“Was that mine or yours?” Clay asked.
“I think mine. We’ll give it a moment and see.”
Clay glanced up and saw the headlights coming through the field. Feeling a surge of hope, he nodded in their direction and laughed, “Well, fuck me. The cavalry at last. I guess it’s not as open and fucking shut as you’d have hoped, huh? I suppose you could do me right now… but then, you won’t have anyone to speak on your behalf when the fucking reinforcements show up, will you?”
“That appears to be only a single truck.”
“Oh, there’s more coming,” Clay smiled. He felt the ground firming up under him as the seconds ticked by. “What do you think they’ll do when they get in here and see what’s happened, huh? You think they just walk the fuck away from what you have here? Think they’ll take it easy on you when they see their friends laid out in the dirt? Go ahead and kill me, you fuck. See what your fucking lifespans look like when I’m not around to stay their fucking hand!”
As he spoke, the dancing of additional headlights beyond the valley entrance gave truth to his words. Clay worked to hold back his laughter; those bouncing high-beams seemed to him the punchline to the funniest joke ever told. They were a sight as welcome to him as Christmas dinner.
And then they were eclipsed entirely. A ball of cloud and muted flame surged from the ground, forcefully instantaneous such that at one instant, there was the night, and in the next, the birthing of Hell into the valley. The north-east and south-west walls of the cleft were illuminated all the way to their peaks, trees standing out in sharp, black spearheads, and in the fury of that light, Clay saw the shockwave blow out from the epicenter, flattening all vegetation in its path as it moved at impossible speed. It passed under his feet, vibrating the earth beneath them like an abbreviated earthquake, and in the growing light of the fireball, Clay saw the lone shadow of an armed man running toward the stationary pickup truck in the center of the field at full speed. The figure paused a few hundred feet shy of their position, and then he was firing his rifle, the sound ridiculously small after the blast of the firebomb. It sounded to Clay like a popgun, but he could see by the burning flames in the sky how bodies began to fall from the truck bed to the valley floor.
“So… what the fuck was that?” Clay asked. His voice had gone flat.
“Somewhere along the line, we’d come into possession of a healthy amount of C4.”
Clay scoffed and again lowered his head. “I suppose that’s it, then.”
“Yes.”
Clay shook his head in disgust. “Do they know? Your fucking people, I mean. Do they know what they’re living with up here?”
“And what would you say it is they’re living with up here?”
“Fuck yourself, huh?”
“Mmm. Some do, I’d say. Some more than others. We’ve all done things, Clay, in the manner seeming best to us, yourself included. We’ve done what’s necessary. And you’ve played a part, certainly. You’ve made such things necessary. I suppose you consider yourself to have lost but… I wonder. I can’t claim to understand any man’s intentions but my own. If we’re to be honest with each other (for the first time, I guess), I’ll allow that the intentions of the average man sometimes… just sometimes… seem alien to me, and it becomes an exercise in gauging the reactions of others in response to the average man; from this, I can take a bearing.”
“Humanity’s fucking mirror, huh?”
“If you like. There’s a certain statistical advantage to it.”
“Bullshit.”
“Oh?”
“Uh. I had you all wrong. I thought at first you were just a fucking sicko but that wasn’t right, and I guess I’ll pay the fucking price, now, for my intuitive failure. You’re not fucking clueless, you cunt, you’re trying to play both ends of the fence. I’m saying you’re a fucking coward. You won’t just be what you are, for whatever fucking reason, and you’ll refuse to admit it. Maybe even to yourself. You’re the worst kind of liar, Jake. I guess you’ll go ahead and do whatever the fuck it is you’re gonna do, but there’s no escaping that. Go on the fuck ahead, then. You cocksuckers deserve each other.”
The gunfire had ceased, leaving the night eerily quiet. The fireball had dispersed into the atmosphere along the valley’s edge, leaving small patches of fire smoldering in the boughs of the trees. Somewhere in the field, the truck’s headlights had gone out.
“What’ll you do with the rest?”
“The rest.”
“In town, fucking son of a bitch. What happens to them?”
“I guess we’ll have to see…”
“Let ’em walk out, huh?”
“Yes. They’ll be given the chance to leave. If they take it, I won’t stop them.”
Clay breathed deep into his lungs and nodded. “Alright, then.”
A hand unnaturally warm encircled the back of Clay’s neck. It began to squeeze, slow but insistent, and he felt himself pulled away from the railing. The power in that hand was undeniable, as smooth and steady as heavy machinery, and he was directed toward the door of the cabin.
“Let’s go inside. I’ll be brief.”
Clay laughed abruptly, the sound pure and genuine. He wondered at the sensation that sprung from his heart, shocked at its sincerity, but then the door closed behind them both, and his laughter was hidden within.
52
THE GHOST OF JACKSON
Water was a thing that could still be procured. It was one of their last saving graces; the ability to find water.
Elton remembered the earliest days. After the Flare but before the Plague, before he’d been a widower. He remembered starting out strong in those early days. Being a life-long resident of California, earthquake preparedness kits had been a part of his existence since the mid-eighties when the real shakers had come along to remind everyone they’d purchased land on a buckling fissure. Time had moved on after the reminder was delivered, of course, and time healed all things eventually. Even the memory of the sudden primal fear that takes hold when an entire house—the one place in an often hard world that was supposed to be a man’s safe haven—shudders on its foundation as though bombed, the sound of the event rattling cabinets and vibrating the windows when they didn’t just shatter outright.
A lot of people forgot such experiences when the bustle of life reasserted its hold; a lot of them let their three-day kits expire. Some of them maybe even broke the kits down over time, considering the closet space they required and rolling their eyes at its waste.
Elton sure didn’t forget. He had a damned long memory. He recalled very well the experience; bracing his lost wife against the doorframe of their bedroom, nothing but underwear and tousled bed hair; her screaming, panicked sobs. He could still hear the sound of the world as the shockwave passed by. The earth had growled up at them like an enraged animal, stalking past their bedroom window, and Elton had felt a hunted man. He maintained his kit until the end.
The water stayed on for a time beyond the loss of the grid, though not terribly long. Thinking quickly, Elton had gone from room to room in the house filling each sink and bathtub to overflowing, and then after loaded up every receptacle he could get his hands on with as much water as his pipes would run. Five-gallon buckets filled with old screws, nails, and rusted tools in the garage were dumped out, rinsed with dish soap and a miserly splash of water, and filled to the brims. The Tupperware, pots, kettles; everything watertight became water’s keeper. When the pressure in their plumbing finally gave out, Elton was feeling pretty good about their chances.
He would soon learn what his feelings were worth.