Harmonic: Resonance (16 page)

“I didn’t see anyone I recognize,” Powell said. “You?”

I shook my head. “There are thousands of people down there. How are we going to find them?”

The people inside the camp looked thin and frail, worse than those they had shown on television. Some stared back through the fence, perhaps waiting for loved ones in the lineup, and others sat with books or bowls of food. In the large fenced-in yard were long rows of bench tables where groups huddled together, talking, laughing, or playing cards.

“Well, they don’t look like prisoners,” I said.

There was movement at the gate. A few of the soldiers grouped together, and I followed them through the binoculars as they approached a man in the lineup. The man beckoned the soldiers using frantic gestures, waving and pointing to something farther back. The soldiers quickened their pace, and the man led them to a young boy, lying on the ground beside a kneeling woman. The first soldier held a bottle to the boy’s lips and then picked him up. The woman and child were led off to another of the surrounding buildings, while the man was made to rejoin the column.

At the gate, another group was ushered through and was met inside with a swarm of hugs and kisses from waiting friends or relatives.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Powell.

“The people that were just let in—looks like they found their family waiting for them.” I handed the binoculars back to Powell. “I should probably go and check on Haley and let her know that we’ve found the camp,” I said.

Haley was sitting cross-legged in the dirt, looking up at the trees. I followed her gaze to a blue Jay perched on a low branch. She looked at me and smiled.

“We can see the camp from here,” I said.

She wrote in her notepad and turned the page to face me.

I shook my head. “We haven’t seen them yet, but there are a lot of people down there. We’ll find them.”

She seemed disappointed but not surprised.

I sat down next to her and gestured to the bird. “It’s a blue jay.”

She nodded, gave a little smile, then shuffled closer, and tucked herself into my waiting arms.

A few minutes later, Powell returned, shaking his head. “At the rate they’re moving them through, we should wait an hour or so, then go back and check the lineup.”

“Okay.”

He pulled three cans from his pack, opened them, and set them on the grill. “We’ll have to slow cook so there’s no smoke,” he said, and pushed the igniter. The switch made a loud click, which reverberated through the open lid of the grill, but there was no spark.

“I guess the igniter’s dead too.” He rummaged through his pack and pulled out a lighter. The leaked gas lit with a
whoosh
, and Powell closed the lid as far as the cans would allow before turning the flame down to low.

“We’ll go back after we eat,” he said and then turned his attention to Haley.

“I have something for you,” he said and reached back into his pack. “
The Chronicles of Narnia
. I found it on the back seat of one of the cars on the way. Here,” he said and handed the book to Haley.

Haley stared at the book’s cover and then pointed at her own chest.

“Yeah, I got it for you. If you like it, then maybe we can search for the others in the series. I’m sure that some libraries and book stores survived somewhere, we’ll make it our quest to find all seven.” He smiled at her, and she beamed back at him.

When he turned to face me, I realized I too was beaming. “You’re very sweet, Powell,” I said.

After the cans had warmed and then cooled a little, we ate. Powell and I sat listening to the song of a blue jay choir, while Haley turned the first few pages of her book, eager to begin her own adventure.

30 | The column

With the safety on and the bolt open, I put my eye to the scope and leveled the rifle at the camp. I scanned the faces of those waiting at the gates for processing. None were faces I recognized, and all seemed drained of emotion or expression. I wondered how long it had taken for those at the front to get there as I followed the column of people across the plains and into the hazy distance.

“They’re transferring more people from the lineup to the building at the back,” Powell said.

“What do you think that building is for?” I raised up from the scope and looked over at Powell.

“Infirmary maybe, or some kind of staging area?” he replied, without lowering the binoculars. “Every so often, they bring a new group from that large building beyond the lineup and take them in through the gate at the back of the camp to the gray building just inside the fence. The people that come in through the main gate are kept in the yard until they’re taken into the same building but through the blue door on the opposite side.”

“Separating the citizens from the N.L.D. maybe?” I asked. The words
dissidents
and
subversives
flashed in my mind.

“Could be. If so, then Sean and Sarah will be, or have been, separated. Unless they’re still in the lineup.”

“Most of the people farther back in the lineup are sitting or lying down. Looks like they’ve been waiting a while. They’re not going to fit everyone in there,” I said.

“Just over to the left of the staging building, there’s a three-man crew working on the vehicles. They must have lost them in the surge. They look like people carriers. Maybe they’re transferring people to other camps, or temporary housing,” he said.

“So Sean and Sarah could be anywhere by now?”

“It’s just a guess, but like you said, they can’t fit them all in there. They have to be going somewhere,” Powell said. “There’s something going on in the camp. They’re escorting a large group out back.”

I thought of what Gary had said, about the N.L.D. having no rights, and about one of the words he had used during his drunken rants, “extermination.” Through the scope, I watched as soldiers grouped together forming a line parallel to the column of people waiting to get in. My stomach turned, as my mind conjured images of a firing squad or some other execution party waiting for those being led behind the building. I imagined their faces, replaced with those of all the people who had lived in my house, our friends.

“Are they going to ...” I started.

“Train,” Powell said.

“Train?”

“There’s a train coming,” he said.

The train slowed to a stop behind the wall of armed soldiers, and groups of people from the camp, and surrounding buildings, were led to the open boxcars. I scrutinized the faces of those I caught in the scope, but Sean and Sarah were not among them. The containers were loaded to capacity within minutes, and then the train continued on and out of sight. The soldiers returned to their positions, while the people in the lineup, within a few hundred feet of the gate, stood and began the slow shuffle forward. The newly admitted filtered into the yard and took their places on the benches or at the fences. The gates were closed again, and the column of people outside lowered themselves back to the dirt.

“Where does the train go?” I asked.

“Should be able to trace it on the map,” he said.

The trees shuddered, raining leaves and small branches down all around us. The flutter of wings as the birds took to the sky and followed in the direction of the train replaced the rustle of leaves.

In a sudden panic, I got to my feet and ran back to Haley. She sat cross-legged with the book in her lap, staring up at the trees.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded and pulled out her notepad. She wrote and turned it for me to see.
Where are the birds going?

“I don’t know. I thought maybe a vehicle had driven by and scared them away,” I said.

Haley shook her head, looked down, and scribbled in her pad.
There weren’t any cars, they just flew away.

They had all taken flight as if in reaction to a gunshot, but there had been no gunshot and no passing vehicle.

“Emily.”

I rejoined Powell between the clearing in the trees and followed his gaze skyward. The skies were filled with birds, all tracing the same lines that the blue jays and crows had flown just minutes before. All had heard or felt the signal, and that signal had told them it was time to leave. Shadows littered the plains, giving chase to the birds, swelling to a blur, as the ground dipped down, and then shrinking and becoming dark specks, as they climbed the sloping cliffs and disappeared over the ridge.

“The next wave is coming,” Powell said.

I picked up the rifle and put my eye to the scope. The veil of a thousand birds had slipped over the ridge and out of view, but in the camp and across the surrounding plains, their erratic shadows remained.

***

Farther up the hill as the road turned around the cliff, we found a camper van. The doors were unlocked, the windows intact and rolled up, and the keys were hanging from the ignition. Powell climbed in, turned the key, then turned back to me, and shook his head. A cold breeze accompanied the evening, and even though we would have no heat from the engine, we were glad of the extra protection offered by the camper’s walls.

Powell boiled water on the grill and split a single sachet of hot chocolate between three rinsed-out cans, while I tucked Haley into her sleeping bag in the back of the camper. I wondered what her nightly rituals had been in the past with Sean and Sarah. Reading bedtime stories aloud and competing with the colorful pictures for her attention seemed more work than comfort. She strained to read in the dimming light, but soon her eyelashes began to wave goodnight, and by the time Powell rejoined us with the hot chocolate, she was fast asleep.

We moved to the cab and set our drinks on the dash before settling into our own sleeping bags, zipped up to our waists.

“The camps won’t be able to take another wave. There’s not enough room for those who are waiting, let alone another wave,” Powell said.

“If the waves keep coming, the
world
won't be big enough to hold us all. Gary was right. They’ll be fighting over the scraps. Another wave might drown us all,” I said.

“Maybe we should put up signs—Earth population full, no vacancy.” He smiled thinly, but there was little joy in it, and it faded away as quickly as it appeared.

“What if our world is the staging area?”

“Maybe we should get on the next rocket to the moon,” he said.

I turned and studied Haley as she slept, the worldwide turmoil unreadable in her soft, peaceful expression. “We can’t leave until we find them.”

“Let’s hope they’re still here then …” He sat up straight and whipped around in his seat.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I thought I saw something, an animal maybe,” he said.

“Hopefully it wasn’t a bear,” I said, trying not to give in to panic.

“No, it was smaller, and fast, maybe a deer.”

I pushed the images of bears and cougars out of my mind, but what replaced them was no better.

“You all right?”

“What will we tell Haley if we can’t find Sean and Sarah?” I asked.

“The truth and that we’ll keep her safe until we do,” he said and offered a smile, that for a second made me feel like everything was going to be okay. “If they took the highway like they planned, they wouldn’t have gotten past all of those obstructions, and it would’ve taken them days or weeks to come the rest of the way on foot. Maybe they
are
somewhere in the lineup. We should get some sleep. We’ll start again at first light.”

I finished my hot chocolate and closed my eyes, unsure if I would be able to sleep with so many thoughts buzzing around in my mind like swarms of agitated bees, but the buzzing soon dulled to a hum. As I began to drift off to sleep, I felt Powell reach across me to zip my sleeping bag up over my shoulders. I murmured my thanks over the distant sounds of him zipping himself into his own.

31 | The next wave

When I awoke, I could see my breath, although it didn’t feel as cold as the night before. The others were sleeping soundly, but I worried about Haley catching a chill without a working engine to idle and warm up the space. I unzipped my sleeping bag slowly and as quietly as possible, then passed between the seats, and folded my sleeping bag over Haley. I returned to the cab, took the binoculars from the dash, opened the door, and climbed down.

With the door pushed closed, I leaned against it to
click
it shut before making my way back down the hill to where we had stopped the previous day. There was a red haze on the horizon, but otherwise it was still dark. I stared down at the road as I walked carefully along its edge and stopped at the clearing where I could make out the small campfires dotting the plains below.

As I stared at the small glowing lights, trailing into the distance, it wasn’t hard to imagine them as street lamps lighting the road. For an instant, everything was back to normal, power was restored, the world was not broken, the dead had remained dead, and my father was not among them. I placed the binoculars down at my side, not wanting to break the illusion, which would be broken soon enough by the rising sun.