Children Of Fiends - Part 1 Winter Is Passing: An Of Sudden Origin Novella Read online

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter One - The Boy And The Kid

  Chapter Two - Stewart Dean

  Chapter Three - The Ultimatum

  Chapter Four - Plum Island

  Chapter Five - Meet Hansel and Gretel

  Chapter Six - Sea Trial

  Chapter Seven - Sea Battle

  Chapter Eight - Second Guesses

  Thank you to my B-Readers, Mom, Leslie, and many others who don’t necessarily seek out genre fiction for the beach. Having the opinions of people who aren’t beholden to the genre helps make the work that much stronger.

  I am most especially grateful to my editors, Chance Crecent, Peter Beaven and Tony Harwood. Your insight is invaluable. You keep me from looking the fool.

  Children Of Fiends - Part 1 Winter Is Passing

  Copyright © 2014 Christopher Harwood / Fate & Fortune Press

  cchaseharwood.com

  [email protected]

  3627 Buena Park Drive

  Studio City, CA 91604

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Boy And The Kid

  The boy had found the map in the attic among the boxes that his father had never sent for. His old man had been a collector of souvenirs during his time in the Navy, and the boy had spent hours and hours over the years sifting through the collection, imagining adventures and playacting battles. There were trinkets and bits of clothing, and all manner of small artifacts stuffed in with the uniforms, letters, and photos. His father had been to places in the world that, as far as the boy’s teachers knew, no longer existed – at least as far as human populations were concerned. There were photos of his dad wearing a turban; standing among dangerous looking turban-wearing bearded men. There were also photos of Dad with men on ships and assault boats – rugged looking men in black fatigues or scuba gear, a surplus of weapons, their eyes a mixture of mirth and deadly intent. The insignia on an old uniform indicated that the father soldier had been a Navy Seal Captain. There were many medals, and the boy’s imagination would fill with wonder as he gazed upon the three Purple Hearts. Omega had happened when he was two and he had no memories of his father who had never come home. He knew he was still alive. After all, way back, Dad had sent for some things, or so his mother had said. They had never spoken.

  His mother had lived with Roy until the bad day. Roy had been okay, but he wasn’t a dad. Never considered himself one. He made feeble attempts to discipline the boy, but it was more about keeping the boy out of his hair. The boy was his mother’s responsibility. Roy provided shelter and food. Roy was more like a brother – a mean one – like when he’d make fun of the boy’s slight lisp – copycatting him when the boy back-talked in protest. Mom had never come to the boy’s defense, saying instead, “Roy’s your Daddy now. You best listen to him”. No, Roy had been no daddy. Roy had been good for one thing; he’d taught the boy how to camp. He hadn’t exactly been a survivalist type, but he knew his way around a campfire, could set up a tent. The boy and Roy had gone several times into the deep woods that abutted their home. Once, they even camped at the edge of the Terminus Zone and the fifteen-foot high double fence that insured that they could walk no further.

  As the boy grew older and his lisp faded away, he would stare for hours across the great icy expanse that began on the other side. As far as he knew, he was the only kid in his town that had ever seen it. The other kids weren’t interested – most had been brought up to believe scary stories of the boogeyman out beyond. Besides, who would want to walk in the great dead frozen forest when there where so many lush virtual worlds to explore? Multigenerational shock over a lost planet made life as an avatar the choice for so many of the survivors.

  His best buddy was the one other kid who had seen the fence, and that was only because the boy had taken him out there one day. The kid had been scared half out of his wits until he saw that it was just a stopping place marked by a huge sign, repeated every forty feet or so and bearing a single bold word – FORBIDDEN. As preschoolers they had been told that the fence went on forever. The boy knew of course that that was impossible, but he and the kid had walked along it for a long way. As far as they could tell, it went farther than their own town of Pawling and probably past Webatuck and South Dover as well.

  For the last two of his twelve years, the boy had been studying his dad’s Seal Team Field Manual and any other book on survival that he could get his hands on. He loved adventure tales; downloading them as fast as he could read them…until his mother found out, saw the credit card that he had taken out in her name, and the bill for online purchases. Roy had whipped him good for that one. Then the bad day happened. A typical Friday; they’d left the boy with a meager dinner to tie one on at the local tavern. As they had stumbled home in a stupor, one of the unpredictable blizzards that made the very long winters so very hard took them. Roy was found a hundred yards closer to the house, clearly leaving the boy’s mom behind to fend for herself. Or, that’s how the boy figured it.

  The boy lived with the kid now, the kid’s daddy having died during Omega, his single mom working two jobs, leaving the boys pretty much to themselves. The boy still had access to his now abandoned house and they’d begun stashing their gear there. It was their hideout, their sanctuary. They’d been plotting their trip for six months, soon after the boy had found the map. They had slowly built up their supplies while occasionally doing test camps in the woods right near the house. Tomorrow would be the first day of August: D-Day for the boy and the kid.

  They had set an alarm for 4am, but neither of them could really sleep. At ten ‘til they got up and snuck quietly down the bedroom hall of the single story house, listening to the kid’s mom snoring away, making sure she didn’t stir. When they got to the kitchen they grabbed the apple juice and the last bag of cereal. The kid’s mom would be angry (apple juice was really expensive) but they would need the energy. They went over to the boy’s house and got their packs. Knowing that they would be heading out in the dark and not wanting to forget anything, they had double-checked it all the day before. Their wind-up flashlights, which they had cranked to the max before dinnertime, were cranked again. Then they quietly marched into the backyard, ducking into the woods.

  The kid had been nervous the day before. He didn’t want to worry his mother, but then the boy reminded him that his mother never worried about him. She came home to sleep and was out the next morning. The most the exhausted woman would do is make them meals in advance while bitching about her life; how hard the two preteens made things for her. That memory set the kid’s mind at ease and he was able to enjoy the hike. Heck, the way the boy figured it, they’d be giving his mom a break. They walked quietly, saving their voices for a distance beyond earshot of other homes and passed the apple juice back and forth and stuffing their hands into the bag of cereal. The sky behind them began to slightly brighten and within an hour they could see well enough to douse the flashlights. Half an hour further brought them to the fence. They had found the gate on their last trip out – the location clearly marked on Dad’s map. The boy’s daddy had been the commanding officer overseeing this part of the Terminus Zone - Captain Stewart Dean it said in bold print in the upper left corner. They assumed correctly that the gate was for maintenance and inspection; a way to get to the secon
d fence.

  There was a dirt road, which on the town’s side of the fence followed its length as far as the eye could see. They had watched an Army patrol truck drive by on their first visit out. The driver seemed bored, barely looking out west as he cruised slowly along. The gate had a keypad lock on it. The boy pressed the digits to match the numbers that had been hand written on the map. He’d read them a hundred times. The gate’s electronic lock clicked, and when he gently pushed, it swung open with ease.

  The second fence had no gate. Any maintenance could be done from the settled side only. The tops of both fences were thickly crowned with heavy gauge razor wire, but the boy had done his research here as well. The survival books had a solution for everything. They set down the one heavy duffle bag that they had carried between them. The boy unzipped it and drew out two thick lengths of rope. Attached to the end of each was a homemade grappling hook that they had fashioned from a couple of hand held garden tillers. The kid had the better arm, so it was agreed that he would make the tosses. With a spin of the hook to get some momentum, the kid heaved it high and they watched it sail over the fence. A straightened wire coat hook was passed through the fence to retrieve the swinging tiller, which the boy anchored into a triangle of the wire fencing. The kid tossed the next one over about three feet to the right of the first. The boy anchored this one as well and then they each put their weight on the ropes, slowly compacting the razor wire above. They tied off the first and then did the same with the second, effectively flattening out the razor wire and creating a gap roughly three feet in width. At the bottom of the duffle bag there was a small sheepskin rug, rolled and tied with a strap. The boy pulled it out and slipped the strap over one shoulder. They gave each other a look. The time had finally come. They were going where no one went. At least not for the past ten years, when the boys had just been toddlers – before everything had changed. The boy started climbing first. Despite the weight of his pack, the fence wasn’t much of a challenge. He and the kid had been training for this - scaled many other fences. At the top, he clipped himself to the fence with a carabineer attached to the webbed belt around his waist. This gave him the luxury to remove the sheepskin from his shoulders and unfurl it with both hands. He then gently laid it across the compacted razor wire. It was then a simple matter of finishing the climb, stepping over the top and climbing back down.

  When the kid set his feet down, joining the boy on the other side, the boy raised his hand and accepted the high-five. The young lads looked around them as though they had just stepped onto another planet- and for all practical purposes they had. As far as they knew, for the ten years after the Terminus Zone fence was completed, not a single soul from the Seven States of America had set foot on this ground.

  As the weak sun threw the black forest’s thin shadows across the great rocky plain, they laughed with nervous delight at this first small accomplishment. According to the map, it was twenty miles to the river called the Hudson. They had a long hike ahead of them.

  The land beneath their feet had once been part of the same blackened forest that abutted the boy’s home. When they built the terminus, thousands of men had cut the forest down, leaving nothing but stumps out to the horizon. The felled trees had been collected and stocked for future use, but according to his daddy’s map, the clearing had not been for timber, but rather the removal of that which could provide cover.

  As they marched, they left the recently thawed lake named Whaley to their right. The terrain was hilly, and at the peaks the breeze was quite cold. The spring, as they still called it, lasted a mere two weeks in July before ushering in the anemically short summer. It often tricked people weary of nine months of perpetual winter. They would sally forth, wearing improper clothes and soak up the forty-degree weather with a tease of sunshine lightening the permanent cloud layer. A sudden cold snap would catch many a fool unawares. The lads were not fools. They’d brought plenty of warm gear.

  They hiked for a couple of hours until they saw a great road. It was like one of the highways on their side of the fence, but in deep disrepair and clogged with thousands of old hulks. Like the stumps behind them, abandoned vehicles filled the horizon. A road sign still showed Highway 84. They planned to follow the road to where it crossed the wide river. This was the point where the map became critical: the highway, as a natural path for foot travel, had been mined. The map offered the way through. Only by hugging the inside shoulder of the westbound side could they avoid tripping the explosives and leaving their disappearance a mystery at home. At various points, they would have to cross to the outside shoulder as the minefield crisscrossed the highway with the intention of avoiding any discernible pattern. Before stepping onto the road they paused for lunch. They had planned out their provisions so that there would be eighteen pre-packed meals. They planned to hike for five days: two to the river, one to walk its shore, and two to go back; returning as explorer heroes, the first to report back on the lands past the Terminus Zone. The boy brought his digital hand pad to memorialize it. The first interesting shots were the ones of the dead highway.

  After giving themselves a short time to digest, they marched on, agreeing on three hours more. They’d made it fifty yards when they found shocking evidence of the decade old disaster: human remains lay scattered amongst the cars and trucks; more along the sides of the road. Bones were strewn about in a haphazard fashion and the lads found themselves staring in fearful wonder. They hesitated only for a moment before resuming their pace, discussing their lessons at school, trying to correlate this scene with that which they’d been told. The kid was more frightened than the boy, and had to be convinced that these bones were almost as old as them and certainly weren’t coming back to life.

  They found themselves poking through the detritus that was the remains of so many lives. Furniture and clothes, toys and electronics; some of it what the lads knew from their own world, but also many things that neither of them recognized for their function. Their hike had become a stroll, the stroll a casual wander, each lad showing off to the other some form of rotting artifact – a smorgasbord of curiosities.

  They chose to set up their tent beneath an underpass and a faded sign that read Shenandoah Road. The trees, this far away from the Terminus Zone, had been left alone and while most still bore the blackened trunks of a long ago inferno, some had sprouted the hints of the short summer of growth. They ate by a small campfire, the warm embers helping ward off the growing night chill. They were quite tired by the time they rested their heads. It had been a sleepless night before, followed by a strenuous day and as young people without the weight of the world on their shoulders tend to do, they slept hard and with ease.

  The lads awoke on the lighter side of dawn. The air was quite cold and they watched the steam of their breath rise to the top of the tent while they waited for full consciousness to return. They ate their breakfast quickly, accompanied by a light lavender cloud layer. With the mighty river only a few hours away calling them, the perpetual graveyard that surrounded them held less interest. They picked up their pace and the kid was chattier now as they passed a big burned out high school. At lunch they entered a town called Fishkill and were amazed at the depth of destruction. The remnants of a couple of motels greeted them first, followed by a mall turned to rubble. The boy took pictures as they ate and then they moved on.

  A sign read Down State Correctional Facility and pointed toward an immense facility, a network of geometric looking buildings surrounded by multiple fences, not unlike those that bordered the Terminus. The open land between the ruined buildings and the fencing was covered in a sea of what looked like bleached white corral, but not coral: thousands upon thousands of human skeletons. The lads stared dumbly at the sight, cement-like fear replacing the ignorance and bravado in their veins. Only the sign above them fortified their resolve. It told of the bridge that lay ahead: the Newburg-Beacon Bridge. Just one mile more.

  They walked as far out on the bridge as they could; perh
aps thirty yards. The structure was really two bridges, one for the westbound traffic, and one for the east; both jutting over the water in mangled amputation. The boy pointed out the melted and twisted steel at the edges and explained that the bridge had been demolished so that whatever roamed on the far side could never enter the Seven States again. Over there, beyond the water’s edge, the black forest continued. Bits of green sprouted here and there, but otherwise the landscape was just as dead as on their side.

  They took the shore road north until they reached the town of New Hamburg, from there they would make a right and follow the county roads back toward home. As they walked, they hadn’t really accounted for the view of the river to be obscured. The eastern shore had been built into a great fortress wall. Since perpetual winter froze the river for much of the year, it began with a concrete barrier that was at least thirty feet tall. Should snow drifts build themselves so high as to offer a ramp, the wall was backed up with a quadruple deep fence system, the spaces between laden with land mines. The shore road had been cleared of any broken down vehicles, and since the wall gave them little to look at, the boys made quick time to the town. When they arrived they found the wall cut the small town in half, reducing their ability to explore it the way they had hoped. A big house on a hill attracted their attention. It had a long curving driveway off a street called Conklin. Unlike the surrounding houses, it was intact with a roof of bright red shingles so they headed up the hill with the hope of a view.

  The house was large, and though weathered, the windows were intact. Every other house that they had passed had either been burned or damaged in some fashion, with most windows smashed out. There was an expansive lawn area that had long ago turned brown and which still had a thin layer of melting snow on it. While standing at its western edge, the lads had a commanding view of the river and the lands beyond. They could see a big bluff, where smoke appeared to be rising up through the black trees. The boy turned and looked back at the house. Something in one of the big picture windows caught his eye. Movement. His heart gave a leap as he pointed it out to the kid. There was nowhere to duck and hide, yet they both found themselves instinctively crouching. The kid gave the window a harder look and saw that the movement was mechanical. They cautiously crept forward until they could get a good look inside. A camera attached to a beefy looking tripod slowly panned across the view. The boys turned to look back across the river. As they did so, they didn’t notice the camera change its trajectory, instead, coming to rest pointing right at them. They spotted other electronic gear inside the room and agreed that they should check it out further, see if there was an unlocked door or window.