by Sam Herrera
“I love you too.” His hand reached out to hold mine, his touch dispelling, as it always did, my anger and gloom. “But I don’t want you punishing him forever.”
“I’m not punishing him,” I sighed, “I’m getting a life of my own.”
“It can’t be,” Caleb gasped.
“What?” I asked, following his stunned gaze to a small figure standing in the garden. It was Chloe; I would know her anywhere. We both squinted down at her as she waved up at us. I was amazed. Though I had no idea what Caleb was so surprised about.
*
“Fuck off, she’s your old babysitter?”
“Yes,” Caleb nodded, looking defeated. “And yet here she is not looking a day older than then.” Chloe smiled demurely and shrugged. I shook my head and hung it between my knees. We were gathered around in a clearing in Redstone’s back yard, far into the forest where none could see us.
“I told this would happen, didn’t I?” Chloe said, sitting right beside me.
“Yes, but—”
“No time for buts,” she interrupted. “We have to prepare ourselves. War is coming.”
“What?”
“The disappearances are just the beginning. I need you two to stay with David Grey. He will become very important in aiding our cause.”
“What’s Dad got to do with anything? And what’s your cause?” Caleb frowned.
“We will need him, believe me,” Chloe continued. “Soon he will play a major part in the UN’s rehabilitation program. You have seen it beginning already with the refugees, haven’t you?” We glanced at each other and both, looking back, nodded.
“Well, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Soon Redstone will become a haven, taking in more and more people. When the government begins to take an interest, that’s when you gotta be really careful.”
“Karden?” I nodded.
“Who? What?” Caleb asked, looking confused.
“Matthew Karden, right now, is a diplomat and an ambassador for the UN. Maybe you know him?”
“I’ve heard the name, I guess,” he admitted. “So what?”
“So, he is the enemy in my time. In fact he is the enemy in all times. Ever and anon he has been using his gift, the gift I too have, to spread his poison all across history.”
“Alright, I’ve heard enough,” he snapped, getting up. “This is all bullshit.”
“Is it?” I asked. “I mean, look around, Caleb. Millions of people have just disappeared into thin air. And well—” I indicated his old nanny.
“You’re not saying you believe this?” he squinted.
“These disappearances were foretold in the Bible. Your mother and grandmother made sure you knew it, chapter and verse, and it happened exactly as it was written. Go if you have to. I’m staying.”
“Damnit, Mara,” he sighed.
“What do you need us to do?” I asked Chloe.
“Accept proof for one. Do you remember Ethan?”
“Who?” Uhhhh!
“Yes, I remember him,” I shuddered.
“Ethan was a creature we met while we were in Borneo.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Borneo?!” Caleb exclaimed.
“She and Kyle have been hiding the Rage of Winter ever since she was a child. It’s a state-of-the-art stealth spacecraft with technology surpassing anything we have today.” Shut up, Chloe.
“Has everyone gone fucking nuts around here?”
“Any denials, Mara?” He looked at my defeated face once and then turned away, shaking his head.
“My world went fucking nuts ages ago, kid. Get over it,” Chloe grinned. “Caleb,” she sighed, “you clearly remember me, right? Well, how else do you explain you reaching twenty while I…haven’t?”
“I can’t,” he admitted after a while. “Who is this Ethan then? What kind of creature is he?”
“He is what Scripture refers to as one of the Locusts.”
“What?”
“The Locusts came upon the Earth and were given the ability to sting like scorpions. They were told not to harm the Earth, the grass and plants but only the people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were told not to kill them but to torture them for five months with the pain of a scorpion sting. In those days people will long to die but death will flee them’,” she quoted. “You remember your Sunday School lessons, don’t you?”
“This is crazy?” Caleb whispered.
“It is happening, though, isn’t it? Everything you have heard from Revelation is coming true. Ethan’s kind are being prepared for war in outlaw laboratories all across the world. Karden means for them to serve him in his campaign of oppression. But the tortures he has inflicted upon them, is inflicting upon them even now, to change them into what they will become, will soon prove too much and they shall rise against him.”
*
I wiped the sweat off my brow as I rolled out the crick in my neck. Shit, this was hard. I was working on Redstone Farm’s new allotment. It had been Jamie’s idea to plant crops and vegetables all around the grounds. What choice did we have really? We were all trying simply to keep our heads above the chaos raging in the wake of the Rapture, as Caleb called it. Looting, vandalism, mass religious hysteria and roving gangs of hoods. It was just the time when a dragon would be useful. But Chloe and Ethan were long gone, she’d simply told us she would be around when we needed her and vanished into the trees. Later we’d gone into the woods to find their campsite deserted. We’d had no time to search for them; we had all been needed to chip into our new jobs here. I sighed as I recalled the lost days of The Survivors, my rock band. I snorted. The name was now a mockery. Dom had been hit by a suddenly unmanned car and killed instantly. Fred, finding his fiancée and parents also vanished, had shot himself. And, as if all that shit wasn’t bad enough, the music industry had collapsed overnight. People were too busy just trying to survive for entertainment. Most TV and radio stations had been shut down due to lack of manpower anyway. We, Linda, Angela her sister, Raz, Abby, Trevor and I were now, as a full-time job, planting turnips, carrots and parsnips while Caleb, David and Kyle were working to build enclosures for the livestock that we would also have to feed. We had quite a selection. Father had chipped in; donating the money we’d need for pigs, cows, chickens and the equipment to make the pens. Usually, before all this had happened, we would drive into town or get the morning delivery. But now the shops and small, local businesses had closed down, again due lack of manpower. So we were the delivery service working to provide, just about, enough food for us and the whole community. I watched as a fully-recovered Trevor tossed back his water and removed his sweaty, plaid shirt. Beneath this was a gray, form-fitting vest that left little of his athletic frame to the imagination. I gave Abby a congratulatory nod behind his back and she grinned, seeing it. We’d been doing this ever since the vanishings and going at it hard. I had found David Grey a real ball-buster. He was constantly reminding us we were “doing this for the sake of the community as a whole and not for ourselves.” I would never forget the day Raz had been caught thieving from the stores. We’d found then that he was nothing compared to Kyle. He had dragged Raz in front of all of us and stuck his groundskeeper’s shotgun under the poor man’s chin.
“This,” he told us, “is what’s going to happen to anyone who thieves, caught once. I will now be guarding, day and night, all we produce, serving equal amounts to all of us and locking what’s left in the freezers until it’s time for it to go to market. Anyone I catch again, anywhere near the shed, I will use this on for real.” Then, before our shocked eyes, he’d put the man on his back with a busted nose and a brace on his ribs for a good week afterwards. I glanced over at the bruised, battered guy as he used his heavy scythe to hack at the crops. From the furious look on his messed-up face and the way he was venting it on the corn we were working on growing, looking l
ike Jason Voorhees taking his machete to happy campers on one of the Friday thirteenth movies, I’d bet good money he recalled it clearly as well. But he’d learned. We all had. Agreeing with Kyle’s harsh new rule, David had the stores guarded carefully. And we’d all profited. He was fair and giving but he weren’t to be fucked with. Neither was Kyle, as other looters and rioters had learned to their cost. He had been invaluable in organizing us. We had needed to defend ourselves and he, needing a purpose, had showed us how, teaching Caleb, David, Raz, Abby, all of us, the right moves: self-defense, mixed martial arts, everything. He was as bad as David when it came to ball-busting, as I knew from personal experience. What more could you ask for from bosses? I arched out the crick in my back and grimaced at the blisters forming on my normal hand.
“Why do you have one glove?” Abby asked me for the umpteenth time. “Isn’t your hand roasting?”
“Here,” I said, offering her a cornhusk. She looked at me, long and hard, picking up on the evasions I was always making. But she held her lighter to the seed.
“Almost ready,” she nodded.
“Cool.”
“Hey, another song later?” I smiled and nodded. There was a silver lining to all this: I still had my guitar and most evenings I was asked to perform for my colleagues. They, at least, still had time for my songs.
“Hey, look.” I followed Abby’s pointing finger, seeing, of all things, a limo pull into the driveway and David walk down the front steps of Redstone to meet it. The UN. I felt a chill as I saw David greet the two suits who were climbing out. Everything was happening just as Chloe had said. I went back to work, trying to ignore the chills that continued to come.
“Song?” I smiled as put down my shovel, strapped on my guitar and walked to my stage with Abby and the others eagerly following. A small tree-stump to sit on in front of the cornfield, surrounded by a bunch of sweaty farmers, was hardly a stage but who cared? I sat and began to strum ‘Lost Friends,’ a small tribute to Dom and Fred, singing from my heart:
“I am the last of a once-great band.
I feel, sometimes, like the last in the whole land.
I often wish I’d never had such friends.
That way I wouldn’t have had to see their ends.
It broke my heart to hear that they had gone,
That we would never again play. Together we shone.”
“It gave me joy to hear our voices mingle.
The roar of the crowd was like crashing waves on the shingle.
Now it’s gone, leaving a hole nothing transcends.
It’s very powerful: the grief of lost friends.”
“I so miss the rare feel of camaraderie,
Before which I was sailing though life, small and lonely.
I was always very unique and strange
And I often wished I could change.
But you didn’t care if I had a whale’s spout,
So long as I sang my motherfucking lungs out.”
I grinned as I waited for the laughter to die down before continuing.
“It gave me joy to hear our voices mingle.
The roar of the crowd was like crashing waves on the shingle.
Now it’s gone, leaving a hole nothing transcends.
It’s very powerful: the grief of lost friends.”
“When I was with you I strummed like I was on fire.
When I jumped off-stage, the crowed buoyed me higher and higher.
They yelled, “Encore. Encore.”
Yeah, we were the best, top of the score.
I would so love, again, to see you guys.
But you’re now loving the great gig in the skies.”
“It gave me joy to hear our voices mingle.
The roar of the crowd was like crashing waves on the shingle.
Now it’s gone, leaving a hole nothing transcends.
It’s very powerful: the grief of lost friends.”
Beaming, I bowed to the applauding, and a little tearful, crowd.
“Baby,” Caleb whispered into my ear as I stood up and he threw his arms around me. “I had no idea you loved them so much.”
*
Later that evening, David summoned Caleb, Jamie and I to his office. “Very moving song,” he smiled at me. I nodded, just wanting my bed. He sat at his desk and came right out with it.
“We’re moving to New York.” My heart sank. New. York? Caleb and I glanced at each other, stunned, as he continued. “An old friend of mine called Matthew Karden, who is now a real big shot in the UN, has offered to sponsor Redstone, giving all the funding and all the equipment we will ever need. In return, he wants us: you two, me, Jamie, Mr Thayer and most of the people we have here to move there to set up our own branch with, again, all, the funding we will need. The truth is he has heard what I have done here and is impressed by how we have banded together while all this chaos is going on.”
“We had no choice, Dad; you’re a fucking nightmare.”
“I know,” he smiled. “Watch your mouth. And because of that he wants me to help handle the riots in New York. Things are going to hell over there and the NYPD is overwhelmed.”
“Doesn’t he have secret service and bodyguards and shit?” I asked.
“Yes and they’re assigned to him, not the city.” Know everything, don’t you, Chloe?
*
A year later.
I heaved a sigh as I looked out over what was left of New York City. I hated it. I had never liked big cities and skyscrapers anyway. I’d been glad my family had only lived in Upstate New York, not the Big Apple. And I hated what was happening to this world. I gave a shiver as I recalled the Great Quake, as the few papers still running were calling it. It was amazing any of us who had come here – Dave, Jamie, Kyle, Caleb and I – were still alive really. Caleb had hidden us both in the smallest, most airtight cupboard he could find and we had ridden it out together. I’d been so scared, fucking terrified. We both had been but we’d held tight to each other and stayed put. I just thanked God we had been at ground level. When it was finally over, we had stayed at home for a week afterwards, watching through the window, horrified, as the moon rose. I looked at it now: a huge, blood-red orb in the sky, bathing everything in an infra-red glow. It was, I supposed, a welcome change from the pitch black of the day. It had been a while since any of us had seen the sun. Day had become night. Night had become…What? I didn’t know which way was up anymore. We had taken a walk outside, after the quake, to find the streets littered with rubble, shale, and the corpses of those that had fallen from their offices and towers illuminated in a glow that was as red as the blood that pooled around them. I had taken one look and collapsed into Caleb’s arms, crying my eyes out.
Caleb. I wished he was here now. I gave a shuddering sigh. What was I wearing? How had I found my way here? How had any of us made it here? Oh yeah, torchlight which we needed for everything. I was dreading the “day” when we would wake up and find no batteries left. From space traveler, to hard rocker, to farm worker, to…apocalypse survivor. I shook my head sadly, missing my guitar and my old life now more than ever. But I missed the sun the most. I even missed the farm work. I had been so different, back then. So happy. My songs had been the highlight of the workday. Since starting work here, stuck behind this fucking desk waiting futilely for this fucking phone to ring, immersed in either fucking pitch black or fucking red all the time, there’d been no chance to play music. My inner poet seemed to have abandoned me anyway.
Taking my mind off these painful thoughts, I turned on my torch and began to swing it around the reception area, the small yellow beam holding back the red gloom and giving me a small smile. I did this at least once every day just to see the light. Caleb hadn’t wanted this either. But the UN had been on the lookout for tough, capable guys who could work security. Thanks to Kyle’s self-defense training he’d b
een perfect. Apparently our jobs here had been to raise money for Redstone Haven and other places like it. But what was the point now? How could anyone farm in this? How could anything grow? Every day we talked for a while, comparing all our dull experiences, deriving some small comfort from each other. Caleb was now a fully-fledged security guard, under Kyle who was now head of security, while I manned a reception desk. I personally didn’t see what purpose I served here except to grow a fat ass. No one called. What was the point even if the phones, by some miracle, still worked? It was with a sigh of relief that I felt my way to the floodlit gym in the evenings; relieving the fear we were all feeling. I nodded at two torch-bearing repair workers as they walked past my desk on their way to scope out the damage the quake had caused. I wished them luck. I really did. There were only here because, most likely, they had no families and because Karden had paid them to be. So what? What could they do really? It was strange: everything Chloe and Ethan had told us would happen continued to. We were now working for the UN where people from high up were still, in the face of all this, trying to restore order. I had to hand it to Karden; he had determination. His name had been heard many times around here, mentioned in the same hushed tones in which one might talk of a deity. And, as Chloe had predicted, he continued to rise in power, unhampered by any of this. The same could not be said for the population. I didn’t know what the food and water situation really was here, but word had spread, throughout New York, that we were hoarding all there was for ourselves and the streets became dangerous for all of us. I looked up, hearing the automatic door open, and almost screamed, seeing with shock the starved, fucked-up man shuffling towards my desk. He looked like a skeleton, like one of the Holocaust victims: his suit hung off him as if it were way too big, his eyes were sunken and dead, his cheekbones stuck out like blades, his mouth was stretched tight over his teeth and he was covered in fading bruises and scrapes. In short he looked, unbelievably, worse off than the rest of us.
“Hi,” he rasped in an Irish accent, “I’m here for the interview.”The security guard interview?! Oh, God.