CICADA: A Stone Age World Novel (9 page)

Carrington reluctantly followed, interested, but still wondering what all of this had to do with him.

Westerling stopped where the walkway and railing elbowed left at the next wall that spanned a hundred feet or so until turning again along the next wall. “You see that?” He pointed to a large opening through the wall at the ground level.

Carrington looked and pointed to a closed door on the next wall, purposely being irritating. “That one?”

“No! There, where the tubes run from the generator into the next room. In there is an ancient volcanic vent that we cored out and tapped when we built this place. The superheated steam is channeled to the turbine you see here, to create our electricity.”

“It looks well designed. So what do you need me for?”

“Simple.” Westerling thrust at him the annotated document he had been studying earlier and holding the whole time. “Our scientists say we are screwed in a few months if we don’t find another source of energy. Here’s their report.”

“Is your vent running dry?”

“So to speak. They suspect it was the earthquake we had a few months back and that it somehow is causing our aquifer to drain off. Regardless, it’s just not outputting enough steam to fuel our generator to keep up with our energy demands. Even with our rationing, it slowly gets worse every month or two.”

“Okay, so why me? What do I know about geothermal power?”

“You may not know a lot about geothermal”—

I know a whole lot more than you do, buddy
.

—“but you know a lot about solar, and last I checked, the sun seems to be generating a lot of electricity lately. I’m hoping I can convince you to help us figure out what we can build to harness this unlimited energy and supplement or replace our geothermal power.”

Carrington hadn’t expected this conversation at all. Maybe he had this guy’s intentions pegged all wrong. “Okay, fine, let’s say I have an idea or two on how to do this. Why would I help those who have separated and imprisoned my wife and me?”

“Okay, we overreached a bit in our tactics—”

“Overreached? Are you kidding me?”

“Have you seen the world we live in right now? It is full of really bad people. Truly, you have no idea how bad these people are. If they were not kept out, they would surely kill each and every last one of us.” Westerling carefully considered his next statement. “So here’s the deal. We all need to work together, not against each other. I know you don’t trust me, and that’s expected. But, in reality, you and your wife are free to go at any time.”

“You’re telling me that Melanie and I could leave right now and you won’t stop us?”

“That’s correct. But know this: You will die out there, and those cannibals will as surely eat you two as you are standing in front of me. Instead, you could stay here and help us solve this problem. Yes, you will have to live by my rules. And if you do, I promise you that you both will be able to live safe and peaceful lives. Cross my rules, we will kick you out.

“You see this?” Westerling said holding up a picture he pulled from his front pocket, showing a young woman and a child. “It’s a picture of my daughter and granddaughter, who live here, same as you and your wife. This was taken a year and a half ago at a house I own on Virginia Beach.”

He snuffled and started to tear up rather convincingly. “Since my wife’s death, they are the most important people in the world to me. Your wife is equally important to you, Dr. Reid. My men were wrong to separate you two. Two people who love each other should not be apart. When we’re done here, you two will be together once more and I promise you that you won’t be separated again.

“But there must be some conditions. I need you two to bring the other scientists back on board and have them use their collective efforts to help us all succeed. If you, or any of your scientist friends, don’t want to stay, you can leave. Likewise, if you don’t want to follow the rules, you’ll be asked to leave.

“Finally, before you answer me, I’d like you to come to my office tomorrow morning and take a look at the world you and your wife would have to live in, outside these walls. That’s it. Go now to your apartment, be with your wife; talk about what we have talked about. Then, tomorrow morning, I’ll send a guard to escort you both to my Observation Tower and I’ll show you what you probably won’t want to see, but you’ll need to see.

“Thank you, Dr. Reid.”

Westerling didn’t wait for an answer. He walked past Carrington toward the door they had come in.

Before he left, Carrington looked back at the other room and wondered what it was. A security guard stationed in front of the room’s entrance looked up at him, a steady contact that seemed to say that he could read Carrington’s mind. The guard’s look was telling him, “Don’t even try it.”

When Melanie opened the apartment door, she wasn’t exactly sure what she expected to find. She wanted to believe what Gufstafson told her, that she and Carr would be reunited. But she didn’t really expect it to happen, assuming the worst instead: it was all a mistake; they found out what she was planning and changed their minds; she was delusional and imagined the whole thing. She became sure that they wouldn’t allow Carr and her to be together.

So when the door swung wide to reveal Carrington sitting casually on their sofa in their small living room, working on some project—he was always tinkering with something—it was almost a complete surprise. She dropped the remains of her sack lunch in the entry. “Carr! My God, is that really you?” In just a few long strides, she closed the gap and jumped on top of him.

“You’re… crushing… me.” He smiled up at her and she backed off of him, sliding onto the couch. “Who did you think it would be in our home?” he asked.

“Is that what this is, our home?”

He dropped the two wires he was carefully holding and looked at her. “Melanie Sinclaire-Reid, our home is wherever we are together.”

“Did you get told the same line I did?”

“You mean if we behave ourselves, we are allowed to stay here, but if we don’t want to stay, we can leave of our own volition, and if we break the rules we’re out? Then yes, I was told pretty much the same thing.”

“Do you believe it?” If he did, perhaps she could, too.

“I figured we probably don’t have a choice. But, I guess we’ll find out a little more tomorrow.”

“Yeah, we get to visit his palace in the sky and see for ourselves how bad it is out there.” Melanie looked down. She wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. The only things she was sure of were that she loved him and she’d do anything for him.

She looked up and saw that he had scribbled a note and pushed it her way. It read “Bugged?”

She lifted her shoulders as if to say, “I don’t know.” Then she grabbed the pencil and added “So we better be careful.”

He nodded.

“What’re you building?” she scribbled.

He grabbed the note and scribbled on the back, pushing it back to her.

She flipped it over. “A bomb!”

Max and Tom were almost invisible, walking silently, holding close to the shadows; no easy task, as the shadows constantly danced, being coaxed away by their malicious collaborators, the fiery aurora-filled skies above.

They had a name now and a general location. The Squatts called him Club because he carried a giant club with spikes on its end built to inflict maximum injury on its intended victims. Max pulled this information from an unwilling man who would probably never recover the use of his fingers after the interrogation. A well-placed gun butt to the middle of his hand and the fear of death was all it took before the fellow gave up Club’s name and tree of residence. It was a lean-to in the woods with a British flag tied to a tree above it.

They entered the canopy of the thinning pine forest, leaving their shadows behind and finding easy cover in its darkness. The forest floor was thick with dead pine needles, a deep shag carpet of brittle spines crunching under their boots, making their progress less silent. Most of those who lived in the woods—hundreds of them—appeared to be asleep.

Each time they came upon a lean-to or something similar, Max pulled out a plastic flashlight and blasted its light up and down the pole, looking for a Union Jack.

They ran across several of Max’s flyers; some were posted on the trees, but most had been discarded on the ground along with so much garbage piling up after a year of living here. The putrid smell of human waste was everywhere. These once-pristine forests were now no more than a dump of trash and humans.

After an unsuccessful hour, they were running out of campsites. So they doubled back and looked for any signs that a flag had once hung on a tree, assuming it must be taken down at night.

They looked again at one of the early lean-tos they had scrutinized, and because they had approached from a different direction, they had missed a piece of fishing line stuck into the bark. It was definitely used for securing something.

Tom was just about to kick over the lean-to when he heard a crackle of pine needles beside him. Pivoting, he saw a thick piece of wood coming down on him. It just grazed Tom’s head, his movement surely saving him from death, and hit the tree instead. The truncheon thudded and bounced out of the attacker’s hand. Max spun around and fired off a silenced round into the man’s leg, not wanting to kill him just yet; it sounded like a small twig breaking and nothing more.

“You shot—” Tom brought the butt of his pistol down hard on the back of the man’s head. This didn’t knock him out but was effective in quieting him.

The man, known as Club and feared by many, shuddered enough that the bandana he wore as a protective hat slid off his head to the pine needle floor.

Max kneeled down face-to-face with Club and smiled, just slightly. “You were the one who attacked that place over there.” He pointed toward Cicada. “And you tossed in the grenade. Good job, by the way; they had it coming to them.”

The man wasn’t sure whether these two were friend or foe but decided it was better to cooperate. “Ah, yeah… it’s those damn scientists; they have food and water and we have nothing,” he said, grimacing from the pain.

“I thought so. Now tell me where you got your explosives. We want some to take out that place—maybe we could split the spoils?”

Feeling a little more confident, Club told them, “There’s a guy who brought these to me. He leaves me a sign when he’s left me a new supply and sometimes instructions about where to hit the fortress.”

“Where are the sign and the drop-off points?”

Club hesitated at first, and then gave up his only bargaining chip. “It’s always at the same place: a split aspen, like from a lightning bolt, just off the road by the Cicada sign. I’m expecting a delivery tomorrow, just before sunrise. Maybe we could—”

Tom scooped up Club’s bandana hat and shoved it into the man’s mouth, holding it in place. “Do you need anything else?”

“No, I’m good,” Max said.

As the sun broke over the rugged horizon, Beatrice Peters stepped out of her parents’ tent to relieve herself. When she looked up from where she’d squatted, she fell back, as if her shock pushed her over. It was Club. He was as dead as anyone she’d seen, and these days, she’d seen lots of dead people. This was certainly ironic being that many of them died at Club’s hands. He had even boasted last night about killing one of the people from the fortress on the hill.

She scuttled back a little, pulled up her pants and stood; she wanted to make sure what she saw was real, scrutinizing every hair and twig. And the knife. Club was strung up in the tree that made up his lean-to. His tongue was dangling out of his slack jaw, and his eyes were swollen in a permanent state of terror, forever staring into the ground. His hunting knife was sticking out of his chest. It pinned a bloody white piece of paper with words on it, as if he were some sort of community billboard. She recognized it as one of the flyers those men handed out yesterday, but someone had scrawled on it with a finger, using Club’s blood: “G U I L T Y”

At long last, she screamed.

Squatters poured out of their tents, cardboard boxes and lean-tos. Within minutes, all received the message.