Clive Darling guided the rigged-up RV he calledBernice up a small incline until he could just see Carbondale over the bulge of the dashboard. The black, armored chase vehicles that accompanied him split up as he brought Bernice to a stop. Some moved to his left and others to his right. They moved in a line, the vehicles, until they came to a stop, like sentries out on a search, an ancient tribal ritual played out in modern sleek machinery. Doors and hatches on the vehicles opened up with precision, and soldiers poured forth from them, and in seconds the team had set up a secure perimeter, which included snipers and patrols.
Clive turned to his passenger and explained that he’d learned that the maniac running the Carbondale “resettlement” center had secured generators and a power plant. Clive explained that the officer running the prison camp was planning on electrifying the fences and illuminating the control tents where interrogations were said to be taking place around the clock.
The listener listened. He watched the man speak with confidence about how a life ought to be lived. He heard in that voice, the voice of the man named Clive, the intonations and ideas of a brother.
As Clive spoke, the listener saw a man who knew what he was about. Clive’s mannerisms showed the listener that the man with the Savannah drawl really believed the words that he said, and that he was not full of guile. This made the listener think of his own journey, his own modern ride, his own tribal ties.
“They don’t need electrical power to terrorize the public,” Clive said to the passenger, his slow drawl emphasizing the horror in the word… Terrorize.
Clive indicated with his hand the general world; first the world outside and then the world inside, over there in Carbondale. “They seem to have been doin’,” he paused. “…You know… the terrorizing… alright by themselves. But—”
Clive paused and looked at his passenger, the man so odd in his own weird skin, this man who seemed to mold himself around the world, and yet, who in the end molded the world around him. He watched his passenger listening, as they sat in the RV with their soldiers spread out in a perimeter around them. As they waited, the two men just passed time, just sharing like friends would.
The friends noticed when the power blinked on in the Carbondale camp, first with some hesitation, and then more insistently.
The lights pierced the surrounding darkness.
But not everywhere, though. The lights only burned in the tents of arbitrary power.
Clive massaged his heavy mustache with his left hand and looked over to his passenger. He indicated to the broader world again, and when he did, his passenger listened.
“There’s no way we can insure fairness in this world, and even if we could, I don’t think I’d want to. People are not equal, and no one can make them what they are not. However, the use of arbitrary power in the hands of tyranny perturbs me. We Luddites look to impair, obstinately, such terrorism wherever we find it.”
Clive looked at his passenger and his passenger looked at him.
“My friend, would you like to do the honors?”
The red-bearded passenger smiled, and his eyes lit up.
Clive lifted up the protective guard on the dashboard, exposing the lighted switch.
In the Carbondale Resettlement Camp, the technician had just finished a long day of fixing, and prepping, and wiring, and fueling up the huge generators. He pulled down the three large levers that would connect the machines to the makeshift “grid” in the camp. After running through a series of checks, the technician flipped up a plastic button guard, and then pressed in the red button with his thumb.
The generators fired up in unison, and the technician was pleased to see the lights in the maintenance tent first flicker, and then begin to burn brightly through the plastic windows.
He’d just packed up his tools and was rushing back to the tent to get out of the cold, when he heard the loud rumble accompanied with the otherworldly buzz.
It seemed that there was a split-second of silence before the entire control panel and junction box on the front of each of the generators blew up, showering pieces of metal and wire around the camp like rain.
The technician ran quickly along the packed white snow as the electrical sparks shot out in in white arcs above his head…
From a distance it might have looked like an umbrella, or a fireworks show.
On the other hand, maybe it looked like a mushroom cloud.
It was hard to tell. The artificial light was so brief. And so rare.
The red-bearded man smiled when the lights went dark again in the camp.
“I sing the body electric. I celebrate the me… yet… to come!”
He looked at Clive, who smiled at him under his thick mustache. “It’s almost like bein’ the Good Lord there for a few seconds,” he said with a wink, his eyes wide, like a child’s.
He sat there, Clive did, and looked over the dash to the darkened prison camp that was Carbondale, Pennsylvania.
“Insufficient shielding,” Clive Darling said, matter-of-factly. “We tried to warn ‘em.”
CHAPTER 29
Natasha did her best not to show concern on her face, and she smiled stiffly, but she was worried. They were in the middle of nowhere with no antibiotics, no herbal remedies, not even any natural antibiotics like garlic, echinacea, or even honey. She’d instructed Elsie to start a fire in the fireplace to boil some water, while she went to find Peter to determine what she might do next to prepare, aid, and support whatever treatment Lang might need.
She found Peter moving stealthily towards the tree line behind the cabin, catching up with him with a low shout. “The wound is infected, Peter,” she said, “and I don’t think just cleaning it and repacking it is going to do anything but cause him excruciating pain. You’re going to have to come and help.”
Peter grimaced. The last gray-blue of dusk was highlighting the trees, and a cold wind began to whip through them, making the shadows move across the snowy ground. He was concerned about Lang, and he saw fear and nervousness etched across Natasha’s face.
“Absolutely…”
Peter’s mind was torn. He was also concerned with security. Lang was his friend, and was like a son to him, but with the four of them all inside the house, they’d be blind, and exposed. He wasn’t happy about that. Security was really everything right now. If only the women could deal with Lang…
He didn’t know what he might do with the wound that the women could not either. He wasn’t sure there was anything to be done at all.
Still, he had to do something to help Lang or the boy wouldn’t last long. Sepsis was a concern, and there wasn’t anything he could think of at that moment that frightened him more than that. If the infection got into the blood stream… well… he’d just have to see if there was anything he could do.
Walking back into the cabin, Peter struggled in his thoughts. Absent a medical solution—and he had to admit that his own library of knowledge and experience had already been taxed to its limit—there wasn’t much left he could do.
The rudiments of an extravagant placebo plan had run through his mind when he first noticed that Lang was getting worse. Convincing someone that a medicine or a procedure is effectual—when in reality it was not—can be very powerful, not just in convincing the injured or sick person that they are getting better, but often enough the positive effects of a placebo extend to actual physiological healing. The body, convinced that something powerful or helpful is going on, will often ramp up its own defenses to match or meet the expected results. In this way, patients have had their pain alleviated during surgery and recovery, and there were even cases of people healed of cancers and other real diseases with the use of placebos alone. In his own mind, Peter called his plan ‘The Sugar Pill Plot.’