Harmonic: Resonance (5 page)

“It’s been a long day,” Powell said.

“It’s been a long week,” I added and breathed a sigh. “Part of me wants to head back to the corner store, grab what I need for myself, and head back to the house. It’s not that I’m ungrateful for everything you’ve done, I just—after seeing Haley’s mom, I’m wondering if my dad will come back, if I should be home in case he does.”

“Don’t you want to hear what Haley’s mom says?” he asked.

“I do, but what if my dad is there at home, waiting for me, I don’t want him to be alone.” I sipped from the cup and looked out through the passenger window, down the hill, to the subtle orange glow still lingering over parts of the town. Without knowledge of what was causing the subdued night lights, the scene would have been serene and beautiful, but in amongst the warm glow were the skeletal remains of buildings and bodies.

“Stay for the night, we’ll go find fuel for the truck in the morning, so you can get back if you need to,” Powell said.

“Okay. Do you want the rest of this? It’s giving me a headache.” I held out the bottle, and Powell took it and screwed the cap back on.

“We’ll save it for if, or when, you come back.” He finished what was in his cup. “Do you want to go back in?”

***

In the hall, the people were calmer than I had expected. Over by the piano, Gary handed notes to Sean, who then passed them one at a time to Haley, who then signed the messages, wrote down her mother’s response to each, and handed them back to Sean. The process was slow; hours had passed before the last note cycled through and found its way back to the stage.

The preacher leaned from the stage into the piano player’s view and signaled for her to stop. Gary waited for the last note to ring out, straightened the stack of paper in his hands, and then asked for quiet.

“I’m going to read these out exactly as they’re written, question and answer. If you’ve got something to say, wait until they’re all read out; otherwise, we’re never going to get through it.”

The preacher looked on with anxious anticipation as the first question was read out.

“Here we go. Question—Is there a god? Answer—I don’t know ... settle down, quiet please. Answer—I don’t know, I’ve not met God or angels, and I have not seen a Heaven or Hell.”

The murmur of the crowd spiked with exclaimed questions of, “How can she not know?” and, “Then where do we go?”

“Quiet, please. You can shout all you want after; just save it until I’m done. Question—Will all the dead come back? Answer—I didn’t know that I was dead until you,
Haley
, told me about my death. I don’t remember seeing anyone else where I was.”

“Question—What is it like in the afterlife? Answer—It was like a dream, a dream I’m starting to forget. It’s like I fell asleep on the day I died, and woke up just a few days ago.”

Gary read aloud each question and answer, and each seemed to disappoint or anger the crowd further. There were no satisfactory answers, no epiphanies or great truths, only answers that raised more futile questions.

Sarah had died, was unaware of her death, had gone somewhere to dream a dream she could no longer recall, and now she, and others, were back among the living not of their own choice, and with no greater knowledge than anyone among the now stirring crowd.

“Looks like there’s going to be trouble,” Powell said, gesturing to a number of the group rushing toward the stage.

One of the men veered from the group, snatched Haley up by her arms, and shook her, while barking something inaudible over the rising volume of the others. Sean lunged, wrapped an arm around the man’s neck, and wrenched him away from his daughter. As the two red-faced men wrestled and shouted back and forth, the others closed in. One of the group pulled at Sean’s arm, while another man flew in with a fist. The collective yell swelled in volume, deepened in pitch, and was punctuated by the intermittent screech of rubber-soled shoes on the church hall’s wood floor, and by the dull, flat sounds of impacting limbs.

Gary jumped down from the stage as groups of people swarmed in, and he pushed his way into the writhing crowd. It was hard to see who was fighting for whom, but it seemed like everyone wanted some part in it. A large man squeezed into the melee, while a teenage boy, cupping a hand to his dripping and bloody face, crawled out between the kicking, stomping fence of legs.

“Jesus,” Powell said, as he rushed toward the boy I now recognized as Jason, the seventeen-year-old cashier from the gas station.

Jason, pointing back at the crowd, tried to get past Powell to re-enter the fight. I watched, dumbfounded, as Powell tried to hold him back. Then Powell spun toward the fight and edged his way in, turned sideways, pushing and shoving his way through. People, who days before, had requested water, blankets, and food, people who had been too tired to stand, were now pushing, kicking, punching, and screaming.

I made my way to Jason; his nose was obviously broken and leaking a steady stream of blood that dripped from his chin. He spat a mouthful of blood and ranted through his hand when I was near enough to hear. “I was trying to get them to stop. They’re trying to drag the little girl out from under the piano.”

“Where are your parents?” I asked.

“They’re in there too,” he said and lowered his gaze to the floor. All the fight seemed to drain out of him quicker than the blood from his nose, and I wondered what side his parents had taken in the fight.

“Stay here, I’ll try to find the little girl,” I said, unsure of how I was going to accomplish the task I had set for myself.

I waved to get the preacher’s attention. He rushed over, leaned down, and helped me up onto the stage. The piano rang out with a dissonant chord as two of the men plowed into it before taking their fight to the ground, their arms working like two sets of blood-leaking pistons driving alternating blows at each other’s faces and bodies.

As I stared down into the whirlpool of violence, I realized it was not only the men of the group, but the women too, and they were just as vicious as the men. I called to Haley, forgetting for a second she was deaf, and cursed myself over the folly. Flat on my stomach, my arm hanging down between the stage and the piano, I waved my hand and tapped on the piano’s underside. She put her small shaking hand in mine and peered up at me through the gap with reddened eyes, wide open and lined with tears.

The preacher joined me and helped pull her up onto the stage; she ran behind my legs, making herself as small as possible and putting me between her and the melee. Powell was on his hands and knees, slumped over Sean’s no longer flinching body, while Gary tried desperately to hold back the front row as they lashed out with feet and fists. The fight showed no sign of ending; as some people tired, others took their place, striking and sliding around on the blood-waxed floor.

An explosive crack rang out in the hall, echoing over the high-pitched squeal in my ears, and the fight was over. The police officer who had paid me a quarter to prove I was alive stood by the back doors of the hall where Gary had stood just a few hours earlier, but in place of an air horn, the officer held a gun, drawn and trained on the crowd.

“Break it up,” the officer shouted.

The majority of the crowd dispersed slowly from the ring of blood, away from the nucleus of carnage, and the heap of seemingly lifeless bodies. A few people remained by the piano, covered in blood and unidentifiable save for their clothes. Gary was on his knees, trying to lift Powell up and over Sean, but Powell made no effort of his own.

As the people spread around the hall, the officer kept his gun out in front, trying to cover the widening target, while backing up slowly toward the door. With Gary’s help, Powell rolled onto his back. He opened his eyes and brought a hand up to rub at the side of his jaw, and I let out the breath that had been caught in my throat.

The preacher dropped down from the stage, and he and Gary helped Powell to his feet. When they let him alone, he staggered a few steps and took a knee. He shook off further attempts to help him up and leaned in to check Sean’s neck for a pulse. It took all three of them to lift Sean’s limp body and carry him to the stage.

“Is he ...” I began.

“He’s out, but he’s alive,” Powell said. He shot a glance at the girl cowering behind me and added, “We need to leave.”

I held the fire exit door open while the three men carried the limp body of the fourth. Haley trailed after her father, and I ran to get the truck.

The bloodied men lifted the bloodiest into the bed of the idling truck, and my heart sank; thoughts of my father’s body wrapped up in the back, now blended with the sight of Haley’s father. Haley and the preacher climbed into the truck, and the rest climbed in the back with Sean. Gary pounded a fist on the roof, and I put the truck in gear. As we pulled away from the church, there was a loud bang from inside, followed by two more in quick succession over the dull, sustained, and oscillating vowel sounds made by the little deaf girl as she cried.

11 | A flock of wolves

Gary’s voice rose to a bark. “I’m not going back there, and Powell’s got to look after Sean.”

“There were children in there,” I said, unable to stay the emotion in my tone and on the verge of tears.

“Those children have parents, and it was their parents that did that to Haley’s dad. You saw what they did to Sean,
and
Powell, and he was only trying to help. They were fighting over that little girl like she was meat. Now she’s gone, they’ve got nothing to fight over.” Gary glanced back and forth, from me to the preacher. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you expect us to do, or what we
can
do. I almost got my head caved in trying to break it up. You weren’t in there, they were dragging Haley around like a ragdoll and kicking at anything that was still moving, and now, at least one of them has a gun; we all heard it go off. Even if it was the cop who fired, there were more of them than there was of him.”

My stomach churned around Gary’s words, and we each sat with our heads in our hands, staring at the floor or kitchen walls.

Powell entered the kitchen and broke the silence. “He’s okay. Dazed and confused, maybe a couple broken ribs and probably a concussion, but it looks like he’ll be okay.”

“How are you?” I asked in a hollow, defeated tone.

Powell grimaced and shook his head. “We spent all that time trying to help, fixing things, and patching people up, just for them to turn on each other and tear it all down in minutes.”

“It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” Gary said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There’s been no food deliveries, nothing in for over a week; when the non-perishables run out, they’ll kill each other for what’s left,” he said.

“These are normal people, regular people ...” I began.

Gary laughed a joyless laugh. “You're fooling yourself if you think they’re all going to hold hands and share the crumbs.”

I looked to the preacher for support, but he looked away.

“What about the decent people? They’re not all as bad as you make them out,” I said.

“The ones that don’t fight over the crumbs won’t get any. You saw what they were like over Haley, like wolves over a carcass,” Gary said.

“I’ll go back, if I can use your truck, Emily,” the preacher said quietly.

“And if you don’t come back, we’re stuck here with whatever food is left in the house and no vehicle,” Gary replied sharply.

I was about to speak, when Powell interjected. “Gary’s right; if we go, there should be at least two of us. If you go alone and get trapped, injured or—well, if something happens to you, there’ll be no one to help or to bring you
or the truck
back. We’re going to need to go out sooner or later for food and to get fuel for the generator.”

“The slip tank out back is full, should last a while if we shut the generator off when it’s not being used; it’s diesel though, we’ll need gas for the truck,” I said.

“So who’s all going?” Gary asked.

“I’ll go.”

The group stared back at me.

“They’re less likely to attack a young woman and a preacher,” I added.

“Don’t be so sure; I’m coming too then,” Gary said.

“No,” the preacher said in a firm, unflinching tone. “We need the extra seat. We have to find Margaret.”

The rest of us looked blankly at each other and back at the preacher.

“The piano player. She’s too old to fight over crumbs,” he added.

***

I changed into an old work shirt and jeans and contemplated fetching my father’s gun from the back of his closet, but decided against it. There didn’t seem much point in carrying a gun if I wasn’t willing to use it, and I had already seen more blood than I could stomach in the brawl.

It was dark outside. I was barely able to make out the preacher waiting by my dad’s truck. He had the bag of supplies, a light version of the everyday travel bags Gary and the search teams used, containing a siphon kit, food and water, and a variety of other survival items.

Along the way, we stopped at crashed or parked cars, checked them for gas, and siphoned what remained in their tanks using the surgical tubing from the kit. The tubing had originally been intended for use as a tourniquet or IV line if required, but now, the fluids that would keep us alive were gas and water, and one was necessary to procure the other.