Our War with Molly Nayfack

by Chris Capps

  Last week the Daily Sentinel had run a piece about leeching lye from wood ash and distilled water. That had been a good morning. Steven had clipped it out and tacked it to the church bulletin for later reference, using the same thumbtack that had previously held a picture of the Virgin and infant Jesus in front of a beam of celestial light. Lye had many uses, and each day the commissary was becoming less generous. Of course with Andrea and Mark Newmann returning for a Monday night communion, hope was once again swelling in Ritzer's chest.

  The sound of a rumbling truck engine rolled up the small hill to the McCarthy household, drawing his gaze. He saw the glowing tail lights of the two McCarthy brothers rattling loosely as the vehicle began its complex and painful song of idling. Ritzer grinned and snorted to himself idly in the vibrating air near the truck, wondering what trouble the boys might have gotten themselves into as he approached. The doors opened.

  "Ahoy there," Steven called out, dragging a squeaky lawnmower behind him. The silhouette of Felix waved from the foggy specter of light shining against the two-car-garage door, and Michael whirled around before gently placing his hand over his heart. Walking into the smell of ghostly diesel, the pastor smiled and dusted the grass shavings from the knees of his jeans, "You boys checking in on your folks?"

  "Yeah," Mike said quickly, peeling himself from the open truck door and then shutting it gently, "Just checking in."

  Felix, the one Ritzer had once awkwardly described in mixed company as 'the smarter one,' rounded behind the truck like a wolf, divining him with those strange eyes. Ritzer wasn't a paranoid person by any means, but whenever he had a rude thought in front of the older McCarthy boy, he would quickly try to cover it up with a forced benevolence. There was something to this one - something that could see things. But then the both of them were still childlike in their pursuit of foolish games. Ritzer glanced down to examine the palm of Felix's hand before shaking it. It was a firm handshake.

  "You heard what happened down at the airfield, then?" Felix asked. There was an imperative tone to his question.

  "What happened?" the pastor asked, removing his gloves and looking over at Mike.

  "Helicopter crashed," Mike said, "That's what all the sirens were doing. It wasn't good. We don't know much more than that."

  "Good lord!" Steven said, nearly choking on the words, "Was anyone hurt?"

  The two of them exchanged looks before Mike responded,

  "Yeah, we think so. There was a big fire."

  "Are there any sacraments you can perform for the victims of something like this?" Felix asked. Ritzer knew it was more for his sake than theirs. The McCarthy family had fallen from grace long ago, pursuing instead the newer path of abstract and open ended spiritual idealism.

  "That depends on if they survived. I can provide no spiritual comfort to those who have already passed on, although their families may want someone to guide their prayers. I should find a way to the hospital in case I'm needed."

  "I'll take you," Felix said, "Mike will be a while in the house anyway."

  "No I won't," Mike said, glaring at his brother, "I'm really not going to be that long. Why don't you wait?"

  Felix was already getting back in the truck through the passenger seat, bypassing any hope for Mike to block the door. He yelled something back, inaudible with the rumble of the old truck's engine, and motioned for the pastor to join him. Mike's fist pounded the window once, but then he whirled around and headed for the front door of the house. The pastor graciously scooted into the cab.

  Night was beginning to descend. The crimson hue of fog had crept into their brief conversation and was already steadily advancing toward night. Their ride to the hospital would be shared in silence. By the time they arrived at the concrete building, the deep red had been replaced by a monochromatic purple, dark and oppressive. The ghostly show of road emerging from fog abruptly changed when they pulled into the lot and looked through the mist at the massive hospital building.

  When it was built, the hospital had been designed to accommodate a population of around 80,000. A parking garage was erected during the first wave into the drop zone even before the name Cairo had been spoken in this world. The design closely resembled numerous military hospitals in its slim and featureless facade. The interior was similarly sparse on personality - much like the tunnel facility that had once led back to DC.

  "Thank you," Pastor Ritzer said after Felix cut the engine off, "It's good to know someone around here still takes the Lord's work seriously."

  Felix pulled the keys from the ignition and unbuckled his seatbelt,

  "Pastor, I don't want to misrepresent myself. I'm hoping you'll be able to provide comfort to an injured person, but I'm mostly using this as an excuse to find out who was piloting that second helicopter. Please don't take that the wrong way. I'm used to people..." He trailed off, searching for the right words.

  "Obfuscating the truth from you," the Pastor finished, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the door, "I understand, Felix. I don't hold it against you." He got up, leaving the cab of the truck and slamming the rusted door behind him. Bracing himself against the cold onset of night, he continued to himself, "I don't appreciate it, but I understand it."

  Inside the hospital, the receptionist hardly looked up when they entered. She braced her teeth into a smile when she saw the pastor and nodded a friendly hello as she scrambled for the sign-in sheet. They signed in, noting the time on paper. The hospital was nearly devoid of movement.

  The last census in town had revealed a population of nearly eight hundred people, including births over the past ten years. In a town of this size, the number of patients was hardly enough to marginally fill a hospital designed to accommodate a small city. The result was a long and lonely walk as they tried to locate the landing field crash victims.

  "Of course there is an obvious place to search," Felix said as they rounded yet another corner to find barren polished halls. Most of the hospital wasn't even powered, meaning the labyrinth they had to look through would be smaller - considerably more manageable. He pointed at a map on the wall hanging behind glass. His finger traced past intensive care and the waiting rooms to the morgue residing on the second floor, "It's here we want to go."

  "If they're in the morgue, there's nothing I can do for them," Ritzer said, "Then they've already passed on. Their families certainly wouldn't appreciate me dragging their loved ones out for your macabre investigation."

  "Their families may not even be here," Felix said, "I think there's another town somewhere out in those woods."

  The pastor stopped short, his heart skipping a beat as he waited for an explanation.

  "Two helicopters were involved in that crash," Felix said, "Think about it. Everyone knows Cairo was originally equipped with three helicopters at the time the tunnel was shut down. The first one crashed years ago and was salvaged for parts. The second one also broke down, being chopped up for parts to keep the third one running. This third helicopter was the one Chance Cooper has been flying for nearly six years. It was the last helicopter in Cairo, in the whole world. That is until another one landed on top of it."

  What else could it possibly be?

  It certainly was something. For over ten years the people of this humble town had lived in utter isolation, scavenging the terrific stockpiles of the initial expedition and building what those left behind could. And yet, as the years went on, even he was finding it difficult to improvise his way through a normal life. Sooner or later, the last of their supplies would dry up.

  Even a sparsely populated installation, nestled somewhere beyond the clear cut line would bring the people hope. It certainly wouldn't have been difficult for such an installation to remain hidden, having been shielded by the thick fog. Distance, geographic isolation, even the radio silence could be explained. Of course there was the helicopter, to one day triumphantly close this gap. What other explanation could there be? Someone certainly didn't build another one from scratch. It was an intoxicatin
g idea, one that promised a whole new era for the small town - a new era born from a tragedy.

  "Alright," the pastor said finally, "A quick prayer."

  ***

  "I told him we would be here," Andrea said. She heard the desperation in her own voice, mingling with the dying echo of timid knocking into an empty building. The night had nearly suffered a catastrophic meltdown as she dragged Mark from the dinner table to the church where "that priest" held services. Mark wanted to go to sleep. It was all he ever wanted to do now. He wanted to sleep.

  "Let's just go home and forget about this foolishness," he said, "There's nothing for us here."

  "I don't understand it," Andrea said shivering in cold red mist, "I told him we'd come at sunset. Maybe we should give him a few more minutes."

  She sniffed delicately, pulling the faded green wool coat she had brought from home around her. It was going to be dark soon. Mark glanced behind them down the street to see distant lights buzzing to life one after the other. A few of the electric lights on the back streets had been converted to argand and oil lamps, fueled by either candles, kerosene, or vegetable oil. On those streets, the lamps served only as a guide to pedestrians and provided very little illumination. Main Street, however, was still brightly illuminated by the dull glow of electric signs, destined to glow until either the power stations shut them off or the industrial filaments broke.

  It was only a matter of time before the lights on Main Street died forever, either to be replaced by the same dull flames of argand or else leave the main drag shrouded in darkness.

  Mark watched the lights buzz on, one at a time in the jack-o'-lantern fog. Down Main Street the theater was putting on a community production of an old Shakespeare piece. Few people in the town shared the theater's enthusiasm for Shakespeare, but it was something. Tomorrow night a silver cloth would drape over the stage and they would be showing movies.

  "We could still salvage tonight," Mark said, "What about a show?"

  As the light slowly faded around them, to be replaced by the distant laughter of a few theater-goers, she looked to the left of the church where Main Street ended, curved to the side, and entered into that vast mausoleum that had brought them to this world.

  "There's another place we could go," she said, "How long since we've been in that building?" She pointed in the general direction of the tunnel facility.

  "You want to go burglarize the tunnel building again?" Mark said, his deadened eyes managing a smile. His gaze had now drifted into that space of reddened shadow where he knew the closed tunnel back to DC rested eternally in peace.

  "Just walk around," she said pulling his hand, "Explore it. Maybe remember some things we liked about our old lives."

  There were six entrances to the two-story, externally featureless concrete tunnel complex. Of these, the main truck entrance had been blocked over with an improvised wooden wall nearly fifteen feet high. Three of the doors were welded physically shut. There were two sets of double doors on either side - service entrances now with chain wrapped between the handles. Other than teenagers in the throes of wanderlust, few people from the town ever found reason to visit the tunnel complex.

  They walked together wordlessly, each unsure of themselves as they broke through thick fog to the building. One of the doors still wrapped with chains had its padlock cut. For some reason, though it was officially off-limits, the old tunnel complex was not entirely considered taboo. No police patrol officially stopped or arrested trespassers. It was understood, quite to the contrary, that people were somewhat expected to break in and look around. Given it was the recognized mouth of their world, it wasn't difficult to understand.

  Their shoes crunched the fragments of a broken beer bottle beneath them as Mark snuck his fingers up to the chain and gingerly lifted it off the door handle, letting it hang slack to the side. The fact that the chain was wrapped around both handles telegraphed that there would likely be no one inside the structure to bother them. With a tarnished whine, they pulled the door with four hands and looked into the darkened hallway.

  "Did you bring anything to light the way?" Mark whispered over his shoulder.

  "A few candles from home," Andrea said rifling through the front pockets of her sundress, "I figured they would make a good donation to the church."

  "You better give me one."

  Lighting the candles with Mark's cigarette lighter, a gentle glow filled the hallway surrounding them. Old posters and papers hung from the walls, suspended by thumbtacks. The door clicked shut behind them, but neither of them were startled. Somehow this place was comfortable. Despite its cold and sterile darkness, this place had all the familiarity of home. Of course they had been here many times before.

  Long ago.

  Down the hallway, shielding their candles from the wind of walking, Andrea and Mark stepped softly side by side. They passed by a map indicating where the nearby fire exits were without even giving it a glance. These rooms - these hallways - had not changed in nearly twenty years. There was little doubt of where they were going.

  "It feels nice to be here again," Mark said, punctuating his sentence with a wistful sigh, "The place hasn't changed much at all."

  "A little dust," Andrea said gently elbowing Mark in the arm, "But it still holds the same excitement it used to."

  "Does it, now?" Mark said.

  They passed over to the old elevator shaft resting next to the door still hiding the stairs to the second floor. Andrea reached out her hand.

  Would these doors still be locked? Surely the droves of teenagers that had passed through this secret spot would have found a way to unlock the stairwell, either by looking through the office drawers or else by simple manipulation of the door's tumblers. Andrea had herself once tried to pick the lock in her younger days. It had seemed an exciting skill to explore. Unfortunately, she had no idea what she was doing. But her attempt had amused Mark. Her hand rested on the door handle. Of course it was locked. She tugged it a couple times to make sure, but it didn't budge.

  "We'll have to take the elevator shaft," Mark said gesturing with his thumb over to the open doors of the elevator, "It looks like someone else has been here before."

  "Probably just teenagers," Andrea said chuckling, then added an uncertain, "Right?"

  Mark had an unfamiliar look in his eye. It was unfamiliar, almost exclusively, because it had been a long time since he had been mischievous around her,

  "Sure," he said with mock uncertainty, "Yeah, teenagers. P-probably"

  "Don't mess with me, Mark," Andrea said tapping him on the arm.

  The elevator door was wedged open, but without any power to this part of the building it wouldn't be closing any time soon. Together they squeezed into the spot and looked up to the ceiling. The service hatch was open, possibly from the last time they had made their ascent to Mark's old office.

  "I'll help you up," he said holding his hands together over his knee to hoist her up.

  With experienced hands, they gripped the steel bars of the ladder leading up to the second floor with ease, even in complete darkness with the candles once again pocketed. When they reached the 27th rung they began the careful climb out into the hallway that led to where they were going.

  Before he was a butcher, Mark had been a trained and respected drafter within the facility, managing the construction of the buildings that now comprised much of the town. When the tunnel shut, he had transferred a few of his belongings from the old office to his home, but it was for the most part still intact from when he worked for the government assisting in the design of such buildings as the hospital and the university complex. Most of the things he used to treasure in those days remained in the office when he left to start his new life.

  After relighting the candles, they opened the door to his office and peered inside. Everything was still waiting, like a dream frozen in time and sprinkled with dust. His coffee mug, his office chair, the plastic plants, his desk, books, and files, and of course the sofa. It was
an old sofa, unremarkable like so many others seen in waiting rooms and offices all over.

  Unremarkable, except for the common history Mark and Andrea shared on it. They were no sooner in the old room than the two of them once again found themselves gripped by passions of the old times. The candles dropped and extinguished, their lips met, and they collapsed together onto the gritty red leather of their old couch.

  ***

  The first time the shovel struck down and pierced the soil on Molly Nayfack's grave, there was an unexpected obstruction that resonated like a wooden drum. Unexpected only because it was struck immediately.

  "We didn't bury her deep at all," Sherriff Rind said leaning the shovel back and tossing aside the first scoop of grave dirt. The mayor was standing beside him, holding his rifle over his shoulder in one hand and the flashlight in the other. Of course if something did arise, something that needed to be shot, he would have to do so in complete darkness. And yet a large part of him somehow knew it was impossible.

  The dead don't come back.

  He held the flashlight steady, but there was a chill in the air. It was a chill that made it nearly impossible not to shiver, not to send that single precious beam of light shaking from side to side. The thing that kept him from shivering most wasn't the warmth of his jacket or the reassuring knowledge that the dead do not return. It was cold pragmatism.

  The beam of light was illuminating in a circle, blocked out mostly by Sherriff Rind's form. And yet there was more, Mayor Sugarhill realized. Beyond the edge of that beam of light was where the rest of their surroundings were. Out there, in the rest of the world was where anything could be hiding. If she wasn't in the grave they were unearthing right now, Molly Nayfack would have to be in that world outside of his small light. She would be standing there staring at them, fully knowing what they had done to her. And whatever cosmic force she had tapped to allow her to come back would be there too. They would both be there, waiting, watching. If the Mayor lost control of his hand, and shivered too hard, the light would inevitably sway ever so slightly. If that happened, it would begin illuminating a fraction of that possibility. It was a world he didn't want to encroach on. It was safer here, digging the grave.