by Peter Clines
“No,” said Clive.
Debbie shook her head. “Nope,” she said.
“It’ll be okay,” said Nate.
“Why you, bro?”
“Because I’m the guy in charge,” Nate said. “Remember?”
“Captain goes down with his ship,” snorted Clive. “That’s messed up.”
Nate shrugged. “I owe it to Tim,” he said. “And Oskar and Mrs. Knight. They’re all dead because...because of what we started. They deserve a little bit of...I don’t know. Justice? Peace?” He shrugged again. “You can stay if you want. But you don’t have to, and I won’t blame you if you don’t.”
Veek squeezed his hand. Xela reached out and grabbed the other one. The surviving tenants of the Kavach Building’s trip to the other side took each other’s hands and said nothing for a few minutes.
“You know what I want?” said Nate, breaking the spell. “I want to be around people. Lots of people.”
“Yes,” said Debbie. “Somewhere that smells good.”
“Thai food,” said Roger. He patted his backside and his hand came back with a wallet. “On me.”
“I want to change my shirt real quick,” said Xela.
“It’s just the Thai place,” said Clive.
“I’ve got paint on me,” said the blue-haired woman. “And I stink.”
“I should change, too,” said Debbie.
“Yeah,” said Nate. “I could grab a different shirt.”
“Fine,” said Roger. “Five minutes, in the lobby. If you’re all not there, I’m going without you and eating eggrolls alone.”
“You’ll wait,” said Xela. She kissed his cheek.
“Not for eggrolls,” said Roger.
Nate squeezed Veek’s hand and climbed up the back staircase. He looked at his door, 28, then turned to look at Mandy’s. He turned his head down the hall to 26. He half-expected to see Tim there, giving him a casual wave. His eyes drifted down, staring through the floor to impossible apartment 14. He opened the door and tried to remember if his favorite striped shirt—his deep space shirt—was clean. Then he froze.
There was a man in a dark suit waiting inside his apartment.
Eighty One
The man was standing next to the entertainment center. Nate realized he was examining the DVD collection. His hand was out and he was inching a case out as a place marker.
He had black hair, cut conservative-short, with a bit of gray streaked through it, but not enough to look old. His nose was a little large, his eyes a little small, but neither enough to stand out. He was the same height as Nate, just under six feet tall, and had a body that showed enough time in the gym to keep off the pounds. The kind of guy who would blend effortlessly into any crowd if not for his sharp suit.
“Hello, Nate,” said the man. “I figured it was time we had a talk. Rent’s almost due, after all.”
“Who are you?”
The man gestured at the entertainment center. “You’re old enough to remember before DVDs, right? Back when you’d visit someone and learn about them by what was on their bookshelves. Don’t get me wrong, I love my movies, but it’s harder to get a good grasp of somebody with them. Movie tastes always seem a bit random.” His mouth formed a tight, professional smile. “You’ve got seventeen of the same ones I do.”
“I asked who you are,” Nate said. He tried to sound confident.
“We’re on the same side,” said the man. “That’s probably the most important thing right now, isn’t it? After all you’ve gone through, I bet you’re not too keen on trusting strangers right now, are you?”
“Not particularly.”
“If it helps, the FBI has arrested all the top members of the Family, and most of the congregation’s been detained for questioning. The ones that aren’t being locked up forever are heading for years of federally-funded therapy.”
“Really?”
The man nodded.
“So who are you?”
He put up a hand and shook his head. “Let’s not complicate things with names. Speaking of which, is it okay if I call you Nate? Overt familiarity’s a curse of the job. Would you be more comfortable with Nathan? Mr. Tucker, maybe?”
“Nate’s fine.”
“Great.” He took a long look at Nate. “You know, I’ve got to be honest. Part of me has been dreading this.”
“Dreading what?”
“You,” said the man. “I’ve been dreading the day I had to meet you. I’ve been waiting years for it, but now that it’s here...” He shook his head and then gave a shrug.
“You’ve been waiting...for me?”
“Well, not you specifically. If you’ll pardon the melodrama, I knew this day was going to come, and I knew I’d be having this conversation with someone. I’m glad it’s you, Nate.”
A moment stretched out between them.
“You’re Locke Management,” said Nate. “You’re who puts out the ads and hires the actresses and all that.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“You decide who lives here.”
He gave another calm nod.
“So, you’re...what? Some government agency that protects the building?”
The man in the suit shook his head. “I never said I was with the government.”
“You’re not?”
“For the record, I haven’t said that, either. Really, I could just be another actor hired to play a role.” His mouth formed a pleasant smile that felt sincere, but also a bit too practiced for Nate’s liking. “Besides, it’s not like the building needs much protecting, is it? Not with folks like you living here.”
“People died here,” snapped Nate. A wave of frustration washed over him. “Fuck, people have been dying here since this place was built. Because of this place.”
“Yes,” said the man, “they have. A lot more than you probably know about.”
“Why haven’t you studied it? If you had some kind of…back-up building or something, or if people knew about it, none of this ever would’ve happened.”
“We’ve tried to study it,” said the man, “and we’ve managed to copy some elements. That’s why you’ve got a room full of replacement parts downstairs. There are light bulbs, too, if you want to swap out the ones in the tunnels.”
“But that’s nothing,” said Nate. “It’s minor stuff. That’s like trying to copy an airplane and coming away with how to make tires.”
The man put up his hands. “It’s the best we can do. You can’t examine an airplane in mid-flight, especially the engine.”
“The right people could.”
“They probably could,” the man agreed. “There are some electronic and mechanical geniuses out there. The problem is recruiting them. I’m sure you’ll agree, we have good reason to keep this building as secret as possible.”
Nate bit his lip and looked over at the wall where Aleksander Koturovic had spent some of the last minutes of his life making sure the world stayed safe.
“I know it doesn’t mean much,” the man said, “but I’m sorry for your losses. I understand you and Tim Farr had become friends.”
“We were. What’s going to happen to him? Officially?”
“There’ll be a funeral. Closed casket, full military honors. You can attend, if you like. He doesn’t have any next of kin.”
“I’ll take care of his stuff.”
“It’s already taken care of,” said the man. He hooked his thumbs on his pockets. “Nate, let’s stop beating around the bush. You’re not in handcuffs. We’re talking alone, like civilized gentlemen. You know what this meeting’s about.”
* * *
Nate found Veek waiting for him in the lobby. “Hey,” she said. “I was just about to come looking for you.”
“Sorry.”
“Roger was serious. They all headed over a couple of minutes ago. Debbie said they’d save us some egg rolls. I told her to order chicken pad thai for us if we missed the waiter.”
He nodded. “Good.”
She tilted her head at him. “You okay, Shaggy?”
Nate reached out and took her hand. “I just got a job.”
Veek blinked. “Just now?”
“Yeah.”
“Did someone call you or something?”
He shook his head.
The man in the suit came down the staircase, speaking quietly into a cell phone. He paused to nod at Nate, and before she knew he was doing it he shook Veek’s hand. “Miss Vishwanath,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you in person. For the record, my money was on you from the start, but I’m glad we’ll still have you on the team.”
He was out the door before she could respond. “What was that all about?” she asked Nate.
“I’m the new building manager.”
Her jaw dropped. “What?”
He led her back up the curving stairs. “The only catch is they want me to be more active than Oskar was. They’re hoping I can learn more about the building and maybe fill in some of the holes in their records.”
“They have records?” asked Veek.
“Yup. They’re giving me copies of all of their files so my staff and I can be up to date.”
“Your staff?”
He squeezed her hand and guided her down the hall to apartment 12. There was a gleaming brass sign next to the door. It fit the Kavach Building’s classic style.
NATHAN TUCKER
MANAGER
She smiled. “So I’m on your staff, is that what you’re saying?”
“If you want to be.”
“Are there rules about office relationships?”
“We could make some up. And then break them.”
“Cool.” She kissed him. “I think I could be up for this. How many files are we talking about?”
“Well,” he said, “let’s check it out.”
He turned the knob and opened the door of his new apartment.
Afterword
It would be easy to say that 14 has been kicking around in my brain for about four or five years.
The truth is, though, that this story started many years back when I was a little kid watching the most terrifying television show at the time—Land of the Lost. I wasn’t just scared because this show was obviously a documentary shot with live dinosaurs. I was unnerved by the fact that no one else seemed to know about it. They’d teach us about dinosaurs in elementary school, but why was there no mention of lost cities or pylons? Why was no one teaching us about Sleestaks? Were they covering it up for some reason or did they honestly not know? How could there be this whole section of history so many adults seemed willfully ignorant of?
That thought has stuck with me for ages—that there’s more to the world than we’ll ever know or understand—and I’ve tried to work little threads of it into several short stories and books. The specific ideas that eventually became 14 were kicking around in my mind for about five years, but the truth is I’ve wanted to tell a story like this since eight-year-old me first realized that Enik wasn’t the descendant of the feral Sleestaks in the Land of the Lost... he was their ancestor.
How’s that for a geek reference?
Naturally, for a story that long in the making, it took more than a few people to help me pull it out and shape it. As such, some thanks and recognition are in order.
First, many thanks to Jacob Kier at Permuted Press, who let me take some time away from zombies and superheroes to tell a very different kind of apocalyptic story. After the last time I tried it, he had every right to say no.
Thom Brannon, author of Lords of Night and co-author of Pavlov’s Dogs, offered me a pile of Tesla research he’d built up from one of his own projects, which I gladly accepted. Bob Spencer at the Los Angeles County Public Works Department spent an afternoon on the phone talking about what happens to old building plans. Any deviations from the facts in either case were my own choice for dramatic reasons, not from any misinformation on their parts.
Chitra helped with Marathi names, pronunciations, and translations after I fumbled around on the internet trying to find certain words.
Tim is named after a friend of mine who’s also lent his name to a silver dragon. He’s always willing to help me with technical and computer issues in books, like designing Veek’s computer.
The usual suspects helped by reading early drafts and convincing me this book wasn’t too crazy and sprawling. Larry, John, Patrick, and David offered fantastic suggestions, encouragement, and also caught many things that slipped past me. Double that thanks for Felicia, my editor at Permuted Press.
And many, many thanks to my lovely lady Colleen, who continues to offer advice, critiques, harsh truths, kind words, and the still sometimes-needed reminders that I can actually do this.
—PC
Los Angeles, November 5th, 2011