NK3

by Michael Tolkin

  “We don’t know. But it’s more than that.”

  “The problem is that we count but don’t understand the numbers. We’re not used to time so we can’t divide what we have by how many we are and estimate how much we use in a day. We have numbers without feeling. And don’t tell me we’re not running out of food for another two months. We withdraw to give ourselves a far horizon without seeing how little we really have left. Two months. We’re running out of food. And everyone blames Tyler, but I blame June Moulton, because our mythology has made us weak just where we thought it made us strong. No surprise, really, as I look at the empty houses of worship around our great city: churches, synagogues, and mosques. I’d say that the previous leaders of the city also wasted their time listening to keepers of mythology, and that their mythology, of which I admit I understand very little, seems to have been about preparation for death. We need a mythology for the preservation of our lives.”

  “When you say ‘our lives,’ ElderGoth, who do we save?”

  “If I had to choose committees, I’d say keep Systems and Security, and me. Feed them and take the rest to the desert along with June Moulton. Mythology can die; the rest of us can do Inventory. Inventory is a failure. Systems and Security, that’s all you and I need to keep up our gracious way of life.”

  They left the DMV.

  Chief, Go Bruins

  It was midnight and Chief crossed the street to talk to Go Bruins. He ignored Vayler screaming in the background, begging to be released, saying it wasn’t his fault.

  He told Royce Hall he was doing a fine job and needed Go Bruins for something else.

  Go Bruins came back to Chief’s terrace.

  “I hope I’m not disappointing you, Chief.”

  “Never, Go Bruins. That’s why I need you to do a mission for me, right now. I need your silence. I tell you now that I don’t expect it, but I need it. So when you break my trust, keep in mind that I can’t be mad at you for doing what I expected you’d do, but that you can be disappointed in yourself. Is that ornate enough of a thought? Do you want me to say something more complicated about duty?”

  “You don’t have to,” said Go Bruins.

  “Do you have any idea what you did at the university, what your job was?”

  “I don’t think about it.”

  “Your hands were calloused.”

  “So I worked in maintenance, most likely.”

  “Or you were a professor and at the same time, one of those men with a lot of tools in his garage or basement, one of those men who did a lot of work around the house or had a hobby restoring old cars, and worked on engines.”

  “I’d like to know I was that, sure.”

  “Smart and capable, respected and self-respecting. Handy.”

  “That’s a nice word. We’re all handy now, though, aren’t we? Isn’t that who was saved, the people who could do things with their hands?”

  “Hands and minds together, that’s what you have, the best of us, and not all of us.”

  “Do you need somebody killed?”

  “No, I need someone protected. I need you to take someone north of Bakersfield, and leave her where she won’t be found if someone other than me is looking for her.”

  “Pippi.”

  “Yes, Pippi.”

  “Why not just kill the person who’s looking for her?”

  “We’re looking for him, and when we find him, we will, but until then, she has to be someplace far away and safe.”

  “She doesn’t want to do this, does she?”

  “She doesn’t know the danger she’s in.”

  Pippi, Go Bruins

  Even though she was in the back of a U-Haul truck, blindfolded and bound to the wall, Chief probably wasn’t sending her somewhere to die.

  Pippi reviewed the evidence. When the First Wavers came back from the Ritz-Carlton, nobody wanted to talk about what they’d seen and heard.

  Chief had come to her bedroom and told Go Bruins and Royce Hall to leave them.

  “I saw the plane, Chief. I watched it take off. I watched it fly over downtown. How close was it?”

  “Could you hear Shannon Squier?”

  “Not over the sound of the plane. Was she what you wanted her to be?”

  “Different.”

  “So she wasn’t what you wanted?”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “You never admit mistakes. Did you tell that to June Moulton or Frank Sinatra?”

  “It was obvious to everyone.”

  “Are you going to kill her?”

  “I have to find a way to use her before she uses me.”

  “This isn’t what we’re really talking about, Chief. You’re talking about something else but you’re not saying it. You’re using the feeling of the thing you’re not saying and you’re telling me about that feeling through the story of Shannon Squier, but I don’t think you’re telling me the truth about her. You’re telling me the other thing using whatever you can, from whatever is happening with Shannon.”

  “That’s complicated.”

  “You’re complicated, Chief.”

  Why blindfold someone in the darkness of a sealed truck? She knew that Chief’s reasons were clouded, and when he came to her in the bedroom he was already planning this adventure for her when he told her: “I’m sorry for keeping you inside the house. That wasn’t fair of me. I’m glad you managed to talk your way out of the bedroom and onto the deck so you could watch. And I’m sorry I didn’t bring you with me. I needed you there. It would have been better.”

  “You didn’t trust me. Who could blame you?”

  “I don’t trust anyone. I can’t lock them all up.”

  Then he wanted sex, and with the expectation of her imminent death, she felt hungrier for the simple solid fact of his body than repulsion for anything so minor as his obvious intention to kill her by proxy in his typically remote way, finding someone else to take the action that would end in her death. She was clear enough now to formulate a question, even though nobody could answer it. “Is it the result of NK3 to be both scared and detached from what is happening to me, or is it the nature of who or whatever I was before to want to make love to the man who wants to kill me?” The question had come to her as she made love not to Chief the killer but to the part of him she could most easily touch: to his guilty desire for her. Her tenderness wasted, she was tied up in darkness.

  She couldn’t remember Chief’s last words to her before he left, because she didn’t know he was leaving. He might have said, “I’ll see you later.”

  She was asleep when Go Bruins gagged her, tied her hands behind her back, and covered her head in a sack before carrying her to the truck parked in the driveway and chaining her inside. He stopped driving after half an hour and removed the gag.

  The truck stopped on a steep downgrade. Go Bruins rolled the door up and cut the zip tie holding her hands and unlocked the chain that bound her to the wall. He took off the blindfold. A Yamaha motorcycle was strapped to the floor.

  “I have to pee so I figure you do, too. Aim downhill.” Go Bruins gave her a roll of toilet paper and a bottle of hand sanitizer.

  They were in the middle of the road. There was no traffic to avoid. The smoke from the Burn didn’t cross the mountains and the stars here were bright. She wanted a telescope more than she wanted to relieve herself. But she squatted as Go Bruins had instructed, with her back to the valley.

  She thought she might have been a farm girl, once, by the easy way she gave up the ease of a bathroom for splashing on the ground. A farm girl or a soldier. Or someone who hiked in the outdoors. Did people who hiked in the outdoors work in special effects, if that was her job? She didn’t know what her life had been before she came to Los Angeles.

  When she stood up, she wasn’t sure of direction. I can run, she thought. But where do I go?r />
  Go Bruins offered her a quarter-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  She tilted her head back three times and the bourbon was gone. “Is this in honor of the jet that made fun of the Burn?” There was enough alcohol in the bottle to give her a good dose of amused confidence. “This is not the end of the line for me?”

  “No.”

  He offered her a plate of Chinese water chestnuts, a can of salmon with fresh lemon squeezed on it, four thick carrots, and a bottle of French white wine, wet from the cooler where it had chilled on ice.

  “I thought we were headed for the desert and that you were going to dump me like a Drifter, but this is the I-5 freeway to Bakersfield, isn’t it? What’s the plan?”

  “He’s not killing you. He’s protecting you from people who want to hurt him. He’s afraid that if they can’t hurt him, they’ll hurt you.”

  “They’re going to miss me in Center Camp. They’re going to wonder where I went.”

  “You were mad at Chief for locking you up in the house. You’re jealous of Shannon Squier. You hated Center Camp. We’ll say you stole a truck. You ran away.”

  “Won’t Chief want to send someone to find me?”

  “But he did. Me. I followed you on that motorcycle. And I lost your trail. None of this makes sense to me, but I will get extra privileges because I’m not that curious.”

  “Do I have to stay inside the truck for the rest of the ride?”

  “You can sit in front, but I have to tie your wrists. That’s not Chief’s order. That’s me making sure I get you where you’re supposed to go. Until then, eat.”

  They finished the food and the wine. He gave her the passenger seat and tied her wrists in front of her and with a loop through the door handle, making certain she couldn’t give him trouble. They went back to the freeway. Neither had more to say. She recognized in him the possibility of sex, that he wanted it and might have asked for it or even taken it, but loyalty to Chief kept him in check. She said it: “You’d like sex but you know that when Chief asks you if you did have sex with me, you want to answer him truthfully.”

  “But if I didn’t care about lying? How would you feel about that?”

  “You’d still have to lie, and I don’t want you to lie about sex.”

  They left the I-5 for the 99, into the farmland beyond Bakersfield.

  Go Bruins turned off the freeway at an exit that didn’t have signs for a gas station or motel. Then they continued west through fifteen miles of orchards and fields, stopping at a crossroads in the orange groves. There was a lumberyard, a church with a short steeple, and a trailer park. He left Pippi in the front seat while he opened the back of the truck. He pulled a ramp into place and rolled the motorcycle to the ground. Then he cut the plastic ties that held her to the door.

  “He gave me a message for you, and he told me to hold it until we were here.” Go Bruins opened the glove compartment and took out a cigarette pack weighted with a stone wrapped inside a piece of paper.

  As she opened the message, Go Bruins stepped away from her.

  “You didn’t read this?” she asked.

  “Chief told me not to.”

  “And you obeyed?”

  “It was in my rehab.”

  The message was in Chief’s hand:

  Darling, I love you. Stay there for your own safety. There is no one but me.

  “Do you have any questions?” Go Bruins asked.

  “Nothing that anyone can answer.”

  Go Bruins started the motorcycle, which woke up a dog somewhere close by.

  “Good luck,” he said, and rode away.

  The dog came fast from the lumberyard, howling.

  Hopper

  Hopper took the shuttle bus to Center Camp, past the Playa. A woman in a wedding gown ran backward, lifting a kite to the sky. He felt his Silent Voice ready to say something favorable about what they were seeing, but neither had the words to understand the kite.

  His Silent Voice said, “She’s here. I know she’s here.” But there was a private urgency to the Voice that Hopper didn’t recognize, as though his Voice wanted to race ahead of him, didn’t care about him.

  The bus stopped at the gate. Hopper showed his clipboard to the security guard and the guard looked up Hopper’s name on the list. “Kraft Serviss?”

  “That’s me.”

  The guard waved him through.

  “We’re here,” said his Silent Voice. “We’re late but we’re here. Start at the first house and just knock on every door and see what they need. Ask to go into the house. Tell them you want to get out of the sun.”

  The first house belonged to the water purity engineers. The door was open but Hopper rang the bell to announce himself. It was one of the only houses with a baby, and at the sound of the bell the baby started crying. A woman came to the door.

  Hopper showed her his clipboard. “I’m Kraft Serviss. I have questions about the things you need. Can we talk? Can I come in?”

  “I’m Season Witch. What kind of questions?”

  “What-do-you-need-from-the-hospital questions.”

  Hopper hadn’t seen a child since leaving the school in Redlands. Inch odge. Inch odge. The baby had a small head, like a ball with a face painted on it, and even though the head was small, the baby couldn’t hold it up, so the head dropped.

  “Does the baby have a name?”

  “I don’t know. It won’t tell me. And you’re from the hospital?”

  “Do you need any of these things?” He showed her his clipboard and stepped into the house. There were blank spaces on the wall, outlined in grime, where there used to be paintings and photographs.

  “We don’t need towels or pillowcases or rubber tubing or any of this. We’re well provisioned.”

  “Have you seen the woman with the red hair that sticks out from her head?”

  “Yes. That’s Pippi.”

  “I was told to ask her if she needs anything.”

  “Ask her yourself, if you can talk to her. He never lets her out of the house.” She pointed to the big house at the top of the hill.

  Chest to the floor, the baby dragged himself forward to Season’s feet and held her leg. Season looked at the list on the clipboard one more time. “I don’t see diapers.” She took Hopper’s pen and wrote the word on the form. “I have enough for three months. There’s no rush. And I could use more baby food, but I don’t see it on the list.”

  “If it’s not there, we’ll find it.” His Silent Voice said, “Good answer.”

  Season turned without shutting the door and the baby fell back down on its bottom, and then on all fours crawled after her.

  Hopper pulled the door behind him, not sure if that was expected, not sure if it mattered. It was good to know that his wife was Chief’s prisoner. One more day and he could free her.

  Shannon, Erin, Toffe, Brin

  Quiet Toffe didn’t believe the rumors that they were running out of food and said so to the group. “I’ve gone on some Inventory runs. I’ve seen lots of food.”

  Brin and Helary were satisfied that the surplus was permanent and didn’t see anything to be scared of. Jobe believed in the rumors, with no proof, just a feeling.

  It was after one of these discussions that Erin asked Shannon to walk with her, and Shannon was impressed with Erin’s confident urgency when Erin said, “Say there isn’t a shortage. Say there’s twenty-five years of food left. That’s still not forever and we’re physically young and don’t want to run out of food. So if it’s true or if it’s not, we’ll have to take over from Chief someday and why wait? You could be the new Chief. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this yourself.”

  Shannon told Erin she was being stupid. “If we’re running out of food and supplies, what’s the use of having any power over the First Wave? We’ll be drifting like everyone el
se. And I’ll need to be on my own again because none of you are strong. Everyone will be each other’s enemies, and I know what that world is like. I think it makes more sense to leave now. Or . . . no.” Shannon held up a hand and Erin watched the expression on Shannon’s face as it went from quarrelsome and impatient to neutral, empty of opinion, before changing, as Shannon considered a fresh possibility. Few people in Center Camp ever changed their minds, and to observe this in Shannon was more proof to Erin of the singer’s power, except that what Shannon had decided to do was something she wasn’t going to share with Erin. This too was legible in Shannon’s expression.

  Erin tested it. “Shannon, what are you thinking?” Shannon didn’t answer and Erin said, “That night on Figueroa, you were on top of the bus, and you were leading the Bottle Bangers, and I felt something. Everyone close to you did. And then the jet came and the feeling stopped. Were you so inside it that you couldn’t feel it?”

  “I didn’t just feel things. I saw things.”

  “Could you do that again?”

  “I didn’t like being on the bus.”

  “Not for the Drifters, for us.”

  “The plane scared me.”

  “The plane is gone. Could you bring back those, I don’t know what to call them, little stories, pictures, memories?”

  “I think so.”

  “Just seeing you dancing and bottle banging made things different. What if you could sing?”

  “My voice is gone.”

  “You haven’t really tried. I have the karaoke disks of your songs in my room. Try singing the songs you used to sing to the music you used to know. It’s a lot to ask of you, I’m sorry, but I have to. If you know what I’m thinking about, you’ll do it.”