Plague Of The Wise

Chapter 2

My eyes unconsciously sought out David. After years of watching him, I never failed to find him, even in a crowd of hundreds.

He was staring straight up at me, his gaze unreadable from this distance. I raised my hand and waved, smiling. David glanced behind him as if to make sure no one was watching. Then he turned back, a flash of white indicating the smile on his face, and eagerly waved back. I felt a warming in my heart then. David's smile was so rare, so beautiful, that it was a blessing.

"Ethan!" Zachary called. "You coming?"

I tore my eyes away from David down below and turned to scramble further up the hill. Jack was already near the top, and my legs were aching from the steep hill, but I followed nonetheless. Like I had told David earlier, this was our last year to be immature and our last chance to be teenagers before the obligations of adulthood came crashing down on us.

Finally the sand of the previous landslide area waned into dirt and shrubs, and the steepness of the hill lessened. I huffed to catch my breath, hands on my knees.

Zachary inhaled deeply and loudly. "I love the smell of fall," he said.

"Dude," Jack said. "It's nothing like the buds in spring."

"You sound dumb when you say that,"

"And you don't sound dumb when you say 'Oh, I love the smell of fall'?" Jack mocked, in a voice startlingly similar to Zachary's that I thought it was Zachary who was talking.

Zachary rolled his eyes and his gaze drifted over the small valley, following the horizon. I watched him watch the skyline. His posture was rigid, and it was obvious his muscles were tense or strained from the climb. His hair was ruffled from the slight wind.

Since the AP anatomy course I had taken two years ago, I hadn't been able to stop observing people, even when my prospective field is supposed to focus on every animal but humans. But that class had focused a lot on human movement and behavior, so I found myself unconsciously analyzing how people were standing or how they were talking or how they portrayed their emotions. It was a great tact to tell how people were feeling.

Zachary drew in a sharp breath when his eyes alighted on the spot where our bus had been. I followed his gaze and did the same. "What is all that?" I asked, confused.

"I don't know," Zachary said. "It doesn't appear to be any sort of device relating to water or hydroelectric power. I should know."

Sitting where our bus had been was a large trailer. On it sat a machine with a long steel arm and cables running up and down the shaft of the arm that was rotating back and forth. The trees just barely blocked what it was doing.

Beyond it was a long convoy of black semi-trucks, all shiny and reflective in the autumn sun. People were flooding around them, some with clipboards, some with large steel rods, some with what appeared to be mesh.

"What are they doing?" I asked.

Jack caught on and his eyes widened. "What in the actual fuck?"

"Do you know what they're doing?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said disdainfully. "I did a tech project this year about new measures taken to enhance security in homes and public places." He paused to scratch his head. "It's some kind of nuclear-powered fence, enough to knock a human being into a coma for at least a day. It's way more powerful than an electric fence but doesn't contain quite enough energy to kill someone. It's most commonly being set up in zoos."

"Then what's it doing here?" I demanded.

"I don't know," Jack said. I could see his mind working, trying to figure out all the possible possibilities. No matter how stupid he appeared, he was just as smart as the rest of us, perhaps smarter than some of us. "Maybe they do this every year. Lock up the valley for the winter so no kids can get in and vandalize or something."