Anna managed to turn her head and open her eyes a fraction of an inch. Sephi was a short girl of Asian descent with a round face and friendly smile. The other girls were just staring.
“Anna,” was all she could manage to say before sleep took her.
When she finally awoke, it had begun to get dark. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her it had been nearly 24 hours since her last real meal.
“Are you finally waking up? I’d started to get worried about you. I could hear your stomach grumbling all through the afternoon.”
It was Sephi.
“Come on, let’s get something to eat.”
Anna looked around the room and realized that the other two girls had disappeared sometime during her slumber. She was touched that one of them stayed behind to make sure she was okay.
“Thanks, Sephi. Is the cafeteria open?”
Sephi grinned. “You could say that.”
…
The two girls left the dorm room and headed into the hallway. Anna noticed right away that a shift had taken place while she slept. When she went to sleep, the mood had been somber, and quiet. Now it was like a festival was going on.
Guitars were being strummed, and there were students drumming on empty five-gallon buckets. People danced, drank, and smoked freely. Someone had gathered a 50-gallon steel drum from somewhere, and students were tossing their textbooks in, shouting with glee as they burned.
Anna’s jaw dropped. She’d been to a couple of parties that semester, but never in her life had she seen such hedonism. She had to avert her gaze several times due to some inappropriate physical behavior between co-eds.
All of that was bad, but when she opened the metal doors to the cafeteria, she nearly threw up.
The dining hall was in shambles. Stacks of dishes were being thrown against the wall with glee, discus-style. Students had emptied the soft-serve ice cream of its melted contents and spread it over the floor to create a makeshift Slip ‘N Slide. They had flipped over tables to create forts and were throwing raw burger patties at one another from across the room.
It wasn’t all fun and games, however. As she looked around the hall, Anna noticed several students nursing light wounds; scrapes, cuts and abrasions, things of that nature. What really worried her was the long-term effect of this madness. Would they starve? What about infection for those students who’d been wounded? She wasn’t sure the student clinic was still in one piece, and God only knew how the hospital was faring.
Students were hopping the counter to help themselves to what food was being stored. Boxes of burger patties had been left out on the counter. The freezer door was wide open, allowing all of the cold air to escape, speeding the spoilage of food.
It was too much for Anna to handle. She turned to Josephina. “Go get Brian. Now. He’s in the first floor lounge meeting with some of the other RAs. Tell him it’s an emergency. Go!”
Sephi ran, slipping momentarily on some chocolate ooze before correcting her footing and booking it through the doorway.
“Enough!” Anna shouted at the top of her lungs. She climbed on top of the nearest table, and although it took her several more tries, she eventually had their attention. “Everyone out, now!” A slow trickle of students started to head out the door, but several of the boys stayed. One of them, a tall kid with short, spiky hair that had frosted tips looked at her, smiled, and tossed another plate.
“You,” she said, stabbing a finger in his direction. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, Backstreet. Throw another plate, and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
Most of the students were leaving now, but the exodus slowed as the confrontation between Backstreet and Anna mounted.
Backstreet sneered and took a plate in hand.
Anna hopped down from the table and began to walk toward him, careful to stay out of arm’s reach.
“Don’t even think about it,” Anna said.
Whether it was the look in her eyes or the posse of ResLife staffers that had arrived on scene, Backstreet thought twice. He spat at Anna’s feet and set the plate down on the remainder of the unbroken dishes, turned, and left.
Anna walked over to the freezer and closed the door.
She tossed mops to two of the staffers and began to bag up trash. The others followed suit. Anna was scared to take inventory and see how much their food storage had just been cut short, but she knew it was the next step.
Brian nodded in her direction, obviously embarrassed at his oversight.
Anna smiled. “Cavalry showed up just in time.”
Brian smiled back. “Just out of curiosity, what would you have done if we hadn’t?”
Anna shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
This sent Brian and the other ResLife staffers into a fit of laughter and shoulder clapping.
Brian looked at Anna with admiration in his eyes.
“For a minute there, I thought things were going to get all O.K. Corral in here. Seems like we’ve got a new sheriff in town.”
Anna smiled and tossed him a broom.
“What’re you waiting for, pardner? Let’s get this place cleaned up. After that, I’m laying down the new law of the land.”
Chapter 2 – Against the Grain
Clyde and Antonio couldn’t help but feel like they’d drawn the short straw in being asked by Spider to escort these men north, and now they had to run.
The four men ran like their lives depended on it, and in this case, it actually did.
Antonio, Clyde, Herbie, and Thom sprinted across the parking lot, a cloud of deadly chlorine gas rapidly covering the distance between them. A hundred yards away was a large grain elevator, their salvation.
Clyde was a larger man and was having a hard time keeping up, but he knew that if he stopped he wouldn’t start up again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d run a hundred yards all in one stretch. He also seriously regretted the pack-a-day habit he’d had for the last decade as the cloud overtook him.
The grey-green mist stung his eyes and muddled his vision, which is how he managed to catch his foot on the curb at just the wrong moment. For a split second, the large man flew, then he crashed brutally down to the poorly-maintained concrete surrounding the elevator.
Clyde managed to regain his footing, and he began to run, though slowly, toward the building, still a bit off balance from the fall. Antonio sprinted ahead, clipping Clyde’s shoulder in the process, sending him tumbling to the ground yet again.
Antonio was a younger man of athletic build, and he was easily outpacing the others. Thom watched as he reached the doors to the elevator stairwell, pulled them open, and closed them behind himself in a panic.
Thom turned back toward where Clyde had fallen. The cloud had overtaken him, and the large man was having trouble breathing. He struggled to rise to his feet, but he collapsed again in a fit of coughing.
Thom and Herbie stopped cold, and Thom began to turn and run toward the fallen man, but Herbie’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
“No! You run. Think of your girl. Run!”
Herbie grabbed Thom roughly by the shoulder and spun him around, pushing him toward the elevator.
Tears streamed from Thom’s face, whether from the gas or because he knew that he’d just condemned a man to die a horrible death, he didn’t know.
Thom ran to the heavy steel doors of the elevator. He pulled the handles in an attempt to fling them open wide, and his heart sank when found them locked.
“Antonio, open the door, you bastard!”
Thom pounded impotent fists against the metal portals. The thuds echoed loudly into the otherwise quiet surroundings. He cursed Antonio with every other word. He could hear Clyde somewhere in the cloud, could hear his sick, gurgling, rasping screams.
Herbie reached the do
ors next and began pulling on Thom’s backpack.
“Thom! Thom! The pry bar, man. Use the pry bar!”
Thom grabbed the bar from the side of his backpack and, together with Herbie’s help, began to pry at the heavy door frame, but it wouldn’t budge.
The cloud was almost on them now, and Herbie looked around frantically. He spotted a parked truck not too far away and headed toward it, leaving Thom to pry at the door.
“Hey! Herbie! What in the heck are you doing?!”
In response, the older man snapped the antenna off of the truck and whipped it against the glass of the driver’s side window. The tempered glass shattered, falling in on itself, and Herbie reached in and popped the truck into neutral.
“Get over here and help me push this thing over to the doorway!”
Thom didn’t ask questions. He ran to the rear of the truck and began to push as hard as he could while Herbie steered towards the door.
The impact when the bumper crashed into the doors resulted in a resounding thud, but the locks held strong. Fortunately, it wasn’t Herbie’s intention to use the car as a battering ram.
The old man climbed onto the hood of the truck more swiftly than a man his age had any right to do and was now within arm’s reach of the 2nd story window. With another whip of the antenna, the glass shattered. Using the antenna to clear the remaining glass from the frame, Herbie shouted to Thom, “Get on up here and give me a boost!”
Thom obliged, climbing up on the hood of the truck. Gaining even a few feet of elevation gave a bit of temporary relief from the chlorine cloud, but it still wasn’t enough. They needed a few more precious feet.
Thom held his hands together and boosted the older man up to the window. Herbie reached in, popped a latch, pushed the frame open, and climbed inside.
There was a moment of panic for Thom. He wondered if the old man would leave him there to die.
Then there was a familiar hand stabbing out of the frame, palm open. The two men clasped hands, and Herbie pulled. Moments later, Thom tumbled onto the stairwell landing, breathing the sweetest air he’d ever breathed.
Footsteps.
Frantic footsteps were running up, and up, echoing about the concrete.
“Antonio! Antonio, you can stop running! We’re safe, for now!”
The footsteps continued.
Thom looked to Herbie, who just shrugged.
The two men began to climb the stairs. A few moments later, they heard Antonio shouting for joy.
They ran to catch up and reached the top of the stairwell, where a door stood propped open, leading to a catwalk that attached the elevator to the grain silo. Inside the silo, Antonio was standing on a mountain of wheat, throwing handfuls into the air.
“I’m rich, man! With all this, I can live like a king! Bartering, selling. This is food for years, man. Years! If I can keep it stored safely, I can start my own kingdom! Drugs, booze, women, hired muscle…my own friggin’ harem!”
Thom crept cautiously toward the man, over the railing of the walkway and out onto the surface of the grain. Each step crunched, like he was stepping through the crust on top of a layer of snow.
“Antonio, you’re right. This is great, man. This grain will help a lot of people, but we need to get over to the walkway there. This isn’t safe.”
Herbie hissed for Thom to back up. “He’s coming down off of something, Thom. Not the best time to negotiate.”
Antonio glared, his eyes casting daggers into Thom.
“This is mine, Thom. Mine.”
“That’s fine, Antonio. I don’t want it. I just want us all to get out of here safely. I’m just going to walk over to the rail now.”
“I don’t think so, Thom. Can’t have either of you guys telling others where my treasure is, eh?” Antonio reached into his pocket and pulled out some sort of black polymer pistol. He pointed it at Thom, then at Herbie, then back at Thom again.
“Whoa! You don’t have to do this, Antonio. We’re leaving. Heading north, and then east. You’ll never see us again.”
“Sorry, gentlemen. I don’t take any pleasure in this, but a man has to protect his kingdom.”
Sweat gleamed off of Antonio’s body, his eyes full of paranoid energy. The man’s trigger finger began to tighten while the gun’s sights settled squarely onto Thom’s chest.
Herbie looked on from the doorway, the soft click of his pocketknife blade locking into place.
“No use talking, Thom. He’s coming down off of something. Not going to be in the mood to negotiate. Right, Antonio?”
Antonio’s eyes slipped from Thom to Herbie. Seeing the old man with knife in hand, his face twisted into a snarl, and he began to pull the trigger.
Thom stepped backwards, but as his foot touched down it broke through the crust of grain, sinking into an empty air pocket below. Off balance, he fell backwards, clutching to the railing, while his other foot scrambled for purchase.
The crust began to snap and pop like a frozen lake when the ice finally begins to thaw and break apart. Antonio stood there, paralyzed with a mixture of fear and confusion. The cracks spread quickly, and in a moment the entire surface was shifting, like water draining from a tub.
Antonio was pulled under; he disappeared completely from sight. Thom breathed a sigh of relief and began to pull himself up, when a hand shot forth from the wheat and grabbed him by the ankle.
The hand scrambled, clawing its way up Thom’s leg, pulling him down as it pulled Antonio up.
Against all odds, Antonio clawed his way to the surface, a look of terror in his eyes. He tried to inhale deeply, his lungs making horrible, wracking coughs as they tried to expel the inhaled wheat. He wrapped his arms tightly around Thom’s waist, and they both began to sink.
Herbie was there in an instant. There was a flash of metal, a flicker of scarlet, and the smell of iron mingled with wheat. Antonio shrieked; a high-pitched, gurgling gasp rushed from his mouth before a boot found his face, and the man’s death grip on Thom finally relented and he was swept swiftly under the tide of wheat.
Thom battled to hang on. He clung tightly to the rails, the weight of the wheat doing its best to suck him down. Glass shattered, and a moment later Herbie was looping a fire hose around Thom’s waist, hauling him out.
The two men finally collapsed onto the dusty metal walkway, the roar of the grain eventually dying down to nothing.
Thom and Herbie sat there for a few minutes, catching their breath. Herbie was the first to speak. “Next time someone sings ‘America the Beautiful,’ I think I’ll slug ’em. Amber waves of grain can take a hike.”
Thom coughed, and laughed.
“Thanks, Herbie.”
“Don’t mention it, Thom. Let’s just get you home, okay?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Chapter 3 – Waking Dream
The deer stand swayed slightly in the upper boughs of the old oak tree in the Willis’ back yard as the wind shifted to the south. John smiled as he surveyed the ongoing work in their neighborhood below through a pair of high-powered binoculars.
Work was speeding along. The tractor that old man Pritchet had spent the last few months restoring had really paid off. The defensive wall around the neighborhood was starting to really come together, and swarms of residents worked to get a few crates of seed potatoes planted in newly created towers.
Among the scattered populace of their tiny village was his wife, Talia. John couldn’t help himself, he turned the binoculars over to the home serving as their clinic and smiled to see his wife welcoming some of the elderly residents in for a checkup. She really was beautiful, inside and out. He considered himself a lucky man.
Satisfied his wife was safe, John turned the binoculars back where they should be looking—outside of their walls—and was surpri
sed to see a thick, pea green cloud headed their direction. He scrambled for the fog horn at his belt, sounding the horn twice before scrambling to unbuckle himself from the stand.
The speed cost him dearly, causing him to lose his balance and slip. The ground rushed to meet him, and John thought he was going to die. Then the line that had tangled itself around his thigh snapped tight, flinging him violently headfirst into the tree.
John had been in a few fights growing up, and he knew he could take a punch, but the old oak punched harder than any of those men, and he saw stars.
When he finally recovered his wits enough to assess his situation, John found himself dangling upside down stuck in the nylon straps. The strap cut tightly into the upper thigh of his left leg, and lightning-sharp pain radiated up his hip and lower back when he tried to move. He breathed deeply, calming himself and reassessing his situation. He was still a good eight to ten feet off of the ground, but he thought he could take the fall. He knew he could probably cut the cord and tuck his shoulder enough to spare his head and neck the majority of the impact.
The force of slamming into the ground sent his mind reeling. Pain like nothing he’d felt before jarred him, and his body begged for the gift of unconsciousness. His vision began to grow dim, the darkness creeping from the outer edges of his sight inward until all that was left was a tunnel the size of a pinpoint.
John focused on the tunnel with all of his might, willing it to grow larger, but another jolt of pain pushed him over the limits. The last thing John saw before the darkness took him were tendrils of noxious gas creeping over the tops of his privacy fence, cascading down into his yard, heading right toward him.
…
Linus tucked the bottle of whiskey into the zip-up hoodie jacket his rescuers had given him. Then he exited the little makeshift clinic the neighborhood had created. The nurse, Talia, and her husband hadn’t bothered to try and hide where they’d stored it. They’d even left the key to the cabinet right where anyone could find it. They were unusually trusting people. He’d have to remember that for future use.
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