The Gates_The Arrival Page 11

  Finn nodded enthusiastically. He was in no position to argue. “Do you have any bottled water?” He pointed to the store.

  The old man shook his head. “Nope, stupidest thing ever come out of the city. There’s a perfectly good well right here with pure, fresh water, no reason to haul it here and bury the world in plastic garbage when you can get a drink just as easy as can be without it. There’s a fountain in there, the generator’s running that too right at the moment, help yourself.”

  Finn smiled. “What about soda?”

  “Yeah, got that, but no power for the coolers, so nothing’s cold but the water.”

  “Right,” Finn said. He had a couple of cases of water in his trunk; if he wanted something warm he could use one of them. He stroked the dog’s back.

  “Have you heard any more about the power going off in the cities? I can’t get too much off the radio.”

  “Eh, not a lot, most of what I hear is all guesswork. People talking about what it could be and saying it like it is. No one who knows is saying much and them what’s saying much don’t really know.”

  “What do you think it is then?” Finn was starting to like the guy. Mike grew bored being the center of attention and wandered back to the chair. The old man didn’t answer for a while. He hung up the pump and picked up the shotgun he’d leaned against it before answering.

  “You ever watch old TV shows?”

  Finn was caught off guard by the randomness of the question. “Ah…sometimes…”

  “When I was boy, there was a show on TV called The Twilight Zone. Science Fiction. It was also a commentary on humans and life in general. There was an episode called…” he paused and thought, “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. It was about aliens that took over one block at a time by turning on and off the power, letting the people’s prejudices and fears do all the work for them. The humans all turned on each other, destroying themselves and all the aliens had to do was turn the power on and off in a few homes.”

  Finn stared at him. “You think this is aliens?”

  The old man shook his head so sadly, Finn felt like he’d disappointed a favorite teacher. “No, no, no, you’re not getting the point, son.” He licked his lips. “I think someone is letting us all kill ourselves over nothing more than a few lights. All they gotta do is flip a switch and we all go up in a flash of our own fears. When I was boy, the thought was that World War III would be all nuclear bombs scouring the earth. Maybe it’s nothing more than turning out the lights and letting us wallow in our own darkness?”

  He wandered off to go back into the store, Mike lay down in the shade of the porch and the old man waved as his disappeared into the gloom of the shop. Behind him, Finn could hear the pump shutting off again. He stood alone in the pump island, the disquiet and the need to be in Carlisle growing exponentially.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Harper

  “Well, that’ll about do it. You need help loading your belongings?”

  The old man had stayed in the buggy the entire time his grandson had worked on the tire. Thankfully the whole task hadn’t taken long. Samuel had never spoken so much as a word as he’d worked. Outside of the occasional grunt as he tightened the lug nuts or hefted the flat tire and secured it under the SUV, he hadn’t made a sound at all.

  Tara and Harper had kept out of his way, keeping under the trees though neither sat. Harper sullenly stamped on ants when she saw them, still scratching at the bites along her stomach. The picnic wasn’t fun anymore, not with that steely-eyed old man watching them, and the surly bear of a man stomping around behind the SUV.

  “We’re fine, thanks!” Tara called, cheerfully, though she made no move to pack up. Samuel stood watching them from the tailgate, his expression unreadable.

  The old man bent then, and retrieved the rifle from the floor of the buggy as Samuel lumbered over to join him. “I’ll thank you, then, to be on your way. We don’t want no trouble here from any of you Englischers, ja? You can leave the basket, I’ll see to it that it’s returned.”

  “What—” Harper stared, seeing only the muzzle of the gun aimed at her chest. It was like seeing the Easter bunny sprout fangs and having it suddenly leap for the jugular.

  “Harper, we need to pack up and go.” Tara’s voice was steady, though her face had gone ashen.

  “But—“

  “Harper, I said let’s go.”

  More angry and resentful than afraid, Harper started hefting cases of water into the back of the SUV. All of Tara’s neat piles, her intended meticulous re-packing went out the window as they flung items into the back with no care for where anything landed. The two men watched without speaking, neither making a move to help, even when Tara staggered suddenly under the weight of the camping gear. Harper grabbed at the other end of the portable tent in time to keep it from crashing to the ground and somehow managed to heave it on top of the rest of the gear. Something broke. Harper flinched, waiting for the explosion, but Tara only slammed the tailgate down and stomped over to the driver’s side door and wrenched it open. Harper was biting her tongue so hard at this point it was a wonder she still had one. She turned to go, but couldn’t resist turning back.

  “What have we ever done to you? We were stranded. We didn’t ask for anything. We only took what was given to us.”

  “You are Englisch,” the old man said with a shrug. “You worship your modern technology, then come crawling to us when it fails you. We do not have the answers you seek.”

  “Yet you have no compassion,” Harper drew herself up. The muzzle of the gun no longer scared her. This weak old man and his pathetic excuse for a grandson was no longer the bogeyman. “You claim to follow the Bible, but isn’t there some story about a man whose son left him, to pursue a lifestyle that didn’t agree with his beliefs? If I’m remembering this correctly, that son eventually returned, when that way of life failed him. And the father celebrated his return.”

  “It is a parable.”

  “It seems to apply.” Harper crossed her arms, and stared him down.

  “Harper, come on!” Tara already had the engine running. She leaned out the window, gesturing wildly for Harper to just get in the damn car.

  “You are not of our flesh and blood. We are not responsible for whatever happens to you.”

  “Perhaps,” Harper said, lifting her chin, and refusing to back down, “perhaps that is part of the problem.”

  It was impossible to flounce into an SUV. First of all, you couldn’t pull off a decent exit in jeans and a t-shirt that advertised the Grateful Dead. Secondly, realizing that she’d forgotten that stupid rucksack in the grass meant she had to go back and fetch it, all under the bright stare of Mr. We-Only-Take-In-Our-Own was just beyond humiliating. Tara had the SUV in gear before Harper even had her seat belt fastened. It might not have been the best of manners to take out a half row of corn on exiting, but the horse and buggy were in the way, and Tara wasn’t waiting around politely for them to get out of her way.

  They hit pavement on two wheels, and Harper half expected the other tires to go out. Behind them, she saw the horse rear back, Samuel struggling to regain control of the animal. She felt vaguely guilty about that; they’d fixed their tire after all. And breakfast had been heavenly.

  But they’d provided help because they felt responsible for the accident in the first place. Patience’s father – Mr. Shumacher – had obviously felt bad enough for frightening them off the road to send help. Proving…what exactly? Maybe that people were still good in many ways…but that even good people were capable of bad things.

  It was a lesson she would do well to remember.

  “So now what?” Harper asked after they’d gone a couple miles. Tara stared intently at the road ahead. They passed a horse and buggy at a speed that set Harper’s teeth on edge.

  “What do you mean now what? We go to Carlisle, like we’d planned. Plain and simple.”

  “I thought we were going to ask directions.”

  “No w
ay am I going up to one of those houses now…”

  Harper looked out her window, studying the farms they passed. They looked innocent enough. Just boxy farmhouses with chickens scratching in the dirt and laundry snapping on the line to dry. Normal stuff. Everyday stuff.

  Yeah, like the Yoders.

  Harper saw her point. “Fine, we’ll ask when we get the tire fixed.”

  Tara shot her a look. “What do you mean when we get the tire fixed? It just was fixed. He put on the spare.”

  Harper leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. Seriously, was this how Tara felt when Harper couldn’t figure out her smartphone? “Honey, it’s a spare tire. It’s not meant to go very far, or at very high rates of speed. So I need you to slow down and find me a place where they can take a nail out of a tire and fix a hole. With any luck it won’t cost us much.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “You have no idea how much I wish I were.”

  ***

  They found a tire shop at the next town they came to. By this point they’d passed more buggies, telling them that this still was very firmly Amish territory. But the auto shop in town sported an assortment of pickup trucks out front, and enough rednecks for a Nascar party. People were standing around in tense groups as they pulled up to the first empty bay.

  “We’re not open.”

  Harper had expected this. She shot a look at Tara who was still looking a little too pale to be driving and jumped out of the truck, and lifted her hands to show she wasn’t armed. “We just have a tire that needs fixing. That’s all. We’re trying to get somewhere…”

  A woman in a stained blue tank top, leaning on a white Ford snorted at that. “Honey, we’re all trying to get somewhere. It’s the end of the world.”

  “Hush you, gal, don’t be a fool. You heard the president.”

  “I’m thinking you sure didn’t. What part of ‘we don’t bow down to terrorism’ translates to ‘we’ll turn the lights back on’?”

  “It’s a valid point,” Harper muttered to Tara who had come to join her. “Hey, can you help us or not!” she addressed the guy who seemed the most in charge, a burly man in a red and blue plaid flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows.

  “Hell, lemme look at it.”

  Across the street there seemed to be divisions forming. Amish men, bearded with wide straw hats faced off against farmer in jeans wearing baseball caps advertising tractors and motor oil. A red-faced man from the farmer side was shouting, though they couldn’t make out the words. The tone was pretty clear though.

  “What’s going on over there?” Harper asked the woman…Marla she thought it was. Behind her Tara watched as they drove the SUV into the bay and jacked it up.

  “There’s some disputin’ over whether to shut down the roads in and out around these here parts. There’s been too many…” she eyed Harper sourly, “…strangers coming on through.”

  “We don’t mean any trouble. We just want to get to Carlisle.”

  “Carlisle!” Marla spat a stream of tobacco juice into the grass, crossing her arms over her bony chest. “What you be wanting with Carlisle?”

  “My brother…I just want to get to my brother.” Without meaning to, Harper began to cry, big gulping sobs that she’d hadn’t even known she was holding in until now.

  “Oh shush now…shhh…don’t get so…we didn’t know you was local with them Connecticut plates, how was we to know? Fred…Fred! Don’t you be charging to patch that tire, you hear me? This here is a local gal out from Carlisle. Don’t look at me like that, we take care of our own. You hear me?” she shouted this last to the combatants across the street. A man came out of the store carrying a generator, causing a stir as another man came running out after him, trying to wrench the first man’s cart away from him.

  “Oh lordy, this ain’t going to end well…” Marla muttered, putting thin arms around Harper and drawing her back toward the garage.

  “I don’t…what…”

  There was more shouting. Harper glanced back over her shoulder, saw the men shoving at each other. The Amish had drawn back, letting the Englischers fight it out. Someone raised a stick…

  Marla pulled Tara around in the other direction. “Don’t look. Fred, you got that car of there’n’ fixed? Things are looking ugly…”

  A shot rang out behind them. Someone screamed.

  “Harper?” Tara was standing in front of her, the blood completely drained from her face. “Harper, we need to get out of here.”

  Harper wanted to look…no…didn’t want to look. There were more shouts. Glass breaking. It was the gas station all over again, only worse. “Tell me,” she said, grabbing Marla’s arm, and looking hard into her watery, red-rimmed eyes. “How do we get to Carlisle from here?” It was a stupid request, she knew that the moment she’d said it. She was supposed to be local. “The safe way,” she added. “We don’t know what to expect out there.”

  Another shot. The silence was so thick that it almost screamed to be filled up with sirens, except there were none. Why weren’t there sirens? Where were the police?”

  “Harper…” Tara’s voice quavered, she sounded on the verge of tears.

  “I’ll draw you a map. You won’t want the main road, but some of them others…it ain’t safe.”

  Someone was crying. Screaming wails in the morning air, where sirens should be.

  “Whatever you can do…we thank you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Harper

  They took off out of town as though the very hounds of hell were chasing them. It was becoming almost normal to be fleeing for their lives. As though keeping their heads down so that they wouldn’t be winged by stray bullets was normal.

  Maybe it was. This was the New World Order, wasn’t it? That was what it would be called in books or movies.

  “Harper…” Tara’s voice was bordering on hysteria. “Harper, I can’t do this anymore.”

  They were going about eighty on a winding country road. Trees flashed past in a blue. The needle on the speedometer was still creeping up. Heading for ninety. The SUV shook as the road curved suddenly.

  Harper’s ears were still ringing. There’d been a whole lot more gunfire after they left. Shots ringing out so fast that it had sounded like background noise in a war movie. Unreal. The air had smelled like gunpowder, Harper remembered. And people had screamed. She wondered what had happened to Marla from the tire shop. She still remembered the woman’s arms around her, the kindness in her eyes she’d shielded her from harm.

  Drawing her out of the line of fire.

  She needed to do that now for Tara. To protect her the way she’d been protected. She reached over, laying a hand on Tara’s arm. “Let me drive.” The needle on the speedometer hit ninety-five. The SUV rattled and shook. It wasn’t designed for these speeds. “Tara, I need you to pull over and let me drive. Please.”

  They passed a yellow sign. Had it been one of those squiggles for curving roads. She felt the vehicle lean hard to the left, and fought the urge to close her eyes. For a moment she felt like they were flying.

  A bump in the road would be a catastrophe. A tire on the shoulder would mean their death.

  “Tara! I need you to pull over! Now!”

  Tara’s foot eased off the accelerator. The SUV slowed. Ahead was a sign for a town. Three miles. Three miles before they had to face it again. More people acting crazy. Doing crazy things. Harper stared as the sign drew closer. The last thing she wanted was for Tara to drive through that town. Not after the last time. Not here.

  “I need you to stop,” she said quietly. “Right now. You’re going to pull over to the side of the road and then you’re going to get out and let me drive. But first you have to stop.”

  “First I have to stop…” Tara repeated the words as though trying to figure out what they meant.

  Her foot found the brake. They were a mile outside the city limits. Harper could see the buildings in the distance. The steeple of a church. A si
gn for a gas station. A long row of storage buildings to the right, painted bright orange.

  The car hit the shoulder faster than Harper would have liked. Gravel sprayed up, rattling against the undercarriage. But they stopped. Tara sat, her hands still on the wheel. Unmoving. It was Harper who reached across and turned off the engine.

  “I saw someone die, Harper. That man…the one who had bought the generator and was trying to take it out to his car. He died. Just for buying a thing he needed. I saw the other man raise his gun and shoot him. And the first man…he just sort of fell, like a puppet with the strings cut. There was blood. So much…blood.”

  Tara’s shoulders heaved once, but she didn’t so much as make a sound, despite the tears on her cheeks.

  “Tara…” What were the words she could say? There weren’t any. She’d been protected from seeing it, but right now she would have given anything to have been the one to protect Tara from the same. She reached out, touching Tara’s hair, brushing the tangled mass back from her face, drawing her near. Tara kind of fell into her arms, as much as her seatbelt allowed, burying her face against Harper’s shoulder. The position was awkward. It was Harper who undid her seatbelt and moved so that she could cradle Tara in her arms.

  Tara cried, in great big gulping sobs. Her shoulders heaved as she fought to catch her breath. With every breath came a high-pitched wail. She’d hit her limit, gone past it, created a new limit, and then hit that one.

  “It’ll be okay. We’ll get to Carlisle and it will all be okay. I just need you to hold it together for me a little bit further, okay? I just need you to—”

  A tap came at the window. “Miss?”

  Harper stifled a scream. A man with mirrored sunglasses peered through the driver’s side window. Tara never so much as flinched. Harper looked for something to grab to use as a weapon, but Tara was still weeping in her arms and there was nothing larger than a water bottle within easy reach. She grabbed at it anyway.