The Book of Fred

by Abby Bardi

  “This is the seventh seal,” he said into the phone. He was reading off a little index card. “We are armed, and we are ready. We are dreaming of Golgotha. Oh, send us the soldiers of eternity. We are your sons and daughters.” He went on talking on the phone, giving directions to where we were, and explaining more about the seals, and turkeys, and the end time, and the next world, and we all crowded toward him, our legs getting tired from standing, listening while he talked. After a while, maybe forty-five minutes, we started to hear sirens, at first just a few and then lots of them. Loud voices began to crackle from outside, and when Cyrus heard them, he raisedhis arms again, the cell phone still in one hand like it was some kind of magic wand, and smiled like he just couldn't be happier.

  The crowd went wild. Everyone started clapping their hands, singing, stomping their feet, and shouting hallelujah and even a few bukulaharas. Some pushed toward the front, as if they were trying to get closer to Cyrus, but men with machine guns formed a line in front of him to keep people from getting too near. I started backing away and let the people surge forward on either side of me. I looked over at Mama and noticed that she was backing away too. She took my hand and pulled me so we were still facing the front but our feet were walking in the wrong direction. “Baby girl,” she said, putting an arm around me. “I can't let you do this.” I could see that she was starting to cry again. “I just can't watch another one of my children—” I didn't catch the end of the sentence, and it was so loud in the room that I could barely hear her at all, but I knew what she was saying. I felt her put something into my hand, and when I looked at it I saw it was a crumpled bunch of money. She looked at me and started saying something else, but the yelling and singing drowned it out, and I just watched her lips move, and her eyes looked at me all wild and sad, the way they had looked when she stood over each of my brothers, praying. She put her arms around me and pulled me very close, and as she held me, she shouted into my ear, “The second warehouse. Downstairs. There's a door there.”

  I told her I wasn't going anywhere without her, but she said she couldn't leave yet or someone would notice us, she would get out later and come find me. I tried to ask her how she would get out, and what she would do to find me, but as the crowd broke into a loud chorus of some song I'd never heard before, she gave me a shove and her eyes were begging me togo on and run. I looked back at her for a moment, and then I slid past all the hot bodies pounding against me, and darted into the kitchen. I walked past the wooden counter where Mama had done all her prep work, and through the doorway that led down the stairs into the cellars.

  There were no guards at the door to the first cellar—they were all upstairs, I guessed—and I just kept on at a slow, steady pace, like I had all the time in the world. If anyone stopped me, I was going to say I was looking for some turkey sausages for breakfast, that we were out of them upstairs, but no one saw me as I sneaked down the dark hallway and into the huge high-ceilinged room that was full of supplies, brown bags of potatoes and carrots, boxes and boxes of canned vegetables, cases of matches and tanks of propane. I went through a doorway and down some stairs into the second cellar, into another warehouse full of barrels and more boxes, and a whole wall of cases of Coca-Cola. I kept walking until I was sure there was no one else in the room, and then I started running.

  At first I couldn't find the door to the outside. It was so dark in that corner of the room that when I did finally get to it, I could barely see it, and I sort of stumbled into the doorway. I pushed on the big metal bar that locked the door, but it wouldn't move. I pushed on it again, but nothing happened. I started struggling with it, getting frantic. I could hear sirens outside, and the loud, crackling voices, and mixed in with them, I thought I could make out some singing. The door still wouldn't open, and I began pounding on it and trying not to scream. Finally as I threw myself against the bar, it slid to the side with a scraping sound. I shoved the door open and looked out through it, but instead of seeing the daylight, I saw nothing but darkness.

  I ran back across the warehouse and grabbed a few little boxes of matches, then returned to the dark doorway. I strucka match and held it up until it started to burn my fingers. Through the threshold, I could see a long, black passageway with dirt walls that looked wet and slimy. I couldn't see where it ended, and for a moment I thought about just running back upstairs, but then I thought of Cyrus, and the look on Mama's face, and I figured, well, I guess there's really only one way to go. I stepped through the opening, holding another lit match, and let the big door fall closed. It shut with a dull thump and then I heard the lock catch behind me.

  The matches burned my fingertips every few seconds as I inched my way along the tunnel. In the flickering light, I could see that it twisted and sloped downward a bit, and for a moment I was afraid I was going to end up in the center of the earth, and that then it would blow apart like in my dream of the exploding garbage, but after a few minutes the path seemed to right itself and go back up again. I trailed one hand along the muddy wall, holding lit matches in my other hand. The money Mama had given me was still stuffed in my pocket. It was cold in the tunnel, and I wished I had brought a sweater, or put on some tights or something. I moved as fast as I could, but a couple of times I slipped on the wet ground and almost fell. All I could do was move slowly and carefully, one step at a time. After a while, I ran out of matches, and I had to just inch forward, holding on to the wall, taking tiny little steps. I could hear dripping sounds, and I thought again about my dream of all that water. The tunnel had an interesting smell, like the smell of the earth itself, a rich, clay-like smell, like I was inhaling the core of everything.

  I guess I must have been crying, because my face felt wet and warm, and every so often I'd make a little sobbing sound. I was getting really tired, and my insides started to ache, and I thought of just lying down on the ground and going to sleep,just staying there for the rest of my life. I didn't know if there was any air in the tunnel, and that seemed okay, since I didn't really need air, did I, I could breathe in water, or at least I could in the dream. I think I was getting a little confused from all the darkness, and just when I thought I wasn't going to be able to go any farther, that I was going to have to lie down right there and melt into the earth, the light in the tunnel started to change—I began to be able to see things, like the outline of the walls, and as I rounded a corner, I saw that there was a little hatch of light coming from above me. My foot bumped into something, a wooden crate I think it was, and I found that if I stood on it, I could reach the ceiling of the tunnel where the light was. I pushed on it and a panel moved aside, and through it I could see the sky. I stood on the box and hoisted myself up. It was hard, since the opening was pretty far above me, but I got a foothold on the side of the wall where there seemed to be some steps, and I kicked and pushed and clawed until I was through the hole and standing in the sunlight.

  When I looked around, I found that I had gone a lot farther than I thought. I was in the middle of some woods, and the Bunker was far off in the distance, beyond a huge barbed wire fence, completely surrounded by police cars, their lights all flashing. Men in black suits were climbing up the side of the building on ropes, and loudspeakers were blaring. I stood and watched. I knew Mama was inside, and I wanted to run and try to get her out of there, but I knew I couldn't. It was hard to get myself to do it, but after a few minutes, I turned around and ran straight into the woods, away from the Bunker.

  There was a path through the trees, though it was kind of overgrown. I was used to running through the woods, since I had spent my whole life at the Outpost playing with my brothersor hunting with Papa or just wandering around. As I ran, I kept expecting Fred or Rickie or Little Freddie to come running out from behind a tree and shoot me with their fingers, the way they always did, but I didn't see anyone at all, just the people in my mind. I ran as fast as I could, until the path I was on got so narrow and covered over with leaves that I could hardly see it. The farther I got, the more brush I had
to push through, but just as the path was about to disappear altogether, I began to see something flickering past in the distance, between the trees. I headed toward the light and the flickering until I found myself on the side of a highway. For a moment I didn't know what to do, but then I stuck out my thumb, like I had seen someone do in a movie on TV. I hadn't stood there for but a few minutes when a car stopped just past where I was standing. I ran to the window and looked in. The car was a blue Ford, and the driver was a middle-aged man with a kind-looking face. He asked me if I was okay, and I said I was. I must have looked like a mess, and I was shaking. He frowned, like he was concerned. I asked him to take me wherever he was going and said that I needed to get to a bus. He said he was going to Greensboro to see his daughter, and that he didn't mind dropping me off at the bus station.

  As we drove, he asked me again how I was, and again I said I was fine. He looked like he didn't believe me, but after a while he started talking to me, telling me about his grand-daughter, who was around my age. He said he was worried about her because she wasn't doing very well in school, she was just hanging around with her friends smoking pot all the time. I told him it was just a phase she was going through, and that if her family stood by her, she would be fine in the end, and that seemed to make him feel better. He asked me if I was cold, since I was still shivering, and I said no, but hetold me to put on a rain poncho that he had in the backseat in case of emergencies. I put it on and I did feel a lot better. He said he knew right where the bus station was, on Lee Street. When he dropped me off, he told me to take care of myself, and to keep the poncho, and said God bless you. I said thanks, and God bless him too, even though by this time I had no idea who would ever bless anyone again. But that didn't seem to matter, since it made us both feel better, and when I walked away, I turned back to wave at him and found him waving at me too.

  As I walked through the lobby of the bus station, I saw a row of tiny little TVs with a bunch of tired-looking people sitting in front of them. When I glanced at them I could see that on most of the TVs was a picture of the Bunker, with all the police cars still outside it. I wanted to go watch and see what was happening, but I had gotten very good at not letting myself think about stuff, especially since I knew there was nothing I could do about the whole situation but hitchhike back to the Bunker and stand outside it with all the police, waiting for the earthquake, or the heavenly thunder, or the seven angels, or turkeys, or the hail, fire, and blood, whatever it turned out to be. And if it turned out that alls that happened was the police broke down the door and arrested everyone, or set fire to the whole building, Mama would be a lot happier if I was on a bus going someplace else.

  I bought a ticket to Washington, D.C., pulling the crumpled bills out of my pocket and counting out forty-two dollars. The money was damp, and my hands were muddy. The cashier told me that the next bus was in twenty minutes, so I just had time to go into the bathroom and freshen up. The bathroom was so dirty I didn't want to touch anything, but I washed the mud off my hands and face and tried to get someof it off my clothes with a wet towel. My hair was messy and I didn't have a comb, or for that matter anything else, but I smoothed it down with water and shook out most of the loose dirt that had fallen on me in the tunnel. Then I walked out and asked a man in a uniform where my bus was. He pointed to a gate, and I went and stood there with a bunch of other people. I was glad I still had the poncho because it was cold in the station, and I still felt chilled to the bone, even though it was a nice spring day. As I passed through the doorway to where the buses were parked, I turned and looked behind me. A big TV hung above a row of seats, and there on the screen, the Bunker was still there, and the police and the men in black were still standing outside it, yelling things through loudspeakers and holding a lot of guns. I turned around and got on the bus.

  As we drove, I stared out the window for a while. Everything looked the same, since we were on a highway and it was just like all the other highways I had ever been on. After a while I found I was closing my eyes, but I didn't like what I saw when I started to fall asleep—naked bodies, dragons and serpents, explosions like fireworks, smoke and locusts, horses with human faces, crowns of stars, clusters of holy fire. So I kept myself awake by pinching my arm every so often, and I stared out the window some more as we drove past billboards and shopping malls, and through a city, and past more billboards and shopping malls, until finally I saw the green signs for Washington, D.C.

  As I climbed down from the bus, I felt kind of weak and woozy, and I realized I hadn't eaten anything all day so I found a fast-food stand and bought a tuna-fish sandwich. I started eating it as I walked out of the station, but it tasted bad to me,like someone had put poison in it, so I dropped it into a garbage can. Outside the station, it was a bit cool out, and I realized that it was evening and that I had no idea where I was. I still had plenty of money with me, so I went over to a taxi that was waiting at the curb and got in. I told the driver that I needed to go to Mount Pleasant, and he said he could take me for twenty dollars, but that I could easily get the Metro from Union Station. Twenty dollars seemed like an awful lot of money to spend, so I chose the Metro. I followed the signs with the big M on them, bought a ticket in the machine, got on the Red Line, and headed north. When the doors chimed open at Mount Pleasant, I got off, took the escalator down into the station, went outside past a bunch of people selling T-shirts at the curb, and started walking down Laurel Avenue. I walked past the stores that Heather and I had been to a million times, the place we rented our videos, the restaurant where we always saw Uncle Roy and his friends, and I kept walking down Willow Street, then Holly Street, then Maple Avenue. I walked until I saw a pink house with purple trim that no longer looked newly painted. Big bushes full of pink and purple flowers spread across the front of the house, flowers I had never seen because I had never been here at this time of year.

  I opened the wooden front gate, which still needed a good nail or two, and climbed up the front steps. I stood on the porch for a few minutes, leaning against the door and looking through the pane of beveled glass in the front door. I could feel my breath going in and out of me, and the door was cold beneath my fingers. I could see them all at the table, but it was getting dark out so they couldn't see me. There were two candles burning in the middle of the table. Alice and Dr. Greenberg sat on one side, and across from them sat Uncle Roy and some dark-haired woman I didn't know, and on theend was Heather. There was still room for me at the table, and I knew that.

  I stayed there for a while, watching their mouths moving, saying things I couldn't hear. Then I rang the bell. I saw Alice look surprised, then stand up and walk over to the door, coming closer, her image turning into a sea of diamonds because of the beveled glass, just the way it had when I had first stood there that day with Diane. When she looked out the window and saw me, she jerked the door open as fast as she could, and her mouth opened but at first no words came out, she just stood there staring at me. Then she shouted, “Puffin! Roy! Come here! Look who it is!”

  Just before I threw myself into her arms, I heard myself say, “I'm back.”

  It had taken me a while to get warm. Alice had given me a bunch of the sweaters I'd left there, wrapped the moon and star blanket around me, put me in the armchair in the sitting room, and made me drink some hot soup. I finally stopped shivering, but it wasn't until I was actually lying in bed that I began to feel warm again, being in my room, holding my pink stuffed dog and watching the dark air around me.

  Everyone had been so surprised to see me that they couldn't stop touching me, patting me on the arm, and giving me hugs. Heather had cried at first, but soon she was making jokes again and seemed more like her old self. She told me that she was back in school, and so was Danny Fox, though he had lost a couple of toes in the accident and couldn't play soccer anymore, and that he would be really glad to see me. It sounded to me like she'd gotten to be pretty good friends with him, and I was glad about that, since there was never anything wrong w
ith Danny Fox that I could see, and I neverdid think he smelled bad, though Heather was always complaining. She asked me if I was coming back to school with her on Monday, and I said I didn't know. Roy told her to stop badgering me and let me get my breath, and he was right, that was just what I was doing, sitting in the armchair trying to breathe again.

  Alice made a lot of phone calls to try to find out what was happening with Mama, and we turned on the TV, though I was scared to watch since I was sure I'd see the whole Bunker going up in flames. Heather put on all the same stupid shows she always watched, and every so often a News Bulletin would come in and tell us about the North Carolina Standoff, as they were calling it. Finally, my eyes started falling shut, and Alice tried to whisk me off to bed, but even though I was afraid of what I might see, I didn't want to leave until I found out what was going on in the Bunker.

  Finally, at around midnight, the news teams standing around there got all excited. The front door to the Bunker opened, and a bunch of people began streaming out with their hands up. Most of the ones who came out were women and children, and I guessed that a lot of the men with guns were staying behind. At almost the end of the line, I saw Mama, her hands on her head. She seemed to be looking around nervously, like she was making sure I wasn't there, and she was squinting like the light from all the police cars and cameras bothered her eyes. When I saw her, relief just whooshed right through me, and I finally let Alice talk me into going upstairs and lying down. I didn't have my cow pajamas anymore, since I had left them behind, and I felt sad about that, but Alice found some other pajamas for me, Heather's I guess, and when I got into them I suddenly felt all cozy and sleepy.