by James Sperl
Andrew turned to her. “And then what?”
Clarissa did a double take. Did she hear him right?
“Sorry?”
“Say it is here,” Andrew began. “Say we're able to walk right up to Rosenstein's front door and ask them what's going on. Then what? What do we think's going to happen? That they're just going to present us with a cure? Something they decided to hold onto until the right people came along to ask for it?”
The ground suddenly felt loose beneath Clarissa's feet. “Don't talk like that. We'll figure it out.”
“Will we? Because I'm starting to think that we're just deluding ourselves. We've been chasing a ghost message for more than two months, Clarissa. To a place no one seems to know about or has heard of. Do we truly believe that we, of all people, are going to be the...the saviors of mankind? That we're doing something that no one else has tried or thought of? Think about it. It's preposterous.”
Andrew was having a meltdown, and it was a bad one. Clarissa glanced around for assistance from anyone in her group, but everyone was preoccupied at the Applicants desk.
“And this place,” he went on before Clarissa had a chance to respond. “Are you serious? Did you see them out there? Lying like rows of cordwood? This isn't a community. It's an internment camp.”
Other people started to look over and whisper. Clarissa didn't know what New Framingham's policy was on dissidents, but she sure as hell didn't want to find out. Not now. Not when they were so close to learning something. She needed to take the reins on the situation and bring it to a halt.
“Now, you listen to me,” she said sharply behind a pointed finger. People continued to stare, but at the moment, she wanted them to. Perhaps if they saw her lay into Andrew, the incident would go unreported, if such things happened here. “This is a raw deal for all of us, you understand? And I'm not just talking about our merry little band. Do you think those people out there 'piled like cordwood,' as you put it, want to be here? Do you think any of the people in this place want to be here?”
Andrew seethed but remained quiet.
“We're all doing the best we can. All of us. And while I appreciate that your situation is unique, it doesn't change the fact that all of us are paying a price. All of us are suffering. But we'll never get to try to undo that suffering if you get us thrown out of here before we have the chance.”
Clarissa paused to breathe. She also took the momentary silence to smooth some wrinkles on Andrew's shirt. His eyes softened at her touch.
“Now, do I know what will happen if we find Rosenstein? Hell, am I even certain that we will find Rosenstein? No. Of course not. But it's all we've got. It's our only lead. And it's a good one, Andrew. Too many things point in its direction. From the radio message to Kap, even to Zane and Darlene. They're responsible somehow for what's happening. And I won't rest until I learn what they did and find out how to fix it.”
Andrew straightened. Clarissa kept her hand on his shoulder.
“But we need your help. We can't do this without you. I can't do this without you. The situation sucks, no doubt about it, but it's what we need to do to try to get back to the lives we miss. Okay?”
He didn't reply, but he didn't argue either. Instead, Andrew faced the bulletin board and picked a card from under the heading “Agriculture.” He read it to himself then worked the card between his fingers.
“Can never have too many farmer-gardeners.”
Clarissa smiled. “I think it sounds perfect.”
The baby reached for the card, and Andrew obliged her. He allowed her tiny hands to grasp at the edges, her eyes wide with fascination.
“You know, you really ought to think about giving her a name.”
“Me? Why me? She's not mine.”
Andrew cocked his head. “You sure about that?”
Clarissa had felt an attachment to the baby from the first moment she laid eyes on her. It was a childish “dibs,” that since she was the one who found her, then by default the baby should remain under her care. The possessive nature of her argument was utter nonsense. Any one of the people she was with that day would have found the child if Clarissa hadn't charged off like a madwoman ahead of them. But those same people would be hard-pressed to name someone other than Clarissa who had cared for the baby more.
“Even so,” Clarissa said, “I kind of thought naming her should be a group decision.”
Andrew shook her off. “Nah. Everyone will be too preoccupied to give it much thought. They'll be fine with whatever you decide.”
Clarissa turned the baby toward her. “Should we do that? Should we give you a name, huh? Something as pretty as you are?” She looked at Andrew. “Any suggestions?”
“Only about a hundred or so.” He grinned and offered the baby his finger. She abandoned the card and gripped it with both hands. “But I trust you to pick the best one.”
Before Clarissa could protest further, Jon and Evan had rejoined them.
“Well that was easy enough,” Jon said. He held up the card he had taken from the board, which now had a bright red date stamp on it with a signature scribbled over it. “Now I just have to report to the security station and see how they want to use me.”
“Well, at least they're efficient,” said Clarissa.
“So it seems.” Jon put his arm around Evan. “In light of this, I thought while everyone's checking out jobs and waiting for our stuff to clear, I'd run by the school and see what I need to do to enroll Evan.”
Evan raised his arms apathetically. “Yay,” he said without a hint of joy.
“Oh, get over it,” Jon said. “I'm glad you'll be getting back to some type of education.”
“Me too. Then I can start concentrating on which college I want to go to.” Evan's voice dripped with sarcasm. “I'm sure getting transcripts from here should be no problem. Yale, here I come.”
Jon slumped his shoulders and gave Andrew and Clarissa a deadpan look. “Anybody want to buy a teenager? Cheap.”
Clarissa lifted the baby. “Already got my hands full.”
“I'm retired,” said Andrew.
“I'm going to be a chef's assistant!”
Rachel bounded over, waving her card, which was now signed and stamped. Cesare and Elenora followed behind her.
“So you and Cesare are going to work together?”
“Well,” Cesare said, he and Elenora arriving seconds later, “we're not sure yet, but it sounds promising. They need cooks at the Olive Garden location, and the guy at the desk thought we could probably work something out with the food services manager.”
Clarissa smiled wide. “That's great news, guys!”
“Thanks.” Cesare's eyes darted to the board then to Clarissa's empty hand. “You find anything yet?”
Clarissa scrunched her face. “I'm dragging my feet.”
“Well, don't wait too long,” Rachel said. “Don't want you getting booted out of here or anything.”
“I've got ten days, remember? The friendly P-E-S lady said so.”
“Well, if she said so...” Jon said, leaving the sentence intentionally dangling. Clarissa stuck out her tongue at him.
“So listen, guys,” Cesare began, “I wanted to run my nonna by the medical clinic.”
Andrew frowned. “Everything all right?”
“Everything's fine,” Elenora said with loving exasperation. She bugged out her eyes for emphasis. “I feel fine. But my dutiful grandson here doesn't believe me.”
“Nonna, you know it's not because I don't believe you. But we've been eating out of cans and sleeping on the ground for more than two months. I just want them to do a check-up on you to make sure everything's okay.”
Jon grimaced affirmatively. “Sounds reasonable. I may even run Ev and myself by there later.”
Evan rolled his eyes. “And my day just keeps getting better.”
“Do you all have money?” Andrew asked to empty stares. “It will most definitely be a cash-for-services arrangement, though what they'll
charge I have no idea.
“I've only got the little I had in my wallet from before,” Cesare responded.
“Yeah, me too,” said Jon. “Maybe eighty bucks or so.”
Andrew covertly slipped a hand inside his jacket and pulled out a small stack of twenties.
“Andrew!” Clarissa whispered with barely contained surprise. She glanced around to make sure no one looked at them. “Where in the hell did you get that?”
Andrew gave the slightest Cheshire-cat grin. “Here and there. I had stashes hidden in different places back at the house. I forgot until today that I had about $400 in the sole of my boot.”
Clarissa looked down at Andrew's feet. He tapped his left heel to the ground three times then fluttered his eyebrows triumphantly.
“Oh, my God,” Clarissa cackled. “Who are you?”
Andrew handed Jon and Cesare each a hundred dollars. “Here. I have a feeling this will be enough.”
“Thanks, Andrew,” Jon said.
“Yeah,” added Cesare. “Thank you.”
Each man took the money and tucked it swiftly into a pocket.
“So what are you going to do now?” Jon asked him.
Andrew sighed a lung-deflating breath. “Guess I'll chase down this job and see what the garden situation looks like here.”
“Well, look,” Jon began, “since we all seem to be peeling off in different directions, why don't we just plan on meeting back at Lowe's around six. Our stuff should have cleared by then. We can see what they left us with.” Heads nodded agreement. “Keep your ears to the ground. Something about what Miss Donna's telling us isn't kosher. Rosenstein is here, and somebody knows it.” Jon put his arm around Evan. “We'll see you all in a few hours.”
“We'll walk out with you,” Cesare said, giving Rachel a glance.
“Clar,” Rachel said, “you want to come with?”
Clarissa wrestled the baby's groping hands away from her face. “No, I'm okay. I'm going to give this board a serious look, see if I can't find something.”
Rachel studied the baby. “You going to be okay by yourself?”
“What, me and little miss what's-her-name?” Clarissa grinned wide and shifted the baby to her other arm. “We'll be just fine.”
“You know, you should probably think about giving her a name.”
“So, I've been told. See you guys in a few.”
Hugging Clarissa, Rachel joined Cesare, Jon, Evan, and Elenora, as they filed past other job seekers and exited the building.
“Guess I should probably start the ball rolling too,” Andrew said.
Clarissa saw the hesitancy in his eyes. She placed a hand on his forearm.
“It'll be all right. Remember, all of this is only temporary.”
Andrew nodded, but it wasn't in agreement. “Good luck finding something.”
Giving the baby a tickle to her ribs, he made his way through the crowd to stand in a line that had grown significantly since five minutes ago.
Clarissa felt for him. It would be a rough adjustment, but it was one she knew he could handle, even if he didn't want to. She didn't think there was much Andrew Wakeland couldn't do.
The baby squirmed. Clarissa returned to the jobs board. Quite a few positions were available. More than she expected to see. Several intrigued her, but it was the one she saw initially upon entering that had grabbed her attention and never let go. It was so not anything she would have selected in her previous life. Not because she wouldn't have wanted to, but because she was largely unqualified, even though every molecule in her body ached to eradicate that inexperience.
But things change. Sometimes in dramatic and unforeseen ways. The little life in her arms was proof of that. Three months ago, Clarissa had a pleasant job that she liked, was surrounded by good friends, and lived in a welcoming community where everyone knew each other. Now, each day was a fight for survival, friends were gone from her life, and she was in a surreal place where everyone was a stranger. When she looked at the baby and felt her warmth and weight press up against her body, she was filled with unquantifiable love, and Clarissa couldn't remember a time when she had been happier.
CHAPTER 50
Inferno sat back and studied the results of his interrogation.
They all began and ended the same way, denial ultimately giving way to truth. People were such creatures of habit. Just take this house. Even before he and his crew had chosen the single-level ranch as their temporary base of operations, he knew it would be mired in middle-class mediocrity: furniture from Ikea; flat-screen HDTV from Best Buy; clothes from Old Navy; hybrid cars in the garage if the previous owners were environmentally conscious, V8 trucks if they weren't. The predictability sickened him. That same predictability, however, was also what he relied upon to get him what he wanted.
It was funny how violence worked. How simple, cruel acts catapulted a person to infamy, to someone who is both respected and feared, based solely on what people have heard and not necessarily on what they have seen.
Granted, he had already achieved a bi-coastal reputation as a sought-after chemist even before the Sound, someone whose product was heralded by many in the drug trade as “next level.” But it was his new persona, the one that had been born of fire and rage, which thrust him into the enviable position of cult-like demigod. And much like fire, word about his transformation traveled fast.
In times of uncertainty, people sought leaders. For Travis the Inferno, gaining control of them was easy, especially when he could supply more than mere leadership in the form of little red pills. Physical salvation often led to spiritual salvation, and Road Rage had done more than its fair share to attract devotees to the Church of Eternal Wake. Did it matter that most users would succumb to the effects of the drug over time and eventually die? Not in the slightest. For what was time now? No one could plan for the future. Surviving to the next day was all anyone could do, something his followers understood. Which was why controlling them had come so easily.
The crowd outside grew restless. Inferno could hear the low murmurings that resulted from impatience. He peeked through the living room window blinds at the people assembled in the yard. People, whose names and faces he would forget thirty minutes from now, who had waited to see him and who would do just as he asked of them without question.
It was time.
Inferno rose from the cheap recliner where he had been sitting. He stepped over to the two bodies hogtied face down on the ground. Well, face down if they actually had faces. Two piles of splattered red and gray goo replaced them. Shotguns at close range made such a mess.
The male Rager met his maker first. Inferno hadn't planned his execution. As far as he could tell, the Rager had been forthright with what he knew, eagerly volunteering as many names as his frayed mind could recall. Until Clarissa. After he had mentioned her, Inferno felt as if he stepped outside himself. Before he knew it, he had pulled the trigger. Not just once, apparently, but four times. He didn't remember pumping the shotgun an additional three times, but he trusted Mr. Stitch. If he said it happened, it was gospel.
The woman was a scraggly mess. Even before Inferno and his crew had arrived to pull her and her boyfriend out of that diagnostics lab, she had looked the way she does now, nervous tics, scabs, and all. Road Rage at work.
She was a mercy killing, but Inferno would be lying if he said he hadn't enjoyed it just a little too. She would have had nothing to look forward to other than misery. After a time, her mind would have reduced to a lump of gray matter incapable of thought. The ability to make prudent decisions and attend to basic daily needs would have required a network of synapses she just wouldn't have anymore. He recognized the side effects in his most devout users, and Darlene was a picture-perfect poster girl. Inferno had unloaded only one round into the back of her skull.
The man in the dress—Kaplinsky, if he remembered correctly—troubled him. It would be one thing if he had lied and sent Inferno on a wild goose chase, but he had clearly pointed Clarissa
and her friends to the same dead-end laboratory. They had been looking for a secret facility called Rosenstein. A place, Kaplinsky had finally confessed, that may play a rather large part in what caused the Sound.
But they hadn't found a secret facility. It was only a run-of-the-mill diagnostics laboratory that housed two permanent residents. The boyfriend tried his best to convince Inferno that the place was, in fact, Rosenstein. He even presented torn pages of computer code as evidence, but it all smelled like bullshit. It wasn't until his men removed the pair from the lab and subjected them to enhanced interrogation techniques that he learned of the real prize: Clarissa and her friends had been there. And now they were in a place called New Framingham.
Inferno had to see the survivor's colony for himself. From a near distance, he had surveyed the layout, had watched people scurry around like ants in an attempt to return to a sense of normalcy. She was there, somewhere inside that sprawling mini-city, making new friends, forging a new life. She probably thought she had seen the last of Inferno. That he was a speck in her rearview never to be heard from again.
She was wrong.
He couldn't wait to see the look on her face when she learned that.
Inferno had a plan, but to set it in motion required help. He couldn't do what he wanted to do alone, and he knew the promise of unlimited free product wouldn't be enough. He needed to play to people's sense of inequity. To their place on the lower rungs of the social ladder. With the right amount of conviction, he could sway them. With the right amount of manufactured anger to rile them, he could command them.
It would be easy.
The people outside on the lawn were primed for what he had to say. They had come from all over, afraid, tired, hungry, and all because they had heard a word-of-mouth rumor that a man had walked through fire to save them. That Inferno was someone who could lead and protect, who was an archetype of survival, a force for the New Age.