|
Marionettes
by
Mike Simon
Somewhere in the predawn haze a single bird chirped. It was a solitary note of hope that seemed to mock our grim demeanor. Since strapping on the skis, neither of us had spoken a word and the scraping of fiberglass over hard packed snow was by default the only reply for our feathered friend.
James, the bail bondsman from Vegas, abruptly held up. Using only his elbows to balance on the poles, he carefully pulled off the binoculars and raised them to his eyes. It was a skill he would never have thought of mastering in the deserts of Nevada. But that was in his previous life, one in which he would routinely prey on the vulnerable for the sole purpose of making a buck.
I waited and watched the night slowly surrender to the emerging day. Being so far north, at this time of year it was like a dark curtain being slowly drawn back, revealing a bleak land, arid and cold.
We had arrived at a high-point, a narrow rise about two miles south of our encampment. It held the best view and we could see clear to the horizon.
“It’s not just cloud.” His matter of fact tone carried an ominous edge.
And confirmed my worst fear.
“Are you sure?”
He half turned and showered me with a look of distain.
I shrugged. It was a mistake to appear vulnerable in his eyes.
“You look.” He shoved the glasses at me.
I couldn’t help it, after a two years reprieve my hands still trembled.
James was well practiced at hiding his emotions, having ridden roughshod over frailer humans his entire life. I was not so well versed.
Besides it was hard enough just to swallow the lump in my throat.
In the distance the gray clouds rolled across the sky, the screaming arctic winds propelling them eastward in an endless procession. But what caused my stomach to lurch had nothing to do with the cruel and inhospitable weather. Rather it was the faint silhouettes of figures that were framed within the predawn sky that set my guts churning.
They looked the same as I remembered, hazy, contorted humanoids advancing relentlessly forward.
“Christ,” I whispered.
Two years ago they suddenly appeared off the coast of every major continent. Scientists and pundits stared into the sky and declared the legions of marching figures the beginning of a new age for mankind. They were thought to be enlightened aliens making first contact or, at the very least, telepathic greetings sent from across the cosmos. Religious leaders proclaimed the second coming and people everywhere stayed glued to their TV’s or made a beeline for the coast to watch the ‘revelation’ firsthand.
“They followed us,” James continued, though I wasn’t sure if he was just talking to himself. I didn’t bother to answer.
The BBC described them as ‘rows of amateur marionettes stumbling forward in hurried, jerky movements, the actions so unnatural as to presuppose an inexact copy of mankind itself.’
The coverage was 24/7 and we watched for three days as the minions advanced robotic-like towards the coast, their outlines growing larger but remaining indistinct and fuzzy in the pale blue Californian sky. The faces, surrounded by a soft, reddish hue, remained blank and expressionless. Finally, after hours of intense anticipation, their long shadows touched land.
And people began to die.
By the thousands. Anyone within miles of the dark stain succumbed in seconds. Like clouds sweeping before a storm, the shadows infected every living thing with its touch, consuming them in death. Neither gender nor age had any bearing.
Most passed uneventfully, dropping silently to the ground as from a painless heart attack or stroke. Others vanished into nothingness in the blink of an eye. But what could not be ignored was what happened to select individuals. These unfortunate ones were engulfed in flame or saw their skin slowly peel off their torsos in an exquisitely agonizing death sequence. Their screams lasted only for a paltry few seconds but it was enough to panic an entire planet.
The last station went off the air two days later but it wasn’t before everyone got a good look at the charred cinders of human remains, or flayed corpses twitching in the middle of a downtown street.
Our civilization, in the making for thousands of years, was undone over the course of one sunny holiday weekend. With a single television image, the world descended into unsalvageable chaos.
The survivors, millions of terrified people, surged away from the coasts, trampling thousands and leaving once proud cities burning in their wake.
The legions of marching marionettes, seemingly oblivious to the carnage below, surged relentlessly forward, sowing death and destruction with every step.
As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could discern the familiar jerky movements within the cloudbank.
I slowly lowered the glasses.
“We’d better get back,” James mumbled, his usually hard tone leaking frustration. “The others will be wondering.”
He waited until I swiveled my skis around before following me down the hill. My mind was blank as I retraced the path to the cabin.
***
“Christ, I haven’t seen this much food since we broke into the school cafeteria after Christmas exams!” I exclaimed. The old wooden table was literally overflowing with steaming pots and plates.
Maggie wiped her hands on her apron but frowned in my direction.
“I’ll thank you for noticing the work, young Calvin, but there’s no need for swearing with young ears around. You will mind your words in my kitchen.”
Offering up a chagrinned smile, I slid into my seat next to the pile of split wood. Maggie’s daughter Rachel made a show of rolling her eyes.
“I’ve heard swear words before, mother.”
“Not in my house. Besides that doesn’t make it right.” She stepped over to take another bubbling pot off the old iron stove.
I winked at Rachel. “That’s what mothers are for,” I whispered.
She smiled back. The thirteen year old had a crush on me ever since the bondsman and I pulled her and her mom out of that burning car on the outskirts of Juneau.
That was nine months ago.
Maggie was initially apprehensive until she saw where my values lay. I may have only been six years older but Rachel and I were still separated by the better part of a lifetime.
The corollary was that Maggie treated me like a long lost nephew and even though she was only in her forties it was hard to think of her in anything but a matronly fashion.
How ironic. It’s the end of the world and I’m bunking with two unattached females, one much too young and one trying to be my mother.
“Damn…”
The chair jostled on my right and interrupted my musings. Wilbur and his ever present gameboy took his seat at the table. If he noticed the feast over the beeps and whistles of the game he gave no indication.
We picked him up several weeks after finding the girls. He was starving, the last surviving member of a group that had made a stand just north of Fairbanks. Their canned food had gone bad and by the time they discovered the problem they were too weak to search for more supplies.
Wilbur told us his name and his age but not much else. Even now, six months later, he speaks only occasionally and even then rarely wastes a word. He did manage to hook his gameboy up to a warped solar panel so he can play ten to twelve hours most days. Needless to say he doesn’t interact with the rest of us much, choosing instead to cloister himself with the handheld in whatever corner happens to be free at the moment.
“Everyone sleep well?” Maggie tossed the question over one shoulder as she shifted pots on the wood stove’s only burner. Everyone understood the unspoken question; did anyone actually get to sleep last night? Or were we more like convicts the night prior to their scheduled executions, mentally pacing the confines of the single-roomed cabin.
A chorus of ‘ayes’ answered her.
She smiled and shoved another log into the side of the stove.
“Can’t be much left in the storeroom,” I remarked. “Considering what we’ve been eating these last couple of days.”
The smile remained as she hurriedly carried a steaming bowl to the table. I swear that women could maintain a smile through a bloody blizzard.
“Getting pretty empty,” she admitted and then winked at her daughter. “But don’t worry; I’ve hidden the last chocolate bar for just us.”
Rachel giggled.
I realized there was another positive aspect. None of us would be making a run into the village for food.
She brushed a lock of hair off Rachel’s face and exchanged a meaningful look with me. I dutifully never said a word.
Come noon it will be two days since James and I returned to the cabin with the news. Oddly enough they took the report calmly and no one had made a comment about it since. Maybe after two years we just were too tired of running.
To her credit Maggie had fed us like kings. Wilbur remained intertwined with his gameboy and I watched the marionettes grow larger in the sky with each passing hour.
Like a well-heeled army, they were advancing on our humble abode in a grim and determined fashion.
The screen door screeched open and the large, familiar frame of the bondsman filled the archway. He carried a melancholy mood at the best of times but the unsavory look he brandished about the room was harsh even for him.
“Shadows are covering the village now,” he announced brusquely. “There’s no way back to the main road.”
His face hidden by the handheld, Wilbur snorted. “As if there was somewhere else to go. We’re at the edge of the world for God’s sake.”
I watched the tips of James ears turn red. It was time to interject.
“He’s got a point. Short of swimming across the Arctic Ocean this is as far away from civilization as we can get.”
The big man turned his glare on me. The amount of vehemence in that look required a lifetime of accumulation.
“So what then, college boy? You going to just sit back and accept it? Or spend the last few hours talking about the ‘good times’ and our last ‘road trip’?”
He was intimidating but I learned long ago not to back down. His kind dominates the meek and mild. He had done so for years.
“You asked me the same questions in Colorado after the nuclear plant went critical and the fallout almost got us. And in those hick towns in Montana and Alberta… you remember the ‘discussion’ we had at the church when we arrived the morning after the fire …” I shivered at the memory. James only tensed even more, like a lion about to spring.
“Not to mention Juneau, Whitehorse and, Christ, how many other ghost towns? Each time we picked up and, unlike the corpses festering in the streets, moved on. All the way from California… somehow we managed to avoid those scions of death.” I took a deep breath. The parade of memories was creating a tremor in my voice and the girls were staring at me wide eyed.
“But dammit, James, there is no where else to run! The sea is at our back and you just said the road was blocked. Even you can’t outrun those demons across the tundra. Unless you’re Moses in disguise and plan to separate the seas…”
“Bah!” He threw off his parka and stomped across the kitchen. “I should never have saved your butt in the first place.” His voice trailed off into a whisper. “Silver spooned college boy…” He used a napkin to wipe the sheen of sweat off his receding forehead.
“Damn weather is unnatural,” he declared.
I hid a smile, recognizing his familiar ploy of changing topics when he felt cornered. “Look at me; I’m sweating in the bloody arctic! It’s sunny for the four thousandth day in a row!”
Wilbur snorted again, this time in obvious agreement. Then again, they both had a point.
From day one it had been nothing but sun and cloud. Nothing else. No rain, snow, fog… nothing. If someone had a giant weather machine, he must have pressed the pause button before stepping out... Two years ago.
The bluster suddenly went out of the big fella and he slumped into the chair at the head of the table. His eyes seemed distant for a few moments before he noticed the feast. His gaze flicked to Maggie before coming back to rest on me.
I shrugged.
Maggie found a space in the center to lay down the final plate. She wiped her hands on her apron and invited everyone to dig in.
Without looking up, Wilbur paused his game and grabbed his utensils.
It was Rachel who asked the obvious question. “So are they are getting closer, Mr. Kennedy? The shadows I mean, they’re coming this way?”
James was ready to spit back a caustic remark when Maggie’s glare buried it in his throat.
“Er, yeah… well a little. There’s some question about direction and timing…”
Maggie interrupted by bending forward to pour some split pea soup into her daughter’s bowl.
“Now, Rachel, Mr. Kennedy just got in and needs a few minutes to catch his breath. Let’s remember our manners and give the man some space. There will be plenty of time to talk about shadows later.”
This time her smile looked forced.
“Yes, Mother.” Rachel murmured.
We ate in silence for fifteen minutes until Wilbur’s gameboy started beeping.
“Battery’s low,” he mumbled, pulling away from the table and hustling out of the room.
“Where’s he going?” Rachel asked.
James chuckled. “Have you been paying attention lately missy? At the moment he’s climbing up the roof to reconnect his do-dad to the solar panel he’s got taped to the smoke stack.”
“How’d he know how to do that anyway?” I asked. “He’s got about ten different wires connected to that… do-dad.”
“It’s easy for him.” Maggie paused. “He was in University like you, Calvin. Third year electrical at MIT. Must have been doing well too because he mentioned something about a pending internship at NASA. Of course that’s before Armageddon showed up at our doorstep.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I asked him. How else?”
I was surprised. “Well I’m glad he speaks to someone around here.”
“Why does he keep playing that game all day?” Rachel asked. “He won’t even let me have a turn.”
James snickered. “Because he’s acting like an ostrich burying his head in the sand. He’s hiding from what’s about to…”
“Carrots, James?” Maggie thrust the bowl under the man’s nose. “You look like you could use some fiber.”
“Huh? Uh, thanks. I was just speculating…”
By the look on Rachel’s face, she had no idea what he was getting at.
“Maybe he’s still in shock,” I offered. “We did pull him out of a tight predicament.”
“You show me anyone here who hasn’t survived a bad situation,” James sneered. “We’ve all lost family and friends, and that’s not the worst of it…”
His voice trailed off but I could tell he wanted to say more.
An awkward silence followed as the four of us made an effort to keep eating. But without a real appetite it was hard to do.
***
Maggie and I leaned over the deck rail and stared silently into the distance. Legions of fluffy clouds swept across another pale blue sky, beautiful sirens signaling the approaching death. Beyond them, high in the atmosphere, the indistinct forms of shuffling mannequins marched inexorable forward.
The two-by-four under my arms felt cool and rough, the results of weather on decades old construction. It was a relief to drop my gaze and just stare at the gray wood.
I noticed Maggie rocking slowly on the balls of her feet, using her elbows as a pivot against the wood.
“Mr. Kennedy says the shadows will reach the cabin sometime tomorrow.”
I caught her eye and nodded. “He told me.” She was starting to tremble. I wanted to comfort her, like a real friend would do, but it was too awkward and I was too young.
“How’s Rachel?”
She tried a smile. “I found an old cryptogram book in the closest. She’s busy working on the puzzles.”
As a thirteen year old was wont to do.
“That’s good.” I wasn’t sure about the next question but I sensed she wanted to talk.
“What are you going to do?”
A sudden sob escaped her throat and she hurriedly put a hand to her mouth. I took a step but she waved me back. She took a moment to regain her composure.
“I’m ok.” She took a breath. “I knew this was coming. I tried to prepare but…” She shrugged. “It’s not something you can practice.”
“Don’t I know it?”
She smiled and this time it came naturally. “Calvin, you’ve been a real gentleman these last four months. I wanted to tell you that. In fact, if the truth be known, you’ve been the only sane person around this joint. Wilbur has been a deaf mute twenty-three hours a day and Mr. Kennedy has been, well, himself. I’m glad Rachel has taken a liking to you.” She paused and the smile faded. “That by itself has saved her, and me, some of the worry… some of the pain.” She slowly turned back to stare at the apparitions in the sky.
“Tomorrow I’m going to take my little girl to that hill just west of here, the one with the pretty blue flowers poking through the snow. Unbeknownst to her I’m going to sit her down with her back to what’s coming. Then I’m going to tell her about the day she was born and how excited her daddy and brothers were. I’m going to describe how she lost her first tooth and what she wore on the first day of kindergarten.”
The tears silently began to fall and she made no attempt to brush them off.
“We’re going to have a mother daughter day… for as long as it lasts…”
I felt the hidden fear and had to ask. “Maggie, aren’t you worried about, some of the people died…”
She shook her head. “I believe they were the bad ones, Calvin, those who lived outside His Blessing. The vast majority passed on quietly. We will have nothing to fear.”
“Are you sure?”
She took my hand in hers. “After forty-five years you learn a few things. I’ve led a boring life, one you would call ‘safe’. And Rachel, well, she’s just a kid. We’ll be ready.”
We stood there for a long time, hand in hand, just staring into the abyss.
***
When I walked back outside the only thing that had changed at all was Wilbur. Our favorite computer nerd had moved from one side of the porch to the other, the game clicking and beeping happily in his grasp.
I could only shake my head.
The sun was drifting down as afternoon gave way to evening, the wind picking up between the trees. The snow crunched under my boots as I wondered aimlessly away from the cabin. For some reason I was full of useless energy. If I was ten years older they’d call it anxiety or restless legs. I was too young for that.
But not too young to die.
A sudden cry echoed in the wood and I hastened towards the sound. Seconds later I entered a small glade and was shocked to see James carrying Rachel in his arms.
He looked just as shocked to see me.
“What the…?” Through a sudden red haze I started towards him.
The bail bondsman slowly put the girl down. She looked flushed and shaken.
He held up one hand. “Wait, Calvin.”
He was half a foot taller and a good fifty pounds heavier but I didn’t care. I bent down and picked up a thick branch.
Then, to my surprise, Rachel jumped up and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thank you, Mr. Kennedy.” Then she waved at me and ran back in the direction of the cabin.
Now I was really confused. I stopped in my tracks and dropped the stick.
“What the hell is going on?”
He had a funny expression on his face as he stepped over.
“I was out walking when I heard the little one call out for help,” he explained. “I found her stuck up that tree. Apparently she was out trying to catch a squirrel when she got stuck. It took me ten minutes to convince her to jump. That’s when you decided to show up.” He looked at me square. “Calvin, I know what you people think of me. God, it’s no different than anyone I’ve ever known. But I would never…”
It was ironic. After traveling with this guy for two years, through cities and towns worse than Dante’s Inferno, I realized at that moment I was seeing him in a new light. I finally realized why the big man from Nevada was running so hard. He was terrified. Terrified of suffering the fate of so many other ‘undesirables’.
However I could see straight into his soul. Though scarred and frayed, it remained whole and unblemished. There was honor there.
I grasped his hand and shook it. “You’re going to do fine tomorrow, James.”
He looked at me with a tentative, hopeful expression. He knew what I was saying and ‘wanted’ to believe.
“Don’t worry,” I repeated. “It will be all right.”
Our hands dropped and I turned back to the cabin. I knew he was staring at my back, a faint flicker of hope in his heart.
***
Sunlight was filling the room when I finally woke up.
‘Damn!’ I felt a spasm of panic. ‘Did I oversleep?’
I hustled into my clothes and, still buttoning my shirt, barged into the kitchen.
“Hello?”
There wasn’t a sound.
“Anybody here?”
No answer.
On the kitchen table, cleared and clean, sat a small glass of flowers.
I smiled. Maggie and Rachel were on their way to scale a certain hill and had left us a parting gift.
“Bye, guys,” I whispered. “See you soon.”
I withdrew the last container of OJ from the icebox and drained it. For some reason I was extremely thirsty.
“James, Wilbur.”
But only the soft rustle of branches outside the window answered me.
I tucked in my shirt and stepped outside.
To my surprise Wilbur was sitting in the old rocking chair, feet perched on the railing. The gameboy was nowhere in sight.
“Wilbur?”
“Mr. Kennedy left for town about two hours ago.” The bespeckled young man didn’t bother looking at me. “He said he had to pick up some supplies.”
“In town?”
“Yeah.” Finally he looked in my direction. His eyes were dilated and wide. He was scared. “He left a message for you.”
“Uh ha.”
“He said he’d be waiting for you on the other side and if you were wrong he was going to kick your butt.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed.
“I bet he would.” I muttered.
Wilbur was still staring at me.
“I see you’re not playing anymore.”
He shook his head. “I finished twenty minutes ago.”
“Finished, or decided enough was enough?”
“All twenty-seven levels, all on the impossible setting.” When I didn’t look impressed, he continued. “Nobody knew it here but back at school me and a few friends actually designed this game. It was the cutting edge, incredible graphics, humorous, challenging, customizable… Sony had already bought the distribution rights. It was going to be the greatest thing since Super Mario and I was on track to be the next Bill Gates.”
I didn’t follow. “So you wanted to play it till the end?”
“We engineered the settings so anyone could play, from three to ninety-three, from kindergarten to genius. ‘Impossible’ was the ultimate. We put it there as a joke knowing it couldn’t be beat. No human could defeat our mathematical computer. The science was absolute.” His gaze turned inward. “After watching my family die, I knew I needed more to keep on living. The only way I could do that was by playing this damned game… and beating it. I wanted… I needed to prove that there is more than fact and science. Sometimes there’s faith and nothing else.”
In my mind, the fog lifted and I understood. “I… see. And now?”
He leaned back in the chair and the old wood creaked under the weight change. “Now I’d like to sit here for a while and think.”
“Ok.” I descended the steps and glanced up into the sky.
The figures were as big as mountains, moving limbs fantastically huge.
‘Christ!’ My knees began to shake.
“Wilbur, I’m… going for a walk.”
“Good bye, Calvin.”
I let my legs take me away from the cabin. I already knew where I would end up.
“Calvin!” Wilbur was leaning over the railing.
I looked back.
“Thank you,” he shouted. “For taking me in.”
I waved and he disappeared into the shadow of the deck.
My legs took me north. I wasn’t quite in a hurry and yet I dared not stop. Something was tugging at my heels and fear swept me forward across the snow. The trail to the sea was rough but fairly straight and yet it still took the better part of an hour to reach the water. I felt the winds pick up near the coast and realized I should have brought a jacket.
Turning about to gaze at the advancing marionettes was in itself a test of courage. I had not created any separation. They still towered over me, omniscient and threatening.
For the first time, I noticed something else as well. Instead of numbering in the thousands, as they did on that very first day, there were but four figures left in the pale blue sky.
‘The four horsemen of the Apocalypse.’ My brain drudged up the analogy.
I traced a path along the rocky shoreline before coming to an extended point that stabbed deep into the water. Our small canoe lay on its side in the wild grass as white caps and small icebergs dotted the green expanse as far as the horizon. Strange how the sky remained clear, the air relatively warm, and yet the snow refused to melt.
Then I noticed the sudden change. Now there were only two figures twisting in the sky.
“Maggie… Rachel…” I fought back a growing lump in my throat. “Be safe…”
At the tip of the point, the wind whipped around me, rustling my hair and pelting me with frigid spray. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied a rather large iceberg drifting close.
On impulse, I pulled the canoe into the water and paddled right up to the iceberg. Balancing precariously on the sides of the canoe, I leapt across the intervening space and landed on my butt on the ice. It shuddered slightly under the impact.
I sat down in the center and watched the land slowly drift away. Huge waves rolled around me, whitecaps slamming into the sides of my ship.
The breath caught in my throat as I realized there was but one remaining apparition above me. One last human being on the planet. Our age was coming to an end.
I drifted for hours, the waves buffeting me relentlessly, almost capsizing me on several occasions. Soaked yet undaunted I held on, watching the shadow in the sky come ever closer. It followed the wind and chased the tide. I couldn’t outrun it… even if I wanted to.
Still, like hounds on the hunt, it was relentless. I figured it had a job to do.
Then, as the sun began its final descent in the west, and the golden hue of vermillion clouds painted the sky, the winds mysteriously faded and finally died.
The waters of the Arctic Ocean settled into an unnatural calm. The air was stilled by some unseen hand.
The apparition appeared to bend towards the water, its descent making it appear even larger. Soon it blocked out the entire sky. A dark stain, like a consuming plague, drew swiftly across the stillness. With heart pounding anticipation, I watched it close on my icy platform.
Just before I became one with the darkness, I swear I saw the eyes of the marionette twinkle and raise his right arm to gesture skywards. Somewhere in the distance, trumpets sounded as a warm breath of wind tickled my face and carried with it a soft voice that whispered softly…
“The time of waiting is over. The Gates have been opened...”
The author is a hockey and rugby player who resides on the east coast of Canada and manages to practice medicine in his spare time. Recently published words include ‘Layers’ in Apex: Science Fiction and Horror (Best of 2005), ‘The Answer’ in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, ‘Star in the East’ and ‘Natural Selection’ in The Sword Review and ‘Standing in Line’ by Ragged Edge,. He has contributed to several anthologies including Travel a Time Historic’, Tall Tales and Short Stories and The Unknown. Non fiction articles have appeared in Stitches Magazine and The Physician’s Chronicle.
______
|
 |
______
|
|
