CHAPTER 14

“How does it look?” Harold whispered over Jack’s right shoulder.

            Jack scanned the area below the trail carefully, noting the slick architecture and neat brick buildings separated by winding dirt paths. To the west, a river formed the town’s border, though several bridges could be seen far in the distance. Whatever lay on the other side of those bridges, Jack couldn’t see from here. These weren’t army-issue binoculars, after all. They were some low-end consumer model, the make of which Jack hadn’t bothered trying to identify. He adjusted the dial between the eye sockets carefully, bringing the near end of the town back into focus, where a family tossed a red frisbee back and forth.

            “It seems harmless from here,” Jack finally answered. “Sort of half-park, half-town. No paved roads from what I can tell. Just a cluster of buildings there in the center, and lots of cleared spaces in between with chairs and picnic tables.”

            “You think it’s safe for us to enter?”

            “I can’t see why it wouldn’t be.”

            “I don’t trust cults. Especially ones that live in the mountain,” Harold grumbled. Jack ignored him. The two men gathered the few items they’d spread out on a bed of ferns they’d slept on the previous night. Jack had insisted they wait till morning to spy out the land from a distance before entering, so they’d camped on the hillside a half mile from the edge of Clive and ate their way through a couple more cans of soy beans and dried pineapple wedges.

            The path leading from the hill to its base and into the small town put them right next to the family playing frisbee, who turned suddenly to wave at the weary travelers.

            “Carry on, carry on,” Harold said in a friendly voice, but Jack could hear his tension stirring.

            The family’s father, a lanky tower of a man, jogged over to the path. His skin was the color of midnight and he wore clothes woven from colorful patterned fabrics that made Jack think this man was from Africa. He spoke without an accent.

            “Well you look like you’ve come straight from the heart of the jungle!” Exclaimed the man. He reached out and grasped the visitors’ hands with both of his arms. “Welcome to Clive. May I ask where you are coming from?”

            “A land far, far away,” Harold said, smiling his plastic smile.

            “And I suppose your bread is dry and crumby!” Said the man, suddenly bellowing out a hoot of laughter. Harold forced a chuckle but wore the look of bewilderment.

            “Actually our food supplies have thinned out a bit. We were hoping there might be somewhere here to stock up,” Jack said.

            “Ah, then you will be heading to the Clive Bazaar. It is located on the northernmost side of town, right on the tree line. You’re not far from it now. Perhaps I could take you there–“

            “No no no,” Harold insisted, raising his hand. “You’ve been quite enough help. I’m sure we’ll find it just fine on our own. You enjoy your game.”

            “What kind of payment do the sellers at the bazaar take?” Jack asked the man. Tears came to the man’s eyes as he rocked with another bout of laughter. Apparently this was a very funny question.

            “Payment!” The man gasped between giggles. “Sellers! Oh, oh, oh! You two are really jokers! Is everyone in your land so funny?” He wiped his eyes, slowly recovering from the hilarity. Jack looked to Harold and smiled sheepishly.

            “One other question,” Harold said, clearing his throat and speaking in a serious tone. “Where can I find the Clive archives?”

            “Archives? They will be in the library here. Just across from the bazaar. But don’t worry, there’s no entrance fee!” The man erupted in another bout of laugher as Jack and Harold waved politely and walked briskly in the direction the man had pointed.

            “Well that was rather odd,” Harold said when they were out of earshot.

           “Yeah, no kidding. I wonder what was so funny? I’m still not sure how we’re going to be able to afford what we need,” Jack said. Harold shot him an icy look.

            “Do what you have to do. Just be careful,” Harold said grimly.

            The two walked on, passing a towering windmill attached to a building with a sign against its wall that read Leigh’s Flour Mill. Beyond that was what looked like an outdoor cafe. Several patrons sat at the tables under umbrellas, engaged in conversations so animated and interesting that they paid no attention to the two disheveled men with backpacks. Jack and Harold walked on.

            Eventually, they saw it, just as the African man had described. At the edge of town and right against the forest rim lay the sprawling Clive Bazaar. Its name had been carved ornately into a shiny wooden sign that sprouted from the ground beside the entrance. The bazaar was crawling with more ethnicities of people than Jack and Harold had ever seen in a single place at once. It was like a United Nations swap meet, Jack thought. But somehow, all these people were communicating just fine. There didn’t seem to be any issues with language barriers. And stranger still, everyone seemed very happy to be rubbing shoulders with one another. There were Whites and Blacks, Asians and Indians, even a few that looked like Arabs. Jack’s head spun.

            “Where are we?” He muttered to Harold, who had reverted to his default look: the frown of concentration.

            “This goes deeper than I thought,” Harold said ominously.

            They spent another few moments taking the place in. Its colors, its smells. Even its sounds of foreign music. A vendor at the far end of the marketplace had set up a table of odd-looking instruments and was demonstrating one now for his delighted customers.

            “Ok, let’s focus,” Harold finally said in his usual voice. “That must be the library over there.”

            Harold turned and motioned to a hexagonal brick building with long vertical windows just forty yards behind them.

            “I’m just going to go and check it out. Hopefully I’ll find some answers in there. You get what we need here. Meet back in an hour. Sound ok?”

            Jack nodded.

            “Alright then. Keep your eyes open, and don’t be late.” And with that, Harold was gone.

***

            Adrina’s hand moved in a swift, confident arc across the coarse paper, leaving behind a scraggly mark from the stub of charcoal. She sat beneath an old wooden gazebo that leaned slightly with age. A breeze came off the lake, pushing cool air onto the shoals and over the ankle high blue green grass. Adrina tucked the edges of the blanket deeper behind the angle her legs made against the slatted bench.

            “You an artist?” Asked a soft, level voice over Adrina’s shoulder. She turned, startled. It was the Chinese woman from the mountain lodge–Liping.

            Adrina shrugged. “Not really. Just messing around. I found the supplies in one of the rooms in their guest house.”

            “You’re living down here now?” Liping asked, glancing over to the guest house around the lake’s bend. Adrina nodded.

            “I always wanted to be an artist. You know, when I was younger. Sort of my dream, I guess. Never happened.”

            “Most of us abandon childhood dreams with the reality of adulthood,” Liping said, sighing. She took a seat on the bench and watched the lake as a flock of ducks thrashed noisily into flight. They tumbled in the air for a few moments as they found their places in a giant bobbing V.

            “Yeah, I guess life just kind of happens to all of us. What about you? How did you end up here?”

            “I still can’t remember. I know I was in a hospital. Pregnant. It was about three weeks early but the baby was impatient. It had been raining terribly all day. I was in the hospital ward, waiting on a gurney. There was so much noise. That’s all I remember.”

            “Do you think it’s true, what they’ve told us about this place?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Do you think we all really died, and this is a second chance?”

            Liping fell silent and gazed into the gloomy clouds. Her voice was low and steady when she began to speak, like scattered droplets into a pool of water. “I was never religious before. I never felt I needed it. Religion was a kind of crutch for weak people who needed something to rely on. But I had myself. I was working, I was strong, I was confident. There was no need for anything outside of that. You know who believed in God, where I come from?”

            Adrina shook her head.

            “Sick people. Sick, poor villagers on the outskirts of town. Atheists in health, Christians in illness. There were these cults all over China, often concentrated in poorer areas, that believed you would be miraculously healed if you believed. It was terrifying–cult members wouldn’t let sick relatives even see a doctor or visit a pharmacy. It was viewed as a lack of faith. Some claimed that it worked, that God had cured them. The cults became very popular in some areas, and their message spread. I visited my family in a countryside village a few times, and each time I would have to come across these fanatical religionists. I vowed never to listen to them or look at their pamphlets.”

            “Sounds like America,” Adrina mumbled.

            “Oh?”

            “Not the doctor thing, I never heard anything like that. But some churches would stage protests against things they didn’t agree with and pressure people to conform to their way of thinking. Sometimes fights would break out, people would start getting violent. It was crazy. So I kept my distance.”

            “I thought all Americans were Christians,” Liping said.

            “Maybe a long time ago. I think most Americans have been to church at some point in their lives. At least for a wedding or a funeral. But in my day, most people didn’t really like Christianity. And then eventually it was banned, and a lot of people seemed to be happy about that.”

            “Banned? Christianity?”

            “The public practice of religion was banned.”

            “Interesting. It must’ve been an American thing. I never heard about it in China. But then there’s so much they weren’t telling us in the news...”

            “It was a little surprising to me at first, too. But it felt like the right thing. There was so much conflict between Muslims and Christians in America and in other countries, and it seemed like every war had some sort of religious connection. Everyone thought the ban was really going to stop the fighting, bring about some peace. I was actually excited for it. I remember thinking that.”

            “And then?”

            “I don’t remember. It was shortly after all that was happening that I...”

            “...Came back in that room,” Liping said. Adrina nodded solemnly.

            “Do you know how much time they’re saying has passed, since... you know. Since we died?”

            Liping shook her head.

            “Almost two hundred years.”

            Liping drew in a sharp breath that seemed to rattle her body. “I don’t know what I believe anymore,” she said. Liping glanced at the sketchbook lying at Adrina’s side. A few delicate marks on the page had formed the face of a child.

            “Who is it?” Liping said, pointing at the drawing.

            Adrina shifted against the wind and pressed her hand to the paper. “This was my baby boy,” she said softly. An uncomfortable knot had formed in her throat.

            A distant rumble lifted Adrina’s chin. She glared into the sky, where a swirling cloud mass had taken on the color of a deep, dull bruise. A storm was on its way.

            “We should head in,” Liping said. “The landlady said we can stay in the house here by the lake.”

            “What about the others?”

            “The men are all gone. The two from the lodge left, the other two went to find them.”

            “They left? Why?” Adrina asked.

            “I don’t know. They never told anyone.”

            Adrina nodded slowly, as if their actions made sense to her. She slid the sketchbook into a zippered bag and held it to her chest. The two women gathered their things and trudged back towards the cabin, a brewing storm licking at their backs.

***

            Hyde hadn’t had much time to gather supplies when he’d bolted from the cabin twelve days prior. He’d made a mental list of things he’d snag on his way out, and had been watching carefully in the days leading up to his escape. He knew, for example, that the large spool of twine was in the kitchen pantry, and that an extra backpack was stowed in a hallway closet along with a folding knife, canned food, and a sleeping bag.

            It had only taken him six minutes to round up these necessary items before slipping out the back door while Trey and Margaret greeted visitors in the front yard. His heart had been racing as he sped quietly through the wooden rooms. It’d been like something from a spy movie.

            After two weeks in the woods Hyde still felt good. Strong, alert, part of his surroundings. A real predator. The leukemia that had for so many years gnawed away at his bones wasn’t there anymore. He didn’t know how he knew, he just knew. He could feel it. Weakness had been replaced by power. He felt heavier. Each step he took seemed to sink farther into the forest sod.

            Hyde wasn’t sure how, but this place had done it to him. It had made him. It had chosen him.

            The cave had been a lucky find, too, perhaps even proof that Hyde was meant to be here. It was even larger than the room he’d fled from, and even if it was a little damp and musty, Hyde didn’t mind. He would adapt, and then he would embrace it, as it had embraced him. He’d checked for bears, of course–he wasn’t stupid–and he’d been gathering supplies and hauling them back to his den since then: dried pine cones for kindling, stones to isolate the fire and pile into small walls and shelves, peat moss to keep out the night cold, twigs and sticks for a hundred other uses. He was stocking up.

            The best part was the campers. Hyde could hear them crashing noisily through the thicket–sometimes even singing!–and it had been a simple thing to track them and sneak into their camps while they slept. Hyde didn’t need much, often just nabbing an item here and there: a few bottles of water, some fruit, maybe a box of matches to save himself trouble later on. So long as campers came from time to time, Hyde knew he’d be fine. Maybe for months. Maybe forever. An endless flow of loot, delivered right to his door.

            No one had come looking yet, either, and that was the important thing. Maybe eventually, though. Maybe by accident they’d even stumble upon his cave hideout, or maybe they’d be dispatched by Trey or Margaret. Hyde imagined a red round button under a desk somewhere in their house that alerted men in black trench coats emblazoned with sinister insignias. They’d sneak through the forest, looking for their man, their fugitive.

            Of course, the other possibility was snooping wildlife. Hyde had seen only a handful of animals so far lumbering through the forest. They seemed harmless enough and kept their distance, and without a rifle Hyde had known to keep his. But that could change, and as the temperature continued to drop and the leaves changed colors and withered, Hyde knew those animals would be getting hungry and aggressive. Maybe they’d even come looking for a place to nest for winter. Either way, Hyde would have to be ready for them. Come man or beast, he would have to be prepared to defend his fortress.

            For four days Hyde had worked tirelessly, hauling branches and sticks into his den and sharpening them with the knife he’d taken from the cabin. It wasn’t much of a hunter’s knife and needed a good sharpening by the end of each day, but so far it had done the job. Hyde had saved the wood shavings for insulation and bedding materials. Smiling, he wiped a line of sweat from his brow and glanced over at the pile of stakes lined against the far wall of the cave.

            Not bad. Not bad at all. The only thing missing, of course, was his rifle.