“It opens on your side,” I said.
“Great.” Basquiat took a huffing, anxious breath. “I so don’t want to do this.” He reached down and lifted, groaning with exertion. The lid rose slowly.
I reached across and grasped it. My fingertips brushed the soft material on the lid’s underside.
Basquiat’s front foot slipped loose from its toehold. Shouting in alarm, he lunged with both arms outstretched, looking for something to grab onto. There was nothing but loose dirt. He tumbled backward, into the coffin. A second later, he was back on his feet, shrieking, trying to climb out of the coffin, but all he managed was to pull down an avalanche of dirt.
I was laughing. I couldn’t help it.
“It’s not funny. I’m standing on her.”
“We’re going to have to stand in there to get the legs anyway.”
“Not on her.” His eyes were bulging. “Stop laughing. Show some respect.”
“I’m sorry.” I stopped laughing, but somehow I couldn’t stop smiling. “I think I’m in a bit of shock.” I handed him the flashlight. “Find a spot where you’re not standing on her.”
His chest rising and falling, Basquiat turned the flashlight on and pointed it into the coffin.
I stopped smiling. Emma Marshall’s hands were still clasped across her chest. She’d been buried in her uniform. All that was left of it were patches of rotting material.
Basquiat was standing on her shoulder and upper arm. Grimacing, he repositioned his feet slowly, gently, on either side of the skull. There wasn’t much space for standing.
“Come on down, Mr. Chuckles.”
I inched around, toward the foot of the coffin, until I was clear of the lid. It felt like spiders were crawling down my spine as I stepped between Emma Marshall’s metallic legs.
Her legs were bolted to what was left of her femurs.
“We left the hacksaw by the headstone,” I said.
“I’ll get it.” Moving carefully, Basquiat found the footholds and climbed out of the hole. He handed down the hacksaw, then held the flashlight from above, pointing it into the coffin.
I looked up into blinding white light. “You coming back down?”
“For what?”
“Moral support.”
“I can provide that from here. You have my full support.”
Squatting, I grasped one metal knee and lifted until the femur was elevated. Then I sawed. It only took about thirty seconds, but it felt like much longer with Emma Marshall’s eyeless skull glaring at me. I passed the leg up to Basquiat, then got to work on the other one.
I clambered out of the hole as soon as I’d finished. As we stood silently over the open grave, my fear subsided, and I was left feeling a cocktail of hope and guilt. What we’d just done was very wrong, but at the same time, right. “We’ll put these to good use, Lieutenant Marshall. Thank you for your service. In the war, and now.”
I’d read that before the Sino-Russian War, you had to go all the way back to World War II to find a war where there weren’t protesters and questions about whether or not the war was necessary. If you could find anyone who had a shred of doubt about the Sino-Russian War, all you had to do was take them on a tour of the bombed-out sections of lower Manhattan; or the Boston waterfront; or Savannah, Georgia; and their doubts would vanish.
Basquiat reached down and closed the lid. I picked up the shovel.
The smell of Mrs. Kong’s jajangmyeon wafted from the kitchen as the drum-heavy opening theme song of Harley’s Shares blared from the TV. With Mrs. Kong here much of the day to watch over Boob, our little house was absurdly crowded. I wasn’t complaining, though, what with the abundance of home-cooked Korean food and getting to see Molly all day. Plus, there was something about the chaos and commotion that signaled forward momentum, life. Too often these past few years this house had felt too quiet.
Rebe was organizing Theo’s files from the safe drive she’d retrieved from the hole in the tree in her side yard. There wasn’t much more we could do until we had recovered our materials from her garage, and we were afraid to move them without protection. Speaking of which.
I checked on Mom. She was still sitting on the kitchen table surrounded by parts, her bladed feet leaned up against the refrigerator. I knew better than to ask Mr. Chambliss how it was coming, but the fire in Mom’s eyes told me everything I needed to know.
“Bend it,” Mr. Chambliss said.
Mom flexed her left knee. She laughed, the sound bubbling up from her belly like a kid on Christmas morning about to turn the corner and see what Santa had left under the tree. She laughed. I hadn’t heard that sound in a long time.
“Those pistons have almost no wear on them.” Mr. Chambliss reached for a tiny tool that looked like a dentist’s mirror.
I retreated into the living room, where Molly and Basquiat were sitting on the carpet facing each other, a deck of cards between them, their knees almost touching. It looked as though they were playing hearts or something to pass the time, except they both had their eyes closed.
I fought to squash a surge of jealousy. I would be mature about this. They were two wonderful people who had fallen for each other, and damn it, I would be happy for them. Or at the very least not angry and resentful.
Molly opened her eyes. “Jack of clubs?”
Basquiat showed her the card he was holding: the king of spades.
Molly slapped her thigh. “Damn it.” She noticed me and smiled. “There’s the problem right there. Skeptics block the flow of energy.”
“I’m not blocking. I’m rooting for you.”
“You don’t believe in paranormal phenomena. That makes you a skeptic, and an energy blocker.”
I burst out laughing. “An energy blocker. Man, that’s harsh. Next time I want to insult someone, I’m going to use that.”
“Damned energy blocker!” Basquiat nodded approval. “That’s good.”
Mr. Chambliss appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce the new and improved”—he swept a hand into the kitchen—“Melissa Gregorious.”
Mom walked into the living room. Everyone burst into cheers and applause, and Mom took a bow.
“Let’s test them out.” Mom sprang onto the kitchen table effortlessly. She barely had to bend her knees. She jumped down, crossed the room in a hop and a skip, and threw a kick.
Her foot went through the wall.
She turned to me. “What do you need from Rebe’s garage?”
“Don’t we need to figure out how to get you a weapon first?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of that on the way.”
“How are you going to take care of it? Do you have a pile of cash lying around I don’t know about?”
Mom looked me in the eye and said, “No. I’m going to steal one.”
I laughed, because I thought she was joking.
“This is war. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you kids safe.”
She went out the back. The mechanical legs gave her a weird, slightly jerky gait. I watched from our patio as she leaped the chest-high cyclone fence that separated our yard from the Luccas’ and took off, moving about as fast as a Doberman at full speed, even though she was just loping along.
Boob’s hands were pressed against the sides of his head as if he was afraid it was going to explode. “We can’t fit the magnet and receiving coil in a ring. Even a really big one. We just can’t.”
“Two rings?” Basquiat suggested.
I pointed at Basquiat. “Two rings. Why not?”
Without Theo, we were having to learn to do all the things we’d been counting on him to do. From his notes we understood how to create a working model of the truth app, and we had the SQUID and the 3-D printer, but actually doing it was different. Moving the operation to my house hadn’t
helped. There was no garage, so we had workstations spread around the house. There were electronics scattered all over the floor.
I was worried about Boob. He’d always been tightly wound—the kid chugging Pepto-Bismol before an exam—but now he looked headed for a nervous breakdown. Besides the fact that he was my friend and I cared about him, with Theo gone, Boob was the closest thing we had to an engineer. It was up to him to figure out Theo’s notes on how to use a weak magnetic field to perform the brain scan, and how to shield the signal from interference from nearby electronics. I understood in theory, but I had no idea how to actually create the necessary technology.
I rubbed my eyes. We were out of energy drink, so I’d have to settle for coffee. I hated coffee.
“Sam?” Rebe was holding up my phone. She was monitoring my calls while keeping the phone in zombie mode. “Message from Leaf: ‘Give me a status update.’ ”
I cursed under my breath. “How about ‘Still searching for the safe drive. You’ll be the first to know when we find it.’ ”
“Good.” Rebe typed it in.
“Where’s your mom?” Molly asked.
I shrugged. “Outside. She stays out of sight and watches the house. Don’t order pizza—she’d probably riddle the delivery guy with bullets.”
“She’s trying not to let it show, but her hips and abs are killing her from the run to Rebe’s house and back,” Mr. Chambliss said from the kitchen, where he’d set up shop. “It’s going to take a while for her body to readjust to this level of exertion. And she’s going to have to sleep at some point. You need to find me another vet. It’s not like you can post an ad in the paper.”
“I know.” I’d been waiting for everything to be up and running. Now it was. “Can you give me a ride?”
“Sure. Where to?” Mr. Chambliss patted his rib cage, double-checking the holstered handgun Mom had given him.
“Clarkstown Diner.” I pictured that flash of silver I’d seen when the cook turned.
* * *
—
When I told Mr. Chambliss who we were going to see, he looked at me like I was out of my mind, taking his eyes off the road much longer than I was comfortable with. “You don’t know him at all? What’s to stop him from selling us out?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Let me think.” I put one finger to my lips, relishing a rare moment when I had one on Mr. Chambliss. “If only we had some way to know for sure when people are lying…”
Mr. Chambliss threw his head back and laughed. “That would come in handy.”
“Before we tell him much, we can bring him back to the house and check him out.”
We pulled into the diner parking lot.
“Maybe I should talk?” Mr. Chambliss said. “This might sound less strange coming from another vet.”
“Sure. Go for it.”
We sat at the counter, six feet from the vet, and ordered two coffees. It was three in the afternoon, so the place was nearly empty. The vet finished cooking a cheeseburger, scooped fries onto the plate, and delivered it to the pickup counter.
“That’s some damned fancy platework. You learn that in the army?” Mr. Chambliss asked.
“Only thing I cooked in the army was Ruskies.” He had a narrow, squinty-eyed face, slicked-back hair, and a goatee. The last time I saw someone wearing a goatee, I was about four.
“Ben Chambliss, Twenty-Third Tech Brigade, Siberian front.”
The guy stepped over, extended a hand. “Kelsey Cook. Do not attempt a joke unless it’s truly original, ’cause I’ve heard ’em all.”
Mr. Chambliss shook his head. “No one ever accused me of being original.”
“You local?”
“Stone’s throw. I’m here with this young man, Sam Gregorious. He’s a regular. He was in here admiring your work a couple of days ago, and suggested we come and see you.”
The vet turned his sightless silver eyes on me, stuck out his hand. “Come see me about what?”
“We have a job offer for you. If you pass the interview,” Mr. Chambliss said.
A door thumped closed nearby. A gray-haired woman limped away from the restroom, a toilet brush in hand.
Kelsey barked a laugh. “Hey, A.J., you hear that? They’re going to steal me away to cook at their five-star nouveau restaurant.”
A.J., the woman who’d been cleaning the bathroom, pointed at us. “Don’t you dare.”
“Or let me guess,” Kelsey said, “not a head chef. Umpire? School bus driver?”
“Private security force.”
I expected Kelsey to laugh, but he scowled, his eyebrows pinched. “That’s not even a little funny.”
“It’s not a joke. I mentioned I was in the Twenty-Third. I was a cybertech.”
“Come on.” Kelsey waved a hand dismissively. “You’re gonna pony up forty grand? Or even better: you want me to come up with the money. Take your con somewhere else.”
“It’s not a con. The job is protecting five kids from an operation that wants something they have. We don’t know how big an operation we’re up against, or when they’re going to strike. You interested?”
Kelsey pinched his goateed chin. “You know, when I was a kid, I used to have dreams where I could fly. Every night I went to sleep hoping I’d have a flying dream.” He pointed at his face. “When my eyes stopped working, I stopped having dreams where I could fly and started having dreams where I could see. I felt the same sort of rush as when I dreamt about flying, I’d just lowered my ambitions a little. The thing is, now I don’t dream about either, and I’d just as soon keep it that way.”
Mr. Chambliss lowered his voice. “What if I told you this was as important as the war so many of our friends died in?”
Kelsey raised his head and stared off into space, considering. “I’d say that’s not a comparison you should make lightly, and I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”
“I’m not making it lightly. The war is the only thing I never make light of.”
Kelsey paused at that, his face turned toward Mr. Chambliss’s voice, thinking. He reached back and untied his apron. “A.J., I’m going to take my dinner break early.”
* * *
—
“Have you ever done anything illegal, Mr. Cook?” I asked, eyes on the readout.
Kelsey laughed like he’d never heard something so funny. “Are there still laws? Could’ve fooled me.” He cleared his throat. “I never killed or hurt nobody except in the war. I stole before, but never from a friend. Fair enough?” The needle had barely budged.
I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see. “Fair enough.”
“Can we trust you?” Basquiat asked.
Kelsey nodded. “If you’re straight with me, I’ll be straight with you. I like a drink now and then, but I’m never drunk on duty, whether the job is combat or cooking omelets.”
Kelsey’s comment about liking a drink didn’t surprise me. He had a wiry build, his arms still showing some muscle and veins bulging, but he had the weathered face of a seventy-year-old man. His face reminded me of my uncle Ron’s, and he’d died of cirrhosis at forty-five.
I looked around at the others. “We good?”
“Sign him up,” Mom said.
Nods all around.
“Mr. Cook, we’d like to offer you a job. The pay is three meals a day, repair and maintenance for your vision, and a one percent share in TruthCorp.”
He squinted. “What the heck is TruthCorp?”
“I’ll show you,” I said. “I’m going to ask you some more questions, but this time I want you to lie some of the time.”
The demo got Kelsey’s attention in a hurry. When it was over, Basquiat and I prepared to retrieve Kelsey’s eyes from their current owner, Anders Seifreid, who was interred in Mount Moor Cemetery in Nyack. I wrapped both my hands in a thick la
yer of medical tape. The blisters from our last dig hadn’t healed yet.
A shout of pain from the kitchen made me jump. Kelsey had insisted Mr. Chambliss didn’t need to locate anesthetic to replace his eyes, that “three knocks of Jim Beam” was all the painkiller he required. I wondered if he was regretting that bravado.
Maybe it wasn’t bravado. Maybe Kelsey was so eager to see that he’d rather suffer the pain than wait another day. I glanced at Mom, wolfing down a turkey sandwich so she could get back to her post, her shoulders squared, eyes bright. She’d been sore as hell yesterday, her muscles unused to running and jumping, but she looked twenty years younger, like a werewolf who’d finally gotten the full moon it had been waiting for.
Yeah, maybe Kelsey was willing to put up with a little pain to get under his own full moon.
I went back to work helping Molly, who was trying to get the head-tracking app within a photo app to communicate with the ring that created the weak magnetic field.
“We’re getting close,” I said as we worked. Everyone else was so focused on their specific pieces of the project that I wasn’t sure any of them realized how close we really were.
“How much longer, do you think?”
“There are still some problems we haven’t figured out, but assuming we figure them out, less than a month. Maybe two weeks.”
In the kitchen, Kelsey called out, “Oh, hell yes! That’s what I’m talking about. Hey, I didn’t realize!”
“That I was black?” Mr. Chambliss asked.
“No, that you were such a handsome guy.” Kelsey breezed into the living room, grinning like a jack-o’-lantern. “Now who’s who?”
Rebe was in the dining area, bleary-eyed. She let her head drop, buried her face in her hands.
The Future Will Be BS Free Page 8