The Phone Company
Page 45
“I’ll fffff, I’ll . . .”
Sarah trailed off into a sob. She kept making faces, as if she were getting gored in the belly. Then the pain would relent and she’d collapse into a sigh.
Steve maneuvered the van around some deep ruts in the logging road, now clogged with sticks and dead flounder, and maybe a purple starfish. He grimaced; in back, his sensitive cargo sloshed and wobbled around.
Could they detonate?
No, he thought. He remembered this. Oklahoma City. That type of fuel-fertilizer mix needed a detonator, a huge blast.
The dynamite should do nicely, he thought.
Steve flashed to the tie-dyed thing back there and wondered how beat up it was getting. Even Marvin didn’t deserve that kind of disrespect.
After the ruts, the road evened out, and Steve went back to searching the FM band.
“I know you,” Sarah said from near sleep. She looked practically passed out, talking just under her breath. “I know . . . all about the cigarettes. And the drugs. And Tasha.”
Steve’s hand stopped on the radio.
“I know,” Sarah said. “It’s all, it’s . . .” She started to cry, started to twist. “You’re no better than me,” she said, and then the knife started goring her again. “Daddy? Daddy? Please, Daddy, it’s ringing. Please let me pick it up. Please.”
Sarah’s face softened, and she trailed off, dangling limp from the handcuffs, completely passed out.
Thank God, Steve thought.
She hadn’t stopped insulting him since they’d left, spewing a laundry list of all Steve’s past transgressions, a litany of his sins. Every cheat, every lie he’d ever been caught in all the way back to when he was a child. Like copying Peggy Peden’s geography test, or spray-painting the gym teacher’s car. Every mean thing he’d ever done that someone else could’ve known about, Sarah knew now as well. But she didn’t know why he’d done them, the reasons behind his choices. PCo always seemed to leave that part out.
The whole way, Steve found himself thinking, When in the hell is she going to shut up? And then she did. And he felt bad. From the smell and the liquid drizzling off the seat, she’d lost control of her bladder.
She’s what matters now, he reminded himself. Nothing else.
No one else.
Steve steered the van around a huge greasy mud puddle, the surface jumping with some kind of silvery minnow.
Fish, fish, everywhere.
He had stopped trying to understand it. The heavens had opened, the sky had rained sea life. All because of Graham’s so-called weather app.
Steve had come to the conclusion it was simply beyond human comprehension; his, at least. Kind of like the barreleye, the big spook fish Steve had seen falling from the clouds, with its weird see-through head. He didn’t understand this fish. Inside the head, like two bulbs glowing inside a lantern, were the fish’s eyes. They usually stared upward, unblinking, watching for the silhouettes of available prey. Like shadow detectors.
To Steve, the eyes of the spook fish were so alien, so odd, he couldn’t identify with it as a species from Earth. He didn’t understand it.
The Phone Company was just like the barreleye.
It’s all a shadowplay,
a cave of shadow and light.
Steve remembered those lines, a stanza from Janice’s poems, coming to him now because everything was related. Whether or not things were connected before, they were now. The Phone Company had made certain of that. They’d dug up all the town’s skeletons and had made new ones. They’d ensured that the past affected the present so much, they were practically the same thing.
They’d transformed JJ into Vedder and Sarah into Janice. And Bill had become . . .
A dog, Steve thought.
He was sick of his own thoughts.
Steve switched the radio to the AM band and immediately heard voices. Not human, but robotic. A man and a woman, both cheerily upbeat. He dialed in.
< . . . struggling to find a candidate since the assassination of Frederick Hill at Mount Rushmore last month.>
Wait, Steve thought. What?
Drones?
Steve knew that name.
Where’d he . . .
It didn’t take him long before he felt the chill.
< . . . noble and necessary sacrifices for The Provider> the male finished.
The male laughed, and Steve shot the radio a disgusted look. He wanted to shut it off, just snap the damn thing off, maybe throw away the knob.
He couldn’t.
If a Tether could enable a kid to fight real wars and assassinate world leaders, if it could let someone fly a plane into a school and uncover secrets as deep as Steve’s brief and confusing thing with Tasha—it was a kiss, just a kiss, stolen from Steve when he was drunk and vulnerable and upset about what was happening with Janice, and yet Steve knew it was one of the worst mistakes of his life, this kiss, a secret so dark only Steve, Tasha, and Janice (and apparently Sarah now) knew, an affront that only Steve (and Sarah) could never forgive—if The Phone Company could do all that, Steve didn’t have the luxury of turning a deaf ear. This. This broadcast. It was his tether to the enemy mind. Steve could hear everything.
He had to know.
What did The Phone Company know?
* * *
Steve stopped the moving van. A cable was strung across the gravel road between two posts. He stared past it at HMS.
< . . . and the search continues for our late Queen Gregory.>
Steve glanced at Sarah, who still hung, slack-jawed and sleeping, from the oh-shit handle. She’d said they would come looking for her. The radio had confirmed it.
< . . . but search parties are understaffed, as most members are now operating in emergency response teams in the wake of The Fullness.>
Steve broke out Bill’s binoculars. From this side of the school, he could see the blackened recess where the plane had crashed. He could see the eighth grade hall, sheared away by one of the wings.
The rescue team had removed a lot of debris from the collapsed HMS, revealing the classrooms in cutaways. Wet posters, falling off chopped walls. Ruined maps. Warped books and flattened desks. Topping it all off, a marlin, lying broken over an upended bookshelf.
In one class, Steve spotted a skull. Was that . . .?
Yep, he thought, focusing in.
Yorick’s skull. A prop that had been in George Ingram’s class ever since the teacher before him.
Ah, George.
Steve lowered the binoculars. Should’ve taken the time. Might’ve liked ya.
< . . . but we’ve almost lost all hope and will need to find a successor soon.>
Steve took one last survey of the school. Aside from the occasional flopping tail or flexing fin, he saw no signs of life. If PCo was searching, it wasn’t searching here.
Carefully, he nosed around the cable and through the field, where small trees had been washed out. He pulled around an uprooted stump, bounced over one last speed bump, and then he was cruising. He was puttering along on the school’s blacktop in a moving van from the past.
Steve drove around the whole complex once, eyeing the dark windows, the tall arborvitaes growing up the sides of impenetrable brick. He looked at the baseball field, the dugout and, farther on, the track.
No one.
Around the far side of HMS, the metal shop had a bay door surrounded by scrap metal heaps. Next to the bay was a smaller fire door.
Real junkyard, Steve thought, park
ing at the bay door of the shop. He’d be lucky if he didn’t pop a tire.
With his master key to the school, Steve was able to pull the van inside, bumper-to-vise with the foremost worktable. He let the van idle.
Sarah, as a baby, would inevitably fall asleep on long car rides. She could be crying, red-faced, and the most pissed off baby in the world, and yet the road was like a lullaby. Only one problem—all car rides come to an end.
Without fail, little Sarah would wake up the second the engine cut off. So when Steve shut off the moving van, ending those soothing rhythms, he fully expected Sarah’s eyes to snap open.
She kind of squirmed, moaned, and made a face—that old knife goring her again. Steve sat with her and watched her sweat.
“Sarah?”
Her face remained blank.
“Sarah, honey, if you can hear me, I’m taking a look around. I think this could be a safe place for us, okay? If anything happens, if anyone comes or tries to get at you, honk. Kick it with your foot or something. Okay?”
She didn’t rouse.
Steve didn’t really want her to.
He grabbed the backpack and started to climb out when an idea struck him. He dug in the pack for a second and pulled out the two phones, his and Janice’s. He powered them on. They were both low on batteries, but this was worth it.
Steve called one phone using the other, then laid Janice’s on the dashboard, clamshell open. He turned on his speakerphone and made sure both the van doors were locked before he hopped out.
When he rolled down the bay door, the entire shop fell into darkness. It echoed with nothing but the sound of Sarah breathing over the speakerphone, her white noise.
Steve clicked on the flashlight. Backpack snug on his back, he ventured into the hall, which reeked of smoke and wet ash.
He went first through the boy’s locker room, planning to cut through the gym to the main hall.
Inside the coach’s office, he found a bin of loaner gym clothes. He grabbed a pair, a shirt and matching shorts. Probably big enough for Sarah. Boys’ clothes, but that was better than pissed pants. Steve stuffed them into his backpack.
As he crossed the gym, he tried not to think about the presentation he’d seen there, Graham’s weird cables and flashing alarms. Graham had disappeared then, too, before appearing magically in another place.
Barreleye, Steve thought, dismissing it. It wasn’t “alien” anymore; it was “barreleye.”
Sarah made a noise, and Steve stopped. He listened for a second. She startled. She gasped.
Steve tensed, eyeballing the phone. Sarah’s scream never came. She started snoring instead. Adjusting the volume, Steve left the gym for the main hall.
Exposed aggregate floor, brick walls lined with lockers—over his own footfalls, Steve could almost hear the echoes of a normal school day. Kids laughing, chatting, and cheering, running down the halls around the slower, more huddled cliques.
He stared at JJ’s locker as he passed, at the dent someone had punched in it. One of JJ’s friends, if Steve recalled.
Food.
Shelter.
Weapons of any kind.
That was the plan.
He would check the faculty lounge first, then the offices. School employees were notorious for having snacks.
In his own office, Steve kept Rolaids and maybe some unsalted nuts; he’d swing by there last.
Near the end of the hall, he passed what had once been Sarah’s locker. He remembered getting a look in there once, how embarrassed Sarah was of the pretty boys she’d clipped out of magazines.
He stopped in the giant archway framed with rough brick pillars. The giant lunchroom opened up before him like a fireplace after water had been poured in. Charred tables. Melted seats. Puddles of slimy rain in the low spots.
Fortunately, the cafeteria had been nearly deserted at the time of the crash. Everyone had been in class, which meant no melted fat dried in seats; no bodily char or smears of lost life. The kitchen, though, and the eighth grade wing . . .
Steve turned back to the main hall, wishing his master key worked on lockers. He didn’t want to walk through the cafeteria. He could just imagine what kind of things, what treasures kids had squirreled away in their lockers. But he couldn’t get at them, and all the offices were down the hall past the caf.
Maybe check metals shop for a crowbar.
Huh, Steve thought, spotting something in the hall he hadn’t noticed before. Like a castle, the walls of the school encompassed an inner courtyard filled with tables, where kids could eat and hang out. Two vending machines sat in a nook near the exit out to the court. Steve walked over and peered through the glass at the snacks.
He didn’t remember this happening, but apparently PCo had taken over the school’s vending machine contract. All the familiar brand names remained the same, but the machines themselves were PCo; you could purchase snacks with your phone.
Steve’s stomach growled, and he started thinking of ways to break the glass. A chair? The fire extinguisher? A hammer from woodshop?
Poison, said a voice in his head, and suddenly Steve didn’t feel hungry, he felt empty and sick. Soft kill, the voice said.
Marvin again. He was right, the food couldn’t be trusted. All the old familiar brand names, sure, but Steve wouldn’t have been surprised if PCo was the owner listed on the back of each snack, the same way you could look at the back of your favorite bottled water only to discover it’s owned by Coke.
Search the school, he thought. If he couldn’t find enough food, then he might come b—
Steve’s head whipped toward the noise. At first, he thought it had come from Sarah, something happening in the van over the clamshells, but nope. Sarah was snoring normally. Steve switched off the speakerphone and stood there for a long time, listening, trying not to breathe, willing his heart to stop.
“Mmmm,” Sarah moaned from the tinny little earpiece of the phone. He brought it closer to his ear.
That noise. Like a small electronic shock. It had come from down the hall, he knew that. But because of the way the hall threw sounds, Steve didn’t know where to look for the ventriloquist.
“Mmmuhhh,” Sarah said.
Steve went to take a step.
And now he knew.
The sound.
It was coming from the boys’ room.
“Mmm, Daddy. Please. Let me get it, let me pick it up.”
“Pleeeeaaaase.”
Steve crept away from the vending machine to get a look down the main hall. The archways into the bathrooms were on his side of the corridor, between him and his escape route to the shop. Steve could hear the sound of rushing water.
“He’s calling,” Sarah said. “Please, Daddy! Plee-hee-hee-eeeeaase.”
Shit, Steve thought. Shit!
Someone in the bathroom, his daughter freaking out—things had just gone barreleye.
The water shut off.
The squeak of the faucet.
Then silence.
“Daaadddeee—”
The courtyard, Steve thought, peering through the glass of the door. He could sneak out that way, into one of the entrances on the far side. Kind of the long way around, but—
The van horn began to honk, changing everything.
Screw the long way. Steve bolted for the gym. His feet pounded across the corridor, and as he wrenched open the door, he glanced back. A shadow was moving in the boys’ room.
Steve went thundering across the polished gym floor, flashlight bobbing. The door didn’t close behind him. Someone wrenched it open and came tearing in after him.
Shit, shit, shit.
Through the gym, into the locker room, Steve glanced around for anything.
Trash can.
Towel rack.
This set of doors had pull handles. Steve jammed the hockey stick into them. It would snap quickly enough but would buy him time.
“I’m in here! I’m here! Come save me!”
Steve threw up the bay door, wincing at the bright light, then opened the van and threw in his bag.
Sarah, her cuffs pulled taut around the oh-shit handle, had stretched out across the bench seat and was laying her knee into the horn.
Steve pushed her out of the way and hopped inside.
“Help, he’s got me! In here, I’m in here!”
The shop door banged open, but Steve was already peeling out, zipping past the scrap metal yard, tires squealing as he whipped it around, threw it into drive, and took off, bomb sloshing.
“I’m here!” Sarah screamed. “Please! Please!”
“Shut up!” Steve said. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
As he rounded the corner toward the back of the school, back to the dirt road, Steve spotted movement on the baseball field: a big fake Indian, standing there by the dugout, sneering and watching them flee.
CHAPTER 47
One night six years ago, Marvin saw something in the Terraformer, a glowing head in the darkness.
“Daggum aliens,” he breathed to himself, a puff of steam in the cold air. Marv had tried to follow the floating head through the junkyard, but it had finally seen him and had disappeared into the woods, even though Marv had chased after it, shouting that he came in peace and he’d totally take them to his leader, man!
The next morning, Marv woke Chuck by thrusting a shotgun at him.
“I saw ’em, Lucky Chucky. You still got that detective kit? Enough to make some plaster casts?”
Chucky did, indeed, have the detective kit. So they went hunting for footprints or hoof prints or whatever kind of prints visitors from outer space left.
“Unnghhh, unnghhh!” Little Chuck said, pointing in a cranny between piles of cars.