by Billy Dering
“My name is Kid. I’m not going to hurt you. You must be Mr. Drexer?”
“How do you know my name?”
“You must be a legend. A girl from New York told us about you,” he commented with his hand still outstretched.
“What?”
“Yeah, told us you were an attorney, and gave it all up to live the life of a fisherman.”
“I gave it up because I wanted peace of mind. The fisherman part was an afterthought,” he said as he timidly took the hand and stood up.
Kid was unsure as to whether or not the old man was crazy, but was very sure that the guy needed a shave and a bath.
“Which girl from New York were you talking to?” the old man asked.
Heidi appeared in the doorway. “That, would be me.”
Mr. Drexer yelled and stepped back, stumbling into the mattress. “It’s… one of them!”
“What?” Heidi froze.
It was then that Kid realized that Heidi was still wearing her uniform from the ships. He laughed. “Don’t worry. Although she is wearing one of their uniforms, she is definitely not one of them.”
She took a step closer and stated, “I remember you.”
He shrank back again, as if he had a guilty conscience. “Wait,” Mr. Drexer finally said, “I recognize you too. You were with one of the groups that hung around the beach next to my house. Was that last summer?”
“Yes!” She turned to Kid and her shoulders sagged. “That is when I met Brian.”
“The place was a crowded madhouse all summer,” Mr. Drexer added. “I couldn’t wait for the solitude that comes with the cold weather.”
“Believe me, you’ve got more solitude than you probably know,” Kid said. “I assume you were here in your house when the destruction came?”
“I was in here for it, whatever it was. I was sleeping when it happened. Kept myself locked in this room because after, some hoodlums decided to break into my house and stay a while. They even broke up my favorite chair and threw it in the wood stove.”
“I’ll tell you what, that chair burned real nice,” Kid said.
“It did?”
“That was us in your house.”
“I thought your voice sounded familiar. Sorry about the hoodlum quip. I heard you talking about militant, programmed soldiers and being chased. Figured everyone had gone crazy until I saw the remains of the Quick-Fix clerk, soldiers roaming the streets, and those ships floating out there.” Mr. Drexer scratched at his beard. “Like an unholy ark trinity, launched by Satan himself.”
“That’s a great description,” Kid noted. “It’s a long story, but first come on out and meet the rest of the group.”
“There are more of you?” He followed Kid and Heidi out of the room.
Kid introduced him to Jess and Maria. “I can’t tell you how glad we are to see another survivor.” Maria shook his hand so briskly that the old man’s head began to wobble on his shoulders.
“Please, just call me Drex.”
Jess also shook his hand, although not as vigorously as Maria. “Grab a seat. After all, it is your couch.” He scooted over.
As Drex sat down, he saw the soldier sitting on the floor. “I assume he is not one of them either?”
“No, now he’s one of them,” Kid said.
Drex jumped off the couch.
“Wait!” Kid waved his hands. “You have nothing to be afraid of. His hands are tied and he has no strength.”
“It was a couple of those soldiers, or whatever they are, who went around the entire area and killed every survivor they found, including the 20 people in the hotel up the road,” Drex said as he walked over to the lone wall unit in the room.
“There were 20 people in a hotel at this time of year?” Heidi asked.
“Winter-rentals. Low-income housing,” he answered. “Yes, 20 people plus three U.S. Army soldiers, all dead. Don’t know where the army soldiers came from.”
Kid and Jess looked at each other. “The military checkpoint at the bridge,” Jess concluded. “They must have taken shelter in the hotel. Surprised we didn’t run into any of these people the day after it happened.”
“They picked the wrong place to take shelter,” Drex said. “The joint was loaded with weapons and drugs. The soldiers were shot and their bodies were just left on a second-floor balcony.”
Having opened the door to a cabinet on the bottom of the wall unit, Drex pulled out a handgun. Kid froze for a second, until the old man held out the grip. “Here, we should cover that soldier. Be careful, it’s loaded.”
“I wish I had this when we were stuck in the fire tower,” Kid muttered as he took the 38-caliber revolver.
“I got that from the hotel. As well as these,” he added as he swung the cabinet door all the way open, revealing a cache of additional handguns and ammunition.
Jess’s interest was piqued and he walked over. “You got all of these from the hotel?”
“Every single one. When I went in there, some of the residents were dead on the floor, but some were sitting around a table in the lobby and they all seemed… frozen. At first I thought they were still alive.”
“That’s because they were shot by one of the bizarre weapons used by the soldiers from those Utopia Project ships,” Jess clarified. “They don’t shoot bullets. They shoot some kind of bolt that freezes people instantly.”
Drex shrugged. “I guess that explains it. Anyway, when I looked closer, I realized the dead people in the hotel were sitting around a table loaded with drugs, guns, and money. I took the guns, but you would think I would be smart enough to keep one on me at all times. What if one of the soldiers had come into my house instead of you?” He grabbed a pistol with a belt holster and affixed it to his waist.
“When I go outside, I am always armed,” Drex continued. “You have to be. To protect yourself from not only those soldiers, but wild dogs.”
“Wild dogs?” Jess asked.
“Yes, as hard as it was to do, I shot two of them yesterday. They may have once been family pets, but they are becoming vicious, wild animals. And with mounds of human guts everywhere for them to feed on, I fear they are acquiring a taste for human flesh.”
He turned to Jess, who was kneeling next to him. “Take what you want. Make sure you can defend yourselves.”
Jess examined the weapons and handed one to Maria, Heidi, and Kid. None of the other handguns had a belt holster, so they had to carry them in coat pockets. Jess took a Glock 9mm pistol with a full magazine. “Drex, how did you avoid getting caught by the soldiers who were searching the area?”
“I stayed in my room, and hid under the mattress when they came in. I obviously did a better job of hiding that time.”
“So they took out all of the other survivors in this area?” Kid asked.
“It appears so, unless they missed other stragglers like me.”
“What makes that even more tragic is that there are so few of us to begin with.” Kid was beside himself as he stood up and paced the floor. Out the window, he noticed the undulations of the beach sand and remembered the unpleasant task he had agreed to. He glanced over at Heidi. “Are you ready to go over to Brian’s grave?”
She looked solemn. “As much as I’ll ever be.”
Seeing them walk to the door, Drex said, “Make sure you are armed.”
Patting the pistol in his pocket, Kid gave a thumbs-up.
Kid and Heidi were hunched over as they ran on the slushy road next to the boardwalk. He jumped onto the boardwalk and crawled to the edge. She crawled up next to him. He felt sadness wash over him as he pointed down at the mound on the beach.
Heidi brought her hands up to cover her face. After several moments of silence, she blew a kiss toward Brian’s grave and whispered, “Rest in peace my love. You died so others could live.”
Again hunched over while they ran, they returned to the shack. As soon as they entered, Maria grabbed his arm. “Kid! Listen to this.” She then turned to Drex. “Go ahead and tell
them.”
Drex cleared his throat, “They were telling me about your fire tower battle in the woods, and mentioned the words those Utopia Project people used for the word conditioning, Ion and Fleson. I’m always solving word puzzles, so it jumped right out at me. I believe they are anadromes.”
“They are what?”
“The simplest of word codes. Spell Ion and Fleson backward.”
“No I,” Kid said.
“And nose l… f?” Heidi attempted, and then backhanded Maria’s shoulder. “Stop snickering. No self.”
“No I and No self,” Kid said. “I never would have thought of that. But it wouldn’t surprise me with these people.”
“From what I can gather, they definitely seemed to frown on… individualism,” Drex said. He seemed to be warming up to the group. “So, do we know what happened out there, on that crazy night?”
Kid poured water into a paper cup and added some instant coffee. He exhaled and shook his head. “We are still trying to piece it all together.”
“Maybe the guy over there knows what happened?” He pointed to the bound soldier.
“Nah, I doubt he knows much of anything. He seems to be just one of the ordinary, conditioned members of their Utopia Project society,” Kid answered as he sat on the floor next to Heidi.
“Then why are you keeping him captive?”
“To learn about them.”
“You said yourself he doesn’t know anything,” Drex noted.
“I don’t think he knows anything about the destruction,” Kid clarified while stirring his cold cup of coffee with a plastic spoon. “But he knows what their everyday life is like. That’s what we hope we can learn from him. Actually, I have a question for 801.”
The bound soldier turned.
“When you all were chasing us around the woods, what did you do at night?” Kid asked. “You were out there three nights. Did you sleep?”
“We found several of what Elder-1 called, campers, parked in the woods. We slept inside them every night.”
“The Compound,” Jess interjected.
“That’s what I was thinking as well,” Kid affirmed. They were familiar with a property owner in the Pine Barrens who allowed his friends to park their campers, which were mostly travel trailers, on his land. The site was touted as a rendezvous point if the Country ever came under attack, hence the nickname, The Compound. Coincidently, he realized they were not ready for the kind of attack that did come.
“If so, they were pretty damn close to us,” Jess said. “Since they caught up to us at the fire tower, they were only a few turns away from the cabin.”
Kid continued, “So 801, you slept in campers, but how did you find your way back to them every night?”
“We marked our path when we went searching for the enemy group so we could find our way back.”
“You mean us. We were the enemy group you were chasing.”
“Yes.”
Maria jumped in. “How could you want to kill us then, but not now?”
“We have no current orders to kill you.”
“Well that’s good to know,” she quipped.
“How did you track us down at the fire tower?” Kid asked. 801 seemed perplexed, so he further clarified, “That tall tower in the middle of woods, where you trapped us?”
“We heard a vehicle engine close by as we were marching back to the ships. Elder-1 ordered us to hide and not attack until the enemy had climbed up,”
“So you weren’t even hunting us anymore when you heard our truck?”
“Elder-1 had canceled that order.”
Heidi sighed. “That is unbelievable. If only we had waited an hour, they never would have trapped us.”
“Another ‘if only.’” Kid sounded sour.
Drex cleared his throat and sat back on the couch. He glanced at the group. “So, where do you plan to go from here?”
“Somewhere warm, with a hot shower and a nice juicy steak,” Jess answered as he picked up a bag of chocolate chip cookies.
“We may have to go really far to get a steak,” Heidi responded.
“Why is that?” Drex asked.
“Because despite the destruction, they left a certain number of ‘wildlife tracts’ intact in America and around the world, to preserve animal species. But I don’t think any are that close to here.”
Drex looked taken aback. “How far did this destruction go?”
“Global. Everyone in the entire world is dead,” Heidi clarified.
“The entire world?” he blurted out, sounding shocked. “It’s beyond comprehension. How?”
“The USA’s neutron beam weapon system.”
“That weapon system they built into the satellites?”
“Yes, but don’t worry about them taking us out with it now,” Heidi added. “When we were captives on the ships, we were told that the satellite system is no longer working.”
Drex stared into space and sounded disgusted. “A world covered with dead bodies? I can’t imagine the smell when winter breaks. It will be like the stench inside the Quick-Fix times millions, billions…”
Jess winced and added, “And the smell inside that store was sickening enough. Just the thought of it makes me want to toss my…” Looking down at his hands, he whipped the bag of cookies over to Maria, who was already shaking her head.
“Wait, what about any people living within wildlife tracts?” Kid asked the girls.
“Also dead,” Heidi clarified. “They cherry picked human beings in those tracts with another beam from the satellites. It sounded kind of technical to me, but they were able to target people using infrared to distinguish them from the animals they wanted to survive.”
“Did they say where the wildlife tracts are?”
“All over the world.” Heidi appeared deep in thought. “I didn’t see any list, but when I asked, Elder-1 gave me some examples. All I remember in North America were areas within the Rockies, the Appalachians and the Everglades. There were more, but those are the areas I remember.”
“It’s worse than I could have ever imagined.” Drex’s fingers trembled as he stroked the scraggly white hair of his mustache and beard. “What about here? We survived and this doesn’t seem to qualify as a wildlife tract?”
“Oh, no,” Maria interjected. “We weren’t supposed to live and neither were you, Drex. But outside of the wildlife tracts that they left intentionally, there were a few areas that they just missed.”
“Because of satellite malfunctions,” Heidi added.
“Wait, a few areas?” Kid started as he pulled his coffee cup from his lips, also looking stunned. “Are you saying there is more than one ‘malfunction’ area, and that this is not the only area that they missed?”
Chapter 34
January 2, 2045
Monday, Midday
New Jersey coast
Seven days after the event
“Yes. Besides here, we were told that there were two other malfunction areas,” Heidi clarified.
“Do you know what that means?” Kid asked.
“What?”
“Possibly more survivors.” He felt a flicker of optimism.
“Assuming they didn’t wipe out the survivors there like they did here,” Drex noted.
“Good point,” Kid acknowledged as his hope was put in check. “Where are the other two areas?”
Heidi shook her head. “They never told me.”
“They mentioned another one to me,” Maria jumped in. Everyone turned her way. “Elder-1 said that the second area they missed was in North America. I asked him where, and he said it was around the Green Mountains wildlife tract, wherever that is.”
“Green Mountains?” Kid sounded surprised. “Up in Vermont?”
“Maria, you don’t remember the Green Mountains? Seriously?” Heidi chided. “We were just up there.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I knew it sounded familiar. Hey, Kid drove. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“That was early
December,” Jess clarified. “We saw Sara’s grandparents and we were hanging out with Karen Stone.”
“Yeah, her,” Heidi uttered with disdain. “And her crazy boyfriend Scott Sherman and his even more psycho older brother, Sid.” Off the cuff she added, “Knowing our luck those idiots survived all of this.”
“What about the third area?” Kid asked.
“He never said,” Maria answered.
Heidi agreed, “No, and I guess I don’t rate because he never even told me about the second area.”
After finishing his coffee, Kid stood up and walked to the back window. Peering at the ships for a moment, he turned and noticed the now cold wood stove. He walked over and knelt in front of it. He realized he was in the very spot where he had had his last conversation with a healthy Sara, before she was captured and before she was compromised by the shot that grazed her. Next to the wood stove was the bronze-topped poker she had used to work the fire while she confided in him about being born in the same hospital in Georgia as the CCP’s Baby Doe. His fingers trembled as he reached for the poker, and when he touched it, he thought he felt a mild electric current. Days before, she had held this very tool, and touching it made him feel a connection to her.
Kid suddenly felt an overwhelming need for his Sara. It was a crushing and desperate urge. It was then that he decided he had to go back to Sara’s house, and her room. Maybe it was part of the grieving process, but he wanted… no, needed, to touch something, anything she had touched, in hopes that he might feel her one more time. He wanted to put her pillow to his face and smell her. He tried to tamp down the empty but growing swell emanating from the pit of his stomach, to no avail. Unable to take it anymore, he jumped to his feet. “I need to take a ride. I need to go back to Sara’s house.”
“Alright.” Jess started, seeming a little taken aback. He hesitated, as if searching for the right words. “Just curious, but what are you looking for there that we can’t find somewhere… closer?”
He stared down for a moment, and muttered, “I don’t know. Maybe just… closure.”
Jess exhaled and paused. “Fine, but we’ll all have to go. We need to stick together. I guess we can just wait in the truck while you go inside.”