Storm Front (Collapse Book 3) Read online

  “It’s true.” Alex stood up. The rummaging sound of a pair of guns being pointed at him. “It’s all true.”

  Krol’s tiny black eyes considered Alex.

  Alex stared back.

  Krol had such small eyes, buried between the bunched-up skin and crow’s feet which made up his face. The man had his own gravity. Those two black holes sucked in the entire world, squeezing everything into a dense, inescapable void.

  “But we do not act on faith, my friends.” Krol turned the dials again. “It is not enough to simply believe. Not anymore. All your story tells me is that you have been in contact with the sick. This is unfortunate. But we are reasonable people. I am here to welcome you to your quarantine. You will remain here until we can ascertain your health.”

  “How long will that take?” Joan asked.

  “As long as it takes. You will be offered the opportunity to join us, one day. You will thank me, one day. Until then, you must endure. It is really quite simple.”

  Moving at a glacial pace, Krol began to stand.

  “Wait!” Alex shouted, ignoring the guns being pointed at his face. “I can prove it.”

  “All of it?” Krol straightened his coat. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Alex racked his brains. What could he prove? Almost nothing. He hardly had evidence that this was his house. When he had left Detroit, he had assumed it would be empty. Or that Eames would be waiting. Or a hundred other things. He had never expected this. His entire childhood was fighting for attention in his mind.

  “No.” Alex admitted.

  “Then we will wait. And hope. Good bye.”

  Krol turned to leave. The thought raced through Alex’s mind. There had to be something. Anything he could prove.

  “I can prove that this is my house.” A desperate attempt.

  Krol began to walk toward the door, picking up the gas tank.

  “No, I do not think you can.” He didn’t even look back.

  His mind thinking a hundred things at once, Alex could almost taste his desperation. One plan had already failed today. He couldn’t let the others down again. There had to be some way.

  Alex jumped forward and took hold of Krol’s shoulders, trying to turn the man around to face him.

  Both guns appeared in front of his face, the strangers shouting and ordering him to stop. Alex refused.

  “I can. This is my house. I can show you. And then, I’ll prove the rest.”

  Those two black eyes turned toward Alex. The breathing mask whirred and crackled.

  “Please.” Alex removed his hand from Krol’s shoulder. “You have to believe me.”

  The clunk of the gas tank on the stone floor. A hand brushed away the guns.

  “We are not believers here, Alexander.”

  “I have proof. I’ll show you who I am.”

  Krol considered Alex.

  He nodded.

  “Show me.”

  5

  Alex had the answer in his hand.

  Prove a little thing first, then the rest will follow. He could see the first domino, waiting to topple and take the rest with it.

  Alex had looked down at his hand in the dim stable light. The thought had struck him like a hammer in a forge, beating against the burning iron. Sparks flew behind his eyes.

  Pushing past Krol, ignoring the strangers with their guns and their orders, Alex knew he was being followed. He was operating on the end of an elastic tether. The game, now, was finding out how far he could stretch himself before snapping back to reality.

  Krol’s black hole eyes had burned into his soul and Alex had read the writing inside. The man wanted to be convinced. He wanted to see the truth. He wanted to see a different world. There had been a crushing desire for hope buried deep in those eyes.

  Krol wanted proof, a reason to believe what he was being told.

  The hands.

  The hands were the answer. Every summer, on the afternoon of Alex’s birthday, he and his mom had sat on the porch and painted their hands, pressing their palms up against the wall to leave a print. His little hands had grown, moving up a few inches every year.

  By the time she had died, there’d been twenty-odd handprints in a pattern on the porch wall.

  Alex could match his hand against the paint and he’d have proof. That was the plan, at least.

  He’d marched past Krol, leaving a bit of strength in his shoulder and catching it against the big man’s coat. It hurt like hell. The strangers with the guns did nothing. Alex was being given his one and only chance. It had to count.

  Walking fast he covered the length of the stable and rapped a knuckle against the door. He knew it was locked. He didn’t want to waste time trying to pry it open.

  “Is everything all right in there, sir?”

  Alex didn’t answer. He turned around, fixing an expectant expression to his face. Krol stared him down.

  “Tell them to open the door,” Alex said in a flat voice. “We’re going to find proof.”

  “We are?”

  “We are.”

  As Krol stood studying Alex, the man with the broken nose tapped him on the arm.

  “Sir, you can’t be serious. We can’t let him out again. He’s already-”

  Krol stirred a lazy finger through the air.

  “Nelson. We can never stand in the way of truth. This man has his chance. Just make sure we’re prepared.”

  Alex could feel the elastic tether tensing, pulling him back toward reality. He had to stretch it out, conjure it further along.

  “Come on, we don’t have all day.” Alex knocked at the door again, still facing Krol. “Tell your people to let us out.”

  “Us?” Krol nearly laughed. The mask twitched. It might have disguised a smile. “You – and only you – will be allowed out of this room. And then, only in the company of people with whom you have already made contact. We simply cannot abandon our entire security apparatus on a whim.”

  “This isn’t a whim.” Alex knocked again. “Fine. Just me. Tell them. Now.”

  Alex looked down the stables. Even without much light, he could see the horrified look on Joan’s face, the excited glee of Timmy’s smile, and Cam’s brow furrowing with curiosity. From this distance, his mind could fill in the blanks. They just had to trust him a little longer.

  “Open the door.” Krol didn’t raise his voice but it carried, even through the mask. “Then move away.”

  The bolt slid back. The door creaked and footsteps ran away from the stables. The light poured in and Alex blinked. He stepped forward.

  Just keep walking. He knew Krol would follow. He hoped Krol would follow. If Alex had planted the seed of curiosity in the man’s mind, it was time to reap what he had sowed.

  Alex walked into the courtyard. The sun was setting but the world was still too bright. He didn’t have time to stop and adjust. He had to keep moving, crossing the empty space.

  The buildings were different. Not as he remembered them. In Alex’s memories, the entire twenty years he had spent on the farm collided together, knitting and knotting themselves together and appearing all at once.

  The rocking chair on the porch had only been there when he was a teenager, while the kid’s rubber boots beside the door dated back to his earliest years. But whenever Alex thought about the farm, all of these images appeared at once, part of the same nostalgic scene.

  But it wasn’t the same courtyard as the one in his mind. Alex’s eyes were adjusting to the light, focusing on the new reality of the world around him. Even as he wrestled with his own mind, trying to concentrate on the moment, these little memories kept creeping in. It was impossible to keep the past at bay, to stop it from breaking through the barricades of the present and smashing into the ruin of today.

  The buildings now were bone white. A peeling kind of paint. Not something he remembered from when he was young. When he thought back, the house and the barn and all the rest were bright reds and luscious browns. The finest woods, built into towering
structures that seemed like they would endure anything.

  It was impossible to shake the sense of decay surrounding the courtyard. No just the flaking paint, but the broken machinery parts laid around the edges. The shattered pieces of pottery, the scraps of garbage which had been rolled up against the walls by the wind and never moved.

  The fields he remembered were glorious, growing corn higher than an elephant’s eye. The site of his father driving the machines up and down the rows, felling the impossibly-high plants every harvest was right there, fixated in his mind.

  But when Alex looked up now, he saw only barren, windswept voids. Brown stretches which peeled away to the horizon, calling his memory a liar.

  It was like he was standing in the skeleton of his own childhood, seeing the bones for the first time and wishing for the skin and the flesh and the blood. The soul. All the human parts of his home. But they were gone, rotted away, and only the calcified remains endured.

  But it didn’t matter. Alex marched forward, desperate for Krol and his followers to feel his confidence and assuredness. Show them the hand prints on the wall and then go on from there. He had to prove to these strangers that this was his house. He had to prove it to himself.

  He crossed the courtyard in half a minute, his mind flooded with thoughts like a rush hour intersection. Different ideas, darting this way and that, horns blaring, tires squealing.

  As he made his way to the porch, Alex could see movement behind the windows. Faces appearing and disappearing, trying to catch a glimpse of him. He had to ignore them.

  He placed his first foot on the step up to the porch and the wood gave a familiar groan. Decades of wind and rain and regular coats of varnish and paint, all soaked in and creaking whenever someone stepped just so. The sound was like an old friend, greeting Alex on the doorstep.

  But something was wrong.

  Alex’s eyes flitted about the porch.

  It had changed. The rocking chair had gone, as had the children’s boots. The convivial, warm space where his mother had relaxed and watched him play, where he’d wasted too many pleasant days with Sammy sitting before the sunset. It had vanished.

  Instead, there was a hollow space. A long stretch of wooden planking measuring ten feet out from the house. No furniture, no boots, no memories, no nothing.

  No handprints.

  Alex felt his breath tighten in his throat.

  No handprints.

  His whole gamble, his stepping stone to proving his version of events, absent.

  Alex couldn’t contain himself. He ran the last few steps to the wall, falling down on his knees in front of the place where he had printed his painted hands. There should have been a row of palms, reaching from the floor to just above the door, stacking one on top of the other like a totem pole, each slightly larger than the last.

  There was nothing but faded white paint.

  Alex’s fingers traced over the surface, trying to find any hint of the shapes he’d left behind decades ago. He started on the floor, following a path all the way upwards, going beyond the height of his head and trying to find marks leading up into the roof of the porch, all the way up into the rafters.

  Nothing.

  He stepped back, worried that he was too close. The eyes were playing tricks. The light was confusing him. Alex’s mind was brimming with excuses, reasons why his entire world wasn’t just as he had imagined.

  “Is something wrong?” Krol’s voice stayed exactly the same. Alex wanted there to be mocking, taunting tones. But there was nothing. Just the same flat, muffled authority, demanding an answer.

  “There… there should have been… when I was a kid, we made handprints all up this wall.”

  “The wall is empty.”

  Alex wanted to turn around. The very bluntness of the words hit like a hammer. He wanted to punch the man square in the mask, to kick away the tank and the wire leading up the sleeve, to sweep his ankles away and elbow the man’s chest, bring him down to the ground, break him down into little pieces.

  Alex wanted to make Krol feel exactly as he was feeling.

  “It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be empty. The hands, they should be here. I know it. This was my farm. This is my farm. I grew up here. I grew up right here.”

  “There is nothing there.”

  Krol motioned to his followers. The man he’d called Nelson, the man with the broken nose, began to walk forward, slowly.

  “Now listen here, buddy. I don’t want any trouble. You’re coming with me. Back to your friends.”

  He kept talking.

  Alex ignored him.

  It was wrong. The house was wrong. Everything was wrong. Alex moved forward, bringing his face an inch away from the wall. The white, faded paint. An ivory color, dulled by the sun.

  Now, Alex began to see every tiny molecule. The grain of the wood, the head of the occasional nail flecked with the first signs of rust, the spot – less faded than the others – where a wind chime had hung and cast a shadow at the same time every day. He began to look closely.

  Alex pressed his face against the wall. He had to know. He had to be right. He closed his eyes, trying to feel the memories coming from within, begging the house to tell him its secrets. It was silent.

  He opened his eyes again. All he could see was the brush strokes of the paint up close, a straight line leading right up to the door, ending at the frame where the white specks had begun to peel and chip. The truth crashed through Alex’s mind like a freight train.

  “Here!” He shouted, jumping back and pointing at the wall. “It’s here!”

  Nelson stopped. He shot a nervous glance back to Krol, who didn’t react. Alex had bent down, inspecting the part of the porch where the floor met the wall. He began picking at the paint with his finger nails.

  “Here! Here! Look!”

  Alex had picked away a square inch of paint. He revealed the bare wood beneath.

  Krol stepped up on to the porch, the tuneful creak singing out across the courtyard. He moved behind Alex and leaned over.

  Still working, picking at the paint with his nails, Alex was excited. The naked wood beneath was spreading, peeled apart by a pair of busy hands.

  Soon, Alex had cleared enough. He backed off, allowing Krol to see his discovery.

  There, nestled behind the paint, revealed beneath a small circle of chipped off flecks, was a faded red pair of children’s fingers.

  “I can find more!” Alex told them. “There’s more here, my whole hand.”

  “I am not sure that is necessary.” Krol’s dry words drifted away as the man stood up to his full height.

  But Alex was bitten by the bug. He knew there were more handprints hidden behind the paint. He wanted to find them.

  “No, it’s fine. Look! I told you! They’re here. This is my house!”

  “This might well have been your house.” Krol’s beady eyes fixed on Alex.

  “I told you, I told-”

  “But this changes very little. Nelson, please.”

  Krol turned his back and, carrying his gas tank, began to walk back across the courtyard. Nelson turned to Alex, motioning with the pistol.

  “We gotta go, buddy.”

  This is wrong, Alex thought. The hand prints were there, even if the house itself had fallen into despair. It wasn’t as he remembered it. Now, it was crumbling and decaying. But beneath it all was the edifice of the home he once knew. His home. That was proof. Not just of the house belonging to him, but of everything. His entire story. He pushed past Nelson and stormed after Krol.

  “Krol! Krol, listen to me. I’m talking to you.”

  He turned around, ten feet from Alex.

  “And I have listened.”

  “And?”

  “And I believe that this was your house. But that changes nothing about the quarantine.”

  “Why the hell not? Can’t you see I was telling the truth?”

  “The truth does not matter, my friend, if I cannot guarantee my people’s safet
y.”

  “Then why let me even show you? Why not believe me?”

  “I believe in the importance of hope. This was what you needed. I am happy for you.”

  “But I told you, I’m immune. I’m not infectious.”

  “You have told me that this is your house, and I believe you. But that is a trivial matter when compared with the sickness.”

  The wheezing and rattling of the mask disguised any compassion in Krol’s voice.

  “You know about the virus? You know about survivors?” Alex asked, his voice exasperated.

  “I don’t know anyone who has survived. The death rate is cataclysmic.”

  Alex walked toward Krol, cutting the distance between the two of them.

  “Well I do. I’ve seen it. Things you wouldn’t imagine. I’ve seen it first-hand. And I’ve lived. Those people in there, two of them are survivors. That gray eye? That’s the mark. You have to trust me.”

  “So they are survivors? The pregnant woman and one of the men?”

  “They fought it off. A far tougher fight than you’ve ever fought. They won.”

  Krol stared Alex down.

  “You are not a doctor.”

  “Neither are you. You couldn’t be, not if you think that survivors carry an infection. They don’t. I’ve seen it first with my own eyes. Joan knows medicine better than any of us, you ask her.”

  Alex kept moving forward. The closer he got to Krol, the smaller he felt. The man rose over him with ease.

  “But we cannot be safe. Not without surety.”

  “How the hell can I prove to you that we’re not sick?” Alex shouted up into the man’s face.

  The mask twitched. The heavy breathing continued. Two eyes burned above. There was a curiosity there, Alex could tell. An intelligent being, considering something smaller. Amused, almost. Intrigued. The mask moved again, ever so slightly.

  “Survive.”

  Krol turned, preparing to walk away.

  Alex felt that red mist rising again, the fury and the rage taking hold of his muscles.

  He jumped, putting himself alongside Krol. With one hand, he reached out and ripped away the mask. A boxer’s nose and two rows of black teeth greeted him.