The Nothing Men, page 17
part #1 of The Nothing Men Series
“What brings you by?”
“I can’t see them,” he said. “I know that. But you’re the next best thing.”
He tilted his head enough and looked over Ben’s shoulder toward Ellie.
“Who’s your friend?”
“Her name’s Ellie. Listen, Walt, it’s not what it—”
Walt held his palm up, cutting Ben off.
“None of my business,” he said.
Ben looked around.
“Have you seen them?” Ben asked.
“’Bout a week ago.”
His heart swelled and shattered simultaneously. He closed his eyes and he could see them, Gavin running loose in the yard, Sarah sitting in the old wooden rocker on the porch reading a book.
“How are they? How’s Gavin?”
“Oh, you know,” he said. He swatted at an insect lazily buzzing about them.
“No. I don’t know.” Ben said.
Walter wiped his brow with the back of his forearm.
“Gavin’s having a hard time with all this. He doesn’t sleep well. Sarah says he still has nightmares. He’s taken to sleeping next to her. He’s embarrassed, doesn’t want to talk about it, but if he’s alone in the dark, his mind, well, it just gets away from him.”
Bad dreams. A parting gift for everyone who’d survived the Panic, something to remember it by. But Ben had convinced himself that his son had been immune to all that, that somehow, this thirteen-year-old boy had emerged from the Panic none worse for the wear. Kids were adaptable they said. They bounce back, they’re tougher than you think. Their brains weren’t completely formed, and so new experiences didn’t clash with firmly set beliefs and fears and prejudices and so on, they didn’t cause that wild internal conflict. He’d just roll with the punches.
Total bullshit.
Because guess what, Sullivan? All those times you told him there was no such thing monsters, well, turns out that was a big steaming pile of lies!
So here’s the deal, son o’ mine, light of my life, heir to my suburban throne. I know we spent your ninth birthday playing mini-golf and hitting the batting cage, and really, that was fantastic, but we’ve got a really special surprise for your tenth! You’re gonna be fighting to stay alive. Oh, and most of your friends will be dead. Happy birthday!
“God, I want to see them so badly.”
Walt was shaking his head even before Ben had finished his sentence.
“They’re not ready,” Walt said. “Gavin’s not ready.”
The memory of their first meeting was still as painful as the actual meeting had been. The looks, the stares, the silence. Standing in his bathroom, the one he’d re-tiled with his own hands, he’d felt like a stranger, an intruder.. His reflection in the mirror betrayed the battle his body had waged for months. The gaunt face, the sunken cheeks, the red eyes. He looked like a demonic heroin addict. No wonder Gavin had refused to hug him. Wouldn’t even do the elaborate high-five they’d done since Gavin had started kindergarten.
Slap, slap, up fist, down fist, fist bump!
“It’s just going to take a little more time.”
Ben huffed loudly, deliberately. He wanted to see Gavin, even as he felt like he was about to go too far and exhaust the patience of the only host he was likely to see in the near future.
Reel it in, he told himself. Blowing your top is just going to make things worse.
He sighed again, this time softly, showing his assent to Walt’s pronouncement.
“She can have the spare room,” Walter said, gesturing toward Sarah. “You crash on the couch.”
This was a big moment. Ben had no idea how Walt would react to seeing him; inviting them to stay was a huge step forward. It let Ben imagine a future with Sarah and Gavin in it, however briefly.
“How about some introductions?” Walt suggested. “I think I’ve been rude enough to my guest.”
Ben waved her over, and she approached slowly, cautiously, and at first glance, he wrote it off to shyness. But as he watched, catching the firmness set in her jaw, the eyes sweeping the yard, he realized it was more than that. Her guard was up. She was in a new place and outnumbered. People were a lot less friendly than they’d once been, and nobody took anything for granted anymore. This made him aware of how trusting she’d been of him.
“Pleasure to meet you, miss,” Walt said. “Walter Clark.”
“Ellie Campbell,” she replied, dipping her head toward him. “Nice to meet you.”
They didn’t shake hands, a social more that had gone the way of the dodo during the early days of the Panic when the government had warned everybody to minimize social contact. The ritual stuck, and the handshake had largely been relegated to a historical footnote. Maybe it would come back. Maybe not. Who knew anything anymore?
Ben looked for something to say, but the well was dry, and so the three of them stood there quietly. A rumble of thunder to the west stepped in like an anxious dinner hosts whose guests weren’t hitting it off. They all looked up at the sky in time to catch a bolt of lightning split the gray sky.
“We should probably head inside.” Walt said.
19
Fat raindrops spattered the ground as Ben and Ellie detoured back to the car for their belongings; the thunder increased in frequency and duration until it was almost a constant roll. The skies opened up just as they slipped inside the house. Fierce rain thrashed the roof and windows as they set their small packs down in the foyer. Walt was standing at a large bay window at the back of the home, working on a pipe.
The air was rich with the smell of pipe smoke, which seemed classy to Ben. A reminder of days gone by. The living room was sunken, the furniture arranged around a huge fireplace. It was barren and dark now, but a small stack of firewood stood at the ready just at the edge. In its maw, Ben saw roaring fires of old, the weekend trips, the holiday dinners, and he forced himself to close that door, pushing it shut before all of his old demons poured out and overwhelmed him.
Ben showed Ellie to the spare bedroom, just off the main room. It was sparsely furnished, just a twin bed in the corner and an old wooden rolltop desk pushed up under the room’s single window. The desk was open, revealing neat stacks of papers and old paperbacks sporting a healthy film of dust. A bright yellow sweatshirt lying on the end of the bed caught his eye. It was Gavin’s. He pressed it to his nose and inhaled its scent, hoping to pick up the smell of Sarah’s laundry detergent or Gavin’s soap, something of his essence that had been left behind. He knew Ellie was watching him, but he didn’t care. If this was as close as he could get to his son, shame be damned.
“So this will be your room,” he said, keeping his back to her. “Bathroom’s down the hall.”
“I appreciate your bringing me here,” she said softly.
“It’s the least I can do,” he said, tucking the sweatshirt under his arm and turning to face her. “That time at the farm meant a lot to me.”
“I guess the shoe is on the other foot now,” she said.
“I guess.”
He absently rubbed a sleeve of the sweatshirt, worn thin by Gavin’s bony elbows.
“It’s hard being here.”
He chuckled aloud.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Doesn’t that sound like the worst cliché ever?”
“I don’t think so. It sounds pretty reasonable to me.”
Dinner consisted of baked beans, corn and ham warmed over steno burners. Canned food was nothing to get excited about, but it tasted a hell of a lot better after it had been heated up, providing at least the illusion of a home-cooked meal. Except during his time at the Haven, most of Ben’s meals since the Panic had started life in a can. He’d become quite the connoisseur of a can-based diet; just as important, he knew which cans to avoid, which ones might be harboring botulism spores.
Ellie and Ben set the table while Walt tended to the food. They sat at the small kitchen table as thunder and lightning lashed the house. Gusty winds blew curtains of rains across the roof and the windows. Ben felt a bit isolated here, alone in the woods, but there wasn’t much that could be done about that. Walt had guns, and that was going to have to do. Even though he’d been infected, he had to remind himself that the Panic was over. Those terrible days, the fear, the horror, as the world had disintegrated around them like a child’s sandcastle at high tide, were still fresh in his mind.
“Thank you for hosting us,” Ellie said after they’d sat down. It was after nine, the house dark but for the soft, warm glow of the few lanterns that Walt had lit. Times like these, Ben was reminded how much they had lost, how different the world was.
“Glad to have you,” Walt said, nodding toward his guest and then looking pointedly at Ben. “Never turned my back on family, not going to start now.”
“Still, it’s very kind of you,” she replied. “You don’t see it much these days.”
“Well, it’s a tough old world,” Walt said. “Can’t blame folks for looking out for themselves.”
Ben wondered how much of that barb was directed toward him. He swirled a chunk of ham in a small puddle of baked bean sauce and took a bite. The beans were hot but good.
“So what’s your story?” Walt asked Ellie.
“What do you mean?”
“How’d you end up with this yahoo?” he asked, pointing a fork toward his son-in-law.
“We met in the camps,” Ben volunteered. He wasn’t sure how much Ellie wanted to disclose about their relationship, about the Haven, about where they might be headed next. He was surprised by how easily he’d served up the lie, especially to a man to whom he owed so much. Why wouldn’t he just tell him the truth?
“What were you doing in the camps?” he asked. “You obviously weren’t infected.”
Now Ben felt like a liar and a fool. Trying to put one over on Walter was rarely a successful proposition.
“What makes you say that? I might have a particularly good set of bunkers in.”
“Oh, you get pretty good at telling folks apart after a while.”
She was quiet a moment. Walter was no fool.
“You’re right, I wasn’t infected. My brother was. Our family’s gone. After he recovered, we decided to stick together. We had nowhere to go, as our hometown had been disinfected.”
Disinfected.
The word still made Ben shudder.
By late May, more than 100 million Americans had been infected with the Orchid virus, and although as many as one-third had been killed in the conflagration, the Reds had overrun many cities in the Northeast, the Midwest and on the West Coast. The war was being lost, so military commanders began carpet-bombing urban areas in a last-ditch effort to neutralize the threat. Efforts to preserve infrastructure were abandoned, and the war effort shifted to exterminating the Redeye threat at all costs.
The blitzkriegs had driven refugees out of the big cities toward the smaller ones that hadn’t fallen under Redeye control, to the extent they controlled anything. Redeyes roamed in packs, a behavioral quirk that the government attributed to their survival-first programming, clustered together like metastasizing cancer cells and devastating the fleeing hordes of the uninfected. Many urban areas had been overrun, leaving the military with very few options. Disinfection was designed to eliminate huge numbers of Redeyes in short order, but it came at a terrible cost, including uninfected refugees who’d been trapped when the bombs began to fall.
She glanced at Ben quickly and cut her eyes back to Walt.
“Where’s your brother now?” Walt asked.
“We’ve had some problems with the Department,” she said, her eyes shiny and wet. “They killed him.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Ben looked down at his lap, where his fingers were engaged in a fidgety dance of shame and embarrassment. Here he was, placing his trust in Ellie, but he was lying to the only man, perhaps in the world, that he actually had good reason to trust.
“Walt, there’s more to the story,” he said, looking up from his hand. He heard the resolve in his own voice, and it surprised him because it had been a long time since he’d felt this kind of resolve about anything. Even his decision to begin searching for Ellie had been based mainly on the lack of any other options, sort of like his decision to go to law school.
Now Walt threw his own glance toward Ben. He could feel Ellie’s eyes on him, and he wondered what she was thinking. Had his admission of deception begun tearing asunder their new relationship, still as fragile as an embryo? He didn’t know, but he had to take the chance. He couldn’t keep Walt in the dark and expect to bridge the gap between him and his lost family. Walt leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers at the base of his chin.
“I didn’t just tip off the Department about the Haven,” he said. “I was there the night of the raid. I was there when her brother died. I thought they were planning a terrorist attack.”
He felt stupid just saying the words. Two years watching the Department turn the country into a totalitarian police state and he’d sided with them, thinking it would help him turn the corner. Only after meeting the likes of Mr. Whitmore had he realized that he was just a thing to them, a device, a gear in the machine that was the Department. A disposable tool.
Walt started to say something but stopped, covering himself by tapping a clenched fist to his lips. Ben had known Walt long enough to know that he was simply sparing Ben’s feelings, that he didn’t need to say anything at all, that he hadn’t needed to say, “Ben, you’re a smart guy, just what the hell were you thinking?”
“Well, what now?” he asked.
“We think the Department is planning a big operation in the coming weeks,” he said. “We need access to their headquarters in Washington so we can figure it out. I know you’re no fan of the Department and I thought-”
“Thought what?” he snapped suddenly, his voice hardening like it had been flash frozen. “Thought you could get me arrested? Thought you could throw away everything based on your hunch? As it is, I’m taking a hell of a risk having you here.”
Shame spilled into his cheeks. It was like he’d been slapped in the face. This he hadn’t anticipated at all. Maybe he’d been fooling himself about what they could accomplish. Maybe the Department had embedded itself into this new world too deeply for anyone to change things on his own, and this was the way it was going to be. So even if they could figure out what Tranquility was in time to make a difference, a new Tranquility would be up and running in no time.
“No, I just thought…”
“You’re unbelievable,” Walt said. “I open my home to you, and you lie to me. Selfish prick.”
Walt got up and stormed away.
Time stretched out like putty, and by two in the morning, Ben felt like he had been tossing and turning for days. Part of him thought about Ellie, but much of that involved his mind processing the five thousand ways it could end badly and fracture their fragile fellowship before they’d even taken the first swing at figuring out what Tranquility was, let alone taking it down.
He threw on a sweatshirt and went out to the main room. He heard a soft whimper coming from the kitchen. Ellie was at the table, silhouetted in shadow. Her hands were clasped together, and her body trembled as she wept. He froze, unsure of whether he should approach her, see what was wrong. Before he could settle on a plan, the decision was made for him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick with the congestion of depression.
“Sorry for what?”
“Just having a bad night.”
“Everyone’s entitled to a bad night every now and again.”
“I try to avoid having them when I’m a guest in someone else’s home.”
He took a few steps toward her, slowly, not wanting to come on too strong, startle her.
“Weird times,” Ben said. “Everyone gets a new set of rules to play by.”
She tapped the table.
“Have a seat,” she said. “You’re just in time for tonight’s meeting of Insomniacs Anonymous.”
He smiled, hoping the darkness of the room concealed some of the goofiness that he was sure was evident on his face.
“How about some tea?”
“Sounds good,” she said.
He set to work in the kitchen, and, after a bit of trial and error, found a pair of mugs and an old box of teabags in a cabinet high above the stove. Walt had many skills, but kitchen organization was not one of them.
He carried the mugs back to the table, setting one in front of Ellie. As the steam swirled from the cup, it caught a bit of the moonlight streaming in from the skylight overhead. The vaporous curtain shimmered in front of Ellie’s face, and Ben couldn’t remember the last time he had seen something so beautiful. He looked down at the dark cylinder of his own mug, suddenly self-conscious of everything.
“Couldn’t find the sugar,” he said.
“I don’t use it anyway,” she said.
He sat down across from her. The room brightened a bit as a full moon shone down through the skylights.
After the disastrous end to dinner, they’d all stayed out of each other’s way. Ben and Ellie cleaned the table and the kitchen while Walt smoked his pipe in silence, no one in a hurry to revisit Ben’s request for Walt’s assistance. They left things in a state that could be best described as an uneasy détente. Ben didn’t quite understand the man’s sudden reticence, but he figured he needed to leave it alone, let Walt stew on it overnight. If he was going to help them, it would be because Walt had decided to, not because his fancy lawyer son-in-law had talked him into it.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” Ben said.
“No need to apologize,” Ellie said. “Thanks for trying.”
She sat quietly, picking at a ragged fingernail.
“So what’s your big plan?”
“Well, our best bet is finding Mercury and seeing if we can’t use that as a way into R&R headquarters,” he said.
Her eyebrows popped upwards as she heard his plan.
“Your own personal Mission: Impossible?”
