Wayward State

by A. R. Shaw

“That explains a lot. He’s a card-carrying member of that Environmental Fundamentalist Group.”

  “The E. F. G. Couldn’t they be more original than that? I wouldn’t be surprised but that’s only a rumor.”

  “You know what they say about rumors.”

  “Look, I don’t think Edwin’s capable of the attacks on the gas pipelines that those animals are responsible for. They’ve killed thousands of people now.”

  “It’s all about the money, man. They’re funded from abroad.”

  “You got to stop reading that conspiracy theory site. It’s rotting your brain.”

  “That guy knows his stuff man.”

  “The aliens? That shooting of those little kids…that did happen. That was a horrible massacre and he claims it was some government inside job. No man…that was mental illness. That guy’s a menace.”

  Owen said, “Look…all I’m saying is, Edwin, what kind of name is Edwin anyway? Sounds like he took his mother-in-law’s first name as his last name. All I’m saying is, he’s using this chaos to further his agenda. That kid’s probably a plant or something.”

  “He’s not…a spy. Owen, he’s a kid and they asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said a smokejumper, only that was last week, and they handed him a certificate for before the ink dried. It’s insanity. I bet he’s never even lived on his own. He probably came right from his parent’s house.”

  Owen sat silent for a moment then gave him a sideways glance. “Well, so did I but that doesn’t mean anything. But I went right into training.”

  “You went through training, became a firefighter…then you tried out for smokejumper and went through more training. It was a long process that weeds out those who can’t sustain the heat.”

  “Did you even look at Dustin’s certificate.”

  “Who?”

  “The kid?”

  “I know, I was just kidding you. No. I didn’t need to. He’s not qualified to even wrap a hose. It took one glance to see that. As long as he stays out of our way and helps out, there’s no reason he can’t stay on. The second he gets out of line though. I’m putting him back on the school bus.”

  “What will Edwin say about that?”

  “I don’t give a damn what Edwin has to say.”

  18

  Dane

  “What…am I going to do with you?”

  He wasn’t tugging within her grasp anymore. His pale hand lay still and cold within hers. His sea-green eyes staring up expectantly with an occasional blink. But the machines were still beeping faster than they were before.

  “Calm down,” she said softly. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.” She added darkly with a raise of her eyebrow, “Unless, you piss me off.”

  “In the meantime, we’re going to get this out of your way.” She untwirled the nurse call button from the chrome bedside bar and draped it out of his reach.

  He tugged lightly on her hand twice. “What?” she said and leaned in closer.

  Air pushed into his lungs. The man could only communicate with his eyes.

  “Look, I don’t know what you want. You’re family’s fine. I’ll be out of here in a second. You’ll never see me again. Just don’t try to do anything stupid.”

  He jerked a little bit at that last statement. Dane thought the man would have laughed if he could, possibly said…As if he was capable of heroic feats at the moment.

  “Right…your options are limited. I’m sorry about this, Mr. Falconer. But please…you didn’t see me, and I was never here. In fact, you’re dreaming. You’re probably having a hallucination from all the opioids they’ve got you on.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that.

  “Okay,” she said and patted his hand before removing hers from his. “Now, how to get around this damn bracelet? Oh…you have one, too.” Now, she was raising her own eyebrow.

  “They didn’t quite think this through, did they?” Dane ripped the clasp with a pop from Mr. Falconer’s wrist after scouting around for scissors and coming up short. She stopped at the door and said, goodbye to Mr. Falconer before she left.

  He blinked at her in response.

  Seconds later, Dane kept her head down while walking back to the elevators and when she stopped on the next floor, someone said, “Oh, thank you for suggesting we wait a while. You were right, the line was certainly easier to get through.”

  Dane looked up and smiled. If it wasn’t the real Mrs. Falconer standing right beside her along with her daughter and father-in-law.

  “No, problem,” Dane said, and swiped Mr. Falconer’s bracelet, concealed from view in the palm of her hand, along the control panel. Dane stepped off on the emergency medicine floor. She figured there were a few more areas that patients were allowed access that she wasn’t, and she’d guessed right. She also realized, she wasn’t going to likely achieve her goal today. There was only so much time before security would realize Mr. Falconer wasn’t wandering around the hospital on his own. And though he wasn’t able to speak, he’d alert his family soon to his imposter wife who’d taken off with his bracelet. You could never trust a husband to have your back, be they real or fake ones, Dane thought with a smile. Then she amended that sardonic thought. Except for, Matthew. If I’d only give him a chance.

  She groaned a little then. She needed to remain focused. Find out where the nemesis was located. I only have a few more minutes before all hell breaks loose, she calculated knowing Mr. Falconer was trying to convey her crime to his wife at that very moment.

  Quickly walking down the hallway, she realized unlike before, the noise level on this floor was more the norm you’d expect from an emergency room. Not quite normal mind you, but more like an emergency room heavily laden with chaotic loud voices and panic in the air.

  “You cannot…arrest the man,” a man with a stethoscope slung around his neck was yelling to an officer standing in front of him.

  “Look, they came in using the same fob as their father. They can’t do that. It’s not authorized. One fob per person.”

  The doctor had his hands on his hips. “You can’t be serious? They’re kids under the age of five. What’s the father supposed to do, leave them in the car alone in the parking lot. You guys are out of your minds. Their mother was in labor here. It was an emergency. It’s not like they had a lot of time to get through security. That’s…why it’s called an Emergency. Room! You guys cannot limit access.”

  “We have procedures set in place for swift arrival, but he didn’t even try, he just snuck them in.”

  “Again, sir, the mother was in labor. Hell, she gave birth five minutes after she crossed the doorway. It was all we could do to catch the infant. And it was quite possible the mother could have bled out or the infant could have had airway issues which is common for fast births. You’ve got to release him. He did nothing wrong. You guys implemented these rules overnight and you have flaws in your system. It took a couple kids to figure that out. I know you guys are just trying to do your job. Just don’t arrest the father. There were extenuating circumstances here. He couldn’t leave the young kids in the car while his wife gave birth to their third child. Look, don’t make people avoid the hospital when they truly need services.”

  “We’ll take it under consideration,” the police officer said, and the doctor huffed.

  “Will you? Will you really?” The doctor said and then walked off. “I’ve got a job to do.”

  Dane shook her head at herself. She’d already stolen a fob off an incapacitated heart patient and now she was looking around for small children or more of the infirmed, like Mr. Falconer, to steal theirs, too. Then suddenly she heard a voice that stopped her still.

  19

  Matthew

  It was supposed to be an easy day by all accounts, but Matthew found himself commenting to the local news crews later that afternoon, “Every time we think we’ve got it, the fire crosses the line and we’re waiting to catch up.”

  The reporter was all long legs and long h
oney-colored hair with bouncy curls tumbling down her back, a sheen of sweat smudging layers of that brown stuff women put on their faces and that inky black stuff around their eyes. She’d even swiped at a stream of sweat stung in a lazy crawl beelining to her eyes with the edge of her expensive wool suit. She was totally out of place as she tried to keep her balance on tiny high pointy heels, that kept sinking into the earth. “Could it be the sudden flare-up and change in wind direction?”

  Yeah, she wasn’t from around here though she tried to put on like she was. That part was obvious. “That’s one of the many factors, sure.”

  “Well, it looks like you’ve contained the majority of the risk from spreading.”

  Matthew shook his head but smiled a bit. “The danger’s not gone.”

  “So you’re saying people won’t be able to return to their homes tonight?”

  “Look, we have to wait until we know it can’t cross the fire line. We’ve got to keep people out of there. We just ask people to be patient with us. We’ve got over four dozen personnel and a helicopter working around the clock. We need more, but fuel’s short and manpower’s running low. We’ve wrapped all the historic structures on site but it’s steep and rocky terrain. It’s going to take a while.” He nodded his head then, thinking that’s all he had to say on the subject.

  “But what about water shortages? Shouldn’t we just save the water and let the fire burn itself out?”

  He tilted his head at her, but then realized the cameras were live. “It’s not like we’re using water from a hose on a forest fire ma’am. The helicopter’s in use at the moment. They use flame retardant when it’s available. When that runs out, we use lake water. We’re not using drinking water from the reservoir. We’ve had one and a half inches of rain over the last two weeks but with the seasonal hot and dry conditions, we might as well have had none at all.

  “Shouldn’t we just let it burn then? Isn’t there a precedent to let nature take its course?”

  That’s it, Matthew thought. “Lady, respectively, I’m not here to debate forest management with you. I’m getting back to my job.” He gave her and the camera a big charming smile and walked away while she stood there expectantly waiting for his response to her question.

  Back through the steep terrain, Matthew caught up with his crew just in time to see in the distance a burning limb slack suddenly over one of his firemen. He set out at a run, but he needn’t have hurried. The others immediately came to the fallen’s aid. It was one of those things that happened, and you accepted the burns and injuries as on the job risks. But then as Matthew approached, the fireman was standing on their own again with Owen and the others tamping out the flames from the non-flame-retardant parts of the uniform when suddenly he heard Rebecca’s voice let loose a shrilling scream and shoved the others away from her. They all jumped back at the same time and gave her an instant berth of space out of arm’s reach.

  Of all people, Rebecca, was the one they were thrashing the flames from. She was the one they were touching…pounding on. Matthew stopped in his tracks. They all did. No one knew what to do, how to react. Owen stood the closest and after a long second, he stretched out his hand calling her softly by name.

  A mewing sob came from her then.

  “It’s okay, Rebecca. We’re just trying to put out the flames.”

  “Don’t touch me!” she suddenly yelled in an octave a little less than a scream. And Owen jerked back.

  Then she swayed from side to side, her hands balled into tight fists held to her chest. Then she put one hand over her eyes, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Owen said and reached out for her again.

  “Owen, wait,” Matthew said as he approached them. “The rest of you get back to work. Clear that line.”

  “Take her back to the fire camp,” Matthew said as Owen reached her and pulled her into a tentative hug.

  “No,” Rebecca said pulling away. “I’m fine. I swear. It won’t happen again. It was just everyone…pushing me at once.”

  Matthew knew he should make her go. He should seclude her from the others. Protect her.

  “She’ll be okay. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  Matthew didn’t answer at first. She wasn’t ready for this. None of them were. They didn’t know how to care for her. Rebecca wasn’t healed enough to return to her job with them. But the one thing the reporter was right about earlier, the wind had changed, and the fire was spreading and gaining strength. They had to turn it around and gain the upper hand. In short, they needed everyone they could get. They couldn’t afford to slow down now. And Rebecca was good at her job…when her head was in the game.

  “All right, but Rebecca…watch yourself. Stay close to Owen.”

  She wiped her eyes and nodded.

  As she and Owen walked away, Owen looked back at Matthew with a quick nod.

  It was a reassuring gesture, a kind of thanks, but Matthew, just as he feared, he couldn’t get out of his mind that night he carried Rebecca’s broken and torn body in his arms to the hospital; shattered and bleeding. She was not okay. She would never be okay again. And this world was far from perfect. There was no time for healing completely. Instead of sending her back, Matthew decided then and there, they would take her the way she came back to them…broken. They would work with what they had. There was really no other choice to be made. No counseling mandate from human resources, nothing to ease the trauma she’d been through. Like most of them, she had no family to turn to. But she was one of them. They were her family and they would heal what was broken to the best of their ability. They were her brothers and they’d patch her up.

  That’s when his wrist vibrated with a message when he least expected it. He stopped, toothed off his glove as quick as he could and hit the illumination button because he thought his eyes were deceiving him. The sender read, Dane Talbot.

  20

  Dane

  She had to get out of the hospital before the alarms sounded and she was trapped within a room with Mr. Falconer’s fob and a lot of explaining to do. There was no doubt in her mind though that she’d just found her mark without even looking at him. The voice, the drawl was unmistakable. That age-old itchy feeling under her scalp…the one that comes from the hairs standing to salute on the back of your neck…that was there, too. For the last several years she’d doused those nightmares with alcohol in an attempt to rid them from her life and yet they persisted like a cancer creeping back into already radiated cells.

  Unfortunately, there was something about certain sounds and smells that triggered the worst of memories from the dark depths of one’s soul. It happened at any given time when least expected. You couldn’t avoid all the triggers. There was no getting rid of them for good. There was no extermination method strong enough to obliterate that reaction. And now…now that he posed a new threat to the thing in life that Dane held most dear…she had to get rid of the source entirely. Like a surgeon cutting out the malignancy with a scalpel. This menace could not be allowed to live another day when he threatened others in society and one soul in particular. Each breath he pulled into his lungs was a waste of a precious resource…because his expiration date was coming soon.

  With her hoodie up over her head, Dane clamped her arms around her middle as if she were in pain and headed into the crowd that remained in the waiting room as if that was where she’d been the entire time and just now returning to a chair she’d occupied earlier. She found a seat between a toddler with a probable ear infection and a construction worker holding his bleeding hand at heart level against his chest. From there, despite the voice that froze her in fear, Dane forced herself to eye the exits. Bill still droned on about his weekend exploits, without ever noticing her amongst the crowd, from behind a long row of tall planters. She saw the bottom half of his lab coat between the crevices and a tablet cupped in his grasp between plant leaves and despite the full-to-capacity waiting room, he recounted the evening as if no one else was in the room. “She
was lit, man…” was all Dane could make out of the conversation as her pulse raced a drumming cadence through her ears. But it was the back of the man’s hand that momentarily kept her riveted in her seat. She remembered that hand, the way his knuckles protruded through his skin like white mountain peaks clenched around her wrists in a vice grip as he held her down against the rough surface of a parking lot pavement many years ago. If you could tell a person by the sound of their voice alone, Dane knew you could also identify them by the landscape of the back of their hands if you knew them well enough. She remembered her father’s hands and her mother’s. She never wanted to remember Bill’s.

  The other man kept saying variations of, “Wow.” He was actually dancing away a little…creating more space as if he had someone where else to be. She had no doubt he was uncomfortable with the conversation. Bill always had that effect on others…especially, other men. They didn’t like him, in general. There was something about him that rubbed others the wrong way. Paul…he had tried to warn her about this. Bill…was off somehow. She just didn’t listen until it was too late.

  She couldn’t help but flash on the incident, that night before her father’s death. She was stunned, dazed and just wanted to get to her father. He would know what to do next. He would call the police. He would take care of her. And yet…he wasn’t there. He’d died that night. He’d never be there for her again.

  The thrumming of her heartbeat became an all-out deluge of angered panic.

  Remain calm. She willed herself.

  She knew this day would come eventually, the day she confronted Bill, but not at this moment. Her mission was to find him. Track him and kill him when it was most convenient. The middle of a busy waiting room wasn’t going to work. Not to mention, having the national guard around wasn’t exactly the ideal conditions she needed to pull this off.