Dean Crawford
The Fusion Cage
I
Amber Ryan knew that there was something wrong the moment she reached the edge of the forest. She crouched down amid the sun dappled trees, the dark green and black disruptive pattern material of her camouflage smock blending in perfectly with the light from the setting sun shimmering through the long grass.
The town below her was nestled deep within the confluence of three valleys and intersected by the silvery line of Hope Creek that wound its way down from the highlands of the Logan Creek Conservation Area. The high hills created a natural, shadowy haven surrounded by deep forests of pine and aspen within which the tiny town of Clearwater had lain since the gold rush of two centuries before. A population of just three hundred fifteen. One road in, one road out. The next town was more than ten miles away.
Amber, her eyes shielded from the sun’s glare by her sunglasses, slowly lay down in the long grass. She shifted her position to avoid crushing the bodies of two grouse hitched to her belt as she slipped the rifle she carried off her shoulder and removed the protective plastic shields on the telescopic sights.
Clearwater’s deep location within the surrounding mountains meant that it saw sunlight only in the very height of summer and by sundown was always deep in shadow. Amber had normally navigated her way home via the town’s twinkling street lights, an obvious and clearly visible marker in the wilderness as soon as one crested the ridge high above the settlement. But this time, things were different.
The street lights were all out and there were blockades on both of the town’s exit routes. From her vantage point high in the hills Amber could not make out any details until she pulled the rifle into her shoulder and aimed it down at the blockade on the west entrance to the town, not so much a proper road as a logging track winding in from the deep forests.
Amber’s heart skipped a beat. Two vehicles, both of them painted a drab green, were parked nose to nose across the road, and in front of them were a series of boards painted with vivid yellow and black hazard chevrons. Behind the boards stood four soldiers, all cradling what looked like assault rifles.
Amber swept the rifle to the east and immediately tracked the position of a second barricade on the far side of the town, likewise manned by armed soldiers. Amber scanned the vehicles but saw no markings to identify which army unit they were assigned to, and the soldiers’ uniforms betrayed no patches or insignia that she could recognize from so far away. Concerned but not alarmed, it took a while for Amber to realize what it was that was truly bugging her, an out — of — place sensation that she could not shake off.
As her sights swept slowly across the town she realized that the main street was devoid of either pedestrians or vehicles. Clearwater was a redneck haven, always filled with trucks and four by fours plastered with mud, burly loggers making their way either to or from Old Rigger’s, a crumbling joint that served the town’s only alcohol. An equally shabby Colonial style hotel on the opposite side of the town provided a place for them to live during the season, after which Clearwater’s population halved as the loggers left.
But now there was not a single car in the town, and through her sights Amber could see that the businesses were closed and some of the windows of the houses were already boarded up. She slowly lowered the rifle and stared in amazement at the sight of her town completely abandoned. She’d left Clearwater four days before for a weekend camping trip in the wilderness, a country girl at heart who longed to escape the stifling routine of college. Amber’s father had stayed behind, the man who had taught her to love and live in the countryside too old now to venture far out across the rugged wilderness. Besides, he had been busy in his workshop, his head down on yet another crazy idea he’d had, something he’d wanted to build for …
Amber saw movement, men emerging from a building near the west edge of the town where most of the residential homes were located up on the foothills, elevated away from the creek that in the winter could swell to twice its normal depth and width as rainfall on the mountains swept down into the myriad gullies and creeks that slashed across the forested valleys.
Amber set her rifle down and pulled a small set of folding binoculars from her smock as she saw eight soldiers carrying something on their shoulders, some kind of pallet. Atop the pallet was something concealed beneath a camouflaged tarpaulin that rippled in the evening breeze gusting through the valley, and she saw the tarpaulin edges flapping as more soldiers hurried into view and began trying to tie it down more securely.
As one soldier yanked down on one corner of the tarpaulin so the opposite edge was hauled upward, and in an instant a fierce flare of blue — white light burst from beneath the cover like a supernova, as though a new born star had blossomed into life. Amber saw the brilliant light fill her vision and she almost screamed as she jerked her eyes away from the optics and threw her hands instinctively over them.
The darkness behind her hands was scorched by the afterglow of the infernal brightness and Amber realized that she was weeping, that she may have permanently damaged her eyes. The vicious light had seemed so intense that it had imprinted upon her eyes a bizarre negative image of the town below, cast in shades of gray and black, the brilliant orb blazing at its centre. Amber tried to open her eyes and whimpered as she saw her vision marred, clear around the edges but filled with blackness at its centre. She turned her head to one side, wiped the tears from her face as she tried to get a last glance at the mysterious object being hauled onto a small truck that had appeared on main street. Through the periphery of her blurred vision she watched as the object was properly secured and concealed, and moments later the barricades were removed and the object was driven out of Clearwater.
Amber reached out with one hand for her rifle and by touch alone she slung the weapon on her shoulder, remaining prone amid the tall grass for fear of being spotted by the troops still in the town. Her vision sparkled and pulsed with kaleidoscopic colors orbiting the blackness, and she stifled her sobs as she withdrew back into the cover of the trees and lay down on the cool grass with her eyes closed. She reached down to her side for a canteen of water, and after drinking from it she poured the cold water across her face in the hope that the damage to her eyes might somehow be mitigated.
She tried to relax as she set up a small camp, more by touch than by sight, relying on her experience and skills to build a simple makeshift shelter on which she laid down, and the soft caress of the warm evening breeze and the whispering of the wind through the trees lulled her into a doze.
Amber did not know how long she was out for, but when she was awoken by the cold air she opened her eyes and for a moment panicked as she saw nothing but absolute blackness.
Amber sucked in a deep breath of air and rolled onto her back, and there above her appeared a sky filled with a panorama of glittering stars. Her gaze swept the dense star fields and she almost wept again as she realized that her blindness had been temporary, the brutal glare of whatever she had seen now nothing but a memory. Amber rolled onto her side once more and looked down into the valley and saw nothing but an absolute and impenetrable blackness, the mountains around her dark against the pale glow of a new dawn, the sky to the east tinged with its light.
She got to her feet and once again used her binoculars to scan the town, but under the faint starlight the only thing of which she could be sure was that the barricades were gone from the tracks and that the power was still off.
Amber strode out of the treeline and descended the hillside toward Clearwater, passing through thick forest glades and hearing the first waters whispering through the creek as she approached the town. She slowed as she joined the logging trail that crossed the base of the foothills before her, cautious of her approach to a town that she had called home for all of her seventeen years. In the dim light she could make out the narrow bridge that crossed the creek onto Main Street and she hesitated for a moment before she crouched down, enshrouded in inky blackness.