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  Amy twisted her lip at the request then rolled her eyes in mild irritation before leaving to get the champagne.

  “She really is quite lovely, though not much of a talker.”

  “I don’t know if I’ve seen the lovely part.”

  Seth laughed. He seemed to find it good to laugh.

  Harold hoped John and Rosa would be with Seth. It would have made everything perfect. Yet Seth rid him of that fantasy.

  “I don’t know where they are, Harry, I wished I did. Now tell me what you’ve been up to and don’t leave out the details. Details are what make life interesting.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Over the next couple of days Harold eat what they brought him and exercised and soon he was back to his old self. Having Seth around to talk to and to joke with had made all the difference and although the lingering effects of his withdrawal had vanished the headaches were coming back with a vengeance, yet Seth had a solution.

  “Amy got me those inhibitors John spoke of. They’re effective just like John said they would be in getting that sun monster out of your head, but I’ve had memory problems on occasion so I use them sparingly. I think it is because I have an old brain. You know, memory can be a problem anyway for older people. They might work just fine for you.”

  “Or the memory problem is a dangerous side effect.”

  “I think it’s worth the risk if we can get pass the borders of the city without experiencing the kind of headaches that thing can devise that make migraines appear like child’s play, don’t you?”

  “How was she able to get the inhibitors? We haven’t been—

  Seth interrupted him smiling like a contented father, “Do you remember what John said about autistics, how their brains are different from normal brains. I don’t know what part of the brain it is that controls emotion but theirs is underdeveloped in that area and maybe that is the key to why that thing can’t get into her head. She told me they already tried to change her and it didn’t work. Anyway she is able to travel unhindered. She’s been outside the city.”

  Harold was astonished. It didn’t seem possible anyone could do that. He probably would have reacted the same way if Seth told him Amy had a third eye.

  “I gave her John’s directions for the Edwards Research Laboratory south of here and she said it was basically a cinch getting in. There were no guards and the security alarms and cameras weren’t functioning and she found the codes to the backup lock mechanisms.”

  “She couldn’t have walked there. It has got to be what… twenty miles.”

  Seth shook his head. His smile growing even wider, “She is full of lots of talent, Harry. Her father was a mechanic and a master criminal on the side. He taught her how to start vehicles without a key or key fob. She talks about him as if he was a hero to her. He glows in her presence. She said he didn’t treat her like any dumb girl, that he respected her. It is one of the few times she has spoken more than a sentence to me and with such enthusiasm you wouldn’t know it was her speaking. Anyway, it turns out a lot of people have abandoned their vehicles with a full or half tank of gas in them. She’s had her pick throughout the city. I guess religious freaks don’t have much use for transportation or gas once they’ve been reborn. Did you notice you don’t hear many planes or helicopters flying overhead?”

  “I don’t think I’d fly if I knew that thing was up there.”

  “That’s a point I hadn’t considered.”

  “But if she can drive away from here free and clear why doesn’t she do that? What’s keeping her here…you?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. She has been roaming in and out long before we met.”

  “Then what is it? I know if I could be gone, I’d be gone.”

  “I can’t say, and there’s no reason to look a gift horse in the mouth. She’s here to help us. We can get out of this city and I think now is the time we did that.”

  “You mean she’s willing to help you. All this was planned before I came, wasn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The point is you’re here and now all three of us can go together.”

  “You sound like you wish we’d left yesterday.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought that a week ago but events have changed. There isn’t as much noise out there and the word is Jacob’s armed revolution is faltering. I still have old friends in among his group who update me now and again. Morale is bad and there have been desertions. The sunbies will have control of the city soon, you can bet on that. Most everyone is dead or changed. We might not have the choice to leave if we don’t do it soon.”

  “But there might be others we can take with us. There’s John and Rosa for one. I think I should try to find them.”

  “I thought you’d say that. You’re a good lad, Harry.”

  “Just give me a little time. Two days maybe.”

  “You have my blessing, but any more time than that would be dangerous. Amy can be ready in hours supplying us with a fully loaded vehicle. Food, water, a first aid kit, weapons which I’m not happy about but she insists on, medicine, the whole shebang. All we got to do is be there.”

  “Alright, I getcha’, two days. I’m as ready to get out of this city as you are. Now where are those inhibitors?”

  “It’s getting bad, huh?”

  “Bad is not the word. I never knew how easy I had it before.”

  “That stuff is addictive, Harry. Jacob should have never allowed for its usage. You can’t just blur the edges of the intrusion you have to wipe it out entirely.”

  “Do they know about the inhibitors?”

  Seth sighed, “I’ve thought about that but there isn’t enough. I wish there was.”

  During the time Harold was recovering and Seth and he were becoming reacquainted Amy had stayed in the background keeping her covert status while eyeing Seth with respect and Harold with trepidation. Harold, though, learned to like the awkward way she spoke and the way she hid from him. There was something very curious about Amy and something loveable in the way she spurted about. She was like a firefly, lighting here and there, and her unease made him chuckle.

  Harold bet that she probably liked bopping him over the head and she would probably bop him over the head again if he tried anything, yet he was intrigued.

  He wondered if she knew how pretty she was, how charming her laugh was on those rare occasions when he could get her to laugh. In some odd sense he missed her when she wasn’t around. She was different from any girl he has known and he knew she was attracted to him. That lack of eye contact and the blushing were clear signs. She was like a little girl unable to express her feelings.

  Like Seth said she’s autistic so Harold had to be careful with her.

  He has never known anyone who was autistic. John told him about how the mind of autistics worked to varying degrees so her behavior toward him made sense. She was the complete opposite to Sara. Someone more in league with him.

  It’s weird how quickly things could change, but he wanted to know her and he meant really know her. It wasn’t just her proximity or her strange idiosyncrasies that attracted him, it was something more and he need to know what that something was. It couldn’t be that he was in love with her. No, he had to put that thought right out of his mind if that was the case, that was crazy, just plain crazy.

  Colder Avenue had suffered from the after effects of the fighting. There was debris and devastation, broken windows, shattered pavements, rattled houses, and pools of blood and clothing everywhere. An avenue pitched into the hell of warfare. Yet among the devastation you could see a few courageous souls surveying the damage with heavy hearts. Among these courageous souls there was Adam with a rifle slung to his back looking dirty and worn and weighted down with a responsibility he probably never imagined, yet when he glimpsed Harold eyeing him from a few feet away he smiled in his old churlish way like a boy grown too old too fast.

  “Good old Harry. The guy with nine lives.”

  “I’m using them up quickly. How about you
?”

  “I’ve had the singular honor of becoming our group’s new leader.”

  He didn’t seem too happy to say this.

  “Jacob never survived the blast. I guess you have a right to know. We did everything we could. I’ve had to improve morale. It’s not easy.”

  Hearing the news only confirmed what Harold feared was true.

  “Now don’t take what I’m saying the wrong way. I’m not blaming you.”

  “I never liked the guy but I think I might have judged him too quickly.”

  “We all have our demons.”

  “Yes we do, and on that note do you think you might visit your father? He misses you.”

  Adam’s face broke out in an astonishment that quickly faded, “I knew you two would hook up somehow. You don’t have to tell me how this happened. It’s probably better I don’t know. I don’t think he wants to see me. Besides, there’s too much to do.”

  Harold saw the ring on his left hand and felt a stab of despair rise up in him as he thought of Sara. The ring shined amid all the dirt and the scattered damage to Adam’s skin.

  “You two got married I see?”

  Adam brought up his hand and danced his fingers with pride before Harold’s face. The ring glowed in the wave of his movement and the glow had the effect of dispelling all his grief as he grinned with the undying bliss of someone in love, “She consented. It was a short ceremony but a memorable one. We took a lot of flak for wanting to be married, but whatever happens happens, right? We’ll still have each other.”

  Like someone blindly snatched into the throes of love he was unaware of the effect he was having on Harold.

  “So, there’s no end to your betrayal.”

  Adam darted his eyes at his old friend in a tumult of confusion that turned to anger, “I didn’t betray anyone, least of all you. This was for the good of all of us. I can’t help it if you’re too thick-headed to understand that.”

  “And who’s this ‘us’ Adam? Where are they?”

  Adam became furious, lifting and pointing his rifle at Harold with menace.

  “And where were you?! Tell me that coward!”

  Harold eyed the nozzle that was pointed at his face and didn’t flinch.

  “Go ahead, shoot me, if that’s the only thing you know to do.”

  Adam sneered and lowered the rifle, pushing Harold away from him, “Go on, get out of my sight! You make me sick!”

  Harold stood there for a moment before giving up. In his mind he could hear and feel the blast as if he was reliving it over and over again. It would never leave him, all those people who died trying to protect him, but he couldn’t express how he felt to Adam. Adam had names for people like him and he was through listening.

  As he left Colder Avenue he happened to run into an ongoing battle being waged in the main section of the city. Both the changed and unchanged were armed and fighting at full bore intensity, unafraid and assured of their cause, yet the unchanged were outnumbered and in amongst the fighting a giant golden spider roamed and pounced on the newly dead to feed and to give encouragement to its troops. Living or dead, it thrived on the energy humans could provide and while Harold saw the spider the sunbies saw a golden man praying over the dead.

  The horrific sight laid waste on Harold’s soul. So much had changed in two months but he should have known this was the way it was going to be, he had seen it in his grandmother’s vision. Yet imagining such a possibility wasn’t the same as seeing it. Seth was right, they didn’t have much time.

  A rifle shot cut close by. He could hear the zing of the bullet zip past him shattering a window. He leaned in to catch a sniper on the shopping plaza’s roof and swiftly sped for cover as another bullet grazed the brick cornice of a building he took cover in. He’d have to get out of there real quick or he would become one of the dead being chopped to bits and tossed into the belly of that monster. There was no rest for anyone, even the dead. But getting out from his hiding place proved harder than getting in and once out he had to zigzag like mad and use the vehicles on the street for additional cover but he finally found an alley then a cross street that got him out of the mess though he was out of breath when he was finished and had to rest.

  CHAPTER 10

  Seth said that Liam could come with them if he wanted to and Harold felt he owed his uncle the chance to decide even if he wasn’t sure the old man was capable of leaving what had become his full time sanctuary. Harold would have to convince him somehow. After all he was the only family Harold had left. Yet as he stood in front of the bar and looked up at the windows something was nagging at him. He couldn’t figure out what it was but something was telling him to turn around and go, to leave before it was too late, and when he later unlocked the door to the apartment that something pressed against him yet again and if he hadn’t witnessed the chaos before him he might have backed away. The apartment was in a terrible mess. The table was overturned and the camera was smashed. The mirror on the other side of the table was shattered into pieces. There were trails of blood on the carpet and dust and old torn up corpses of mice peppered about, but the most horrendous sight of all came when Harold saw the body lying on the floor in a fetal position. He gasped as he got a good look at it and wanted to cry. The whole side of his uncle’s face was bloodied and the gun that had shattered his skull was still in his hand. It’s no wonder he didn’t want to come in. Something had indeed been trying to warn him; perhaps it had even been someone. Hadn’t he felt that pressure that push as he first came in, and hadn’t he also heard a voice, a voice that sounded an awful lot like his grandmother’s telling him to go back. Could he be mistaken? He didn’t think he was.

  There was a piece of paper lying beside his uncle’s shoulder. He didn’t think he had the strength to lift it into his hands but he eventually found the strength.

  Sorry nephew,

  It’s time I joined Adelia. I hope I’m sent to the right place. I should have done this long ago. I can’t live this way anymore. This was the only way it couldn’t get to me. My mind is mine now and if I’m cold by the time you read this then I’ve succeeded in fooling it. Take care and if you can find it in your heart to forgive me please do. You know I loved your mother and you and I always will.

  There was no signature but Harold didn’t expect there would be. His uncle hated the use of unnecessary words. Besides the love part was all that was needed. If only he had got here a little earlier.

  He could hear his grandmother weeping at his back and as he heard her he felt the tears welling up in him as well. He made no effort to stem the flow that poured from him as his whole body shook from the tenderness and the sadness he felt for his uncle. He remembered how he was and maybe how he’d been at the end. A good soul all in all who had been twisted into something unrecognizable like so many of us have.

  As Harold reached out to his uncle to be able to touch him one last time he could feel how cold he was. He had got his last wish. Leave it to him to find an angle that was both crazy and dignified.

  Harold decided there and then that he would bury Liam next to his Aunt Adelia at Hope Cemetery come what may but he would need a vehicle first.

  It took a lot of convincing by Seth to get Amy to agree to steal a Ford Ranger for the task. Seth helped Harold lift Liam into the back. They covered up his head the best way they could. He was stiff and heavy but they managed it. Amy powered up a backhoe at the cemetery and Harold dug the hole with directions from Amy. Apparently she had been trained to operate a backhoe as well. Afterwards Harold said a few words and prayed for his uncle’s soul. Seth came up with an appropriate passage from the bible and they stood around in silence and respect. The wind heating at their backs as the distant sound of gunfire disturbed the silence.

  Amy surprised Harold when she grabbed violets from a nearby gravesite and distributed them on his uncle’s and his aunt’s grave. It was a kind thing to do even if it wasn’t ethical.

  When she stood up from the grave her eyes caught on
his as if seeking approval and when he smiled she smiled in turn. Maybe it hadn’t taken all that much convincing after all.

  Harold spent all of the next day in search of John and Rosa. Amy helped even though she knew Rosa had become an earth mother of sorts to the sunbies while John was heading the faction seeking peace among the group. It was a small faction but their god was playing the two-sided card most gods play in encouraging the separate ideals. A god must be merciful and ruthless if he is to maintain credibility and since the faction on the wrong side of the equation in his view was so weak he saw no need to change his stance as long as there was still a ripe supply of human energy for him to consume.

  Maybe it would be the right thing to do to tell Seth and Harold the truth but she would rather spare their feelings. They had so little to believe in so why not give them this one thing.

  When the whole day had gone by without success Harold had finally told Seth he was ready. They would leave once Amy found a replacement for the Ranger which had a bad fuel pump.

  In the meanwhile, Harold was doing all he could to gain Amy’s attention, trying to extend that smile he saw on her face into something bigger. So he would purposely stand in her way and wouldn’t let her pass until she made eye contact with him. She had punched him in the gut one time for doing it when he became an expert at forecasting her moves and she couldn’t slip past him, but he could see that she was weakening. He could even catch a smile here or there though he dared not touch her, not just yet anyway.

  Seth heard their squabbles and was delighted by them. There was nothing better than young love even in this twisted and distorted state. And though he was familiar with her anger and his acts of innocence he told Harold when he should let up. He knew Amy’s limits better than Harold did. He could sense them in the tone of her voice and in her movements. The little mumbling terrors that sometimes left her frozen, almost distraught.