Harmonic: Resonance

by Laeser, Nico

  “What is it?” He brought the rifle up and put his eye to the scope.

  While Powell panned the rifle from left to right, Haley scribbled in her pad and then turned it to face me. There are animals in the camp and the army are shooting at them.

  I frowned at her message. “What's happening? She says there are animals down there.”

  “I don’t know what they are. They’re just shapes, shadows. The people in the camp are running scared, they’re going crazy.” His frantic tone trailed off to a whisper. “What the …”

  “They’re shooting people.”

  “What? Why?” As I took the binoculars from Haley’s lap, I heard the delayed report of gunfire.

  “They rushed the gate and soldiers opened fire,” he said in disbelief.

  “They’re shooting people in the lineup? Are Sean and Sarah—”

  Powell interjected. “They’re not shooting people in the lineup. The people aren’t rushing the gate to get in. It’s the people in the camp trying to get out. They’re being shot for trying to escape.”

  Through the glass, the crowd was a blur, turning in every direction amid swirls of kicked up dust. I fumbled at the focus wheel to widen my view and watched the crowd part, dissipate, and regroup like a school of fish sharing the water with a predator. At the camp, the soldiers were backing away with their weapons trained on the fence. The brief burst of light from each muzzle was translated a second later as an echoing crack, crack, crack. The wall of people inside the camp slumped against the bulging mesh, while others clambered over the dead, climbed the fence, and fell limp before reaching the barbed wire. Through the blur of tears, I watched the dirt around the camp’s perimeter darken with the blood of the trampled dead.

  “What are they doing? Why aren’t they trying to get away from the soldiers?” I cried.

  “They’re trying to get away from whatever those things are, and whatever they are, they’re worse than being shot.”

  I wiped my eyes and returned to the chaos inside the camp. I caught sight of dark shapes darting between people as they ran, trampling and falling over each other to get away. The animals were unclear. Some were nothing more than distortions in space, and others gave the impression of stalking cats or their pouncing shadows. My heart thumped quickly in my chest, and my eyes began to sting with tears.

  “It’s madness. What are they?” I cried.

  “It’s the next wave,” Powell said. “Take Haley and go back to the house. I’m going to get the others.”

  “What? You can’t go down there,” I blurted.

  “Whatever they are, they’re going to manifest here the same way the dead did. Right now, they don’t seem to be inflicting anything but panic. That is going to change. We have to move now.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” I said.

  He took a hold of my shoulders. “I’ll grab the others and get the hell out of there. Take Haley and try to find a vehicle that works and meet us back at the van.”

  He took the shotgun from his pack and strapped the rifle in its place. “Take this and use it if you have to. If we’re not there by the time you’ve transferred the supplies from the van, don’t wait, just leave, and we’ll meet you back at the house.”

  “I’m scared, Powell,” I said.

  “I’m scared too, but we have to do this now. Grab your stuff and go.” He pulled on his pack, got to his feet, and began his descent, scrambling and hanging onto tree limbs as he climbed and slid down and out of sight. I took Haley by the arm and told her to follow me and that everything would be okay. Though my tone was unreadable to her eyes, my expression surely exposed the blatant lie.

  32 | Jack and Jill ...

  Between the van that still held our supplies and the place we had chosen as our vantage point over the camp, there had been no working or serviceable vehicles. Our only choice was to continue on, following the road up and around the cliff—past the camper we had used to shelter us against the cold night air and farther along the lifeless road. For every few hundred yards traveled came the reward of another wreckage, although most were dismissed at a glance. Of the vehicles that passed visual inspection, some were missing keys, and the rest made no effort to obey the key when turned.

  We came upon a truck, the same make and model as my father’s. The keys hung from the ignition, and even with the hood up, some sentimental part of me took it as a sign from my dad, and I allowed myself to hope. I climbed up onto the driver’s seat and turned the key. Nothing happened. My hopes and my heart sank. For a minute, I sat, leaned forward with my head against the steering wheel with my eyes closed. When I opened them again, Haley was there, standing at the open door with a joyless, sympathetic smile, a reminder of my lie that everything would be okay.

  As we strode away, I turned back, half-expecting to see my father waving goodbye, but the raised hood obscured the truck’s interior, giving only a shallow view of the dead engine.

  “Wait.” I touched Haley’s shoulder to get her attention. “The battery is disconnected,” I said and gestured for her to follow me back to the truck.

  She frowned but remained in tow.

  I tapped the clamps down onto the battery terminals with a rock, but they remained loose enough to turn. Haley stood patiently, facing the cliff, while I searched through her pack for the multi-tool, hoping it had been on Gary’s list and not just in my imagination. The tool was there, a folding set of pliers, screwdrivers, and blades. I tightened the clamps and climbed back into the truck, all the while trying to prepare myself for silence. I let out my breath slowly, as though readying myself to lift a heavy weight, and turned the key. The engine coughed, cycled, but failed to turn over. I tried again, but the result was the same.

  I climbed out and opened the small door to the gas cap. When I unscrewed the cap, the tank gasped for air. I unclipped my pack, dropped it to the road, pulled out a bottle of water, and handed it to Haley, urging her to drink, before retrieving the coiled rubber hose and a bottle of water for myself.

  With our bottles empty, I stood and scoured the road ahead for the nearest vehicle. Haley took the bottle and hose from me and offered a smile in exchange. She had watched Powell siphon gas from the various wreckages along the way, and by the simple gesture of a smile, she was asking me to trust her with the task.

  “You’re such a beautiful, special little girl,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Her smile turned shy before she turned and ran to complete her task.

  While she made her way up the hill, I checked the oil, fluids, and tires with a version of the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill playing on repeat in the back of my mind.

  She returned with the bottles filled and the hose tied around her waist like a belt. I took the bottles from her and carefully poured the yellow fluid onto the tongue of the makeshift cardboard funnel and in through the mouth of the tank, hoping a liter of gasoline would be enough to rehydrate and revive our new companion. My attention wandered to the sticker inside of the small, square door, which read, Gasoline only. As the words sank in, I sighed with relief while simultaneously cursing myself for not having checked before filling.

  In my mind, I repeated the prayer, Please work, please work, please work, before turning the key. The engine coughed like a sick and dying old man, and I turned the key back. On the second try, the truck coughed, sputtered, and growled to life. I closed my eyes and whispered, “Thank you.”

  ***

  We stopped at the camper and transferred the fuel from its reserve to the tank of our truck, idling alongside. I thought of all the warnings about gasoline fumes and static discharge, but to shut off the engine and hope the truck would start again seemed a more foolish taunt of fate.

  There was more than enough fuel in the tank to see us to the van and enough fuel waiting in the van to see us home. I pulled up to the ridge, put the truck in park, and asked Haley to wait. I searched through the binoculars for Powell and the others amid the chaos below, but the people were a blur. The train was stopp
ed and its carriages rocked as swarms of people clambered in or up over each other and onto its roof. When the train pulled away, the outer layer of the swarm was uprooted and shaken loose, while those pressed against the train were pulled under or dragged along side and discarded farther down like broken dolls. Nearer the camp, the writhing, surging, sieging crowd wrapped around small groups of soldiers, constricting and assimilating them into the wave. The dust clouds waned in the wake of the crowds, exposing the dark, stained dirt, strewn with the dead or injured.

  My body began to shake. The temporary numbness of disbelief or shock slipped away behind an overwhelming tide of emotion. Tears streamed down my face as I tried to comprehend the madness below. Somewhere in that madness were people I knew, and people I had come to love as family.

  When I returned to the truck, my face was wiped clean of tears, but the tremble in my hands and arms was impossible to hide. Haley held a note in my periphery, asking if I had seen them, and if they were coming. I tried to push away the images of what I’d seen and swallow back the urge to break down or throw up. I took a breath, let it out slowly, and nodded. I kept my eyes on the road ahead, put the truck in gear, and pulled away from the ridge.

  ***

  My mind was given over to the devil, but my shaking hands were far from idle. While using all of the concentration I could muster to keep the truck on the road and away from the edge, Hell’s projectionist spliced together the worst parts of what I had seen on the plains and replayed them on a loop. The farther we descended, the greater my paranoia became. I feared I had driven past the van in some post-traumatic daze, but soon the van’s edges flashed in the distance over a shimmering mirage pool that striped the road.

  I parked the truck at the side of the road and rushed to the van. The van’s doors were locked. It took only a second to remember Powell had taken the keys and only a few seconds more to find a rock to replace them.

  We filled the fuel tank and stowed the remaining gas cans with the rest of our supplies in the bed of the truck. I arranged the packs and sleeping bags in the bed, realizing the single bench seat inside the cab would not fit us all, and then returned to the van to check for anything we might have missed.

  I pulled the shotgun and binoculars from the pack and asked Haley to stay close. We walked the tree line to a clearing with a view of the plains. I sat Haley down and suggested she busy herself with her book, while I tried to find the others. It was obvious she wanted to look too, but I allowed no opening for her to ask. My view was restricted by the lower cliff edge and by overhanging trees, censoring the nucleus of the chaos and violence, but my imagination worked hard against my will to paint the rest of the landscape from recalled reference.

  Powell’s words echoed in my mind, “…don’t wait, just leave, and we’ll meet you back at the house.” Haley looked up from the page, as though she too had heard Powell’s words, and she made a plea with her eyes for me to ignore his instructions. Perhaps my conscience had truly made the plea, but still, I couldn’t ignore it. We would stay and wait until they made it back to us.

  What seemed like hours passed with no sign of the others. I asked Haley to wait while I went back to get water and food from the truck. I brought the shotgun and binoculars with me, fearing more the allure of the binoculars, than any curiosity of the gun. On my way to the truck, a rustling sound came from the trees. I expected to see Powell emerge—all flushed and awash with sweat, the way he’d been at the end of our last climb, but it wasn’t Powell. It was a man, but not a man I recognized. I ran and crouched behind the van. I slipped the shotgun strap from my shoulder and worked to silence my breathing.

  I heard a car door open somewhere down the hill and the brief jingle of keys followed by, “Fuck.” I peered around the van to see him slam the car’s door and follow it up with a kick. He turned, and I pulled myself back behind the van, hoping he hadn’t seen me. The sound of his footsteps synchronized with every second beat of my heart, and the beat grew louder. The van shook as he opened the driver door, and again when he slammed it shut.

  I listened to the scrape of his feet as he turned, and there was little doubt in my mind as to his destination. He was headed for the truck—our truck with all of our supplies, our food, gas, and water loaded in the back, and the keys waiting in the ignition. My heart began to pound on the wall of my chest, and before I could stop myself, it was already too late.

  “No. That’s our truck. I can’t let you take it,” I called, as I stood.

  The man gave no response and continued toward the truck.

  “I’ll shoot you if I have to.” My raised voice shook around the words, and my hands trembled around the gun.

  The man stopped and turned. His eyes remained hidden in dark pockets, recessed into the leathery skin that hung from his skull like an ill-fitting mask. He was graying, thin, and wiry, looked half-starved and half-crazed, and I was unsure which half to fear more.

  I kept the shotgun trained on the man’s chest and glanced back to the trees. Haley remained hidden, but I wondered if she was watching, possibly about to witness me shoot an unarmed man. Using buckshot at this distance, there would be little chance of wounding the man. If I pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t matter where I aimed, he would surely die—if he took the truck and all of our food and water, then we would die a much slower and more painful death.

  “I’ll take you with me,” he said.

  “There are other trucks, just like this one, around the bend as you crest the hill. I can offer you gas, maybe a little food and water, but you are not taking this truck,” I said and circled around to the back of the truck, just in case he made a run for the driver side.

  His expression didn’t change, but he gave a subtle nod. “Okay. Where’s the gas?”

  “In the back just behind the cab on the passenger side.”

  He pulled back the sleeping bag, took one of the red gas cans, and set it down by his feet. “You said ‘food and water’ too?”

  “Open the backpack and take two cans and two bottles of water,” I said.

  The man glanced at the truck, and after a moment’s hesitation, said, “I don’t see it. What backpack?”

  My heart raced to an anxious beat. He wanted me to come closer, close enough for him to take the gun. “If there’s no backpack, there’s no food. Take the gas and go.”

  I could not see his eyes in their shadowed sockets, but I could feel his glare as it lingered on me before he turned back to the truck and retrieved the pack. “This pack?”

  I nodded. “Take what I offered and go, please.”

  He pulled out two cans, set them by the gas can, and then two bottles of water, counting aloud as he set them down. “One. Two.” He unbuttoned and removed his shirt, placed it on the ground, and wrapped the cans and bottles up in it, looping and tying the arms to use as a handle.

  “Thanks.” He stood and swung the shirt-sack over his shoulder, picked up the gas can, and started toward me. “There’s other trucks up there?” He gestured with a nod to the top of the hill.

  I nodded, backed up around the truck as he passed, and exhaled as I watched him continue. I heard the sound of snapping twigs and turned, expecting to see Haley climbing out from her hiding place, but instead there was a flash of cloth. Pain shot through the side of my head as I fell against the back of the truck and to the dirt. The sack deadened the clack of the cans inside when it hit the ground beside me. As the world came back into focus, I felt the man’s weight on top of me.

  “You should have let me take the truck,” he spat, pressing the shotgun like a barbell across my neck while I tried desperately to kick and squirm.

  He continued to rant, but his words rounded to a single droning vowel behind the fast throb of my pulse. The edges of his face began to blur. Spots of color flashed on and off as the dark pockets around his gray eyes seemed to spread like a veil across his face. Then there was a loud crack, a gasping wheeze, and the pressure on my body lifted. Sparks zipped across the blackness
before a red tunnel appeared, swelling as the world raced through it to meet me. I began to cough and splutter, wheezing and gasping for air.

  The man was gone, but the gun was still across my throat. I rolled onto my side and fumbled for the grip of the shotgun. As I tried to stand, the ground began to sway, and I collapsed again to the dirt. I raised the gun to the off-white shape cut out of the red blur of the dirt cliff, struggling to maintain what hold I had of the gun and of consciousness. My eyes refocused on the lifeless man, arranged against the dirt slope in a mural of his blood. One side of his leather mask was a red mess, and the crown of his head was half-gone.

  “Emily?”

  I turned to see Powell clutching the rifle. The four of them stepped out from the shadows, and I began to cry.

  33 | back together

  “If you’d taken a minute longer, I’d be dead.”

  Powell knelt and put his arms around me. “It’s okay, you’re safe now.”

  His words took me back to the first time we met in the church. It seemed so long ago, and his embrace was more welcomed now. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “Haley told us there was a man trying to take the truck,” Sarah said.

  “She led us to you,” Powell added.

  I mouthed my thanks to Haley, and she left her mom’s side to squeeze in under Powell’s arm.

  “Do you want me to drive?” Sean asked.

  Powell let go of me, stood, and helped Haley and me to our feet. “Why don’t you three ride up front, and I’ll stay with Emily in the back.” He turned back to me. “Is that okay?”

  I nodded. He climbed up over the rear tire and reached back to help me up, while Haley climbed into the cab between her parents. Powell tapped on the glass and Sarah slid it open.

  “Keep it under fifty, there’s wreckage and debris all the way down.”

  Sean gave a nod and started the truck.

  As we descended the hill, I watched the shirtless man shrink to a red spot in the distance. I breathed a sigh and closed my eyes. When I reopened them, he was gone.