by Platt, Sean
She stared at the window, drapes drawn tight, and wondered where Charlie was. Even though she barely got a chance to know him, she found herself missing him more as she poured through his thoughts on the pages.
She fell asleep thinking about him, and how she had to get away from Bob as soon as possible, monsters be damned.
**
October 19
Morning
Pensacola, Florida
She woke in the morning, Bob knocking on her door and barging right in. Confused, she looked up at him, realizing too late that she’d left Charlie’s diary open on the bed. If Bob noticed, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he was looking out her window. She slid the spiral under the blanket seconds before he turned back to her.
“Pack your shit; we’re getting out of here.”
“What?” she asked, surprised.
“I’m not waiting around for those fucking things to come back. I saw two more last night, and I’m thinking we need to find somewhere new to go before more show up.”
“But what about Charlie? What if he comes back? How will he find us?”
“Fuck Charlie,” Bob said. “He made his coffin; let him lie in it.”
“But he’s your stepson; you can’t just leave him out there to die!”
Bob glared at her, “Listen, sister, I didn’t leave him; he left us. He chose to walk out the door. The boy never thinks about anyone but himself. I’m tired of everyone actin’ like I’m the fucking bad guy here and going ‘poor Charlie’ this and ‘poor Charlie’ that. Fuck that shit. His mom is gone. I don’t need to hear that shit from another bitch.”
“Excuse me?” Callie said, now glaring back at him. She no longer cared to play along with his games. Let the cards fall where they may. “What did you say?”
Bob’s eyes met hers, and for a moment, she was certain he’d take a swing at her. But like the bully he was, he shrunk back from a strong response.
Instead, he smiled that bullshit smile that seemed to fool so many people for some reason, allowing him to skate through life getting away with shit no human should get away with. It was some sort of reptilian charm which seemed to work especially well with women. But not her.
“Hey, I wasn’t calling you a bitch, I was just generalizing. Didn’t realize you were so damned sensitive. Shit.”
She stared at him, not saying a word, as she tried to think what to do next. She couldn’t leave, not while Charlie was still out there. She had to find him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’m waiting for Charlie.”
“Hah,” Bob laughed. “You got a thing for the little geek or something?”
“It’s not like that,” she said, annoyed.
“I didn’t think so, seeing as how he’s just a boy. You need a man.”
“Like you?” she said with a sneer before she could bite her tongue.
“You didn’t seem to mind having my manhood in you.”
That was it. She was done playing nice. She got in his face.
“Make no mistakes; you fucking raped me. And if you think I forgot that little fact, think again, you pig fuck.”
Bob’s eyes flashed, anger clouding them, and flushing his face. He was frozen for a second before he swung the back of his hand and hit her square in the jaw. The pain shot through Callie like fire and she fell to the ground.
Fuck, get up.
She rolled over as Bob circled her, “You fucking cunt.”
She spat at him and missed. He kicked her hard in her left ribcage.
“Fuck!” she screamed out.
“Bitch, you ain’t even seen rape yet. That was foreplay,” he said grabbing his cock through his jeans.
He kicked at her again, in the leg, and she balled up, trying to present as small a target as possible until she could get the advantage.
Then he was on her, arms pushing her hands above her head as he used his legs to push hers apart and roll her onto her back.
She screamed out, spitting at his face, this time connecting.
He let go of an arm and smacked her hard across her left cheek. The pain was intense, and she began to feel sick to her stomach like she was going to pass out.
“It’s time I teach you a thing or two, bitch,” Bob spat out as he grabbed at her sweatpants and started to rip at them.
Suddenly another voice in the room spoke.
They turned to the doorway to see two strangers standing there. The older of the two men was holding a baseball bat. And he spoke.
“No, I think it’s you who’ll be doing the learnin’ and luckily for you, Boricio is one fuck of a teacher, Bobby.”
Then a third person entered the room... Charlie.
* * * *
EDWARD KEENAN
Ed woke in handcuffs, for the second time this week.
He was in a chair, arms bound behind him, staring at his reflection in a streaked mirror. The harsh neon lights mocked every line of his nearly 40 years. Behind him was a gray door, reminding Ed of a police “interview” room. Or, to use a more appropriate name, the interrogation room.
They’d caught him, which meant the world hadn’t come to a grinding halt, after all. The powers that be were still in power. And he was still important enough to capture and silence. His head was pounding. The last thing he remembered was staring out the window. And then looking up to see the girls.
Shit.
Jade! Teagan! Ken! Where are they?
He struggled in his chair, but knew that even if he managed to break free, someone would be in the room in seconds. He was being watched. He could feel eyes on the other side of the mirror.
“Where are they?!” he shouted, flaunting his anger. “What did you do with them?!”
No answer.
He closed his eyes and tried to piece together where he might be. But without knowing how long he’d been out or what time it was, he was lost. All he knew was the place had electricity — and interrogation rooms, which meant either a police station, or perhaps one of the agency’s government compounds, one of the secret locales scattered across the country where agents could snatch whoever they wanted, then interrogate, or torture them, if necessary, to extract information. He’d been on the other side of the mirror too many times to count. Hell, he could’ve been in this very room before and not recognize it now.
“You’ve got me. You win. Just tell me where they are and I’ll play nice and go sit in a cell and rot.”
Still no answer.
They were trying to push him. Let his fear mount, so their leverage would be greater when agents eventually came into the room. They were waiting for him to crack, to show signs of weakness they could exploit. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t give in to what they wanted. But they had Jade, Teagan, and Ken. And he was tired of fighting.
He was ready to surrender, to give them whatever they wanted. He considered breaking down and crying, but if they knew him, if they really knew him, they’d know he’d not break that quickly. They’d see it as the ruse it was, and he’d probably be stuck waiting even longer for someone to come.
So he went with reality and stared straight ahead, through the mirror, at whoever stood unseen on the other side.
“I know you’re in there,” he said with a straight face and even, if somewhat tired, tone. “You caught me. Yes, I ran when the plane went down, but I had nothing to do with the crash. Shit, I thought you guys engineered it to take me out, or hell, even extract me to use as deep cover or something. So, I’ve got to ask — what do you want from me? Just tell me and it’s yours. Want me to go along with your little story, make a public plea that I’m crazy as hell, and sure, I’d shoot more people if given a chance? Get a camera and start rolling. Whatever you want, I’ll do it, say it, cop to it, whatever. Just please, let my daughter and the other two kids go.”
He swallowed, still staring at himself. A long time had passed since he saw beyond his appearance in the mirror and was forced to contemplate the man beneath the skin — the fath
er who’d lost so much, if not everything. He closed his eyes to keep self-pity from taking root in his mind.
“Do you have kids?” he asked his invisible captors.
“I’ve gotta tell you, they can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. My wife and I weren’t planning on having any. Well, I wasn’t. And she said she wasn’t, but who knows what goes on in the deepest parts of a woman’s mind? They’re hardwired to want kids. So even when they say they don’t, there’s still some biological part deep inside that says, ‘oh yeah you do.’ Maybe men are hardwired too; I don’t know. I didn’t think I wanted a kid, but when Jade came into our lives, I changed my mind.”
Eyes still closed, Ed continued.
“Funny thing about kids, you have this idea about who you are. What you want in life. What you want to do, be, and all that hubris. Your plans can be cast in concrete, and you can carry an unshakable belief that you were meant to do one thing and one thing only. But the minute your child looks at you in that way, wide-eyed and full of trust and love and all the things you feel you don’t deserve... the minute they look at you like that, you question everything. You begin to think you were meant for something better. To be someone your child can look up to. To make a difference in their world. Some people go their whole lives and never get that message, that call to be something greater than themselves. They never experience that moment. But I did.”
He opened his eyes, looking at the mirror again.
“And I went against it. I chose the agency over what my heart was telling me. I did what you wanted me to do. I ignored that call to be a better person, father, and husband. I kept following your instructions because you all said the world would be better, safer, blah-blah-blah. Take a look outside. Tell me, for all the shit we’ve done, all the lives we’ve taken, all we’ve sacrificed, did it make us any safer? Is the world any better off? Could we prevent whatever the hell happened?”
Ed swallowed hard, glanced at the floor, then returned his gaze to the mirror.
“Was this worth selling your soul?” he asked not just the men behind the mirror, but also himself.
The lights above him flicked off, casting the room into darkness — and a terrible silence.
**
Ed woke with a jolt to the sound of a chair scraping across the floor.
A man in a blue dress shirt, charcoal slacks, and thin wire-frame glassed sat in front of him. He wore short cropped brown hair above the fat cheeks of a baby face, despite otherwise appearing in his mid-thirties.
“Hello,” the man said, his voice low, face professional.
“Who are you?” Ed asked.
“You first,” the man said, pulling a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and offering it to Ed. “Want one?”
“No thank you.”
“Don’t mind if I do?”
“Go ahead,” Ed said.
The man flicked open his lighter and lit a cigarette.
Ed spoke again, “You don’t know who I am?”
“Should I?” the man asked, taking a deep drag on his cigarette.
Ed grinned, “I’d be surprised if you didn’t.”
“Well, prepare to be surprised,” the man said, “Because we don’t.”
“Who’s we?” Ed asked, the man’s smoke spiraling around him. Ed hated cigarette smoke, but didn’t give the man the pleasure of seeing his annoyance.
“You handled yourself pretty well in the parking lot,” the man said, “like you were trained.”
“Maybe because I was.”
“And yet when I ran your face and fingerprints, you didn’t show in our system.”
“Weird,” Ed said, not buying the guy’s bit for a second. Though the guy was obviously trained to counter the tell-tale physical signs of deception, he couldn’t pull the wool over Ed’s instincts.
“So, where’d you learn to use a gun like that?”
“You’d be surprised what you can learn on YouTube,” Ed said, grinning.
His smile wasn’t returned. “What’s this agency you were talking about earlier?”
“Let’s cut the shit, guy. Just tell me what you want from me and I’ll do it. Want me to go on the six o’ clock news and tell everyone I’m a psycho gunman and not at all an agent of the government, fine. I’ll do it. Just, please, I want to see them.”
“Who do you want to see?”
“Jade, Teagan, and the guy, Ken. I assume you picked them up when you grabbed me.”
“Well, we’ve got two of them.”
“What do you mean, two of them?”
“One of them didn’t make it.”
Ed swallowed, not sure if the guy was pushing his buttons. He kept calm. “Who?”
“The man, Ken. He was infected so we had to purge him.”
Ed stared at the guy, trying to gauge his honesty. If he was lying, Ed couldn’t tell. “What do you mean infected?”
“He was bitten. We can’t risk bringing the infection here.”
“So, he’s dead?”
“He would’ve died, anyway. Or become one of them.”
“What are they?” Ed asked.
“You’ve yet to tell me your name.”
“Edward Keenan.”
The man paused for a moment. Ed wasn’t sure if it was deliberate or Ed saying his name had thrown him for some kind of loop. Do they really not know who I am?
“Well, hello, Mr. Edward Keenan. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Sullivan. Now, tell me, Mr. Keenan, what is it that you do?”
“Are you fucking with me? You really don’t know? Who the hell are you that you don’t know who I am? If you were a legal authority worth a damn, you’d know my name, even if you didn’t know who I really worked for. So, if you really don’t know that information, I’m sure as hell not at liberty to tell you.”
Sullivan smiled. “I’m gonna tell you what I think, Mr. Keenan. I think you think you’re something you’re not. Because trust me when I say, if you were anybody worth knowing, I would know who you are and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So, why don’t we start over and tell me who you really are and what it is that you do?”
Ed closed his eyes, then opened them, “I’m not telling you shit until I see my daughter and Teagan. After that, I’ll sing whatever song you like.”
Sullivan stared for a moment. “I can bring you Jade, but Teagan had to be moved elsewhere.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sorry, Mr. Keenan, I’m not at liberty to tell you.”
* * * *
MARY OLSON
October 18
Morning
Belle Springs, Missouri
In the last week, Mary had been forced to face an entire world gone missing, her only child thrown into unimaginable danger, and a lingering imprisonment in a godforsaken Dreary Inn. Yet seeing the brooding despair colonizing the children’s faces on the other side of the bar was an altogether different sort of torture.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said in her best sitcom mom voice. “Desmond will have a plan in a few minutes. Then we’ll either be on our way, or camping out here for another day. Either way, we’re safe. I promise.” She dropped a maraschino cherry and straw into each of the two Shirley Temples, then slid them across the bar to Paola and Luca.
“How do you know everything will be okay, mom?” Paola said.
“I just do,” Mary answered, even though she didn’t.
“Outside,” Luca said, “it’s more of the terrible scary.”
Paola and Mary traded a glance. It was weird seeing the boy aged. Weirder still, when he still used language like an eight year old, rather than the young teen he appeared to be.
Paola said, “What’s the terrible scary?”
“The black stuff that wasn’t there before the bad stuff happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you ever get sad spiders?” Luca asked Mary.
She couldn’t help but smile. “Sure, I think everyone probably ge
ts sad spiders sometimes.”
“Well, the terrible scary is filled with sad spiders. I think it might even make them. And the terrible scary gets bigger and bigger until it’s everywhere, so if the terrible scary outside is like the terrible scary I saw on the way to the lobster tacos, we have to go right now.”
Paola said, “What happens if we don’t?”
“I don’t know,” Luca said, shaking his head, “but I think we might become part of the terrible scary too.”
A cold chill flooded Mary’s back. She poured herself a glass of water, wishing it were something harder, and drank it all in one gulp, then said, “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” Paola looked at her mom, quietly pleading, don’t leave!
Mary answered with apologetic eyes, but said, “I’ll be quick. I have to talk with Will and Desmond. We have to sort this out. Need a refill before I go?”
Paola nodded. Mary topped off her daughter’s drink with a quick squirt and two more cherries.
“You?” she turned to Luca.
“I’m good.”
Mary smiled, then left the bar. A minute later, she was between Will and Desmond, arms crossed, demanding answers.
“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head at Desmond. “You’ve been five steps ahead since this all started. We need you right now. What’s our plan? If we have to stay then we have to stay. But we can’t just stay because we’re not going.”
Mary felt herself teetering at the edge of hysteria.
“It’s okay,” Desmond said. “I’m sorry I’m indecisive, but I honestly don’t know what to do and am having a hard time sorting through my thoughts. I usually listen to instinct, but right now, I don’t know what else to say other than my Spidey sense is tingling, and the solutions aren’t showing themselves to me like they usually do.”
He found her eyes. “What do you think we should do, Mary?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, and I really don’t care. I just want to do something and I want to know what that something is. I don’t want to be scared; I’m sick of it. Impossible starts the second you let fear get bigger than faith.”