Unrestricted Vision

R. Boon

November 23, 2013

Unrestricted Vision

            “Where is that good fer nuthin cow?” Lily called out, not quietly.  She was a stout woman, with a ridge of gray hair streaked through her black bun, which people whispered about, connecting the mark to her powers.  She expected to be listened to.  “Uriel?” she called, stepping out the screen door onto the sagging porch.

            Uriel Vanoy, her husband, walked back down the road, his work boots half-laced, flopping, his overalls loose.  His big brown mutt, Gabe, followed him, touching his hand every third or fourth step.  “Lily, darlin’, they can hear you cross the river and three counties into Illinois.”

            “Maybe they can, but you don’t seem to.”  She lodged her hands on her hips, elbows flared out.  “Where’s the cow?  Where’s my bucket of milk?”

            Uriel smiled.  “I kept out a good quart, for us tonight.  But that old widow up the hill with all them kids, well, she had some need, so I let her have the cow for a few days.”

            Lily opened her mouth, said nothing.  The screen door slammed behind her.

            They both heard the loud engine noise of Jed Miller’s pickup running down the road, hard.  Lily stepped back out on the porch, as the truck slowed.  Jed, their nearest neighbor here in the bottoms, leaned out the window, and said, “it’s the boy.  Pete broke his damn arm rollin’ them logs up to our woodcut.”  He nodded at his son.  “Looks bad enough I’m gonna take him to the clinic, up on the bluff.” 

            “Better stop for Rosy and take her along.  You’ll never hear the end tof it otherwise,” Uriel called out.

“You’re right,” said Jed. “I’ll get her.”  He touched his hat and roared off.

            Lily set her mouth hard.  “Didn’t I tell you to get right down there to Pete and warn him about that log?  I saw it clear.  No reason for that arm to be broke or them to have to pay for a doctor.”

            Uriel shuffled the dust and didn’t look up.  “Well, Lily, I was gettin’ the cow up the road, the other direction.  I was on my way.  Just not fast enough.”

            “Forty some years, and you still have no respect for my vision.  Next month, we’re getting a phone line put in here.  There’s no depending on you to keep people safe.”  She returned inside, slamming the screen door again.  The hinge wobbled.

            Indeed, Lily had vision and people for fifty miles around would come ask her advice.  Louise Becker came in to ask about her daughter’s engagement, Brick Henry needed to know about taking those “damn St. Louis tourists” out on his john boat, Suzy Jackson asked about the weather next month when she wanted to go to Little Rock, others came in to ask about canning, or which dress pattern would get the most attention.  She refused to talk to George Robinson about the stock market, calling it “immoral gambling.”  She sent a note to Wanda about the blacksnake that was going to get into her henhouse. 

            By six, everyone knew it was too late to call.  Uriel came into his wife’s little parlor that doubled as her meeting room.  “Lily, I feel bad about Jed’s boy, not listening to you and getting over to there fast enough.  Let’s walk up the hill and catch a ride into town.  We’ll have a real nice supper at Richardson’s Café.  I bet Freida’s got some of her peach cobbler fixed up.  Might even have some nice cold cream to pour over it.”

She refused, righteously.  “You need to fix that hinge,” she said, and went back to making vision notes for folks tomorrow.  Uriel let her alone, and cooked up the best meal he could, set out the dishes nice, and even opened the last jar of raspberry jam.  They didn’t talk much, but Lily smiled when he piled two extra scoops of butter and jam on her biscuits.

            After supper, he took her hand.  “Come on, just you and me, old gal.  Let’s walk up to the bluff and look out at the river and watch the stars.”

            She smiled back at him.  “Oh, Uriel, you may not ever have a responsible bone in your body, but you are the sweetest man.”  She squeezed his hand.  “I’m tired.  Let’s get to bed.  Long day tomorrow.  I have a dozen visions I’ve got to get out to folks.”

Uriel nodded.  “Let me check the critters, and I’ll be in.”  Outside, he whistled at Gabe, who bounded up, all enthusiasm.  Uriel bent down, rubbed his cheeks and ears.  “Gabe, old boy, time for you to get out of here.  I’m gonna open up the pen, let them damn pigs out, and I want you to head em up to high ground over there.  And you stay there.  You stay up there.”  He pointed, walked two steps, pointed.  And so it was, when he let the pigs out, Gabe was at their heels, headed in the right direction.  “Bye, Gabe,” he whispered, low enough not to distract the dog.

            Uriel went in, washed his hands and face, and climbed into bed with Lily, who was already fair asleep.  He held her tight, through the first tremors that no one would notice if they weren’t up, walking around.

He remembered the terms of his gift, way back when he was a kid, way before he met Lily, crying out into the blackest night, and the great voice out of the penetrating light had answered, blessed him to know, to really know, yet had added, “the greater the vision, the more restriction—suggest, lead, but you can’t tell people the future, you can’t control the great events of the world.  People must have their own will, choose their own destinies.”

In bed, he whispered, “Aw, Lily, I’ll always love you.  Wish we could a had another forty years.”  He kissed the back of her neck, and stroked her cheek.  She turned and looked at him, blinked a couple times, and smiled back.  She kissed him, lightly on the lips, as the great fault in the earth slid loose, and the whole valley sunk fifteen foot in a second, and the great river rushed in, killing everyone and everything that hadn’t already gotten to high ground.

© 2013, Robert E. Boon

   

John (chapter draft) Jim

Muffled static, like sandpaper across my eardrum, scratches and crawls up my spine one aching vertebrae at a time.  It seems to go on and on, labored breaths of uncertainty and panic, commotion and dissonance molest the receiver. It hasn’t even dawned on me that I haven’t taken a breath until my lungs begin to burn with fire. 

“Hello,” the weary voice slips into my ear, heavy and full of fatigue. I recognize it like a ghost, an echo from the past. 

“Emma, honey?”

“John, you’re okay,” she pauses,“...alive?” Her voice is like a warm hug. A distant embrace held apart by so much death and malevolence. 

“Emma are you safe? The Clarks? You’re with them?”

“John...” 

“Mr. Clark is a strong, resourceful man. He knows how to survive.”

“John?” 

“You are in good hands with him, he will keep you safe.”

“John! They’re dead.”

Little beads of sweat, filthy and brown, cool and wet sting my forehead. I collapse against the corner of the phone booth like a prizefighter taking a pummeling against the ropes. I'm lost in the muttle. I stare at Joe pacing the parking lot. He looks like he’s aged years in the past week. His white shirt smattered with tiny crimson rorschach's, his Beatles mop twisting in the warm Atlantic breeze.  A far different kid now than the one I met spinning tales beyond his years and serving me Dark and Stormies on the last living day of our lives.  We fled Carolina Beach and made it as far as Wilmington, NC before the hoards pushed us northeast towards the coastal town of Hampstead. With our backs against the ocean we soon will have to face the enclave of dead.  

Word spread that Camp Lejeune, the Marine Base, was a refuge, others said the it was the source of the outbreak, plague, pestilence, whatever.  The only thing we know is that everyday it’s getting worse and it seems to be sprawling in every direction. The things, the horror we've witnessed imprint themselves in black bloody globs, staining our sleep with gore and bits of flesh, lingering the way vomit does in the back of your throat. 

"John? Are you there?" Emma says. 

I hear her, but I don't. I can't make the connecting. Joe is kicking a rock across the parking lot. I see a twenty something kid, transformed, evolving into something no one thought he could be, not even himself. The fact is, we no longer exist! All we knew, all we thought about us, as people has changed. A simple singularity connects us all now, the will to survive. The how, the why is a greater enegima than it ever was before. Purpose be damned. A hero made in one split second of a decision or casualty a half a second too long.  

"John? Say something."

"Are you safe?" I stammer. 

"Yes. John what is going on? Where are you?" 

"North Carolina. Was attending a conference when it all began."

"I'm scared."

“Me too. Do you have a...I mean, how are you protecting yourself?”

I already know I must reveal my secret, expose her to my shame. 

“There’s a bat, I keep in my car, but I panicked. I’ve been hiding in your basement for days.”

I must tell her. I don’t want to but it’s the only way to keep her safe.  

“Emma, don’t go outside. I need you to listen to me. I need you to go to the attic. In the corner, there’s an old trunk. Inside is a small wooden box. I need you to get it. Can you do that?” 

“Yes, I can.” 

I hear her steps on the hardwood. With each one the static rises and crackles a little more. The signal is fading, along with the chance of disconnect growing and separation hovering on permanences.  I have to do what I can to keep her safe. 

“Emma? You need to set the phone down. We can’t lose the connection!”

“Okay, John.”

I can almost feel her set the phone down with care, like putting a sleeping baby in their crib. Her steps slowly recess and fade away. The attic door squeaks on rusty springs as she pulls the chain and lowers it to the floor. I hear her first step and then she’s gone.

At the top of the attic stairs, our christmas tree, ornaments and tinsel of christmas past, frozen in a time when love breathed a deeper breath within those four walls. Next to it, a bookcase, surrounded by draping and worn out insulation, a makeshift eulogy of a life past and forgotten strun amongst the shelves. Pictures of Emma, age five and up, until there were no more. Pictures of Sabrina and I, when things were...not perfect, but not weary as they soon would become. A collection of memories, more illusion than actual remains now. The trunk in the corner was my grandfather's, a WWI relic. Inside, wrapped in Emma’s favorite blanket is small wooden box finished and stained with a secret. It will feel heavy in her hands and the weight will shift inside when she moves it. She will try to open it but it is locked, the last line of defense and protection against myself.

Joe has wandered a little further down the road, a little too far for my comfort. The Shell station yielded nothing more than a few bottles of water, Red Bulls and potato chips and this landline. A populous on the edge of uncertainty  will strip everything in sight for a chance at survival. A luxury I suppose of being at the beginning of the end in a familiar place and surroundings. I am not. I am out of my element. I am thankful for Joe. Lords knows I wouldn’t have survived this long without him. The sound of footsteps make their way back to my ears in between crunches of static. As Emma picks up the phone Joe’s disappears just out of my view and my nerves begin to rise.

“I have it John, but it’s locked.”

“I know honey. I need you to go into the kitchen now. The reception should reach.” 

Just then a loud thump pounds against my ear. Through many miles of telephone wire, I know exactly what the sound was and where it emanated from. Again it hits the front door with force and I hear the wood in the door frame split. Emma screams, helpless my blood turns cold. 

I don’t know if it’s a looter or a “Z”, either way they are coming through my door.

“Emma, in the kitchen drawer, the one by the stove, are a set of keys to unlock the box.” Another bang against the door and the glass cracks. 

“You have to hurry. Whatever is trying to get in, is gonna get in. You have to accept that baby."

"John I'm scared."

"I know honey but you have to focus. Get the keys and lock yourself in the bathroom." 

My own wits shatter before me as Joe comes running into view. The shotgun bounces heavy on his back and against his head. He's waving frantically and the intensity of his eyes glow even in the daylight. The stretch wiggles it's way up my nose before I even catch eye of the oppressors. We are being hunted. My attempt to keep my Emma safe has now put Joe and me in direct danger. Joe struggles to retrieve the keys to the Impala from his pocket mid stride. We don’t dare try and make a stand and fight. In my haste to stop we didn’t make a thorough sweep of the area. There’s no telling how many there might be wandering, waiting for us to screw up. The knot in my stomach grows and it feels like it might burst right out and onto the dusty phone booth floor.

“I have the keys. There are so many. Which one is it?” Emma squeals in agony. I am painfully aware that I have no time to explain or answer her question. That my time is running out and that I must leave. That this is possibly the last time I will ever hear her voice. That I must leave her to her own, abandon her again. 

“Emma honey, I must go. I’m in danger. I love you so much. Never forget that. Hide and keep yourself safe. I am coming to you. I will come for you.”

“John, wait...I don't know which one. There has to be over a hundred keys!”

Joe is screaming. 

Emma is crying. 

Z’s are quickly approaching. 

My head is caught in the toil.

“Emma, I am sorry honey. I love you. I cannot tell you which one. I don’t know, but one will open it, I promise. I am coming for you.” 

There is no more time. I cannot bring myself to hang the phone up. It seems too final. I let the receiver fall and it bangs against the glass. Joe revs the engine as I spin around the front of the hood. I am cut off from the passenger door by one of them. A mailman, perhaps in his fifties and recently bitten, a Freshy.  He snarls and is quick, not like the others approaching behind him. He bites the air with ferocity and lunges at me. I kick at him, exposing a limb to the fray and a possible bite. I kick again, knocking him off balance enough that he staggers back and falls into another. I grab the door handle as Joe is already pressing the accelerator. The gas station begins to slowly disappear behind us and I catch the phone booth in the side mirror. The receiver still swaying back and forth. Uncertainty on the other end. 

“I will come for you,” I mumble to myself, “I will come for you.”

Fracking

R. Boon

11/17/13

Fracking

2013:  6,526,548

            Seven hours before, the conversation had gone like this:

            “Hey, bossman, you sure we want to do this?  We don’t have clearance to be fracking here.”

            Josh Aaron spit on the ground and flipped Jack off.  “Dumb roustabout.  Do your job.”

            “But aren’t we too near the Lake?  A lot of Dallas water comes from Lake Ray Hubbard.”

            “So what?  We’re just using lake water and a little sand, and it’ll go right back.  Everybody drinks bottled water these days anyhow.”  He checked the well head once more.  “Ready?”

            “Yeah, but boss…”

            Josh patted Jack on the shoulder.  “You saw those ground scans.   There’s a finger of the Barnett Shale over here, and looks like it has an incredible layers of gas in there, if we just bust it up enough.  You just keep that casing stable.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”  Jack hit the switch and the high-pressure pumps kicked in, shaking the ground as the water, sand, chemical mix shot down into the earth.  He gazed away at the canopy of city lights from Dallas-Fort Worth, at the cars racing over the causeway.  He was pretty sure the main line sucking water straight out of Lake Ray Hubbard was illegal. His friends Matt and Pete waved at him from the trailer.  Matt turned on some Sinatra song he was always humming and went in for coffee.  “I get no kick in a plane, / Flying too high with some gal in the sky…”

***

2015:  92, 149, 667 

Around 11 that night, there were pressure changes, a little a first, then wild swings.  Pete was checking the gages, was on the line asking about doing a fast shut-down.  Things smoothed out, then an hour later, all the gauges stopped dead, as if the injection stream was going into an empty pocket, something so enormous there was no resistance at all.   Then flow completely stopped, lurching, pushing back.  Jack could tell some of the casings had buckled.  The ground around the well head shifted, then fell away from their rig, then the rig, the pipes, casings, all were pushed up thirty foot, then pulled down and snapped off.  Jack began running toward high ground.

When he turned to look, the trailer was caught at the edge of the new pit.  He saw Josh’s truck pull up at the service road.  And rising out of the pit, he saw—he shook his head and sniffed the air, wondering if gasses were tricking him.  He saw a swirl of tentacles? Tongues? Sick flesh laced with red and gold energy flashes, like solar flares, and then gaps of dizzying absence.  Each flash scarred away part of Jack’s vision, and radiation began to shrivel lines across his skin.    In his head, Jack heard it announce itself:  “I am A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e, your god returned…”  Jack whimpered and wanted to look away. 

            At the edge of the pit, not floating, but crawling, came a different pulse of darkness, like the sludge of raw oil, convulsing, bulging with cavities and mouths, a stench and a sense of absolute—hunger.  Jack heard again in his head, “I am Thuut, Master Lord of the Dark.  You will feed me.”  An amoebic pod rushed out and pulled Josh from his truck, crushing his legs and dissolving his skin.  Josh kept screaming, until only his head and spine were left and dropped.

On the other side of the pit, A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e  reached out with its tentacles and neatly sliced through the trailer walls, then as quickly sliced through Matt and Pete, sucking, taking something from them, blue and green flashes, folded into the vortex.  Souls, perhaps.  The discarded limbs and parts crawled the ground, searching for each other, combining in random, twitching clumps that scampered off toward the highway.

A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e sniffed the air.  “Three hundred million years, trapped below with our last great feast.  This time there are even more lives to use.”

Jack felt Thuut pulse an eagerness, watched a pod reach out to the Lake.  Where it touched, a pink-orange mist rose and rushed across the city.  Jack could see through Thuut’s mind the joy of dissolving the 6 million people there, leaving them a strange jelly, filled with twitching eyeballs and grasping fingers.  A swamp of boiled flesh, more than Thuut would be able to consume in years.

“You waste them,” said A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e, flaring brighter.

“They are humans, and will breed enough to refill a 100 such cities,” answered Thuut.  “And did you not feel the joy of their agony?  The shattering of all their reason?  How I have hungered for that.”

            “Yet I am the higher being, and you must have my sanction for such events.”

            Jack watched Thuut swell.  He threw up, then found Thuut reaching into his mind, to find other full cities, Houston, Tulsa.  He walked down the hill. “You have no right.  No right to come here.  No right to take away all those lives, to leave nothing.”  He stared at the gods, feeling his face begin to melt.  He felt Thuut’s rage reach out to him.  And felt it stopped.  Stopped by the laughter of A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e.

            “A human claims the value of human life,” laughed A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e.  “It believes they should not simply feed us.  That they should be remembered.  So be it.”

They changed him.  Thuut swirled around him, healed his body and made it unbreakable, immortal, and A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e lashed him with his fire.  “You are now become a god with us.  You will catch the memory of every human death, for all time.”

And the memories, the essence, of the six million recent dead flowed into Jack, and he screamed and wept and crawled away, and hid himself in dark hills and burning forests, but nothing stopped the dead from joining him, for hundreds of years, as A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e and Thuut moved and destroyed most of what humans had built, and deaths soared.

2078:  1,899,443,146

***

            Jack no longer was compelled to follow the swaths of carnage, his feet bleeding, survivors cursing him, stoning him, offering worship, pleading.  He rested in the great desert that had once been the plains of Kansas or Nebraska.  Another joined him in death.

2156:  4,287,231,432

            He spoke with the voice of billions inside him.  “It is enough.  The balance has turned.”  With one collective thought, hard as an obsidian knife, he sliced a deep gash in the earth, and thrust Thuut and A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e back into darkness.  Billions inside him wept and rejoiced.  Jack reminded them, “at 7 billion, we shall have the strength to find their worlds, and destroy them all.” 

More lived, more died, and the vengeful god grew strong.

© 2013, Robert E. Boon