Welcome to the Greenhouse

by Gordon Van Gelder

  Des misinterpreted his silence. “Impressive, isn’t it? Our glory days are ahead.”

  Bear rubbed his mouth. “I’m a railroad engineer, Des. I know nothing about aeronautics. Never mind airship technology. Or nuclear weapons.”

  “A machine is a machine. You’ll figure it out.”

  Des took Bear to his place, where Gloria made him a late dinner. They served a meal the likes of which he had not had in years: bread with real butter, roast chicken, yams, and asparagus, with a glass of ‘82 Merlot.

  “Impressive provisions,” he remarked. Des beamed. “Yes. The colonel has his connections.”

  “I’ll get the cheesecake,” Gloria said, laying her napkin on the chair. She shared a look with Bear that told him a great deal about Des, Gloria, and the choices they had made.

  Des swirled his wine in his glass. “Too bad you didn’t find us earlier, Bear. Maybe they could have treated Orla’s cancer.”

  Really, he shouldn’t have mentioned Orla. “You never much cared for her, did you, though?” Bear asked.

  “Aw, Bear. That’s water under the bridge.”

  But something about deciding he was ready to die made all this a lot easier for Bear. The church held no more power over him. And he found he had a lot of things to say. “I seem to recall you hated her for her defiance of the church.”

  Des’s face grew stiff. “It was not for me to judge her. That’s God’s job.”

  A knock came at the door. Gloria answered, looking anxious. An enlisted man stood there. “The colonel wants to talk to Mr. Jessen.”

  Bear shook his head. “You still spin such amazing bullshit out of your own hot air.”

  Des’s lips went thin. He stood and threw his napkin on his chair. “You want to know what I think? God punished your wife for her defiance. It’s too late for her. But you have a chance to repent. Jesus welcomes you with open arms. Come to me when you are ready.”

  “I don’t think so.” Bear stood. Orla, he shouldn’t have implied that, about your cancer being God’s punishment. At the door, he turned. “I’m done with your God and I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other.”

  The airman took Bear to a room at the command barracks, where Colonel O’Neal and his second-in-command waited. Two armed men stood outside the door. They made him sit in the room’s only chair.

  “Now it’s time for you to tell us what happened to my men out on Highway 93,” the colonel said.

  What the hell, Bear thought. “All right. I killed your men myself. I’d do it again if I had the chance. They were about to slaughter a group of innocent children.”

  They stared at him as if he had grown two heads. The colonel said, “I didn’t think we’d have it out of you so quickly.”

  Bear shrugged. Death by firing squad seemed an okay way to go. Death by torture, not so much.

  “They weren’t necessarily going to kill them,” the colonel said. “We need strong arms and backs for our war effort. Of course I give my troops broad discretion. We have an agreement with the Canadians. We help protect their borders and they give us any refugees who make it across.”

  “Ironic, that, since you are using those refugees to build ammunition to attack the Canadians.”

  The colonel looked at him thoughtfully. “Yes.” He paced for a moment. The major stood by the door, silent. “Ordinarily I would have you executed, Mr. Jessen. But we are in sore need of engineers. So Major Stedtler and I”—he gestured at the other officer—“have decided to give you a reprieve. If we can count on your cooperation, we will keep the children you traveled with here, and not send them off to the factory.”

  Hostages, Bear thought. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “I’m a man of my word, Mr. Jessen.”

  The hell you are. “What about Patty?” “

  No, you can’t have Patricia. I have other plans for her.”

  At that, Bear caught a fleeting shadow in the major’s eyes. Disgust? Anger? Or envy?

  “I want to see the children now.”

  The colonel studied Bear. “All right. Fair enough. But I have my limits. For every stunt you pull, one of your kids gets a bullet. Clear?”

  “As crystal.”

  Bear might be old. He might not be as massive as he once was, and his joints in the morning were stiff. But he was still plenty big and plenty strong. And he wasn’t afraid of dying anymore. He surged at the colonel and picked him up by the neck. His hand encircled the colonel’s neck as easily as a normal-sized adult’s hand might encircle a child’s. He plucked the gun from the colonel’s holster with his other hand. To Bear’s joy, it turned out to be his own Colt.45.

  The colonel flailed in his grip, pinned with his back against Bear’s massive chest. Bear put the colonel between himself and the major and eased his grip on the colonel’s throat, just enough to let air through. As he did so, the two armed men burst in and aimed their weapons at him. Colonel O’Neal made wheezing noises but couldn’t speak. Bear said, “Drop your guns on the floor. Kick them over to me. Then lie on the floor with your hands on your heads”

  The men did so. The major said, “You’ll never make it out of here.”

  “You let me worry about that part,” Bear said.

  He got the information he needed from the major, and left him trussed up and gagged in the interrogation room, secured to a pipe. Each of the colonel’s two guards he left in their own little rooms, also securely tied and gagged. He wasn’t a big fan of shooting people out of turn, but couldn’t have them alerting the camp. He tied and gagged the colonel, too, and carried him out over his shoulder, like a sack of grain. He crossed the camp in darkness to the building Des had pointed out to him as the colonel’s quarters. He knocked several times before Patty’s face appeared at the window.

  Her eyes widened. She gestured and shouted. He could barely hear her.

  “It’s locked! I can’t get out!” So Bear kicked the door in.

  He came inside and dumped the colonel on the carpet. The room was dark other than the light streaming in through the door. Patty gazed at the colonel with contempt. She was wearing a flimsy nightgown. She gave him a good, hard kick in the testicles. Colonel O’Neal curled up with a moan.

  “Let me get dressed,” she said.

  “Hurry.”

  When she came back in, she was wearing her clothes from before, Orla’s jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt, and was tying her long hair into a bun. “What are we going to do with him?” she asked, gesturing at the colonel.

  Bear hadn’t wanted to kill the colonel. But after seeing Patty in the nightgown, he had changed his mind. He raised his gun but Patty put her hand on the barrel. “No. We may need him.” She pulled Bear out of the colonel’s earshot. “We can rescue the children and steal a vehicle.”

  “And I know exactly which vehicle to steal,” Bear said, thinking of the airship. “Do you know where the kids are?”

  “I do. They are in a big building,” Patty said. “A room with benches where people watch sports. What do you call it?”

  “A gymnasium?” Bear asked.

  “Yes. A gymnasium.” She pronounced it hymn-nauseum. “All right, then. We’re getting out of here. We’re headed to Hoku Pa’a.”

  Amusement glinted in her gaze. “I thought you didn’t believe in Hoku Pa’a.”

  “If it doesn’t exist yet, it will when we get there.”

  She smiled.

  The best-guarded place in camp was the hangar with the nuke-encrusted blimp. He glanced at his watch. It was midnight. They needed to be out of here before dawn and there was too much to do before then. He looked at Patty, so fierce a woman, so tiny—barely more than a child herself. He grimaced. Dammit, Orla; she’s given me something to care about. He handed her an automatic weapon. “Can you rescue the children on your own?”

  “I can.”

  “You sure? It’s important, Patty. Don’t say yes if you don’t mean it.”

  “I saw only two guards guarding the gymnas
ium as we passed by, and they were both drunk.” She glowered. “You have to trust me, Bear. I know what I am doing.”

  “All right. I’m going to need time to rig a diversion. It’ll take most of the night.” He took her to the kitchen, and gestured at Des and Gloria’s place. A light shone in their window. “I want you to take the kids there.” He pointed. “Hide the kids. Take Desmond—the man— hostage. Tell him you need to talk to his wife. When she comes out, you bring out the kids out. Her name’s Gloria. You tell her Bear said they needed a good meal and a decent night’s sleep. She’ll make sure they are taken care of.

  “But you have to watch Des, the pastor. The man. You understand? He’s afraid of him “—he gestured at O’Neal, who glared at them from the carpeting—“and he’ll turn you in or raise the alarm, if he gets a chance. Also, don’t let Desmond get Gloria alone, or he will bully her into doing what he wants. Got that?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “At six AM, bring the children and meet me near the airship hangar. You can’t miss it—it’s the giant building at the base of the hills. That way.” He pointed out the window, at the black hills that blotted out the starlight to the southeast. “Don’t be late.”

  Two guards were at the munitions shack. They were both asleep when he found them, and stank of booze. He took their flashlights and other equipment, tied them up with electrical cord, and left them a safe distance from the shed. In the munitions shack he found everything he needed. Bear might not know nukes, but as a former railroad man, he knew explosives. He spent the next several hours prepping charges and setting up a radio detonator.

  Then Bear went back for O’Neal. The warlord (Bear refused to think of him as true military) had managed to worm his way from the middle of his living room carpet to the kitchen and was on his knees by the kitchen counter… presumably trying to get a knife out of the drawer. Bear slung him over his shoulder and headed out toward the blimp hangar. It was almost six AM.

  The sky was still dark as pitch. Patty was waiting for him, and so were the rest of the kids. The children swarmed around Bear and greeted him. They were all there, miraculously, in one piece, along with a few other people Bear didn’t recognize. “They needed help too,” Patty said.

  Bear dumped O’Neal on the ground and cut the bonds on his ankles. He ungagged him. O’Neal spat, and gazed at Bear with the requisite fear and loathing.

  “Don’t much like being on the receiving end, do you, son?” Bear asked.

  “There’s no way you can escape.”

  Bear put his Colt under the man’s chin, finger on the trigger. “You’re only alive because she “—he gestured in Patty’s direction— “reminded me you might be useful. Mind your manners.”

  Patty edged over. “What now?” she asked in a low voice. “Fireworks,” Bear said. “Make sure the kids are behind the dumpsters.”

  Patty did so, and gave him the OK signal. He blew the munitions dump. The response was gratifying. It made a very big boom. Everyone in the entire camp, it seemed like, went running to help put out the fire.

  “Follow me,” Bear told Patty. “Bring the kids.” He carried O’Neal over and set the man down between himself and the soldier standing guard at the hangar door.

  “Don’t make me hurt you, son,” Bear said. The soldier stood there for a moment staring first at the gun and then up at Bear. Then he threw down his own weapon and ran.

  And so did they all run—Bear and Patty and Vanessa and Tommy, and Nabil and Margaritte and Phyllis and Angelique and Jonah and Katie and Earl and Janette and Frankie and George and Bill and Jess, and Teresa and Mimi and Sandra and Lin—except of course, the three littlest ones, Penelope and Paul and Latoya, who were carried— for the blimp.

  O’Neal’s second-in-command, Stedtler, stepped out from behind the airship as they neared it. He had with him a handful of large, well-armed men. He gestured at the rafters, where more soldiers crouched, aiming weapons at them. Desmond stood there, too, hands clasped before him and a grim, worried look on his face. Bear realized Des must have found and freed the major.

  Des, Bear thought, sad. At least you could have stayed home.

  “I should have shot you when I had the chance,” Bear told Stedtler, who gave him a gallows grin. Bear looked around for Patty. She and the children had all moved to a spot between the containers and the airship cabin, mostly out of range of snipers. Bear put his weapon against the joint of O’Neal’s jaw. “Tell your men to put down their weapons.”

  Stedtler stared hard at O’Neal. “Do it,” O’Neal said. Stedtler gestured to his men and they lowered their guns. Bear waved Patty and the children into the airship cabin.

  “I want all the weapons on the floor,” Bear said. None complied. By now the last of the refugees were scrambling up the ramp. Bear did a quick calculation, and started edging toward the ramp himself. The soldiers began raising their weapons’ points again. Bear stopped moving. He felt the ramp’s rim against his right heel.

  O’Neal tried to look over his shoulder at Bear. “We can’t let you take our nukes.”

  “Nobody needs nukes,” Bear replied. He kept his grip around O’Neal’s chest as firmly as he could, but it had been a long night without sleep, and weariness was creeping in around the edges.

  “Give up this foolishness,” Des said. “Be a patriot, Bear. Let go of the colonel and I can guarantee you no one will be hurt.”

  Bear gave his old friend an incredulous look. Did he really believe that? “The U.S. is gone, Des. Long gone. These men are nothing but bullies and warlords, who use fairy tales to get people to listen to their ravings. The last thing our Canuck neighbors need is crazy people like O’Neal dropping nuclear weapons on their heads.”

  O’Neal gave a sudden lurch while Bear was talking and managed to break Bear’s grip. The two men wrestled for Bear’s Colt. Bear tripped on the edge of the ramp and went down on his tailbone. O’Neal pointed the gun at him, but a shot struck him in the forehead and he fell backward, looking surprised. Bear’s Colt skittered across the hangar floor. Bear bade it goodbye. Bullets started to fly—he scrambled up the ramp with hands and feet.

  Patty dragged him into the blimp and hit the switch to close the cabin door. He lay down. “You shot the colonel, didn’t you?” he asked. “Good work.”

  She was pressing her hands against his diaphragm. Blood was leaking out of him from somewhere and he realized he was going into shock. “He’s been hit,” Patty said to someone Bear couldn’t see, as she faded away.

  Damn shame, Bear thought. Just when I’d about decided to live.

  Orla came to him in a dream. There was nothing consequential— nothing he remembered later. Just that she was standing with him, smiling. Somehow their love outlived her, and he thought it might even outlive him as well, as something he passed along to Patty and the little ones. It pleased him to think so, anyway.

  He woke up in the airship infirmary. A woman there identified herself as Dr. Maribeth Zedrosky. “You missed a bit of excitement,” she said, fiddling with his bandages.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Four days, just about.” He gaped. It didn’t seem possible.

  “How do you feel?”

  He felt like a crap sandwich with a side of crap. “I’ll live.” He sat up with a grunt. His midriff and neck were swathed in bandages, and his calf was in a cast.

  “What happened?”

  “You were shot. Three times. We had to operate to remove a bullet in your lung. Another struck your ankle, fracturing it, and a third one grazed your carotid. Luckily for you, we are well stocked with medical supplies. This airship was designed to be a field hospital, among other things.”

  “No. I mean, what happened to my friends? Are we safe? Did we escape O’Neal and his crew?”

  The woman gave him a big smile. “We are safe.”

  He blinked. He felt groggy and couldn’t think clearly. “How?”

  “Once your young friend Patty dragged you inside and
sealed the cabin, O’Neal’s men tried to scale the blimp and steal the warheads. We blew a hole in the hangar door and floated away on a breeze.”

  “You’re not with them, I take it,” he said. The warlords, he meant.

  She made a rude noise. “Not by a long shot. They’ve held five of us here for months. They’ve been forcing us to work on the airship. When we didn’t cooperate, they would start killing the other prisoners. Right now,” she said, “we are about three miles up, heading northwest toward the Arctic Ocean. We’re nearly there. You should come see.”

  She helped Bear along the corridor and down a spiral stair to a lounge that hung at the bottom of the airship, below the pilot’s bridge.

  The lounge was big enough for a whole platoon, Bear thought. Near the rear were the tables and the mess. Some of the children were there. Three adults Bear did not know were teaching some of the older children how to play cards. The little ones were tottering around in makeshift diapers. Near the front sat Patty on the floor, legs curled under her, looking at maps and out at the terrain. She wore a worried look and looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the front and sides of the lounge.

  Beyond the glass, the air was a dark, intense blue strung with piles of cumulus. The early spring sun shone behind them, casting their shadow ahead of them onto a nearby cloud. Far below lay a swatch of brilliant green. Livestock and herds of wild caribou dotted the landscape, and rivers snaked through sodden marshes that had once been tundra. The sun shone over across the Arctic Sea to the north. Islands jutted up from the sea, and their peaks cast long shadows across the choppy water.

  When Patty spotted Bear, she gave a happy shriek, bounced over the couch, and hugged him. It sent shooting pains down his side and he groaned.

  “I’m so sorry!” she said, and released him.

  The children came up too, nine or ten of them. They jumped up and down and all wanted a hug.