The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  Ken stood up and nudged Coop to follow him as he headed for the floodplain.

  “You didn’t have to be so hard on her,” Coop chided him as they walked.

  “Mind your own business, Dharma Chameleon,” Ken snapped.

  Lamar stood up and silently mouthed the word “sorry” to Beverly before running to join the others. Just as they were walking past the shower, Lamar stopped and turned, flashing her a hopeful thumbs up. She didn’t respond.

  Beverly stared off in the distance, feeling spent. Apart from the shock of last night’s indiscretions, she was struggling with a 10-ton hangover and the realization that she’d done irreparable harm to her relationship with Gaby. And she expected to spend all afternoon trying — and failing — to make it up to her. Beverly closed her eyes and steeled herself for what must come next.

  On the other side of the fortifications, she could hear chopping noises. Beverly peered around the fence line and found Gaby splitting logs by the woodpile. Her swings were wild and erratic. Beverly suspected it was her face Gaby projected onto each log as she swung the hatchet.

  Gaby heard Beverly approaching and looked over her shoulder. Her already stormy demeanor visibly darkened. She turned away and resumed chopping logs with renewed ferocity.

  “Mind if I join you?” Beverly asked timidly.

  “It’s a free country,” Gaby replied coldly, her back still turned.

  “Gaby, I understand that last night, I may have … said certain things,” Beverly started awkwardly. “I just want you to know …”

  Gaby suddenly dropped the hatchet while it was still buried in a log.

  “Excuse me,” Gaby said as she spun on her heel and stalked off.

  After a few moments of hesitation, Beverly followed her, walking along the edge of the fence line and to the beech tree on the other side of camp, where Gaby had hung her clothes to dry.

  She found Gaby checking her clothes, feeling them to see which were damp, but it was clear she was agitated. Her touches became pokes before escalating into finger stabs.

  Beverly felt the bottom of her stomach drop out. She hated confrontation. But she hated open wounds more. She clenched her fists in resolve and strode forward.

  Gaby spied her approach and flashed a look of disgust.

  “What do you want?” she asked coldly.

  “I just want to talk,” Beverly pleaded.

  “You did plenty of that last night,” Gaby spat at her as she selected a green turtleneck and a pair of acid-washed jeans.

  Gaby ripped the clothes from the low-hanging tree limb, sending a cream-colored blouse and a pair of socks flying. She charged toward the wigwam but hesitated a moment, not wanting to leave the rest of her clothes on the ground. Seizing the opportunity, Beverly started collecting them for her. Gaby threw up her hands in disgust and stalked off to the wigwam.

  Beverly refused to give up, and after gathering the scattered clothes, took a deep breath before entering the wigwam. She found Gaby haphazardly stuffing the clothes and a couple of cans of food into her backpack.

  Gaby’s eyes flashed a warning to Beverly as she entered.

  “Why are you following me?” she demanded.

  Beverly held up the clothes in front of her as both an explanation and a peace offering. She laid the clothes down on Gaby’s suitcase and slowly backed away.

  “I know you’re angry at me,” Beverly tried again. “I wish I could take it back. I don’t know what to say to make things right.”

  “Then don’t say anything,” she replied.

  Gaby pulled a canteen from her pack and dipped it in the drinking bucket. She stowed it in her backpack and zipped the bag closed.

  Beverly was growing concerned. Not only was Gaby acting out, she appeared to be packing for a journey.

  “Where are you going?” Beverly asked hesitantly.

  Instead of responding, Gaby slung the backpack over her shoulders, stood up and pushed past the older woman.

  Beverly grabbed her by the wrist.

  “If we could just talk for a moment. I want to …”

  Gaby tensed up like a live wire at Beverly’s touch and pulled her arm free as if it had been dipped in boiling acid. Beverly remembered Gaby’s phobia about human contact and instantly regretted her decision.

  “How dare you, you bitch!” Gaby exploded, finally unleashing all of her pent-up hostility. “I trusted you! But you just had to open your big mouth and tell everyone about it! Do you have any idea how small that made me feel?”

  “Gaby, I’m …” Beverly started, hanging her head in contrition, when Gaby cut her off with a hard slap to the face. Beverly saw stars momentarily and caressed her wounded cheek as she stared at Gaby in shock.

  “Don’t you ever speak to me again!” Gaby shouted as tears welled up in the corner of her eyes. “I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to know you! Just stay the hell away from me!”

  Gaby charged out of the wigwam in such a fury that she nearly fell out the door.

  Beverly followed and saw her picking up Lamar’s Frankenstein C.B. from one of the log stools beside the firepit and heading east without so much as a sidelong look at Beverly.

  “Where are you taking that?” Beverly tried, knowing it was futile. “We’re not supposed to go out by ourselves!”

  “Drop dead!” came the shouted reply as Gaby stalked off into the forest, leaving Beverly feeling very much alone.

  * * * * * *

  The men all stood on the edge of the cliff overlooking the floodplain, gawking in wide-eyed amazement at a view unlike any they’d ever imagined.

  As far as the eye could see, the floodplain was covered in 30-foot-wide swirling spirals of some steaming, grayish substance. These swirls looped in and around each other, creating a kaleidoscope effect of endlessly converging and diverging circles, like an extreme close-up of a thumbprint that extended out of view.

  Everything the substance had come in contact with was dead. The sparse vegetation and abundant grasses of the floodplain had all withered and browned. The handful of trees that it sustained had lost all their leaves as though fall had turned into the dead of winter overnight. Those leaves lay strewn across the landscape, blackened and shriveled.

  Watching the steam slowly rising from the remains of a devastated ecosystem, while standing on an untouched plateau not 20 feet away, was indescribably eerie. They felt like they were staring at an alien landscape, not a familiar stomping ground that had been radically remade in the course of a single night.

  In a panorama of inexplicable sights, perhaps the strangest was the mysterious gray substance. It was hard to tell from the haze of steam coming off it, but it appeared to be some kind of powder, set in swirls that were impossibly precise and completely undisturbed. Not a grain was out of place, as if they’d all been inked into the dirt by Paul Bunyan wielding the world’s largest tattoo needle. The substance also seemed to have infected the soil itself, as the landscape had taken on a sickly, grayish pallor, even in places untouched by the swirls of powder.

  The three of them were dumbstruck as they looked out over the blasted landscape, struggling merely to process the surreal scene before them, let alone articulate it. Lamar was almost afraid to speak, as if commenting on what he saw would somehow crystallize it.

  Beside him, Coop’s quivering fingers lost their grip on his spear/fishing pole. It clattered loudly to the ground, startling all of them out of their stupor.

  “What … the … fuck … happened … here?” Ken asked in a hushed whisper.

  “It looks like the aftermath of a forest fire,” Coop said, the awe in his voice unmistakable.

  “One that incinerated the most barren section of the forest while sparing everything else?” Ken replied with a snort.

  “If this was a fire, where’s the smoke?” Lamar pointed out. “All I see is steam.”

  “Nothing about this makes any sense,” Coop agreed.

  After a few more moments of silent contemplation, Coop voiced
what all of them were thinking.

  “One of us should go down there. You know, to investigate.”

  Ken crossed his arms defiantly.

  “Well, I’m not doing it.”

  The two turned to Lamar.

  “Don’t look at me,” he insisted. “It was your idea.”

  “I was suggesting, not volunteering,” Coop clarified.

  Ken threw up his hands.

  “We’ll all go, okay? Will that shut you two up?”

  Lamar cautiously made his way down the slope leading to the floodplain, with the other two following behind in single file. As he descended, the haze from the rising steam made everything look increasingly translucent, as though he were viewing the world through a shower curtain. He paused at the bottom, where the green of the slope ended and the gray of the floodplain began, trying to work up enough courage to step onto this otherworldly landscape.

  “Quit being a pussy,” Ken said after waiting several seconds.

  Lamar extended his right foot onto the edge of the plain, testing the ground for a moment.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ken intoned, face-palming as he watched Lamar pull his foot back, unwilling to take the next step onto the floodplain.

  “You know what? If you’re so gung ho, you can go first,” Lamar replied in irritation.

  Ken brushed past him with characteristic bravado.

  “This isn’t scary,” he assured the others. “Pumping and dumping while under SEC review; that’s scary. This is just fucking weird.”

  After a long moment, he took a cautious first step onto the plain, and then another.

  “See? It’s fine,” he crowed.

  Lamar and Coop exchanged nervous glances before following him onto the floodplain, making certain to follow in one another’s footsteps.

  Through the haze they spotted a dappled goldfinch lying on its back on the outer edge of one of the gray, powdery swirls, its tiny legs pointing skyward. It looked shriveled and desiccated, like a tiny mummy. It must have died recently, too, because it hadn’t been touched by predators. Its blank eyes staring into nothingness reflected the confusion in the faces of the trio staring at it. It reminded Coop of the dead squirrel that he’d tried to pass off as a clean kill.

  Ken watched his feet as he walked, mindful not to step on any of the powdery swirls, which looked like big brothers to those pinwheel shapes he had found days earlier by the dead tree with the mandala nailed to it.

  Lamar, who was walking behind the others, strayed from their footsteps slightly and accidentally stepped on a downed tree branch that snapped loudly underfoot, making all of them jump a little. Ken looked back in disapproval as Lamar mouthed a silent apology. The episode gave Coop pause, and he suddenly stopped in his tracks.

  “Why don’t we hear more noises down here?” he asked.

  “I hear your stupid questions and the Badyear Blimp’s heavy breathing just fine,” Ken replied dismissively.

  “Forest sounds,” Coop elaborated. “Where are all the birds chirping, or the insects? All I hear down here is us and the things we touch.”

  Lamar closed his eyes and listened for any external sounds. In the heart of a wilderness teeming with life, he heard nothing, not even the wind whistling through the trees. He’d heard and felt its bracing caress up on the plateau. But down here, there was no wind. There was nothing living or moving except for them. The sense of isolation was unreal; it reminded him of a recording booth, where all exterior noises are cut off.

  It wasn’t just sound, either. They all slowly started to register a knot in the pit of their stomachs that felt like equal parts dread and nausea. It made them feel unsteady on their feet, like a sailor struggling to find his land legs after weeks at sea.

  Through the haze of steam, Ken nearly walked into one of the hay bales on the archery range. One of the gray swirls actually went vertical along the side of the leftmost bale, the steaming particulate matter clinging to the edges through some unknown power.

  Curious, Lamar leaned forward and extended a finger toward it.

  “No, don’t touch it!” Coop cautioned.

  Lamar touched the hay bale with the pad of his index finger. Despite the steam, it was only lukewarm. It felt like it was made from fine granules of sand. He pulled his finger back and saw it was smudged with a blackish film.

  “Ash,” he declared as he wiped his finger on his shirt, smearing the soot over the “Zero Day Dude” logo on the front.

  “Ash?” Coop asked, puzzled by Lamar’s assessment. “Could some coal company be using this area as a dumping ground?”

  Ken rolled his eyes in frustration.

  “Sure, Coop. They rolled dozens of dump trucks up here without our noticing, and instead of unloading it in giant piles, they spread it out in intricate patterns just to fuck with us.”

  Coop was too unnerved to respond to Ken’s taunt.

  “What leaves ash but isn’t a fire or illegal dumping?” Lamar asked, like he was posing some philosophical riddle on the meaning of life.

  “I dunno, something underground, like maybe lava?” Ken posited.

  Now it was Coop’s turn to roll his eyes.

  “An active volcano in Pennsylvania? Try again.”

  “He’s right,” Lamar concurred. “If there were, this whole place would reek of sulfur. And that shower you gave me earlier would have boiled me alive.”

  “Then maybe it’s some kind of bacteria,” Ken guessed.

  “That kills everything in sight in less than 24 hours?” Lamar asked skeptically.

  “Then you explain it,” Ken challenged.

  “I can’t,” he admitted after a few moments of consideration. “And that’s what scares me.”

  “We should go,” Coop said. “We may be … infected if we stay here.”

  As they turned to leave, something off in the distance disrupted the cone of silence enshrouding them. Footsteps, though they were too faint to determine the direction.

  Ken clutched his spear tightly as a human shape came shimmering into view through the steam haze, approaching from the direction of the plateau. Just as he was about to bark out a warning, the hazy image grew more distinct, and they recognized the feminine features and bundled clothing of Beverly as she slowly came into view. Ken relaxed his grip on the spear.

  “Tell me you’re seeing the same shit we are,” he called out to her.

  Beverly nodded slowly.

  “I remember my dream now,” she responded in a serene voice that clashed so wildly with their circumstances that the others wondered if she was still dreaming. “I was walking in the moonlight up there,” she said sedately, pointing in the direction of the overlook, “and saw writhing, black shapes swarming the floodplain. Untold millions of them.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a dream,” Coop offered.

  “Maybe you’re both being stupid,” Ken countered. “There’s no creature on Earth that could do this in one night, even if there were millions of them.”

  “Beverly, is it possible that you mistook all this ash for creatures?” Lamar probed gently. “The moonlight can play tricks on your eyes, and owing to your … condition …” Lamar said, trying to be tactful.

  “Fifty sheets to the wind,” Ken chimed in, not giving a damn about diplomacy.

  “…You might have had some fanciful interpretations of what you saw,” Lamar continued, ignoring Ken. “Is that possible?”

  Beverly shook her head no.

  “I threw something at them. A branch, I think. They dodged it,” Beverly said simply.

  Ken ground his teeth in frustration.

  “What you saw came out of a bottle. Period. End of story.”

  Beverly was about to respond when Coop suddenly cut in.

  “Hang on. Why aren’t you with Gaby?”

  Beverly’s face darkened and her dreamlike calm faded.

  “She’s still angry,” Beverly explained.

  “You were supposed to watch her!” Ken said with a scowl. “Where is she now?
”

  “I tried talking to her but she picked up that C.B. thing and took off.”

  Coop balked at this explanation.

  “And you just let her go?”

  “She needed some personal space,” Beverly replied weakly.

  “You let her leave unarmed and alone?” Lamar exclaimed, growing more concerned with each syllable. “With Wade on the loose? What’s wrong with you?”

  Without waiting for a response, Lamar rushed back to camp. Coop flashed Beverly a look of disgust before following.

  Beverly hung her head in shame as Ken eyed her coldly. He leaned in and paused there until she reluctantly raised her eyes to meet his gaze.

  “You really are useless, you know that?” he said before hurrying to rejoin the others.

  Beverly looked out over the blasted, desolate landscape, knowing with the surety of despair that she would never be whole again. And as she looked, she replayed Ken’s parting words in her mind, over and over again.

  * * * * * *

  The sun was riding high in the sky when Gaby finally stopped for a break. She set the C.B. down gingerly on a bed of moss-covered stones near the edge of a 30-foot-wide draw that separated her from the eastern edge of the forest. It didn’t look especially deep; maybe a 15-foot drop before returning to the same elevation on the other side, but the edges were steep. It was filled with trees canted at dangerous angles and scrub plants masking numerous foot-snagging crannies, all of which she would have to navigate while safeguarding her precious cargo. A short break would give her time to plot out her course through the depression.

  Gaby slung her pack from her shoulders and sat beside the C.B. It was surprisingly heavy, and her arms ached after carrying it for nearly an hour, though not nearly as much as her shoulder muscles, which she had kept tensed this whole time to prevent the pack from slipping off. She idly rubbed one of her throbbing shoulders with one hand while the other dug around in her pack for the canteen.

  She unscrewed the top and tilted her head upward to receive the restorative liquid. Despite her exhaustion and the dire circumstances, Gaby was starting to enjoy herself. This was the sort of thing she had envisioned when signing up for this trip: long and peaceful walks through the forest with nothing to distract or detract from the splendor of nature.