The Vanishing Gary Brown (booksvooks TXT) 📖

accepted as the sun’s unfailing promise to rise each day. To Virgil, the outside world was corrupt, its inhabitants’ populous lesions occupying a host body which had been permitted to fester and decay despite being tested repeatedly, yet never given to the common sense realization that such repeated acts of collective faithlessness cannot go unpunished forever, that those actions would one day bring about unimaginable consequences, and that time was running out.

With the wick of humanity’s pre-eminent destruction burning steadily to the quick, Virgil and his family had traveled across the country in search of a new Eden. Now, in the waning hours of the afternoon as he attached the stretcher unit to the last of the wooden line posts and slowly tightened and nailed the final yard of barbed wire securely into place, Virgil knew in his heart he was finally home.

Satisfied, he stood back and surveyed the last half-mile of finished barricade.

“Go ahead,” Fallon said. “You do the honors.”

Virgil stepped forward and affixed a painted wooden plank that read POSITIVELY NO TRESPASSING to the top wire. He adjusted the sign until it hung perfectly centered between the posts.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Virgil said, contemplation weighing heavily in his voice. He leaned against the fence and surveyed the rolling hillside, watching as twilight crept up from the foot of the rugged mountain valley. Basking in the dying breath of daylight, Mount Horning stood red-faced in the distance, its quiet majesty guarded by the echoing cries of a lone hawk spiraling above, lifted higher and higher on unseen thermal updrafts.

“How’s that?” Fallon replied. He picked up a rock, lobbed it up and down, tested its heft, aimed for the trunk of a distant tree, threw it. The stone found its mark with a muffled thump.

“Look around you,” Virgil said. “For years I only dreamed about this. I never thought I’d see the day my family and I would live in a place like this with so much land to call our own.”

“I suppose,” Fallon replied matter-of-factly. He ran a hand through his wiry black hair. “Personally, I had no doubt we’d end up here. It was only a matter of time before Prophet found what he was looking for. He’s true to his word. Always has been. And I’ve known him a very long time.”

Malignant gray clouds grumbled in baritone timbre from the peak of Mount Horning. The hawk cried again, circled in one last long arc, then rushed against the face of the mountain and dived. It flapped its wings, slowed, and came to rest in its crag nest, invisible from sight. A flash of lightning vaulted across the tortured sky and serrated the tops of the clouds with a parry of electricity as erratic and unpredictable as the thrust of a madman’s dagger.

“We’d best be heading back,” Fallon said. He watched as the mountaintop disappeared beneath the irritated clouds. “Looks like it’s going to pour.”

A fat droplet of rainwater christened Virgil’s neck as he leaned over. “You grab the rifles,” he said. “I can manage the tools by myself.”

He slipped his hammer into his belt, lifted the wire stretcher to one shoulder, the sledgehammer to the other. Together they walked up the hill. In the distance they could see the others preparing to seek shelter from the oncoming thunderstorm. Blessing was playing hide-and-seek among billowing sails of tablecloths, bedsheets, shirts, pants and linens as her mother fought against the roiling wind and splattering raindrops to remove the items from the laundry line.

“Boo!” Sky teased as she pulled down a bed sheet. Blessing laughed with glee every time she was discovered, then ran further down the clothesline only to be enveloped by another wind-shorn hiding place. With the last sheet pulled down and the game finally over, Virgil heard Blessing cry out.

“Mommy, look! Daddy’s home!”

Virgil tossed the tools to the ground, dropped to his knees, spread his arms and said, “Three... two... one!”

Blessing ran as fast as her little legs could carry her, then threw herself into her father’s open arms in a revelry of high-pitched laughter.

“Gotcha!” Virgil laughed. “Hi baby,” he said. “How’s my angel?”

“I’m fine, Daddy. I helped Mommy take in the laundry.”

“Helped? Really? It looked to me like Mommy was doing all the work out there.”

“I was supersizing.”

“You were what?”

“Supersizing.”

“You mean supervising.”

“That’s what I said. Supersizing.”

Virgil laughed. “Come on, baby. Let’s get you inside before it pours. What do you say, King of the Mountain?”

“Okay!”

“All right. Climb aboard!”

Virgil leaned over as Blessing squirmed her legs around her father’s neck and laced her fingers under his chin.

“Ready?”

“Ready!”

“Okay. Up we go!”

Virgil picked up the tools at his feet and wrapped his arms around his daughter’s legs, balancing her on his shoulders as he stood.

“Prophet wants to have a meeting tonight,” Fallon said as they walked toward the compound. “Says he has some important news we need to hear.”

“Did he say what it was about?”

Fallon shook his head. “No. Just that it was important. And that we all need to be there.”

“What time?”

“After supper. In Communion Hall, around nine.”

“All right. I’ll tell Sky.” Virgil motioned to their Brethren brothers and sisters still tending to the fields despite the ominous thunderhead rumbling above. “Perhaps you can tell the others.”

Fallon grunted his acknowledgement, then walked off toward the fields. They had said more to each other in the last five minutes than they had all day, which was fine with Virgil. Something about Fallon always made him feel uneasy. The man was not physically overwhelming, nor did he possess an intimidating presence. In fact, the opposite was true. Fallon was weak in appearance, with a jaundice look that stretched itself over a frame of skin and bones. But it was his eyes Virgil found most unsettling. They were cold, caliginous. Earlier, while Fallon held the fence post in place for him to stretch and staple to it the last section of wire, Virgil had to break his gaze. Looking into his eyes was like staring into a soulless entity, darkly