On the backside of the house they noted a few struggling weeds breaking through the gravel topped circular drive. They tested the first floor windows and doors and found them to be securely locked. Frustrated, the boy suddenly got impulsive and tossed a rock through a kitchen window. Why not? Every other window in town seemed to be broken. They ran several yards away and turned to watch. After two minutes and nothing, they stepped back to the window. The boy reached in, flipped the lock and they both pushed the stiff casement up and open. After clearing the bigger pieces of glass they slid inside.
They were greeted by moldy doors and dark corners as they crept forward, passing through a formal dining room, stopping short of the living room. The roof wasn’t in as good shape as it had appeared from the outside. There were several places where leaks had destroyed floors, furniture and cabinets. There was no electricity out here of course, but something was making the equipment work. They could hear a quiet electrical hum followed by a sound of a winding motor. The boy called out a hello, but got no response. They peeked further and spotted the camera slowly scanning back and forth. A second camera panned back and forth as well, the search patterns overlapping. There were also huge binoculars mounted to a tripod of its own.
The boy called out another hello. With no response, they relaxed. The kid walked up to the big pair of binoculars and put his eyes to the glass and focused on the bluff on the far side of the river. He could see the smoke well now and there seemed to be movement. He adjusted the focus knob slightly and things became sharper. Then he saw something queer, something not right, and he gasped stepping back. He couldn’t speak at first, his psyche trying to sort it all out. The boy pushed past him to have a look for himself. There were men on the far side of the river. They were dressed in heavy furs and had long shaggy hair. Some were tall, others not, but all looked fit and strong. They seemed to be building or maybe repairing a dome shaped shelter made from logs, branches and mud. It didn’t seem too unusual, just somehow ancient. Like the people he had learned about who lived on this land hundreds of years before. Then he looked a little harder and saw what the kid had seen and he felt his throat constrict. The men had an odd gait, as though walking on tiptoes. They had long tapered ears that seemed to swivel on their own. Then there were the eyes: large dark eyes, like those of an owl. One of them stretched his jaw and a mouthful of sharp shinny teeth caused the boy’s heart to skip a beat. He took a quick breath. The kid told him to stop looking - but he couldn’t - something compelled him to keep staring. One of the men… things… stopped doing his work and turned around to face him, his great owlish black pupils intimately staring, as if separated by a few yards rather than a couple of miles. The boy let out a small cry as he felt his mind fill with a jumble of confusing images and sensations. He could smell the man over there, the fire, the forest; could hear the movement of the others. He could see the house that he himself was standing in. It was just a dot on a chopped top hillside, but the red roof gave it away. Then something else entered his mind – it wasn’t language, but communication nevertheless – it said to him, COME. COME. COME. BE HERE. COME. It became urgent and the boy felt his whole body filling with it and suddenly all he wanted to do was run out of the house and down to the river. He would scale the fence, climb the barrier, swim across the frigid river – he had to! COME. BE HERE. COME. BE HERE.
The boy turned from the binoculars sporting a thousand yard stare. The kid, now crying, trying to stop him. The boy pushing right past, heading back to the kitchen, the window. Outside, with the kid pleading, pulling at his sleeve, the boy yanking his arm away and beginning to run. COME. BE WITH US. The boy began to sprint. Nothing mattered but to get to the other side. The kid gave chase, but he was quickly winded as his friend, his brother, ran faster. The kid didn’t give up. He screamed over and over for the boy to stop, but the boy ran through the town, down the river road, right for the blown out bridge.
The kid watched in amazement as his friend sprinted to the end of the bridge. The kids was about to be left alone - out here – the boy jumped. The kid ran to the edge of the bridge screaming no! Then his mind was filled with an odd sensation, a warm buzzing, and he had to look, wanted to look, was compelled to look at the opposite shore where the smoke rose, and at the small dots that were the odd men – an overwhelming feeling - COME HERE. BE WITH US. The boy swimming away toward the distant shore. Then a high pitched whine. Small cc engines behind the kid – skidding tires on gravel – two men on motorcycles – black fatigues, their heads covered in some kind of crazy helmet, the front the same as the back, no way to see out. One dismounted and grabbed the kid, pulling him toward his idling bike, the kid struggling, screaming that he wanted to be over there, gloved hands slapping over his mouth, his eyes – a visor slightly raised, a gruff, but kind voice, offering reassurance.
The kid was returned to his home, the hand pad taken away, his trembling mother taken aside, instruction given: They’d been camping in the local woods. The boy got lost. There was no further explanation, just a stern warning to never do such a thing again, that their home would be watched, their conversations recorded. They were to speak no more of the boy or the land beyond the Terminus Zone. To do so would mean permanent removal. No second chances – erased from the earth. But, what about the boy? They said the boy was dead. But you’ll say he ran away.
And the kid thought about it, his friend, the boy; he did run away. Who could say he was dead?
CHAPTER TWO
Stewart Dean
Stewart Dean’s eyes slowly opened to observe that the water in the glass on his bedside table was frozen solid. Sometime during the night, the electricity had gone out. His ceramic space heater sat idly in the corner. He had a heap of quilts on top of him, but that didn’t keep his nose and forehead from feeling like they’d been packed with cold clay. A thin layer of ice on the window diffused the dawn light. His condensed warm breath had collected there during the night and then frozen in harmony with the drinking water. He looked at the bare wooden floor and dreaded putting his feet on it. He glanced about for his slippers and then cursed himself, recalling that they were neatly set under his reading chair by the fireplace in his office. The night before, when the novel he was reading could no longer hold his interest, the warm bedroom and the knowledge of the space heater, tricked him into shuffling barefoot to bed.
He noted the heavy blanket of snow that had gathered outside, some of it drifting higher than the window ledge. He should have known better. The spring storm had howled around his small house for most of the previous day and into the night. Storms like that frequently brought down electric lines or fouled transformers. It was probably the tenth time since New Years that a storm had knocked out the power. How could he have forgotten his slippers? The rotgut that the islander’s called whiskey probably hadn’t helped.
Groaning, he threw off the blankets, gingerly set his feet on the floor and hopped into the bathroom where he could at least grab his robe and stand on a terry cloth rug. His morning routine usually started with a hot shower, but with no electricity, the instant hot water heater would be dead too. Instead, he ran a wet comb through his hair (at thirty-six his vanity was still very much intact) and let the faucet run to wash his face and brush his teeth. His were strong features, with cheeks and forehead assembling themselves into hard Teutonic plates accented by thick lips and a blunt, hawkish nose. It was the face of a man whose genetic mix suggested a long lineage of warriors. As he filled an empty toothpaste-stained glass, feeling grateful that the pipes hadn’t frozen and that there was still a bit of water pressure, he slapped a handful of pills into his mouth. The capsules kept him from turning into a mindless killing machine and were a drag to swallow without water. The only other liquid in the house was the so called whiskey.
Normally he ate his breakfast cereal with goat’s milk and a glass of weak tea, but the weather had kept Mister Helprin from making his usual delivery. The sturdy farmer had managed to breed a hardy herd th
at could survive the harsh climate of Nantucket, producing enough milk for the whole colony. Dean stoked the bed of coals beneath the ash of the previous night’s fire and got it roaring again and sat, absorbing the warmth, brushing last night’s book to the dock on his reader and scanning the Boston Globe. The headline: Moroccan Freighter Arrives With First Citrus caught his eye. He knew the reporter. Had met him as an embed during the Exodus. Two years earlier, the same guy had come out to the colony to do a story. As one of a handful of immune people, the fellow was the first outside voice to offer an opinion on the life and times of the Nantucket exiles. His fame had brought the plight of the Halflies to the public back on the mainland. Things had turned a little for the better after that.
There was another article on the gradual re-warmth of the planet: the effects of millions of tons of smoke, ash, and dust trapped in the Stratosphere finally dissipating. The hope was that the next half of the year might see freezing weather wait until the end of September, offering the first growing season outside of hot houses in nine years.
He shoveled his walk. He didn’t expect any visitors, but the exercise felt good and his military mind simply couldn’t abide a snow covered walk. One of the island’s two diesel powered snowplows had been by and the street was relatively clear. The colony had agreed to use some of its precious fuel for the two vehicles; the need to support commerce far too great to allow the roadways to be impassable. Despite the previous day’s storm, the village was slowly coming to life. Dean could smell Fitzwell’s Bakery pumping out the scent of the day’s bread, and he quickened his pace as his only slightly sated stomach reminded him that onboard the Ginger Girl, Cookie would have biscuits hot and ready.
Passing over the treacherous cobblestones that still made up the streets of downtown Nantucket, Captain Stewart Dean’s long legs deftly marched him to the wharf where his ship lay tied to her berth. He could see men crawling in the rigging amongst the schooner’s three tall masts. The crew had risen before dawn to prep her, sweep off the snow and ready her sails. Smoke rose from the forward galley warming and thickening the air with the smell of more baking. As he stepped out onto the long pier where the schooner was docked, he passed row upon row of massive private yachts that had been long ago converted to permanent housing. Many of his crew lived aboard these boats, their owners long dead or finding little need for a luxury yacht left behind on what was effectively a leper colony.
When America fought to reclaim the New England states, Nantucket had become the home for the Halflies; an unfortunate (or fortunate, depending whether your glass is half full or half empty) group of humans who had become infected with Cain’s disease and had received what was then considered to be a miracle medication. The potent cocktail, if given in time, arrested the raging bacterium – temporarily short-circuiting its ability to breach the blood-brain barrier. To enjoy this miracle, the victim was destined to take a daily handful of pills for the rest of his life or succumb to the beast that would replace him. Captain Dean was a former Navy Seal who had contracted the disease nine years before, while trying to finish an impregnable wall against millions of his infected fellow Americans. Dean’s team had the job of securing and ultimately destroying the Newburg-Beacon Bridge, the last major crossing for the Hudson and the final escape path for thousands of uninfected refugees. Inevitably a hoard of Fiends had come on the tail of the fleeing healthy. The Seal Team hadn’t finished setting the demolition charges and to their profound frustration, after urgently setting off what they had, the bridge stayed in place. Despite a huge amount of firepower, the Seals had been overrun. Only Dean and one of his ensigns had escaped, both bitten and in rough shape. A medivac to a converted euthanasia station had got them to a medic with access to the then experimental drugs. Dean and the ensign (now his boatswain) survived and had been living in exile ever since. He would leave behind a son and wife, and he let them go rather than remain a haunting reminder of someone they could never touch or lay physical eyes on again. That’s what he told himself anyway.
Despite the cocktail of pills, he and the rest of the island’s residents were still highly infectious to healthy people. As such, they were offered permanent, so called, accommodations on the 48 square mile island of Nantucket. The residents also had to agree to sexual sterilization (infected persons passed the disease on to their offspring in a genetically mutated form). A child of such a union was, by all accounts, an evolutionary nightmare and the foundation for modern day fairy tales that spoke of demons born with nothing but wickedness in their DNA.
As he approached the gangplank, his boatswain, Ensign Lance Palmer, spotted him. The man brought out his whistle to announce the arrival of the ship’s captain and Dean offered a brief salute as the crew paused and came to attention. Though the Ginger Girl was a commercial vessel, many of her crew were, like Dean, former Navy and used to the hierarchy of the military. The captain moved to the stern and found his First Mate, George Sanders, in the master’s cabin at the navigation table. Sanders stood along with the Pilot for the Nantucket harbor, Kevin Jenkins. The men had been bent over a chart of the Nantucket Sound, steaming cups of tea in their hands.
“Morning, Stew,” said Sanders, offering Dean a cup.
Jenkins nodded at Dean and set his cup down, pointing at the chart, “Telling Sanders here, Rights spotted last evening about here. Twas the timber ship comin’ in. ‘Er cap’n said it was a big pod. Maybe twenty adults, several calves. Noticed ‘em from afar. Orcas, must’ve peeled off a calf. Said it raised quite a froth.”
Sanders said, “Ship’s about rigged, Cap. We could be out there in two, three hours. Jenkins here, says they were heading southwest, practically crossing our front door.”
Cookie entered with a steaming tray of biscuits, “Mornin’, sirs. Fresh out of the oven.”
“My growling belly says thank you, Cook,” said Dean through a quick mouthful.
Cookie nodded with pleasure, “Sir.”
As he chewed, Dean pointed at the chart, his finger hovering over an area of ocean covered in Xs. “Gonna get themselves into the mills, looks like.”
“Could be, sir,” said Sanders.
“Well, what are you waiting for, George? Let’s put out.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
One hundred and forty years before, the Ginger Girl had been a trading schooner. At 132 feet long (172 with her bowsprit) she was among the last of her type when steamships replaced nearly every commercial sailing vessel. Her primary route had taken her to Shanghai where she brought back ginger root in exchange for cotton grown in South Carolina. In the early twentieth century, she had come into the ownership of a railroad magnet who had converted her for pleasure cruising out of Newport Road Island. During the next half century she passed into the hands of other wealthy men, remaining a large luxury yacht, always with a full-time professional crew. There was a brief stint from 1942 to 1944 when she was commissioned as a submarine watcher during the war. In 1969 she was trapped in a probate battle and allowed to rot on a dock while an unsettled estate paid the rent for a decade. In the nineteen eighties she was donated to a maritime school in Connecticut, which used her as a dry-dock classroom for wooden ship construction. Later, the school put together the funds to repair her and she became a floating classroom. Then in 2002 the school failed and she was sold off at auction, finding herself a sixth life taking tourists out on day cruises from Nantucket. In 2021 she survived the U.S. Marine invasion of the then infected island to wipe it clean of Fiends. Now she found herself converted to a fast whaling ship. Her cargo: a precious resource of both food and lamp oil – a rare commodity that could be bartered for goods from the mainland and beyond.
In absence of a large resource hungry polluting human populace, and despite the ravages of a ten-year nuclear winter that left all but the planet’s equator in permanent overcast, the world’s whale populations had veritably exploded. After calving in the warm and sunny center of the planet, they continued to return to their traditio
nal feeding grounds in the colder climes, where surprisingly, the krill population remained robust. The Ginger Girl didn’t have to roam far to get her share of the great fatty mammals, which was fortunate since her hunting grounds were geographically limited. As a condition of her use in the sea beyond the three mile zone surrounding Nantucket (the limit of where the island’s fishing fleet was allowed to work) the schooner, like all Nantucket boats, was fitted out with a radio beacon that broadcast her position to stations along the mainland at all times. Additionally, every resident of the island was implanted with a transponder chip. As a requirement of accepting exile over euthanasia, the residents were required to be monitored 24/7 to make sure that they never encountered the healthy. To insure that no healthy came within spitting distance of the Halflies, shipments to and from the island were left at floating wharfs out in the harbor.
The breeze was up early and the Ginger Girl cut through the two-foot swell with a full set of sails. Dean stood by the helmsman, Mr. Burrows, enjoying the feel of the salt air. Despite the deep chill, the gritty moisture brought some rose to his cheeks; a bracing sensation that his skin never failed to enjoy. He glanced toward the lookout, perched two-thirds of the way up on the forward mast, and felt a tinge of sympathy for the man. The frigid breeze up there would be very harsh. The sailor was fitted out with the warmest gear but his eyes would still be exposed to look through his binoculars. Along with searching for their prey, the lookout also had the important job of gauging the depth and breadth of the submerged parts of the hundreds of icebergs that dotted the ocean around them. A berg that appeared as a small lump on the sea’s surface could just as easily be a deadly floating mountain - its sharp edges capable of shredding the wooden planking of the schooner’s hull.
Children Of Fiends - Part 1 Winter Is Passing: An Of Sudden Origin Novella Page 2