American Midnight | Book 2 | Nightfall

by Kazzie, David

  Alexander found his father in the first-floor conference room of the hotel, sitting alone at a long oak table. Alexander recognized the leather folio laying open in front of him. These would be the written protocols governing the execution ceremony. The man took his work very seriously, down to the last i to be dotted, the last t to be crossed. His lips moved silently as he read through the material.

  “Father?”

  That was another thing. As a boy, Alexander had referred to him as “Dad” like any normal kid. But a few years ago, he’d instructed Alexander to refer to him as Father. He didn’t know why, but he had done it. It sounded ridiculous, and his stomach clenched with annoyance whenever he said it. Just the cheesiest thing ever.

  His father looked up. He was a good-looking man. He was in his forties, but he looked ten years younger. One of those men who would always be handsome.

  “What is it?” he asked coldly.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Can it wait?” his father said. “I’m preparing for the ceremony.”

  “It’s about the ceremony.”

  His father raised an eyebrow. He motioned for Alexander to sit down. Suddenly, Alexander’s mouth had dried up, all the moisture that made it possible to speak evaporating in the heat of his father’s gaze. He hated the way the man made him feel. He never seemed to be good enough for his father, not since Alexander had gone to live with him as a young boy. His mother had been raising him on her own, but then she had become sick with the cancer that ultimately took her life. Alexander had only met his father a few times before going to live with him full-time.

  “Well?” his father said after a few awkward moments of silence.

  Beads of sweat trailed down Alexander’s flank. He became aware of his own body odor.

  “You shouldn’t kill Oliver,” he said as firmly as he could.

  His father leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers to his lips.

  “I am not killing him,” he said. “He is being punished in accordance with the laws of our community.”

  “I know,” Alexander said, the words getting stuck in his throat. His entire argument had abandoned him. “It’s just that…”

  The words hung in the air as he struggled to get back on track.

  “It’s just that it doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Alexander, what is the punishment for stealing from the community?”

  “Death.”

  “Is this punishment a secret?”

  Alexander’s heart sank. There was no question. There was a reason there had been no executions in the last two years. People knew the score. Initially, they had tried an eye-for-an-eye approach to justice. But that had proven impractical. In the early days of the Haven, they had taken the hand of a thief, but he had developed sepsis and died anyway. The Haven had adopted the single sanction approach shortly thereafter.

  “No.”

  “Alexander, I take no joy in what we are about to do today. But it is a necessary thing. It is an important thing. Keeping everyone at the Haven safe is my duty. The best way to do that is to make sure we have rules and that that those rules are followed.

  “But…”

  His father held up a hand.

  “You didn’t see how bad things got after the Fall,” he said. “I did my best to shield you from it.”

  “Yeah, but Oliver is a good person,” Alexander said. “He made a mistake. He should get another chance.”

  His father pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.

  “Another chance,” he said, echoing his son’s words. “Another chance.”

  He began pacing the room, the heels of his shiny, black shoes clocking along the tile floor.

  “Yes, perhaps we should.”

  Alexander’s heart soared, but he didn’t understand what was happening. His father almost always rejected his arguments out of hand.

  “Maybe we just give him a stern talking to. Put him in the cell for a little while.”

  Alexander’s mood brightened. His father was listening to him. For once, his father was really hearing him.

  “After all, it’s not like he murdered someone.”

  “Exactly!” Alexander said, slapping the table with his hand.

  “I’ll tell you what,” his father said, now stalking the room with a weird energy emanating from him. “I will do you one better.”

  “One better?” Alexander said, his stomach fluttering suddenly.

  “Yes! We will make it legal for people to steal food!”

  Uh, oh.

  “If someone is hungry, and it isn’t mealtime, they can just help themselves to anything they want from the kitchen.”

  Embarrassment and shame flooded through Alexander. He’d been stupid to think he could change his father’s mind. He lay his hands on the table and stared down at them while his father continued his performance.

  “In fact,” he said, wagging a finger in the air, “we will get rid of all our rules. It certainly will be easier.”

  Alexander searched for an off-ramp; it was way past time to end this summit. His father’s back was to him as he made his way toward the far side of the room. Alexander would leave, and later this morning, he would join the other residents of the Haven as they escorted Oliver to his death.

  “No, wait, we will let, no, encourage people to rape and rob and kill one another!”

  As Alexander pushed back from the table, his father spun around and slammed both his fists into the table.

  “Sit down!” his father bellowed.

  Alexander complied. His eyes welled with tears.

  “Listen to me very carefully, son.”

  Alexander nodded.

  “Without rules there is chaos,” he said, his voice back down in volume. “And without consequence, there is no reason to follow the rules. What we do today keeps the chaos at bay.”

  It keeps the chaos at bay.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now leave me,” he said. “I have work to do.”

  The words echoed in Alexander’s head as he joined nearly five hundred Haven residents on the terrible walk to the majestic oak tree from which Oliver would hang. It was a beautiful old tree guarding the green of the long, par-five third hole.

  His father made him stand alongside him at the hanging tree. Oliver locked in on Alexander, sensing, perhaps, an ally here. But Alexander simply stared emptily back at him, focusing instead on the mole above Oliver’s eye and thinking about the card tricks Oliver had dazzled the Haven with. They were so good. Alexander’s favorite trick had been one in which a member of the crowd tore up a playing card that he’d marked with a red pen and sealed it in an envelope. After setting the envelope on fire, Oliver would direct the audience member to his or her own pocket, where they would find the unmolested playing card. He had begged Oliver to teach him his tricks, but the man had always demurred. And now, it seemed, his secret would die with him.

  Two sentinels stepped forward, each taking Oliver by an elbow. He resisted, flinging elbows this way and that, but with his hands bound tightly behind his back, his efforts were futile. They lifted him onto the stool and encircled his neck with the noose dangling from the thick branch.

  Alexander’s father read the sentence of death as Oliver’s head hung low.

  “Stands here, the accused, Oliver Grimm, who has been found guilty of the capital offense of larceny against the Haven, and who shall now be put to death by hanging.”

  It was simple and to the point.

  He nodded to the two hooded guards. They kicked the stool out from under Oliver’s feet.

  Evening.

  The execution had gone smoothly. Oliver’s neck snapped like a twig breaking, and in a perverse sort of way, that was about the best anyone could have hoped for.

  After the hanging, Oliver’s lifeless body was dumped into a previously excavated grave unceremoniously. The people returned to the Haven and quietly went back to their day. A su
llen silence dropped over the place. Alexander skipped dinner, which made up for the food he had discarded that morning. At least he was square with the house on that issue.

  He spent the evening in his room on the fifth floor of the Firethorn hotel trying to write in his journal. The words would not come, however, and he secreted the journal in its hiding place under his mattress. He drifted over to the window overlooking the resort. The day’s last light had all but leaked out of the sky. A campfire was burning somewhere, its orange glow flickering against the darkness.

  Journaling was an activity he shared with no one; his father would not approve. He was not one to share his innermost hopes, fears, and dreams to anyone in person, much less commit them into writing. Most of the people here were like his dad.

  Rough folks.

  Survivalist types.

  Lots of guns.

  Most were nice enough. They treated Alexander well. But he hated this place. He hated their lives here. He missed school so terribly. He had loved English and history class, the math and science not so much. His father steered him away from his books, instead teaching him the trades, the skills that would be useful in this post-Pulse world.

  He missed his mother. She’d been gone more than a decade now, but sometimes the grief would rear up and run over him like a runaway freight train. His specific memories of her were fading. He had a few photographs of her from when he was small, but only a precious few. He remembered the way she made him feel though. Safe and loved. She sang to him. They took walks on the nature trail in the wooded park near their apartment. She made him eat his vegetables. On this point she had been very stern. He regretted giving her a hard time about it now. He regretted it because he had wasted some of the little time he’d had with her on petty matters like being angry with her about vegetables.

  Then she had gotten sick and died, and the strange little man from Child Protective Services had taken him down to the hospital cafeteria for lunch. There, the man explained that Alexander would be going to live with his father now. He had been right at the age where he understood death without understanding it. For some time after he’d gone to live with his father, part of him kept expecting her to show up and whisk him back home.

  But, of course, she never had.

  Then the Pulse had hit.

  It had been lunch time at McDowell-Markey Middle School in Arlington, Virginia. As the scope of the disaster became apparent, people around him had panicked. Even the teachers. It was because of the phones. It was one thing for the electricity to go out. Losing the phones, their lifelines, had been the thing that had driven folks over the edge. But he had not panicked. Amid the chaos, he told a teacher he’d seen his father in the crowd. A little lie, perhaps, but a necessary one. He walked the two miles home, his mouth agape. Fires burning, abandoned cars, even an airplane.

  His father was gone often that first week, leaving Alexander to his own devices. For the most part, he stayed close to home, as his father had directed. He read books, played D&D with the boy across the street. Occasionally, they would venture out exploring, as any preteen boys would do. But days stretched into weeks, and still the power had not returned. Although his dad always returned with food for the two of them, the neighbors had started running out, and things started to get weird. People began abandoning their homes. Gunfire became constant background music.

  About a month after the Pulse, Alexander’s father told him they were moving and ordered him to pack a bag. They met up with a handful of his father’s friends, men who had come to the house often while Alexander was growing up. Ten of them hit the road around the first of July, and they began the journey south. They walked for days, finally arriving at the golf resort after a two-week trek. It had been a fun trip. Camping every night, cooking meat on the fire. It felt like a family.

  Alexander was never quite sure why they’d selected this place as their new home, but after a few months, he stopped thinking about it. There was too much to do, and his father had worked him hard. The men were always out on supply runs, bringing stuff back, bringing people back. He worked the new farmland, converting the fairways into growing fields, sowing the seeds, helping construct the irrigation systems.

  Sometimes, he would lay awake at night, stunned by how quickly his world had changed, his life had changed. With each passing season, his old life drifted farther and farther away, a junk satellite lost in space. He kept hoping, probably longer than many others, that the lights would magically kick back on, and they could go back to their old lives.

  But they never did.

  And he began to understand what the Haven really was.

  He had started to wonder what it would like to be dead. Strange metaphysical questions began shooting through him. Would he be with his mother again? That prospect alone made the idea mildly attractive. And he wouldn’t have to be here in this godforsaken hellscape anymore. It certainly couldn’t be any worse than being here. Could it?

  In fact, even if he hadn’t been seriously considering it now, he could see a pathway there. That scared him. Just thinking about thinking about it was frightening enough. And if things hadn’t changed, he could see himself walking down that dark path through a dark wood.

  But then he had met the girl.

  They had met at the Market. At the table of the resident tarot card reader. He often found himself drawn to her because she reminded him of Oliver. Not because he believed in her pseudoscience, but because he had loved the cards themselves. It was like a grownup version of the role-playing games he loved so much, like Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering.

  He didn’t know how long she had been standing next to him when he noticed her. Just out of the corner of his eye, this glorious creature appeared. She was tall, almost as tall as he was. Her hair was cropped short, close to her head. Her eyes were deep brown, almost black.

  “You believe in this stuff?” she asked him.

  The reader ignored them, laying out her cards across the table and then sweeping them back up like she was playing solitaire.

  “No,” he replied said, laughing nervously. “I don’t know.”

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Alexander.”

  “Cool.”

  He drifted away from the table; the girl followed him. They walked in silence for a while, making loops around the Market. He was incredibly nervous. He was inexperienced with girls. There was a handful about his age in the Haven, but they paid him little mind. Eventually, his nerves got the best of him, and he began chattering like a bird. He couldn’t help himself.

  At one point, she slipped her hand into his own. This he couldn’t believe. He was embarrassed by how sweaty his palm was, the way he kept losing his grip on her hand, but she did not seem to mind.

  “What do you do for fun?” she asked.

  “I like to read.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “What kind of books do you like?”

  He prattled on about the fantasy and science fiction novels he loved, the ones he’d read and re-read until the bindings fell apart. He told her about the board games he liked to play, even the video games. It was as if he could only think of the things that would drive a pretty girl like her away. Still, she stayed with him. Just walking and talking with her, holding her hand, her listening. It was the best afternoon of his life.

  She led him into the woods, just outside the perimeter of the Market, and kissed him. More than anything, he remembered the way her lips had tasted on his, cherry lip balm, maybe. His body buzzed like electricity flowed through it, but he was embarrassed she might feel the tent he’d pitched in his pants. She said nothing, though, and they kissed for a few minutes, and he never wanted it to end.

  Then she pulled away from him, a big smile on her beautiful face. He had done it! He hadn’t screwed it up!

  “I have to go,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you next time?”

  He nodded.

  She turned to leave. Panic flooded through him. A sudden r
ealization.

  “Hey!” he called out to her.

  She turned toward him, a wry smile on her face.

  “You never told me your name.”

  “It’s Norah.”

  6

  Lucy left the clinic as the sun dipped below the foothills to the west, bathing the land in purple shadows. It had been another chilly day, and the temperature was dropping as evening fell. She pulled her jacket tight against the cold wind blowing in from the north. She stopped by the wood shop on her way home, but Kasandra, Promise’s carpenter, was alone in the shop.

  “Hey,” she called out.

  Kasandra looked up from her project, a lovely chair she had been working on. Her strawberry-blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Despite the chill, sawdust clung to her sweaty face. She was about thirty years old, mother to a little boy named Harlan. Her table would fetch a good price at the next Market, which was less than a week away.

  “It’s looking good,” Lucy said.

  Kasandra tapped her knuckles on the armrest.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Have you seen Norah?”

  “She left an hour ago,” replied Kasandra.

  “Any idea where she was headed?”

  Kasandra shrugged.

  “Sorry.”

  Kasandra turned her attention toward shutting down her shop for the night. Carpentry was difficult, exacting work, and it was virtually impossible once twilight arrived. Lucy bid her farewell and continued her journey home.

  Norah was sixteen years old, well on the way to adulthood. She came and went as she pleased. The only rule was that she had to be home by full dark. Norah was normally a dutiful kid, a joy to raise since fate had thrown them together five years ago. Her grandmother had died in the crash of the train they’d been riding when the Pulse hit. The shock and the grief of her loss had caught up with her several weeks after they’d made it back to Lucy’s farmhouse. Once the adrenaline and the rush of their escape faded, post-traumatic stress began to take hold of Norah. It had been insidious, a slow-moving emotional cancer.