by Wil Mara
“What if they don’t? What if you can’t find anyone?”
“I’ll find someone.”
“Pete, I can still call Sarah. I’m sure she can do something.”
“It’s okay, Katie, I can do this. Just let me take—”
The span of time between the moment when his foot hooked the lip of the pothole and when his face hit the water was incredibly brief. It wasn’t the impact that made him lose his grip on the phone but rather the surprise. When the device went under, the connection to Pete’s headset, and thus to his wife, was instantly severed.
All four limbs flailed as he struggled to right himself. The mask twisted out of its base position, causing him to swallow what seemed like a gallon of rainwater. Then he hacked it back out along with a cloud of vomit.
When his head finally broke the surface, Pete released a scream that could’ve been heard in deep space. Then he spat repeatedly and vomited for the second time. The mask floated nearby, doing a graceful dipsy-doodle a few inches down. He ignored it and groped for the phone instead, but it was nowhere to be found.
All emotions fled his body except for a broiling, incandescent rage. Baring his teeth like a predator, he broke into a splashing run that had him out of the floodwaters and onto solid ground in seconds. Then the dizziness—powerful and unyielding—took over, and the darkness began closing in.
He collapsed less than twenty feet from the road’s peak.
* * *
Kate dialed Sarah Redmond’s number.
24
A sound cut through the inky, swirling blackness. It was a light and gentle sound, one that Emilio associated with happiness even though he couldn’t quite register it. He felt as if his brain had broken into four or five separate pieces; frontal lobe over here, parietal lobe over there, temporal lobe somewhere else. There was some remaining connection between them, but it was staticky and unreliable. The sound came again, sweet and promising.
Bing!
He knew that sound. He knew what it meant. He was sure of that. It meant … something. What? Why does it matter to me?
He was swimming now. No, spinning. No … floating.
Floating?
That wasn’t it, either. But it was close. He felt unhinged, unanchored from himself and from reality. And also—
Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.
Emilio tried to open his eyes. The lids felt like cast iron pivoting on rusted hinges. He managed to move them a little, but they shut again immediately, as if they didn’t want to be opened.
He forced them up once more, and at the same time became acutely aware of his breathing. It was as if opening his eyes had restarted his lungs. The darkness around him began to take on a dimness, like the dusky quality of the sky at the end of a long summer day. A weariness, as if all the world’s light has become too exhausted to go on.
Where am I?
He heard another sound, something rough and unsettling, like sandpaper being pushed slowly over old wood.
Breathing. It’s me, breathing.
That didn’t make sense. He sounded like someone in the waning years of a life marred by hard drinking and cigarettes and maybe some narcotics thrown in here and there. Someone who never exercised, and spent years painting cars in an auto-body shop or installing asbestos insulation back in the old days when real men didn’t wear protective gear.
He tried drawing in a lungful of air and the resulting pain in his chest was beyond belief. He jerked into a fetal position; the swirling sensation returned with such force that he was certain he was going to pass out. He decided to lay still for a few moments, taking only short, halting breaths and attempting to organize his thoughts. This second task was particularly difficult. They were like fireflies, drawing restless glow-lines in the darkness but impossible to collect and coordinate.
What’s wrong with me?
The happy sound came again.
Bing!
He knew he had to respond to it. It was an important sound. It meant something.
He needed to appraise his surroundings, he decided. He managed to open his eyes again, and keep them open this time. But, just as before, nothing was visible. Wherever he was, there were no lights on.
Keep your eyes open. Let them adjust.
He waited until, finally, shapes began to emerge from the gloom. Lines running up and down, lines running left to right. Some were fat, some thin. None seemed to add up to anything, except that there was a checkerboard hovering up high.
A checkerboard?
A grid pattern. Dark lines, light squares.
The rest of his body began to wake. There was pain everywhere, strong enough that he wished he could stop it as easily as closing his eyes had cut off his sight. His head felt like a rock with cracks running all through it, as if one light tap from a mallet would cause it to crumble into a thousand pieces. A rhythmic throb was pounding away, steady in time but not in volume; some of the more emphatic pulses made him twitch and tremble. Please make it stop, oh, God, please.
He detected an unusual scent, one that he felt held some special meaning for him. It’s called.… The word began with a T, he was pretty sure. Turp … tarp … trip. No, not … Turkish, Turkey … Dammit.
Something warm and wet slid down his forehead. I’m sweating, and … I’m feverish. I can feel the heat. I have a fever.
The next thought came together easily—I have to get help. I’m an EMT and I know these things. You have to get the patient to the hospital as soon as possible. You have to get the patient to the.…
Turpentine!
The image of an elderly man flashed through his mind. Grandpa. Yes … but also no. It was him, but it was someone else as well. An overlay, like in those CGI time-lapse transitions where the face of one person morphs into that of another. Who…? The man was wearing navy blue coveralls, dusty at the knees. A kind face, round and soft. Glasses, wire-rimmed and inexpensive. Always round.
A ferocious beat boomed in his head and the bodyquake that followed awakened injuries both large and small. Emilio moaned and cried out. There seemed to be something everywhere—arms, legs, chest, shoulders, knees, elbows, neck.…
What happened? Why am I—
Vomit charged up his throat, and he turned his head as quickly as he could. It splashed onto the floor with a horrific sound. Now his stomach felt as though it’d been kicked by a horse. He lay motionless for a time, breathing and moaning in equal measure.
The janitor. The high school janitor, Mr. Tilton. “TT,” they used to call him.
This was the blockage in his thoughts, and now that it had cleared, the details began marching in.
I’m in the janitor’s workroom, where the boilers are … I was on a ladder and I fell … I was trying to close the windows because of the storm … because … because …
A luminous terror took up residence inside him.
The radiation!
And the sound. That sweet sound—a text message from Sarah!
The phone was somewhere in his suit, in one of the pockets. He wasn’t sure which—when he was walking, he kept it in a back pocket. When he was sitting, however, he transferred it to the front. He had to find it.
He still couldn’t see much, but now he realized that was because the sun was beginning to set on this nightmare of a day. The checkerboard pattern that seemed to be floating overhead was the plane of ceiling windows, he saw. The dying light made the windows pale and faint, and soon they’d disappear altogether. Pitch-black, he thought. I’ve got to get my phone before that happens.
His EMT training chimed in—Don’t move the patient until help arrives. The irony was not lost on him. How many times had he said that to someone over the phone? How many times had he sped to the site of an accident thinking, Please, God, don’t let anyone be stupid enough to move the patient.
He focused on Sarah again—on her infinite kindness, the remarkable strength that surfaced no matter how formidable the situation, and the smile that never failed
to launch a flutter in his stomach. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do it.
Emilio was fairly certain his left shoulder was either broken or dislocated. He lifted his right arm, which was a struggle because it felt like it was filled with concrete, and slowly worked his hand under the long flap that protected the suit’s vertical zipper. Pulling the slider down was ridiculously agonizing; he had to stop every few inches to catch his breath. When it was finally low enough, he slipped his hand into the right pocket of his jeans.
The phone was not there.
Cursing in a croaking whisper, he girded himself for what he knew was coming.
Twisting his torso to reach his back pocket launched fresh currents of torment. He screamed without caring if anyone heard. He had to make repeated attempts, each one stretching his damaged muscles and tendons a little further. By the time he finally anchored his thumb on the pocket flap, tears were running down his cheeks.
The phone wasn’t there, either.
It had to be in one of the pockets on the other side.
Oh no …
25
Marla burst into Corwin’s office not really expecting to find him there; it was simply where she’d decided to begin looking. Yet there he was, sitting at his computer, typing away serenely.
He turned to her in a casual and unhurried manner, as if her arrival was entirely expected. She was stunned by his sallow appearance. He’s aged ten years since this morning, she thought. He was still wearing the navy blazer with the gold buttons that underscored his privileged pedigree, still had the glistening Rolex. But his eyes, so bright and lively before, now had dark bags beneath them, and his single-sweep Ivy League hairstyle was no longer anywhere close to immaculate.
“I know about the plan to stop the leak,” Marla said. “By reopening the sluice gate manually.”
“It’s not a sluice gate, it’s an alternating gate. Similar in operation to that of carburetors in older cars. But you’ve got the basics of it. There’s no other option. We’ve explored them all.”
“And you’re going to do it. You, by yourself. That was the gist of your text message to Ted Ellerton as I understood it. Am I right?”
He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender and said, “I certainly can’t ask someone else, can I?” Then he returned to his typing.
She couldn’t decide at this point if he was being melodramatic or sincere, if he really was planning to go through with this or just playing her in some way.
“It’s a suicide mission.”
Corwin’s fingers stopped again, hovering over the keyboard.
“Possibly.”
“Possibly? How can any protective equipment keep you alive in there?”
“I don’t … I have to try,” he said wearily.
Marla got into the chair directly across from him. “Are you serious about this, or is it some kind of PR thing?”
She saw his jaw tighten just slightly, and for a moment real anger danced in his eyes. Not enough, though, to eclipse the resignation that had settled there.
“It’s bad enough that it has to be done, please don’t make it any harder.” He went back to typing once again. “Now, please, let me finish this.”
“The thought of dying doesn’t bother you?”
“My life’s been over for a while,” he said, giving her one of the most miserable smiles she’d ever seen. “Since the lightning strike, really. The people who have already died, those who will survive but whose health will be permanently compromised—how could anyone live with that burden? Not to mention the years of lawsuits and the public outcry and hatred that are headed my way.” He shook his head. “This has to be done, and it has to be done by me.”
The finality in his voice lingered between them as the typing went on. From all outward appearances, he could have been preparing some banal memorandum. Marla watched for a time without a word. She had encountered just two other people facing imminent death before—a Native American on death row for killing two men in a bar fight, and a soldier on sentry duty in Fallujah. The latter had been chatting amiably with her about his parents’ deli back in Akron, when a bullet zipped out of the darkness and punched a hole through his heart. He died less than two minutes later, after choking his final thoughts into the voice-memo app on her iPhone.
She’d also investigated a clinic in Alabama, trying to determine if patients were getting all the medications they needed or if members of the staff—including the hospital’s president and CEO—were selling most of it to the Asian black market. That had kept her around the terminally ill for weeks. And the one thing they’d all had in common was an open acknowledgment of their fate. She sensed similar resignation in the man sitting across from her now, but she still couldn’t quite get her mind around the implied nobility of it and the man she believed him to be. This conflict still made her wonder if the guy had some kind of plan in place. A way, perhaps, of halting the leak while only making it appear as though he had valiantly put his life on the line.
“If you’re successful,” she said, “you’ll be a hero. They’ll write poems and sing songs about you.”
She waited for a reaction that she could read and analyze, but none came.
“All that stuff about the radiation-sickness cases and the lawsuits—” she went on, “it’ll all be erased, and you know it. Worst-case scenario, some people might say, ‘Yeah, some of the things he and his father did caused the accident, but at the end of the day he did the right thing.’ And that will forgive all offenses.”
Again no response, like she wasn’t even in the room.
Time to take a gamble, she thought, and cut right to the truth. “Is it possible you’re just being a coward? Just trying to find an easy way out?”
Corwin stopped yet again, and when he faced her this time there was none of the anger that seemed to be swimming just below the surface before. There was only hurt now—and deep hurt at that.
“Marla, please,” he said wearily. “Please let me finish.”
Her mind was reeling now, struggling to recalculate the situation. There was no way his anguish was manufactured. She had seen enough suffering for a thousand lifetimes and had developed a strong sensitivity to its counterfeit. Corwin was not faking.
How can that be? How can a man in his position, who willingly hid all the things I saw today …
Then the realization struck, and all the pieces came flying together like reversed footage of glass breaking. And in that instant, she saw everything.
“It was you.”
The pause in Corwin’s typing was so negligible—as if he felt he was about to sneeze, but did not—that Marla almost missed it.
“My God, Ted Ellerton was your front man. Of course…” Her voice was rising as her thoughts gathered steam, “There’s no way he could have gathered all that information on his own, even as a security guard. He would have needed help from someone at a higher level. Much higher. He first contacted me last December, about leaks that were covered up the previous year.”
“The last such incident on my father’s watch,” Corwin said.
“You gave Ellerton that information and told him to give it to me.”
“Yes.”
“So that story about his uncle working here, that was just—”
“No, that was the truth. His Uncle Butch worked here for more than twenty years. A model employee and a wonderful man.”
“And the throat cancer?”
Corwin nodded. “He developed it here. I have the paperwork proving it—paperwork my father hid during the investigation. And now you have it as well.”
Marla opened her mouth to say more, then closed it again. A dozen other questions were jockeying for priority in her mind.
Finally, she said, “Why did you do all this?”
Corwin printed the document and then stood. He retrieved the sheets with shaking hands, tri-folded them, and slipped them into an envelope. Then he wrote a name on it that Marla couldn’t see.
“Ther
e isn’t time to explain,” he replied, “but take this…”
He reached toward a column of other envelopes that lay on his desk, arranged like louvered blades. He set the one he’d just finished at the top. Then he selected another somewhere near the middle and held it out. Marla’s full name was written across the front in his neat print. She glanced at the names on the other envelopes and recognized two: Corwin’s ex-wife, Gloria, and Ted Ellerton.
“Everything you need is right here,” he said. “The answers to all your remaining questions.”
“That’s it?” she asked as Corwin reached over and turned off his computer.
“Excuse me?”
“Now you just go out there and … that’s it?”
He sighed. “That’s it.”
She got up quickly, shaking her head. “No, come on. There must be another way. There has to be. There are always options.”
“Not today.”
“Andrew…”
He put a hand up defensively. “Please, this is … it’s hard enough.” A tear slid down his cheek. “It has to be done. It has to be. So I’m doing it.”
As he turned to go, she held up the letter and said, “Whatever it is you want me to do, I’m sure I can do it a lot more effectively with your help.”
Corwin stopped at the door, his body so limp she wasn’t sure how he was remaining upright. Marla would remember this pose of complete resignation for the rest of her life.
“Just make sure you tell the public everything,” he said, turning back. “Promise me. I know it’s your job to do that, and I know you’re good for your word. I just need to hear it for my own peace of mind. Promise me.”
Marla nodded. “You have my word.”
“Thanks,” he said. Then he was gone.
26
Sarah sat at her desk with the cordless phone to her ear, but her attention was focused on the cellphone that lay stubbornly silent nearby.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking out of her trance. “What was that, Sergeant?” Sergeant Pitt, she had come to learn.
“I said we’re finished with Barrett Street,” came Pitt’s young voice. “We’re now turning onto Porridge.”