Infernal

An old trick from the early nineteenth century might work here, Richard thought as Johnse Hatfield bound his arms behind his back with a length of thick hemp. Forged steel handcuffs were not widely used in the early twentieth century. And forget zip-ties; those plastics had yet to be invented.

As Johnse looped around Richard’s wrists, making two tight figure eights and tying a knot in the center, Richard tightened the muscles in his forearms while pushing outwards. In his haste to do his father’s bidding and set about destroying their enemies, Johnse didn’t notice. The move gave Richard enough slack to rotate his wrists and move his fingers freely.

Johnse handed Richard off to a subordinate—the same man who had nearly concussed him with a blow to the back of the head earlier. Blood flow returned to Richards fingers, the nerves rejoicing by sending wave after wave of painful impulses tingling up his forearms. His hands felt as if hungry ants were devouring them. His feet felt little better.

“Put him in with the woman,” Johnse told the man. “And Thomas,” he warned as the man grabbed Richard’s arm in an iron grip, his fingertips digging into the bicep like the teeth of a bear trap, “No rough stuff. The General wants both of them alive.”

“’Course, Major,” Thomas responded dully, digging his fingers even deeper into Richard’s muscle. When Johnse turned and walked away Thomas yanked Richard forward so roughly he nearly lost his footing.

Richard feigned more pain and weakness than he actually felt, letting himself be dragged along the hall. Behind his back he flexed his fingers to hasten the reawakening of nerve endings. Once his hands felt more like his own and less like gloves half filled with sand he ran his thumbs over the knot in his bindings, searching for a weakness. He was bound with a common whipping knot. A bight, or loop, had been laid under the center mass of the cinch and the end of the rope pulled through it. If he could work his thumb under the whipping and find the bight, he could work the end loose enough to free himself.

Thomas yanked him hard to the left and down a side hallway. The cinderblock walls were cracked; intermittent piles of dirt and debris shaken loose by repeated bombardment littered the floor. At the end of the hall Thomas pushed him into a room fifteen feet to a side, with a desk facing a barred cell at the far end. Sophia sat on one of two bunks inside the cell, her hair hanging in her face. She looked up as they entered. The gag had been removed from her mouth but Richard saw a fresh set of bruises on the left side of her jaw.

Richard cast his captor a look of pure malice.

“She’s feisty, that one,” Thomas said cheerfully before shoving Richard face first into the bars. He retrieved a set of keys from the desk. “Stomped Tater’s foot real good and tried to run off. Me an’ Johnse had to chase her a bit, but I caught up to her and convinced her to settle down.”

Thomas unlocked the cell and shoved Richard inside, slamming the gate before Richard could cause him any trouble.

“I reckon she’ll settle down a might more when Tater gets back from the infirmary. Smashed his toes all to hell and broke one or two of ’em for certain. He’s gonna want to repay that favor.”

Richard said nothing to the grinning man. Only stared at him through the bars as he pocketed the keys and headed back to the hall.

“Y’all sleep tight, now,” he said, and with that he was gone.

Richard worked his thumb under the bight in his bindings and loosened it from the cinch, creating enough slack to work his wrists free. He let the rope drop to the floor and turned to Sophia and crouched. Took her face gently in his hands.

“Was it worth it?” he asked softly.

She gave him a lopsided grin and pulled her hands from behind her back. She’d slipped her bonds as easily as Richard had. In one hand she held a set of keys similar to the ones their jailer had just pocketed.

“Tater’s in quite a bit of pain.” She spoke slowly. The left side of her face was swollen. It would be a lovely shade of purple by morning. “I don’t think he’s going to miss these for a while.”

“You are a feisty one, aren’t you?” Richard laughed softly.

“If we can get back to our weapons,” Sophia said, “they just might find out how feisty I can be.”

Free of the cell, Richard cautiously poked his head out into the hallway and looked down the corridor. No footfalls hurried towards him; no voices rang out in alarm. The hallway was deserted. He nodded to Sophia and stepped out. She followed closely behind.

“So what did the General want to talk about?” She asked in a low voice.

“Religion, of all things,” Richard said. Their feet rasped noisily on the gritty floor as they approached a junction in the hall.

“Why religion?” Sophia asked.

“It was a feint to see if I’d slip up and reveal who we are,” Richard told her. “To get a sense of what we’re about. Hatfield knows about the Rips and the Multi-verse. He’s working with Jefferson. BanaTech is here and has been for a long time. They want control of this world and they’re using the Hatfield-McCoy feud to get it.”

Richard took a look out into the adjoining corridor. Seeing no one, he started forward. Sophia pulled him back.

“This is bad, Richard,” she hissed. “Very bad. If Hatfield is in BanaTech’s pocket he’ll hand us over to Jefferson or have us executed.”

“No he won’t,” Richard said. “He wants to use us as a bargaining chip to get off this Earth. But we have bigger problems. Hatfield is going to nuke Pikesville.”

“What? Where the hell did they get nuclear weapons?”

“Shhh,” Richard admonished, taking Sophia by the shoulders. “Either BanaTech gave them nuclear technology or stole it from another country on this Earth for them. It doesn’t matter. Hatfield has a device and he and his son are on their way to arm it. We need to grab our gear and put a stop to this before they kill thousands.”

Richard took another look into the junction, still saw no one, and stepped around the corner. Sophia followed, but only to halt him again.

“Richard. Wait. You don’t understand. Jefferson is a master manipulator. He’s taken dozens of worlds without firing a single shot or losing a single operative because he knows how to play both ends against the middle and come out on top every time. If he’s given Hatfield a nuclear device to destroy Pikesville, then you can bet he gave McCoy one to destroy Logan county. That way he and BanaTech, and whoever they have in Washington, D.C.—and you can be certain they have someone there—are the only ones standing when the dust has settled.”

“Jesus Christ,” Richard muttered. “He’ll kill tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands, maybe.”

“As long as he wins whatever is left of this Earth in the end,” Sophia said solemnly, “he won’t care.”

“I thought maybe we could stop one device,” Richard said, “but two?”

“We can’t worry about either device, Richard. I know you want to save these people—I do, too—but we have to think about the bigger picture. If we don’t find the Key and stop BanaTech from opening a permanent focal point, the entire Multi-verse could be lost. Not just these two cities on this one Earth but every city on every Earth could be thrown into chaos.”

Richard sighed. People were going to die here. He knew it and was powerless to stop it. It pained him to turn his back on this Earth and allow Jefferson’s plans to play out unopposed. He knew in his heart, however, that Sophia was right. There was much more at stake here than two little cities on one little Earth.

With a sigh of regret Richard dismissed the notion of interfering with BanaTech’s designs for this world and turned his attention towards getting the two of them out of here before the bombs went off.

The hallways were empty. He expected at least a sentry or roving guard but there was no one. He and Sophia made the interrogation room where they’d first been held without incident.

“Where’d they all go?” Sophia wondered.

“I don’t know.” Richard opened the heavy steel door to the room slowly. Rusty hinges wailed in protest. He and Sophia froze, expecting to hear someone charging their position. No one came. They stepped inside the room and left the door hanging ajar.

“Maybe Devil Anse’’ is out there rallying his troops with a rousing speech like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.”

“Like who?” Sophia asked.

“Never mind.”

Their gear—guns, ammunition, supplies of food, water, and medicines—was still laid out on the table. They each began grabbing up supplies and stowing it in their REAPERS. Richard elected to keep a PX4 Storm and H&K MP7 at the ready while Sophia returned the Gerber Mark II to its wrist sheath and reholstered the Springfield XD(M) compact at her ankle. She kept the Beretta 92FS within easy reach. Extra ammo went into various pockets of their BDU’s.

Richard checked a side pocket of his LRRP—his mother’s trinket box was still there—while Sophia opened the slider on the RLP and entered her password.

“Is it still working?” Richard asked, remembering the way Hatfield had slammed it down onto the table in his rage at Sophia.

“It’s fine,” she said. “These things are built to take a beating. Short of intentionally destroying it with a hammer or a rock there’s little that can damage them.”

As Richard watched, she worked the keypad of the device with her fingers. Screens changed, maximized, minimized again, and flashed by faster than Richard could follow.

“Lexington,” Sophia muttered as she scanned the results of her search. “No, too far. Lima, Ohio. Way too far. Wait. Here. Charleston. There’s a Rip opening there now. We have three hours. We can make that.”

“Charleston?” Richard asked. “South Carolina? We can’t make that in three hours. Not without one of those Mustangs I saw flying around out there.”

“Charleston, West Virginia,” Sophia corrected. “It’s about forty miles from here.”

“We’ll have to find the motor pool.” Richard said. “Steal a Jeep.”

“There’s no need to steal,” Devil Anse’’ Hatfield interrupted from the doorway. He had a Colt .45 caliber M1911 leveled at Richard’s head. Johnse Hatfield, the man named Thomas, and three others that Richard could see were crowded outside the door of the interrogation room, all armed to the teeth. “We’ll go in mine.”

The convoy of Jeeps and troop transports numbering in the dozens headed northeast towards Charleston at a brisk pace. Richard and Sophia—again stripped of their REAPERs, firearms, and the RLP before being led unbound to a troop transport—rode out the pocked and pitted roads in the back of a covered two and a half ton GMC Jimmy.

“I have no quarrel with you,” Devil Anse’’ had told them before they clambered into the back of the vehicle. “I rather like the idea of you running around and mucking about in Jefferson’s affairs.”

Richard thought what he really liked was the distraction their continued existence would provide from what Hatfield and his men were doing, but he remained silent.

“Jefferson is pure evil,” Hatfield said. “He gave McCoy the same weapon he gave us. Our spotters saw ’em loading it up just as we were loading ours. We’re evacuating everyone who would leave.”

Sophia shot Richard an ‘I told you so’ look as Hatfield continued:

“I’ve been manipulated and lied to and do not cotton to such. Your choice is simple. You come along, play nice, and when we get to Charleston I’ll return your gear and weapons and you’re free to go. Or”—he smiled a crocodile’s smile—“you can cause me and mine trouble and I’ll leave you by the side of the road to die in what’s coming.”

“Fair enough,” Richard replied.

As the truck pulled away from the base he’d seen a chilling sight through the open back of the vehicle—an airstrip lie within sight of the convoy. Sitting on it was a B-29 Superfortress, her four powerful Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone engines spooling up to operating temperatures. The nose of the aircraft bore the name ‘ENOLA GAY.’ He briefly wondered if a similar aircraft bearing the name ‘BOCKSCAR’ was spooling up on an airstrip to the west.

Richard had been lost in thought since spotting the B-29 and the deadly cargo he knew it carried. The collision of time and events here on this Earth, the sheer anachronistic mayhem evident in Hatfield’s existence in a time when aircraft and nuclear technology should have beenhalf a century in the planet’s future drove home a simple point:

If the Focal Point Generator goes online and the Rips are all opened simultaneously, technology and history will collide with unimaginable results throughout the Multi-verse. The natural order will be thrown into chaos and nothing and no one will survive.

And again: Why am I here? What is my role in all this?

The truck hit a large pothole that sent them and the lone guard Hatfield had placed in the back of the truck scrambling for the leather straps that hung in intervals above their heads.

The soldier, a youth of about seventeen, had looked pale and panic stricken since they’d climbed into the Jimmy. He constantly cast his gaze out of the rear of the vehicle in the direction of Logan County, sheer terror evident on his features.

“Relax, kid,” Richard told him. “If any of this holds to history that bomb detonates a fraction of its fissionable material and will only affect a five mile radius. We’re well beyond that.”

The soldier looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language.

“Just don’t look at it when it goes off,” Richard cautioned. “You’ll go blind.”

The boy’s eyes widened further until Richard feared they would fall from their sockets. Then the youth pinched his eyes shut and bowed his head, muttering a prayer under his breath.

Far to the south, two planes separated by a mere 39 miles dropped twin packages of death on the unsuspecting populace below. Pikesville went up first: more than a square mile of that fair city ceased to exist nanoseconds before nuclear fire swept out engulfing another four square miles in the blink of an eye. Logan County felt Asa McCoy’s wrath within seconds of Pikesville’s destruction. Those outside the blast areas later reported that it sounded as if God himself, grown weary of the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s and their petty feud, had stomped twice upon the earth in rapid succession, ending the conflict forever.

Nineteen miles northeast of Logan County, Devil Anse’’ Hatfield’s convoy motored on. Those who could see the twin pillars of destruction rising from what had once been their beloved land were struck dumb by the sight. Those who could not scrambled for position so that they could. A few moments later a warm rush of air buffeted the column.

Richard, his heart heavy with grief for the thousands of lives that had winked out in an instant, did not look.