Children of the Earth

by Anna Schumacher

  Daphne ran toward the oil rig, in the direction of the screams, and the fire ran, too, thundering down the foothills, swallowing every living thing in its path. It was only a couple of miles away, the smoke heavy enough to make Daphne gag as she ran, her bootlaces flapping against the ground.

  She saw the crowd first, the backs of her coworkers standing in a semicircle, clutching their hard hats in their hands.

  She shouldered her way through to the source of the cries. Her heart contracted when she saw Aunt Karen on her hands and knees on the ground, her arms streaked with smoke and dust as she beat the ground. Her face was twisted in agony, and each ragged breath brought with it a fresh wail.

  Daphne knelt beside her and put her arm around Karen’s heaving shoulders. “Aunt Karen, what happened?”

  With a trembling finger, her aunt pointed up. Up the length of the derrick, up the towering metal scaffolding to the very top, to a sight that made Daphne’s blood stand still. Strung up on the derrick, skin dull and blue eyes dead, was her cousin Janie.

  The sweat froze on Daphne’s skin. Her cousin had been tied to the rig using the same white rope that had lashed the sheriff to the flagpole. A teardrop, drawn in blood, glistened on her forehead.

  Daphne couldn’t speak. Her legs gave out, and she pitched forward, face-first onto the ground.

  She stayed like that, weak and limp and tasting dirt, powerless. She’d been too late to save Janie, too slow and stupid to help her cousin when she needed her most.

  A sob ripped through her, threatening to split her in two. She didn’t know if she was choking on smoke or dirt or tears, and it didn’t matter. All she knew was that this thing had gone too far. It had gone too far, and she had let it.

  The Children of the Earth had done this, and it wasn’t enough just to stop them. She had to make them suffer as hard and as deep as the Peyton family would from this moment on. She didn’t know how; all she knew was that she had to make them pay. She would make them pay.

  She had God on her side.

  She felt a hand on her back and turned to see Dale kneeling beside her, worry lines deep around his eyes.

  “Daphne, I know this is hard, but we’ve got to get out of here.” Urgency flooded his voice. “That fire’s coming closer by the minute. We shut down the pumps, but there’s still a ton of crude on this land. I don’t have to tell you what that means.”

  Daphne looked from him to the top of the derrick.

  “We have to get her down,” she said. “I’ll climb up and grab her.” The thought of touching her cousin’s corpse turned her stomach, but not as much as the idea of letting Janie’s body stay to be consumed by the flames.

  Dale shook his head. “I can’t let anyone up there. The metal’s too hot to touch. Everyone needs to evacuate. Now.”

  “We can’t!” Karen stopped sobbing long enough to look up at them with ashen eyes. “I won’t leave my girl.”

  Daphne watched Dale dig for the right words, his eyes darting nervously from Karen to the wall of fire creeping down the foothills. Over his shoulder, in the distance, she saw someone running toward them, feet kicking up a long plume of dust. As the figure grew nearer she made out a shock of thick, dark hair.

  “Owen.” The name slipped like poison from her lips.

  He came to a stop in front of her, speaking between labored gasps. “You were right. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Carbon dust left thick smears on his skin, and his hair was a greasy, tangled mess. A sweat-soaked shirt clung to him like tissue paper, and the scent rising from his body was strong and animal, as if he’d been running all night. It reminded Daphne of their most intimate moments together, the times they had been as close as two humans could be, and a volcano of rage began to boil inside her.

  “You did this.” She struggled to keep her voice under control, but her hand shook as she pointed to the top of the rig, to Janie’s body.

  Pain clouded Owen’s eyes.

  “You’re one of them. You’re a killer. The tablet warned us about you.”

  A walloping crack thundered through the foothills as a burning evergreen hit the ground, sending a fireball the size of a house ballooning into the sky. The top of the downed tree lit the pine grove at the edge of the Peytons’ property, igniting the tall, dry trees and carpet of pine needles.

  “We have to get out of here!” Dale barked. “It’s less than a football field away.”

  The crackling flames shut out all other sounds, and the heat beat relentlessly against Daphne’s skin.

  “He’s right,” she said reluctantly, grasping her aunt’s arm and trying to pull her to her feet. “Karen, we have to go now. I’m sorry.”

  Dale grabbed her other arm, but Karen refused to get to her feet. “I won’t leave my girl!” she sobbed again.

  As Daphne and Dale struggled with her aunt’s dead weight, Owen took a step forward, toward the blaze. His eyes began to glow with that evil, fluorescent green, the dreaded light that Daphne now recognized as the Children of the Earth activating their powers.

  He held up his hands, palms facing the burning pine grove, eyes blazing with determination. The fire, which had begun to lap at the grass between the pine grove and the oil rig, froze for a moment, looking like the paused frame of a video. Then it flickered back to life.

  But instead of creeping toward them, it leapt upward, flames licking the sky.

  Sweat poured from Owen’s head, and his entire body shook with effort. The flames climbed higher and higher, until they looked like they were searing the stratosphere. He was controlling the fire, Daphne realized. But was he bringing it closer or keeping it at bay?

  A sick sense of déjà vu washed over her. She had seen this image before: Owen standing in front of the rig, his eyes glowing that terrifying green and his hands held out to the flames. She had seen him control fire, seen his evil power spill out of him until he could manipulate the very elements of the world.

  She had seen it in a vision, her first vision. A vision sent to her from God.

  The picture in front of her went cloudy as, without warning, she fell back seizing on the ground.

  The Vision of the Final Reckoning

  The room is dark, the air close,

  The window small and streaked with dirt.

  Garbage trucks screech and chug

  Through the Detroit streets outside.

  You huddle in the corner of your bed,

  Knees drawn to your chest,

  Heart pounding, limbs shivering,

  Alone, but not alone enough.

  Here come his footsteps,

  Drunk and heavy down the hall.

  Here comes his breath,

  Thick with drink and unwanted kisses.

  Here comes his hand,

  Knocking on the door,

  Knocking down the door,

  Splintering the cheap lock, kicking it in.

  There is his face.

  Chapped lips, bloodshot eyes

  Emanating evil,

  Wanting what you will not give.

  You shrink back,

  Protecting yourself:

  The part of yourself he wants

  But will never have.

  This time is different.

  Something silver flashes in his hand,

  Reflected in the grimy yellow

  Of the streetlight.

  Something sharp, bone-handled, deadly.

  A knife.

  He approaches slowly, licking his lips,

  Raising the knife above your head.

  You have stopped trembling.

  Inside of you, everything is still.

  And as he brings the knife

  Down upon you,

  As the blade comes whizzing

  Toward your chest

  You l
unge.

  And grab it.

  And turn it around.

  It happens so fast.

  You are just protecting yourself—

  As yea, my child, my prophet,

  Survivor of terror, seer of visions,

  You must.

  You must protect the world:

  My child,

  My prophet.

  You must.

  For when metal meets flesh

  And life leaks from

  This evildoer

  In wet ribbons of red

  When he falls to the ground

  And gasps, and writhes, And finally stops breathing,

  The world is once again at peace.

  Now look upon his face!

  My child, my prophet,

  Watch his jowls melt away

  And his hair grow thick and black

  Look upon his face

  And see his eyes turn

  Green.

  See who he truly is.

  The enemy has come to you

  In many forms.

  Yet this is the final one:

  The King of Evils.

  27

  DOUG HAD BEEN DRIVING ALL night, drinking Red Bull to stay awake and looking for Janie. Now he was jittery and sleep-deprived, and his wife was still MIA.

  He’d looked for her in all their old haunts: the woods behind the football field, the pullout where they used to make out after school dances, that all-night diner she liked up in Rawlins.

  Then, when he returned to Carbon County, he noticed the red clouds hanging low in the sky and the smoke drifting down from the Savage Mountains. It wasn’t the first time there’d been a forest fire up there, but it was the first time it had made his stomach clench in fear, for reasons he couldn’t explain and didn’t want to think about all that hard.

  Now he was at work, bone-tired and worried as shit, practically gagging on smoke while his dad barked out orders to hurry up and get that pipeline in, drill faster before Floyd Peyton got wind of what they were doing and turned the tables to slap a lawsuit on him.

  “Listen, Mr. Varley.” Dwayne trotted behind him, clutching his clipboard with clammy palms. “I’ve been keeping an eye on those fires, and it don’t look good. They’re getting closer.”

  “What, you think they’ll cause an earthquake, too?” Vince swatted his foreman away and kept pacing, yelling at the roughnecks to drill faster, to get a move on, he wasn’t paying them an extra 20 percent to loll around like a bunch of barflies.

  “Mr. Varley!” Dwayne tugged on his sleeve. His pale eyebrows were damp with sweat.

  Vince whirled. “What?!”

  “Look, I know you want me to just keep quiet and do my job, but this is messed up.” Dwayne waved the clipboard at the rig, and the fire, and the guys struggling to keep up with Vince’s orders. “We’re already way deeper than any of the plans we submitted, and the guys’ve been telling me they’re feeling tremors when they drill. I can’t say for sure, but I’d hazard a bet it’s ’cause we’re hitting that fault line. Now there’s a fire so close we can all feel it, and instead of having us evacuate you want us to stick around and maybe burn to death? That’s just not right, Mr. Varley. It’s seriously messed up.”

  Vince glared at him, his face the color of roasted giblets. “And just what do you intend to do about it?”

  “Look, Mr. Varley, I’m just trying to talk sense here.” Dwayne stumbled on his words. “You don’t want to run a dangerous rig, do you?”

  “You think I give a flying rat’s ass?” Vince snorted. “I’m not doing this ’cause it’s good for the community or any of that kumbaya bullshit. I want the oil that’s rightfully mine, and I want it now. It’s either my way or the highway, buddy. I don’t know how many times I gotta tell you.”

  Doug could hear Dwayne’s gulp all the way over by the Quonset hut where he was pretending to stack sacks of drilling mud. “Then I guess it’s the highway,” Dwayne said finally. He trembled a little as he handed Vince his clipboard, but he didn’t look away. “I won’t work for someone who don’t put safety first. I just won’t.”

  Vince’s nostrils flared. He reared back and hurled the clipboard at Dwayne, missing by several feet in his rage. Its pages fluttered as it clattered to the ground, dislodging a sheaf of papers and sending them swirling away on the swift, dry wind blowing down from the foothills.

  “You have a contract!” Vince screamed.

  “I’m breaking it.” Satisfied that Vince had nothing left to throw, Dwayne turned and headed for the parking lot, unbuckling his helmet as he went. His face was grim, but something twitched at the corner of his mouth, making the blond hairs on his chin glimmer like filaments of fishing wire. At first, Doug couldn’t tell quite what that expression meant. But as Dwayne drew closer, the slap of his boots angry on the dirt, Doug recognized it as pride. Pride at having done the right thing, pride at knowing that if something went wrong with the pipeline or the fire, his hands would be washed clean.

  It must have felt good to stand up to Vince Varley like that, Doug thought. Maybe someday he’d have the guts to do it himself.

  He paused, the piles of drilling mud at his feet, as Dwayne walked by. He wanted to salute or something, give the guy a pat on the back, but all he could manage was a half smile.

  “Hey, listen bud.” Dwayne leaned in as he walked past, barely breaking stride. “You try talking some sense into him. Maybe he’ll listen ’cause you’re his son. ’Cause if he keeps doing what he’s doing, people are gonna die.”

  As punctuation, he took off his hard hat and tossed it to Doug, who caught it reflexively. Standing there, cradling the yellow plastic orb, he watched Dwayne drive away, his fourth-hand Dodge Dart disappearing almost instantly into a low-hanging cloud of smoke.

  People are gonna die. The words reverberated as he set the hard hat slowly down and lifted another sack of drilling mud, barely noticing its weight on his shoulders.

  It had come to that, and his dad didn’t care. Janie was missing, lives were at stake, it looked like the whole damn town was about to catch fire, and all ol’ Vince cared about was getting his piece of the pie. Dwayne was right: It was messed up. His parents had a fucked-up way of looking at the world. And, thanks to them, so did he.

  He set the drilling mud down, trying to think of what he could say that would stop his father’s madness. Vince wasn’t exactly his biggest fan right then, but they were still family. That had to count for something, right?

  Maybe he could organize a strike or something, get all the workers to walk out. Without anyone to work his rig, Vince would have to stop—no way he could do it all himself. Could he?

  But that was crazy. Doug knew the guys hated him, and he realized, suddenly, they always had. Sure, they’d slapped his back and laughed at his jokes, bought rounds at the bar and pretended to listen when he had something to say, but that was because he was the boss’s son, and they were in it for the paycheck. When it came right down to it, they’d never really been his friends, and they’d used the incident up at the Vein as an excuse to say out loud what they’d probably been thinking all along.

  There was no rallying them, not in his position. He’d have to confront his dad on his own.

  He eyed ol’ Vince from under the yellow brim of his hard hat. The guy was strutting around with his chest puffed out like a Thanksgiving turkey, talking about how he didn’t take shit from no one and who the hell needed a foreman anyway. It was probably the worst time to call him on his shit ever. But Dwayne was gone, and the fires were getting closer. If Doug didn’t do something, who would?

  Maybe it was better not to overthink it. He wasn’t any bigger than his dad, but he had built up some muscle working the rig. Worse came to worst, Doug could take him.

  He took a step forward, then another. He was about to call Vince’
s name when a red pickup coated with dust came careening down the road and screeched to a stop just inches from the Quonset hut. The driver jumped down and ran to the roughnecks still working on the rig, shouting at them to stop what they were doing and evacuate.

  “Are you people crazy? What the hell are you still doing here?” Doug squinted through the haze and saw that it was Dale, the foreman from over at the Peyton rig. His voice thundered over the drill’s grinding. “Where’s your foreman?”

  “We were just about to evacuate.” Vince hurried over. His face was still purple, but his voice had regained the honeyed calm that Doug had always thought of as the “Varley charm.”

  Except that suddenly, it didn’t sound so charming anymore. It sounded fake and smarmy. Like anyone with half a brain could tell Vince Varley was full of it.

  Dale looked from Vince to the rig and back again. “How are you still drilling?” he asked incredulously. “I just risked my life to come over here and make sure all your people were gone. The fire may look like it’s taking a break, but trust me, that won’t last long.”

  “We’re going, we’re going,” Vince muttered. “Thanks for the warning. We’ll see you over on the other side of town.

  Dale still looked unconvinced. “Are you sure? I’m surprised your people are still working.”

  Doug could almost hear the steam whistling from his dad’s ears. “We were just about to pack up. You go on and get back to your guys. Trust me, we got this.”

  “All right.” Dale turned to go, and Doug watched that crazy gleam of greed return to his father’s eyes. He’d bet his left nut that ol’ Vince had no intention of shutting things down. He was just waiting for Dale to leave so he could yell at his roughnecks to double down and drill harder.

  Dale took two steps, then turned again. “Look, Vince, I don’t want to burden you at a time like this, but there’s something you oughta know.”

  “What now?” Vince was boiling on the inside, Doug could tell. One more word and he’d start frothing at the mouth.

  “Is your son around? I’m afraid he should hear this, too.”

  Doug didn’t like the sound of that.

  “I’m right here.” He stepped forward.

  “Oh, Doug. Hi.” Dale took off his Stetson and fiddled with the brim, looking down at the worn, scratched leather for support. Finally, he raised his pale blue eyes.