Aaron reached out, and Steve stepped closer with the phone, glad she was taking his offering and making this whole thing easier on him, because right now it was killing him, this terrible decision he had to make.
Aaron’s fingers latched onto his arm instead.
“Mr. Gregory, please, you can’t. I hear them at night.”
“They’ve already been here,” Steve said, trying to pull away from her. “They searched the entire house. Stay inside and you should be sa—”
“They’ll find me and kill me, or take me away, and I won’t be able to find my way back, I’ll be in that dark place, and I can’t go back there, Mr. Gregory, I can’t.”
“Aaron,” Steve said. Her thumb had started to dig at the edges of his bandage. A penny of pus and blood had soaked through from the pressure.
She dropped his arm. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
Gritting his teeth, Steve straightened out the bandage. “It’s all right.” That pus, though. He desperately needed antibiotics. It’ll have to wait.
Already the sun was cutting west, casting the summit’s toothed shadow over Burnt Valley and Cracked Rock. More than anything, Steve needed to get back to Mars. He needed to change this bandage and make sure Sarah ate.
Aaron lifted the pot in the sink, then let it thump back into the basin. She turned the dry faucet on and off, then just left it on. “If that’s what you want.”
She wasn’t able to meet his eyes. It was a small mercy for Steve. Not big enough.
Aaron reached out to take Steve’s phone. “I’ll stay.”
Her voice was steady, but her hand was not. Her delicate, bony hand, as small and cold as his daughter’s.
Aaron would always be his student.
“Come on,” Steve said and took her hand.
* * *
The crates and tackle boxes remained stacked in front of the Shack of Silence where Steve had left them.
“In there?” Aaron asked as Steve moved the crates.
He nodded. “It’s small but it’s safe. Marv, he called it his, uh, Dead Spot. Something like that. I think all the, uh, all the junk is supposed to block their signal?”
“Oh,” Aaron said.
“Dad?”
From inside the shed.
Steve opened the doors, and Sarah, huddled around her handcuffs against the back wall, winced at the setting sun. She looked pale, gaunt. Dark circles hung around her eyes. She wasn’t trembling and sweating as much, which was good. Her face no longer looked tight like Mrs. Hayworth’s.
That had been wild, seeing his old teacher but not recognizing her.
One of the twelve, Steve thought.
He stepped over some blankets to the conspiracy web, remembering something. He had been thinking about it the whole way back. Why twelve? Why twelve of those special tents? The number sounded significant to him, and Steve was just now putting it together.
The web would help.
In the shed, it stank of body odor and mold.
“Oh my God,” Aaron said, backing away. “You’re crazy, you’re—”
“What?” Steve said, coming back.
Aaron shook a finger at him, as if she thought it could shoot like a gun. “Why do you have a girl tied up in your shed, huh, Steve?”
Ah. So he was no longer Mr. Gregory.
He hung his head. Steve realized now what this must look like to an outsider.
Girl tied up in a shed, shaved. Crazy web of string and photographs spun across the entire back wall, all related to The Phone Company. Yes, my sweet. Welcome, right into my web.
“Aaron—”
“Get away from me!” she shrieked.
Steve stopped.
“You’re The Phone Com—”
“No, he’s not!” Sarah shouted. “I attacked him! I wasn’t thinking clearly, and he burned me—I mean my phone! He saved me! Probably saved you, too.”
Aaron stopped backing away, but still looked like a deer, those trembling legs.
Once Steve was certain she wouldn’t leave, he stepped back into the shed.
“It’s up to you, Aaron. It’s not much, but if we all lie lengthwise . . .” Steve kicked some blankets into place and looked up. “I think we’ll fit.”
Aaron and Sarah stared at each other.
Aaron had calmed down somewhat.
“You were tethered too,” Sarah said. “Huh.”
“Yeah,” Aaron finally said.
“What happened? To your phone?”
“I don’t know. It broke.”
Sarah seemed to think about that for a second. “Does it ever go away?”
“What?” Steve asked. “Does what go away?”
“I can still hear it. Ringing,” Aaron said.
“Yeah.”
“Sometimes only a buzz. Then sometimes right in my ear.”
“Me too,” Sarah said.
Steve’s eyes flicked from one girl to the other. Yet again, he was on the outside looking in. Aaron and Sarah shared some bond he would never understand because he’d never connected. They had a secret language, a shorthand, a text speak for the mind.
“I think you’ve just got to hang up,” Sarah said. “At least for me.”
“Yeah.”
The girls fell silent then, but they stared at each other, almost in awe of each other, the way the last bit of light hit Aaron’s hair, the way Sarah’s eyes caught its rays so that the iris itself appeared to glow.
Steve cleared his throat and finished arranging the bedding. He stepped back to the wall, to the web. That was the last thing Aaron really seemed uncertain of.
“I think Marvin was on to something,” Steve explained.
Aaron nodded, and that seemed to be the end of it.
She would stay.
* * *
When dark fell, Steve started up the barbecue to boil water and heat up lentil soup. He thought about what he’d discovered in Bill and Marvin’s web.
The Top Twelve.
That was the phrase he remembered. It had become a buzzword there for a while in town.
The X-code on the McLeans’ bungalow had sparked the memory. The code at the top, 10/12.
Ten out of the Top Twelve they’d found? Not in that one house, but maybe in their whole search of Cracked Rock? Like some kind of running tally.
In the web, just like Steve remembered, Bill had pinned up pictures. A couple dozen suspects Bill had been trying to narrow down to twelve. A lot of them were descendants of the town founders, some of the same people who had opened the gates of Harcum Cemetery for PCo.
Among them, Mrs. Hayworth smiled, a picture Bill hadn’t x-ed out. There were two others, too, that kept Steve brooding well after he’d stepped away from the web.
Aaron came over and dropped an armful of wood scraps in a wide, clear area amid the junk.
“What’re you doing?” Steve said from the barbecue.
“Fire.”
“No way. The light.”
She stared at him. “But I’m cold.”
No doubt. Her dress, dirty and ripped, tickled just above her skinned knee.
“Marvin had some thicker flannels,” Steve said. “In the Airstream. You could take the flashlight, go get one.”
Aaron looked over at the dark hulks of Cydonia and shivered. “Come with?”
“Uh . . .” Steve stirred the beans.
“Dad?” Sarah called from the Shack of Silence, just a huddled, dark shape in the shed.
“Be right there,” Steve called back.
“Mr. Gregory, please?” It was like Aaron was asking permission for the bathroom pass.
On the grill, the toilet water came to a rolling boil. Steve set the pot on a small TV tray he’d found in the junk, then checked the lentils. “Someone has to stay with the soup.”
“I can stir. Move.” Aaron took the spoon from him and nudged him aside. “Ooo,” she said, warming her hands over the briquettes.
“Fine,” Steve said. “Let me just . . .”
He walked over to the SoS and shined the light inside. “I’m going to the trailers. Aaron’s cold.”
“’Kay,” Sarah said.
“Need anything?”
“Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Will you please let me go?”
Steve leaned in the doorway, lingering with the light on Sarah’s face before lowering it to the blanket puddled around her knees.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “We’ll talk about it.”
“Okay.”
He started to leave.
“Dad?” Sarah said.
“Yeah? What’s up?”
“You found Aaron. We’ll find JJ, too.”
Steve nodded.
He wanted to believe it.
On his way to the trailers, Steve thought about the other pictures he’d seen on the board. Sarah’s had never been x-ed out. Hadn’t Bill said she was Top Twelve?
He couldn’t remember.
She really did seem to be getting better. With their situation changing, maybe Sarah would be better off if she could run or fight.
Marvin’s Airstream reeked of the food rotting in the fridge. Steve went to the bedroom, to the closet. Clothes spewed out from boxes and sacks. Coats crowded each other’s hangers off the rack. Steve grabbed one of the puffy flannels, but stopped when the back door swung shut.
He listened.
A low whisper.
A whistle, then a howl.
Steve walked out and splashed the door with his light. The wind sucked it open and clapped it shut again.
That door had been shut.
Locked, even.
Steve had secured it himself.
He caught the door before it could slam again and shined his light out. Nothing but woods behind the trailer. Here and there, a random piece of junk rusted among the trees. A thresher. An old plow.
He shut the door and threw the lock. Steve pushed against it to make sure it couldn’t open by itself.
On his way back to the shed, he swept the Terraformer with his flashlight, throwing huge shadows. The junkyard really was a terrible place. So many heaps of things, so many places to hide.
By the time he returned to the Dead Zone, Aaron no longer stood at the barbecue.
“Aaron?” he shouted, running toward the shed.
“In here!”
Aaron had already emptied the lentil soup into bowls, and she was feeding Sarah. “Yours is on the bed.”
“Thanks,” Steve said, handing her the flannel. “Hey, did you open the back door to the Airstream?”
“I don’t think so. I did go in there earlier. To get newspaper. Open up, sweetie.”
Sarah did, and took another bite from the spoon. “Mmm,” she said, closing her eyes.
Steve propped up a metal chair outside the shed. He kept watch while he ate, thinking about that door.
“Mmm,” he said, finally realizing. “Damn good soup.”
“Thank you,” Aaron said.
Steve chased it with a drink of water, which was still pretty warm and boiled bland, but refreshing enough.
“That dress,” Sarah said, when Steve’s flashlight played over Aaron. “It’s like one of my mom’s.”
Aaron smoothed out the hems. “Bill always liked this one. Blondes too,” she said, lifting a lock of hair. Aaron scooped up more lentils, but Sarah frowned at the spoon.
“No, thanks.”
“You’re sure?” Aaron said.
“Yeah. I can’t hold much down. You can have it if you want.”
Aaron happily dug into the soup, oblivious. Steve had seen what had happened, the change that had come over Sarah’s face. Bill. They were both still messed up about Bill.
Steve really didn’t feel like eating either, but he needed to keep his fuel up, so he did. For the next few minutes, only the sound of spoons clinking against bowls filled the makeshift campground. Marvin would have been proud.
After a few more gulps of water, Steve sat back and burped. The girls laughed. Steve kind of did, too. Staring at Aaron’s little pile of wood, he really did wish they could build a fire.
As the girls were getting ready for bed, Sarah slid her handcuffs up the wall support. “Hey, Dad?”
“Oh, Sarah, I totally forgot.”
“It’s okay.”
“Why didn’t you remind me?”
“We all got sidetracked, it’s okay. You’ve got so much on your mind. It’s just . . . they’re starting to hurt.”
“Yeah, of course.” Steve leaned over with the key, and as the cuffs fell away, Sarah whimpered and sighed, curling over to cradle her hands.
“I’ve got some ointment,” Steve said, reaching for the backpack.
“I’m closer,” Aaron said. She got the tube from the pack and helped massage the antibiotic cream into Sarah’s abrasions. “Next we’ll change your bandage,” Aaron told Steve. “Maybe put some of this ointment around the wound.”
“No, I can do it.”
She smiled, gently rubbing both of Sarah’s tiny wrists. “Please?”
“Okay,” Steve said.
While he waited, he found himself returning to the conspiracy web. It had been gnawing at him this entire time, something he’d seen but wanted to unsee.
What had Sarah said? We’ll find him? She had been right. There was JJ, a picture of him anyway, smiling back at Steve from The Provider’s Top Twelve.
CHAPTER 52
Steve licked the paper and rolled the cigarette shut, but didn’t strike the match.
He’d found the tobacco in Marv’s trailer and had debated whether or not to take it. It had been the aroma of the fresh tobacco, so much like raisins, that convinced him. Steve had never forgotten that, the smell.
It took him back to better times. Bar night with Bill. The afterglow with Janice. The scent alone sparked a craving inside him, and not just for cigarettes. More than anything, Steve was addicted to the past.
Covenant, he thought, turning the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, enjoying the crinkle of tobacco against thin paper. He held up the match and twirled it in the opposite direction.
He’d thought a lot about mental addiction, about how, in large part, we get hooked on ritual. People love repetition. Petting a dog, prayer, singing the same song over and over, reading the paper or checking your phone—even exercise or the rake of cigarette smoke on the back of the throat, repetition is soothing, especially in alleviating anxiety. And, oh boy, Steve had anxiety.
The shed creaked open behind him.
Steve’s hand went to the lead pipe leaning against his fold-up chair. “Sarah?”
Aaron winced and eased the door shut behind her. “Sorry.” She was wearing nothing but Marv’s musty flannel and the white slip of her dress. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She had both her hands tucked into the sleeves.
Steve’s hand relaxed on the bar. “Is Sarah—”
“Like an angel.” Aaron cozied into the fold-up chair next to him. “These are nice.”
“I pulled them from the junk,” Steve said. Aaron’s seat was held together with fraying duct tape and hope.
“Can I bum one?” she asked.
Steve passed her the cigarette. “Didn’t know you smoked.”
“Socially, sometimes. I’ve never seen you do it.”
“I don’t, really. I mean, I used to. But I made a promise.” He struck the match and lit the cigarette for her.
Aaron took a few puffs, then a long draw. She offered the glowing cigarette back, letting smoke curl into the air between them. “I dare you,” she said, holding her breath.
“Too late.” Steve waved the cigarette away. Now that it was lit, he remembered why he hated it.
“Who’d you break it to?” Aaron asked.
Steve peered into the sky. Stars sprayed out above them, bright in the absence of man-made light. He saw something, a speck no bigger than a distant star, except it move
d.
Satellite.
He looked to the ground, kicked at a bolt. “Doesn’t matter.”
They sat in silence after that, and Steve found the sound of Aaron smoking (her lips coming off the wet end, her quick breath, in and out) oddly soothing. It reminded him of Janice.
It reminded him, too, of Janice’s oxygen mask, which had also sounded like someone smoking, a wet, desperate, mechanical sound filling her hospital room.
“Marv was pretty crazy about them, huh,” Aaron said, staring at the blinking eye of the cell tower. “The Phone Company.”
“Yeah.”
“You think he was right?”
Steve traced the sky for constellations, the icons and legends of the stars. “Don’t know. I’ve studied his little web in there. It’s all pretty crazy. But it’s starting to make sense.”
Ah, there was one: Cancer, of course.
It’s all connected.
“I’ve seen them turn people into monsters,” Steve said. “They can make it rain fish. I have to operate now as if anything’s possible.” Anything, he thought, looking for more satellites.
Aaron blew out smoke and gazed into the stars as well. “I remember now. Bits and pieces. I had this app, The Hubble. It was on my glasses. I could zoom in on any galaxy I wanted to.”
“Huh,” Steve said. He watched her as she talked. He’d been cocking his ear to the radio in the moving van this same way, trying to determine the movements of his enemy. Any intel, any scrap of data he could mine, would only serve him.
Besides, he genuinely wanted to know the psychology of being connected. What was it really like inside the head of The Provider’s Top Twelve?
He wanted to know, if only to help them, if only to help his neighbors, students, co-workers, and everyone else just hang the fuck up, cut the cord, smash the phone, scatter the pieces in five different fires.
Aaron took a pull on her cigarette. “I could zoom in on any planet. Like, way in. There was this diamond planet. I watched it melt as its star kind of . . . I can’t remember if it went nova or what this star did, but it was beautiful, Steve.”
“I bet.”
“And since it had all happened in the past, you know, like, how the starlight we see could be from stars that are already dead? But they’d captured it all, you know, on the Tether, so you could fast-forward and rewind. Time-lapse, I guess.”
The Phone Company Page 49