Walter Stickle and the Galactic Rangers, page 12
“Maybe it was a coincidence.”
“Who would name an alien ‘Benoit?’ That’s the kind of name you find in a French romance novel, not on a scout ship. That’s like naming the ship’s captain, ‘Captain Stickle.’ It doesn’t work.”
“That’s your only reason?”
“Well, that and the fact that they were talking to me through my TV set. That’s not exactly a normal thing, is it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were looking for someone nice, someone helpful like you.”
“Vivien, they wanted me to access the secure Social Security database from my home computer, the one they had already infected. They wanted to download it. That’s the identities of everyone in the country. Do you know what that’s worth to the wrong people? That’s not being helpful. That’s being an idiot.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? I shut everything down, and this morning I asked my boss to have my work computer checked out to make sure nothing’s wrong. I didn’t tell him what happened, though. I probably should have.”
“Why would hackers dress up as comic strip characters and go to these lengths?”
“Because they’re smart and I’m stupid? They knew exactly all the right buttons to push to lure me in.”
“Not all of them. You didn’t give them what they were after.”
“Maybe I did and just don’t know it. After all, I am Captain Brainless.”
“Walter, you’re too hard on yourself. If they already had what they wanted, they would be gone, wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know, maybe you’re right, but then again maybe they’re sadistic evil hackers. Maybe they’re into torturing their victims and posting their stupidity on YouTube.”
“Maybe you worry too much.”
“Maybe. At least I know a good lawyer, at least until she goes home to France.”
The conversation died after that, leaving Walter alone with nothing but the boring road and his own thoughts. Vivien nodded off and woke up later when they were near New York City and leaving the turnpike to go west to Hackensack.
“Have a nice nap?” he asked.
“Yes, I guess I was tired. Are we almost there?”
“The Wurm-I says we’re ten minutes away.”
“The what?”
“The GPS. My dad calls it the Wurm-I.”
“That’s a funny name for a navigation system.”
“You have to say it with a cowboy accent,” and Walter did, “’Honey, where am I?’ you say, or just ‘Wurm-I?’ Get it?”
“Not really.”
They came to a red light, and Vivien took off her glasses to clean them. When the car behind them beeped its horn, she caught Walter staring at her and said, “We have a green light.”
He started the car up again. “I was just wondering if your mother or father have your eyes.”
“I don’t know. They died when I was very young.”
“I’m sorry,” Walter said. “That must have been hard.”
“My father died in an accident when my mother was pregnant with me. She died when I was born.”
“I’m so sorry, Vivien. I don’t know what to say.”
Wurm-I’s mechanical voice interrupted, “You have reached your destination.”
Walter pulled up in front of a modest one-story duplex on the shabby side of town in a quiet neighborhood.
“Do you want to wait in the car?” asked Vivien. “I won’t be long.”
“Whatever you think is best,” Walter said.
“It’s been a long drive. Why don’t you come inside?”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to stretch my legs a bit.”
An old man in overalls answered the front door. When he saw Vivien, he launched himself at her and pulled her into a bear hug. He was Martin Gendle, one-time riveter for Pandactic Enterprises and Vivien’s first client. He invited them into his living room and got them both glasses of iced tea. Mr. Gendle’s home could have used new wallpaper, a new hall rug, a new light fixture to replace the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling, a new coat of paint and a lot of other things, but it was clean.
When he asked Walter what he did for a living, and Walter told him that he worked for Social Security, Martin looked at Vivien, dismayed.
“I’m not here on business, Mr. Gendle,” Walter said. “I’m just a friend. Vivien needed a driver, and I offered to help.”
“Oh, I see,” Martin said.
“How have you been, Martin?” Vivien asked.
“The same — old and getting older. How long has it been, little girl?”
Vivien blushed.
“Oh, that’s right. You’re not a little girl anymore, are you? You’re a grown woman now. So, is this your boyfriend?”
She looked over at Walter and he said, “May I use your bathroom, Mr. Gendle? We’ve been on the road for two hours.”
“Of course,” the old man said. “Down the hall past the kitchen. Don’t mind the cat. Whiskers likes to sleep in the sink. He’ll move when you reach for the faucet.”
Walter found the bathroom and closed the door behind him, trying not to listen as Vivien and Martin spoke in whispers in the living room. Whiskers was asleep in the sink and looked up only briefly at Walter before stretching his claws and closing his eyes again. Walter called his office, but his cell phone wouldn’t connect. So, after using the toilet and unsuccessfully trying to get the cat to move, he washed his hands in the tub and looked through a stack of old newspaper comics piled in the corner of the room. Fifteen minutes later, he returned to the living room.
“We thought you’d fallen in,” Martin said.
“I was just getting acquainted with Whiskers,” said Walter. “I’m not getting any cell reception in your house. If you don’t mind, I’ll just step outside. I should check in with the office.”
“It’s these old houses,” Martin said. “The knob-and-tube wiring creates a signal-proof cage that blocks most everything, including AM radio, which is all right by me. Those Yankees are bums. It keeps out the Z-rays too. Yes sir, those aliens will never get you in an old place like this.”
“Z-rays?” Walter asked. “I’ve never heard of them.”
“Most people haven’t. They turn you into a zombie,” said Martin.
“Of course, that would explain it,” Walter said, looking to Vivien for help.
“We won’t be much longer,” she said.
“Oh, okay. I’ll be outside in the car.” Walter shook hands with Martin, told him how nice it was to meet him, and left his Z-ray-proof house.
He called the office from the car and spoke to Red who told him that she had just gotten off the phone with his parents. They were worried. He wasn’t at home, he wasn’t at the office, and he was supposed to be sick. They’d called the local hospital, but he wasn’t there either. They’d tried his cell, but it had gone right to voicemail. Walter explained that he was out of town with a friend and that he would call them right away.
“What about my computer?” Walter asked. “Did Central Office check it out yet?”
“These dudes in white space suits are going over your office with Geiger counters and vacuum cleaners, paleface.”
“Oh, my God. What did they find?”
“I think they found ET in your middle drawer.”
“What?”
“I’m just kidding, Kemosabe. Ruben had me send the request for the scan and password changes when I got in. They’re checking out your PC now.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks, Red. I’ll call back tomorrow.”
“Far out,” she said.
He said “good-bye,” and she said that she hoped he was feeling groovy.
Walter called his parents and spoke first with his dad, assuring him that everything was all right, and he had just finished re-explaining this to his mother when Vivien got into the car.
“I have to go, Mom,” Walter said. “I love you too.”
Vivien smiled.
“What?” said Walter. “I can’t tell my mom I love her?”
“I just think it’s nice, Walter. Any news about your computer?”
“Nothing yet. They’re still checking.”
Their next stop was in East Rutherford to see Lucius Dornburger. He had been a foreman at Pandactic. When Wurm-I couldn’t locate the address, Walter stopped at a gas station for directions. They found his apartment in a fifty year-old high-rise in a seedy section of town across Route 17 just past the abandoned Stellar Burger joint, just where the gas station attendant said it would be.
Lucius was a quiet old man whose eyes rarely strayed from the frayed orange carpeting that covered his one-room apartment. A mattress stuffed with old comic strips claimed most of the floor space. A recliner situated beneath the apartment’s only window and a paint-stripped table and two chairs took the rest, leaving a narrow path between these sad bits of furniture as the only way from the front door to the back closet. The closet had been converted to a door-less toilet. There was no tub, no shower, and when Lucius bathed, it was with a washcloth in the sink that was more or less attached to the wall.
The old man didn’t seem to notice the squalor that smacked Walter across the face like the stale smell of cooked fish that filled his apartment. Lucius greeted them warmly, after which Walter excused himself to wait in the car, saying he didn’t feel well. Vivien came down about an hour later.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I’m fine. It’s just that poor man,” said Walter, “living in that awful place. Is that all he can afford on his Social Security?”
“The world is different outside Pitville, Walter. What you call ‘normal’ is something these people will never see.”
“I feel like I should be doing something for him. Mr. Gendle too.”
“You are doing something. You’re helping the Luciuses and Martins of the world every day. You’re a hero, Walter. Without you, people like them would have nothing and no one to look after them.”
Walter didn’t feel like a hero.
“We should be going,” Vivien said.
After their visit to Mr. Dornburger, Walter stayed the entire time when Vivien met with each of the others. He found that they didn’t talk like a lawyer and her clients. They talked like friends, about how they were doing, about old times, and about life and what a joy it was to be free and alive. By late in the day, Walter and Vivien had visited all but one of her former clients, none of them any better off than the last. After seeing them, what struck Walter was not the squalor, not the smell, not the fact that they lived in places so far from normal that he thought he was on another planet; it was how grateful they all were to be alive, how happy they all were just to be where they were, and how attached they were to Vivien Benoit.
It was getting dark and they were somewhere out in the middle of nowhere trying to find her last client, Millie Varger. Millie lived in a shack somewhere in the Pine Barrens. Vivien couldn’t remember the name of the municipality. Her dirt road had no name. She had no street address with the Post Office, and Wurm-I was clueless. The only way Vivien knew to get to her place was by following the landmarks. Millie was a squatter, Walter concluded, and he realized that if they managed to find her, it was going to be a big step down from the others.
Somewhere in Burlington County, they took a two-lane unmarked road east until there was a break in the guardrail. There, they turned south through the Wharton Forest and followed the gravel until a tree blocked the way. Then, they made a series of twists and turns on dirt roads surrounded by pine trees that all looked the same.
“How does she get her Social Security check way out here,” Walter wondered, “or any of her mail, for that matter?”
“Her checks are deposited directly to her bank account,” Vivien said. “She goes to town once a month for food and necessities. She keeps a Post Office box in town for her other mail.”
“Why doesn’t she just live in town? Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“She likes it out here. She likes the quiet and her privacy.”
“And it is quiet,” Walter said.
The Prius is a car that doesn’t make much noise, especially when it’s stopped at an intersection. The gasoline engine shuts off to conserve fuel and the hybrid’s electric motor takes over. Those who aren’t familiar with the Prius think that the car has stalled out when it comes to a stop and goes quiet like that. Even the crickets are noisier than its electric motor.
Walter stopped the car at a fork in the road. Vivien puzzled for a moment before she remembered the way and pointed to a break in the trees to the right, but when Walter pressed down on the gas pedal, nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. We might be out of gas,” said Walter. “I can’t believe it. I thought these hybrids never ran out of gas. That must have been what that little green blinking light meant beside the picture of the gas pump. It came on about an hour ago, then went out, then another blinked for a while, and then all the lights went out.”
“What did you think it meant?”
“I don’t know. Green is supposed to mean ‘go’ not ‘stop.’ Why would anyone use green for a warning light?”
“I guess it’s the blinking that’s significant in this case, not the color.”
“Thank you, ‘Miss I drive on curbs and don’t have a license.’ I should tell you, I really don’t like cars.”
“Then why do you have a license?”
“Everybody has a license. It’s part of growing up in this country. It’s the photo ID of choice. You can’t get a checking account without one. You can’t get a credit card,” and Walter named a few other annoyances before Vivien stopped him.
“I don’t understand. Why did you offer to drive if you don’t like to?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, what now?”
“We’re not that far from Millie’s. She’ll have fuel.”
Walter turned off the headlights, and they got out of the car. The woods were dark and getting darker. The stars were coming out in a clear sky, and the moon was a sliver above the trees. Vivien stared at a meteor streaking across the heavens.
“One of the Perseids,” Walter said. “This is supposed to be a good year for them. Did you ever wonder if any of them are actually space ships pretending to be meteors? I mean, maybe that’s how UFOs disguise themselves when they land. That would be cool, don’t you think?”
Vivien seemed uncomfortable.
“Are you all right?” Walter asked.
“Yes, it’s just dark.”
Walter turned on his flashlight, held it under his chin, and made a scary face. “Now, aren’t you glad I came prepared?” he said, and added, “I vant to suck your blood.”
“What?”
“You know, Dracula?”
“Who?”
“You don’t know about vampires? What planet are you from anyway?”
She took his hand, and while he explained vampires to her, they walked along the dirt road surrounded by the chirping of insects and distant howling of creatures in the night. The Pine Barrens had seemed so much less noisy when they were safe inside the car, even if it was a quiet Prius.
A crunching sound in the underbrush made them both jump back and huddle together.
Walter flailed his light from side to side, “What was that? Did you see that?”
The noise seemed to be coming closer, and when the flashlight reflected off two beady eyes in the bushes, they took off down the road screaming. Whatever had been chasing them gave up when they reached the rickety porch of Millie Varger’s shack, laughing at each other.
“You’re such a chicken,” said Walter.
“Me?” Vivien said. “Who was it that said, ‘If I don’t get out of this alive, you can have my collection of action figures?’”
“Yeah, well that deal’s off. We made it, didn’t we?”
Millie Varger opened the front door with a shotgun in hand.
“What’s all the ruckus? Who’s there?” she demanded.
“Millie, it’s me,” said Vivien.
She came out onto the porch and trained the gun on Walter. “I didn’t hear your car. Who’s this?”
“I’m Walter, Vivien’s chauffeur.”
“I don’t see any car.”
“We ran out of gas just down the road,” he said.
“Sounds to me like someone who’s not prepared,” she said, with the gun still pointed at him. “Guess you weren’t a Boy Scout.”
“Millie,” said Vivien, “Put that down. You’re scaring him.”
Walter looked at Vivien, and she gave him a big bug-eyed smile.
“You’d best come in then before the skeeters eat us alive,” Millie said and waved them inside.
Walter noticed a satellite dish bracketed to one of the posts that held up the porch roof. “You have dish out here?”
“That one’s broke,” Millie said. “The good one’s up on the roof. Gets me two hundred channels of crap.”
The inside of her house looked more like Walter’s living room than an old rundown shack in the woods. It had a sofa, a big screen TV, electric lights, and the air was cool and dry from an air conditioner running quietly somewhere.
Millie hugged Vivien and said, “It’s good to see you, Vivy. How have you been? Have you lost weight?”
“I’m fine, Millie, and actually, I’ve gained a little.”
“Good. You could use a few more pounds.”
“Wow, you’d never know your place was like this looking at it from the outside,” Walter said.
“That’s the general idea. The bathroom’s downstairs if you need to pee,” Millie said, pointing to a hatch covering a staircase leading down. She set her gun back on the rack over the electric fireplace.
“Thanks,” Walter said. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Walter opened the hatch and took the stairs down into a carpeted hallway with paneled walls. There was a kitchen with modern appliances, a bedroom, a room that looked like some kind of workroom, one room that was locked, and the bathroom at the end of the hall.
When Walter came back upstairs, he said, “I can’t believe this. Where do you get your electricity? I didn’t notice any wires.”
