Fields of Fire: The TWO JOURNEYS series, #2

By Clemens P. Suter

The world, empty and lost. A pandemic has killed humanity, and a few survivors need to cope with the hardships of the post-apocalypse. On the run from gangs in the Old World, Alan and his family arrive in the United States, hoping to build a new life. But dark forces are at work, and soon his family disappears without a trace. They seem to have been kidnapped, but by whom? Alan has to use all his cunning to survive in a hostile country. Dreadful secrets begin to unravel as he crosses the violent continent in search of his family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clemens P. Suter
• Release date: Mar 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310104534

Clemens P. Suter

Books You Can't Put Down Once You Begin. WARNING: make sure you don't have anything important going on the next day because these gripping books will keep you awake all night long. Clemens P. Suter is the author of top-rated SciFi and adventure stories. His novel TWO JOURNEYS (2011) describes the adventures of the sole survivor of a corona pandemic - how visionary is that then?!. FIELDS OF FIRE (2016) and REBOUND (2022) are further installments in this series. CELETERRA (2013) is one of the few atheist crime novels ever-written. Suter's novels and short stories are suited for all ages, combining straightforward adventure, philosophic elements, and dark humor. Clemens P. Suter has a Ph.D. in biology, his scientific know-how is omnipresent in all of his works. Remember: >>> THE BEST PAGE-TURNERS ARE WORTH THE LOSS OF SLEEP

Book preview

Prologue

He wasn’t nervous. In fact, he didn’t feel any emotion; no excitement, joy, or regret. He just stood there, looking at the ocean. Heavy waves rolled in and the wind carried a spray of rain. The glass of the French windows was gray with the mix of salt and water. He retrieved a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, fumbled one cigarette free, and stuck it into the corner of his mouth. He lighted it and took a deep drag.

Four men came into view and started to cross the golf course. One man was in the back with a gun and two other men dragged the prisoner forward. They had to struggle against the wind. The prisoner’s legs hung down limply, but he seemed to be conscious, occasionally lifting his head.

The quartet approached the cliffs that towered sixty feet above the ocean and the rough rocks. The man at the window took a second drag and a quick third. He dropped the cigarette on the carpet and killed its glow with the tip of his shoe.

The prisoner seemed to collect all his remaining strength. He managed to struggle free, and hit out at one of the guards, turned around and staggered away. For a moment, the man at the window felt something like excitement, but one of the guards ran after the prisoner and stepped down on his heel. The prisoner crashed to the ground. Did he shout out in pain? His mouth seemed to have opened in a scream, but the men were too distant and the sea was too loud for any sound to have carried over.

The guards dragged the prisoner to the edge of the cliff. They turned around and looked across the golf course and towards the man at the French windows. They waited. The man fumbled for a new cigarette. One of these days, I have to quit smoking, this is going to kill me, I know it. He continued to stare at the four men. He lighted his cigarette, puffed out the smoke.

Then he nodded. The three guards understood the signal; they always did.

The rain and wind increased, and the guards came hurrying back towards the building, the legs of their trousers flapping madly in the wind.

1

Thud!

The tugboat had hit an obstruction, and the force of the impact hurled us forward. I fell to the deck. My wife shouted from the wheelhouse, What the hell was that?

I got up and rubbed my knees. I’m not sure! We must have hit something heavy, something underwater. I can’t see anything through this damn fog. Are you all OK?

My two sons shouted confirmations from the back of the ship. The dogs barked nervously. A loud screeching followed, and the metal of the boat vibrated. I hurried to the bow and bent over the side, switching on my flashlight. The ocean was as flat as a mirror, which was surprising after the horrible storm of the past days. It had tortured our boat like a boxer practicing on his punching bag.

I checked both sides of the ship. The fog was so heavy that I could see no more than twenty feet into the distance. The night was pitch black. I couldn’t see any object beneath the surface of the murky water. Our motor had died just minutes before, and the boat’s speed had been low. Whatever we had hit, it must have been something big, something unmovable. I straightened up and angrily spat into the ocean. The last days had been hell. In a storm of a strength that we had never experienced in our lives, most of the equipment had been destroyed or washed overboard, and the motor had been damaged. Was this the next disaster to happen?

Indeed it was. My wife called out, Shit!

I turned toward the bridge and almost lost my balance on the slippery deck. The fog condensed on all surfaces, even on my clothing. The ship had a single strong floodlight that turned all structures into squares of white and black, a cubist painting of angry angles. Lisa? What’s up?

We’re tilting! We’re definitely tilting!

I looked at the deck, and indeed, it seemed as if we were at an angle. I cocked my head to listen. A deep gurgling sound came from the back of the boat. I shouted, We’re taking water! The deck continued to vibrate, as if an enormous power drill ate its way through our hull.

Lisa came hurrying down the ladder. She wore blue plastic boots, frayed jeans, a heavy blue sailor’s pullover, and a yellow raincoat. I remembered how she had carefully selected these garments in the store in Spain so that she would be dressed appropriately for the Atlantic crossing. Lisa always made sure she was dressed for the occasion. She stepped up to me. What do we do?

Together we hurried to the back of the boat and bent over the side. I assessed the situation. I looked at the ship, the fog, my wife. The ship had obviously started to slant to one side. My last hope evaporated. We had hit something big—the mast of a shipwreck, perhaps, or a reef. I imagined a gigantic hole in the hull with water pouring in.

My eldest son appeared from belowdecks, apparently he had gone down to check. There’s water entering. There’s at least five inches of it in the hold.

Did you see where it’s coming in? I asked.

I couldn’t see any hole. It’s probably hidden behind the plating.

Lucas was a serious boy, and even though he was just seventeen, I knew I could trust his opinion. I looked at my wife. We’ve got to bail out.

You think so? she asked anxiously.

I can’t get the motor to run. The usual kicking and cursing doesn’t seem to help. We would need an engineer and tools, and time. I will go belowdecks and check for the leak, but you better pull in the dingy, throw some food and equipment into it, and make sure we can disembark within the next minutes.

OK. What about the dogs?

We were traveling with eight dogs. I had objected to taking them all on board, but the boys had insisted. Make sure Bo and King are in the dingy. The others will have to swim; it can’t be helped. The coast can’t be far away; I suspect part of it just ripped the hull of our ship. Now hurry! And start the engine of the dingy.

My wife turned away, and Lucas and I went down the ladder into the hold. Ten inches of water greeted us; it was rising rapidly. I waded around the engine and peeked into the storage. I heard the rush of water but I couldn’t locate the leak either. We grabbed some of our belongings and hurried back to the deck. The water below is rising fast! Hurry! I called out.

My youngest son had pulled in the dingy—a small, flat boat just big enough for four people and some equipment. I had been convinced that we had lost it during the storm, but when the winds and rain ceased, it had still been there, covered by a tarpaulin and attached to the ship by a long line.

By now the tugboat was at an awkward angle, and walking the deck had become precarious. The four of us hurriedly collected a few belongings—food, water, some personal keepsakes, gear. Andrew was crying, realizing that he couldn’t take all of the dogs. He loved each of them. I took him in my arms. Why don’t you take a long rope and hang it over the side of the dingy? They can grab the rope, and we can pull them along. I wasn’t convinced that this would work, but I too felt guilt at the idea that these poor animals could drown in the ocean—and that after our joint three-thousand-mile trip. Andrew clumsily wiped his tears away. At thirteen, he was still a boy, skinny, fair-haired, and sensitive.

Lucas climbed overboard, and my wife handed him a few bags. I climbed the ladder to the wheelhouse and searched for more stuff to take along. There wasn’t much. We had thrown everything overboard that had been damaged by the storm. I took a hunting knife and the handgun from the drawer, the latter packed in a plastic bag. As I came back to the deck, the fog was still heavy, but it wasn’t dark anymore, somewhere behind the fog, the sun was rising. I felt strangely relieved, as if drowning by day was the better option.

My wife and kids were already in the dingy, as were Bo and King. My wife looked up at me. How about the other dogs?

They ran around nervously on the deck, looked down at the dingy but were afraid to jump into the water. I didn’t hesitate. Honestly, I love dogs. Bo, King and I were great partners, they listened to my commands and protected me. But, I’m a biologist by education, and pragmatic when it comes to handling animals. I grabbed the first two dogs by the scruff of their necks and threw them overboard. It took me less than a minute to hunt down the others and throw them down as well. Andrew shouted at me in disgust.

I climbed down. An argument about my treatment of the dogs broke out among the three, which I ignored as I huddled on top of the idling engine. There wasn’t any other space for me to sit. Even so, Andrew was desperately trying to pull more dogs aboard. Lucas cut the rope to the tugboat and pushed us off with a paddle. Slowly we started to drift away. With regret, I looked up at the hull. The ship had carried us thousands of miles—it had protected our lives in the hardest of circumstances. My watch showed five in the morning. I checked the compass and managed to point the bow of the dingy toward the west. My wife looked up at me. Where are we?

I have no idea. My best guess is that we should continue straight west. America should be in that direction. But how many miles…? My voice trailed off. I had no idea about our position. Had we left the tugboat too early? We had fuel for a few miles, but after that, we would need to start rowing. Disheartened, I looked at our scant belongings, the cans of food and bottles of water…enough for a few days at the most.

Lisa smiled weakly. It can’t be far.

Why not? I asked.

I think we hit a wreck, a sunken ship. I looked over the side of the dingy, and I thought I could make out the silhouette of a mast. I think it is stuck to a sandbank. That would mean land must be close by.

Some of the dogs were still in the water, holding on to the rope that Andrew had thrown overboard. My wife and sons pulled them on board, but we lost two as the dingy picked up speed. It hurt my heart, but I realized that it would be foolhardy to turn around trying to collect them.

I peered forward into the fog and the beginning of a new day. The sunlight seemed to become stronger in patches, indicating that the fog was lifting. The water remained flat and oily. We didn’t say much; we were too tired and too anxious to speak. The water slopped against the bow, and some of the dogs whined in self-pity.

After fifteen minutes, my wife kicked my foot. Hear that?

I cocked my head. A seagull!

The lonely cry was weak and way up in the air. I listened to the sound, looked at the compass, and adjusted the course of the boat slightly.

We continued for five, ten, fifteen minutes. No sign of land. The tension became too much to bear; we craned our necks in the hope to get a glance of rocks or beach. I imagined that the coast was near and that on a sunny day, we would have been able to see it, in its entire splendor. However, in this dratted fog, we could be passing by an island and entering a new, endless bay…I shivered from worry as we held our breath, peering ahead.

The motor of the dingy sputtered once, but continued running. I cursed. Drat! We’re running out of fuel.

Lisa put her hand on my arm. Shh!

Suddenly we heard the soft sound of breaking wavelets, and shortly after that, a dark, flat shape appeared in front of us. I didn’t have a chance to slow down the boat, and we ran ashore on a sandy beach. The unexpected impact threw us forward, and the motor stopped. Two of the dogs fell into the water, barking.

2

Lucas jumped over the side of the boat, grabbed the bow, and pulled us on land. I jumped out and helped him. I got the gun from the back of my belt. Wait here. Be as quiet as possible. I ran forward through the fog. Underfoot, the beach consisted of fine sand, and the pounding of my feet sounded muted. Visibility was close to zero, and within seconds, I was lost in a milky white cloud. After about four hundred feet, I hit on a row of dunes. I ran to the left and then to the right. Then, retracing my footsteps, I returned to the dingy.

My family had disembarked and unloaded. My wife whispered. Well?

I spoke in a hushed voice, too. The beach seems to be empty in both directions. Just sand and dunes; nothing else except for some driftwood.

What now?

Breakfast, what else? I’m starving.

She grinned and embraced me. You did it, Alan. You helped us escape from Spain. You brought us over the dratted ocean and through the storm. I’m so happy to finally walk on land. You won’t get me on a boat—ever again.

I smiled and kissed her. We sat down on the sand and opened some of our cans, all the while attentive for sounds. I checked the labels; most were well beyond the expiration dates. We had a cold meal of sausages, canned tomatoes, beans, corn, sardines, and cashews. The dogs scurried about for leftovers. One of the dogs that we had lost, unexpectedly swam up to the beach and struggled onto the sand. We cheered the poor animal with hushed voices. I gave it an extra portion of sardines, which it gulped down, shivering and wet.

The sand and our clothing were damp from the mist. However, the fog started to lift, and the sun began to shine through. The surrounding landscape became visible. We found ourselves on a deserted beach that ran in a curve along a row of dunes. The Atlantic Ocean was still amazingly quiet, almost like a lake. Farther south, a big passenger ship lay close to the shore, tilted on its side, almost as if it were sleeping. It was the only manmade object in sight; seagulls circled its big, dormant shape.

Lucas looked toward the dunes. What will we do now?

We leave the boat behind. I don’t think we will need it anymore—ever, indeed. This must be the mainland of the USA. Let’s cross the dunes and see if we can find a town or a village.

Do you think there will be…people? asked Lucas.

My wife stood up and wiped the sand from her clothing. Let’s go find out.

We quickly sorted our belongings, and started out for the dunes. As always, we didn’t speak much, or we spoke only in low, hushed voices. My wife had unpacked the AK-47, which she carried in the crook of her arm. We watched the dogs closely, as their behavior usually warned us of anything out of the ordinary. I called Bo and King and patted their heads. They licked my hands, obviously completely at ease.

There was no path, so when we came to the dunes, we had to struggle up through the shifting sand. Halfway up, we came to a small wire fence, which we managed to pull down.

We arrived at the top. Behind us, the ocean was quiet and endless. A few shipwrecks were visible, including our tugboat, which had almost disappeared beneath the surface. The landscape in front of us was flat and almost feature-free. The ground was sandy, with dark green brush and clusters of trees. Some buildings were visible far in the distance. Closer by, a road, empty and partially covered with moss and blown-in sand, dipped in and out of view between the dunes.

Without further hesitation, we walked towards it. It took us a few minutes to reach, but from then on, it was easy walking. The road, still in good shape, snaked between the hills and led to a big plain covered with waist-high scrubs.

A car stood parked on a curve. We stopped and stared at it. It was a Ford Coupe, covered in dust. The tires were flat, and the windows were dirty. Its metallic coat, once a distinguished light brown, had lost its luster. Some rust had started to develop. It had two wheels over the yellow line, as if somebody had parked it hurriedly, and had simply walked away.

We hesitated. We knew what we would find inside, but our expectations sharply contrasted with our hopes. Slowly we moved forward, instinctively spreading out. I put my hand on the handle but was afraid to open the door. Instead, I wiped the dirt from the window. There was a lot of grime on the inside of the glass. It made me shudder, as I knew what it meant.

I bent down and peered inside. My family stayed a little ways back, distrustful and nervous. The interior remained misty and dreamlike, as if I were looking into a cabinet of horrors. I saw some dead flies, and a spider had made its web between roof, door, and steering wheel.

The car contained three passengers, two in the front and one in the back. Skeletons—the faces consisted of naked skulls with a few remaining shreds of leathery tissue. The hair had fallen out. Judging by the clothing, the passengers had been a man, a woman, and a child.

I sighed. My family moved forward, and they looked in as well, silently.

Finally, my wife stepped back. Well, that solves it then, really. The catastrophe has struck here too…

I sighed again. As we feared…or knew all along. Look, there in the west: it seems to be an airport, but no planes are landing or taking off. We’re all alone. Still alone—or yet again.

Andrew pointed at the driver. He has a nice camera. Can I have it?

If you want to. But don’t open the car while I’m standing here.

Andrew shrugged off my comment but didn’t seem eager to take the camera. His remark had been one of his little jokes; like all of us, he knew from experience that goods taken from corpses were usually worthless—dirty, smelly, broken. Where are we? he asked.

The license plates on the car read Massachusetts. The traffic signs look American. It seems we are in the States.

We hitched up our backpacks, collected the dogs, and continued, leaving this sad grave behind. We were certain we would find many more.

Seagulls passed by overhead, eyeing us with mild interest. Cars stood parked here and there, but not too many. Some were empty; some contained corpses. Without the right tools, I couldn’t get any of them to run and after a while I gave up trying.

We came to a forest of low trees, in the middle of which was a silent pond. We took a short break. Fat fish stirred below the deep blue surface. It was a beautiful spot, and now that the weeds and trees had started to crowd in on the shore, it looked almost primordial—as if a nymph could appear at any moment and dance over the water. A sign stated that camping, swimming, fishing, and defecating dogs were all subject to a fine of $500. Some of the dogs jumped into the water and frolicked about; others emptied their bowels in the bushes. So much for romance.

After another hour, deserted houses came into view. We ignored them and carried on instead. The streets became broader, and then we hit on a big intersection. An interstate, marked 6, ran east to west. No movement, though; cars stood on the tarmac as if waiting for invisible traffic signs to turn green. We walked across the intersection, and shortly after that, we came to a town. Lucas pointed at the city sign. Look!

I laughed as I read the town’s name. My wife looked at me quizzically but didn’t say anything. I pointed south. Let’s go see that monument over there.

In front of us was a harbor full of pleasure boats. Most had sunk or capsized. We arrived in a small park and at the monument. It was a tower of big, square stones. It looked vaguely Italian, but it wasn’t very pretty. There was a plaque, too. My wife read the texts. Oh wow. This is where the Mayflower landed in 1620.

Yes, that’s why I had to laugh. This is Provincetown, the place where the Pilgrims came ashore. Ironically, we landed at the same spot a few hundred years later.

The boys and the dogs ran about and cavorted through the park. It worried me for a second, but as I looked at the surrounding town and landscape, I realized that we were completely alone. We walked toward the waterfront. I broke into a grocery store, and we raided its contents.

We had a makeshift meal on a pier in the harbor of Provincetown, on the peninsula of Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

3

How had we ended up in the United States? Why had we crossed the ocean from Europe? Like so many people before us who had made that journey, we were on the run. We were refugees, searching for a safe haven where no evil could harm us.

A catastrophe had struck Earth. It had wiped away nearly all of humanity, leaving only a few helpless souls to wander its surface. It had been a pandemic of an impact never witnessed before. It had probably started with an innocent sneeze by a single fellow human, in Washington, Moscow, or Zimbabwe. Then the virus had swept over Earth like a lethal tidal wave, killing most within days, leaving billions of people dead.

It had happened about a year before we landed on that beach. One day, Earth was bustling with people, a place full of activity, with traffic moving about, radio signals in the air, and billions of us going after our daily business: working, learning, creating, talking, loving, building, multiplying, fighting, killing. The next day brought the cold awakening, the punishment for our sins. On a pleasant spring day in April, our species had simply been eradicated. The traffic came to a stop, and the machines halted.

Time for others to move in and own the planet: the flies, the rats, the cockroaches, and the vultures.

For some unclear reason, a few of us had survived—wretched souls who now wandered Earth, trying to determine whether they were the lucky or unlucky ones.

I had been among those survivors. The pandemic had struck while I was on business in Tokyo, selling R&D software to pharmaceutical companies. Nobody in Japan had survived to tell the tale of my sales successes—during my postpandemic travels through that country, I never found a trace of any living human being. It had taken me weeks to battle my way through a devastated country littered with dead bodies, struggling to stay alive, and attempting to keep my sanity. During my travels I had adopted two dogs, two stragglers, which I had named Bo and King. Or had they adopted me? In any case, they had saved my life on several occasions, and the three of us were inseparable.

I had managed to cross over to Korea by boat. I had traveled through China, Mongolia, and Russia in a desperate attempt to reach my home and my family in Berlin. They, too, had survived. In the ruins of Berlin, we tried to rebuild some form of existence. In the absence of electricity, fresh food, medical services, or any kind of infrastructure, we were forced to plan our lives on a day-by-day basis, like cave dwellers. My wife and I had been academics; Lisa was a professional translator, and I was a biologist, with a PhD to boot. Ideal backgrounds for people thrown back into a prehistoric world. At least my sarcasm had survived.

We mourned the dead and managed to bury a few. None of our relatives, friends, or acquaintances seemed to have survived. There was time and space for loneliness and enough reasons for despair. Nevertheless, as humans will, we somehow made do with the new situation. Our two sons were our biggest stimulus; their youth allowed them to cope more easily with the new reality—in fact, the only thing that seemed to dishearten them was the aggravation and grief of their parents.

A few others had survived as well in that big, ugly wound that had once been called Berlin. It was only handful of people—but enough of them to stir up trouble.

One of them was Gunther. Before the disaster struck, he had been a prison warden, and active in a right-wing political party, the NPD. Now he was a little despot who tried to build a fiefdom in the ruins of Berlin Mitte. He didn’t take a liking to me, for some obscure reason. One day we got into an argument, after which Lisa and I decided that it would be best to collect a few belongings and make a run for it.

I could easily fill a book describing our gruesome odyssey across Europe. We ran into an extremely cold winter. The roads were full of snowed-in wrecks of deserted cars and trucks, and progress had been slow. We traveled across the Pyrenees and finally ended up in Santander, a town on the northern coast of Spain.

However, Gunther wasn’t just a little despot; he was vengeful too. He sent men after us, and only through luck did we spot them first. I always wondered what he had promised them as bounty—in this day and age, money, gold, and jewels were plentiful and worthless. Whatever it was, it must have been something rather convincing, as they stayed on our trail, searching for us in the villages and the woods along the Atlantic Coast.

We managed to escape again, on foot and late in the night, following the beach. We walked for twenty miles through the waves, broke into a car, and drove west to a port called Coruna on the western tip of the Spanish coast.

Originally, we had planned to stay there, or to follow the Portuguese coast to the south—perhaps even set over to Africa. However, one day, as I walked through the harbor, an idea entered my mind, both radical and ridiculous.

The pandemic had killed practically all people—seven billion obituaries forever stamped into the backs of our minds. Nevertheless, among the few people who had survived, some managed to stay in contact with one another through long-wave radio. A network of radio amateurs spanned the globe. I had such a radio as well and spent many hours listening to broadcasts from all over the world. However, after a while, I noticed that some voices were disappearing from the ether. Broadcasters in Russia, Asia, Europe, and Latin America kept up the traffic, but the voices in the United States and Canada fell silent, one after the other. They simply disappeared. It was as if the northern half of the American continent had been silenced forever—none of their voices disturbed the ether, no sounds. Was North America now completely deserted, and if so, why?

This worried me for a particular, personal reason. I had a sister in America. She and her family had lived on the East Coast. Was she still alive? Or had she died, just like the rest of my family? I became restless, worried, and felt occasional pangs of guilt.

One day, in the Coruna harbor in Spain, I concluded that we must travel to America. It would allow us to finally escape from Gunther’s agents, find out about my sister, and learn why the broadcasts had fallen silent.

I collected maps from the stores in the port and started plotting a possible route. Initially, my wife wasn’t convinced. After all, we needed to cross at least 2,000 miles of water, with little boating experience. She looked at the maps in disgust and waved her hands at me in frustration. We had a few arguments about it.

However, one night, we received a broadcast from Berlin. Our informant told us that Gunther hadn’t given up. Not only had he sent more men after us, he was actually preparing to relocate his entire court to Spain. Apparently, the Berlin weather was bad for his asthma. He also wanted to increase the size of his army by kidnapping any able person whom he might encounter during his journey south.

We were sitting in the kitchen. I can still remember my wife looking at me silently, her face illuminated by the candles, as she listened to the voice from Berlin, crackling with static. She stretched out