Circles in the Dust Read online

  Circles in the Dust

  Matthew Harrop

  Copyright © 2014 Matthew Harrop

  All rights reserved.

  All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 1497476070

  ISBN-13: 978-1497476073

  This work is dedicated to my dearest Caitlyn. I never could have done this if you hadn’t refused to support me when I got discouraged.

  PROLOGUE

  A spark of light cut across the night sky, darting through the starless canvas hanging above the quiet city. Spring was just coming to an end but the wind had lost its edge. The city sat in a low valley, a metropolitan center flanked by forests and wilderness on every side, an oasis from the harsh natural world. Evening had just descended and the streets were deserted, save for the few lonely stragglers wandering in search of home, or at least a place to call that for a few hours. Families huddled around a television or computer screen, their eyes and ears devouring the news of the world.

  This disaster was nothing new; the current storm had been brewing for decades. Never had it come so close to the people of this town tucked away in the mountains, though, and the only way they knew to cope with it was to sit and listen to the news.

  David sat on the edge of the couch, crunched up against the arm of it by his two older brothers. The coarse green fabric rubbed against his bare arm, causing him to shift restlessly. He moved his arm into every conceivable position but no matter what he did, it ended up resting awkwardly on the itchy fabric. Eventually he gave up and let it hang awkwardly over the side. His attention shifted back to the television, where the rest of his family’s had remained during his quest for comfort. Normally his brothers would have yelled at him, maybe even punched him for squirming so much. But not tonight. Tonight something serious was happening; his dad hadn’t made a corny joke about the state of the world, his mom hadn’t started dinner. His brothers had made room for him on the couch when he first wandered up. In that moment David knew something serious was going on, though the cause still eluded his prepubescent mind. He tried to glean some insight from the flashing images on the television screen, hoping for some enlightenment from the anchorman’s voice, but it was all beyond him. Tanks bumped over rough ground one moment; a very angry man in a military uniform yelled some foreign language into a microphone the next. The newsman with the perfect comb-over and the big red tie punctuated these baffling images. Words flowed from his mouth like candy into the open mouths of his family. David could not taste it though. He had no idea what the man was talking about.

  There were flags now and again. David got excited whenever he saw the red, white, and blue that belonged to his own country and hoped to grab a foothold in the tense situation. It was useless. He knew that the stars and stripes were his own, but the dots and squares on other flags that followed drowned him in meaningless colors. Sometimes his dad would flip the channel to a different man in a tan suit who stood next to a woman with dark eyes and a knowing smile, and his mom would hiss at him. His dad would complain about wanting another point of view and shush her. Eventually he would turn it back to the original channel, waiting long enough for it to seem his own idea. David’s brother Mark got up to go to the bathroom and didn’t take his eyes off the screen until the door blocked him from sight.

  David looked around at his family, wondering who he could ask to explain what was going on. His mom was the natural choice. She always showed the most patience with him, never made him feel naïve or silly for asking her about something he didn’t understand. But now, as David looked at her perched on the arm of the big, cushy armchair, he could see the usually unnoticeable lines on her face; her mouth was pulled tight and her eyes wide, bright with the reflection of the handsome man on the news. He knew by the way she hissed when his dad changed the channel that now was not the time to ask her a question.

  His brothers were out of the question. Since he had become a teenager, Mark’s words had grown increasingly rare, as had his time spent interacting with the family. He grunted a lot and spent days on end in his room. He and David had never been terribly close anyway. Ben was closer to David in age but still older, something he never let David forget. He probably had no more idea what was going on than David, but would still scoff at his younger brother and call him stupid for not being able to keep up. Ben normally took the longest to sit still when something serious happened, thanks to his ADD, but now a statue sat where his brother should have been, hunched over in a sort of thinking-man pose, hat turned backward as always, baggy sweatshirt hanging down in front of him.

  David sat back and resigned himself to staring out the window. He saw a shooting star and made a silent wish for someone to break the silence with a clear explanation of what the television had been droning on about all day. Their apartment hovered a few levels up from the bottom and David could see over the rooftops of the surrounding houses and out beyond the city to the ring of trees that clustered around the north part of town. They had moved to this newer part of the city several years before, and David enjoyed looking out at the woods, dreaming of hiking and camping and fishing. He had a rough plan of what he would do when he got out there and explored the spectacular unknown, someday when he was older and didn’t have to ask permission. His family’s consciousness was in the living room—eyes glued to the flat screen—but David’s mind had whisked him off to a different world, filled with the emerald pines and evergreen trees he could just make out in the evening gloom through the window beside him, of ridges and rivers he would scale and ford. The stars shone dimly, but someone at school had told him that if you got away from the city, out where the drone of traffic and buzz of the modern world died away, you could really see them, bright and beautiful. David wanted to escape the city and find those magical lights.

  A flash of light grabbed his attention and pulled him back into the real world, where his eyes had hovered while his mind worked to create its own daydream images. A burst of red and gold light flowered, followed by a round black cloud. A muffled boom trailed after, almost imperceptible from the great distance, and a pillar of darkness rose from the spot over the last edges of sky that still contained some faint traces of blue twilight. David chalked this up to another grown-up thing he didn’t understand, figuring it must have something to do with whatever the newsman had been going on about. He looked over to see if his family had noticed the flash and bang but the man with the firm voice on the far wall still had them enslaved. He returned his gaze to the window and saw another flash, this one burning brighter and bigger. Like the first, the light had come from somewhere off in the distance; David couldn’t tell how far. Still his family had no idea what was happening outside. David didn’t tell them. Now he knew something they didn’t, and wasn’t about to share. Now he had something of his own, some snippet of knowledge they didn’t.

  “…for those in the threatened zone, we recommend evacuation to one of the sheltered areas shown on the map here. If you are unable to travel, the best thing to do is find a safe place to stay bunkered down in, a basement or bomb shelter if you have one…”

  David ignored the mysteries sliding out of the speakers. His eyes were plastered to the window as intently as his family’s were on the television. More blasts twinkled from afar; some small, like a cherry in the distance, while others left purple smudges that swam in front of him when he closed his eyes. After a minute, so many fires blossomed that he began to feel he should tell his family. He wanted to yell at them to look and see what was happening, what was really happening, not just what was flashing past on the LCD screen, but he couldn’t tear himself away from the distant light show.

  A gasp tore from his mother�
��s taut lips and yanked his attention back inside. His head whipped around to see what had finally happened to evoke some extreme emotion in the stifling room and expected to see something outrageous on the television. His eyes fell on the screen, but he saw nothing of note there. The screen was black, the stream of words cut off, though the television still hummed as if it were simply muted. David watched his father hit a few buttons on the remote, his expression gray with worry.

  When nothing elicited a response, he turned it off and dropped the remote to the floor, where it landed with a soft thud. His father placed a hand on his mother’s thigh and looked up at her with a face that was older than it should have been. Tears stained her cheeks. Mark hung his head for a moment and Ben’s mouth opened as if he wanted to say something, but he floundered for words and gave up.

  David wanted to bring their attention to the window; he lifted his hand to point but could not call his tongue to action. Finally he nudged Mark’s scrawny arm and motioned outside.

  “L-L-Look,” he managed to say.

  Mark raised his eyes from the floor to the glass pane. David knew from the way his brother’s eyes widened that this was important, maybe even as much as anything the man on the news had to say.

  “Oh my god,” Mark uttered under his breath. “Mom, Dad, look outside,” he continued in a more audible tone. “There’s—”

  A shriek from his mother cut him off as she turned her head. She raised her hand to her mouth to stifle the noise and only slightly succeeded. His father ran across the room and pressed his face against the glass, his hands gripping the windowsill like he was hanging on for his life. The last vestiges of color drained from his face as he saw the bursts of color on the horizon and he sank a little, hunching over, a pained expression on his face.

  “That’s it then,” he said, turning back to the living room. David stood up and walked over to the window as his father lurched into the kitchen, opened up the freezer and took out a bottle of whiskey that he normally saved for a rough day of work. David took a closer look out the window, noticing the smudges where his father’s face had connected with the glass. The lights shone closer now and David could tell that they were explosions. That didn’t seem right; explosions had a place in movies and video games. He had never actually seen them. Not like this. He remembered hearing the words “bomb” and “blown-up” mumbled and whispered over the last few weeks but he had given little heed to them. Grown-ups were always worried about something and never shared it with kids. He wondered for a moment if school would be cancelled on Monday. They had gotten a few days off when everyone had been whispering about the swine flu. Maybe this was just like that.

  “Honey, what do we do?” his mother choked out between sobs.

  “What do we do?” David’s father repeated. The bottle in his hand was already half drained. Mark and Ben stayed on the couch, looking at each other for some guidance. David’s father’s eyes had glassed over, as they did whenever the bottle came out of the freezer. “We’re gonna d-”

  “No!” his mother shouted from across the room. Her sobs doubled in intensity.

  “Now, sweetheart,” he slurred, “the boys deserve to know the truth.”

  “No,” she implored.

  He sighed. “What would you suggest we do?”

  “We should have left when we had the chance.”

  “It’s too late for that now.”

  “What about the boys?” his mother whispered, though the three of them stood between her and her husband.

  “What about ‘em?” David’s father was making his way back into the living room, leaning on every piece of furniture he passed. “Boys, if this is it, you deserve to know what’s happening.”

  “Steve, stop!”

  “They’ve been sitting here with us watching the news anyway.” He turned to the couch to address his sons. “There are a lot of people in this world that hate us, kids. Not that we,” he motioned to all of them in the room, “did anything to them particularly. But they don’t care. They want to kill us.”

  “That’s enough, Steve.”

  “Joyce, just hang on,” he said, waving her off. “And right now, what you’re seeing is the collapse of the American dream. We built ourselves up so high we got nowhere to go but down.” He paused and took another swig of the pungent liquor.

  “Dad,” Ben piped up, pulling on the collar of his oversized sweatshirt, “are they bombing us right now?”

  “Have a look out the window and see for yourself, son.”

  Ben shuffled over to the window slowly. He looked outside and stared blankly at the scene laid out before him. David let him pass then climbed up on the arm of the couch to peer over his shoulder. The explosions were popping up like firecrackers, one right after the other. Each one that went off illuminated the cloud of smoke left by its predecessors.

  “They’re not hitting the city though,” Ben said, his voice colored with hope. “You can see them, but they’re way out there-”

  “For now,” his father interjected. The light in Ben’s face drained and he turned away.

  David’s mother was rocking back and forth on the armchair, her hand still stuck over her mouth, tears streaming from her eyes.

  “I think we should leave,” she said, sobbing.

  “Where exactly are we gonna go?”

  “I don’t know, a bomb shelter or-”

  “There aren’t any bomb shelters. We have the most powerful army on Earth; who’s gonna fuck with us, right?” He laughed a little and threw his head back, bottle married firmly to his lips, light from the explosions dancing on the dark glass in his hand.

  “Well, I’m not just going to sit here.” David’s mother rose out of her stupor and rushed into the kitchen. She grabbed a cloth grocery bag and began filling it with cans and packages from the cupboards.

  “Where are you goin’?”

  “If you won’t take us somewhere else, I’ll at least head to the basement. They always say when something happens, basements are the safest place,” his mother said with a forced calm. Her hands betrayed her. She dropped a can and jumped at the sound of it striking the linoleum. She raised a trembling finger to wipe a last tear from the corner of her eye.

  “In a tornado maybe.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here.”

  “Darlin’, this is the end. This is it. Hiding in the basement isn’t gonna save you from a nuc-”

  “Shut up!” his mother snapped, slamming another innocent can onto the countertop with a sharp smack. David’s father jumped at the shrillness in her voice. He sloshed a little booze onto his front though he didn’t seem to notice. He eyed her with a surprised and wary expression.

  “Boys, go pack a bag,” she said, without looking up from the second bag her unsure hands worked to fill. After a few seconds with no response, she shot them a fiery glance. “Now!” she barked.

  Mark jumped up off the couch and darted off. David followed Ben into their shared room. He saw Ben dump the contents of his backpack on the floor and followed suit, replacing his books with the clothes piled on the floor. Ben kept his eyes hidden as he stuffed a pair of jeans into his bag. David watched him though as he absently packed his own clothes. He thought he could see a glimmer of moisture on his brother’s cheek but couldn’t be sure. David wished he knew enough about the situation to shed tears, but he was still having a hard time grasping what the explosions outside their window meant and why he was packing a bag. He just wanted to watch what was happening out the window.

  More shouting from the kitchen punctured the silence of the room and the two boys ramped up their pace. Ben dropped the jeans in his hands and scrambled to pick them up. David stuffed more underwear and socks into the top of his backpack and reached for the book he was reading, wondering if he should take it. There might not be anything to do in the basement after all.

  It was not long before they’d all assembled back in the living room. David and Ben had their backpacks, Mark toted a duffle bag stretche
d to capacity. Their mother was out of sight when they re-entered the main room, but a rustling drifted out of her room and they waited in silence for their mother to finish packing. Their father had returned to his armchair, which he had pulled over to face the window, the empty bottle hanging from his fingers. David wanted to ask why his dad wasn’t getting ready, why he was just sitting there, but his mouth was so dry all he could do was cough and lick his lips. Not a word passed between any of them until their mother finally emerged from her room with a large purse stuffed to the brim and a monstrous rolling suitcase. She looked at the chair tucked against the far wall, a yearning in her eyes, some words on her fluttering lips. She only looked, and their father never saw, just sat and watched the events unfolding outside the window. She waited a long moment before she turned and put her hand on the front doorknob.

  “Boys, grab those bags from the kitchen,” she commanded.

  They filed in to acquiesce, each taking in their hands one of the bags stuffed with all the food in their kitchen. Mark grabbed two, having slung his duffle bag over one shoulder. They stood in a huddle by the front door for what felt like hours; not a single word was uttered. David trained his eyes on the back of the head poking over the back of the armchair. The brown hair was disheveled in places by the drunken hand that had a habit of running through the muddy locks. He watched, waiting for the moment when his father would stand up and laugh, walk into his room and grab his things like the rest of the family and lead them out the door. No one spoke. David pulled his eyes away from the dismal corner of the room and turned to the rest of his family. They all had their eyes trained on the man frozen in his easy chair, gazing out the window at the apocalyptic scene like an insomniac watching a late-night infomercial. One by one they rose from their stupor and shuffled their feet, eyes wandering, ready to leave.

  His mother opened the door and motioned for her children to file out in front of her. They shambled out into the hallway and David heard his mother saying something quietly to his father. A short, gruff reply wafted out before the tiny click as the door closed. David’s mother turned to her boys, bearing a fresh stream of tears and cleared her throat.