The Gift of Remembering

by C. L. Shaffer

  He made his way back to the door and shoved it open. "Who's Kent?" he asked himself. He allowed her words to tumble around in his head a few more times before realizing what he was doing. At the street's curb, he put his hands on his hips and shook his head as if to dispel the envy he was feeling. The motion did little to lessen the sensation, and he decided to ignore it by turning his attention to searching for supplies and food.

  After wandering a bit, he came across a small pharmacy at the corner of Broad and Main. Stepping inside, he scanned the shelves for medical supplies. As he did, a small desk in the corner caught his eye. Moving closer, he noticed a half-finished inventory list with the word "scissors" missing its last two letters. Beside the desk, on the floor, was a cardboard box. A tape dispenser dangled from the package as if the owner had just walked away. He tried to overlook Irene's remark about forced processing, but something had occurred in this town. And whatever it was, it had taken place quickly.

  The wall above the desk displayed a series of black and white framed photos. One pictured a grey-haired couple, presumably the owners of the store. Alongside it were snapshots of various employees dressed in their store uniforms and personal photographs of perhaps the owners' children and grandchildren. Chris straightened the frame of the photo that captured the couple's family together. As he ran his hand across their faces, something black flashed by the window. He leaned toward the glass to peer out but saw nothing more.

  Returning to his original purpose, he picked out gauze, alcohol, and some expired aspirin on the shelves and made his way to the cashier. He laughed to himself, realizing what he'd done out of habit. But the mistake wasn't for nothing. A few packs of beef jerky were on display next to the register. Apparently, Irene liked the stuff. He snatched the entire supply.

  As he zipped up Sims’s backpack, a sharp pain stabbed him in the head. He grasped the counter for support. The vision punctured him into a bright, blue sky, where he began to descend. He fell for some time before stopping abruptly over the house he recognized from the previous vision. For a moment, he hovered over the sidewalk in front of the home. His body then turned upright, and he was set to his feet. A woman dressed in scrubs walked toward him. She reached out her hand to touch his face.

  "Irene?" he uttered.

  She looked toward the home, and as he did the same, three small figures appeared in the front window. But before he could ask another question, the sidewalk between him and the scene expanded to infinity, sucking him back to reality.

  He rubbed his brow. "I'm going nuts. I'm completely going nuts." After saying those words, something growled from behind him. He looked over his shoulder to find a black bear lumbering toward him from the rear of the store. "Whoa," he said as if the bear comprehended the English language. The animal let out another growl, this one louder than the one before, and Chris went for his gun.

  "Stop!" Irene shouted. She reached around Chris and sprayed the creature in the eyes with some kind of aerosol can.

  The bear whimpered, pivoted, and ran out the back.

  Chris dropped his gun to his side. "What was that?"

  "A rescue mission."

  "I had it under control." He opened his hand to show her the gun before returning it to its holster.

  "It wasn't you that I was rescuing."

  Chris frowned at her as he leaned on the counter. "How did you even know there was a bear?"

  "I saw him go by the sporting goods store, and I know you like shooting things."

  She was teasing him and enjoying it. "You were supposed to be resting," he said, sounding angrier than he'd intended.

  "I'm hungry."

  "Well, the bear would have made a good dinner."

  "Really? Have you ever eaten a bear?"

  Chris looked toward the back of the store where the animal had escaped. "I can't say that I have."

  "Come on," Irene motioned at him, "I saw a diner behind the sporting goods store."

  …

  The apple pie was excellent, and the strawberry cake Irene was digging into looked good too. Chris forked another helping into his mouth. "It's like someone just made this pie yesterday."

  "I know. I found a half-eaten sandwich in the kitchen as if its owner had just stepped away and would be back in a minute."

  "Oh, yeah?" Chris uttered, forgoing to tell her what he'd seen in the pharmacy, knowing she'd just use it to build her case for forced processing.

  Irene pierced her dessert with her fork again. "This town was not starving. They were isolated but self-sufficient. So you should ask yourself why The Firsts would drag these people away to a so-called better location."

  “We don’t even know that it was The Firsts.” He took a huge bite of pie and glanced out the window of the diner. "Maybe a virus spread through town," he said with a mouthful.

  "What?"

  He swallowed and wiped his face with a napkin. "I said maybe it was a virus, and the town had to evacuate."

  "Did you see any evidence of that?"

  "I'm just suggesting that's one possible explanation." He rubbed the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand. It was damp from sweat. She was drilling him, and he was growing agitated. "Besides, I'm sure whatever the reason, it was perfectly sensible."

  Irene offered him a half-formed smile. "Oh, I'm sure to The Firsts it was perfectly reasonable. I have no quarrel with you on that."

  "So you're feeling better," Chris said, wanting to change the subject.

  She observed him for a moment, and perhaps sensing he'd had enough, she dug into her piece of cake again. "Yeah, it hurts more when I lie down."

  "Not when you're saving bears?"

  Irene put her hand over her mouth, seemingly to hold back a laugh full of dessert.

  A warm feeling descended on Chris again. He couldn't remember the last time he'd sat and ate with anyone. It had probably been with his daughter. "Why did you say, 'our daughter'?"

  Irene stopped her fork midway to her mouth. "I don't know what you’re talking about," she said before following through with the bite.

  "Before you passed out, you said we would rescue 'our daughter.'" He watched as she kept her attention on her cake.

  "I don't recall saying that."

  Chris leaned back and crossed his arms. "Well, you did."

  "I probably meant our daughters."

  "That makes even less sense."

  "Not if you knew I have daughters of my own and that I would very much like to see them someday."

  Chris slowly uncrossed his arms. "I'm sorry. I had no idea. How many daughters do you have?"

  She hesitated, seeming to calculate whether she could trust him with that kind of information. "I have three," she finally offered while still not looking at him.

  "Three?" Chris thought back to the vision he'd experienced at the pharmacy of the three small figures at the window. An odd sensation came over him—a nostalgic feeling.

  "Yes, three," she repeated, but this time, she was looking at him, searching his eyes for something.

  "What?" he asked, straightening in his chair.

  "Nothing," she uttered and returned to her dessert.

  Chris inclined back in his booth. It was merely coincidental that his vision highlighted three children. Perhaps he'd picked up that information about Irene’s family from the military and then forgot. It was plausible that the detail had subconsciously infiltrated his hallucinations. He ran his hand roughly through his hair as he thought of his daughter. "I know how hard it is to be away from the people you love."

  She nodded without looking at him. Her sadness was evident in her slumped posture. His chest tightened in empathy. "I'd like to help you."

  She lifted her eyes to him. "Help me? How?"

  "I'd like to help you get your daughters back," he said, a little surprised by his own words.

  "You would do that? You would help me get all three back?"

  "All three of them." He enjoyed the benefit that the statement brought—an expression of
joy on her face. He then watched as it faded somewhat.

  "But how?"

  "Maybe after a good night's sleep, I'll have an idea."

  She went quiet as she scraped the remaining cake from her plate. Finishing, she got up and disappeared into the kitchen. Chris could hear water running and the familiar sound of dishes being placed into a sink.

  He pushed himself out of the booth. "What's wrong?" he asked, coming up behind her. She was nearly scrubbing the glaze off the dish in her hand. "I just don't see how we can work together if you still believe what The Firsts are telling you. How do I know you won't just turn on me when we go back?"

  "You still want me to talk to Mac, don't you?"

  Irene shut off the water. "I think you need to hear the truth from someone other than me. Because when I tell you the truth, you don't believe it."

  He stepped back. "It's true that I don't believe that The Firsts are up to something bad, but you have made me . . . question some things."

  She wiped her hands with a dishcloth. "So you'll go and see Mac?"

  "I will, but we should probably leave soon. Are you up to it?"

  Irene slapped the soggy dishtowel down next to the sink. "Yes, because I have no idea why I'm washing these dishes."

  Chapter 16

  Using one of the abandoned cars left along Main Street, Irene and Chris traveled toward The Firsts' headquarters. An atmosphere of quiet determination hung in the car as they went, but Chris could tell the benefits of Irene's painkillers were beginning to wear off.

  At first, her discomfort seemed bearable as she gently rubbed the area around her wound. She did not speak of it, possibly not wanting to stop the progression toward their destination, but her body language soon betrayed her. She doubled over, wrapping her mid-section with her arms.

  "Here, let me give you some of the aspirin I swiped from the pharmacy in town."

  Without protest, she downed a couple of the weakened aspirin and leaned her head back against the headrest. It wasn't long before she was asleep.

  As the self-driving car directed them, Chris watched the lowering and rising of Irene's chest as a flush of heat came across his face. He felt as if he'd watched the scene before. It was possibly a recollection from his relationship with Tia's mother, Gwendolyn who'd been killed during the war. Tia was Gwendolyn's only child—not his, but he and Tia had bonded after Gwendolyn's death. He had loved Gwendolyn—at least that's what he told himself. But he could hardly remember those days.

  "One of the many consequences of the war," Donatello had explained to him. Donatello was a therapist the military had sent him to after he complained about memory loss, particularly concerning his life before the war. At the time, Donatello's explanation made perfect sense, but now Chris was beginning to wonder. Did Donatello help him fill in the missing pieces to his past, or did Donatello fill in those parts for him?

  Irene mumbled something and shifted in her seat. Her sleepiness was contagious. Chris leaned his own head back and closed his eyes.

  …

  "Chris," he heard Irene say with a nudge to his arm. He snapped to attention when he saw Irene's wide-eyed look. "I . . . I was just resting my eyes," he said.

  "Where are we?" she asked with a crack in her voice. She pointed out a window covered in droplets of rain.

  Chris ran his hand down his face. "Oh man, I must have been tired. I was really out of it."

  "Where are we?" she asked again, this time through gritted teeth.

  "Ah, I set the car to drive about a mile away from The Firsts' headquarters." He pointed at the droplets of rain. "Look at that. It must have rained last night. I didn't even hear it."

  "A mile away? But we're in the middle of nowhere. Headquarters is back in the city."

  With his hand, Chris wiped away the inside condensation on the windshield. "That's what they want you to believe. But that building—it's just a decoy, a shell."

  Irene slumped a little in her seat. "What? That's kind of creepy."

  "I guess you could look at it that way, but it was set up for security reasons. They're just a handful of paper-pushers stationed at that location. They were told to look busy—for prying eyes and so forth."

  "But I once went down there with a complaint about loose dogs in our neighborhood."

  Chris stared at her for a second or two. He wanted to laugh in her face. The Firsts had far more important things to deal with than a bunch of unleashed dogs. He could imagine stacks of such trivial matters piling up in some storage room where no one bothered to go. "What happened when you went down there?" he asked just out of simple curiosity.

  "Nothing, obviously," she leaned into him as if to challenge him, "and that's the point. It's just another lie."

  "You have it all wrong. The building was used to keep people away from the main point of operation, but the structure and the people inside also helped you feel as if some normalcy had returned. Every wartime machine has its propaganda to help its citizenry feel better about the war."

  "But that's just it. That war is over."

  Chris had to concede the point, and he did so by not responding. She seemed pleased by this and retreated into her seat.

  "So, what's your plan?" she asked.

  He paused and looked out the windshield. "The plan is I'm taking you in." In the corner of his eye, he watched as her hand slowly slid toward the door handle.

  "For pretend," he clarified, "it's only going to look as if I've recaptured you. Wow, you still don't trust me, do you?"

  She glanced down at her hand, which she'd tightly curled around the lever of the door. "The building thing made me have some doubts."

  "Well, there you go. That's proof that the building did what it was designed to do. Your reaction to finding out that it was not what you thought it was proved it provided some comfort."

  Irene growled under her breath like the abandoned dogs she'd just mentioned.

  "Let's get back to the plan, shall we? I've brought in a lot of people for The Firsts, so the procedure will be mundane and routine for me. You'll need to play your part, though. Pretend to be ticked off or in despair about being recaptured. Whatever you do, don't make it look like we've bonded."

  "Bonded?"

  "Yeah, they'll spot that right away, and my commanding officer seems to think you’ll be my undoing. We have to play against that kind of speculation."

  She leaned into him. "That will be difficult for you."

  He looked into her playful eyes. "Funny."

  "I'm just saying, out of nowhere, you just seem to want to try and kiss me. I wonder if it will happen again."

  "I could say the same about you." He reached behind for Sims’s backpack. "I seem to recall you kissed me back at the Steele's farm."

  "That was nothing more than strategy."

  He unzipped the bag and pulled out a pack of mints he'd found within it earlier. "Here, have a mint. You have morning breath."

  Her eyes dropped to the packet of mints. She snatched it from him with a seemingly diminished ego. "You know, you really can be infuriating. It reminds me of the time when—" She ended short, popping a mint into her mouth.

  "What does it remind you of?"

  "Um, I was just remembering a time . . . before . . . when you were the . . . other Chris."

  With that, her playfulness seemed at an end. She appeared to grow serious as she recalled the moment. But he felt as if there was something more to it than that. The response, like The Firsts' building downtown, seemed to be merely a cover, a way to hide the truth. But he decided not to press her further on it. They needed to get moving.

  He punched the address for Headquarters into the car's GPS, and they were off down the road.

  …

  As predicted, check-in was routine. But Chris noticed an increase in traffic at the station—a result, possibly, from nighttime operations being back online after the electricity had returned. He was glad for it. The quicker they could empty the city, the sooner he would be back with his d
aughter.

  For Irene, however, the sight seemed to create the opposite reaction. His plan to have her playact was unnecessary. The troubled look on her face was most likely caused by witnessing families huddled together, unknowingly waiting to have, what she claimed would be, the destruction of their minds.

  As they made their way through the crowd, he gently took her arm. If she'd wanted to scream her truth to them, she could have. But she remained silent.

  "Sergeant."

  Chris turned to see Lieutenant Cunningham shoving his way through the mass of people. He did so with so little care that Chris wondered if he thought the crowd was merely a herd of sheep. Chris forced the thought from his mind. "Yes, sir."

  Cunningham looked Irene over as they stood in a clearing. He dropped his hand heavily on Chris's shoulder. "Well done, sergeant."

  The grasp was stronger and lasted longer than necessary, so Chris knew what was coming next. He'd prepared for it.

  "Where are Sims and Jerry?" Lieutenant Cunningham asked, smiling at Irene and then allowing it to fade as he steadied his eyes back on Chris.

  "Sir, we decided I should go on ahead. Jerry was handling Sims's medical situation, but they lagged behind as we made our way out. Sims was slowing us all down."

  Chris wondered if the lie would hold. He was counting on Lieutenant Cunningham's lack of knowledge concerning Sims's personality. If he'd known Sims better, he would have seen through the deception, for Sims would have never allowed Chris to bring Irene in himself. There was only reward and praise for such an accomplishment. Chris motioned at Irene. "We all agreed we needed to get her here as soon as possible so that the information could be extracted. I was just on my way to place her in custody."

  His lieutenant said nothing.

  Chris must have unknowingly gripped Irene's arm tighter, for she jerked it away. The motion seemed to break the tension, and his commanding officer stepped back as he gestured down the hall. "Then I won't stop you, sergeant."

  Without hesitation, Chris grasped Irene once more and led her down the hall away from the crowd. Around the corner, they came into an empty corridor. He stopped and inclined against the wall. He exhaled as he tried to get his thoughts together for the next step in his plan.