Dominion

by Doug Goodman

“I was kinda thinking it’d come again in the night, but nothing happened…so maybe that means I’m wrong and it’s over. When’d all this start again?”

  “Two days ago,” Meg answered.

  “A week then, maybe two, before we’re taken care of. Air force jet passed by about an hour ago, woke me up. They’ve been moving around a lot. Here,” he passed her a plate, started to scoop bacon, eggs, and pancakes onto her dish. “I’ve been thinking. A bike’s a good choice of travel right now, better than a car. You can weave through blocks on the road, better than a motorcycle, because it doesn’t need gas.”

  “Slow though.”

  He nodded, “You headed north? Can I ask where?”

  She nodded. “Kansas. Home for me.”

  “Oh. I’ve got some chores to do today, then I’ll head to town and get your bike fixed. It might take a while.”

  “You want some help?”

  “Uh, sure, if you’re up to it. I’ve gotta put some things away, fix the generator out back, clean some stuff up.”

  “Yeah, anything,” Meg said. “Least I can do.”

  They started the chores. Jim guided her to the backyard, opened a toolshed out back, reached inside, and pulled out a flimsy rake. Meg gave the yard a glance. Ash leaves littered the ground, and the red trees surrounding Jim’s house weren’t even through shedding their autumn leaves. “They say trees are a commodity in Texas. You got trees in Kansas?”

  “Saw one once,” she joked. “They built a museum round it.” He handed her the tool with a laugh. She grudgingly started her work, a smile on her face all the same.

  While she raked, he started dissecting a generator that stood against the side of the house. She watched him in glances as she worked, stealing looks up from the steadily growing pile of leaves. The work he did didn’t look very interesting. He dismantled a million parts and laid them out in groups on the gravel, circular shaped chunks of metal in one pile, large coolant rivets in another. He was interesting, the meticulousness in which he went about disassembling the machine. She somehow understood his process just by watching him work. He considered all the parts of the generator, not as individual items, but as fractions of a complete set, organs in a body. In doing so, he had a complete image of the machine in front of him, just by looking at the laid out pieces.

  They stopped for a break around midday, the generator halfway reassembled, a large mound of leaves piled in the middle of the yard. Jim went inside and brought out a pair of cups and a pitcher of water.

  “Hey, can I ask you something about Manny?” Meg asked, taking a sip from her glass.

  “Yea, what about him?”

  “Is he uh-I dunno how to say it. Is he…weird?”

  “Why you think that?”

  “He…knew something about me that I didn’t tell him.”

  “What did he know?” Her face reddened. “Never mind. Uh-Manny. Let’s see…no, can’t say that he is.”

  Are you weird? She thought. You knew that I was scared last night. You gave me a lock for my door.

  Jim stood up and spoke, his voice quieter than usual. “I’m gonna head into town, get the tube for your bike. I’ll be back in an hour.” She nodded, and he left.

  The house was quiet while Jim was gone. Meg sat inside at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of water, and staring out the window for a time, watching white clouds pass through blue sky. Things seemed normal, but she didn’t trust the calm. Things couldn’t be normal, not after Dallas. She rearranged the contents of her backpack, pulling out her most valuable possession, the carving knife she’d taken from her dorm kitchen. She played with it for a bit, swinging it back and forth in her right hand, getting used to the weight and feel of the blade. Jim returned an hour and a half later.

  “I’ve got the tubes,” he said, strolling in from the kitchen. “Got them from a buddy in town. It cost me a little. He gets to keep a set of Allen wrenches I let him borrow a while back. Your bike’s gonna be good to go in a few minutes, shouldn’t take too long to fix up. You’ll probably want to wait until tomorrow to leave though. It’s getting late.”

  ***

  Meg prepared for a second night in Jim’s house. She asked him if he’d be okay with letting her try making dinner that night. The spaghetti had been okay, but Meg thought she could do better. He agreed, and Meg started to go through his pantry looking for ingredients.

  “Don’t open any canned stuff. Baggies and boxes are okay. I wanna save anything that’s non-perishable.”

  For dinner, they had pesto ravioli with ground beef thrown in, seasoned with a few extra ingredients, and some frozen French fries Meg had found in the back of the freezer. Despite her opinion of her ability as a cook, the fries were the best part of the meal. After dinner, once the dishes were washed, Jim started to move a few things from the house to the garage. Crates of food came first, then boxes of tools he had lying around, loose car parts and the like.

  He moved to the backyard and worked at finishing the repairs to his generator. Meg saw a single crate full of canned food forgotten under the table. She picked it up in both hands and called to Jim. “To the garage?” she asked. He didn’t answer. He had stopped his work. He was looking straight up at the sky.

  “Drop it,” he said. “Get inside.”

  They went into the house. Meg had just enough time to grab her pack from the hallway floor before Jim pushed her through the doorway and into the garage. Once they were both inside, he started to pick up crates, stacking them against the inner door. Meg watched. She backed away from him and the doorway, toward the center of the garage.

  The sound started, and it took Meg right back to Dallas. She felt woozy as the sound grew. She sat down on the greasy floor before her legs could buckle, and the sound grew. She started to cry. Jim continued to barricade the openings to their shelter.

  The roar of the storm never relented, but it was far from its peak. Meg knew that from experience. It would grow in volume until the roar became a scream, and the buildings would start to shake, but never the ground. The ground never shook.

  Is it the same one as last time? Meg wondered. No, it can’t be. It moved north.

  She had believed for a little while that it’d been a one time deal, an accident.

  Jim had done all he could do for the doorway. He reached up, pulling the chord on a single naked light bulb that hung from the ceiling, giving them a little light in the darkness. Eerie shadows deepened and shallowed on either side as the bulb swung back and forth. Jim sat next to Meg on the ground. She looked up and saw that he was crying too.

  ***

  The crescendo of the danger grew. In about ten minutes, it would be overhead, and it would be hours before the storm fully passed, before they’d know if they were safe or gone.

  Neither spoke over the storm’s crescendo. Its noise hung in the air, steadily growing.

  When she felt like the only thing she could do was speak, she did, yelling over the blanketing noise from outside. “How did you know that I was scared of you, that I didn’t want to sleep in your house?” Meg asked.

  “Dunno.” Jim said, “Same way you know about your brother.” Her eyes widened at that. “Yea, I know about that. I get these thoughts now. They came with the first attack, and you do too, right? After people started dying? I think that’s a big part of it. Maybe…” He hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  The storm dug in, threatening to overtake the entire house, turn it upside down, crush them under the weight of the garage. Outside, the things scrambled and scraped against the wood, tearing trees, breaking windows, destroying the world. Jim shifted to wake his butt, which had fallen asleep on the cement floor. “Meg,” he said, “you should tell me about Dallas.”

  She cried again, and wiped the tears away. Jim crawled over to her side and put a hand on her waist, slid his palm across her back, holding her gently, reassuringly. She leaned against him. “I’m scared,” she said.

  “Me too.” The
storm shook the house in a rhythm of deep thrums and beats. It was like a tide coming in, the wave of a tsunami spilling out over a coastline.

  Outside, the storm reached its peak. The noise was louder than anything possible, but Meg didn’t have to raise her voice. Jim heard every word.

  The Swarm is available from Amazon here