by Maxey, Phil
Are they nice people?
She had been hearing noises downstairs since the sun came up and wondered if there were other guests. Maybe Claire was getting breakfast ready?
She smiled at the absurdity of the idea.
Maybe we can stay…? I need to find Russell…
She had no idea where her husband was, but she knew if he was alive he would be out there somewhere looking for her.
I can’t stay…
The debate went back and forth in her mind.
She sat up quicker than she wanted to and looked back at her daughter.
Still sleeping.
Pulling the sheet back she put her feet on the cool floor and stood. She decided to keep her pants on when she climbed into bed, in case she needed to leave quickly, and she walked softly over to the single chair, sat and put her boots on. She then put on her light, orange shirt, over her vest. Walking to the window she pulled the blinds back slightly and looked out into an alleyway which ran alongside the building. Nothing about it screamed that the world had ended. There were large trash cans, weeds breaking through the concrete paving, and an empty bottle. She crept around the bed, and opened the door, leaving quietly.
As soon as she was on the landing, she could hear multiple voices from downstairs, and the smell of freshly made coffee. She took a few steps forward when a door nearby opened, and a young woman appeared. Marina smiled and continued walking.
“You one of the newcomers?” said the woman.
Marina stopped at the top of the stairs. “Yeah.”
The woman stepped forward with her hand out. “I’m Kelly-Anne, but people call me Kelly.”
Marina shook her hand. “Are you staying here?”
“I live here. Claire is my grandmother.”
Kelly moved past and started to descend the stairs. “You want some breakfast?”
Marina nodded, while briefly looking back to her bedroom door. “That’d be great, thanks.”
They moved down the stairs and turned right at the bottom into a good-sized eating area, with twelve tables and accompanying chairs, half of which were occupied.
The din of conversation lowered when Marina appeared.
“I’ll get you some coffee,” said Kelly, walking through a doorway into a kitchen area. Marina smiled.
She then spotted Joel sitting alone in the back corner. He was looking down, trying to look like just another member of the community having breakfast. His dog was laying at the side of the table.
She picked her way through the maze of tables, eyes following her, then sat opposite Joel.
He paused while biting into a pastry, then continued chewing.
She leaned forward. “What you think of this place? You think it’s okay?”
Joel’s eyes swept across the other diners, most of which had grown silent since Marina appeared.
“Good pastries,” said Joel, dropping his half-eaten pastry to the ground, which the dog quickly snapped up. He then took a sip from his coffee.
She frowned. “You know what I mean,” she half-whispered.
“Well, they haven’t tied us to a tree yet.”
She sat back. Kelly appeared with a jug, the top of which steam was emanating from. She then placed a mug on the table and poured the coffee in. “All the pastries seem to have gone, but we can make you some eggs?”
Marina looked concerned. “I… I don’t have much money to pay you…”
“First one’s free, then we can work something out,” said a voice behind Kelly.
Claire appeared, frowning at the black and grey animal panting on the floor.
Marina looked at Kelly. “Could I have some on two plates, the other’s for my daughter.”
Kelly smiled. “Sure.” She disappeared into the kitchen.
“Get a good night’s rest?” Claire said to Marina.
Marina nodded. “Yes… thanks.” Marina had the feeling Joel and Claire had already talked.
Claire looked at Joel. “You can’t keep him in here, there’s a yard out back. You might want to secure it, but you can keep him there.”
“No problem,” said Joel. “And thanks for the breakfast.”
She nodded and went back into the kitchen.
The sound of the door to the street opening, was followed by heads looking towards the entrance to the dining area. Jim looked across to Joel, as did most in the room.
Joel got up. “I’ll catch up with you later.” He went to move off, but stopped. “How’s your kid?”
“Hopefully, still sleeping.”
“Good.” He looked down at the dog. “Flint, come on.” The dog remained fixed to the ground. Some of the diners quietly laughed. Joel moved away, still looking at the dog. “Come on.”
Flint sprang up and followed Joel out of the room.
*****
Joel sat in Jim’s police pickup. The street in front of him looked like it hadn’t changed in over a hundred years. The sun above beamed down from a deep blue sky, and it was easy to imagine the tourists shopping for that special gold mine souvenir.
The tall man finished a conversation with a woman Joel didn’t recognize, then got into the driver’s seat.
“I thought I’d take you on a tour of our little hillside town.”
“Okay…”
“And maybe you and I could get to know each other a little better.”
He pointed back up the hill. “There’s only one way into Bellweather and one way out. You came in from the west, the exit heads east. Everything else is either mountain or as you go further into the valley, wilderness.”
“How many people are actually left?”
“Last count, eighty-nine.” Before Joel could ask the obvious question, Jim continued. “That’s down from over four hundred.” He pulled off, driving slowly along main street.
“And the others, are they all dead?”
“Some, not all.”
“Any idea where the ‘not all’ are?”
“We’ve been looking, haven’t found them yet. Maybe they just all wandered off.”
The silence from both men just confirmed that neither of them truly believed that.
Antique shops, more diners, and a barbershop were amongst other quaint buildings on both sides. Some of which had boards across the large glass fronts.
Jim pointed at one of the terraced buildings to their right. “That’s the town hall and police station.”
Joel looked up at the large steel mast standing a hundred feet at the back of it.
“That radio mast was the only communication we had with the outside world when it all went sideways.”
“You still in contact with authorities?”
“Not since a month ago.”
They continued driving along the narrow road which dissected the town. It was bigger in the daylight Joel thought. He switched his view to the other side and looked down into the valley. Desert, and the occasional building, stretched out for miles into a haze which eventually became mountains on the horizon.
“The last we heard, the army had been sent into the nearby larger towns, but if they were planning to make it to Bellweather, they never did,” said Jim.
They drove along the same mountain road Joel walked the night before, passing the mine entrance.
“What’s the deal with the mine?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you tried looking there for the missing?”
Jim sighed. “Getting anyone to go into the mine since it all kicked off is not an easy task. Me and my two deputies took the tourist trail, at an entrance higher up the mountain, and couldn’t see anyone, or thing, in there.”
“They seem to want to stick to the dark mostly. They could be deeper in.”
“Yup, but we found it better to draw them out, lay a trap. They might be strong, but they’re not too bright.”
“Right.”
Images of frenzied bloodthirsty beings filling the streets of LA entered his mind. He wondered why he was different, but f
or now was just glad he was. He noticed they were moving lower into the valley. “Where we going?”
“To see an old friend.”
“I was hoping to get my guns and supplies back, and head out.”
“Alone? I thought you and the lady were together.”
“She’s not with me.”
“I see… well, we’ll visit Bill, and then I’ll take you back to the hotel. I’ll give you some of your weapons back and supplies, and then if you want, you can be on your way.”
“I’d prefer to leave a good while before the sun goes down.”
“I’ll have you back in time.”
The road flattened out, and after a short while, the police pickup pulled onto a gravel parking lot, with a boarded up wooden shop at the edge of it. They both got out.
Joel looked further along the road, which again fell away on one side, with a sharp cliff on the other. A barricade of a truck, a few cars, and assorted beams and logs was hard to miss. “What’s beyond that?”
For twenty miles, not much, then you reach the town of Wyton, population just over three thousand. That’s also the direction the previous holder of the title of sheriff went three weeks ago.
“I take it he never came back.”
Jim’s expression gave Joel the answer.
“And you think that—” He nodded towards the awkward jumble of vehicles. “— Is going to stop them?”
Jim frowned. “We feel safer with it there.”
“What about those last night? On the street?”
Jim started walking towards the ramshackled building. “Those were from within our own borders.”
Joel followed. As he did, he realized there was a larger two-story building further back, and that it was covered in wooden beams at haphazard angles, and nailed into them, wooden crosses.
He had already walked past countless crucifixes even after he discovered he was different, and his heart never skipped a beat. But as they walked down the side of the abandoned truck stop, and over the broken paving slabs to the front yard of the other building, he started to feel uneasy.
“You okay?” said Jim, noticing Joel starting to slow down.
Joel forced a smile. “I’m fine, just my breakfast coming back at me.”
“Tell me you didn’t eat the pastries?” Jim smiled, and walked up the steps of the porch to the front door.
He lifted his hand to knock on the partition but stopped when the inner door opened. Stepping back, the outer also opened and a sinewy elderly man stood, wearing a gray shirt. He looked past the sheriff to Joel.
“Who’s this?”
“That would be Joel, he wandered into our town last night. He’s from the big city.”
The old man raised his eyebrows. “Phoenix?”
“Los Angeles,” said Joel.
“I see. Well, if you’re standing in my front yard, I guess there’s a reason for it. I’m Willian Sawyer, but just call me Bill. Come in, and I’ll put some tea on.”
Joel followed Jim into a chaotic hallway. Somehow, the inside of the house seemed older than the outside, as the magazines, and old newspapers sat in piles, and most of the antique furniture had a thick blanket of dust on top of it. The walls were covered in striped and pattern wallpaper the like of which Joel thought only existed on filmsets, together with gilded picture frames of silver, and sepia photos.
“I know it’s a bit cramped in here, but after a life of collecting things, that’s going to happen,” said Bill.
Joel had spent some time at Quantico doing a profiling course and felt like he was inside the old-timer’s brain as he weaved between the narrow channels available to get to a kitchen and dining area.
Bill started to boil some water, while bringing down some chipped mugs from a cupboard. “Ryan told me you got quite a few of them last night on main street.”
Jim sat on a single stool near the kitchen counter, while Joel sat on a ragged sofa.
“Yeah, eighteen to be exact. None of them got anywhere near us either, so no new infections,” said Jim. “Joel here is FBI.”
Bill briefly turned around raising his brow, then started to pour the bubbling water into the mugs. “Is that so. I take it your people had a theory as to what was happening? Chemicals in the water, or maybe an attack from a rogue state?” He emphasized the word ‘rogue.’ “Making everyone go crazy?”
“The CDC had a working theory along those lines, yes.”
“But they couldn’t find any cure, or treatment to stop it, right?”
Joel sighed. “No.” He wondered what the purpose of him being there was.
A noise came from the hallway, and a young man appeared, wearing shorts and T-shirt. “Hey, Jim.”
“Hey, Evan.”
“This is FBI man, Joel,” said Bill to Evan.
Evan froze. “I don’t hack anymore.”
Jim smiled. “I’m going to guess the FBI doesn’t care about that, bigger things on their mind and all that.” His eyes then betrayed his thoughts. “That’s even if there is a FBI left.” He looked back at the young man. “We’re not here about that.”
“So why is he here?” said Evan.
Joel was thinking the same.
Bill handed Jim and Joel their mugs, then sat opposite both. “So, what’s your take on what happened, then?” he said to Joel.
Joel took a sip from his tea, despite how hot it was. “Some kind of virus.”
I know that’s not true.
“Yeah, it’s not a virus,” said Evan. “Well it—”
Bill frowned at his grandson.
“I’ll be in the war room.” Evan disappeared back down the hallway.
“My grandson and I used to run a website. About, you know, strange goings on in the world.”
Joel did his best to hide his sigh, by taking another sip of the tea, which despite the heat was pretty good.
“I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, this is a crazy old coot.”
“Bill used to teach history at the high school.”
“I did, and you should have studied more!”
Bill and Jim shared a smile.
“Where was I. Right, well my son… umm” Joel could sense the old man’s heart, a skill he had picked up since his change. It was missing a beat or two. “We were both interested in esoteric goings on. He’s a professor at Cornell.”
Joel smiled and made sure to nod to seem suitably impressed.
“He called me before all of this started and warned me about Daniel Copeland, and what he was getting up to. Have you heard of Mr. Copeland?”
Everyone in LA knew of Copeland. The CEO of the Copeland Corporation. The slogan, ‘Find hope at Copeland,’ and the accompanying jingle started to play through Joel’s brain. “What about him?”
“Umm… what do you know of the Sumerian King List?”
The word ‘Sumerian’ vaguely rang a bell from a documentary he had seen a decade before, but apart from that, his mind was drawing a blank. He briefly looked at Jim, then back to the older man. “No idea, but what has that got to do with Copeland?”
“Justin, who’s my son, called me to say Mr. Copeland had repeatedly asked him to help find the lost temple of Annunaki kings. He believed the secret to everlasting life was to be found there.”
Joel smiled, then looked at both men, then laughed. “Everlasting life?”
Both men looked back at him, their faces not giving him the reaction he sought.
“Right.” He looked into his mug, it was half full, but he felt he had had enough. He looked at Jim, standing up. “I think it’s time I got those supplies we talked about.”
Jim raised his hand. “Just hold on a minute, and hear out the rest of the story.”
Joel sat back down.
“So, as I was saying, Justin told me Copeland had become obsessed with not dying. He had spent close to a billion dollars on secret laboratories, whose sole purpose was to find a ‘cure for aging,’ was how Copeland put it to Justin. But after almost a decade o
f trying, they were no closer to giving him what he wanted. So, he decided to look elsewhere, darker places. He chose to look at the ancient occult texts for such a cure.”
“What does this have to do with the world ending?” said Joel, his composure slipping.
“He found the temple, he found his cure!” said Bill.
Joel started to feel hot. He placed the mug down on the floor by his feet and blew out his cheeks. “Well, this is a great story, but—” A noise, which sounded like a horn, echoed from his mind, and for a moment he could see a stone wall etched with carvings, bathed in flickering orange light. As he tried to focus, the image was gone, and he was back in the living room with the two men looking at him.
“So?” said Bill.
“So…?”
“The Sumerian King List?”
“What is it?” He looked down at the mug.
What was in that tea?
Bill frowned, then continued. “The Sumerian King List is an ancient stone tablet, that details the reigns of the kings of Sumer, which I presume you know was one of the earliest human civilizations.”
Joel had a vague recollection from being told about it in high school and nodded.
“Well, one of the strange things about the list is the length of time some of the kings are meant to have reigned.”
“Okay…” Joel wanted this history lesson to be over, he reckoned by how bright it was outside it was already midday, and he wanted to be long gone by early afternoon.
“The tablet says the earliest kings reigned for thousands of years. In other words, we’re able to cheat aging, death, all of it.”
“That’s… err… very interesting.” The horn sound was still ringing in Joel’s ears.
“Justin told me Copeland was convinced he had found where these ancient kings were buried. That it was somewhere in southern Iraq, and that inside the tomb or temple he would find what he was looking for.”
Joel looked at Jim for a sign that they were just there to humor an old man, but the sheriff remained stony faced.
“It all sounds crazy, I know, but…” said Jim.