by James Sperl
“My instinct tells me no,” he said finally.
Clarissa let out a slow, steady breath. “Then why would he have access to that drug yet be so secretive about it?”
“Could be any number of reasons. Could be the pills have nothing to do with anything, and Donna was just helping out a friend in need. Both of them have been here since the get-go. The two could have simply formed a friendship, and Donna used her apparent connection with Rosenstein to procure him some highly advanced sleeping medication.” Andrew leaned back in his chair and stretched. “Then there's the flip side.”
Clarissa narrowed her eyes at him. “What flip side?”
“That Dustin is one of the very guinea pigs we're talking about, but one who's completely ignorant of his role. I think it's pretty evident he and Donna have some sort of relationship. She could be exploiting that. Promising him help while having a secret agenda. It would make her a cold and unscrupulous bitch, but it doesn't mean it's not true.”
Clarissa hoped for the first scenario.
“I'll tell you one thing, though,” Andrew went on.
“What?”
“I think you're spot on with those pills having some significance in all this. You said Dustin told you he could control his dreams? Like he was fully cognizant as he dreamed?”
Clarissa nodded. “It sounds like total sci-fi, but that's what he said.” She reiterated the part about limited control—the “template”—but that everything else in the dream could be manipulated, or so Dustin claimed.
Andrew leaned forward and cupped his chin thoughtfully in his hands. “They've got to be in that building.”
Clarissa hunched onto her forearms. She scrutinized Andrew through a pensive wince.
“What's going on in that head of yours?” she said. “I can see the hamster running in his wheel from here. You're not still thinking of trying to sneak over to that building, are you?”
Andrew popped up. “It's the only way, Clarissa. We need to recon that facility so we know what we're dealing with.”
“I think we already know what we're dealing with, and you know it.” She inhaled and let the breath out in a frustrated huff. “Even if you do somehow manage to make it over there and back without getting caught or killed, what're you hoping to find?”
“What am I hoping to...?” Andrew looked at the table and chuckled. “Answers, Clarissa. Otherwise, what's the point of us even being here?” He thumbed over his shoulder. “That attack has pushed up our timeline, and we have no idea to what degree. Whoever carried it out could be amassing right now all around the city. If we lose this chance...”
The implication was apparent, but she felt Andrew hadn't considered the full reality or all of their options.
“Of course that's possible,” she began, “but think about what you're saying. Yes, the people who attacked the convoy could strike here, but wouldn't they have already done it by now?” Andrew looked at her sharply. “I'm no war tactician, but it seems to me that the best way to mount a siege is through the element of surprise. Well, guess what? That card's already been played. They hit the convoy, and we all know about it. Maybe it was planned, maybe it was blind luck, but the fact that there's been no follow-up attack on New Framingham suggests that whoever attacked the convoy isn't ready to mount a full-scale attack on this place. At least not yet.”
Andrew lifted his chin in consideration.
“Which buys us some time. But more than time, we have something we didn't have a day ago.”
“Which is what?” he said through flat-lined brows.
“A direct line to Donna. If she and Dustin are friends, we may be able to learn more from him than we could from sneaking around in the dark outside some heavily guarded building.”
Andrew nodded, but it wasn't in agreement. “I don't know, Clarissa. You said yourself how reluctant he was to divulge where he got the pills. What makes you think he's going to tell you anything else, assuming he even knows anything more?”
Clarissa lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “I don't know that he will. But I know I'd rather try that first than risk anything happening to you.”
Andrew's face sagged. He struggled against emotion and fought to keep his eyes from watering. It was probably the first time since his wife had died that someone told him they cared about him.
And Clarissa did, too. Andrew filled a void in her life she didn't even know was empty. She had long since adapted to being fatherless, but Andrew's gruff yet kind demeanor awakened a longing in her that had laid dormant for years. She had missed her father as a child, she remembered, but time had a way of bandaging wounds of the heart so they became invisible. After several birthdays and Christmases had passed without his presence, he became only a name Clarissa once knew. Years later, that name became a forgotten memory.
In the early years, when her mother tried and failed to move on with her life by dating a string of forgettable, would-be replacements, Clarissa had wondered what the point was. Every attempt to bring another man into their lives was met with disappointment and no small amount of heartbreak. It was all the same to Clarissa. She couldn't have cared less to have had some strange man living under her and her mother's roof, even though it was all her mother craved. Not simply because she preferred to share her life with a member of the opposite sex, but because she desired balance.
It was hard enough to raise a child, but the day-to-day challenges of doing so were compounded when one was forced to do it alone. And the difficulties weren't solely physical. Throughout her life, Clarissa witnessed the agonizing decisions her mother had been forced to make: taking a second shift to pay rent instead of going to Clarissa's sixth grade play; refusing to treat a broken toe so she had money to buy Clarissa new school clothes; riding the bus to and from work, which added hours to her day, so that the money saved from owning a car could go towards Clarissa's college tuition, though college was something Clarissa ultimately decided to forego. (Ironically, she spent every squirreled-away cent on her mother's hospital bills in the years leading up to her death).
The sacrifices were many, and all were made so that Clarissa would want for nothing. Her mother spent much of life working herself to the bone, and all because one man couldn't handle the responsibility he had created for himself.
In time, it became so Clarissa actually loathed the idea of having a father. Eventually, having one became less important to both her and her mother. Sure, she had plenty of friends who enjoyed unbroken families surrounded by love and support, but that didn't matter to Clarissa. For her, having a father figure in her life had become an unnecessary role.
Until Andrew.
He had grown on her like slow-spreading moss from the first day he walked into Aunt Mae's. Kind, patient, and suffused with a sadness Clarissa wouldn't learn the reason for until many years later, he came across as both invincible and vulnerable all at once. Though he never said much, his responses were honest, his engagements earnest. If he didn't feel like talking, he didn't. If he had an opinion or suggestion about how something could be improved, he'd tell her, but only in the most respectful way.
Looking back now, it all made sense. Clarissa had gravitated toward him without realizing it. And like gravity, objects tended to attract one another. She was sure Andrew felt a fatherly duty toward her despite the fact that neither of them had attempted to qualify their relationship. It was just as well. For her money, the most potent connections were born out of unspoken, mutual understanding. To attach labels only sullied things.
But sometimes those unspoken bonds needed to be moored in real-world feelings. Andrew needed to hear that he mattered, that he was cared for. That he was loved. Without such professions, Clarissa might very well lose something else, and that something was light years ahead of importance over whether Rosenstein used a particular building.
“So,” Clarissa said, crossing her arms, “you're not going to do anything just yet.” Andrew raised his brows. Clarissa pinched her eyes shut to block out his
amused stare. “I hate to sound like a mother hen—maybe Naomi's bringing it out of me—but I like our little group. I don't want anything to happen to it. So, please, for me, hold off for a while longer before you go gallivanting off to play super spy.”
Andrew wrestled against a grin. “Yes, ma'am. Whatever you say.”
Clarissa let a giggle escape. “Good. Now go clean your room.”
* * *
Clarissa was a hypocrite.
And a liar.
She had just kissed Naomi on the cheek and put her down for the night. The daycare was unusually quiet considering the coiled-spring tension that had permeated the air since early this morning. The attack was all anyone talked about. But once the sun set, and the panicked families that thought it better to withdraw their children and flee had done so, the atmosphere around the community took on a graveyard calm.
Having fewer people not only contributed to a decrease in noise, but it also created an unforeseen issue—a shortfall of staff. Reports were widespread: Macy's had to shut its doors for several hours when three of its attendants failed to appear for second shift; the converted Olive Garden struggled with a quarter fewer workers; the wait to acquire personal belongings at Lowe's more than doubled from its usual time thanks to reduced staff; and rumor even had it that two teachers and three assistants from the school had absconded. Every place felt the impact.
It didn't surprise Clarissa. With a community built under the “everyone must work” premise, hiccups in services were to be expected. The daycare was no exception, though it was affected to a much lesser degree.
Only one worker—a mousy woman named Edna, who had greasy hair and who barely spoke—failed to show up for her scheduled shift. The least challenging one of the day, third shift required only three workers to oversee the mostly empty facility. Typically, families reunited in the late afternoon, with exhausted moms and dads collecting their children for dinner and then queuing up for a spot in the Sleep Zone. Very few children remained after 6 p.m., so the need to maintain a full staff became unnecessary. Though little was required of the third shift workers, a single absence still left a hole.
This was where the first of Clarissa's lies began.
With Edna a no-show, Dustin was in a bind to fill the spot. No one was either able or willing to work a double, and he had already covered for someone else earlier in the day—a young woman who had to leave early because of severe cramping thanks to her monthly “goddess check”—so it fatigued him to even think of having to pull a triple.
So Clarissa volunteered. She was exhausted too, but she couldn't in good conscience risk anything happening to those precious babies because someone had chosen to be controlled by fear rather than take charge of it.
At least that's what she told her friends.
The truth of the matter was that Dustin and the daycare were just fine. Edna had in fact gone, but Dustin had already found a replacement for her.
Clarissa felt tremendous guilt for lying to Andrew and the others, but if they got even so much as a whiff of what she intended to do, they would have likely tied her to a tree until morning. Her story wasn't entirely untrue. She did stop by the daycare, but it was only to put Naomi down. She had no intention of staying. She had other plans, and those included stealing from Dustin.
Stealing.
Just saying the word made her stomach flop. She couldn't candy-coat what she was going to do nor could she finesse a reasonable explanation if anyone ever found out. She was stealing. Clarissa tried to rationalize her actions as just and true, and that noble causes were sometimes mired in despicable acts, but it didn't make her feel any better. She was stealing, and not only that, she was stealing from someone she knew. Someone she actually liked. Really liked, in fact.
But it couldn't be helped. When Dustin told her about the pills he had been using to control his dreams, the light bulb in Clarissa's mind popped on and burned brightly. She knew what she needed to do, even if every single person she cared about—and who cared about her—would have tried to talk her out of it. It's a foolhardy plan, they would say, and they would be right. It was more than foolish. It was downright reckless and ill-planned not to mention exceptionally dangerous, but somebody needed to try something, and it needed to be more than simply verifying Rosenstein's base of operations.
After she laid Naomi down, Clarissa pretended to search for paper and a pen near the front desk. She didn't need either, but the phony quest put her within eyeshot of Dustin's backpack, which he always stored in the same place. Normally, it wouldn't be here at this time of night because Dustin wasn't here at this time of night, but after he had secured a replacement for Edna, he felt obliged to stop by and check in.
It made Clarissa feel even more like shit.
He was at the back of the store helping one of the attendants—Clarissa thought her name was Cynthia—sterilize and store bottles for the morning. The timing couldn't have been more optimal. Numbing her conscience against guilt, Clarissa swiftly dug into his pack and found the tin he had shown her earlier in the day. She popped the lid.
There were seven pills left. She hoped he wasn't counting.
She plucked one from the tin, stuffed it into her pocket, and returned the container to the backpack. When she was done, Clarissa just breathed and tried to remind herself that she wasn't a terrible person, that what she was doing was for the greater good of all mankind. That it was the truth didn't do anything to ease her battered morals, but she tried to accept it all the same.
She needed paper after all. Finding a legal pad and a fine-tipped Sharpie, she scribbled a quick note. Not to Andrew or the others, but to Naomi. If something happened, she wanted this little girl to know who she was, regardless of how little time they had spent together. Whether the girl would ever know it, she had transformed Clarissa in an instant and all for the better. Clarissa hoped she would get the chance to tell her herself, but the future was a cloudy crystal ball.
Folding the paper, she tucked the note into the side of Naomi's bassinet. With any luck, Clarissa would be back later to retrieve it and rip it up. She gave the likelihood of that happening a less-than-average chance.
What she was about to attempt terrified her. She had no idea if her plan would yield results. All she knew was that someone needed to go big with a bold move, and she was willing—however reluctant—to be that person.
She could hear Andrew's objections play out in her head. But that's what I was trying to do! or Rosenstein holds the answer, not a kamikaze mission into dreamland! or even Are you crazy!? You could get killed!
He would have been justified with any or all three.
Still, Clarissa's mind was set.
With a final, tear-streaked goodbye to Naomi, Clarissa forced herself to leave the daycare. She exited the northeastern checkpoint then hotfooted it out of New Framingham. Once she put the shaken community behind her, she veered beyond its walls into the darkest area of the city she could find. Somewhere she was sure she could be alone.
CHAPTER 58
Newbury Park was a collection of single-level medical practices located less than half a mile from New Framingham's northeastern gate, but it may as well have been on the moon for as dark and desolate as it was.
So this is what a modern day ghost town looks like, Clarissa thought.
She caught glimpses of silhouetted people making their way to who knew where through the darkened landscape. Whichever direction they headed, Clarissa went the opposite way. She had walked for a good forty minutes before she settled on the abandoned doctors' offices of Newbury Park.
It wasn't a quick sell. Her months on the road had taught her a thing or two about scouting whether a location was safe. Finding an unlocked car, she hid and watched one of the offices. She had to be sure no one emerged or entered through the shadowy doorway, whose front glass had been liberated from its door frame creating a gaping black maw. After enough time had passed, and she was assured the building was vacant, she crept from the car a
nd entered.
As expected, the place was in shambles. The exam rooms and receptionist's desk had been violently plundered, no doubt a result from the people who had been in search of pharmaceuticals.
There were three examination rooms located off one central hallway. Clarissa chose the room farthest from the entry. It was the least damaged of the three, but it still sported hefty destruction. Cabinets had been destroyed, drawers ripped out and overturned. Shattered glass was everywhere. While distressing, the devastation was of little concern. All Clarissa cared about was the chiropractic table in the center of the room.
She brushed glass pellets from the beige cushions then spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out how to adjust the complex table into the prone position. Once she worked the table flat, she climbed onto it, but she could only bring herself to sit. She let her legs dangle as if she were a child nervously awaiting her yearly physical.
It's not too late to back out.
But she couldn't. She had to go through with this. She had too much to learn. Working the pill from her pocket, she held it in the palm of her hand. She stared at it for a long time before she finally popped it into her mouth. Dry-swallowing it, Clarissa exhaled a pent-up, jittery breath then lay back on the table.
She stared at the ceiling for what seemed an eternity, counting the pock-marked holes in the dark tiles. It seemed sleep would never come. She was too anxious, too worked-up to be able to relax enough to close her eyes and drift away.
Then it came. It was like a euphoric wave that made her feel as if she floated in warm water. The darkness became even darker until nothing was left but eternal blackness. Before Clarissa knew it, she was asleep.
* * *
She was walking. Only she wasn't. She was still. She knew this because the things that surrounded her remained relative to her, even though she felt her legs move and her feet reach for steps.