The Phone Company

by David Jacob Knight

  “Sarah—”

  “No. If you had just stayed home. If you had just kept your nose out of my business . . .”

  “Sarah, that wasn’t Bill. You have to know that. It wasn’t Bill you were with, it was a monster. Bill never would have—”

  “But he did! In his car, in his cruiser! He bummed a smoke, and he was the only one. The only person in this butthole of a town who actually knew me! I wasn’t some kid, some stupid girl with crappy hair, and you murdered him, you murdered Mom’s best friend and now he’s calling and I can’t even, I can’t . . .” She flicked her eyes to the bandages on her hands. “You burned me, don’t you get it? And now I can’t even . . .”

  Sarah made a disgusted, congested sound in the back of her throat, then disintegrated into sobs. It hurt to hear, but Steve preferred this Sarah. He could at least talk to this Sarah, if not reason with her. He hoped she stayed, hoped the nastier Sarah remained in her cage.

  “I just want to die,” she said. “Just hit me over the head with a lead pipe and kill me.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Steve said.

  “Then give it to me, I’ll do it myself.”

  “No. I don’t ever want to hear you talk like that, you hear me? Your mom went through hell and she never once talked like that.”

  It wasn’t true. There had been several times Janice had begged for death. Steve was the only one who knew that, the only one who needed to know that, the only one who’d been there for her at those darkest moments when they were both losing the love of their life, and she only wanted her dignity, she only wanted her grace even in death.

  Steve didn’t care what was true right now. There was more than one truth, and he stuck with his version, where the people you love are strong and never give up on you.

  “It’s their fault,” he said. “Theirs, not mine, not Bill’s. And certainly not yours. Not even Barksdale’s, do you hear me? It’s theirs.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” Sarah said. “I’m not even talking about that.”

  “What happened with Bill was—”

  “Nothing happened, Dad! Bill wouldn’t . . . he said he’d screwed up enough relationships in his life, he wasn’t going to screw this one up too. He wanted to get married first.”

  “So you didn’t—”

  “No. I wanted to. I think he did, too, but no. He said no. But that’s not even what I meant.”

  Steve hugged her. He didn’t care what she smelled like or what she was covered in. He reeked, too. She had just helped him let go of something. His anger for Bill. The heat was still there, but she had turned the stove burner way down.

  “Thank you.” Steve pulled away and wiped his eyes, smiling, almost laughing.

  Sarah wasn’t smiling.

  “What?”

  “I’m thankful.”

  “For what?”

  “We’re alive, for one.”

  “Yeah, but what about them? All those kids at the school. The lunch lady. Mr. Ingram, your friend.”

  Not my friend, Steve almost said, but he didn’t. “I know, I know. But that isn’t our fault. We have to let things go, Sarah. If you don’t, if you bottle things up, you’ll wind up stuck in the bottle yourself. We’re alive. We’re safe. That’s all that counts.”

  “I flew that plane into the school,” Sarah said.

  Steve stared at her. She looked sunken now. Sunken eyes, sunken cheeks; her whole body shriveled around a hard pit of guilt.

  “Your phone?” Steve said, remembering something. “Did you do it with your . . .”

  “Not on purpose. It was a game. Some stupid flying game, and I sucked. But I liked flying over the schools, you know? Seeing places I’ve grown up, and I’d draw these hearts. It’s stupid, but it’s kind of a tribute, I guess. You remember my half necklace?”

  “Yes,” Steve said.

  “Well, she was there That Day, and she. . . . So I’d draw these hearts, kind of broken in the middle? Because she was buried with hers? And then one day I thought I saw JJ down there, standing outside the school, you know, in the grass. So I tried to get closer, I tried to get a better look, and I just, I don’t know.”

  The shudders came back, and this time Sarah let Steve lay a hand on her shoulder.

  “It was an accident, sweetheart. You didn’t know what would happen. You didn’t even know what was real.”

  “I was happy,” Sarah said, sweating and weeping and draining out of every pore, as if her entire body were grieving. “When I thought maybe I’d killed him, I was so happy. Because maybe, I don’t know, he got a phone first? Because he was such a little snot, and I was happy he was dead. Until I saw it had actually crashed. You know, like, in real life. And I couldn’t stand it. I tried to forget, and I did for a while, I did forget, but I don’t have my Tether now and it’s all coming back. Everything’s back, and, oh God, Daddy . . .”

  Steve stopped rubbing Sarah’s shoulder as her confession sank in. He caught himself and kept massaging before she noticed anything was wrong.

  Bottle it up . . .

  . . . you’re in the bottle yourself.

  But how much could you throw at one person? Should they throw in some swords for Steve to juggle as well? How about an infant and three burning animals?

  Those bastards.

  Sarah’s cuffs clanked on the bar as she slid her hands down, offering Steve a dark look, only half her face in the flashlight. “That’s when I realized. It isn’t my fault at all, you’re right. You’re the one. You’re the one who got us Tethers in the first place. You, not me.”

  “Sarah—”

  “Shut up and take out my shit.”

  Moaning, she screwed her eyes shut and toppled over onto the mat, still hugging herself, still crying from every pore. She fell back into the withdrawals again, leaving Steve alone to deal with all this shit, and save her life as well.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said one day over a can of beans. She was starting to get better. No longer calling out for Bill at night. Fever breaking.

  Steve stopped chewing, then nodded and dug out another bite of chopped hot dog.

  They’d been there for three days now, living off Marvin’s rations. Steve couldn’t believe it. Sarah was voluntarily eating and taking her medicine. She was still cuffed to the wall, sure, but she wasn’t exactly begging to be set free. Steve took that as a good sign.

  “Was that the last of it?” she asked as Steve collected her empty can.

  He opened the door to the shed, squinting against the sunlight. He listened. It was too cold for birds, so all he heard was the air. The air and the hum, that steady .

  Steve tucked the tin cans deep into the wall of junk outside, adding to Marv’s aluminum shield.

  When he returned to the shack, he said, “I found a bike. Yesterday. It’s too big a risk to take the van out, but I think I can use it get some more—”

  “You’re leaving me?”

  “We’re out of water.”

  “Can’t you just go find a creek?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a creek. It’s right out by the road.”

  “A contaminated creek,” Steve said. “All that slime from the storm? Runoff from the junkyard? No.” He felt a trickle under his bandage and looked at his arm, at the red and yellowed stain permeating the gauze. He’d need antibiotics soon. “I just, I need to see what’s out there. Don’t you want to know what’s out there? What if it’s all fixed and we die in here because we never took a peek?”

  “I’m coming with you,” Sarah said, trying to stand. The cuffs only slid up the wall support so far. They clinked against a horizontal strut of rebar and lodged there. “Where’s the key?”

  Steve stared at her, biting his lip. He hated leaving her here, hated dwelling on all the things that could happen while he was gone. He could probably use help out there, too. But he had already thought about taking her with him, and there were too many risks.

  He also ha
d evaluated the need for going anywhere at all, wondering how dangerous it was, worried he might lead someone back. He’d heard heavy machinery in the distance for the past couple days. He wasn’t sure what that was about.

  In the end, Steve knew he couldn’t wait. He had the energy to do it. Two days from now, though? Three? They had to find supplies and hike out while they still could.

  “I’d leave your mom’s phone with you,” he said, “and put you on speakerphone, but no bars here, so.”

  “Dad . . .”

  Steve hugged her and kissed her head, which was fuzzy with new growth. “I need to see how to get us out of this, okay? I have to. Then I’ll come back and take you with me.”

  “At least uncuff me,” Sarah said. “At least let me defend myself.”

  And there it was. Her bid to get loose.

  She seemed better, but . . .

  “I’ll be back,” Steve said, knees popping as he stood.

  “Dad.”

  He shut the shed door and piled some crates and tackle boxes in front of it. He shrugged into Bill’s backpack, and with the bike he’d found, he took off for the logging roads, back where Marv had hung all those signs.

  Steve stopped once to look back. The woods around the junkyard were quiet. Everything quiet.

 

  Steve lifted the bike over Marv’s fence and hit the road.

  CHAPTER 49

  The last time Marv saw the glowing alien head was the night Bill shot him in the gut.

  “Come on, man,” Marv said, slipping on all the coins as Bill backed him up into the Interstellar Bank.

  The light of Bill’s Dragnet glasses blinked at the opening in the horseshoe of cars. His gun, black, polymer, was darker than the night.

  “Come o—”

  Marvin heard it behind him, the subtle bending of metal beneath a heavy weight.

  The alien head floated above him, hovering over the cars. Something glowed in its hands, too.

  A phone.

  And because of the Tether, because of the bright LCD, Marvin saw the face behind the alien head. It wasn’t an alien at all, just a boy wearing a glow-in-the-dark shirt.

  “He can’t hear you,” the boy said. He swiped a thumb across his phone, and Bill hiked farther into the Bank, his boots crunching coins. “Well, maybe he can, but what does it matter?”

  “Hey, man,” Marv said, backing away from Bill and the boy. “If you’re looking for parts, or fuel for your mother ship or whatever—”

  “Shut this guy up,” the boy said to Bill, and Marv heard a loud boom.

  For a second he thought, How’d these get in my pocket? Because suddenly there was a weight hanging on him, as if he were transporting another chunk of change to deposit.

  The sensation shifted, and it felt more like he’d swallowed a bunch of change, which he was pretty sure he hadn’t.

  For some reason, Marvin couldn’t stand any longer. He felt weak and there was all that weight. So he fell to the coins, into the smell of copper, like pennies except extremely fresh, extremely sharp.

  It wasn’t pennies he smelled.

  It wasn’t pennies at all.

  Looming behind the boy stood a tall man in a black suit, holding an old black handset to his ear. He was what smelled, not the pennies. This man.

  The boy’s Tether went dark, leaving just the alien head glowering down, its bug-like eyes, its flat mouth.

  Marvin spiraled away from it, down into the smell of pennies and a deep crack threaded with quartz and gold. He cried out for Chuck and knew he was dead when his voice echoed back to him. Only it wasn’t his voice.

  It was Chuck, saying hello.

  * * *

  Steve stared through the binoculars at the McLeans’ craftsman bungalow for five minutes straight.

  A tree had fallen right through the back side of the house. The chicken coop, the poultry netting, and all the chickens themselves had been washed downhill. Mr. McLean’s old truck lay lodged against two jagged stumps.

  Looks pretty washed out, Steve thought, lowering the binoculars. The front door had been ripped from its hinges and most of the windows had shattered. He had to check, though.

  It was one of the things he’d promised himself, to check in on a few people who had been close to him. He’d decided to try the McLeans’ house first because it was close to the Terraformer, it was way out in the woods away from town, and, well—he loved them. Steve grabbed the bike and headed down.

  In what was left of the backyard, where there was nothing left of the gardens, Steve stopped and listened to the bungalow.

  No one here, he thought. Or maybe they’re . . .

  He stopped thinking about it.

  If they were, they were.

  Steve stepped in the house through the back door, which hung open.

  In low spots on the linoleum, oily puddles reflected the window above the kitchen sink. Dishes had fallen out of the cupboards and had shattered all over the counters; shards had been washed into corners.

  The fridge lay on its side. The food in it, whatever hadn’t been washed out, had already spoiled. Steve saw a to-go box in there. Breakfast from Hayworth Diner.

  He checked the pantry and found a bunch of canned food, including fruits and vegetables Mrs. McLean had canned herself. Peaches, corn, green beans. Steve stuffed a bunch of cans in his backpack, plus some cereal, powdered milk, and a few other items not tainted by the flood. Some matches, thank God.

  He wanted to take more. He had room for it. The house certainly seemed abandoned, but if it wasn’t, he’d be robbing an elderly couple of their means to survive. He could always check in on his way back, get more.

  At the kitchen sink, Steve put a clean pot in the basin and turned on the faucet. It spit some water into the pot, but then went dry. He had expected this. Water pumps required electricity to pump water out of wells. Steve didn’t know if he could trust the groundwater anyway, not after the storm. Even if he boiled it, he wouldn’t trust it. Rocky mountains like this lacked thick enough soils to filter out contaminants.

  In the bathroom, he opened the toilet tank. The water in there looked clean, not tainted with stormwater. He dug a few empty water bottles out of his backpack and filled them up from the tank to boil later.

  The medicine cabinet produced some useful pills, including Mr. McLean’s blood pressure medication. A bit high in dosage compared to Steve’s prescription, but he cut a pill in half and swallowed it dry. He took a little handful for later. He didn’t find any antibiotics for his arm.

  The rest of the house didn’t provide anything he couldn’t find at Marvin’s. No guns, nothing.

  Outside, Steve got a closer look at the front of the house. On its way out the door, the flood had deposited a ton of furniture against the jambs. Legs and corners stuck out at all angles.

  Next to the door, someone had spray-painted markings on the siding, an X with numbers and abbreviations crammed into each quadrant.

  Steve remembered this from Hurricane Katrina. Rescue teams would draw these X-codes on structures they’d searched. He’d forgotten what most of the codes meant, but the top one looked like a date: “10/12.”

  Twelfth of October?

  Or October 2012?

  Or something else, Steve thought, trying not to get his hopes up. It was entirely possible the markings signified something else. Not a date, but something more like ten out of twelve.

  Ten out of twelve of what, though?

  Steve did remember one code, the one at the bottom of the X. It was the information he had been most unsettled by at the time of Katrina: the number of bodies.

  On the McLeans’ house, at the bottom of the X, the search and rescue team had written “2 DB.”

  * * *

  A first aid tent, Steve thought, focusing the binoculars. The markings at the McLeans’ had made him wonder, and sure enough. . . .

  Down at Mountain View Church, an entire infrastructure had sprung up in the parking lot. Search teams in
orange vests. Nurses and doctors.

  In the meadow next to the church, a tent city had been pitched. People milled around like blurry ants.

  Or bees, Steve thought. Cold, ambling, aimless ones. Winter bees. From this distance, he couldn’t tell whether they were the type that stung.

  Closer, he thought, lowering the binoculars. That meant hiking down through the woods where he wouldn’t be able to see. He had to, though. One of the tents looked like a Red Cross tent. He needed to be certain. He needed a closer look.

  Maybe from the cemetery, he thought.

  Maybe.

  Steve hid the bike, then picked his way down a bank of rubble into the trees.

  * * *

  Jellyfish dangled and membranes hung in ropes from the boughs. The underbrush had been matted flat. It made the hike down easier, save for a few piles of felled trees, logged with sticks and debris. Steve had to hike around them.

  He crossed one paved road, hardly paved now for all the sloughed-off continents of it. After that was the cemetery. Steve thought if he could sneak out on the rise of the hill, he might be able to spy on the church from the trees—

  What the hell? he thought, stopping.

  The graves.

  Steve took in the entire cemetery, growing angrier and more scared, then he was running the rest of the way to the first hole in the ground. All of them, holes. All of the graves. Some headstones remained, toppled and cracked, but the graves . . .

  Rectangular and deep, these holes hadn’t been dug by the storm. They’d been excavated before, filled now with snotty water, detritus, and fish carcasses. No floating human remains.

  Janice, Steve thought.

  It was Harcum all over again.

  He ran, dodging between holes, leaping over limbs and a smashed porpoise. All his landmarks had been erased. The mausoleums. The granite angels. Even the road looked different. Eroded. Covered in sticks and tree limbs and logs and rock.