The Sound

by James Sperl

  Clarissa straightened. “That's a little presumptuous, don't you think? Not every woman wants to have children.”

  “Of course not. But are you going to sit there with that baby and tell me you're one of them?”

  If Dustin only knew how far from “one of them” she was. Clarissa had dreamed of being a mom ever since her mother gave her a play stroller when she was six. She didn't know what it meant at the time, that term “mother,” but she knew she loved her dolls and their clothes and relished changing them every day. She loved her tiny kitchen and miniature tea set and table and often held parties. She loved pretending to read to her stuffed animals and looked forward to tucking them into bed at night just before she closed her eyes. Clarissa was a domestic goddess even before she was old enough to know what that meant—and her childhood affinity for motherhood never left her. If anything, her desire for it only amplified with age.

  High school was less a secondary education than it was a living, breathing catalog of potential fathers. Clarissa knew college wasn't in her future. That wasn't her life goal, much to the chagrin of the school guidance counselors, who strongly urged her to reconsider abandoning higher education in favor of staying home and baking cookies.

  But Clarissa didn't care. To her, being a mother was as important a job as anything out there. Perhaps more important. Instead of furthering a career or collecting a paycheck, she would be devoting her life to forming an actual person. It baffled her that no one saw the relevancy of that.

  High school had been a bust. While boyfriends came and went, no one of the caliber she sought crossed her path. A mother could raise children alone if she had to—Clarissa's mother had proven this throughout Clarissa's life—but a child's life was much more enhanced, more balanced, with a partner to shoulder the responsibility. Clarissa just never found that partner.

  She had considered adoption, but waitressing didn't pay the sort of wages one needed to purchase a child in need of a home (it still rankled her that so much money was required to give a child love). She dabbled with the idea of pursuing a college degree if only to secure a higher paying job so that she could make adoption happen, but the extra money she would have eventually earned would have undoubtedly gone to pay back her school loans. It was a vicious cycle of crushing disappointment.

  Years passed, and with each one, a part of her dream eroded. She often thought of her failure to secure motherhood as a sand castle on a beach during the onset of high tide, each incoming wave taking just a little more of her imagined life as the waters rose and consumed everything until nothing was left.

  Then a baby exploded into her life and pushed the tide back.

  Part of Clarissa's hesitation in giving the child a name was a direct result of pure, unbridled selfishness. Of course, she had a name. She had stored it in her memory banks ever since she first read it in a storybook in second grade. But that name was reserved for her baby. For her child. Parting with it meant surrender, to acknowledge that Clarissa would never realize the dream she had so often depicted with crayons on construction paper as a child.

  But maybe that was okay. Maybe it was time to commit those images to the drawing cabinet in her mind and make space for a reimagined version. For what good was having a dream if it only stayed as such?

  “Naomi.”

  “Naomi?” Dustin said, allowing the name to breathe. “I love it.”

  Clarissa smiled. “Yeah?” She looked at the baby, whose pacifier twitched in her mouth as she slept. “Naomi.” She returned to Dustin wearing a smile she could barely contain. “I like it too.”

  Dustin held up his mug. “To Naomi. Welcome to the world.”

  “To Naomi.” Clarissa clinked her mug with his and took a sip of tea. It tasted heavenly.

  “So Oregon,” Dustin said. “That's a long way. How'd you end up all the way out here?”

  Clarissa shifted, the urge to explain her reason for coming to New Framingham powerful. She had promised herself to back off Rosenstein while she got acquainted with her new environment, but it wasn't compelled by some self-imposed oath. If Jon was right, and Donna was lying—which meant Rosenstein was here—she was likely just one cog in a giant wheel. Others certainly knew, which meant if Donna lied about it, anyone else Clarissa had spoken to since arriving could be lying also. It all came down to who she thought she could trust. Dustin seemed like a kind and honest person, but Clarissa had been duped before, by closer acquaintances and to a much greater degree.

  “You know,” she began in response, “we were just doing like lots of people. Scavenging. Moving from place to place, trying to figure out what was going on while trying to stay alive.”

  “And the people you're traveling with, they're friends of yours?”

  “They are now,” Clarissa said with a grin. “We picked up a few people here and there. Now they're all pretty much family. And you? Where'd you come from?”

  “Me? I was living about six miles from here when the Sound began, so I've been here almost from the beginning.”

  Clarissa was stunned. “You lived here? So did you help build this place?”

  Dustin tossed his head from side-to-side. “Sort of. By the time I got wind of New Framingham, they had already started setting up perimeters around Shopper's World and were working on cordoning off some of the areas outside of it, like Lowe's and the AMC theater. Now they're trying to incorporate the Natick Mall, so we all have a place to sleep through the winter.”

  The fact that Dustin had been at New Framingham during its initial stages intrigued Clarissa. If he helped get the place off the ground, she thought, then he might know who spearheaded the effort.

  “So how did this place come about?” she said. “I can't even begin to imagine what it would've taken to manage so many people in such a limited space, especially since everything seems so well organized. An ad hoc government must have already been in place to hit the ground running so efficiently.”

  “Honestly, I have no idea,” Dustin said, deflating Clarissa's hopes. “All I know is that when I got here there were already tons of people, and I think a lot of them were military or, at the very least, ex-military.”

  Clarissa frowned. “What, like the Army?”

  Dustin sipped his tea. “I don't know. Maybe. But definitely people who'd served in some capacity. No one wore uniforms, but you could tell that many of them had at one point by the way they spoke to each other. You know that military-style shorthand where everything's an acronym?” Clarissa nodded. “Like that.”

  “Was it like a military base or a post when you arrived?”

  “No. No, nothing like that. It was just very efficiently run. The way I heard it, there was a lot of looting at Shopper's World in the weeks following the Sound, back before it became New Framingham. The cops had apparently battled to try to keep it under control, but they couldn't manage it. According to some people I talked with, that's when these military types came in and cleared the place out. It was so bad all over the city at this point, the police were happy to have the assistance, so they let these military folks have at it. They're the ones who liberated Shopper's World and closed it off. New Framingham as we know it began sometime just after that.”

  Clarissa sat forward suddenly, bumping the stroller Dustin had lent her to allow Naomi to sleep. She checked to make sure she hadn't wakened the baby.

  “And you're sure they weren't the Army or the Marines?”

  “Positive. I mean, I guess there could've been members from those branches of the armed forces there, but, like I said, no one wore uniforms. There were no platoons or squads or whatever you call them. No commanders or NCOs. Not that I saw. By the time I got here, all I saw was a bunch of grateful people happy to have a place to sleep without fear of not waking up.”

  Clarissa's heart galloped. The people who Dustin described as having established New Framingham sounded an awful lot like mercenaries. That Rosenstein would have employed hired guns as their security force came as little surprise. That s
aid security force could be living incognito among the residents of New Framingham sent a bolt of ice down her back. It was a tremendous piece of information and one that supported Jon's belief that Donna was lying about Rosenstein's presence. If what Dustin told her was true, she and the others needed to be careful.

  “So what did you do when you first got here?” Clarissa asked.

  Dustin set his mug down to a loud clank. “Fencing primarily.”

  “Fencing?”

  “Yeah. You know that gate you had to pass through to get in here? You have yours truly to thank for that. Well, me and about fifty other guys.”

  Clarissa remembered well the imposing chain-link and corrugated metal security checkpoint that provided entrance into New Framingham. It was her first introduction to what would become her temporary new home. Seeing it was also the first moment she began to regret her decision.

  “But why such a fortified gate?” she asked. “It seems like this place has got a pretty solid pay-as-you-go system in place, and it's not like there's a terribly strict vetting process for new citizens. So what purpose do checkpoints serve?”

  “Plenty, believe me,” Dustin said. “There are lots of people who've been turned away or thrown out who would love nothing more than to raid our stores.”

  “But why would people get turned away?”

  Dustin chuckled, but it was without condescension. “For a whole litany of reasons: unwillingness to give up their firearms, failure to find work, theft, disturbing the peace, you name it.”

  Clarissa frowned. “Disturbing the peace?”

  “Mm hmm. They don't tolerate much disobedience here, which in a way is good.” Clarissa tipped her head, dubious. “I know. It seems strict, but, for the most part, the rules keep people in line. Any breach of the regs will get you tossed. It's not bulletproof, though. I've seen more than my fair share of people get escorted out of here that had me shaking my head. I'm talking entire families, crying and screaming. It's horrible.”

  “But how can that be enforced? I haven't been here a day yet, and I've already noticed some pretty huge gaps in the perimeter. I mean most of the corridor between the Sleep Zone and Lowe's is wide open. Couldn't the people escorted out just sneak back in?”

  Dustin stirred what was left of his tea, his spoon clinking inside the cup.

  “They could certainly try. But they'd have to re-enter through heavily guarded places, and even if they did make it back inside, they would have been removed from the system. Everything requires an ID or totem, both of which are confiscated once a person is expelled from the community. Have people cheated the system and won? Sure. But I'd hate to be them if they're ever caught.”

  “You make this place sound like a police state, or, as my friend called it, an internment camp.”

  Dustin leaned forward and looked around cautiously. “You should probably be careful about what you say and how loud you say it. Some people are pretty protective of this place, especially those who've been here awhile.” He offered a smile, which Clarissa couldn't resist. “The thing is, New Framingham has turned out to be a success. People feel safe. We have food, and fuel, and work, and a thriving, functioning community. The less fortunate and the cast out would love nothing more than to get their hands on what this place has.

  “I used to think like you do. That the penalties for failing to comply were too severe, but now I believe they have to be. By nature, people are opportunistic and self-serving, more so now than they were before. And I understand that people feel they need to be. But that line of thinking doesn't work in here. In order for all of us to survive, we can't just think of ourselves. We need to get back to the bigger picture, which is that all of us matter, that everyone is better off when the group takes precedence over the individual.”

  Clarissa scrunched her face into an unconvinced pucker. “Sounds a bit lofty.”

  “I suppose it is to some degree. Doesn't make it any less true. One of the only positive things to have come about as a result of the Sound is that it's made a lot of people remember what's important. They've committed themselves to making this society work. If they didn't, the consequences for failure are too impossible to imagine. In a way, the Sound has brought people back together.”

  There were so many tangents in which Clarissa could veer: Who decided when to expel a person, and how often did it happen? What did they do to those who tried to cheat the system? Where did they keep the food stores Dustin spoke of? Most importantly, why didn't it seem to bother anyone that New Framingham had been set up by a cadre of mercenaries, whose reason for being there remained as of yet unexplained?

  Clarissa thought she knew the answer to the last question, but rather than delve into conspiracy theories relating to shadowy, government-sponsored R&D companies that had single-handedly discovered a way to transcend time and space via in-lab wormholes, which opened a temporal rift into some ungodly, cross-universe hellscape, she only smiled.

  Then she said: “Well, I'm glad we're here.”

  She almost meant it.

  CHAPTER 52

  If there were such a place as Hell on Earth, Andrew thought the Sleep Zone might very well be it.

  He had only glimpsed the area earlier in the day from along its perimeter while he chased down the gardener job lead. It was barely controlled chaos. People queued in terrible lines, and even more waited in designated “Hold Areas” on the outskirts of the Sleep Zone to have their number called. But what brief insanity Andrew had seen during the daylight hours paled in comparison to the all-out madness nighttime brought with it.

  More people than he had seen in one place since he arrived in New Framingham surrounded the Sleep Zone. The line to apply for a sleep space twisted behind waiting crowds, and the Hold Areas swelled to overcapacity. Exhausted families tried to pass the time by playing card games while they waited, but it couldn't keep impatience at bay from among the youngest of their groups. Babies cried, and small children whined, and Andrew wondered how anyone got a wink of sleep in this madhouse.

  He glanced at the hot-pink Post-it note he held, the number “233” handwritten on it. He looked for the millionth time at the solar-powered LED number counter and a digital clock that rose above the crowd near the applicants desk. The counter up-ticked silently from “227” to “228.” After seventy exasperating minutes, he and the others were close to securing a spot.

  “Think they'll be able to put us together?” Clarissa asked. She sat on the ground, her knees pulled to her chest. Her wide, wandering eyes seemed to be trying to make sense of this place.

  Andrew shrugged. “I wouldn't get my hopes up.” He passed his eyes over the bloated crowd. In fairness, he admired the attempts the Sleep Zone's workers made to keep groups together. It was no easy task to be sure, and from what Andrew had seen, they tried their diligent best to make it happen. But sometimes things didn't work out, and if a would-be applicant had questions as to why, a rule board had been installed at the base of the desk to explain.

  Groups could apply to sleep side-by-side, but there were no guarantees. Applicants indicated the number of spaces they preferred, and even though the desire for many was to remain together as a group, each person in the group was required to take a number. When the first of the group's numbers displayed on the LED, any additional spaces were indicated by a standalone light beside the LED, which blinked once for each available space. (number “xxx” followed by three blinks? Four available spaces.)

  If the Sleep Zone couldn't accommodate an entire group, those in the group who responded turned in their numbers and the counter was adjusted accordingly. Those that were left could only hope that a similar block of spaces became available for them. If it didn't, then the remaining members had no choice but to split up if they wanted a bed.

  Andrew thought it was a clever system. The combination of counter plus flashing light eliminated guesswork and cut down on what would have otherwise been a confused and even more congested process. It wasn't perfect. People often mi
ssed seeing their number come up, which caused the occasional heated argument when observant residents, who had responded in a timely manner after their number was called, had to concede their spaces to someone else who hadn't. The concession was written as the “five-minute rule” on the rule board, which seemed fair. With no aural indication that the number had changed, it was easy for harried mothers or sleepy fathers to lose track of the count momentarily. Folks should have a window to respond. The downside was that if a person or group didn't claim their spot within the appropriated time limit, they forfeited their space and had to start the grueling process all over again.

  “I didn't realize I was this exhausted,” said Rachel, as she leaned her head against Cesare's shoulder and stared through droopy lids.

  As if prompted by the word “exhausted,” Jon yawned. He twisted to look up at the LCD, which held steady at “228.”

  “Who's got 229?” he asked.

  Rachel held up her pink Post-it. “I do. But they better hurry up, or I'm going to crash right here.”

  “You do, and you'll be in violation,” Andrew said.

  “Violation of what? Being tired?”

  “Of sleeping outside designated areas. Didn't you read the very informative sign at the application desk?” Andrew grinned wryly.

  “No,” Rachel deadpanned. “I was too tired.”

  Andrew chuckled, but he wasn't joking. Printed in large, capital letters at the bottom of the sign was a declaration of intolerance for those who fell asleep outside the Sleep Zone. Anyone caught dozing anywhere other than inside its boundaries was immediately escorted from New Framingham. They weren't expelled. They would be allowed to reenter before their next shift, but they would have to face a sleep cycle free from watchful eyes.

  The measure struck Andrew as extreme, but he understood the reasoning. From what he and the others had surmised, New Framingham strove to be an autonomous community. The only way that could happen was if its citizens could be relied upon to adhere to rules and do their jobs. As minor an infraction as sleeping outside the Sleep Zone seemed, it spoke to the larger issue of irresponsibility. Not because a person had broken a rule, but because others who relied on the person to perform a certain function within the well-oiled machine that was New Framingham, had just proven him- or herself to be, to some degree, unreliable. It appeared to be effective even if the punishment was somewhat severe.