Canis Latrans
© Copyright 2005,
Canis Latrans
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission from the author.
Prologue
Fields of Power
Hubert Trang was nothing
more than a student of martial arts in northern Virginia when the plagues
arrived. Envisioning himself as a great
master of empty handed combat, he was too absorbed in hand-held gaming toys to
be anything close to that. Nevertheless,
he used what money he saved from various dead-end jobs to continue lessons.
He was working in pizza
delivery while the influenza outbreak was in full swing. Traffic in Arlington was a mess that winter,
tied up constantly with cold slush and emergency vehicles. But that hadn’t stopped the pizza business
from flourishing. If anything, delivery
was up as a result of the illness.
People didn’t want to go out. It
was too dangerous.
The full impact of what
was happening came clear to Hubert when he made his last delivery. People were lying in the street and on the
sidewalks, as Hubert pulled his old Toyota pickup to a squeaky halt outside the
delivery address. The man who had 30
minutes before ordered two extra large “Meat-eater’s Paradise” pizzas was
lodged in the front door, choking on his own spit. Something told Hubert that this wasn’t influenza. He backed down the walkway and got into his
rusty truck.
By the time he returned
to the shop, people everywhere were running.
They ran in many directions, but mostly they ran toward the closest edge
of town. Others were lying where they
collapsed, incapable of running. Still
others stood where they were, looking around in wonder, emotionally incapable
of movement. As Hubert stepped out of
his truck, watching the scene unfold, he became one of the later. He stood for the better part of an hour,
watching people die before his eyes.
Hunger and thirst
eventually pulled Hubert from his reverie.
He began working on the pizza he had tried to delivery, and grabbed a
can of warm soda from the passenger foot-well of his truck. He saw no point in running. He had been exposed to whatever it was, and
he knew he was about to die. Might as
well die in “Meatlover’s Paradise.”
But he didn’t die. In fact, as
the days went on, he never even got sick.
From his apartment he occasionally saw the furtive movements of
Arlington’s remaining population, but there were desperately few of them. Though he could not care less about his dead
co-workers, or his missing parents and siblings, he did miss his girlfriend -
for obvious reasons. He went to her
place once, hoping she was still alive, but after seeing her in less than
inviting condition, he never went back.
Eventually he moved into more centrally located digs, hoping to find
somebody else he could hook up with.
He found a penthouse suite at the top of a hotel, which worked for a
while until he got tired of climbing all those stairs. The electricity in town failed soon after
everyone left. A more accessible suite
near street level in the same hotel served as his headquarters for the better
part of that winter and some of spring.
Over that space of time, Hubert scoured the city in his truck, and
finally on foot, looking for people.
At one point, the creepiness of being alone for so long in a big city got
to Hubert, and he procured a sword from a cutlery place at the local mall. The blade at his side provided welcome
feelings of security, despite his continued desire to learn weaponless defense,
and he took to wearing it every time he left the hotel.
When not out and about, Hubert practiced with the sword in front of a
large, mirrored wall in his compartment, and over a period of months, he became
at least somewhat graceful in his movements with it - not that he knew anything
about using it for combat. His
appearance was impressive, if not masterful.
One May morning - Hubert thought it might be Easter Sunday, but he wasn’t
sure - his wanderings took him into the vicinity of a large Episcopal
church. Like the rest of the city, it
seemed empty. The front door was
unlocked, and he went in - treading silently past the pews, and looking at the
painted walls in silent expectation. He
was not a Christian - his family had been Buddhists in Vietnam, but he himself
was without any formal practice of any religion. Still, the stain glass windows were beautiful. The dust rose in quiet clouds about him to
form diagonal pillars of sunlight. No
one had come back to this place in the months after the plagues hit. Hubert walked all the way to the platform at
the rear. Dusty, gilded purple hung everywhere,
augmenting the myriad religious symbols.
Impressive, but ultimately wrong.
There was no savior here.
Only myself.
He
left the deserted building, starting back toward the downtown area as before,
when another thought came to him.
I was saved for some purpose.
On
a whim, he returned to the church.
Perhaps this place could be put to some use, despite its flawed
purpose. Backing away from the details,
Hubert discovered the church sported an old-fashioned bell tower. It was an anachronism to be sure, but Hubert
found immediate use for it. He
tentatively pulled the rope still attached to the single bell, and the strike
of the clapper cleanly reverberated as if it was in his head. With that sound, something changed within
Hubert. It was as though a switch, long lying latent, had finally been turned
on. Any indecisiveness or regret
instantly vanished. Hubert continued
pulling the cord for the next half hour, and the ringing could be heard over
most of the city. There was no
competition to it.
Finally
spent, and bored, he stopped, and walked to the front of the building. Stepping out the great doors, he discovered
the better part of 100 people standing on, or converging upon, the front steps.
At
first surprised, Hubert pulled out his sword in a gesture of defense. Then he realized that these people were no
threat to him. They were drawn to his
call. He had power over them. He called, and they had answered. In passing, he noticed that the group was
almost exclusively of Asian descent.
There was definitely a selective process going on.
We were chosen.
Suddenly
he found himself raising the sword over his head, pointing to the sky. Words were coming from his mouth - words
that seemed to be coming from somewhere inside.
“The
old world is dead! We have been
selected to rule the new one! Today,
the task has been brought before us to tear down this old world. Together, we shall create the seven shining
cities, and rule them in splendor for all eternity! This I promise, as your new king. Are there any here who would speak otherwise? Any of you who wish to challenge my
authority?”
The
crowd was silent.
“Assemble
here tomorrow at the sound of the bell.
I will begin your training. We
will become the greatest army the world has ever seen.”
He
turned and walked back into the church.
Moving to the center of the great hall, he scanned the room for a table
large enough for planning and administrative purposes. He would need such tools and more for his
new kingdom. A light from the front indicated
the doors were opening once more. A man
stood briefly outlined by the sun.
“Sir,”
the young man said, “I know where we can get horses.”
The
King needed horses.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ten
turns of the seasons later, the King was firmly in control of the southeastern
coastline, from Maryland to Florida. As
his army moved from place to place, they carried a message of death and rebirth
wherever they traveled. The disease
that they were immune to was deadly to most of the inhabitants. And those that survived either swore fealty
to the new king, or were cut down where they stood.
The
first of the King’s great cities began to take shape outside the remains of
Atlanta. The King, who had officially
changed his name to something he found more suitable, was in the process of
selecting his second wife, while the first was busily cementing her position by
trying to produce a son. It was a
heady, creative time.
The
rest of the south was in the midst of a bloody civil war. Racially divided, its outcome was still
undecided. The King would have a say in
how it turned out, as he consolidated his position.
Survivors
who had come from the west told of another kingdom claiming to be the United States. The King viewed this new country as a threat
to his authority and a challenge to his strength. Surrounded now by loyal and talented strategists, plans were
begun that would take another decade to unfold, but the challenge would be met,
and the threat destroyed. They had no place in the world the King envisioned.
Spring 2041
Chapter 1
You Can’t Go Back
There’s no reliving the past. You wouldn’t want to anyway.
The Mojave Desert looked silly covered in snow. Early morning found, between the endless yellow dirt and the
drifting pure white mantle, a comical contrast that defied reason. The wind, great equalizer that it was,
seemed busy in its attempt to mix the virgin water dust into the anhydrous
soil. Surely there must be some way to
get things back to the way they were supposed to be. The snow, though no longer falling, continued to winnow away from
the rocky particulates. Its appearance
in this place would not be denied.
Appearances can be deceiving though.
As hilarious as the scene was, it was a potentially deadly
scenario. The humidity was still quite
low, and any unprepared humans in the area would find the wind quickly robbing
them of both moisture and body heat.
Two humans were in fact
on the scene, waiting out the wind in their tiny, orange mountaineer’s
tent. Partially obscured by a drift
forming in the lee of the dome, the tent provided a point of opalescent glow in
the bleak terrain – quite fetching, but not entirely out of place in the circus
landscape. Fittingly, the tent
manufacturer had provided its name, ‘Big Top’, in large, black letters printed
boldly on the upper portion of the exterior.
Nearby, the ghost of an
ancient Powerwagon rested unevenly on its three good and one flat tire. Clearly this was the circus train. But where were the tracks? In fact, bad visibility, coupled with
twenty-odd years of no road maintenance, had lead to a slight deviation from
the travelers’ southward course during the previous evening. Further examination would find the road
faintly visible not more than 100 yards distant from the truck’s current
location, and easy to attain, once the flat tire was repaired or replaced. But that would require some attention by the
tent’s occupants.
Faint stirrings visible
through the orange fabric of the ‘Big Top’ indicated that the clowns were at
last greeting the day. One was urgently
trying to attract the attention of the other, who was not reacting.
“Taine! Come on!
Wake up! This is really starting
to freak me out!”
Joanne gave the still
form or her companion a series of bone-jarring shoves, that finally got a
semi-intelligent response.
“What?” Taine’s body softened as he came to full
consciousness, and his eyes opened to take in the view. Joanne looked deeply disturbed, but somehow
Taine couldn’t quite fathom what the problem was.
“It happened again,” she
said.
“What happened?”
“You blacked out
again. You were completely out for the
rest of the night after we got settled in.”
“You… You didn’t try anything?” Taine seemed puzzled.
“No. Not like the last time. I was just trying to stay warm.”
“You didn’t touch me,
right?”
“Taine, I had my arms
and legs wrapped around you. I was
cold!”
“But you didn’t… touch
me. You know…”
“I don’t know. I might have. I just needed a cuddle.
Besides, how can this cause you to black out?” Joanne reached down and grabbed Taine’s penis in her hand. Taine closed his eyes and went stiff.
“Taine this is not
funny! Cut it out!”
But Taine was out cold
again.
If some clown screams in
the middle of the Mojave Desert, in a circus tent covered with snow, and no one
was there to hear it, did it make a sound?
Anyway, half an hour
later, a thickly-bundled harlequin trudged toward the truck through the crispy
snow. It was still below freezing, but
this fact did not seem to discourage the figure from her perceived task. After vociferously grappling with the back
of the truck, the performer produced a tool kit, and with it began the
laborious project of lifting the truck and changing the single flat tire. The project involved several kicks to the
old tire, some spinning around, a lot of hand-waving, and an entertaining
selection of coughs, grunts, and hair-pulling screams. Yet within an hour, the skit was completed,
to the entertainment of no one in particular.
The figure leaned exhausted against the frost-adorned fuselage and
stared back at the tent in perplexed concentration. Finally she moved slowly back to the ‘Big Top’ with measured
determination, unzipping the tent door to allow the freezing wind to penetrate
the tent interior fully.
“Rise and shine,
Mountain Boy! Time to get your fuckin’
ass out of bed! We gotta get out of
this fuckin’ snow before we fuckin’ freeze to fuckin’ death!”
“Jesus Christ!” The tent responded. Taine was awake again.
With Joanne at the
wheel, the truck regained the now-visible road, and the caravan got moving
again toward the south. Joanne could
heat the cab with remains of her anger, while Taine sheepishly stared out the
windshield. The diminutive pass in the
Rand Mountains was behind them now, but the day before it had foiled their
attempts to get past to the north. With
the knowledge that higher and more treacherous terrain lay between them and
their destination, they had wisely turned around. It was probably the wisest thing they had done during the two
weeks since leaving the Wizard’s home in Griffith Park. Stopping in Morongo Valley to get their
supplies was the second wisest. They
would head back there now to wait out the late winter storms.
The sky cleared, and the
signs of the road began to slip away under the glare of the ubiquitous frozen
icing. Joanne slowed the truck down to
a crawl as she squinted into the late morning light. Taine offered her some shades, collected from their trip back
from LA.
“Here. These will help.”
“Thanks. They do.”
More quiet.
“Taine, you know we’ve
really got a problem here.”
“What kind of problem?”
“We have a problem with
the fact that every time I make a move on you, you faint!”
“I do not!”
“Yes! You do!
And don’t deny it. I can recount
the times, if you like.”
“No thanks,” Taine said
tersely. He was uncomfortable with the
subject. “Does sex have to be a part of
our relationship?”
“Siddies! God, Taine!
A few months ago we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We’re young and in lust, or so I
thought. What the heck is your
problem?”
Taine pushed himself
into the far corner of his car seat. He
didn’t know where else to go. Telling
Joanne about his experiences with the angel required Taine to go back to the
dark places in his mind still haunted by his Cynamid captor, Uncle Christ. It was a scary place that he didn’t want to
dwell in.
Joanne saw his face go
pale. “Taine, what is it? Something about your captivity?”
“It’s hard to talk about
it,” he said, without commitment.
“To me? Or just talking about it at all?”
“Just thinking about
it…”
That set Joanne back for
a while. She concentrated on the road,
which was changing yet again as the temperature rose above freezing. The road was easier to see, but the dirty
snow became mud on the windshield, and visibility in general was
difficult. The two stopped, and
sacrificed some clean water to anoint the glass. Wiping it squeaky clean, they each took a few moments to toilet and
continued on. Taine asked if he could
spot Joanne on the driving, and she reluctantly agreed.
“Are you sure you are up
to it?”
“Yes, and it will help
me focus,” he said.
Afternoon found the
couple on more familiar ground, passing the small airport near the location of
Coyoteman’s secret cave.
“It’s amazing how 6
months can change a place. This looks
almost nothing like it did last summer.”
“Or how it can change someone,”
Joanne responded. “Taine, you shouldn’t
drop this. It’s driving a big wedge
between us. I need you to be my lover,
or I need to know why I can’t. You need
to tell me what’s between us. Do you
still care for me? Is it someone else?”
The blur in Taine’s eyes
came on so fast, he almost lost control of the truck. He brought the Powerwagon to a halt as tears welled up
uncontrollably. Bit by bit the words
came out.
“There was… this woman…
and Uncle told me… to have… to be with…
her. And… it was… like nothing…
nothing I ever knew. She… pulledthepleasureoutofme… andreplacedit…
withpain!” The last part came pouring
out like a torrent of anguish.
Joanne was moved. She carefully put her arm around his
shoulder in a motion that could not be interpreted as sexual, in an effort to
comfort a man who was obviously in the throes of extreme emotional pain.
“Taine, I’m sorry. Sometimes in my own selfishness I forget the
torment you went through in that colony.
Darth explained about brainwashing, but I never really understood about
it until now. It must have been
horrible.”
“In the beginning, he…
put me in charge of this young girl.
And when I made a plan to escape, he killed her. Just like that! Then he gave me another girl to take care of. You have to understand… He knew what I was thinking!” The tears came again, and wouldn’t stop.
After a moment, Joanne
spoke again.
“Listen, honey. I’d really like to get back to a reasonable
bed before nightfall. Can I drive
again?”
“Sure,” Taine
mumbled. He slid over, while Joanne
walked around the truck.
“I’m sure we’ll get this
thing licked,” she said, as she pulled the truck back on the road. “I don’t have any experience with this sort
of thing, but I know someone who probably does.”
“Coyoteman?”
“Of course not! I mean Darth! Coyoteman, for all his power, is not a compassionate man. Darth cares. You should talk to him.
I’m sure he can help you get through this”
“What about my
parents? And the baby?”
“Taine, they’re just
going to have to wait. They don’t know
what you’ve been through. They’ll
understand.”
“I guess.”
Joanne got them to
Morongo Valley that evening, and did achieve her goal of sleeping in a real
bed. But before she dozed off that
night, she spent a few calories thinking about the woman Taine spoke of. Funny that Coyoteman never spoke of her,
she thought. He must have known
about this. Maybe I should talk to him
as well.
Chapter 2
Points of View
Meet your fate head on, or be
dragged to it kicking and screaming
Phil trudged
through the slushy snow, feeling a measure of determination, but also of
disbelief. It wasn’t supposed to snow
in Las Vegas, let alone snow in the spring.
Oh, sure, some of the friends he had made in town remembered slight
dustings to the north of the city, both before and after the ‘Change,’ but
never anything approaching what had precipitated this winter. The sheer volume of the stuff was truly
unthinkable. Now the days were getting
noticeably longer, but the sun seemed weak, as if high clouds were partially
obscuring it, or like some solar eclipse.
There was no energy to it, and the white stuff covering the landscape
was slow to melt.
Now it was April,
and Phil’s trip to Yucca Mountain could be put off no longer. Diane was rather more in favor of going to
see Taine in Morongo Camp; thoughts of returning to New Washington were fading,
now that the baby had come. But Las
Vegas needed Phil’s help, and Yucca Mountain had become his pet project for the
moment.
The slushy mess
was daunting, though. It tripled the
time needed to get to Yucca Mountain from the one-day of the original
estimate. That in turn meant a
three-day return, and his party only had food for two weeks. It would be a short stay at the nuclear
waste disposal site.
A dark stretch of
snow to the west betrayed the recent passage of a herd of wild ponies. They were quite numerous now, after a
quarter century of neglect by humans.
But humanity’s need for the horses had re-asserted itself now that
gasoline was in such short supply. The
animals that had so recently passed by would likely end up in a corral before
the end of the season.
Phil’s own mount
twisted his head away, mildly straining the reigns as it sensed the passage of
his brethren. Phil mused that his horse
would in all likelihood be happy to trot off to join them, even in this knee-deep
slush. He and the other men in his
party were having all kinds of difficulty keeping their mounts moving
north. Motivation is a key element in
keeping six hundred pounds of animal moving in the right direction.
The tragedy of
the ‘Mad Dash’ was behind him for now.
Life presses onward. It never
waits for the human heart to catch up.
The vision of his fellow reaching upward from the dangling passenger car
was not one that Phil would soon forget.
And the implications were even more far-reaching. True trade and social contact with the rest
of the United States were indefinitely on hold.
Toward noon, the party
passed Indian Springs. It was high
ground, and the snow was thinner. At
last the ponies allowed themselves to be mounted again, and Phil was able to
double his speed for several miles.
These horses were barely tamed, and balked for the slightest
reason. Still, for the amount of
equipment and supplies they carried, they were an essential part of this
journey.
From a distance the four
men on horseback could have been mistaken for a scene from an old west
movie. The gear and attire were all too
familiar: wide-rim hat, scarf, chaps,
and boots were all making a comeback as society refitted itself to old
standards. Up close, they seemed a
little worse for wear, as all the materials had to be obtained locally. The saddles looked amateurish in execution,
but leather was to be found, and the craftsmanship was improving rapidly.
Randy, David, and Weiroo
were all veterans of the anti-Peter campaign of the year before. All but Weiroo were younger than Phil, and
none of them had any scientific training.
They were as close to experts as anyone could be on cooking, camping,
and the management of the horses. What
they didn’t know about science, they were all eager to help and learn – and
Phil was happy to teach. It could
actually be fun, if they could get into more comfortable surroundings.
Afternoon found the
group still moving downhill toward the old defense facility at Mercury. Two men on horseback passed by at a distance
on a journey south, a string of palominos trailing behind. They waved silently but kept moving. Trust was hard-won in this age. Mercury, Phil hoped, would offer a protected
overnight camp for the four without having to set up their own tents.
The presence of snow did
nothing to otherwise disrupt the afternoon winds from appearing, and the
shelter of the gloomy metal buildings on the outskirts of Mercury looked ever
so inviting as the winds picked up. Even
the ponies were drawn to the faintest hope of a break from the whistling air.
Phil found Mercury full
of noisy ghosts. From the building he
and his cohorts chose to weather the night, he could hear a constant moan of a
thousand separate pieces of rusty corrugated sheet metal, scraping across aging
concrete blocks.
“Man, this place gives
me the shivers,” Randy said as he stoked the fire.
“Uh huh,” Phil
replied. “But it’s not going to prevent
me from getting any sleep. I am beat!”
“Ditto,” Weiroo said.
David was silent, as he
tended the horses. Whatever his
feelings on the matter, he kept them to himself.
The old facility was
coming apart at the seams. Dry wood
burned quietly and rapidly in their campfire.
Though the wood was in ample supply, the fire required almost constant
attention to keep kindled, and died soon after the men turned in. The horses grazed on rich oats they had
carried. Cold water, provided by the
melting slush, had amply hydrated them.
Finally they too dozed off in the vocal, moonlit night.
Yucca Mountain loomed
large before the travelers in the early afternoon of the following day. Its yellow-brown, treeless soil contrasted
darkly with mantling snows. A small cloud
seemed to be perched near the top of the ridge. Like a huddled dancer, it kept changing its shape, but basically
remaining in one place. Observing the
anomalous cloud for a time, the rest of the group was puzzled.
David scratched his
head, slipping his hand under the brim of his hat. “What is that thing?”
“Yeah. That’s weird!” Weiroo echoed.
“Gentlemen, I believe
that is well number 1632.”
“Well what?” said Randy.
“Well 1632 is a vertical
hole in the rock that penetrates one of the deeper tunnels in the complex,”
Phil explained. “Cool air moves into
the tunnels from the outside, and slowly warms due to the hot waste
inside. The warm air becomes saturated
with water vapor from the rocks and tries to rise. It gets its chance at well 1632.
The air climbs through the pipe and shoots out the top into the cool air
above. There the contained water
condenses to form the cloud you see.”
“So the cloud is always
there?” Randy postulated.
“I think so. It was there when I first toured the place
close to 30 years ago.” Phil pulled out
his binoculars and had a better look.
“I would bet there’s a huge pile of snow up there now.”
“We don’t have to go up
there, do we?”
“Not unless you want
to. The main entrance is our goal, and
that’s at the bottom.”
The entrance came into
sight a short time later. Randy and
David were tasked with setting up the camp, while Weiroo followed Phil up to
the tunnel’s mouth. Phil expected a
door with a lock, but what remained of the door hung loosely to massive hinges
on one side. The tunnel was wide open.
“I don’t know whether
this is good or bad,” Phil remarked.
“It’s good because we don’t have any work in front of us to get
inside. But it’s bad because if someone
messed around in there, there could be a radiation leak. That would be very bad.”
“Probably worse than
that,” Weiroo said, staring at a large red stain in the slush. Drag marks showed something large and
bleeding was dragged into the cavern.
“I’m thinking ‘lion,’”
Weiroo said, after Phil had seen the blood and track marks.
“I’m still trying to
imagine what might have knocked in that door,” Phil answered. “One thing’s for sure though: The game is totally changed. Everyone carries a weapon at all times.”