Harmonic: Resonance Page 8

  “I don’t know,” I said but quickly felt a rise of shame with the realization of what I had said. “The piano player.”

  I left them talking about getting the band back together and followed Randall outside.

  He stood by my father’s truck, staring out over the fields and hills toward town.

  “Are you okay, Randall?” I asked.

  In the afternoon light, the rings around his pale blue-gray eyes were as red as open wounds. The sunlight shone through the dry translucent skin hanging from highlighted cheek bones beneath his thousand-yard stare. His once hardened exterior had thinned with time, leaving only the lines carved though years of service. The war mask worn by this retired soldier could no longer conceal the emotional and spiritual losses of the more recently retired preacher.

  “I can’t believe everything that’s happened—at the church and in town. I convinced myself that people were inherently good, turned bitter by circumstance, but I was wrong. At the first sign of trouble, they turn on each other, kill each other for scraps. It’s worse than war; it’s chaos, every man for himself.”

  “Maybe you should focus on what’s happening in here instead of out there,” I said, gesturing back to the house. “They all seem like good people.”

  “There’s food and shelter here—nothing to fight or kill for. I knew most of those people in the church. I’d known some of them for years, and not once did I think them capable of turning on each other the way they did,” he said.

  I stepped around to intercept his gaze, but his stare remained fixed far behind me. Liquid lined his reddened lower eyelids, threatening to overflow as they trembled around his distant stare. “I will never be absolved for the things I’ve done. My judgment was made a long time ago, but I had hoped to steer as many as I could from the misgivings of men and into the grace of God. I failed them, and I have failed God.”

  “What about the children, Haley and Kyle? You can still help them. Even if the rest of us are damned, surely they are worth God’s grace.” My words came out sharper than I had planned, and the ex-soldier’s thousand-yard stare raced back to refocus on me. “Maybe this is a wake-up call for us all. I’m not willing to accept that everyone is bad, or that we’re all doomed. You said yourself, back in the church, whatever this is, it brought Sean and Sarah back together. Haley has a mother again; it’s not all bad.”

  Randall closed his eyes and dragged a hand across his face. “I just can’t get her out of my mind. I never thought I’d see anything like that again.”

  “Who? The piano player?” I asked. “Is this about the night we went back to the church?”

  His eyes reopened, bloodshot and glazed, and he nodded slowly. “She was eighty-two years old, and the sweetest lady you could ever meet. I found her curled up under the piano. I don’t know if she suffered a heart attack or if one of those animals did something to her. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”

  “I’m so sorry, Randall …” I started.

  “I can’t stop thinking about her, how scared she must have been, hiding under the piano just like Haley had, but with no one to save her. She devoted her life to the church, to God, and died alone and afraid. Margaret was not the only one. There were bodies strewn across the church floor, people I knew. The worst part is that it didn’t make me want to pray; it made me want to kill. I wanted to take God’s law into my own hands and send all those responsible to Hell.” His face turned a deep red and seemed to vibrate.

  As I opened my mouth to speak, he turned away.

  “What happened in the church was horrible, but there are still good people in the world, good people that need saving from the rest. We can turn into animals or we can try to be better; we have the opportunity of a new start. We’re alive, and we have people in that house, not animals, but people, that just want to survive and take care of their families. My family is gone, my mom’s dead, my dad too, and I don’t know where my brother is, if he’s dead or alive. The people in there are the closest thing to family that I have, the people in there and you, Randall. We’re all in this together, we need each other. If we’re all going to Hell, then so be it, but we should be good to each other until then, and maybe the kids might escape our fate. Doesn’t The Bible say that the meek shall inherit the earth?”

  He turned back to face me and replied in a low monotone, “I don’t know how I can claim to have faith in God, having lost my faith in his creation. Do we have free will, or is this God’s will? Does he watch while we run amok of our own accord, or is this part of the divine plan?”

  “Maybe he just supplies the rope,” I said.

  Randall frowned.

  “It’s our choice to use the rope to save someone about to fall or to bind or hang ourselves.”

  22 | Broadcast

  The white noise was interrupted by a zipping beat of sound—a single vowel, a human voice. The three of us snapped to attention, our heads turned to Gary and the radio. He held up a hand, trying to quiet the rest of us down while turning the dial back the other way with his other hand—and then we heard it again.

  This is an emergency broadcast. Citizens are advised to remain in their homes, while emergency crews work to repair your city and restore power. Please remain calm and know that we are doing everything we can to stabilize the situation. Please disconnect all electrical appliances to avoid power surges and reduce the chance of fire. Power will be restored temporarily during testing phase. We are working hard to fix and isolate problems and expect to have power restored shortly.

  This is an emergency broadcast. Citizens are ...

  For a minute, we listened as the message played over and over, and then Gary lowered the volume and turned to face the rest of us. “Looks like things are going to go back to normal.”

  I glanced over the breakfast bar to the fully populated living room. “Not everything. Why didn’t they mention everything else that’s happened?”

  Gary shrugged. “What is there to say? I doubt that anyone else has any better idea of what’s going on than we do.”

  Even with so much to discuss, none of the four of us uttered another word. I stirred in the powdered coffee whitener, picked up my cup, and left the kitchen. Haley, Kyle, and their parents sat in the corner of the living room, huddled over an old board game that Sam and I used to play as kids. While one rolled the dice, the others were talking, signing, smiling, or laughing. A small parade of the newly living ambled slowly behind a self-appointed tour guide as he crossed the room, drawing the party’s attention to minor technological marvels throughout the lower floor of the house. I carried on through the living room and exited the house, closing the front door quietly behind me so as not to attract attention or interrupt the social activities inside.

  I lowered the truck’s tailgate and set my coffee down on it before climbing up over the rear wheel and taking a seat next to my cup. The sky had returned to its natural blue, no longer obscured by yellow haze or black smoke. My small part of the world was peaceful and serene. The absence of life or movement made the town feel desolate and dead, but here, on our dirt mound surrounded by lush green hills, the solitude was tranquil and beautiful. It often seemed, on the return drive of a supply run, we had experienced the end of the world—passed right through it and out the other side.

  I closed my eyes and tipped my head back to feel the sun and the breeze on my face. Something was different. It took a second before I realized what it was, and then I turned my head to listen. It was another broadcast, one that I had not heard since the first major power surge. It was the myriad twitter and whistle of birds. They had all taken the power surge as a warning or signal for early migration or evacuation, but now they were back. The translation of their song, proof of their return, provided comfort where the radio broadcast had not. It was a song of hope, that things would return to normal, and that the process was done—complete. My relief quickly gave way to the realization that the door leading to a reunion with my father was now closed.

  �
�You all right?” It was Powell’s voice.

  I turned to face him, wiped my eyes, and offered a smile. “I’m fine, just needed some air.”

  “You want some company?” he asked.

  I gave a nod and held his cup, while he hopped up onto the tailgate. “Looks like you’ll be getting the house back to yourself soon.”

  “It’s going to be strange being here alone. I’ve always had my dad around.”

  “We can still be friends after the power comes back on. I can come by with some of that terrible wine and keep you company if you’d like,” Powell said.

  “I’d like that,” I said and brought my cup up in front of my face to hide the beginnings of a smile. “What happened to your house? Was it destroyed?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been back there yet. I was on call when all this started. After the police shut down the roads, we were redirected to the church, and I was asked to stay and help out. It’s just a little rental place on the other side of town, I don’t own much stuff anyway. When I came out here, I didn’t bring anything with me.”

  “Why did you move to this tiny backwater town?” I asked.

  “Tiny? This place was like the big city to me when I first came out. Where my family is back east, there’s less than a couple hundred people.”

  “You grew up in a small town and never fired a gun?”

  Powell shrugged. “Too busy working my way through school so I could get the hell out of there.”

  “I left school and trained to be an electrician so I could carry on working with my dad. Thought I’d work with my dad forever. I don’t know what I’ll do now. The house is paid off at least.”

  “There should be a lot of work for electricians, carpenters, and plumbers once they get things started. It’s going to take a long while to rebuild everything we lost,” he said.

  “What do you think will happen to the others?” I asked.

  “The resurrected?”

  I nodded. “They’re going to need food, work, and places to live. If the rest are anything like those in the house, most won’t know how to turn on a light or use a phone, let alone drive a car or use a computer.”

  “It would probably be better for them if the power didn’t come back on at all. They could probably teach us more than we could teach them about how to live without power,” he said.

  “Do you want to take a drive out to your house, to see if it’s still there?”

  “You need to get away for a while?”

  He had seen my selfish offer for what it was, but his sympathetic smile worked like a balm to soothe any rising guilt. I nodded.

  “I’ll go and let Gary know and find out if anyone needs anything while we’re out.” He took my cup and his, poured the cold coffee dregs out on the dirt, and went back into the house.

  23 | Ghost town

  We drove slowly through the blackened ruins. Stores I had frequented throughout my life were now unrecognizable, reduced to concrete foundations and warped metal framework—their insides picked clean of anything worth taking. Fragile charcoal sculptures, crafted by the flames, rose like twisted gravestones out of the shallow rectangular troughs of black mud.

  The roads were streaked with soot, perhaps from rain run-off or from the sprayed water that had failed to extinguish the fires. The blackened water had stained the road on its way to the drain, creating elongated paintings of dead winter trees that now appeared to be rooted inside every metal grate.

  We managed to pass through town with very few detours, having mapped out most of the area on countless supply runs—we made our way out through the uncharted residential areas beyond. There were homes amid the ruins that remained standing, seemingly untouched by fire, but nevertheless deserted.

  “Where have they all gone?” I asked.

  “Beats me.” Powell shrugged. “Take a left up at the intersection.”

  I followed his directions, weaving between stalled vehicles, fallen signs, and obstacles. The main road was blocked at the end by several lines of cars, trucks, campers, and debris.

  “Looks like there was a party at my house,” Powell said through an audible smirk.

  “Should I turn around?” I asked.

  “No. My place is only a few blocks down, if it’s still there. We can go the rest of the way on foot if you’re up for it?”

  I turned the truck around anyway and parked it half on the sidewalk. “Just in case we need to get out of here in a hurry,” I said.

  Powell reached behind the seat and retrieved the shotgun. “Just in case.”

  At the front of the lineup, two cars were seemingly welded together. It was hard to know which one was embedded in the other. Another car lay on its side. Orange, red, and clear glass littered the road between twisted and separated bodywork. Powell stepped over a crumpled bumper and around wreckage, and I followed.

  “Where were they all going?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but it looks like they were in a hurry though.”

  We arrived at the house on the corner. It was a small one-level rancher with a telegraph pole embedded from corner to corner of its caved-in roof.

  “This is it. Home sweet home. The post is a new feature,” he said. “I don’t suppose it matters that I lost my keys.”

  He tried the door before kicking it. The flap of the mail slot rattled, but the door didn’t budge. He picked up a plant pot, tipped out the dry remains of whatever plant had been in there, lifted his left arm up to shield his face, and launched the clay pot through the glass panel next to the front door. The glass clanged to the step, shattering at Powell’s feet. He reached in, fumbled with the lock, and pulled at the handle with his other hand. “The door’s wedged. You might want to back up a little, just in case the whole place falls down when it opens.”

  I took a few steps back, and Powell wrenched the door handle with both hands. The door shuddered open, enough for us to slip inside, and the house creaked.

  “If it was going to collapse, it would’ve done by now, right?” I asked.

  “Unless it was the door holding it all up,” he said and raised an eyebrow.

  “All right, well, after you.”

  Inside, dilapidated drywall layered the floor where it had fallen from the ceiling, and large cracks ran diagonally down the walls in the living room, but what I could see of the rest of the house seemed fine, or at least better than I had expected.

  I followed him into the kitchen.

  “Beer?” he asked, as he pulled two from the fridge.

  I smiled and took the beer. “It’s a good thing you didn’t leave anything but condiments and beer in the fridge.”

  “I pretty much survived on take-out before all of this. How’s the beer?”

  “Warm, but still better than the wine we had at the church,” I said. “So I guess you’re not going to be staying here. You could stay with me. Until you find a place, I mean.” A smile crept over my face as I remembered Haley’s note and her teasing.

  “What’s so funny?” Powell asked.

  “Nothing. Just thinking about something Haley said.”

  “What?”

  I shook my head.

  “Girl stuff?” he asked, letting me off the hook.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m going to go pack up some clothes. Help yourself to anything you want, well, anything that’s still good.”

  I looked in each of the cabinets, pulling out any non-perishables and setting them on the counter. “Do you have any bags? So we can take the food with us.” I called.

  “Under the sink.”

  I retrieved the balled-up bags and stuffed several of them full of everything worth taking and then carried them outside and set them at the base of the step. As I turned to walk back in, the doorframe creaked, and the door seemed to jut out. There was a loud crack before the living room window burst into shards over the unkempt lawn.

  I tried to shout through the gap in the door, but my voice was cut off as drywall dust plumed out throug
h the doorway into my eyes and throat. I staggered, tripped, and fell backward onto the grass.

  As I sat wiping at my eyes and coughing, there came a thunderous symphony of sound—cracking, creaking, crunching, and popping, punctuated by the high-pitched pang of breaking glass and followed by the pattering and tinkling of debris.

  I waved the dust from in front of my face. When it settled, I saw through the blur of stinging tears that the house had collapsed in on itself, in on Powell.

  “Powell,” I called, but there was no response.

  I got to my feet and ran around to the back of the house to find another way in. The back corner of the house, where Powell had been, was crushed. The end of the telegraph pole hung only a few feet from the ground amid jagged wooden teeth and folded, broken drywall, with every gum-like gap filled with pink fiberglass insulation and shards of glass.

  “Powell?” I cried through every gap.

  I heard crunching and cracking from inside what was left of the kitchen, and I ran to peer in through a gap left by the now triangular window frame.

  I gasped as a bright white face appeared at the opening.

  “I’m okay,” Powell said and rubbed the drywall dust out of his hair, before squeezing his arm and head through the jagged gap. I grabbed his arm and pulled as he wriggled to get through. We both fell to the ground as his leg came free, and I let out a sigh of relief.

  “I thought you were ...” I began.

  “I heard the first crack and ran to the kitchen, but you weren’t there,” he said. “The ceiling collapsed and I got wedged up against the fridge. I didn’t know where you were.”

  “You ran to the kitchen to save me?” I asked, with a smile spreading across my face.

  Powell smiled a shy smile and stood up. “I was trying to save the rest of the beer,” he said and shook, patted, and brushed the rest of the dust from his hair, face, and clothes. “It’s a good thing I did. Look at that,” Powell said, staring at what remained of his bedroom.

  “You okay?” he asked, the seriousness back in his tone.