Chapter 2

 

Daniel

 

Daniel wiped his self-winding watch with a microfiber cloth, thankful for the ticking sound that had continued all these years. How long had the doctor been with Aiden? Twenty minutes? Not only did Daniel have a near overwhelming desire to know what was happening, Mira’s foot patrol in their compact living room raised the tension to a near boiling point. If she’d just slow down…The tight bun she’d pulled her dark hair into promised him that her tension and anxiety weren’t going anywhere. They’d been together for twenty-nine years. It was miracle enough they hadn’t killed each other yet.

“Can you please stop pacing?”

She clutched his hand. What she needed most was probably a cigarette, but she didn’t know he’d seen her smoking near the waterfront because he hadn’t said a word to her about it. He hated how she chuffed down cancer, but he couldn’t deny it stabilized her mood. The thought of losing her to something like lung cancer made him sick to his stomach. There was no cure coming. He’d read a few self-help books about relationships that he’d found and kept in the attic, but couldn’t figure out what to do to help her quit. If he asked her what was wrong, she’d stop in place and deny her feelings.

She sat beside him on the loveseat, squeezing his hand hard enough to turn the tips white. “Do you think he’ll be able to help Aiden? I hope so. I want my baby back.”

“Let’s give him some time. We’ll see what happens.” Michael can’t be all evil, can he? Aiden was still in there. Their family DNA was still in there. There was so much he didn’t understand about his son and wondered if he’d ever know. Nobody in his family had ever shown signs of a dissociative disorder. Mira hadn’t known her family well, so she wasn’t certain if any of them had it. Her father had abandoned her when she was a child, fearing she was dying of the Reaper’s Breath and would pass it on to him. Her mood was often a labyrinth of twists and turns, but only the highs and lows of the same person. Never a different person.

Daniel had hoped as Aiden grew, he could articulate what was happening, but he didn’t even remember it. Not the scar he’d cut over Daniel’s eye, the burn he’d left on his mother’s arm, or the animals he’d tortured—he’d remembered nothing. Michael was always to blame—the boy who thought he was eighteen years old despite Daniel knowing Mira had given birth twelve years ago. It was the only child they’d been lucky to have after years of miscarriages, which they assumed resulted from stress and poor nutrition. Her best friend Lily had acted like a midwife, monitoring Mira for blood loss and reassuring her it was okay. Mira wasn’t the only woman to have lost a baby. It was happening all over. Many mothers had died during birth.

Two candles burned in the living room, casting a faint glow on Mira’s dark skin and highlighting some wrinkles that had formed as she neared her fiftieth birthday. One candle smelled like vanilla and the other was unscented. The vanilla candle did little to supply light because of its small wick, but Mira loved the fragrance. She can’t hide the scent of tobacco forever. Though they only had two dozen vanilla candles left, he let her use candles as often as she wanted, keeping quiet about his true thoughts—it was a waste of resources. Supplies ran lower every year with no factories to replenish them. The world functioned on a first come, first serve basis. Except for raiders, which is what he called the people who wandered the cities, stealing from others and often murdering them.

“I hope he can help. I’m scared, Daniel, and I hate saying that.” She paused. “I’m a terrible mother…I’m terrified of my son.” She cried, releasing his hand and covering her face.

Daniel scooted over to her, put his arms around her, and rubbed her shoulders.

“You agree, don’t you? You think I’m a terrible mother?” Loud sobs reverberated through his hand as she struggled to take a breath. She leaned away from him when he didn’t answer soon enough, nearly bent over the armrest. “You can tell me I’m a good mother you know.”

“You’re not a terrible mother. I’m sure Aiden doesn’t think you’re afraid of him.” Daniel knew that’s exactly how Aiden felt. They’d taken enough fishing trips along the river together for Aiden to tell Daniel he wished he could be one person, and that his mother could look at him like Lily looked at her daughter Zoe. Daniel didn’t know what to say to him. Denying it could have fractured the relationship they had, and he’d promised himself he’d be close to his son, that he’d be a better father than his father. Michael changed all of that.

She shook her head and shoved him away as if he’d forced a hug on her she never wanted. He tamed his frustration by trudging into the kitchen. He couldn’t tell her the truth. It would break her heart to hear him say it. Instead, he kept quiet and told her what she needed to hear. To his shame, when Aiden walked into a room after being gone for a time, Daniel felt nervous, too. He would scan Aiden’s eyes, looking for a sign that he wasn’t himself. Michael didn’t come out often, but he was a very different boy: emotionally turbulent, dangerous, and independent beyond his years.

“Can you stay with me? Please?” She chewed her lip so hard she could have been eating steak.

“I’m checking on them,” he forced the words out. Despite the chilly night, sweat trickled down his forehead.

He walked down the short hallway and descended the stairs into the basement, using his hands to search ahead of him—the candles in the other room didn’t provide any light. He heard Mira inch down the stairs toward him. When the wall’s smooth surface gave way to random broken holes, he reached for Aiden’s door, the handle colder than he expected. The chains rattled as if the wind blew it, and he cracked the door open. Silence and darkness.

 “Where are they? Aiden! Aiden! Oh my God. What did Micheal do to the doctor?” Mira stormed past Daniel and across the room, opened the closet door, and checked under the bed as if they’d hidden beneath it.

Daniel stood in stunned silence. A gentle breeze caressed his cheek, carrying with it the scent of pine from the woods. There was a slight gap at the base of the window. They aren’t in the house. Daniel marched to the window, cracking his knee into the nightstand but suffering none of the pain. He shoved the window, and it creaked up with little resistance.

“Where would they go?” Daniel said, his voice tinged with shock. The profound darkness made it impossible to see Mira’s face from the other side of the room, so he braced for the surge of panic that was sure to follow.

“What? Where are they? Why would they leave?”

Were they trying some unorthodox treatment? Hypnosis? Was Doctor Gagnon going to be another victim? He shouldn’t have left them alone. Just like he shouldn’t have left Aiden alone with Mia. He’d known Aiden hadn’t been himself that day. He’d excused Aiden’s behavior as a part of growing up. And Doctor Gagnon had asked us to leave.

“Why aren’t you saying anything? Talk to me! Where are they, Daniel? We shouldn’t have left them alone. I knew it. I knew that doctor would threaten him. He brought Michael out. It’s happening again. Oh God, it’s happening again.” Mira pulled him around to face her with nails that cut as deep as Smokey’s claws.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, ignoring the pain in his arm and the droplets of blood from her grip.

Her mouth hung open. “Do you think he’s dead?”

Daniel almost shouted, “Which one?”

A week ago, they’d had a bright cycle of nights with the full moon—enough to scour abandoned houses a dozen blocks away for canned food, bottled water, and clothes. But those nights had ended, and the moon had almost disappeared at the end of the moon cycle they referred to as the balance. A normal twenty-nine-day cycle in September. Soon, the sliver of moon would disappear, and they’d spend the next sixty days in the eclipsing—inescapable darkness.

None of that mattered now, though, because the damn clouds covered any light they would have had. The darkness posed many risks: broken ankles, raider attacks, wild animals…

“Daniel?” Mira swatted his arm, but he didn’t flinch. What damage had they done by hiding how dangerous Michael was? Mira wanted to tell Doctor Gagnon what Aiden had done, but Daniel convinced her to keep it to themselves so he wouldn’t come with a bias.

They were self-governed, free to choose right from wrong with the only consequence being other people’s reactions. No more court systems or prison sentences, only the raw justice of exile and the knowledge of what you had done. The world was more dangerous than ever. Daniel had kept his family isolated to protect everyone from Michael—had that been the right thing to do?

“Let’s look outside,” he said without a crack in his voice or hint of concern, which he’d learned from years of having been too emotional, saying the wrong thing to Mira, his mom and dad…everyone.

They took the candle, slipped on their ragged shoes—mere sandals now—and stepped into the darkness. He not only tasted the stale air, the aftermath of two days with extreme daytime heat and little rainfall, but saw it in the dusted vegetation. The sound of Mira crying battered him from every direction as she searched in various nooks and crannies—perhaps she thought Aiden and the doctor were part of a rendition of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. He stepped further away from the house, extending his arm to gain maximum advantage of the candlelight, yet it didn’t improve his vision in the distance. Mira’s rummaging was the only sound; no Aiden, no Michael, and no Doctor Gagnon. Daniel walked the perimeter of the house and turned up nothing.

“I don’t understand.” Mira’s voice echoed in the darkness, a sure target for a lurking animal with an appetite, though animal attacks were rare because there weren’t many large carnivores left. Their greatest threat came from wolves. “Could raiders have come for them? No, we would have heard them shouting. They would have come for our things too.”

A wolf had attacked Daniel’s best friend Charlie four or five years ago—so he told the story of his narrow escape from death without a scratch—and Daniel couldn’t shake the idea that a two-hundred-pound timber wolf was coming for them too. Who would the wolf want to eat first? Did it prefer chewing muscle or bones? Although Daniel usually carried a gun like his father had trained him to, he had left it inside the house. The multi-tool strapped to his hip had a knife dangerous enough to give the wolf papercuts.

Daniel brought Mira close. His eyes met hers. Her pupils were dilated even in the dim candlelight. “I don’t think they’re close by, Mira. You should stay home in case Aiden or the doctor returns.” He gripped her shoulder. “Both of us wandering might be more risky than helpful. It’s easy to get lost if you wander a few blocks away, and if raiders find you…”

She stared back at him, and he prepared for a battle to get her to stay inside. “Okay, but when you get tired, come back, and I’ll go out.”

He nodded, skeptical. “Sure.”

She slipped into the house, the door closing with a soft click. He waited a few minutes to relish in the serenity of silence, alert for footsteps or voices in the distance. Mira’s pacing from inside the house, accompanied by a few crashes and curses, was all he heard. He imagined Mira storming through the house, searching and hoping to find him. He enjoyed a moment of solitude and stepped further away from his bungalow, the moisture so thick in the air he could drink from it. His eyes adjusted to the darkness; he saw the empty houses of dead neighbors, which they had long ago scavenged, and remembered the smell of their bodies rotting in their homes before he buried them. Aiden could hide anywhere with the doctor. There was no sign or trace of either to guide him. Daniel’s father had taught him to hunt, to track, but Daniel hadn’t been interested and worked only hard enough to make him happy. The results spoke for themselves. He was outside without a weapon, a map, or a hint of Aiden’s—Michael’s—whereabouts.

“Aiden?” he yelled, scouring the streets, startled by the sounds of broken shingles cutting through the wind and the garbage blowing past. He feared every disturbance, yet desperately waited for Aiden to call his name.

The decision to bring Doctor Gagnon into their home had been his. It would be easy to spiral into a web of doubt. That wouldn’t do Aiden any good. Every good and bad decision he had made was meant to keep his family safe.

Hours passed, and he headed back to the house to see if they had returned. The perpetual darkness made it impossible to see, but daylight would soon force him inside.

When he returned home, he found Mira combing the yard. It took one glance to answer his unspoken question.

“I didn’t see Aiden or the doctor. But it’s very dark out,” he said. If Aiden had become Michael, he’d be back already, with or without the doctor. Michael might be dangerous, but he was still young and had never wandered far. Could Doctor Gagnon have taken Aiden? Maybe Michael had nothing to do with it.

“What do we do, Daniel? Our little boy might have killed the doctor, and he’s out there scared to death.”

The doctor might have killed Aiden, too. In the reverse scenario, they would have found Dr. Gagnon’s body already. “I need a minute to think.” He stepped inside, Mira so close behind him that if he halted, she’d march straight into him.

“You didn’t take a minute while you were out there? Forget it. I’m going.” She stormed back outside without a light to guide her, shouting for Aiden. As quickly as she had walked out, she screamed, ran into the house, and slammed the door.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. His heart kicked up to fight-or-flight gear and his mind wondered if raiders were coming. He did his best to keep his tone neutral.

“Something came for me. I couldn’t tell what it was. It wanted to kill. It was black, definitely black, and like the size of a wolf.”

Daniel saw nothing in the darkness through the living room window and wondered if she had imagined it—she often saw things that weren’t there. The world was so empty it frequently left them jumping at any noise. Before he asked how certain she was that she’d seen something, a scrape sounded from the front door like claws slicing into wooden siding. Thankfully, he had switched out his fragile wooden door with a heavy-duty oak door. It could take a lot of abuse.

“Get in the other room.” He grasped Mira’s arm and pulled her to their bedroom. Behind the slammed door, they only heard their breaths, neither of them able to slow their heart rates. The smell of vanilla vanished, replaced with stale air and rank body odor. Daniel stared at the wall and window, wondering if something might smash through.

Whatever had come to the door must have been discouraged by being locked out. After an hour, Daniel left the room, snatched his rifle from above the fire mantle—not grabbing the rifle on instinct when the thing was at the door was a failure his father would have ridiculed him for—and stepped outside. A sizeable gash ran down the frame’s right side, as if it had given up on the door and tried to cut through the wall. If I would have been quick and smart, I would have killed it and eaten wolf meat for a week. Daniel closed the door and returned to the room. “Whatever was out there, it’s probably still lurking around. We should wait here.”

“What if it killed Aiden? What if that thing killed my son?”

Daniel took her by the shoulders and drew her close, knowing she needed the comfort of his touch. “It’s almost dawn; we can’t do anything to help them right now. I looked everywhere. That thing must have tracked me back to the house, but I didn’t see blood outside or on the doorframe. Mira, we just have to wait it out. Dying won’t help Aiden. He’s still out there.”

They went to sleep together on the bed, Mira’s head resting on his chest, her arm draped across him. Her skin smelled like cigarette smoke. Has it been so long since we’ve been this close? It could be she hadn’t bothered to put on a scented cream, too scared to think of it. His stomach growled to remind him that the last time he ate was before Dr. Gagnon visited. How many hours ago was that? His mouth salivated with the thought of eating some of the smoked fish he’d cooked a few days ago.

They had been lucky as one of the few families immune to the Reaper’s Breath. Many families had lost loved ones or died out. Daniel had been six when a solar event triggered a significant disruption in the Sun’s magnetic field that weakened and destabilized it. When first reported on the news, nobody understood the impact this would have until the instability caused the sun’s outer layers to expand and lose cohesion, leading to the Sun increasing in size. Soon after, scientists reported a surge in solar flares and radiation output. The Sun expanded so far its gravitational field dragged the Earth closer, into a new orbit. It scorched everything in the south. People panicked and raced north.

The supposed savior from human extinction, the United Nations, now included every country in the world. Every populated country. Many countries south of the Equator like Australia and South Africa had emptied. The combined UN genius resulted in many attempts to thwart humanity’s eradication: advanced cooling technologies, ways to shield the Earth, and even options for survival on other celestial bodies.

They designed the Reaper’s Breath—at the time they called it the Helios Vaccine, or HV for short. HV was a gene therapy designed to modify human DNA, enhancing heat tolerance, reducing water requirements and improving resistance to UV radiation. They rushed production under the guise that they’d succeeded with other gene therapies and done it safely before. The UN had no intention of waiting for people to agree or disagree with taking the vaccine, so they released it as an airborne contaminate across the globe. It worked. At first. People better handled the extreme heat.

Less than a year later, HV had killed most of the people on Earth, sparing few. There was nobody left to figure out why some lived and nearly everyone died. The people that died from autoimmune disorders and neurological damage were lucky compared to the mutations.

“Daniel?”

“Yeah?”

“I have to pee,” Mira said.

“Can you hold it?” Toilets had stopped flushing years ago. Daniel had dug several pit latrines down the street in sheds to keep the scent away. The setup was basic: he cut a hole in the shed floor, dug a pit, then placed a toilet seat with legs over the hole and they used it until it filled and he found another shed.

“I’ll try.” Mira sighed.

He stroked her shoulder until he fell asleep. When they woke, the sun was pouring into the room. Daniel’s right eye blurred, and he panicked, thinking a migraine imminent. His migraines came with pain so intense he threw up, bedridden for hours. The only respite was Mira’s deep love, as if him in pain woke her nurturing side, and Aiden’s happiness as he read through book after book in his bedroom and often laughed out loud at the cartoons. Daniel had suffered from migraines since he was seventeen. His father told him medication was too precious a resource after Armageddon, so he had to fight through it—migraines were a regular part of life. Daniel rubbed his eyes and blinked, and the blurriness dissipated. Thank Christ.

Mira shifted on the bed. “No. No.” She pulled away, rushed to the window and closed the curtains, then ran out of the room and down the hall, probably hoping Aiden had come home. The bedsheet was damp with sweat from the heat of the sun that had poured through the window. Daniel’s watch read 11:36 am, which meant the sun had been up for hours. And if Aiden wasn’t home or hadn’t found shelter, he’d be burned, probably dead. Daniel swallowed hard and fought tears. He found Mira in the hallway downstairs, slouched against the wall, rubbing the scar on her arm.

“It will be okay, Mira. We’ll use the daytime to prepare ourselves to go out tonight and find them.”

“We don’t have a goddamn clue what’s going through Michael’s mind. Where do we even start?”

“What if Michael had nothing to do with Aiden’s disappearance?” The horrific guilt they would feel if Michael hurt Doctor Gagnon…Worse is what it would do to Aiden to know a part of him killed the doctor. Daniel had never told Aiden the truth of what happened to Mia. He didn’t want Aiden to know what Michael had done, another burden a young boy didn’t need to face. Mia’s death was Daniel’s fault. Even Mira didn’t know the truth about that night. For his own sake, Daniel desperately considered alternatives. “If the doctor took Aiden somewhere, where would he go?”

Mira shot her arms up in a gesture that said, how the hell should I know? and walked out of his sight.

Fine. He’d let her pack her bag and work through her emotions before he talked to her again. If Michael was in control, Aiden could be anywhere. But if Doctor Gagnon was in control, they could check with the Wilsons first to see if the doctor had returned there. Doctor Gagnon had been with Zoe the night before, and the Wilsons had set up the meeting. If anyone knew where he was, or where he would head next, they would.

Mira burst into the room, eyes wide. “What about Novaria?”

Daniel sighed. “What about it? We don’t even know it exists. All we know is that it’s a little walled-up city that doesn’t accept new people in the community. It’s days away. Let’s start with the Wilsons.”

He shook his head, but unwilling to dismiss anything, he asked Mira, “Why would Doctor Gagnon go to Novaria?”

Horror reflected on Mira’s face. “For trade.”

Daniel didn’t believe that. “They don’t want new people. They have their perfect little world.”