Fear! by Steven Nedelton (me reader txt) 📕

Midwest Book Review--"Reviewer's Bookwatch" features 'FEAR!' five years, July 2011"

As the world goes to hell, it proves very difficult not to go with them. "Fear!" is a novel from Steven Nedelton who tells of a future where mankind is falling apart and oppression is the name of the day. One family tries to hang onto their humanity, as Nedelton tells their endeavor to stay together and stay united in a miserable world. "Fear!" is novel of a potential terrifying future, well worth considering."

This is an excerpt from the novel FEAR! The book is available in all formats at Amazon.com, B&N, etc. All novel details are available at www.snedelton.com.

Prologue

“Today it is 2035 and look where we are,” he said as he gestured in despair with the back of his hand at the walls of the MPS, the Maximum Protection Shelter. “History does not change, it just repeats itself, they say. The stories I could tell you...I swear are a bit embellished, perhaps, but they’re stories of ruthlessness and the destruction of our natural dignity. You have never heard tales like these, all in the name of some ideal… of another new, false faith. And quite a hell at that. One of them lasted decades. It repeated itself again and again, always with a different label.” And it was there he began...

Hunt

The quarter-sun is barely up, shining between the mountain’s flanks. The horizon is already aglow in pink, red and yellow streaks. The air is fresh, almost freezing, and there’s not a wisp of a gale. Heavy, dark clouds are still overhead, leaning upon each other, overlapping here and there as if whispering down to men from the mouths of gods that the rains will be coming soon. It is another early summer morning millennia ago.

The Bear Cave people are still asleep, growling in their dreams, pawing at the invisible beast. Last night’s fires are extinguished and the warmth and the stench of the pelts inundate the sleeping. But the hunters are already up, spears and axes having been sharpened the night before. They are lively this early dawn, chewing the dried meat the women readied the last evening. Meat, cornbread and water is their diet. Food is hard to come by. Corn does not grow well and hunting wild beasts is the job for any man able to run, hurl a spear and shoot arrows.

In the semi-darkness surrounding the fire, the men are dark, undulating shadows, with reds and yellows whipping across and licking their faces, dancing on them and lighting up their eyes as they argue and grumble about who is going hunting this morning. There are always a dozen men with the leader. Most hunters are old, grisly from their thirty summers, yet strong, weather-beaten, bony and muscular; their faces so like the beasts they kill: sly, fox eyes, fierce and cunning; teeth of a wolf, yellowed and pointed; fingernails long, blackened and bent like the claws of a raptor; all ready to tear one’s heart out with fingers alone. A few hunters are still young—pups really—just learning to kill. Most will die but some will live, and they know it; it is the will of the gods.

The leader is broad shouldered, muscular. His eyes are fierce, alert, darting from face to face, probing, as if trying to read their innermost secrets, as if ghosts are lurking in their own skulls. They need him, yet he must know that they hate him, too. His gaze is in constant motion, on each one of them as if insulting them yet coaxing them on. It is his voice they fear most. That deep, resonant blast which carries the magic power that equally intimidates and cajoles. That voice that sometimes roars and booms throughout the Bear Cave like thunder striking down from above. Demons are within him, they secretly think, and sometimes they whisper to each other about him when he is not there. He imbibed witches’ milk, they believe, and when he speaks they know to listen well. A few nights ago, a younger man, a pup, failed his leader and he’ll be punished soon. The group expects it. They know that to obey is to survive, to defy is to be punished. That is the Bear Cave’s Law.

The leader has many wenches, while others share and at most have two. The leader may choose anyone he wants, even one of theirs, and they’d understand it. His needs are greater, for he is the Man. While he lives in the Big Cave like the rest, he also has a smaller one where his women sleep. They do not mix with others. Mixing is not proper. There are secrets to keep.
The group hunts in early mornings when animals are still asleep and hiding, not ready for a fight, because surprise is everything and numbers count. A single hunter does not have a chance, and even if he did have the luck, he would still share the kill with the group, and the leader would get the best of it all.
Today they are after a big catch; a full three days ago they dug a large hole, a trap, inserted into the bottom of it many pointed wooden shafts and then covered the opening with branches and leaves. A large elk would be fine. Occasionally a mountain lion falls in and does not die; sometimes it is not even hurt. That is the danger and that calls for the group’s effort. Scouts have checked the trap several times in the past two days, but there was no luck. Then last night they announced a big catch. An elk it was, and a good sign too. A gift from the gods. There will be a lot of merriment when they arrive home with the load. And then, a great fire and the succulent smell of roasted meat. A great feast ending in dance and festivities. And so the days will go on and the nights will pass.

But the tribal life is not all peace, feasts, hunts and merriment. Like the dark clouds before the rain, like a deadly quiet before a whirlwind, there are also black clouds and windstorms in the tribal life. The leader was not always the Man. Just in the past two summers there were three strong ones who led the tribe in succession and then suddenly and inexplicably disappeared, as if by magic, one by one. There were rumors amongst folk that the Mountain Man caught them at night, killed them and carried their bodies away to devour them later. People fear the Mountain Man. Though some wenches dared think differently and although none ever spoke about it aloud, their eyes, their darting glances pointed questioningly at the new Man.

The people of the tribe, the cave people, although all similar, are not all alike. As anywhere else, there are always oddballs. There’s one who, unlike the rest, spends most of his time making tools and gadgets. Others laugh, play, fight a bit and chase wenches but he is always busy working; if it is not spear tips then it is arrow tips or other contraptions. Most recently, he is spending all his time fashioning an odd object. And it is something no one has ever seen before. It looks like a wooden corn pie, all round and flat and thick. And it makes the wenches laugh and laugh but they’d laugh if one showed two fingers. And the thing has a hole in the middle. And he has made two of those pies. What will he do with them? The gods would certainly know but who there could ask them? And then, of all things, he stuck one end of his spear handle into one pie, through the hole, and then the killing end of the spear through the hole of the other one. And the thing, whatever it may be, became a solid object. Then he nudged it and it turned and moved all by itself as if alive. It was c-r-a-z-y, a shear folly.

People stopped talking, eating or whatever they were doing and meandered over to see this mysterious self-moving wonder. They touched it, very cautiously of course—one doesn’t fool with magic even if the crazy one contrapted it. Then they just nudged it a bit, like the oddball did before, and it moved again. Yes it moved. It did not move like any other gizmo but for the lack of a better word, it turned. Gods would only know how and why. There was this incline, and when the round thing began turning, as of itself, it ran down the hill, faster and faster until it hit the flat on the bottom, rocked a bit, and stopped dead before some stones. As if showing respect for them, the foolish wonder. The crowd burst into a roar and ran down the hill after the object too. Again they approached it carefully, though it lay still. It did not budge anymore. Yet it had been alive a moment earlier, and it must be alive now. Perhaps it was relaxing.

The older folk started arguing, saying it was no magic, just a daft pair of wooden pies stuck on a very good spear handle. And then a debate started about its usefulness to the tribe. Some very deep thoughts were thrown around. And while the old ones did all the heavy cogitating, the wenches, especially the young ones, played with it, and when it moved they screamed and giggled mischievously. As if they knew all about it. But who’d listen to them, their little heads full of silly thoughts. Then the kids touched it, made it turn, and then ran around it, just for the fun of it all. Pretty soon everybody was showing off and everyone was plenty happy. And this affection for the new and like alive object lasted for most of the afternoon, believe it or not. Finally, just when most of the tribe was gathered around the famous oddball and his crazy wonder, the leader’s wives arrived and started giggling and wondering too. And, to be fair, they giggled much louder than the rest of the crowd for they were the Man’s wenches, not to be taken lightly either.

Of all the people in the tribe, only the leader and several of his men remained sitting together, staying away from the spear maker and his new contraption, totally disinterested in all that simple-minded jabber and all. In fact, the leader paid no attention until the object moved, as of itself, and the crowd roared in delight. It was only then that he looked at them and there was that momentary very somber, cloudy, worried look in his dark eyes, as one of his men described it later. But the more the fools talked and screamed in delight, the braver they got with their new game (for it was nothing to them than but a mere toy), the more upset the leader became. Then, quite suddenly, he started laughing too and pointing at the spear maker, then at the object, and then at the spear maker again. The men around him began laughing too, his men later said. And they laughed hard and then harder, much harder. And a bit later, they were slapping each other on their backs and laughing even louder, much louder. Finally, they were stomping with their feet so hard, and they were howling like a bunch of wolves, the men said.

It was just about then that the leader’s wenches arrived. And now, quite abruptly, as if