Variance - Book 1, Issue #12

   Annie, Crowley, Laura, and the National Guard soldiers arrived at base camp 45 minutes after Veverka had dropped dead.  The scene was dismal and bleak: four nomadic huts had been set up just inside the Potawatomi Woods.  They were the size of old schoolhouses, but could be be put up and taken down in less than an hour.  Soldiers had used them in the Middle East, and now the National Guard was using them to defend against the Variants. 

   The Humvee parked in front of the second hut.  Annie noticed four National Guard soldiers standing in a semi-circle near a poorly engineered fire pit.  All but one were smoking.  The one who wasn’t smoking was a sickly-looking boy, no more than 19 years old.  He looked terribly pale and shell-shocked.  Annie could sympathize.  Jesus, wouldn’t anyone?

   “Everybody off,” the man on the Humvee ordered.

   Annie helped Crowley and Laura down from the be and led them inside the hut.

   “My god…” Crowley muttered upon entering.

   The hut was crammed with dozens of survivors.  It looked like a refugee hut, packed to the gills with broken, disparaged souls.  Mothers held their children while fathers paced feverishly next to them.  Some of the survivors had dried blood stained across their clothes.  Others seemed to be in a catatonic state, rocking back and forth like laughing maniacs.

   “This looks like a cattle cage,” Crowley remarked.  He picked up Laura and propped her on the inside of his elbow.  

   “Who are these people, Daddy?” she asked.

   “These are people who need help, sweetie.”

   “Do we need help, Daddy?” she asked.

   Crowley looked at his daughter and cupped her left hand in his.  He kissed her little fingers as tears formed on the inside of his eyes.  “No, sweetie, we’re okay,” he told her.

   “Is Mommy meeting us here?” Laura asked.

   Annie saw the tears that had welled in the pits of his eyes fall down his cheeks.  It broke her heart.  Crowley couldn’t formulate a response, all he could do was bury his face in his daughter’s neck and cry.

   “I’m going to find out what’s going on,” Annie said.  “Try and find a place where she can rest.”

   Crowley nodded, wiped the tears from his eyes, and went off with Laura.

   Outside, Annie saw the man on the Humvee speaking to the four soldiers by the fire pit.  He, too, was smoking a cigarette, and, as she approached them, she could see the burning white stick quivering in his hand.  

   “Excuse me,” Annie said.

   The man on the Humvee turned to her, a grim look in his eyes.  “Yes, ma’am?”  She could tell the man’s patience was fading, and probably had been for some time.  He tried to put on his best reassuring smile, but all that came out was a slight part of the lips and a gap where she could see his bottom teeth.

   “I was wondering if somebody could tell me what’s going on.”

   The man inhaled, but said nothing.

   “Please, I’d really like to know what’s happening.”

   “So would I,” the man said.

   “These people need information,” said Annie.  “They deserve information.”

   The man looked at the four other soldiers, all of whom gave him the same noncommittal grunt.

   “Look, I just saw you gun down my neighbor in the place I call home—“

   “—Called home,” one of them interrupted.

   “Shut your yap,” the man snapped.  He turned back to Annie.  “Nobody knows what the hell is going on, sister.  It’s like some outbreak.  Only nobody can figure it out.”

   “Is there anything they do know?”  She took a step closer to him and dropped her tone.

   “Listen, you shouldn’t worry,” he told her.  “The best thing you can do now is to go back inside and try and help out with the others.”

   “You’re not getting rid of me until you start giving me some answers, Mr…”

   The man smiled.  He placed the cigarette at the corner of his mouth and held out his hand.  “Name’s Porter,” he said.  “Pleasure.”  He looked around at their surroundings and shrugged.  “Well, I guess it’s only sort of a pleasure.”

   She took his hand in hers. “Annie Walker.”  Then she, too, looked around and shrugged.  “Now please, Mr. Porter, I’d really like to know what’s going on.”

   He sighed.  She thought he might tell her to scram or get lost, but was surprised when he put his arm inside her elbow and led her away from the others.  He stuffed out his cigarette and leaned so close to Annie she could smell the terrible smokiness on his breath.  “The CDC is denying any sort of outbreak or epidemic.  When all this started, they did a few atmospheric tests but didn’t find any irregularities.”

   “When did this all start?” she asked.

   “On the record, a week ago.  Off the record?  Who fucking knows?  All we do know is, people started dying—and people started dying fast.  The murders caught CDC’s eye first, but what they’re not telling the public is that there has been a tremendous spike in aneurism deaths ever since the attacks started.  They’re not sure how the aneurisms and the attacks are related, but they do know they are related.  That’s what they’re trying to weed through now.”

   “So they’re still working on it?  Is there a cure?”

   Porter took another cigarette from his pack and she saw that his hands were still quivering.  He went to put the smoke in his mouth, but it fell from his fingers and hit the ground.  “I don’t know, Ms. Walker.  And that’s the god’s-honest-truth.”

   Annie glanced back at the huts.  “So what now?”

   “We wait for the military to tell us what to do.  Or the DOD.  Or the CDC.  Hell, we’ll listen to just about anybody at this point.  Frankly, Ms. Walker, everybody’s scared shitless.  We’ve never seen anything of this magnitude and nobody knows how we can fix it.”  He bent down and picked up his cigarette.  “One thing's for sure though: things are fixin' to get a lot worse, before they get better.  I ain't never been so god damn scared.”

   She looked deep into his eyes, but saw only small, black marbles staring back at her.  The Hell Porter had seen over the last hour had snatched the soul from his body.  He lit the cigarette with those awful, trembling hands.  

   If the cigarettes didn’t get him, Annie thought, the Hell surely would.

   The cigarettes would be of little concern, however, because Porter and the other Potawatomi survivors would be dead by nightfall.

   And on and on it goes…