Stranger

by Simon Clark

I said, “The pan must be close to a mike.”

  “Maybe,” Phoenix agreed. “Now don’t go burning yourselves, will you, guys?”

  “We won’t.” Michaela laughed. “Why don’t you come across and join us?”

  “I wish I could, Michaela. Only the rules don’t allow it.”

  “Rules are made to be broken.”

  “An intriguing thought. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. We’ve got a little incident happening at one our sister installations.”

  “An incident, Phoenix? What kind of incident?”

  But there was no reply. We stood looking at the kitchen walls for a moment, waiting for the voice of Phoenix to return.

  “I guess the man’s busy,” I said. “Let’s watch some TV.”

  “What are you doing, Michaela?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re sketching.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you sketching me?”

  “Nothing else to sketch.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Are you ticklish?”

  “Do you bleed?”

  “I bleed, but I’m going to tickle you.”

  We were in the lounge area. I’d sat eating popcorn while watching a batch of sitcoms. I only just noticed that Michaela had curled herself into a big, plump arm-chair, where she worked with a pencil on some scraps of paper.

  I hooked my hands like claws, then shambled across to her; my knees bowed like a gorilla’s. “Gonna get pretty lady. Gonna tickle her good and hard.”

  “You do and I’ll bust your lip.” She laughed and threw a cushion at me.

  “That’s don’t hurt Mungo,” I grunted. “Mungo tickle pretty lady.”

  “Here, let me draw Mungo. Hold still while I sketch that big bulbous forehead of yours.”

  “Like this.” I struck a pose with my arms reaching out over her monster-style.

  “Yeah, like that.”

  “Mungo like pretty lady?”

  “Mungo very pretty.” Smiling, she worked the pencil. “I’m drawing Mungo’s big round nostrils, the big wart on his nose. His staring eyes, shaggy eyebrows; his bug-ugly yellow teeth.”

  “Mungo see now.”

  “Mungo can wait.”

  “Mungo impatient.” I grunted like a gorilla, but oh, Jesus, keeping up this playacting was making me crazy. I wanted—hell, no—I craved to have a proper conversation about Phoenix and my suspicions, but by this time I’d convinced myself that not only were there microphones dotted about the bunker but hidden cameras, too. Those things were probably implanted in the walls, and of course the lenses would be little bigger than pinheads. To all intents and purposes they were invisible.

  “Right, show me the picture or I tickle good and hard,” I told her.

  “Oh, all right. Here. Sit down beside me.” She patted the cushion. I sat beside her. Then she pointed at the drawing. “I think I’ve got the lips just perfect, don’t you?” She pointed at what I took to be a drawing of a face with a long smiling mouth. Instead of lips I realized she’d run words together: Good-Idea. The-Popcorn-Scam-Worked. Then she pointed to the chin, which was formed by the words: Didn’t-Hear-Us-Did-He?

  “What do you think?” she asked, fixing me with her eye.

  “My God, Michaela, you’ve really caught my chin, but where are my eyebrows?”

  “It’s a work in progress.”

  “Here, give me the pencil.” Above the eyes I wrote: Careful, he’ll be watching. “There; eat your heart out, da Vinci.”

  We sat ’round some more. All the time I felt conscious of camera lenses burning into the pair of us. I guessed that Michaela felt the same way. She continued to sketch, but she looked a little on edge. Try as I might, it was hard to concentrate on the TV. My eyes kept sliding off screen to try to find those hidden camera lenses.

  “Say, people, good news!” Phoenix spoke so abruptly that Michaela started. “Listen, I’ve been given security clearance from the highest level to show you something.”

  Michaela and I looked at each other. Phoenix sounded excited.

  “So, Greg, Michaela, if you could move into the lounge so you can see the TV screen . . .”

  I said, “We’re already in the lounge, Phoenix.” But then, he knew that, I’d wager. He’d been sitting in his lair watching us all along.

  Michaela put down the sketches. “What you got to show us, Phoenix?”

  “I hope you guys are going to be as thrilled as I am about this. We’re implementing something called Reach Out. At last we’re allowed to start doing what we’ve been put here to do.”

  “How does that work, Phoenix?”

  “As the program title states we’re going to Reach Out to bands of survivors like yourselves to provide you with food, ammunition and medicines.”

  “You mean you’re going to help us?” Michaela’s eyes were wide.

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s going to be a tough one, Phoenix,” I said. “You haven’t seen the mess the cities are in, or how few there are of us who survived in the outside world.”

  “Oh, but there are.” The velvet voice gushed now.

  “There are more than you think, Greg. Of course, this epidemic hit the country hard, but there are hundreds and hundreds of facilities like this. Most are far bigger, housing a hundred or more people.”

  “You make it sound like Noah’s ark.”

  “Think of it as hundreds of arks. Each with stores of food, seeds for planting new crops, fuel. There are agricultural experts as well as engineers, mechanics and scientists, ready to help rebuild.” The enthusiasm made his voice soar. “This is a new beginning. You, Michaela and Greg, can be part of it.”

  “How do we fit in?” Nice and easy does it, said the cautious voice in the back of my head. Something’s brewing here. Someone’s been making plans.

  Phoenix gushed, “We need people on the outside to bring survivors like yourself to the bunkers.”

  “Why?”

  “We can provide food, clothing, everything you need. You can make a start by bringing your own people here. Like yourselves, they can rest, enjoy some of our hospitality while we help you get organized into a secure society. You will be able—”

  “Whoa, Phoenix. Hold on.” Michaela stood up. “You know we’re still outnumbered out there by thousands to one. The hornets are everywhere. We’ve tried to settle in one place, but they keep driving us on.”

  “We can help you.” Phoenix paused. The excitement exerted him. I could hear his breathing rasp from the speakers. “We will be dispatching military units in armored vehicles. There’ll be helicopter gunships. They will use all the firepower at their disposal—and believe me, it is formidable firepower—to create safe home-lands for our people.”

  I shook my head. “You mean you’re going to clear cities of hornets. Then what? Build a big wall around Chicago or Atlanta?”

  “I understand you might be skeptical after what you’ve encountered in the outside world. But there are areas of America that are largely free of affected people, the hornets as you call them.”

  “Excuse my skepticism,” I said. “Really, I want this to work as much as anyone, but it’s going to be a tall order.”

  Michaela nodded. “It’s a wasteland out there. You’re lucky to find a single house that hasn’t been smashed to pieces or burned.”

  “We can build new houses. We can repair those that aren’t badly damaged.”

  “You’re asking us to put our faith in you?”

  “Yeah.” Michaela sounded angry. “Where were all you people when our nation was being torn apart and citizens being killed by the thousand? You were hiding here in your bunkers watching Friends or snacking on microwave weeners.”

  “Michaela.” Phoenix’s voice oozed with calm sincerity. “Michaela. We were taken by surprise. We’ve needed months to regroup and reorder ourselves. Many of our armed forces were destroyed along with civilians. Besides, we couldn�
�t bomb our own towns and cities, could we?”

  “OK,” she said, not backing down. “Tell me what you and your bunker buddies are going to do to help the likes of us.”

  “I don’t have to tell you, I can show you. Please watch the TV screen.”

  Thirty-seven

  Somewhere in the bunker Phoenix operated the big TV on the wall. One second a sitcom I didn’t even know the name of had been playing, the next the canned laughter vanished, to be replaced by a view of a desert with a dust road and hundreds of Joshua trees. The morning sun blazed down from a cloudless sky.

  “This,” Phoenix said, “is the scene from a big military bunker complex in Texas. Exactly where I can’t say for security reasons. You’re seeing this live as it happens. Any moment now you’ll see why I’m so optimistic about things working out. Right-o. We’re going to switch to another camera. Here we go.” At the bottom of the screen ran a code that didn’t make much sense at first: TX 03/23. EXT. CAM 3.

  When Phoenix said, “Here we go,” the scene shifted. Now we looked from a camera mounted on some high point perhaps thirty feet above the ground and showing the edge of a large concrete structure that had been painted a dappling of browns and dull yellows to camouflage it against the desert. Now part of the code changed. The first part remained the same, TX 03. I figured that was the location, Texas followed by some identification number. The next code had changed to EXT. CAM 5. That was easy enough to figure: Exterior camera number five.

  Phoenix’s voice was breathy with excitement. “Do you see what’s happening now? We’re moving out. We’re taking back what’s rightfully ours.”

  I looked out across the desert scene. Among the Joshua trees were hundreds of figures. From their ragged clothes and wild hair you could tell they were hornets easily enough.

  “There they go!” Phoenix’s voice rose to a shout as from an opening in the bunker rolled tanks, APCs and maybe another dozen armored vehicles. They immediately plunged into the desert, crushing the Joshua trees to pulp. Seconds later they’d reached the hornets, too. Men and women by the dozen went under the caterpillar tracks or fell victim to guns of many different calibers. Tracers spat fiery sparks across the terrain to drop the hornets into the dust by the dozen. Then came the bigger guns, lobbing high explosive shells into clumps of hornets. They vanished in a flash of flame.

  “That’s right,” Phoenix panted. “We’re fighting back. It’s like this all over the country.”

  We watched the screen as lines of troops appeared to walk toward the surviving hornets. Of course hornets never run. You can’t even make them flinch. They stood there with their God almighty hammers and clubs at the ready, but the GIs simply picked them off one by one with their automatic rifles. At last the bad guys had met their match. We were fighting back. We were winning.

  We sat there for maybe an hour, watching the one-sided battle. When the troops had finished with the hornets armored bulldozers moved out to scrape the desert clean of all that butchered flesh. After the corpses were piled into heaps they were soaked in gasoline and burned. By lunchtime funeral pyres shot smoke into clear blue skies.

  We watched as if we’d been welded to the seats. This was nothing less than a miracle. We were seeing the rebirth of a nation. Our nation.

  “I’ve clearance to show you some more scenes,” Phoenix told us. “Sit tight.”

  The banner at the bottom of the screen contained the text: WYMG (Wyoming?) 04/18. EXT. CAM 2. This time helicopter gunships passed overhead to pour down bone-shattering rocket fire on a cluster of hornets running toward the camera. The same pattern followed. Armored bulldozers shoved the corpses into mounds. Then came the gasoline. Burn, baby, burn. I felt the blood roaring through my veins. Yes! We were doing it! We were wiping out the goddam monsters!

  “Next scene,” Phoenix said. He sounded pleased. “You might find this a little different. Again I’m not permitted to give you a specific location other than that it’s an island in Hawaii.”

  I saw a tract of grass dotted with palm trees, ending with rocks, then sea. In the distance surf rolled in creamy waves across the beach. The midday sun shone down, making the place look like paradise.

  “This can’t be live,” Michaela said. “It’ll still be night in Hawaii.”

  “You’re right; this was recorded yesterday. And I think this might be the best news yet.”

  Not a lot happened in this scene. Half a dozen guys were lazily playing baseball on the grass. Strolling into the picture came a couple of young women in army fatigues.

  “What are you showing us, Phoenix?”

  “What do you see?”

  “People enjoying the sunshine.”

  “Exactly. What you don’t see are any hornets. The crew have left the bunker.”

  “You’re saying there aren’t any hornets on the island?”

  “There aren’t anymore. We destroyed the last one a week ago. Those people are safe to stroll ’round the place unarmed, take in the sun, go for a swim. Looks great, doesn’t it?”

  “It does look great,” I agreed with feeling. “What time does the next flight leave?”

  Phoenix gave a soft, breathy laugh. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to be patient, Greg. But one day . . . who knows?”

  I looked at the text at the bottom of the screen. Along with the camera number were the letters: MKI. That had to be the Hawaiian island of Molokai.

  Phoenix spoke: “So you can bring your people here to the bunker. See for yourself; we’ve begun the battle to liberate America.”

  I looked at Michaela. There was such a look of enchantment on her face as she watched those happy people in the island sunshine. They were in paradise.

  That night everything changed again.

  Thirty-eight

  Michaela sat up in bed when I switched on the light. She looked uneasy. “They’re going to be sore if we start snooping ’round those bunker rooms.”

  “You really think they’re going to throw us out to the hornets?”

  “I wouldn’t like to chance it.”

  “They’ll never know. They’ll all be asleep at this time of night.”

  “OK. Just give me a minute to get dressed.”

  I backed out through the doorway of her bedroom and waited in the corridor as she slipped on the green sweatshirt and pants. The time was creeping up to two in the morning. I’d waited until I guessed the bunker crews in the main part of the installation were asleep, and I was wagering that the sealed rooms in our annex weren’t wired to an alarm. I know there really wasn’t a good, logical reason to poke ’round in places that were off limits. But I still had a sneaking suspicion something wasn’t right. I remembered how Phoenix had put us through the degrading decontamination procedure while no doubt ogling himself rigid (and, yeah, I had a gut feeling that Phoenix was a HE, not a SHE). We knew, also, that he spied on us and eavesdropped on our conversations.

  “You got the numbers?” Michaela asked as she stepped into the corridor.

  “Right here.” I touched my pocket.

  “You know, if sirens start screaming because we’ve tripped some alarm we’re going to be in the crap waist deep.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “These military types don’t like people disobeying orders.”

  “Phoenix said he was on the civilian side of things.”

  “But there are army personnel here.”

  “I’ll tell them I was sleepwalking.”

  “Yeah, right, and you just happened to dream access code numbers to locked doors.”

  “There’s probably nothing behind them anyway.”

  “Then why bother risking our necks to poke in some storerooms full of pails and brooms?”

  “Phoenix isn’t telling us everything.”

  “And what makes you think he’s not listening to us right now? There could be bugs hidden in the walls.”

  “There might,” I agreed. “But the guy’s got to sleep sometime.”

  She sighed. �
�Let’s get this over with then.”

  We walked along the corridor, past the stairway that led up to the living room level, through the double doors and into the bleak-looking concrete passageway beyond with the sealed doors that had a brooding quality about them. It was colder here, too. Michaela shivered, gooseflesh raising her arms into bumps. She folded her arms.

  “No, Greg. Whichever way you look at this I don’t like it.” Her shoulders gave another shiver. “These doors are locked for a reason.”

  I pulled the sheet of paper that contained the porn doodle of Dr. Roestller and the columns of numbers from my pocket. “See this?” I said, and read out the four-digit number. “Seven-six-o-eight. The letters by this one are SB.” I nodded at the door labeled SICK BAY. “I guess this one matches with that number.”

  Michaela’s unease grew. “You’re not looking in there, are you? All you’ll find are Band-Aids and bed-pans.”

  Glancing down at the list of numbers, I matched doors to code numbers. Beside each steel door was an illuminated keypad, inviting me to tap a number and— open sesame!—I’m in. “One of the doors doesn’t have a keypad.” I nodded toward a set of twin steel doors. I read the word stenciled there. “Comm-Route. What do you think that means?”

  “I don’t know, Greg. Come to that, I don’t really care. Listen.” She touched my arm. “I don’t think we should be doing this.”

  “You think I’m being goddam nosy?”

  “Yes. Phoenix has invited us to bring the rest of our people here. Don’t louse it up for Zak and the others.”

  “But there’s something he’s not telling us.”

  “Such as?”

  “Didn’t you think that sudden invitation to Phoenix’s house party seemed convenient?”

  “You saw what I did on TV. The military have launched an offensive against the hornets.”

  “I know. I’m as pleased as the next man.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t know, Michaela. I just don’t know. . . .” I murmured the words as I ran my hands over the twin doors marked COMM-ROUTE. These were more solid than the doors to the sick bay and boardroom. What’s more, a lip of steel ran ’round the doorway to seal them tight. They made me think of bulkhead doors in a submarine. I ran my fingers ’round the edge of the doorway. “Rubber seals,” I said. “It’s meant to be air-tight. But look at this at the bottom.” I crumbled a piece of rubber between my finger and thumb. “It’s rotted.”