Periphery, page 25
“Shit’s getting real,” Langston said. “Me, I say we call the army, let them handle this. One hit from an 88mm tank shell and those coils would be dust.”
“Probably,” Andrew said as another pang of gratitude shuddered through him. Sid believed him. Max believed him. The firefighters milling in the hallway believed him. And despite their initial skepticism, the men and women at the conference table believed him, with the possible exception of Chief Rodriguez.
Team Tate(the name brought an embarrassed heat to his cheeks, but he couldn’t help thinking of them in any other way) had grown from four people to nearly a hundred. He had set something in motion, and the building momentum was becoming a thing of its own. The relief was intoxicating.
And yet in the field of that relief, a nagging concern remained. The vetro offalate knew what he was up to. He had no doubt of that. To speak aloud about explosive charges and demolition teams was the same as broadcasting it into the minds (or was it just one Mind?) of the enemy. There was no getting around it. Hopefully, if they completed their work under cover of night, the vetro would be powerless to stop them. On the other hand, if dawn found them still dicking around, Andrew suspected even a full-scale military response would be too little too late.
That, however, wasn’t the reason for his misgivings. What he’d sensed from the vetro offalate after laying out his plan to the others wasn’t alarm. And it wasn’t anger. It was the equivalent of a vast mental shrug, as if they had instantly evaluated the scheme and judged it irrelevant.
At least his father had something up his sleeve, a Hail Mary from the top of that old tower. And there was the other thing, the thing he was keeping buried at the bottom of his awareness: not the knowledge of some mysterious machine or the location of a secret arsenal of anti-offalate weapons, only an unlikely possibility born in darkness and nurtured in drought.
“Thing about the military,” Andrew said after a long pause, “kind of hard to imagine them mobilizing anything for this. First, who do you call, the base commander at MacDill? The only thing flying out of there are refueling tankers. The governor? And tell her what, her state’s about to be invaded by creatures from another universe? See where that gets you. Even if you manage to get someone to commit to a countermeasure, it has to be in place by dawn. You think that’s going to happen?”
“Are we even sure this shit’s going down at dawn?” Sid asked.
“Yes.” Katie’s tone left no room for argument. She was staring at the city map, her head slowly cocking toward her left shoulder. A vertical line ran between her brows from her forehead to the bridge of her nose. “Will,” she began but was silenced by Chief Rodriguez’s call for attention. The room quickly filled with the firefighters who had been milling in the hall.
“Okay, people.” He waited, arms raised, until the room quieted. “We’re going to tackle this on a number of fronts. Mr. Tate says our best option is to take out the pylons he described earlier, the coils, so that’s what we’re going to focus on. I understand an attempt to pull one down with a vehicle some years ago was unsuccessful, as was a recent attempt to blow one up. We’re going to try to yank them down again, this time with heavy equipment.
"As most of you know, the DOF has some dozers they’ve been using to create firebreaks up at the wildfire. We can bring two down on a flatbed. Be here in an hour. Mr. Tate’s friend,” he indicated Little Billy, “thinks destroying even one might be enough to stop this. We’re going to be systematic, start with the first and move on to the next if we can’t budge it, work through all eighteen if we have to.”
A murmur of discontent rippled through the audience as Andrew began calculating how long such a process would take.
Rodriguez raised his arms again, looking like a man wading into steadily deepening water.
“If we can’t pull any down, then and only then will we turn to explosives. We already know from Mr. Tate’s first attempt how much Trenchrite is too little. I’ll be conferring with our explosive experts over the next few hours to determine how much bigger we can go without risking property or lives.
"These things aren’t in a field somewhere in the middle of nowhere. They’re in backyards. They’re in parking lots. In many cases, they’re next to utility poles and sewer lines. We have to take all that into account.”
“Bullshit.” Although Katie’s voice was low, several people glanced her way. Little Billy whispered something in her ear. “What difference does it make if they take out a streetlight?” Her volume rose to a stage whisper. “Those things are going to swallow this city whole. Go big or go home, otherwise what’s the point?”
Low grunts of agreement, a single “damn right” from Sid, and then a fizz of agitation until someone near the back of the room asked, “What about the National Guard? Shouldn’t they be involved in this?”
Rodriguez waited for the room to settle.
“We’re going to attempt to contact all possible military channels. But let’s face it, other than the Coast Guard, we really don’t have a hotline to the top brass. It’s going to take time to work our way up to the right people. That’s going to take time. Hell, I’m still not fully convinced and I’m surrounded by true believers.”
“True believers?” Katie huffed. Andrew wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. The room had grown stifling with so many closely-packed bodies.
“Now comes the part that will directly affect most of you.” Rodriguez nodded to the DOF representative who had asked about the size of the vetro offalate. He circled the table and displaced Rodriguez at the center of the room.
“Hello. Not a lot of you know me. My name is Frank Leanza and I’m the Withlacoochee Field Operations Bureau Chief for the Florida Department of Forestry. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the chief has been talking about how we’re going to play offense. But as all of you know, any plan is incomplete without a defensive component. You don’t fight wildfires without firebreaks, whether they’re backburns or burnouts or whatever.
"The way I see it, this situation is no different. Worst comes to worst, we’re going to need a containment line around this thing. If those creatures manage to break into our world, I’m not about to let them stroll past us, are you?”
A smattering of agreement. Andrew didn’t need to survey the room to know puzzled glances were being exchanged. Leanza felt it as well. He appeared to deflate as the assembled firefighters held their collective breath.
“Hell no,” Andrew said. He caught Sid’s eye. “Hell no.”
“Hell no,” Sid echo. “Hell no.”
Behind him, Max took up the chant. “Hell no. Hell no.”
A few more voices joined in. Then a dozen. Soon the entire room was chanting. Hell no, Andrew thought. The war cry of a thousand generations.
“So, here’s what we’re going to do,” Leanza said. Too timid. The chant continued unabated, feeding on itself. Behind the DOF chief, the rest of the committee officials watched the crowd with varying mixtures of amusement, satisfaction and embarrassment.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he repeated, nearly shouting to be heard. “We’re going to form a perimeter around that circle.” Leanza pointed to the city map. “A perimeter of firefighters and police officers. The officers will be armed with guns. The firefighters will be armed with fire hoses.”
The chanting continued for another second, maybe two, diminished to a series of isolated voices, then evaporated altogether on a final ‘hell.’
“Fire hoses?” someone asked.
“We’re going to use them as water cannons,” Leanza said.
The room filled with a static charge of incredulity. Andrew knew why. Fire hoses were for fighting fires. The thought of repurposing them, of weaponizing them, wouldn’t sit well with most firefighters. Besides, how effective could they possibly be against such creatures? What was the phrase? Never bring a knife to a gunfight. Or a squirt gun to the apocalypse.
“I like it.” Every head in the room swiveled toward Max. “Think about it. I was a nozzleman for five years. We’ve all seen what a hundred p.s.i can do. I’ve knocked down walls with water jets. I’ve blown out windows. Blasted off roofs. Hell, you could peel the skin off an elephant with a hose at close range.”
At the front of the room, Leanza looked as if he were resisting the urge to jump into Max’s arms.
“Now if I had a choice,” Max continued, “I’d take a howitzer over a fire hose any day. But if something big is charging my way, I’d rather be behind a hose than a pistol.”
Max’s words were enough to fan the crowd’s enthusiasm back into life. It returned in a combustive whoosh as a dozen comments about nozzlemen and pump operators, bore preference and water pressure began to simultaneously snap and pop. As Leanza tried unenthusiastically to reign in the commotion, a single voice gradually rose to cut through the static.
“Is that it?” Katie repeated. The room began to settle once more. “Is that it?”
Chief Rodriguez returned to the center of the room, Leanza retreating gratefully back to the other side of the table.
“Is what it, Ms…”
“Katie Fife. Is that your entire plan?”
Rodriguez leaned his rear against the edge of the table and folded his arms across his chest. “You think it’s inadequate.”
“Yes.”
“Sorry you feel that way, Ms. Fife. We had an hour to cobble this together. It’s not perfect.” When he saw she was not going to accept that as an answer he sighed. “What? What have we forgotten?”
Katie pointed to the city map. “May I? Will.” She motioned Little Billy to follow. The crowd parted as the two made their way to the wall map. “Okay. Let’s say worst comes to worst and we can’t stop the xalanthracoils from ripping us a new one. That means what, exactly? That a piece of their world pops into this circle?”
Little Billy nodded. “That’s what we think. Everything inside the circle will be their world.”
“That’s a hell of a perimeter,” someone in the crowd remarked. “Got to be two miles across, at least. We going to have enough hoses to surround it?” The audience began to chatter again and Katie held up both arms. “Wait! I’m not done yet. If the vetro’s world appears inside the circle, what happens to everything that’s already in there? What happens to the part of our world that’s inside the circle?”
“I guess it…” Little Billy’s eyes slid shut as his fist shot up to rap his forehead. “Augh! How did we miss that?” He looked at the map with dawning horror. “Oh, Christ. All those people.”
“What’s going on?” Sid asked. “What’s the issue?”
“The issue,” Katie said, “is that if their world comes here, our world must go there, to the vetro’s planet.”
For a moment, the crowd seemed to rear back in stunned silence. Then they exploded into chatter. “Evacuation teams…” “At least twenty thousand…,” “Never get everyone out…,” “Top priority…,” “Clusterfuck is what it is…,” “Oh god, my brother’s house is in there…”
Sid was pushing through the crowd toward Andrew, shouting something he couldn’t hear above the din. Little Billy and Katie were close behind. Sid pointed to the door and together all four shimmied out into the hallway.
“If you want to go back,” Sid said, moving to the far end of the corridor where conversation was once more possible, “I’ll take you.”
Andrew checked his watch again. “She should be gone by now. She was just going to pack a few things and pick up Anna.”
“What’s going on?” Katie asked, glancing from Andrew to Sid and back again.
“My house is inside the circle. Just barely, but yeah, it’s in there.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” She made a shooing motion with her fingertips. “Go. Go. Family first. Will and I can handle the rest.”
“She should be halfway to Ocala by now.”
“If they haven’t closed more of the interstate because of the fire.”
Katie shot Sid a withering look.
“It’s getting pretty bad near the fire. Visibility’s dropping every hour. Last update, they were considering expanding the I-75 closure all the way to the I-275 juncture.”
Andrew reached for his phone. “Let me call her first.”
Before he could dial, the phone began to chime “Love Will Keep Us Together,” his wife’s ringtone. Later, he would remember the black certainty of catastrophe sending an icy spike of panic through the hollow of his throat even before he brought the cell to his ear. He would remember Katie’s face, her hands rising to cover her mouth, her eyes widening in fear. What did she read in his expression to provoke such a reaction? He would remember the red and white “no exit” sign above her shoulder and the fire extinguisher mounted on the wall beneath.
What he would never remember were the exact words spoken by the almost apologetic voice on the other end of the line, one that was not Grace’s or Anna’s, but familiar nevertheless.
Andrew listened for nearly a minute, saying nothing. When the voice stopped, he stood staring at the screen until Katie whispered, “What?”
“I need to borrow your car,” he told Sid.
“What?” Katie repeated.
“They have my family.”
Sid tossed him his car keys. “Go,” he urged. “Go.”
Andrew went.
Nineteen
She was gone again. Gary Wyatt saw the awareness flicker from his mother’s eyes as her face contracted into the puzzled frown that had become her default expression. Loretta Wyatt turned as if catching the faint peal of an alarm and Gary placed the bowl of ice cream on the bedside table, knowing what would come next. He had hoped she would stay with him a least to the end of her treat. Ice cream was one of the few things she still enjoyed. Certainly, the only thing she sat still for.
Perched on the edge of her bed, she would open her mouth for each new spoonful like an infant in a highchair, and as he fed her he would talk about his day, or exchange some trivial snippet of gossip he’d overheard on the ward, or recite a favorite childhood memory, presenting it like a bauble retrieved from a display case. Remember the time you took me to the zoo and we got stuck on the sky chair ride for thirty minutes? You had a pack of cards in your purse and we just sat up there swaying and playing rummy until the chairs started moving again. Remember that, Mom? Just you and me way up there over the aviary, listing to all the birds and playing cards? That was a fun day, wasn’t it?
And with the ice cream glistening on her lips, her eyes would find his and he would see his mother behind them, her startled recognition as if he had suddenly stepped from behind a living room curtain. Not long ago, she might even have said his name. His response was always the same: a loud, bright, casual “Hi, Mom!,” the greeting of a boy sliding into a mother’s waiting car after school.
Today, however, there had been only the briefest glimmer of recognition amid the bovine contentment of her eager chewing. Now she stood, smoothed her sweater, gave a businesslike sniff and shuffled into the hall. This was how his mother spent her hours: pacing endlessly from one end of the ward to the other, never slowing, never tiring, a tin toy whose clockwork mechanisms were always wound tight.
At first, Gary had wondered where she thought she was going. There was nothing leisurely in her motion. She didn’t stroll. She marched with the purpose of someone late for an appointment. When she reached the bay window at the ward’s east end, she would pivot and stride with equal purpose to the west end. He didn’t wonder about her motivations anymore. He knew she paced because it was one of the few neural loops still firing in her plaque-snarled brain.
But not for long. His mother would only have to endure this hell one more night. Tomorrow a new era would dawn, and when it did everyone evaporating under Alzheimer’s relentless, pestilent sun would be refreshed. The vetro offalate had promised him this, and he knew they spoke the truth.
Loretta Wyatt turned left out of the room. Gary followed, his hand resting lightly on her forearm although she had no need for his assistance. Except for her rotting brain, she was in perfect health.
His mother was all he had. His father had skipped town when Gary was three and he had no siblings. He wasn’t a mama’s boy, one of those sheltered, timid, overly-dependent apron-clingers who couldn’t decide what to eat for breakfast without consulting mommy first. Growing up, he’d always been athletic and popular. Plenty of friends. Plenty of girls. Still, his mother was his best friend, more pal than parent. Watching her slow deconstruction was like having a limb sawed off with a butter knife. Had he lost her quickly, in a car accident for instance, he would have mourned and eventually moved on.
But he hadn’t lost her. Not yet. She was still there, sinking slowly out of sight but visible beneath murky waters. He would do anything to save her. Anything at all. What good were doctors and hospitals if all they could do was stand at his mother’s bedside, offering platitudes and false sympathy? Useless fuckers. Every one.
Six months ago, Gary had been on the verge of despondency. He could admit that now. The thought of one more afternoon spent prattling at his mother’s side as she ignored him—it was too much to bear. Too much for anyone to bear.
And then the vetro had whispered to him, faintly at first, so faintly he thought he might be going mad with grief. Their language was, initially, nothing but gibberish, syllables spiraling round and round at the bottom of his head like particles of grit circling a drain. He tried to ignore them, tried to convince himself he was willfully conjuring up the utterances in an attempt to distract himself from his mother’s tragedy.
But they would not be ignored. The more he tried to push them away, the more insistent they became until one night, sweating and thrashing in his bed under the assault, something in his head seemed to dilate and a single word, ng’al’calu, suddenly made sense. Ng’al’calu: restore. Restore? Restore what? Knelgulig. Understanding. By the first gray smear of dawn, he understood the meaning of one more word: pi’vak. Pi’vak meant mother. After that, Gary listened very closely to everything the vetro offalate had to say.
