.”
“We?”
“Humanity. We were rotting and the Earth knew it and was cleansing herself of us. That was the answer for the Rages. Maybe the Gray Walker and the old man are the answer to us. Something of humanity that hasn’t spoiled.”
“Do you think you’re spoiled Harley?”
Harley thought back to the day on the swing when he had watched the old couple hand out the most beautiful apples he had ever seen to the people of Orangeville. He had reached for an apple and the old man had taken it away.
“I know I’m spoiled.”
Jodi studied him quietly and he found her gaze pleasing. “What do your people believe Harley Nearwater?”
“My people?” Harley’s brow furrowed. “My people.” He remembered his mother sometimes told him stories when he was very small, before his father left, before she grew to hate him. He remembered something of a Changing Woman but nothing more. He also remembered his mother wore a cross on occasion, so he did not know if they were Christian or followed the beliefs of the Navajo. It didn’t seem to matter. Whatever the beliefs of his parents or his people, those beliefs had done little to shape the man he was. “I think whatever my people are, whatever they believe, they would rather I not speak for them.”
Jodi smiled softly. “What do you suggest I do about it, this imbalance in the Wilderness?”
“I know what I would do.”
“And what is that?”
Harley stood and looked down at her. “I’d strap on a sidearm and take care of what needs to be taken care of.”
“Such as?”
“You have a Wrynd Marshal in your territory using his scye and arming his zombies. I’d start there.”
“How do you know he was a marshal?”
“His scye is red, just like yours. Tell me he isn’t.”
“Killing Orrin would serve your purpose rather nicely.”
Harley winked. “Wouldn’t hurt.”
“And the Gray Walker and this old man who commands the weather and the animals?”
“I’d steer clear of them. But that’s just me.”
Jodi stood beside him and they looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 played in the park. “Do you know where this old man went after the Rages saved him?”
Harley narrowed his gaze into a squint an
d shook his head. “I don’t.” The lie came easy to his lips. He tipped his head. “Good day Marshal Tempest.” He left the digiverse in a blink, leaving the marshal standing in an empty city park.
Outside the storm began to wane and he slept for a time. When he woke he opened the door and climbed out and his boots sank in the mud. He made his way to the highway. He walked to where the slope of the hill ended and he could see the entire valley. Lightning and thunder played a symphony to the north in the valley and the black clouds still roiled. He caught the first whiff of smoke and looked to his left. The mountains were burning. It was kindling dry and with the wind he knew a firestorm would soon be racing north and south and east and west.
It was time to go. He could go home to Orangeville and rest up for a bit and after a good night’s sleep or two he could pack the truck and go through the San Rafael Swell until he hit the old Interstate 70. There was still a service road that followed the high-speed rail that had replaced the interstate. He could follow it until he hit US-191 toward the ruins of Moab, where a small hamlet of neands and pilgrims still lived and were preyed upon by Wrynd, who came down the Colorado River to terrorize the natives and eat lunch. From there it was an easy route south to Kayenta. He could save his mother and forget about Wrynd and Gray Walkers and old men who had powers they should not have. He could forget about Marshal Tempest and how it felt to sit beside her, even in the digiverse instead of the universe and he could try to find a bit of peace in his world while there was still a world for it to be found.
He turned and headed back for his truck. Already he was starting to smile because he missed his house, where he used to sit on his porch and look down on the sleepy little town and not worry about people and how uncomfortable they always made him feel.