Authors: Geoff North
CRYERS
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is
coincidental.
Other Books by Geoff North:
Table
of Contents
Part One:
Thawed
1976
2,655 meters underground
253 kilometers northwest of
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Lothair Eichberg was done running.
He had just celebrated his seventieth birthday—with his son, his son’s wife,
and his two grandchildren—the week before in Chicago, and he was tired. ABZE,
the cryogenics corporation—short for
Absolute
Zero
—had burrowed its latest installation, in 1974, beneath the ground of a
small Canadian town called Dauphin. It was an ideal location for the
specialized services ABZE provided. The terrain was flat and the ground was stable,
consisting of kilometers thick bedrock. There was little seismic activity, and the
region—known mostly for farming—was desolate, due to its cold, long winters.
Lothair hated the cold, and that
was ironic, considering his ten-billion dollar empire was built on it. But he
longed for the desolation. He wasn’t a young man anymore. Since 1945, Lothair
had been fleeing from the past. His first move to Argentina had been the
longest stay anywhere. He had met his wife there, and they had raised three
children in the South American country. It was where he had built his initial
fortune—developing and distributing a powerful cocaine-based drug that
eventually found its way onto the streets in cities north of Mexico.
But the past eventually caught up
with Lothair. The
hunters
had found
him, and in 1957, the Eichberg family slipped out of Argentina and headed for
Cuba. The country had been good to him for the short time that he was there.
His drugs made millions in Havana—especially to the greedy Americans exploiting
the country’s resources and generous nature. Fidel’s revolution in ’59 saw the
Eichberg family running again. Communism was bad for the drug trade, and
Lothair needed the capital to build on his new venture with research in the
field of cryogenics. The Eichbergs ended up in California, and Lothair—his name
had changed twice already since the Reich days—had settled in a country rich
with opportunity and new ideas.
And ideas didn’t get much newer
than selling life after death. Some people wanted to live forever, and those
with almost limitless amounts of money were always the first in line. Lothair
figured it was due to vanity, or, perhaps, a fear that their hard-earned cash
would be squandered away by those that didn’t deserve it. Lothair could
appreciate their concerns, and he could provide them with an alternative. There
was an old saying—
you can’t take it with
you
—that Lothair had liked to tell his early customers.
But now you can
, he would always finish.
He had used that line to seal the
deal with his first two-hundred clients; each paying one-and-a-half million for
the service of having their bodies frozen at the time of death. There was no
guarantee they would be revived—ABZE Corp wasn’t in the business of curing
cancer and heart disease—but there was a chance other companies might someday
find the cures that these vain, self-centered millionaires so desperately
craved.
Lothair called it ‘eternal peace of
mind.’ People would pay
any
amount
for that. Even for just the idea of it.
ABZE drilled into the ground of
southern California and planted its first dozen clients. The decision to build
cryogenic facilities deep underground was costly but deemed necessary by the
corporation’s paying customers. In the event mankind obliterated itself to
smithereens with hydrogen bombs, those already frozen wanted assurance they
wouldn’t be atomized along with the rest of humanity. And during the height of
the Cold War, no one could blame them. It was just more
eternal peace of mind
.
Lothair and his family had moved
east and north, and the business grew. Additional installations were buried
throughout the states of Oregon, Colorado, Ohio, Idaho, Illinois, South Dakota,
and North Dakota. The land had grown colder, the ground harder and more stable.
The population had thinned, but Lothair never felt safe. The cursed hunters
were always closing in. His vast wealth had shielded him—for the most part—from
extradition and other legal forms of capture, but Lothair always feared some
hateful Jew sympathizer would attack him on a more personal level—drive a blade
into his back, or slit his throat open—during those times when his security
wasn’t around to help.
The Canadian facility should’ve
been their safest move, but the hunters wouldn’t be denied. They followed, and
Lothair—now an old man and riddled with cancer—was about to meet his maker.
Whether it was from a malignant brain tumor, or an avenging survivor, mattered
little at this point. Lothair Eichberg would be dead in two weeks if he didn’t
take the matter into his own hands.
His beloved Estay had died the year
before. She had chosen to be buried in a coffin instead of a cylinder, much to
Lothair’s dismay. She had believed in an afterlife; he believed life merely
continued for as long as the individual decided.
His children and grandchildren
couldn’t be prosecuted for the experiments he’d conducted during the war. The
time was right to move on. After all these years, Lothair still couldn’t
understand why his research into the effects of freezing human children was
such a horrific crime. They would’ve died anyway—either shot through the brain
or gassed—so why not take advantage of live test subjects? It was such a
fascinating field of science.
He had wrapped up some final loose ends a few
days before at ABZE’s head offices in Chicago. Albert, the son he’d left in
charge, hugged his frail body and told him the company was in good hands. He
had said goodbye to his remaining family, and fled one last time—north.
Lothair lay naked in the cool,
steel cylinder, and thought of all those children slowly freezing to death
under his orders. He couldn’t help giggling nervously. The sound was muffled.
His final order was to have himself frozen. How ironic was that? Some had said
freezing was one of the most painless ways to go. Lothair wouldn’t experience
the sensation. He would fall asleep, suddenly, in the next thirty seconds. He
wouldn’t hear the gas. He wouldn’t feel the cold seeping into his tired, old
bones. Not like the three-hundred-eleven children back in Nazi Germany. They
weren’t gassed beforehand, or given drugs, to put them to sleep.
No. Freezing to death wasn’t a
pleasant way to go—especially when you went at such a young age, without your
parents. Without anyone. All alone.
Lothair’s tired eyes closed. Thoughts
of the children he’d put to death for the good of science, over thirty years
before, were his last.
He still couldn’t see what all the
fuss was about.
It had taken more than a coronal mass ejection to bring the greatest
civilization on Earth to its knees, but it was enough to knock out the power
grids. It had rendered those thousands of satellites—the ones that helped us
turn left and right, and gave us high definition pornography twenty-four-seven—into
orbiting hunks of uselessness. Mankind’s numbers were cut in half.
Religious crazies set up in major cities left cold and black. They
used the chemical weapons, taking out another quarter of the population.
When enough power had finally been restored, humanity’s hardiest
unlocked the codes and unleashed the bombs. White fire burned color from the
sky, and mushroom clouds blanketed the heavens, putting the stars to sleep for
a hundred years.
A handful of survivors remained.
New life forms evolved at
an accelerated rate in the planet-wide cesspool of chemical poison and
radioactive fallout.
A thousand years later...
The boy knew two things for sure. The
first, today was his sixteenth birthday. Cobe knew this for sure because his ma
had taught him how the calendar worked years before and he kept track of those
things in his head real good. Not many other folks knew much about numbers and how
they planned their lives. The more you learned, the more dangerous life became.
The writing of letters, and the use of numbers on paper, was forbidden. Paper
was scarce as hell. Books were rarer still. If you got caught writing letters
and numbers in the dirt, you got a beating. It wasn’t a soft beating either—bones
got broke and fingers got crushed. If you got caught with a book, the
punishment was worse. Cobe’s pa had taught Cobe’s ma how to read letters and
numbers. His name was Elward, and everyone in town knew he was a worthless
drunk. How Elward had learned about letters and numbers was anyone’s guess. But
he had shared the forbidden knowledge with Cobe’s ma before Cobe was born, and
made her swear never to tell another living soul. Freeda was true to her word—almost.
She didn’t think family counted. She believed such knowledge should be handed
down.
She’d taught her firstborn during
those evenings when her husband was out and too piss-drunk to catch her. She’d
taught him about the calendar and how it worked with months, weeks, and days.
Cobe didn’t dwell on hours and minutes. The sun came up and the sun went down.
It got warm and it got cold. Tracking things day by day with seconds seemed
like a pointless thing to do.
Today was Cobe’s sixteenth
birthday. He didn’t need his ma to remind him. She’d been planted in the ground
seven days earlier.
He shook his little brother by the
arm. “I know you’re not sleeping. Get up.”
The second thing Cobe knew for sure
was that their pa was going to join their ma today.
Willem moved his arm—his only
arm—quickly beneath the filthy blanket. “Don’t wanna go. Don’t wanna see Daddy
dangle from no rope.”
“We don’t got no choice…and quit
calling him Daddy. You’re twelve, and that’s too old to be talking like a
little kid. Call him Dad, or Pa, or Old Man. He’s gonna die this morning,
Willem, and we gotta watch.”
A wild patch of brown hair appeared,
followed by a pale face streaked with dirt. Willem’s blue eyes met his
brother’s—they were filled with water. “Who says?’”
Cobe watched the tears spill over
and run down his brother’s face. It took a little of the grime away but not much.
“We just got to.” He pulled the blanket away and helped the boy sit up. “Ma
shouldn’t have said the things she said, and Dad shouldn’t have got drunk and shot
his mouth off either.”
“I’ll be next, you know. What with
my one arm and all. They’re gonna string me up right after.” He threw himself
at Cobe and hugged him. The imbalance of being held by one arm almost knocked
the older boy over. “Or worse, they’ll cut me.”
“They ain’t gonna come after you.
They ain’t after little kids missing arms and legs. They only want to punish
the grownups that speak about shit we ain’t supposed to know.”
Willem continued, blocking out his
brother’s words. “And after me, they’re gonna come for you. You’re too skinny
and your skin’s too white.”
Cobe didn’t know how to comfort him
any further. For a twelve-year-old, he was awfully smart. He could only hug him
harder.
“It’s what them fuckers been
planning all along,” Willem whispered into his chest. “They want all of us
gone—the whole gawdamn family.”
“Don’t swear.”
“You swear.”
“Guess I can get away with it
‘cause I’m the man of the family…or will be soon. Maybe that’s what you gotta
do when you’re a man. Maybe that’s the way you gotta act to get by.”
“Didn’t help Daddy much and he
swore
a lot
.”
Cobe almost laughed. He bit his
bottom lip instead, and swallowed his guilt. “We have to watch. It’s expected.”
“I’m scared. I’m scared, and I
don’t wanna be left alone.”
“I won’t leave you…I have a plan.”
He looked conspiratorially about the single room of their home. The window was
covered with a blanket that was filthier than the one he and his brother shared
on cold nights. Beneath it was the bed of moldy straw where their parents used
to sleep. Cobe glanced at the doorway where the door no longer stood. At least
their father had built the opening away from the wind. He whispered into the
top of Willem’s head. “As soon as Dad’s done swinging, we’re leaving Burn.”
Willem pushed away from his brother.
His tears had dried but the terror in his eyes was still there. “Are you crazy?
What about the howlers and the rollers? Where would we go? There ain’t nothin’
outside town to run away to. We’d die out there for sure.”
“We’re already dead here.” It hurt
telling the truth only seconds after lying to the boy. “A few more days...a
week or two. You’re right, Willem. They’re coming for
all
of us. I’d rather take my chances outside of town.”
Willem moaned. It was a deep sound
that started in his chest and escaped through his nostrils.
Cobe shook him. “It’s what we have
to do, and we have to do it right after Dad’s done hanging. The folks in town
will be gathered together and busy celebrating. We can slip out the west-side
of Burn and be miles away before nightfall.”
Willem considered the plan. “Lots
of bad things come out after dark.”
Cobe waited for his decision.
The boy wiped snot away from his
face with the back of his hand. He still looked terrified, but there was
something else. Not hope exactly—just a will to keep on living.
