by James Sperl
Which was all it was.
Clarissa lowered the handgun and stared in disbelief. Damaged microscopes lined tables alongside cracked computer screens and keyboards. Analyzers, centrifuges, and other complex, high-tech equipment were pushed up against walls and out of the way from the copious broken glass and destroyed measuring devices, which littered the floor. This was not Rosenstein.
It was a fucking lab.
“Goddammit,” Andrew said. He lowered his rifle and just stood in the center of the room, staring.
Cesare shook his head, demoralized. “I don't get it. Why would Kap send us here?”
“Maybe it's like your grandmother said,” Jon began. “Maybe he only thought he knew what was go—”
Metal scraped from behind a closed door in the corner of the room.
Everyone snapped to, each person pointing his or her weapon at the lone door. Andrew conducted a visual sweep of the room for hidden spaces or unseen assailants. When no one appeared, he returned to the door.
“Is someone here?” he called out. “You should know we're armed. Come out so we can see you.”
Dead silence.
Andrew nodded to Jon, who crossed the room to creep along the wall opposite the door. He nudged his chin at Cesare, quietly directing him to hug the adjacent wall near the door. Clarissa sidled up beside him.
“Stay on my ass,” he ordered.
Clarissa only blinked profusely.
Andrew tiptoed around puddles of broken glass, sidestepping anything that made noise until he arrived in front of the door. Clarissa followed him step for step, but as soon as she moved up beside him, Andrew motioned for her to take cover behind a testing station. He didn't have to tell her twice.
“I'll say it again,” he said aloud. “There are several of us out here, and we're all armed. Do yourself a favor and come out, or we'll be forced to come in.”
Andrew approached the door. Cesare slipped furtively alongside it and placed a hand on the knob. Jon crossed the room and took up position behind the nearest workstation and trained the barrel of his rifle at the door.
Andrew held up three fingers.
Two...
One...
Cesare ripped open the door. Andrew thrust his rifle into the opening, as Jon stood and leaned forward in anticipation of a counterattack.
No one charged forward. No one attacked. Instead, a young woman screamed—but not before she removed her mouth from the rock hard cock of the man with her.
Andrew lowered his rifle and simultaneously held up a staying hand.
“It's okay! Take it easy!”
Clarissa blushed nine shades of red.
The young shirtless man, whose head was shaved to stubble, scrambled to pull up his pants. The woman with him pushed herself into a corner and cowered.
“Didn't you hear us calling?” Andrew said, not the least bit affected by what he had just disrupted. “You could've been killed.”
The man climbed hastily to his feet. Cesare drew on him, prompting a frenzy of waving palms.
“You ain't gotta do that!” said the man. “It's cool. I'm cool. She's cool. We're all cool.”
“Why don't you two come out of there,” said Andrew.
“You're the boss. No worries.” He turned to the woman. “Come on, Darlene.”
Darlene peeked over her arm covering her face then raised her head the rest of the way when she realized no one was going to hurt her. She held out a trembling hand to the man, who escorted her out of the office.
Clarissa came out from behind the desk, as the couple stepped into the light.
The telltale signs of Road Rage were immediate: all-over body scratches and sores, cadaverous torsos, involuntary twitches, and eyes so bloodshot little white remained.
Clarissa thought immediately of Valentina.
“What's your name?” Jon said.
“Me? I'm Zane. That's Darle—”
“Darlene. Yeah, we got that. What're you two doing here?”
“Well, now,” Zane said, his hands trying and failing to find a place to go, “I might could ask you the same thing.” He shot his arms out in defense. “I don't mean nothing by it. It's just that, well, you're here, same as us.”
“We're looking for something,” Andrew said. “And it's clear now that we've come to the wrong place.”
“Well, we ain't looking for nothing,” Zane said. “Just trying to stay low. Keep out of sight. There's some bad people out there, know what I mean?”
“I suppose I do.”
“Whatch'all looking for?”
Jon slung his rifle over his shoulder. “It's nothing. You wouldn't know what it is. Sorry to have, uh...disturbed you.”
Zane chuckled. “What, that?” he said, thumbing over his shoulder into the room. “Shit, that weren't nothing. That was just the two o'clock.”
Clarissa sidled up beside Jon. “The what?”
“Oh, hey, ma'am,” said Zane, as if he hadn't noticed Clarissa until just this moment. “The two o'clock. You know, the two o'clock BJ?” He looked at everyone as if this were self-explanatory.
“I'm sorry,” Cesare said, fighting against a smile. “The two o'clock BJ?”
A shiver rippled over Zane's body. “Sure. Got the nine, the two, and the eleven. But don't worry, though, Darlene gets her socks rocked at ten and six.” Zane leaned forward and cupped a hand around his mouth conspiratorially. “Truth be told, two times is about all I can take in a day. She's been a little ripe smelling lately, if you know what I mean.”
“Zane!” Darlene snickered and threw a hand over her mouth.
Cesare looked back and forth between the two. Clarissa wondered if he knew his face looked like he had just smelled a well-used Porta-Jon.
“It helps to have a routine,” Darlene said. She giggled, but it wasn't from embarrassment. Her laugh revealed horribly stained teeth. “There ain't much else to do. Figured we might as well have fun if this is how things are now.”
Jon leaned into Clarissa's ear. “This guy gets more action in a day than I ever got in a week.”
Clarissa scowled and play-slapped his arm.
“Well,” Andrew said, sighing with exasperation. “Apologies for the scare. You all take care now.”
Turning, he strode for the exit. Clarissa looked at Cesare and Jon, who shrugged, as if to say, I guess we're leaving.
Clarissa frowned. That was it? All the time they had spent trying to get here, all the speculation, Kap's confirmation that Rosenstein existed, and now they were just going to walk away? This was the place. Maybe not the place, but it factored in somehow. Clarissa knew it. Could feel it. They were missing something, and she wouldn't leave until she found out what that was.
“Y'all leaving already?” said Zane. He took a step forward, but it was all Cesare allowed before drawing on him. Zane held up his hands again, his body protesting with severe shakes. “It's all good. I's just saying...I mean...It's been a time since we seen people in here. Kinda miss folks sometimes. Y'all seem like good people, pistolas notwithstanding and whatnot.”
“Can't stay,” Jon said. “Sorry. Come on, Clar.” He held out a hand to her, his eyes pinned to the couple, wary.
Darlene clung to Zane's arm. “Can't you stay for a little while? We haven't seen nobody in weeks. Be nice to talk to somebody else. No offense, Z.”
“None taken, D,” Zane said.
“Wait a minute,” Clarissa said. She lowered Cesare's gun. “You guys have been here for weeks?”
Andrew stopped and faced the room at the sound of her voice.
“Pretty much,” Darlene said. “About four or five.” She looked at Zane for confirmation and hugged his arm tighter when she got it. “Ever since we got back from New Framingham.”
“What's New Framingham?” Jon asked.
Zane let his head drop. “What is it?” He grinned at Darlene. “You can tell they ain't from around here.”
“We're most definitely not from around here,” said Andrew, as he rej
oined the group. “Now what is New Framingham?”
“Only, like, one of the biggest sleep farms out here. Just up the road in Framingham. Converted the old Shopper's World into this mini-city. Me and Darlene was there for a time, but...” Zane trailed off as if suddenly given to an interrupting thought. His red-steeped eyes swelled with revelation. He jabbed a filthy finger at Clarissa and the others and hopped with childlike jubilation.
“That's what y'all are doing, ain't ya! You're looking for Rosenspine!”
The word was wrong, but it buckled Clarissa's knees just the same. She shared stunned expressions with Andrew, Cesare, and Jon then returned to Zane and asked in a voice just above a whisper, “Do you mean Rosenstein?”
“Rosenstein! That's it. I can't never remember the name. I'm just a big dumb dumb sometimes.”
Darlene snort-chuckled and covered her mouth.
Andrew stepped within arm's length of Zane. He was skeptical. Every creased line on his forehead said it: How could this drug-addled man know about Rosenstein? But smoothing out the lines was the reality buried within the question, which loomed larger than his doubt: This drug-addled man knew about Rosenstein.
“Are you saying this place is Rosenstein?”
“This place?” Zane said, panning around the lab. “Nah, this is a blood lab. ADLS or whatever.” He cocked a thumb toward the office where he and Darlene had only moments ago been in the throes of the two o'clock BJ. “That's Rosenstein.”
Andrew's face crashed. “What the hell're you talking about? That's an office. An ordinary office.”
“Yeah, well, maybe, but there's files aplenty with Rosenstein printed all over 'em.”
Andrew shot past the group into the office and started rummaging through the first of three file cabinets.
“It's the one on the left, boss man,” Zane said. “The other two's all lab stuff.”
Andrew frowned at Zane then shuffled over to the one he indicated and ripped open the top drawer.
“Does that name mean anything to you?” Clarissa pressed. “Rosenstein? Had either of you heard of it before?”
Darlene lifted her shoulders. “Not really. Not until we got to New Framingham. Then it was all people was talking about.”
“They were talking about Rosenstein?” Cesare asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Zane said, his eyes flitting wildly. “It's all anyone was jabbering about. What's Rosenstein? Where's Rosenstein? What do they do? What do they know? Blah, blah, blah. Hearing about it's how we come to be in Ashland and this place.”
Jon canted his head. “What do you mean? You weren't here from the beginning?”
“Us? Nah, we're up from Providence—well, actually, we just moved up there last year from the great state of Kentucky. Had a buddy runnin' fishing charters out of there offered me a job. Kentucky weren't doing nothing for us so we took it.”
Clarissa crossed her arms. “So you were in Providence when the Sound arrived?”
“We was,” Darlene said, “but once that sound thing started, shit there got crazy. I mean crazy! People was running around, doing things, like it was the end of the world. The shit we seen...” She paused, a memory coming back to haunt her. “Me and Zane, we just hit the road after a couple of weeks of that. Floated here and there until we came across New Framingham.”
“About that,” said Cesare. “You called it a 'sleep farm' a minute ago. What is that?”
Zane scratched at a horribly red splotch along his rib cage. Fresh scabs peppered the skin, the pattern reminiscent of a cheese grater.
“Sleep farms? If you ain't seen one they're a sight. I'm talking hundreds of beds, mattresses, sleeping bags—whatever you got—all laid out over this huge parking area with armed folks patrolling and watching over you.” He shook his head. “It ain't the most sound sleep you're ever gonna get, what with all the lights and all, but at least you don't have to worry too much about not waking come sunup.”
“So it's like a sleep camp?” Clarissa said.
“Guess so. But 'camp' makes it sound small. It ain't small.”
Clarissa recalled the various handcrafted fliers she and the others had come across on the road, all of which promoted the relative safety of “sleep camps.” Ohio jumped particularly to mind, and Zane's description of the one he experienced didn't do anything to add to her already skeptical appeal for them. Their effectiveness notwithstanding, the camps seemed to be far from the Utopian havens she had thought they might be.
“So help me out here,” Jon started. “You said that when you got to this New Framingham, people were talking about Rosenstein.”
“That's right,” Zane said.
“Any idea why? I guess what I'm asking is, why was everyone in New Framingham instead of here since this place is supposedly Rosenstein?”
“I ain't so sure,” Zane began, as he picked at his stubbly scalp, “but from what folks I talked to, lots of them were here before they ended up there.”
Clarissa cocked her head. “Are you saying other people have come here looking for Rosenstein like us?”
“Was there other people?” Zane cackled uproariously. Darlene joined him. “Man, all the time! When we first got here there was so many folks poking their noses around, Darlene and me had to make a sign to try and keep 'em out. Looky here.”
Zane bolted across the room. The unexpected movement elicited a response from Cesare and Jon, who twitched their weapons toward him, but they relaxed them when Zane yanked up a sizable piece of cardboard, which he had stowed behind the farthest workstation.
“We found a can of white paint in the maintenance closet, so we made this.”
He unfolded the cardboard to reveal white, sloppily rendered letters, which read: “Looking for Rosenstein? Go to New Framingham!”
“That did the trick. After we put it up, we hardly saw anyone inside. They'd roll up, read it, and be on their way. But we got to missing seeing folks after a bit, so we took it down some weeks back. Y'all are the first since.”
Clarissa peered past Zane and Darlene into the office. Andrew opened several files and had strewn their contents across the already messy desk. He tracked information with a diligent finger.
“Why was everybody coming here?” Jon asked. He lifted his shoulders uncertainly. “How'd they know this place was Rosenstein?”
Zane screwed his face into an inquisitive pucker. “How'd you all know it was Rosenstein?”
Jon looked at Clarissa. His body slackened from the obviousness of the response.
The radio broadcast. Of course, others would have heard it. When Clarissa and Jon stumbled across it that fateful day, it didn't register that so many others could have heard it as well. But they had, and as a result, everyone within earshot got explicit instructions on how to reach ADLS, a.k.a., Rosenstein. Had Clarissa and Jon the opportunity to hear the message clearly and in its entirety, they would have learned the location too. Then they could have made a straight shot right up to the front door instead of having to gallivant all over the country looking for it. When Clarissa thought about it, it was almost comical how things turned out. Almost.
“Did anyone ever say who transmitted the message?” Jon asked. “We lost the signal shortly after we found it, and we were never able to pick it up again.”
Zane let the sign fall to the floor.
“I never heard nothing about where it come from, but it didn't sound like it hung around too long. Lots of the folks we talked to said they never actually heard the message but got told about it from a friend.”
“Did anybody have any theories as to why that was?”
“Did they ever, eh, Darlene?”
“Oh, my God, yes,” Darlene said with a roll of her eyes. “Everyone had an opinion. One guy said it was a disgruntled employee trying to get back at the company. This other guy said it was all a hoax, but that's stupid since there really is a Rosenstein. Lots said it was the government—that was a popular one—but some others thought it was Rosenstein itself. Like they was adve
rtising or something to get people here.”
Cesare cocked his head, curious. “What, like recruiting or something?” He looked at Jon and Clarissa. “Why would they do that?”
Darlene lifted her shoulders almost to her ears and let them collapse. “I don't know and I don't care. I was just glad to be out of that place.”
“New Framingham?” Clarissa asked.
“Yeah. We wasn't there a week before...well...”
“It's all right,” Zane said, scurrying back to the group. “You can say it. We got kicked out.”
“You got kicked out?” said Clarissa. “Of the sleep area?”
“We did. Got caught stealing. I ain't proud of it, but we was real hungry when we got there, and what we was able to get just weren't enough. I'd done it a couple times. Got caught on the third one. It's all right, though. They won't miss us, and we sure as hell won't miss them.”
“Stealing food, though,” Cesare began, “they could have killed you for that.”
“Suppose so. But they got more people there than they know what to do with. It didn't seem like they could just go around killing everyone what didn't follow the rules. They tell you right up front: break the law and face banishment. Well, we'll take banishment, thank you very much. Especially with what all else went on there.”
“Why, what else went on there?” said Clarissa.
Zane shrugged then swatted at the air with both hands like he was pushing away something invisible.
“Ah, I don't know. Ain't nothin'. Just sometimes it seemed like people was there one minute then gone the next. But I's probably just losing my mind's all.”
“You wasn't losing your mind,” Darlene said sternly. She pinned her eyes to Clarissa. “It happened all the time. One day you'd meet someone, and you'd get on with them, the next day—poof!—they're gone. I met a lady there that was supposed to meet me one morning to trade cigs for bud, but she never showed. I never saw her again. I can think of at least three people that happened with, and we was only there a week.”
“Any chance these people got kicked out like you?” Jon said. “I imagine there were some people who were surprised when you didn't show up the next day.”