The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  “Look at her arm,” Ken said with a head feint toward Beverly’s infected left arm.

  Gaby saw the skin of her blackened hand was starting to crack, with flaking and small fissures opening up all the way up to her elbow. A greenish-yellow puss oozed from the webbing between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Whatever you do, don’t touch it,” he cautioned. “It looks necrotic.”

  Ken touched Beverly’s forehead through his glove.

  “You could cook an egg on her head,” he said grimly. “Check her pulse. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  Gaby hesitated.

  “She’s already touched you once, so what difference will it make?” he said impatiently.

  Gaby saw the logic in this and removed her gloves. She placed her hands on Beverly’s undamaged arm and resisted the urge to flinch at the cold and clammy skin. She pressed two fingers on the inside of Beverly’s wrist.

  “I don’t feel anything,” Gaby said after a minute.

  “Press harder,” Ken urged.

  Gaby complied, and Beverly started to squirm.

  “Don’t! Darcy, stop it!” Beverly said, fidgeting and laughing. “That tickles.”

  Gaby dug her fingers in and concentrated.

  “I had the oddest dream,” Beverly said quietly with her eyes closed and her head still rolling aimlessly from side to side. “I was trapped in a forest with five other people. Ghastly, I know.”

  “Well?” Ken said impatiently.

  “I don’t think I’m doing it right. I’m not feeling anything.”

  As Gaby moved out of the way so Ken could take over, Beverly continued babbling.

  “But one of them reminded me so much of you, Darcy,” she said. “A Latin you, curiously enough.”

  As Ken removed his gloves, Beverly giggled to herself.

  “I know, I know,” she continued. “Sounds silly.”

  Gaby cocked an eyebrow at that.

  “I’m guessing I should be offended,” she said aloud, mainly to herself.

  “But she was like you in so many ways,” Beverly continued. “Around the same age. Strong, confident, fiercely independent. She knew her mind, like you. She also stood up for what she believed in, like you.”

  Ken made a face as he pressed his fingers against Beverly’s icy wrist.

  “You know, Darcy, I probably shouldn’t even tell you this, but the day after the intervention, when you walked out, I was so proud of you, darling,” Beverly said, her voice barely above a whisper. “It tore me apart, knowing that my drinking had pushed you away, but your refusal to back down gave me such a swell of pride. It means I raised you right.”

  “Her pulse is faint,” Ken said after about 20 seconds. “And really slow.”

  “I sometimes wish I were as strong as you, that I didn’t need the bottle to feel things,” Beverly said with a sniff. “Anyway, I just thought you should know that, here at the end,” she concluded as she patted and stroked Ken’s boot, mistaking it for her daughter’s hand.

  Beverly stopped stroking his boot after a few moments, and her hand slowly fell to her side. Her breathing deepened, but was still erratic.

  “I think she’s in real trouble,” Ken said as he looked up from their patient. “She may have only … Oh, come on!” he exclaimed as he saw Gaby tearing up at Beverly’s confession.

  “What?” Gaby said, waving her hands in front of her face to keep from crying. “That was really sweet.”

  Ken rolled his eyes in disgust.

  “She needs hot water and a fire, two things we can’t give her until nightfall,” Ken said. “And I’m not sure she’ll last that long.”

  Ken grabbed his leather jacket and boots.

  “So, what do we do?” Gaby said, dabbing her eyes.

  “For her? Nothing,” he said as he laced up his boots. “But we can find out where she got dry wood and see if there’s more of it. We’re going to retrace her steps.”

  As Gaby zipped up her outer jacket, she noted that Ken hadn’t asked her to join him; he’d ordered her to. At least he wasn’t talking about throwing Beverly out anymore. Though if she was as sick as he said, it probably wouldn’t make much difference where she died, Gaby reasoned as she upended the plastic target’s wooden contents onto the pile of usable logs and folded it in her arms. It could prove useful if they found more dry wood.

  Outside, the rainstorm had passed, but it was still misting. The woods were shrouded in light fog, making everything look mysterious and vaguely sinister. By the entrance to the fence line, they found the hatchet that Beverly had dropped, its blade buried in the mud. Ken hefted it and wiped the handle clean as they followed Beverly’s footprints.

  Despite the fog, the indentations were easy to follow. The rain had washed away most other footprints, and this set of tracks was unique in that Beverly had been barefoot. The footprints came from the south, disappearing into the fog back behind the showers.

  As they followed the footprints south toward the floodplain, Gaby’s stomach growled ferociously. Ken actually jumped slightly at the noise and looked back in annoyance.

  “Sorry, but I haven’t eaten a thing in 24 hours,” she apologized.

  “Neither have I,” Ken lied, “but I can still regulate my bodily noises.”

  “The truth is, I can’t stop thinking about food,” Gaby admitted as they followed the trail.

  “Then grab your spear and go hunting,” Ken chided her as they reached the end of the path, right before the descent into the floodplain. “You can’t expect Mother Nature to just provide …”

  Ken paused midsentence as he looked out over the floodplain. Even through the haze of mist and the rolling fog, they could see that the entire floodplain had been transformed overnight. In place of the blighted foliage and desiccated soil, they found a verdant and flourishing ecosystem. The rocky soil was awash in a sea of pastels, with delicate pink carnations budding beside fiery orange marigolds and sunny black-eyed Susans wafting in a gentle breeze beside trumpet-like tufts of bluebells. Wild grasses sprouted all over, while the few trees in the floodplain — all of which had been dead only last night — were now budding. Even the soil had been transformed; its pasty complexion of yesterday was now rich and brown. If the blight that had swept this area so rapidly two days ago represented winter’s lethal embrace, this was surely the spring of renewal, and equally out of season.

  “… for you,” Ken finished, the words already forgotten as they rolled off his tongue.

  The veil of mist and fog rolling across the lush landscape below made it appear almost mystical. This surreal impression was heightened by the fact that they were still standing in the blight, two feet from the edge. If they looked straight down, they could see the wild grasses growing right at the foot of the cliff, some 25 feet down.

  Gaby and Ken followed the path down to the floodplain, paying virtually no attention to where they were walking as they soaked up the idyllic vista before them in slack-jawed wonderment. Gaby was convinced it wasn’t real, like someone dying of thirst in the desert hallucinating about an oasis. But like that desert dweller, she felt compelled to investigate, even as she told herself it was just a mirage.

  Partway down the slope, the dust and ash gave way to a carpet of burgeoning green, flecked with clover and budding violets. Glorious scents wafted tantalizingly past their nostrils as they descended. The moisture-swollen air seemed cleaner, too. It was like they were passing from the wasteland into the Garden of Eden.

  The fog grew thicker as they neared the bottom, casting wild shadows in all directions and making navigation virtually impossible. Gaby took a deep breath before stepping into this new world. The grasses by the slopes were already ankle high.

  As their eyes adjusted to the gray light of the mist, they spied a host of wild edibles nestled among the flowers and grasses: mushrooms, red sumac berries growing on the vine, fiddleheads curled tight above their thistled stalks, even wild onions buried in the dirt beneath their vine-like a
ppendages.

  Gaby dropped to her knees and started scarfing down a cluster of wild mushrooms, not even pausing to consider whether they were poisonous. She didn’t care. Ken watched for a moment and then joined her, uprooting a clump of wild onions and eating them raw.

  The pair fed for nearly 10 minutes straight without stopping, not even pausing to savor the taste or enjoy the texture of the food, just desperate to fill their stomachs. Only after Gaby had polished off the last of the fiddleheads within reach did she pause to consider the implications of their discovery.

  “Like the phoenix,” Gaby mumbled to herself.

  “What?” Ken asked through a mouthful of berries, which he was shoveling in his mouth, stalk and all, before stripping the berries off with his tongue and discarding the stalk.

  “The myth of the phoenix,” she explained. “It would rise out of the ashes of its forbearer. Kind of like those before-and-after photos you see of volcanoes. It blows its top and kills everything around it, but three years later the place looks like paradise because of all the nutrients in the volcanic ash.”

  Ken paused momentarily from his feasting to look down at his hands, which had been uprooting every wild edible in sight. He noticed that they were covered in dirt and smeared ash. He looked closer at the soil and could see the scattered remnants of the ash that had coated the landscape just yesterday.

  “Except this took hours, not years,” he replied.

  The pair forsook their original plan of finding dry wood and used the archery target like a grocery bag, stuffing it full of all the wild edibles they could find. They had cleared out the area around the base of the slope and were foraging for more along the cliff’s edge when they heard the clean crack of wood snapping underfoot in the distance. The two immediately tensed and scanned the perimeter for any sign of movement, but the mist and fog made it impossible to see anything more than 20 feet away. What had before made this place seem mystical now made it creepy and foreboding.

  “What was that?” Ken hissed as he put his back to the cliff.

  “It could just be an elk,” Gaby said, though the lilt in her voice betrayed her doubt.

  They heard another sound, like something heavy falling. It sounded like it was coming from their left, but it was hard to gauge in the mist.

  “Or a bear,” Ken said as he snatched the hatchet from Gaby’s shaking hands and assumed a defensive posture.

  Gaby knelt down, picked up a couple of palm-sized rocks and steadied her throwing arm.

  As the seconds ticked by, the sound drew closer. They could hear the swish of grass and a shuffling sound as something drew nearer.

  Ken cursed under his breath for leaving his spear in the wigwam. Gaby tried to steady her breathing as she felt her pulse quicken.

  Before long, they could see motion in the fog to their left. Gaby reared back with her throwing arm and scrunched her eyes, trying to make it out. Fragmented images flitted before them, warped and distorted by the shadows in the fog. Formless and indefinable, these unconnected images slowly coalesced as the creature drew closer, combining into a monstrous and looming shape some 30 feet away. It looked like an enormous grizzly standing on its hind legs, but that could have been a trick of the light refracting off the moisture in the air.

  When the creature was about 20 feet away, just outside their visual range, it stopped. Ken caught glimpses of brown fur through the wisps of vapor before the creature suddenly keeled over and splayed out on the grass before them.

  He and Gaby exchanged confused and nervous glances, both wondering whether they should investigate or simply run for it. The creature was motionless. After a few moments, Gaby took a cautious step forward.

  “Be careful!” Ken hissed. “It could be a trick.”

  Gaby nodded and stepped gingerly toward the unmoving creature, with Ken following several steps behind her.

  Details started to emerge as they closed in on it. The creature was too large to be a coyote or a bobcat, but a bit puny for a bear. Thick, matted brown fur covered what they assumed was its back, with darker fur on its flank. The fur on its head didn’t match the rest of its pelt; it was black, close-cropped and so thin it didn’t look like fur at all. Ken spied blood on a splayed out appendage, which he guessed was its front right limb. Only the paw was pinkish and had fingers instead of claws.

  It was human. A man, by the size of him, wrapped in various animal skins, while his own skin was coated in dried blood and caked-on mud.

  Ken stood in front of the unmoving man, hatchet at the ready, and lightly kicked his head. No response.

  Gaby knelt down and, with some difficulty, rolled him over.

  He was emaciated — at least 25 pounds underweight — and much of his face was buried beneath a bushy black beard, but there was no mistaking the sunburned complexion of their former companion.

  Wade had returned.

  * * * Five Hours Until Sundown * * *

  It was mid-afternoon by the time Coop and Lamar reached the other side of the ashen field bearing the Curtiss-Wright sign. The air temperature was still unseasonably cold, but had warmed to the point that their breath was no longer visible.

  Waiting for them were three concrete bunkers, each the size of a small barracks. No control towers, no hangars, no runways; nothing to show that nuclear-powered jets had once been tested here. Either the base had been largely dismantled, or else this had merely been a satellite facility and not part of the main campus. Apart from the bunkers, the only sign of development was a long untended dirt road that wound around a hill behind the bunkers that marked the edge of the field. Lamar guessed that was Reactor Road, which John had mentioned when he first brought them here. It was hard not to feel disappointed by it all.

  All the bunkers had five sides: exterior walls that reached only three feet above the ground before sloping inward and upward on either side before ending in a broad and flat roof.

  This unusual design choice made each of the buildings wide but squat, with none of them higher than 15 feet; just three feet taller than the wigwam. It also lent them the appearance of octagons half-buried in the dirt. The bunkers on the left and right were layered with patches of moss, while the center one, which was a few feet smaller than the other two, was partially covered in rubble, courtesy of a rock slide from the hill behind it.

  In the center of each was an imposing, seven-foot-high metal door that was double padlocked: one at shoulder height above the metal door handle and another at knee level. All the doors were reinforced with triple hinges nearly as thick as a man’s arm that extended from the left side of the exterior frame halfway across the door. Both the doors and the hinges appeared scarred and aged but otherwise untouched by the elements.

  Above each of the doors was a small placard identifying the building’s function and security level. The building on the right was designated Curtiss-Wright Gen-1: All Access, while the one in the center was Curtiss-Wright Comm-1: Restricted Access. The left building had the most ominous designation: Curtiss-Wright Reactor-1: Code Access. A stylized logo of a C over a W in a small circle appeared beside each placard. After some thought, Lamar and Coop concluded that the one on the right was a generator building, the center bunker was a communications bunker, while the left one must lead to the decommissioned nuclear reactor.

  “Where are the stacks?” Coop asked. “Those giant stacks you see on reactors in all those disaster flicks. And those big concrete domes where everything is stored in case of a meltdown.”

  Lamar, who was leaning heavily on his walking stick after walking all day, shook his head.

  “I think this is just the entrance. They used to build reactors underground as a safety precaution, so I’m guessing the rest of it is far below us and probably extends all the way to the lake. I suspect that’s where you’ll find the discharge vents; the ‘stacks’ you’re thinking of.”

  “Great,” Coop replied. “So how do we get in?”

  “No clue,” Lamar answered slowly as he looked aroun
d. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure we’d ever find this place.” He looked back over his shoulder and noticed Coop’s eyes were practically popping out of their sockets at this revelation. “C’mon, let’s check the door,” Lamar said, trying to stifle a laugh.

  Lamar leaned against the door of the generator building and rapped it with the flashlight. It gave a startlingly loud metal clang that echoed throughout the interior of the deserted building.

  “That sounded several inches thick,” Coop exclaimed.

  “At least,” Lamar replied with a nod. He tested the padlocks; both were rusted clear through and wouldn’t budge. “The front door is a lost cause, so we’ll do what the best hackers do: start looking for back doors,” Lamar declared.

  The two started casing the perimeter of each building, looking for other access points. All of the bunkers were windowless, and they found no secondary entrances to any of them. They were starting to despair when they noticed the remains of a ventilation port at the base of the communications building. Part of the shaft was buried under rubble from a landslide, but the exposed portion showed a corroded metal plate had been bolted over it, probably when the facility was closed. More interestingly, part of the cover had been peeled back several inches, either by the rockslide or nosy tourists.

  Jackpot.

  Lamar and Coop exchanged a knowing look before dropping to their knees and scooping away rubble with their bare hands. After about 30 minutes of work, they’d exposed most of the vent. It was enormous, an industrial vent four times the size of modern ones, just large enough for them to squeeze through. It was held in place by two rusted bolts.

  Coop shoved his wood spear through the exposed section of the vent cover and pushed outward, using it as a fulcrum to pry the cover loose. After several minutes of struggle, he peeled it back enough for Lamar to fit his spear in beside it. The pair alternated between pushing their spear tips toward their chests and away from them, trying to wiggle the bolts loose. It was backbreaking work, since neither of them had much in the way of upper-body strength, but after 20 minutes of pushing and pulling, their solid oak spears triumphed over the rusted bolts, which came loose with a wrenching noise of metal shearing against metal. Lamar leaned on his spear, exhausted, as Coop kicked the metal plate loose.