Storm

EIGHTEEN

The trucks slowed down and crept through fog that was so dense I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I listened intently for any sound other than the rumble of the truck engines, but heard nothing. We rolled along for a minute or two before I began to sense shapes through the smoke. My first thought was that I was seeing large statues. The dark objects weren’t uniform and didn’t seem to have any straight lines. The smallest was the size of a truck; the largest looked like it had solid beams that jutted skyward for thirty feet. I strained to see what they might be and noticed other, smaller shadows moving past them… shapes I recognized.

People.

The fog thinned, and visibility grew. I could make out people in groups of two, apparently sauntering along casually with no particular destination in mind. I imagined that they might be couples out for an evening stroll through a sculpture garden.

The smoke cleared further, and I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The strolling couples wore red camouflage military fatigues with dark red berets: the uniform of SYLO. The green-and-yellow rising-sun patch on their berets and their shoulders confirmed it. I was back in the center of a nest of SYLO vipers… who had assault weapons slung over their shoulders.

The full realization of what I had found hit hard when the smoke thinned and I saw the sculptures for what they really were: artillery. These were modern, antiaircraft weapons aimed at the sky. There were hundreds of them, stretching out on either side of the road.

“Hey, kid!” a soldier shouted.

I tensed up. Should I reach for the gun? No. That would be suicide. These guys were professionals with assault rifles, and all I had was a pistol that I’d never even fired.

I looked over my shoulder to see two SYLO soldiers on the side of the road. Their weapons weren’t aimed at me. Yet.

“Bad night to be on garbage duty,” the soldier called. He was actually smiling.

“Sucks to be you,” the other called.

I gave them a casual shrug as if to say, “What can you do?”

These guys thought I was working, not sneaking in to hunt down their commander.

The convoy moved on, and I soon realized that the smoke was completely gone. I looked back to see that we had emerged from the other side of the fog bank. We had just passed through a wide band of smoke-camouflaged weapons, and now I was inside Fort Knox, where the first thing I heard was… calliope music.

I thought I was imagining it. The guttural rumble of the garbage truck masked everything except for the bright, tinny sound of old-fashioned calliope music. I took a chance and swung around the side of the truck to look ahead and confirm that the sound wasn’t coming from my imagination.

We were passing by a row of jet fighters parked on a runway. Normal jet fighters, not black Air Force marauders. The map had shown us that we were headed toward the runways of the fort when we came upon the wide stretch of cleared earth. So the jets made sense.

What I saw beyond the silent row of aircraft didn’t.

When I made the decision to penetrate the fog, I expected to find a military base like SYLO had set up on Pemberwick Island. Or maybe the ruins of Fort Knox. Or even an Air Force base full of black fighters that had finally broken through and triumphed. I was not prepared for what was actually there.

It was a carnival. A full-on carnival, complete with rides, tents, strings of colorful lights, and a carousel, which was providing the music.

I jumped off the truck, letting it continue on its way without me. The lure of the carnival was too great. Not that I wanted to ride the rides or try my hand at ring-toss; it was the idea that it existed at all that drew me.

It was about a hundred yards from where I had jumped off the truck to the first row of brightly colored tents. To get there I had to walk across a wide expanse of grass that was far from empty. Every twenty yards or so, there was a metallic, cone-shaped structure that looked like a large teepee. They stood like silent sentries, each rising forty feet toward the sky. I had no idea what they were or what purpose they served. It was yet another mystery, but one that wasn’t nearly as strange as the carnival.

As I got closer, I could hear other typical carnival sounds. People laughed and screamed. Adults as well as kids of all ages hurried between the rides. Bells and buzzers signaled a game that was won or lost. The throaty chugging of gas engines powering the rides provided a bed of white noise. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about this carnival, except that it existed.

I reached the row of tents, stepped beyond them, and entered an impossible world of fun and music. The place was jammed with people who were running along the midway, playing the games, and lining up for cotton candy and hot dogs. Most wore normal civilian clothes, but many of the adults had on red SYLO fatigues. This was definitely not like the golf course prison on Pemberwick Island. These people wanted to be here. They were having fun.

This was where Mr. Hartman’s son wanted to bring his father to be safe.

I wasn’t worried about sticking out. There were plenty of people my age who must have been the kids of SYLO soldiers. I doubted that they’d spot a stranger. Or so I hoped. As I walked through the crowd, I saw a mini-golf course; dozens of skill games; a dunk tank where kids threw softballs at a target to knock a SYLO soldier into the drink; and food booths that offered ice cream, sodas, popcorn, hot dogs… you name it. There were plenty of rides too. I saw the Scrambler, the Octopus, Tilt-a-Whirl, flying swings, a carousel, and plenty of kiddie rides. The only thing missing was a Ferris wheel. None of the rides were taller than the steel teepees that were scattered throughout the fairgrounds.

I wasn’t used to being around so many people, especially people having fun. It was all so… normal, which is what made it so incredibly abnormal. As typical as the scene was, there was something odd about it that I couldn’t put my finger on. I stood in the center of the midway and did a slow three-sixty, taking it all in, watching the faces of the happy people, wracking my brain to figure out what it was that seemed so off.

The place was magical, yet a little cheesy. Carnivals weren’t Disneyland. They were erected quickly and torn down just as fast to be moved to the next location. The tents were faded and patched. The colorful paint on the carousel horses was cracked. Many of the light bulbs on the rides were burned out. But none of that mattered. Especially at night. Thousands of colorful carnival lights made the place feel like a wonderland… just like every other traveling carnival.

That’s what was wrong.

“Power,” I said to myself.

There was electricity.

I had been so stunned by the sight of the carnival that it hadn’t clicked right away. Carnivals were supposed to look exactly like this. They were bright and colorful and cheesy… but not in a world without power. SYLO had the means to produce electricity, and by the looks of the carnival, it wasn’t from batteries or a couple of generators. This base had juice.

It made me focus on the reality of what I was seeing. This was an oasis. A well-protected oasis. There was a wide expanse of cleared earth that ringed Fort Knox. Inside that ring was a second ring of artillery and plenty of armed soldiers who protected the fort from attack. But what exactly was being protected? A rinky-dink carnival? There had to be more.

I heard the loud clang of a bell followed by a huge cheer. I looked to where the cheering came from to see one of those highstriker games where you try to ring the bell on top of a pole by hitting the base with a heavy mallet, shooting a metal weight up a wire. I’d never actually seen anybody win at that game. I always thought it was rigged.

Clang!

The bell rung again, and another cheer went up.

I wandered closer, not so much because somebody was killing the game, but because the crowd was so enthusiastic about it. It was a show of joy and laughter that filled a void in my soul. The spectators were thrilled, probably more so than the feat deserved. Hearing them laugh and applaud made me understand why this carnival existed.

It was a break from the reality of war. A vacation from the horror. By tomorrow the tents would probably be struck and the rides dismantled, but for the time being these people could forget that they were living inside a ring of artillery and under the constant threat of an aerial attack.

I made my way closer to the action. I wanted to see the guy win again so I could cheer him on like everybody else. I wanted a few seconds of relief. As I wound my way through the loosely gathered group, I could see that the hero of the moment was a SYLO soldier. No big surprise. He was a tall guy, though not particularly muscular. His back was to me, and I could see that he was breathing heavily from the exertion.

“One more time! One more time!” the crowd chanted, urging him on.

The soldier gripped the heavy mallet. The chanting grew louder and faster. The guy took a deep breath, wound up, and slammed the mallet down. He hit the pad, and the metal object shot to the sky, nailing the bell once again.

Clang!

The crowd cheered. I did too. I couldn’t help myself. It was silly, but at least it was something positive. There was very little that I had seen over the past few weeks that deserved a simple cheer of congratulations. I felt good for the guy, and for the crowd, and for me. It was nice to cheer for something.

It was a cheer that caught in my throat when the soldier turned around.

He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and handed the mallet to the man in the rainbow-striped jacket who was running the game.

“Show’s over,” the soldier said. “I’m too old for this.”

The crowd shouted “No!” as if to assure the guy he wasn’t all that old. He was their hero. He had given them reason to cheer.

He was also their commander.

Not only had he rung the bell, he had done something else that was equally impossible.

He had come back from the dead.

It was Captain Norman Granger.

The man I had come to find… and kill.