The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  Lamar cracked a smile, the first in some time.

  “John said they were testing nuclear-powered airplanes and had a reactor on site. Nuclear reactors use water to keep the core cool; thousands and thousands of gallons of it. A creek or a stream wouldn’t cut it, so it has to be beside the lake. Since Ken didn’t mention seeing it, I’m guessing it’ll be on the opposite bank.”

  Coop’s eyes widened at Lamar’s deduction.

  “If you’re right about this, I’m putting you up for a Mensa award,” he said with a grin.

  Coop joined him on the right fork, and the padding of ash-covered dirt beneath their feet quickly turned to the crunch of ash-coated gravel. The rumbling in the skies grew louder. Both of them kept a watchful eye on the rapidly darkening skies.

  “I still don’t understand why you’re doing this,” Lamar said. “Their beef was with me, not you. You could be luxuriating in a warm wigwam right now, instead of freezing your tail feathers off with me.”

  “And be goose-stepping for that prick Ken right now?” Coop said with a chuckle. “No, thanks! I’d rather be here with you.”

  Lamar stopped in his tracks.

  “You’re willing to die for friendship?”

  Coop made a strange face, like he’d just bit into something sour.

  “You make it sound so cavalier. I want to live, obviously. But if it’s a choice between safety and friendship, I’ll stand by my friends. Well, friend,” Coop corrected himself. “After all, you’re the only one I’ve got.”

  “You don’t have any back home?” Lamar asked as they resumed walking.

  Coop shook his head sadly.

  “I’m a registered sex offender, so word gets out pretty quickly,” he explained. “My coworkers only communicate with me by email, so they won’t be seen talking to ‘you-know-who.’ My neighbors won’t even make eye contact. Last week, I ran into one of them with her daughter in the supermarket. She literally scooped the kid up and ran out the store. I had to put steel bars over my windows because the neighborhood kids throw rocks at them.”

  Coop sounded almost wistful as he recounted the various indignities.

  “You’re not bitter?” Lamar asked.

  Coop shrugged as he paused to clean his glasses with the sleeve of his robes.

  “Sometimes. Then I remember what I did. Anyway, you’re the only one who knows what I am and still treats me like a person.”

  Lamar gave him a sympathetic look and put his hand on Coop’s shoulder.

  “Since you’re feeling so chatty, mind if I ask you something?” Coop said.

  “Ask away … friend.”

  “You didn’t take the food, right?”

  Lamar glowered at him and removed his hand from Coop’s shoulder.

  “Hey, I had to ask,” Coop said with a lopsided grin.

  The gravel road wound west around the open field before turning south. The pair left the road and continued west into the ashen remnants of the forest, following a gently sloping hill lined with desiccated maple trees down toward a football-field-sized dell. The thick lines of soot swirls that decorated the landscape had already turned Lamar’s sneakers and Coop’s sandals a dingy gray.

  As they approached, they could hear a buzzing sound emanating from the dell. The pair exchanged confused and worried glances. After spending so much time within the blight’s sound-dampening field, hearing external noises again was confusing and a little frightening.

  They approached cautiously, flitting between the withered husks of the numerous beech, birch and oak trees that ringed the dell to avoid being spotted. Lamar was about to make for the next stand of trees when Coop tugged on his jacket.

  “What?” Lamar whispered fiercely.

  Coop pointed skyward. Lamar followed his finger, and through the withered branches of the trees between them and the dell’s border, he saw something impossible. A beech tree 20 feet ahead of them, on the edge of the dell, was budding. Dozens of fuzzy green sprouts with reddish centers decorated the top branches of the tree. Lamar noted that the oak tree beside it was also blossoming, and was already growing leaves on some of its lower-hanging branches. And so was the one beside it.

  All the trees in the inner ring around the dell were flowering and blooming, tiny markers of blossoming life amid a wasteland of death and decay. The pair quickly dropped the pretense of subterfuge and stepped forward into a dell bursting with life and greenery. The glade was awash with color, as dozens of thriving wildflowers dotted the thigh-high sea of grasses with white, pink, violet and orange hues. Sprouts, weeds and wild mushrooms grew lustily all around, seemingly impervious to weather so cold that Lamar and Coop could see their breath. As absurd as it seemed, springtime had come in mid-October to this one small patch of Quehanna.

  The buzzing noise came from a colony of bees flitting between the flowers, busy pollinating as many as they could find. The fragrance of the budding flowers was almost as intoxicating to Lamar and Coop as it was to the bees. Coop heard a bird’s call overhead and spotted a small blue jay building a nest in one of the blossoming trees on the outskirts.

  Lamar flashed back to yesterday, when they had found small pockets of wilderness untouched by the blight, but this was several orders of magnitude weirder. After all, it was still autumn in those regions. Here, Mother Nature seemed to have thrown out her Farmers’ Almanac and leapt seven months ahead. He looked down at his feet and saw that there were traces of ash still on the ground, barely visible amid all the rejuvenated plant life.

  In the exact center of the dell was a small, sloped mound that bore an enormous ash tree in full bloom, one that must have been seven stories tall. Hundreds of delicate white flowers decorated its numerous outstretched limbs.

  Lamar and Coop stared at the strange scene for several long seconds before seeking confirmation in each other’s eyes. This may have been surreal, but it was no dream.

  They started toward the earthen mound, staring in slack-jawed wonder at this sudden burst of new life. Neither spoke, as if afraid it would shatter the mirage. As they ascended the mound, Coop noted the hearty brown tone of the earth, so different from the sickly gray dirt of the surrounding landscape.

  At the base of the enormous ash tree they saw a network of exposed roots that twisted into pretzel-like shapes before plunging into the ground. In the center, at the base of the trunk, was a dark hole, possibly a badger’s den.

  “I can’t decide which makes less sense: the blight or this,” Coop said in an awed whisper, gazing around in wonderment.

  “I think they’re connected,” Lamar responded, trying to process everything he was seeing. “Look at the ash in the dirt. The iku have been here.”

  “So why is this place Appalachian Spring and everywhere else looks like The Road?”

  Lamar paused to think.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” he answered after a few moments. “But if I’m right, there’ll be more patches like this springing up soon.”

  “I just hope we live to see it,” Coop intoned.

  Lamar caught a glimmer of something along the outer edge of the giant tree. He took several steps to his right to investigate. What he saw took his breath away, even in the midst of all this weirdness.

  A crimson, eight-petalled talisman dangled from a nail on the other side of the great tree.

  Coop stood beside him and leaned in for a closer look.

  “Is that …”

  “Yeah,” Lamar answered before Coop even finished. “It looks just like the one in the teepee.”

  “That can’t be a coincidence.”

  The sound of distant thunder in the heavens broke their reverie. Lamar felt a splash of water land on his head. He looked up and saw that the skies were dark and menacing. Another drop fell. And another.

  “Kinda wishing I’d brought wet weather gear,” Coop said as he turned up the collar on his Patagonia jacket.

  “Do you remember what John said about the mandala?” Lamar asked, still reflecting on the talisman i
n front of them.

  “Something about it acting like a guidepost,” Coop replied absently. “You don’t think …”

  “I do,” Lamar interrupted as thunder rumbled in the skies once more. “I’m starting to think the iku were summoned.”

  * * * Eight Hours Until Sundown * * *

  Noise

  A metallic clattering

  Heavy breathing

  Feet stomping

  Gaby opened one eye cautiously. Some kind of commotion. Bare feet shot past her. Gaby raised her head and tried to focus her eyes. Beverly was running around the wigwam in her slip, digging through the various piles of belongings, seemingly searching for something.

  Gaby noticed that the Beverly’s black mark had spread beyond her left arm to her shoulder and her left armpit.

  A low-frequency rumble sounded in the skies above. Outside, she could hear torrents of rain pummeling the camp. She looked up hazily and saw little rivulets of water leaking through the hole in the ceiling.

  Beverly continued digging through people’s belongings haphazardly, tossing objects to and fro as she shivered.

  “Beverly, what’s going on?” Gaby asked, rubbing her tired eyes.

  The older woman didn’t respond as she searched, her back to Gaby as she dug through the pile of knickknacks recovered from the former shed.

  Beverly suddenly paused. She shuddered before hoisting something that Gaby couldn’t see, presumably what she had been hunting for. Beverly made a beeline for the entrance.

  Gaby propped herself up on one elbow, growing alarmed by Beverly’s conduct. She started to wonder if Beverly was on the cusp of another psychotic breakdown.

  “Beverly, what’s wrong?” Gaby asked. “You’re scaring me.”

  The older woman paused beside the entrance. She waited a beat or two before wheeling around.

  Her eyes were wide and she was shivering uncontrollably. In her trembling hands she clutched the hatchet, holding it at the ready, as though she was prepared to attack the first thing that moved.

  Gaby sat bolt upright and scooted backward, kicking her legs free of the sleeping bag as she did so. Her eyes scanned the room for anything she could defend herself with. Unfortunately, the spears were all by the entrance, right beside Beverly.

  She forcefully shook Ken, who had managed to sleep through the commotion, while still keeping her eyes trained on Beverly.

  “Urrhhmm, five more minutes,” Ken mumbled hazily and rolled over.

  “Get up!” Gaby cried and gave him a sharp kick.

  “Oww! What the fuck?” Ken howled as he sat up. “What the hell are you … hollleeey shit!” he exclaimed as he spotted the half-naked Beverly standing by the entrance, wielding a hatchet.

  Ken held his hands up in front of him to show he was unarmed. Gaby quickly followed suit, breathing as shallowly as possible. No one spoke for several seconds as the pair locked eyes with Beverly. The older woman’s wide, unblinking eyes betrayed fear, anxiety and pain, but not madness. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a repeat of last night.

  Beverly quivered once more, then slowly turned and pushed the wigwam door outward, running off into the torrent of freezing rain.

  Gaby and Ken sat in silence for several seconds, dumbfounded, still trying to process what had happened.

  “Explain,” Ken demanded once they were both sure that Beverly was gone. “Was she about to go Lizzie Borden on us?”

  “I woke up right before you did,” Gaby insisted. “I have no clue what set her off.”

  “Whatever that was, it’s not happening again,” Ken said as he crawled out of his sleeping bag and tied off the door. He picked up one of the spears by the door and tossed it to Gaby.

  “We keep these by our sides at all times now, got it?” he said.

  Gaby nodded, still reeling from Beverly’s inexplicable actions.

  “Did you see how far the black spot’s spread?”

  “It was kinda hard to miss,” Ken intoned as he tugged on the pull chain to close the flue overhead. The thin rivulets of rainwater trickling from overhead branches into the central firepit slowly ebbed into droplets.

  “Maybe the black spot has something to do with last night’s episode and whatever this was,” Gaby said.

  “What makes you think this wasn’t more of the same?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted, biting her lip as she mulled it over. “Something in the way she looked at us. I think she knew who we were. Last night, she was hallucinating and thought we were all iku.”

  “Hallucinating or not, she pulled a hatchet on us,” Ken said. “From now on, she doesn’t get within 10 feet of any sharp objects.”

  “Agreed,” Gaby said as she started rounding up anything remotely pointy and hid it all in Coop’s empty sleeping bag beside hers.

  As she worked, Gaby could feel a headache coming on, a dull throbbing in her temples that the storm only aggravated. Whether it was from a lack of sustenance, sleep deprivation, constant terror or all of the above, she couldn’t say.

  Partially due to her burgeoning headache, Gaby did little to hide her irritation with Ken as he quickly retreated to the warmth of his sleeping bag and zipped himself back up.

  “How can you sleep after that?”

  “I can’t,” he replied simply. “But I can stay warm.”

  “The least you could do is go hunting for some food,” she nagged.

  Fortunately, a couple of extra hours of sleep had brought Ken’s volatility under control, and he didn’t take umbrage at her cheek.

  “In this weather?” he snorted. “The only thing I’d catch is pneumonia.”

  “But …” Gaby started before Ken cut her off.

  “We’re going to wait the storm out.”

  His tone made it clear this wasn’t a suggestion.

  “So what’s that mean for Beverly?”

  “Not my problem,” he responded callously. “We’ve covered enough for her. If she doesn’t die of exposure, we can talk about letting her back in. But not until I’m sure she’s sane.”

  Gaby harrumphed, not at Ken’s new policy toward Beverly, or even at his increasingly controlling manner, but at something more ephemeral. Something in that phrase, “We’ve covered enough for her,” bothered Gaby. Some nagging doubt that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Almost as if she had forgotten to cover something. But what was there …

  Gaby froze and her eyes opened wide with realization. She hadn’t covered the log pile after chopping wood last night. She was sure of it. Their only means of defense against the iku was being drenched!

  “Oh my God! Get up! Get up! We have to cover the woodpile!” she shouted in panic as she threw on a jacket.

  “What?” Ken yelled, tearing himself from his sleeping bag.

  “The wood’s getting soaked!” Gaby fretted as she undid the upper and lower enclosures on the door and ran outside.

  The temperature change was jarring. It was cold enough that should could see her breath, and the stinging rain had soaked her to the skin by the time she rounded the fence line to find the log pile uncovered as she had feared. The burgundy tarp lay on the muddy ground beside it, fluttering ineffectively in the wind.

  Gaby upended the tarp to loose all the water it had collected just as Ken popped out of the fence line to assist.

  “Why didn’t you cover it?” Ken demanded through chattering teeth as the two struggled to right the tarp and set it in place as the wind threatened to rip it from their grasp.

  “Like I knew this was coming?” Gaby shouted in frustration as they finally got two corners down over the log pile and smoothed the tarp out to cover the rest.

  Gaby poked her head under the tarp to see what they had to work with. Ken quickly did the same on the other side. It looked like the logs on the bottom had escaped the worst of the storm, but everything above them looked soaked through. Worse still, the weight of the pile made it impossible to simply pull those logs from the bottom like they were Jenga blocks. The only way
they could reach them would be to remove the logs on top weighing them down, which was virtually impossible without removing the protective tarp. It was a catch-22.

  “It’s soaked most of the way through on this side,” Gaby called out.

  “This side’s not much better,” Ken replied. “Let’s unload the wet logs row by row. We’ll stash what remains in the wigwam. You better pray there’s enough dry wood left to get us through the night.”

  He added that threat at the end almost as an afterthought as the two worked furiously in the bone-chilling rain to salvage what wood they could.

  * * * Seven Hours Until Sundown * * *

  Sheets of rain pelted Lamar and Coop as they trudged through the mud, their eyes peeled for any type of respite from the storm. But the lake’s shoreline remained stubbornly flat as they followed it south, offering up no shelter. The only constant feature as they walked, apart from the lake 100 hundred yards to their west, was row after row of dead and withered trees, none of which offered adequate protection without their leaves.

  The two walked single file in brooding silence, their heads bowed low to keep the chill rain from seeping under their jackets. Lamar’s bubble jacket kept his chest dry, but the rest of him was soaked to the skin. Rainwater trickled from the tip of his scraggly goatee like he was a human stalactite. Several paces behind him, Coop sneezed violently and breathed on his cupped hands to keep them warm. His jacket and robes afforded him virtually no protection from the elements, and as his shivering attested, he was suffering mightily for it.

  The pair had been walking near the lake’s edge for over 90 minutes with nothing to show for it. They hewed close to the tree line, reasoning that poor cover from bare trees was better than no cover. To the east, the ground rose a dozen feet to form a small ridge that ran parallel to the shoreline, with flatlands lying just beyond, but the ridge was graded and offered no protection. All it did was send small streams of icy water their way, where it pooled around their feet, numbing their toes as they walked. They had briefly considered walking along the ridge itself to avoid this, but it was narrow and slick.

  As they walked, they made certain to maintain line of sight with the lake. They couldn’t risk missing their quarry: the abandoned research base. But thus far, not so much as a single structure had emerged, let alone an entire base.