The Nothing Men, page 7
part #1 of The Nothing Men Series
“Thank you.”
“Anyway, everyone around here has a job, except for the few children, and we’re working on starting school for them,” he said. “Luke will take you on as an apprentice. He’s taken a shine to you. You’ll start in the fields, and as you prove yourself, you can move up in the hierarchy. I’m pretty good at reading people, and I think you could have a bright future here. People will look up to you. Eventually, I’ll want to have a governing body of some kind. This won’t be a utopia forever.”
“Am I ever allowed to leave?” Ben asked, chuckling.
“Of course,” Thompson said.
Ben took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Eventually, that is.”
Ben’s next breath caught in his throat.
“We have to be very careful about security. We’re pretty off the beaten path, but this isn’t a public shelter. We have a very strict protocol about leaving the grounds. Unauthorized absences will result in expulsion from the community. Besides, it’s important to us that our new members have a chance to acclimate themselves, get to know other people.”
“I see,” Ben said.
Ben’s dozen years as a lawyer had embedded in him a healthy skepticism of many things, including, but not limited to, nearly every word anyone said. Unlike Thompson, he didn’t rely on gut feelings too much, so instead, he took a more utilitarian approach and simply assumed that everyone was lying about something.
“What if I change my mind a week from now, two weeks from now?” Ben asked.
The question seemed to take Thompson by surprise, as if no one had ever asked it before. As though he’d never contemplated the possibility that someone might decide that life out there, beyond the borders of the Haven, was preferable to their insulated existence here. Thompson froze, just for an instant, long enough to make Ben wonder whether he was making it up as he went along, looking for an answer that would satisfy this desperate newcomer. Ben suspected that the promise of food and shelter and safety had been more than enough to convince a wide-eyed guest to sign on the dotted line. He had the very strong sense that Mr. Calvin Thompson expected everyone to say yes, and that this was a permanent arrangement.
“Same deal,” Thompson said finally, breaking the brief but awkward silence. “Blindfold. A ride back to wherever you were picked up. And you never see us again. But I’m proud to say that no one has turned down my offer yet, and no one has changed their mind.”
“What’s to stop me from taking off in the middle of the night?” Ben asked.
Thompson smiled, a jolly-looking grin that reminded Ben of a sparkly rock, which if you pulled it up, would reveal maggots and centipedes and other terrifying creepy-crawlies underneath.
“We’re a long way from anything out here, son.”
Ben rubbed his chin as he considered this, his hand scraping across the ever-present stubble. He gazed out over the fields and the thick forest, and realized with just a touch of morbidity that it would make a good place to dump bodies of people who hadn’t been swayed by Thompson’s offer.
He glanced back toward the main house, where things were still hopping. A few torches had been lit, and someone had fired up a boom box. Formless music filled the air, and he thought about the other side of the coin. Was he being too suspicious? Why wouldn’t Redeyes want to stick together? Wouldn’t a place like this make sense? There were probably communities like this popping up all over the place. Millions of Reds were roaming the countryside, scared, hungry, alone.
Perhaps he was just having a hard time accepting that the rest of his life would be flavored by the Panic. He was making the mistake of thinking of himself as a special little flower. Poor little Ben. So the Panic would dominate the rest of his life. At least he had a life. So many didn’t. Billions lay dead in houses and schools and hospitals and bowling alleys and shacks and tenements around the world.
“When do I need to let you know by?” he asked finally.
“I’d appreciate an answer by noon tomorrow,” Thompson said. The warmth in his voice had evaporated like a puddle of seawater, leaving behind the salty, shrewd businessman Ben suspected Thompson once had been. “If you turn us down, I’ve got other candidates to consider. But I hope you’ll say yes, Ben.”
Classic! Ben thought. Addressing me by name directly. Making it all personal. Making me feel all warm and cozy.
“Just come by my private study,” he said. “Someone will point you in the right direction. Enjoy the rest of the evening.”
Thompson headed back to the party without shaking Ben’s hand. Ben watched the man walk away, like a rescue ship steaming away from a crippled boat.
8
In the end, it hadn’t been a very difficult decision at all. It wasn’t like he had other offers on the table, other communes banging down his door, or really any other options at all. The ease of it, the way it seemed that there was only one correct choice, surprised him. After Thompson had taken his leave of him, Ben watched the sunset over the farm and then retired to his room. He expected to be up all night, tossing and turning, wrestling with this grave decision, but he’d been out as soon as his head hit the pillow. He slept even harder and more soundly than he had on his first night, and when he woke up, he felt new, fresh, and dare he say it, home. And so at noon on his second full day at the Haven, he sat with Thompson in his study, clinking glasses of scotch with the man and accepting his offer to become part of their “family,” as Thompson described it.
Like all rookies, Ben started in the fields, working from sunup to sundown for the rest of that summer, harvesting vegetables and fruits, weeding, mulching and fertilizing. The work involved in feeding two dozen people without the assistance of a supermarket was gargantuan, more than he’d ever fathomed. By the time he joined the work crew, the crops were in full bloom. Luke, who’d grown up with Ellie on a farm in southwest Virginia, was in charge of the farming operations, and Ben worked hard to impress him. Not because of any particular desire to become a master farmer, but because he figured it would be the quickest ticket out of the fields and into more responsibility. He occasionally felt guilty for thinking in this way, given that Thompson had opened his home to him, kept him fed, sheltered, and so on, and he sometimes wondered why he couldn’t just be happy with his good fortune. Millions of people would trade spots with him in a second. But if there were other jobs to be had, he could do those too. Ambition didn’t care about the state of the world.
He was assigned to a small guest cottage northwest of the main house, which he shared with four men, all of whom worked in the fields. Ben shared a room with a former consultant named Marc Basnight, a pleasant enough fellow who kept to himself and read fantasy novels in his spare time. He was plagued by bad dreams; this Ben knew because he’d wake up during the night to find Marc sitting on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands, taking slow, deep breaths. Ben never spoke to him about it because seriously, what was there to say? He knew what lay behind the curtains of slumber. You didn’t go through what they had gone through without a little scarring. Post-traumatic stress disorder, the ironic gift that kept on giving to those that had been the cause of all the trauma in the first place.
One night in late October, Ben was at the main house, reading in the modest library. It had been a bad day in the fields; something had gotten into the pumpkins and ruined about two hundred of them, leaving tempers short among the field crew. Everyone had retired for the night, but Ben was restless, couldn’t sleep. A little after midnight, he gave up, threw on a light jacket and made his way to the main house. The air was clear and cold and, instead of relaxing him, infused him with a jolt of energy. Fall had definitely arrived.
Ben chose The Stand to whittle away the insomnia. He had read Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic opus in college, and it had quickly become one of his favorites. As he thumbed through the familiar pages, he read the story with a sense of aching nostalgia for a time when, he was embarrassed to admit, he’d been intrigued by the prospect of surviving an apocalypse. He never quite understood why he believed he would be among the tiny fraction of survivors, or why he thought he’d become some important figure in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Knowing his luck, had he been a character in the novel, he’d have died before the public-at-large even knew what was going on, or if he did manage to survive the initial plague, he’d have succumbed to food poisoning. But there it was. Every man believed in his own potential greatness, greatness was that was being suppressed, held down by society and circumstance. Life, the ultimate restrictor plate. And now that he had survived an apocalypse, albeit not as complete as King’s vision but scarier, what with the neighbors slaughtering each other and all, he was ashamed by his naiveté.
It was well after two in the morning when his eyelids grew heavy. Finally. The days in the fields were hard enough with a good night’s sleep. He got up from the reading chair to re-shelve the massive hardcover novel and head back to his room. He scanned the other titles and made a point to read something different next time, perhaps a previously unread piece of fiction that might stretch his mind and his horizons.
As he passed through the main foyer on his way to the front door, he heard a ruckus from somewhere deep inside the house, and he froze. At first, he couldn’t quite make it out, but as he stood there, not breathing, his hand on the doorknob, he realized it was the sound of people talking.
No, strike that.
People arguing, three or four of them. Loudly. The cacophony came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, bursting through the old house, echoing against the walls, seeping through the floors. Although he couldn’t quite discern the words being said, he tried to distill the emotions from the tone, the way a wine connoisseur might detect hints of fruits and cheeses in a new bottle of Pinot. Anger, mostly. A slight hint of fear, perhaps.
A dozen people living in relatively close quarters, you were bound to have disagreements from time to time. This didn’t concern him. This was none of his business. A lovers’ quarrel. Perhaps even a love triangle, even. But his legs wouldn’t move, and his ears primed themselves, working harder and harder to pick up the discussion, as if part of him knew that if he didn’t learn more, it would just eat at him for the rest of the night, the rest of the week, the rest of however long his stay here proved to be.
Letting go of the doorknob, he sighed and crept toward the darkened corridor behind the stairs, his best guess for the voices’ origin. He stepped gingerly, staying close to the wall, where he hoped the floor was tighter and the creaking would keep to a minimum. Old houses like this creaked all the time, he told himself. Part of their old South charm, a stubborn old grandfather’s worn-out joints.
He made his way past the stairs, down a small hallway that fed into a longer corridor that ran the width of the house. A series of doors lay opposite the base of the stairs, almost all shut tight, dark and ominous like approaching storm clouds. All but one. The fourth door down, nearly beyond Ben’s vantage point, was cracked just so, revealing a sliver of dim light spilling out. His heart was pounding in his ears now; his mouth had dried out like overcooked meat, and he could barely keep his legs underneath him.
The voices hadn’t gotten any louder, but they’d maintained the same pitch that had initially drawn Ben’s attention in the first place, as though they’d found a new equilibrium, a new status quo. There were at least four people in the room, three men and one or two women. He recognized Luke and Thompson instantly; Luke lived in the main house with Thompson. The other voices were familiar to him, but he couldn’t definitively match them up with their owners. If he had to guess, Floyd and Carrie. He hadn’t really gotten to know them at all, although he suspected they had a little bit of a thing going, and they were quite close to Calvin.
He stole a quick glance over his shoulder, back toward the main foyer, making sure that no one was spying on him spying on other people. Seeing nothing, he turned his attention back to the late-night get-together and focused on picking up slivers of conversation, words or phrases that might clue him in as to what was going on. He crouched down low, leaning in toward the wall, hoping the acoustics of the building would amplify the discussion a little. Words lacking context registered in his mind, and it was virtually impossible to match words to voices.
“…next week…”
“Department…”
“Mercury…”
“…traceable…”
“…willing to take that risk…”
Laughter.
“…never…”
The longer he listened, the more confused he became. Each word or phrase was like a piece to a puzzle whose ultimate destiny he did not know. It was maddening. Information was coming at him rapid-fire now, and the earlier bits were slipping away from him, despite his best efforts to harness everything into a mental net he could sort through later, as though he were panning for gold.
And then he heard it. A solitary word that tied the others together, the word that served the foundation for the entire discussion.
“…bomb…”
The word took his breath away, like a punch in the stomach. The discussion went suddenly silent, as if someone had muted a television. His heart fluttered madly, and a single bead of sweat traced an icy trail down his back. Had they heard him? Did one of them have that inscrutable itch of an unknown presence eavesdropping?
He retreated down the hallway, staying in his crouch and keeping his back pressed against the wall. His head rotated from side to side, as though on a swivel, searching for any sign that his presence had been detected. A door screeched open, but he didn’t hear any footsteps.
As he drew near the end of the corridor, the front door came into view. The foyer was empty, dimly lit by the chandelier hanging from the ceiling. He rotated his body into a sprinter’s crouch, ducking low at the base of the stairs. From there, he could see into the library, which was, mercifully, empty. He didn’t know what he would say if someone confronted him, and the more he tried to push the thoughts away, the more this worst-case scenario ran through his mind. A worrier by nature, he thought it was ironic that he hadn’t been a big enough worrier. If he had been, then maybe he wouldn’t have become infected in the first place.
“I’m sure it was nothing,” one of the voices said behind him. Luke.
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” a sharp voice replied. Thompson. “I know the creaks in this goddamn house. Check the first floor.”
Bootheels echoed through the corridor as Luke searched for the eavesdropper.
Before Luke had a chance to turn the corner down the main corridor, Ben broke for the door and opened it just wide enough to slip out onto the country porch, where the night seemed preternaturally quiet. He considered making a run for it, but there was nothing but open ground between here and his cottage.
Think, dammit, think!
The panic was huge inside him, now, like an earthquake threatening to crack his foundation. He heard voices in the foyer behind him, and he knew it was time to act. The air was heavy and still. No cicadas. No hooting of owls. He leapt from the porch to the sidewalk below, trying to recall if the night was always this quiet at two-fifteen in the morning, or if he should consider this a very bad omen.
Omen, he decided. If he were proven wrong later, so be it.
He curled around the side of the house and took refuge behind a large azalea bush that gave him an unobstructed view of the house, just as the door opened and Luke trailed out behind him. A channel of moonlight stretched from the house to the edge of the driveway like a silvery river, but Ben’s hiding spot was shrouded in darkness. Luke scanned the property, perhaps thinking that the intruder had fled. Relief flooded through Ben when Luke ducked back in the house. He knew he didn’t have time to celebrate his victory. Luke was likely going back for a flashlight or worse, reinforcements.
But it bought him the time he needed. He sprinted through the night, terrified that the moonlight would spotlight him like a suspect under the unforgiving glare of a police helicopter. The only sound was the susurration of the shin-high grass as he knifed across the grounds.
He lay awake in bed all night, his heart racing, his brain trying to maintain order, the unemotional scientist attempting to make sense of what he’d heard. He started with the word “bomb” and worked backwards. Perhaps it had been a metaphor. Metaphorically, things went off like bombs all the time. But he pieced that word with the other phrases he’d heard, like a rudimentary NSA computer scouring Internet chatter, hunting for terrorist plots, to try and sketch the big picture, and he didn’t like what he was coming up with.
What did he know about these people, really? Had he signed up with a terrorist group? Was he in the early stages of the indoctrination? Was that the more responsibility that Thompson had talked about that evening when they were watching the horses? They hated the government, of course, but who didn’t? Even those who hadn’t been infected had to live in this brave new world of checkpoints and a catalog of civil rights that was being drawn down upon like a dwindling bank account.
He could run away. He’d made it on his own for a long time before signing on here. He could survive. He could make a new life for himself. So what if he didn’t know where he was? It wasn’t like he had anywhere to be. It didn’t matter if it took him a day or a week or even a month. Such was the life of a post-apocalyptic refugee. But would they hunt him down?
Something else was at work, as well, something he didn’t necessarily want to admit at the top of his consciousness. Because if it wasn’t there, he’d have packed his bag and kept on keeping on, right on out the back door. There wouldn’t be any of this ridiculous pacing, like a pathetic teenage boy trying to muster up the courage to call a pretty girl for the first time. These were his people. The world had left them behind.
