Settlement Earth Series

I took a trip around the upstairs. The boards are all tight, but the night is dragging on and the dead are still too quiet: That bothers me a great deal. I don't know what they are up to. I will be glad when morning arrives, although to be honest it doesn't seem to stop them much anymore. They are getting used to it, if they ever weren't. Maybe it is just my own mind that is more comforted by the daylight... Had me a little drink. Rummaging around upstairs and found the access panel to the attic. Just a square in the ceiling, but you pull the handle and a set of stairs drop down. No floor up there, just tons of that blown-in insulation, and boxes and crates packed in there sort of haphazardly. I found a case of brandy in between the ceiling joists, dusty, but when did that ever matter when it came to booze. I was afraid it might be gone over. I'm not even sure that is possible. In any case it doesn't taste gone over. It tastes fine. Smooth. It will make the rest of this night easier... I hope it will anyway. I was telling you about the City, Rochester. I had misgivings and I ignored them. I shouldn't have, but of course after the fact we all see twenty-twenty, as we had gotten closer to Rochester we had found others. They had come out of hiding. Some to say hello, some to warn us, others to join with us. By the time we rolled down East Avenue into the city we had a few more vehicles and more than a dozen more people traveling with us.

Andrea Zurita had been alive for the second time for more than three days. The men who had left her body had done so carefully: Senor Prescott would be very angry to find them on his land: Transgressions had been met with violence in the past, the bodies dumped into the ocean. Andrea Ivanna Zurita had taken I'll three days before in the small village near to Prescott's property. She worked for Prescott, someone allowed on and off the property with ease. She had taken ill at work suddenly, no one knew the why of it and her family was poor: A doctor, other than the local clinic was out of the question. So she had been sent home to rest, but she had never made it to the local free clinic: She had lapsed into a coma a few hours later and while her family had still been reeling she had died: No rhyme, no reason. Andrea Zurita was a young woman, there seemed no reason for her sudden illness and death, but there were things that should be done and so the local Mirukus, shaman had come. A few words, prayers, the shaman was a transplanted Haitian: They understood most of what he said, but not everything. He had left and they had prepared her for burial. She was washed and dressed in a plain white cotton dress. The second day came and the family came to call, leaving their wishes where she lay in her grandmother’s home. The third day came and the burial was coming. Cousins, men who worked in a neighboring village were on the way to open the grave. That was when Andrea had sat up and vomited blood. Her eyes had rolled back into her head. Her body shook, but her chest did not rise. She had spoken no words, but she had tried to rise several times before one of the arriving cousins, crossing himself, had bound her with rope, hand and foot. They had sent for the Mirukus again. The old Haitian had come quickly, taken one look at Andrea and then spoken cryptically, quickly. “Return her to the man that has cast this spell on her. He has bound her to him in life and that has followed her into death: Return her for she is yours no longer.” The Mirukus believed the white man, Prescott had attempted to control the river spirit Pullujmu, to take control of the beautiful young woman for his own devices, but she had slipped over into death and was now controlled only by those who controlled the dead. He had left fearfully, quickly and had refused to come back for any reason. With nothing left to do for her they had taken her and left her bound body on the long drive that lead to the Prescott house. The white man may have her, but he would not have what he expected to have.

An alarm that was mounted partway up the wall above the huge banks of monitors began to bray. Long, strident calls. Mieka turned to the alarm, frozen for a second. It had never been triggered in the ten years he had worked at the Alaska station, never, he had begun to believe it would never be triggered. He thought of it as the Oh Shit, alarm. It was triggered from the central office on the mainland. It was only set off if there was a catastrophic failure of some sort. With the delay because of the land lines he had no way of knowing how late the alarm was. What had already, in all probability occurred. He turned to go back to his own chair; there were decisions to make, people to notify. Suddenly the floor dropped from under him, and he found himself falling. Before he could reach the floor it suddenly leapt up to meet him, and he slammed headfirst into the polished concrete, nearly losing consciousness. He regained his knees and tried to brace himself as the floor shook harder still. Blood ran from his hairline, and joined a small trickle of blood from one eyebrow. A second later it ran across his cheek to his chin; dripping to the floor. He watched the drops hit the concrete; splatter, and he thanked God that he could still see. There was a stabbing pain behind his eyes. He had hit hard, and the shaking building wasn't helping at all. Screams and yells mixed with the crash of file cabinets and the splintering of plastic as monitors shook apart or crashed to the floor. The air suddenly became clouded with dust as the concrete the room was made from began to shake apart. Mieka watched as Jane Howe bounced across the floor, her eyes wild, and slammed headfirst into the corner of a desk, sliding underneath; her body suddenly loose, shaking like a rag doll as the jolts hit the building: Her legs jumped up and down. Mieka tore his eyes away. He tried to maintain his position on his knees, the palms of his hands flat, grasping at the concrete, but the constant pounding of the floor against his kneecaps was becoming excruciatingly painful. Reluctantly he dropped back down to the floor, trying to control the drop as much as he could, but he went rolling away to slam into a wall: He felt his ribs break as he hit. The noise from the earthquake was a constant roar. Screaming, yelling, crying, pleading the constant rain of concrete chunks sounding like hail stones as they fell from the ceiling above. The thickening dust: A roar of something else, wind? ... Something beginning to overtake everything else, closing out all other sounds as he sagged against the wall and tried to hang on. His ribs were definitely broken; it hurt to lift his arms. He could feel the bones grinding together. He knew he was crying out each time they were moved, but he could not hear those cries. The ribs ground harder, and this time the light dimmed further; he had a harder time opening his eyes. A second later they slipped shut again as the floor suddenly dropped from beneath him once more, causing the splintered ends of his ribs to grind together even harder. He found himself falling as consciousness slipped away from him. The noise increased as he fell and then suddenly it was gone. He fell silently through the darkness.