Larry Nowak
Gymnasium, Rainbowland, UT
Larry was shaking hands with a group of people in the gymnasium when someone touched his arm. He spun around. It was the man who’d been accompanying All Father earlier that day when Larry had tried in vain to promote his ideas for security.
This man wasn’t nearly as skinny as the others, although he wore the same outfit as everyone else in this flaky New Age cult – blue cotton pants, white shirt, and hair tied back into a pony tail. Most noticeable were his cheeks, flush with color, though it was almost as striking that the dazed look in the eyes of many of the other cult members was absent with him.
The man introduced himself as Timothy, and right away Larry recalled the conversation he’d had with Simon that had sparked his interest.
With talk like that, you’re starting to sound like Brother Timothy.
“Can we go somewhere to talk?” Timothy asked.
“Sure,” came Larry’s reply. He excused himself from the others, wondering if this was where they asked him to get the fuck off their land.
The two men went to a corner that was free of people.
“Many of us here appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Timothy said. “Brother Simon mentioned your conversation. ‘Course, he was rather shocked by what you said, but he’s young, and Peter is his father.”
“So you agree then?”
“In part, I do. But you need to understand that nothing here is as it seems.”
“How so?”
“I can’t go into it here, especially not now. As things stand, you and your views won’t be taken seriously. Not as an outsider.”
“Wow, talk about denial. Don’t these people realize what’s happening? It’s just a question of time before at least some of those freaks discover this place.”
“Peter’s lived apart from that world for too long to fully recognize the danger. I worry he’s lost perspective. We might not have physical walls, but walls of another kind have surely kept us isolated, and I believe that has been a good thing. Look how many of us made it through The Shift, Larry. We know more than you think. But you also need to understand that right now, you’re little more than an intruder, trying to change our ways.”
Larry nodded. He was thinking about Giuliani again. About fighting fire with fire and doing whatever it would take to get what he wanted. “Then let me join.”
“Pardon me?”
“Your cult, religion, whatever you wanna call it,” Larry said, deadly serious. “I wanna join. I’ll do whatever I need to do. Baptize me. Make me stand on my head for an hour. I’ll do it. Just convince Peter to let me in, and I’ll help make this place safe.”
Timothy looked doubtful. “After what happened today, I can’t make any promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Please do,” Larry said. “Before it’s too late.”
Finn
Gymnasium, Rainbowland, UT
Finn left the gymnasium not long after he realized Carole and Nikki had disappeared. Lou and Ethan were gone, too. The loss of Lou’s wife was a burden Finn couldn’t possibly imagine. Mostly because Finn had no real memories of his own to draw on. For all he knew, somewhere there might be a wife and eight kids waiting for him. But a surge of empathy burned in him regardless.
A set of double doors with a push bar let out next to a path at the back of the compound. Ahead were rows of parked cars.
From around the corner came the distinct sound of an argument. Sounded from where Finn was as though a woman were yelling. He hurried to see what was going on and found Carole accosting two male cult members.
“Are you all too chicken shit to help me?” she screamed.
Finn moved in. Nikki was behind her mother, looking rather detached and embarrassed.
“Don’t you people understand, my son is at the airport and he may be hurt? We need to head there right away and find him.”
The cult members’ glossy smiles were beginning to crack. Finn put a hand on her shoulder. She would have more luck convincing Gandhi to go seal clubbing than she would getting through to these folks.
Carole turned, and her momentary change of focus gave the two cult members an opportunity to steal away, which they did in quick order back to the safety of the main compound. It was clear enough already that All Father’s town hall meeting hadn’t gone as smoothly as the Rainbowites had hoped it would. Carole’s eyes were moist, but her frustration was understandable, and in the short time he had known her, Finn was growing to admire her strength.
“None of them will help me.”
“You wanna fill me in?” Finn asked.
Carole told him about their harrowing experience at the airport and the narrow escape they’d made. Hearing it reminded him at once of the Buy Low grocery store in Vegas and how even a group of men with guns had nearly been overwhelmed.
“This is dangerous business, Carole. You’re asking people to put their lives on the line.”
Nikki was rubbing her mother’s back.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“For starters, stop asking these hippies for help. Even if you somehow convince them to tag along, they’re more likely than not to get in the way. Look, I may be able to round up a handful of guys to help you. It won’t be an army, but we might be able to head over there and at least have a look.” Finn pointed behind him to Lou’s battle wagon. “And if I manage to convince the big guy to join us, we can ride there in style.”
Lou’s gawky truck didn’t seem to instill much confidence in Carole. “I hate the idea of risking any other lives, but the thought of my son ... ” Her face crumpled, and Finn took her into his arms.
“I’ll do what I can,” Finn said, “but there’s something I need from you first. From your daughter, actually.”
Carole pulled away as though Finn had just asked for the unthinkable.
“Hell, I’m not asking anything like that. For God’s sake. Nikki has a gift. I don’t quite understand it, but that doesn’t change what she can do.”
Carole rubbed her eyes. “She can see lost memories, which is ironic I suppose, since she can’t remember any of her own.”
Finn laughed. A group of cult members had gathered over by one of the trailers. Were they being watched?
“What do you make of all this?”
He was actually asking Carole, but Nikki spoke up. “This whole thing gives me the creeps.”
“We met with All Father earlier,” Carole said, “we were trying to solicit his help with Aiden, and Nikki asked him about his daughter, Abigail, before any of us knew she even existed.”
“And what happened?”
“He got really weird,” Nikki said. “Like he was angry that I brought it up.”
“Hmm,” Finn said, rubbing his chin. “Tell me what you saw.”
“A little girl writing in a notebook. It was Christmas, and there was a tree and multicolored lights strung along the windows. She looked up at me and said, ‘I love you, Daddy.’ It looked like an old memory he’d forgotten.”
“He mentioned her in his speech,” Carole added. “Called her his late daughter.”
“Wonder how she died.” Finn said no one in particular. “But I don’t think these people are anything to worry about. Naïve, yes. Brainwashed, for sure. But if it weren’t for them, most of the people here wouldn’t have made it. In fact, Lou would still be in Vegas, shooting looters from the nest on his roof.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Carole said. “So what did you want to ask Nikki about?”
Finn rolled up the sleeve of his overalls and showed both of them his tattoo.
92574301
“I need you to tell me what this means.”
Dana Hatfield
Green River, UT
Dana was with a group of women from Tent City who were heading down to the river to fill buckets of water. Even before everything had gone to hell, the people living here didn’t have any of the modern conveniences that modern society to
ok for granted. Necessities like running water and electricity. The shelter part they had down. Between the trailers and the main compound, they sure weren’t suffering for anything, which made the water and electric light issue all the more confounding.
Dana dipped her bucket in the water and lifted it with ease. For the other women, the task was proving far more difficult. Wasn’t much of a surprise either. She was about as different from them as it was possible to be different from anyone. None of them had served in the armed forces. In fact, most of them were probably baby factories. No, that wasn’t true, or fair. Many of these women had worked for a living, sitting behind desks and shuffling papers around, or typing on those once ubiquitous devices that had gone completely extinct overnight: computers.
She reached over and helped a slightly thick, 20-something girl named Kelly pull her bucket out of the river. ‘Course, this water wasn’t fit for human consumption. Not yet. It needed to be filtered and then boiled. A few of the men had already started building a filtration system. They found two plastic 55 gallon drums out back. They would be fitted one on top of the other. Holes would be punctured in the bottom of the top drum and then filled with layers of sand and charcoal to catch some of the larger impurities. What trickled into the barrel below would then be boiled to remove bacteria, making it safe to drink. Not surprisingly, most of the people here had to be shown what to do by the culties who’d probably been at this for a while now. At some point, after the Rainbowites had built the main compound, they also attached a water collection device on the roof that fed into a storage tank down below. The eventual dream would be to build a windmill and have the water pumped up from the river to avoid all this backbreaking work. The extra electricity it generated could then be used to power some lights.
Dana set Kelly’s bucket down and took a deep breath. She was looking at the compound when a thought struck her. More of an inconsistency, really. These hippies claimed to hate modern conveniences, but most everything they had was a product of the very thing they stood against. Those trailers, the compound itself. The list went on and on. Hypocrisy. That’s what it came down to. Not that she didn’t respect their stance on violence. Hurting others should absolutely be a last resort, but when you stand up and preach, you better make sure you aren’t guilty of the very thing you’re judging in others.
Kelly thanked Dana, and when all the women were finished, they continued on toward Tent City. But Dana’s mind kept returning to the way things used to be. Somehow, the line between need and want had become seriously blurred in those final years leading up to the end. Much of the planet didn’t have the luxuries people in the developed world whined about losing. With any other technological disaster, a big chunk of the planet would have carried on just the same. What would a bushman deep in the jungles of the Pacific know about electric lights and microwave ovens? The Shift, as All Father referred to it, wouldn’t have changed a thing for them if it hadn’t erased most of human memory.
The group was halfway to the tents, about parallel to the third trailer, when one of the women asked them to stop. They would all return together, they agreed, if for no other reason than to shield the pride of those less physically capable.
A switch had turned off in Dana’s head when she’d made the final decision to leave Rainbowland. And it didn’t have a thing to do with Alvarez. At this point, he was probably either dead or dying, and Dana was perfectly at peace with either possibility. The thought of justice and vengeance had driven her here, although even as she made her way along I-80, passing countless wrecks strewn along the highway, she could feel the lie coming undone. She hadn’t only been pursuing Alvarez. She’d been looking for somewhere she could belong.
But now another change was afoot.
“Don’t get too attached to anyone,” she told herself in that quiet little voice that always strove to protect her from the pain. All Father’s reaction to fending off marauders had helped to solidify her decision to leave. She’d seen the way Larry had petitioned and worked the crowd, including herself, into something of a hornet’s nest, only to have the head of the entire cult walk off the stage. He was a man of peace after all, so leaving before he told them all to fuck off probably helped to save his image. But these people were only being true to their beliefs. Besides, hadn’t they called us all here in the first place?
Surely there would be other safe locations with plentiful resources nearby. Farm land, hemmed in by mountain ranges, maybe an aquifer underground with clean water. Working the soil may very well prove a lost art in the coming years, but surely some would remember how.
The women carrying the buckets were moving again, and Dana wasn’t going to stop even if someone fainted. There was a limit to her patience. She was still thinking about this new paradise she’d conjured in her head, a group of like-minded people who weren’t afraid to protect what was theirs. She had no sooner set the bucket on a patch of dried grass when she heard her name. The voice was familiar, but surely she had to be dreaming. Dana spun around, and her lower jaw nearly hit the ground. The man standing before her put his arms out.
Dana couldn’t believe it. “Dad?”
Carole Cartright
Tent City, Rainbowland, UT
“It doesn’t work that way,” Carole was saying. “You can’t ask Nikki to call out a particular memory. It’s not like fishing through a filing cabinet for a birth certificate.”
“Who’s Harry?” Nikki asked.
Finn shook his head. “I don’t know ... ” Then he remembered the letter he’d found at Tevatron’s regional office in Vegas. He dug a hand into his pocket and came out with a crumpled piece of paper. The memo was signed Dr. Harry Thomson, Head of Research and Development. Then something else occurred to him. His conversation with Bob shortly after arriving in Rainbowland. He’d mentioned Harry, hadn’t he? Called him a slave driver and a certifiable nut case.
“What can you tell me about him?”
Nikki didn’t look certain. “It was faint, but I see myself sitting in a chair, and my arms are strapped down, and there’s a man who calls himself Harry with me in the room. I can hear myself speak.” She points at Finn “And I sound just like you. I am you, and I’m asking Harry if he thinks it’ll really make me forget, and Harry says yes. There’s another man in the room, hunched over between Harry and me. There’s a stinging pain in my forearm, and when I look down I see he’s got some kind of pen and he’s tattooing numbers onto my arm. 9 ... 2 ... 5 ... ”
Nikki stopped and looked up. Her body was quivering and wet with perspiration. Carole pulled her close. Finn’s face was a mix of disbelief and fear. That was exactly how Carole had felt when Nikki first did it to her.
Finn’s facial muscles settled. It was clear he was digesting all this as quickly as he could, wondering what it meant.
“Is that it?” he asked. “Can you tell me anymore? Where was I? Why were they inking me?”
Carole was still hugging Nikki’s trembling body.
She could understand the frustration Finn must be feeling. What a tease to be thrown a tiny morsel of a past you knew next to nothing about.
“It has to come out naturally, Finn,” Carole explained. “This isn’t something you can force.”
Finn went back to the memo again.
“I volunteered for something. Tevatron was running some kind of program, and for some reason I volunteered.”
“Program?” Carole asked
“It’s a long story,” Finn replied. “When she’s strong again, can I ask her more questions?”
Carole felt Nikki nodding against her chest. “You may. But now it’s time for your end of the bargain.”
Finn headed off toward Tent City, tapping his leg, deep in thought. He would be gone a few moments while he went to round up others to help search for Aiden and Alice. In the meantime, Carole wanted to take some time to make sure Nikki was all right.
But before she could ask, Nikki began to shudder.
“Honey? What is it?”
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Carole tried to pull Nikki’s face up, but her daughter wasn’t budging. It took several minutes for her to relax.
“You wanna talk about it?” Carole asked. She could only imagine how physically and emotionally taxing these last few days had been. As a grown woman, the only thing keeping her from peeling apart was the need to stay strong for Nikki. The more distressing truth was that if she stopped fighting, she might lose Aiden forever.
Nikki looked up at her. “My only memories are painful ones.”
“What do you mean, Sweetie?”
“Being on that burning plane,” Nikki said, her dark eyes swollen with tears. “That’s the very first thing I can recall. Seeing you and Aiden and not knowing how I got there or what was happening. Who you were.”
“And what about the others who didn’t make it?” Carole said. “They lost far more than who they were. Most of them forgot how to undo their seatbelts, and guess what, they burned to death.”
Nikki was quiet. A scolding from her mother normally provoked defiance from the young girl, but now things were different. The look on Nikki’s face was like a stranger had told her off. And the biting pain that came with that realization cut Carole deep. She thought she and Nikki had started to rebuild, maybe even from scratch, but now she understood she was no more than a stranger to the girl, a temporary custodian. She couldn’t blame Nikki. It wasn’t her fault. She never asked for any of this.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Nikki said. “You’re trying to toughen me up, but you don’t know what it’s like to see other people’s memories and know not a single one belongs to you.”
Finn walked up to them in that purposeful way he seemed to approach all things. Flanking him was Lou and the man with the cowboy hat Carole had seen asking questions during the meeting this morning.
Primal Shift: Volume 1 (A Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 26