“Engine? What the hell are you talking about?”
Primo unleashed another smile, this one the most chilling of all. He placed a hand on Fixer’s shoulder like a commandant about to deliver a punishment to an underperforming plebe.
“It’s time we put you to good use, son.”
Crap, thought Fixer.
26
Laura couldn’t remember Doc ever being this sick.
Sure, he’d gotten the occasional cold; she’d had her fair share too. It was only natural, considering how much time they spent on the move, with more than a few nights camping out in the chilled open air. She hoped that was the case here, given a few nights on the run with interrupted sleep, no longer in the safe confines of the Winnebago. Maybe Doc had gotten worn down and was now paying the price.
But this seemed like more than a common cold. Laura might have been all of twelve, but she had lived in this new world for more than half of those years and knew there were a lot of things that couldn’t be explained. Anytime something out of the ordinary occurred, she couldn’t help but wonder if the Strangers were responsible. Their time had been brief, but their influence was still felt everywhere. Laura hadn’t heard of anyone dying from some alien disease, but that didn’t stop her mind from immediately going there while watching her suffering stepfather.
The sniffling and sneezing had given way to violent bouts of vomiting, and now that Doc’s stomach was empty, his body had begun to shake and shudder. Whenever Laura asked what she could do, he would just roll over and clutch his aching stomach and say he was going to try and sleep it off. Which negated the need to try and scrounge up dinner; Doc clearly wasn’t in any condition to eat, and sitting with him had pretty much killed Laura’s appetite for the evening.
She wondered if Joad was having any luck tracking down Fixer. The longer he was gone, the more she worried that the brothers had indeed escaped the avalanche back at the crater, and not only captured Fixer, but Joad as well. That thought provided its own chill; the idea of going forward without them was something she didn’t want to even think about. Of course, her mind couldn’t concentrate on anything else after that. Horrible scenarios began to play out in her head: Doc succumbing to an awful alien malady and she having to set out to Nemo on her own. What if she finally got there and the town didn’t exist—as with so many places they’d passed on their travels across the Flats? Where would she go then? Who would she talk to? What would be the sense of surviving if there were no one left she cared about? This made her constantly check and double-check on Doc, to see if he was still breathing.
Doc had fallen asleep, but was still shaking. He’d tossed aside the blanket and Laura pulled it back over him. The shivers subsided for the moment, and a deeper slumber came over him. Laura settled in beside him and the campfire. She stoked it to keep the warmth flowing, then closed her eyes and tried to go to sleep.
Which took a while. All she could think about was what it would be like to be totally alone.
Sayers woke up and, surprisingly, didn’t feel all that bad.
His head ached. No question, it throbbed like a son of a bitch. But his stomach was hardly queasy at all. His gag reflex had abandoned him, thank goodness; even his nose had stopped running, and the chills had abated.
That was quick, he thought.
It had been quite some time since he’d been totally sober. Definitely years since he’d gone this long without a drink. Maybe he’d forgotten what it took to get over the DTs. But one day? Wow. Seemed awfully fast. He could’ve sworn it had lasted a few days whenever it happened before.
Who was he to complain?
As he sat up and looked at Laura, asleep beside the barely lit campfire, he realized he could have answered that question in a number of ways.
He was a man who never expected to be raising a young girl in a world no one was ready for.
A man who had incurred the wrath of Primo and his brothers when all he had done was to try and save a sibling doomed long before they burst through the Winnebago door.
A man who now found himself where no one dared to go—suffering from alcohol deprivation, without the person who dragged them up there in the first place.
No wonder the only thing going through his head was the desire for another drink.
He looked down again at his stepdaughter. True, he’d never bargained for this. But one thing he could say for sure: The girl had never given him a hint of trouble. She was kind and bright. Willing to chip in wherever and for whatever necessary. Look at how she had watched over him the past twenty-four hours. She was selfless and giving. Just like her mother.
The mother she was looking more and more like with each passing day.
God. He missed Naomi something terrible.
One would have thought the ache would fade as time went by. Sayers would say that it only got deeper. Maybe it didn’t sit on the surface, tearing at every inch of skin like it did those first few months. But the hurt burrowed itself inside his heart, making the loss ever-present, casting a sadness over each breath he experienced without her.
He wondered if Laura felt the same way.
Sayers knew the girl didn’t want much. Only for him to love her.
In a sense he did. Laura was all he had left of Naomi.
Plus the memories.
But it was those last ones—those final hours on The Seventh Day—that he couldn’t hide from.
That was the stuff that drove him to build makeshift stills and move farther away from Laura.
The Seventh Day was what prevented him from finding any peace.
And perhaps loving Laura the way she deserved.
The girl continued to sleep.
Sayers kept on feeling sorry for himself. And wishing he could have just one more drink.
Something thwacked.
Thwack. That was the best way to describe it.
It sounded familiar, but Sayers couldn’t put his finger on it.
He got up slowly, making sure he could get his feet underneath him. He was super-cautious, remembering how shitty he felt before going to sleep. When he’d tried to stand earlier, he had doubled over in pain, vomited the little left in his stomach, and dropped to his knees, clutching his abdomen. This time, it was practically effortless. There was only a continued pounding in his head.
And one more thwack.
Laura didn’t budge an inch. Sayers envied her ability to sleep so soundly. He feared that the only way he could do that was by losing himself in another bottle. Fat chance that would occur any time soon.
He moved in the direction of the strange but familiar sound. The campfire flickered in the background; the aurora borealis glistened above, providing enough light for Sayers to navigate the terrain.
With the next thwack came one of the objects causing it.
A baseball rolled out of the darkness and settled at his feet.
It was caked in mud.
Another thwack, and another muddied ball joined its mate. Courtesy of the crack of a bat—horsehide meeting ash. The old familiar sound that had graced baseball’s cathedrals for over a century.
Great. He knew what the hell the sound was. But it made no sense whatsoever, someone fungo-hitting up here in the Fields miles and years from any sort of civilization.
But then, it was The Fields. Like the wraiths they’d encountered at the lake, perhaps this was another secret held by the unchartered territory. Sayers walked further along, having gone this far and admittedly curious about where the balls were coming from.
He had a sneaking suspicion.
A few steps brought him to a small pond. He didn’t remember seeing it on their way to making camp; maybe he had gotten turned around chasing the sound of the bat and ball. Sayers dipped his toe at the edge to find it was neither a pond nor water.
The moonlight gleamed off the edge of his shoe, which was caked with gunky mud. Suddenly, he felt something tug at his other foot. He looked down and saw mud swirling around his legs. When he tried to
step out of it, he found himself unable to do so.
As he felt the pull starting, he realized what he had just stepped into.
Quicksand.
There was another thwack. The baseball bounced off his shoulder. It stung.
Sayers turned toward where the ball had come from.
Standing in the middle of the quicksand was a man in a muddied baseball uniform. His features were indistinguishable due to blotches of quicksand clinging to his catcher’s mask and the surrounding shadows.
Sayers knew who it was—even though it had to be impossible.
“No!” he screamed.
The catcher lifted the bat off his shoulder and pointed it at Sayers.
“Why did you leave me?”
He cocked the bat, preparing to toss another ball in the air and thwack it directly at Sayers.
The doctor yelled at the top of his lungs.
“No! You can’t be real!”
“Doc! Doc!”
Laura’s voice punctured through the haze in Sayers’s brain. He rolled over and immediately felt sick to his stomach. Luckily there was nothing left to bring up. He felt nowhere as good as he had in the dream. The second Laura woke him, he could tell he was still in the throes of detoxing.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Felt better.” He managed to spit that much out. Sayers realized he might be getting over the hump, but still had a long way to go before getting to the sober side of things.
“Who was that man?”
“What man?” Sayers asked, his eyes still shut tight.
“The one with the bat and ball. The one you said couldn’t be real.”
As piss-poor as he felt, that caught his attention. Sayers cracked his eyes open and saw Laura was immeasurably close. Concern was spread all over face.
Along with something else.
Something he didn’t think he wanted to hear.
“Was I talking in my sleep?” he asked.
Laura shook her head.
“But I don’t understand.”
“Joad said I should tell you. So, I’m telling you.”
“Telling me what?”
“I saw that man. Covered in mud. Hitting balls at you.”
Sayers wondered if he were having one of those dreams within a dream.
But the truth was, Sayers knew he was definitely awake. No reason to pinch himself.
The catcher had definitely been in his nightmare.
“I was dreaming that,” he said.
Laura looked embarrassed, but nodded somberly.
Which suddenly explained a whole lot.
The way Laura seemed to know so much about certain things. Stuff she should have no business knowing. Moments of his life he never intended to share with her.
“Good God,” Sayers muttered.
She had a Gift too.
“You can see my dreams?”
She nodded again.
“How often?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“How often you let me.”
“I have a choice?”
“It’s not that simple.” She kept her eyes steady on him, like a mother hen.
“Explain it to me, then.”
She did. By the end of her saga, Sayers realized a couple of things. She was an extraordinary young woman, his stepdaughter. And he felt bad that he had let her deal with this by herself for so long.
“You should have told me,” Sayers said.
“I was afraid to.”
“Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t like me anymore. You’d be afraid to be around me.”
“I would never be afraid of you.”
For the first time since she’d revealed the truth of her Gift, Laura smiled. But then her face quickly filled with sadness.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Are you dying?”
“What? No. At least, I don’t think so.”
“Then, what are DTs?”
Sayers started to chuckle. But it hurt too much. “You pick up on everything, huh?”
“So, what is it? Is it contagious?”
“Not at all.”
“What about that man? Should I be worried he’s going to hurt you?”
“You needn’t concern yourself about him. He’s from a long time ago.”
“But who is he?”
“Laura …”
“C’mon. I told you my secret. You should at least tell me one of yours.”
Her so-sad sweetness and innocence pulled at Sayers’s heart.
He thought about it. Then decided to tell her.
As much as he dared.
27
When Primo first said he wanted a car, Fixer had to stomp down on his sarcastic inclination to tell the man he wanted a lot of things too. An airplane, a local Starbucks on the corner; hell, even a marathon session of 24 on the tube would’ve been great for starters. But then Fixer realized that though all of the things on his wish list were long gone, what Primo was asking for was not impossible. Batshit crazy, yes. He was reminded of an old James Bond movie he’d seen as a child. The one in Japan; where 007 was given a contraption that was half motorcycle, part helicopter. It had been called Little Nellie, and there was this sequence where Q, the R&D guy, had the thing assembled in fast motion in front of Bond. Nellie had been composed from a combo of car parts, airplane pieces, and for all he knew, chopper bits. Whatever the components, Nellie ended up looking like a race car coupled with a whirlybird. It sped along the ground, then took off into the air.
Not that Fixer planned on building something that could actually fly. He couldn’t move at the breakneck speed with which Nellie had been put together. But once he studied the parts strewn across the debris field, he thought he could make something that would fit Primo’s need. He wouldn’t exactly call it a car; but it would get one from here to there.
Primo’s threats prodded him into action. Having seen what Fixer’s Gift made possible, the oldest brother was savvy enough to be wary it could be turned against him and Secundo. He had warned Fixer that Secundo would be standing within arm’s length with his knife at the ready—one piece of machinery acting out of sorts or headed toward either brother, and Secundo would use it to cut Fixer’s throat.
Fixer didn’t need much more incentive.
Normally he would’ve drawn schematics and mulled over different possibilities before digging in. But he knew such activity on his part would frustrate his captors, so he started moving parts around, making himself look busy. He felt like that woman in ancient times who told 1001 stories, one after another, to keep herself alive. By the time she wrapped things up, the king decided not to chop off her head and married her instead.
Maybe if he did the same thing here, he’d buy enough time for Joad to come to the rescue.
So he continued to tinker and made it look like he was making progress.
But then an odd thing happened.
Fixer got into the idea of actually building the thing.
Not only was it possible to create a vehicle, it was actually possible to create a really cool one. His fingers began matching part to part, swiping one screw from a piece that had nothing to do with the one in his hand, but could be retrofitted with some force and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants ingenuity.
Which made him think of Abe.
Fixer thought the old man would’ve been proud of him. True, this was a bizarre repair, but his mentor would have appreciated the gusto with which Fixer threw himself into the job.
It was what Abe had admired most about him. On numerous occasions he had tapped Fixer on the shoulder, telling him he ought to go home. It would be two hours past quitting time and Abe wasn’t about to start paying him overtime. Fixer would say he didn’t have to—he knew he wouldn’t sleep until he got the thing put together to see if it would work.
The same was happening here.
Fixer had to actually slow down. He thought back on the storyte
lling woman and imagined if she’d rushed through her tales. Had she, most likely the king would have ended up with her head in his lap instead of her hand in marriage. A whole lot of good it would do to have Joad finally show up and only be able to rescue a corpse.
Because despite Primo’s promises, Fixer was sure the moment he built something that worked, his fixing days were over.
That got him to thinking about Abe again.
“You like working here?”
Fixer looked up from the engine he was tinkering with. Abe was chewing on one of the black licorice sticks he’d taken from the seemingly endless supply he kept in a plastic container on his desk. They had turned the man’s tongue a permanent shade of ebony. If Fixer hadn’t known better, he would have thought the old man had developed some sort of cancer or leprosy.
“You know I do,” Fixer answered.
“Then, maybe we oughta keep the place in one piece.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How’d you do in your high-school chemistry class?”
“Chemistry?” Fixer was trying to keep up with the subject changes and not having much success. “When I wasn’t sleeping through it or ditching it to surf?”
Abe smiled. “Thought as much.”
He pointed to a small pipe jutting out of the engine.
“Bring that and your tools to the parking lot.”
Fixer gathered everything and followed his boss out of the shop. When they were outside, Abe had him place the engine on a workbench he’d moved to the center of the lot.
“That little tube. You cleaned it out, right?” Abe asked.
“No. Just grabbed it out of the extra bin,” Fixer replied, referring to the box on a shelf where spare parts were stored.
Abe extracted the tube from the engine and held it up so both could peer through it end to end. “What do you see in there?”
“Smudges.”
“It’s actually fuel remnants.”
“Shouldn’t someone have cleaned it out?” asked Fixer.
Abe reached into the toolbox and pulled out some copper wire. “They’re supposed to. It’s why we always double-check.” Fixer’s boss affixed the wire to the end of the tube and rolled it out while stepping backwards.
“Oh.”
The Seventh Day Page 20