Despite two deaths at their hands, no one much seems to consider the Sickers a threat anymore. Dallas and Cooper died, the reasoning goes, because they got stupid. Their deaths have served to make everyone a little more vigilant, and that’s all well and good. Thanks to them, the problem has essentially solved itself.
Doyle believes differently. From his perspective, there are two possibilities: you regard the Sickers as still being people, in which case they’re dangerous; or else they are something different, something worse, and then they’re both dangerous and unquantified. So he keeps to his tower and looks out and wonders what might be occurring beyond that distant line of timber.
Or so he tells himself. Today, at any rate, Doyle has hardly been seeing anything. Had Sickers advanced in droves upon the walls, he could easily have missed the spectacle. Instead, he’s been thinking: about Silensky, about Carlita, about what Aaronovich said to him, what Plan John may be up to – the entire damned mess. And now it’s too dark to see, and a day’s thinking has got him nowhere.
He hears a sound, shockingly loud amid the silence, and it takes Doyle a moment to realize it’s merely the rattle of a throat being cleared. When he looks down, Ben Silensky is just an outline in the darkness. Doyle hadn’t noticed his approach. They’re all getting pretty good at navigating the yard without light; funny how quickly the mind adapts, how eagerly it slews off the habits of civilization. Or maybe, Doyle thinks, not remotely funny.
“Thought I might find you here,” Silensky calls up.
“Keep your voice down,” Doyle hisses. He descends the tower stairs, resisting the urge to lock the door behind him out of habit.
“Sorry,” Silensky says once they’re beside each other. He’s lowered his voice to a whisper. Doyle can make out his features: the thin, down-turned mouth, the sleepy-lidded eyes perpetually on the verge of squinting, his whole face posed for an inquiry that never quite comes.
The only lights are the ones above the doors of the cellblock and the Big House. One of the more surprising things they salvaged early on was a wind turbine, which Nguyen has rigged in the grounds of the farm and managed to cable into White Cliff’s existing grid. It’s taken some strain off the gas generator, but not enough, and electric lighting has rapidly become yet another resource to ration. Nonetheless, Plan John has prohibited absolute darkness as well, perhaps wary of what it might breed.
That caution, however, does not extend to the administrative wing. It can be recognized solely by its absence, as a solid rectangle of blackness. Doyle leads the way toward it.
“So?” Silensky says, his voice still muted.
“So, what?”
“So, we’re on? I can see her?”
Doyle feels no need to reply. Their direction should be sufficient answer. A query of his own has been eating at him all day, and though he doesn’t expect Silensky to tell him the truth, he asks anyway. “Before, you said you thought something might be going down. Were you talking about Foster?”
“That was a dumb thing to say.” Silensky sounds uncomfortable.
“Because it was true?”
“Because I don’t know anything. Foster was just talking, the way he does. He was talking and I was worrying about Carlita and I got spooked.”
“So you don’t think something’s happening?”
“Jesus, Johnson, how would I know? I’m not anyone.”
“Keep your voice down,” Doyle reminds him.
You’re scared, he decides. More than you were a few hours ago. Some encounter has rattled Silensky, rattled him badly. If it wasn’t Foster then it’s Plan John. Doyle nearly says, You’re someone enough to be Plan John’s bodyguard of choice, for that’s the role it was decreed Silensky should occupy, almost as soon as he arrived. Plan John’s reasoning has been a matter of conjecture, since he isn’t a man to share his motives.
Doyle has his own theories. Silensky is an outsider, and the manner of his arrival, even in the redacted version Doyle himself has circulated, has meant that status will stay with him for a long time. Carlita, of course, has been erased from the official history, and, to keep anybody from asking the wrong questions, it seemed useful to emphasize Silensky’s responsibility for the disastrous events he’s now the only adult survivor of. That in turn has made him vulnerable, and vulnerability is what Plan John thrives on. This way, Silensky is both beholden to him and useful.
Does that make Silensky loyal? Doyle is still working that one out. If nothing else, he’s loyal enough to keep himself covered. Doyle could press, but there’s no point. Silensky will simply clam up.
“I’ve known Foster longer than you have,” Doyle says. “If there is something going down, don’t be so sure he can protect you. Don’t be so sure he’ll even try.”
Or Plan John, either, Doyle thinks. He’ll look out for you for exactly as long as you’re useful and not a second more. Especially given that Ben Silensky has one further virtue. He’s disposable.
Envisioning Plan John, Doyle looks up instinctively, as he has a dozen times since they set out across the yard. Howard, however, isn’t on his balcony tonight. A good thing, except that there are plenty of routes by which this assignation can reach his ear. Silensky’s absence alone, in the hermetically sealed environs of Funland, might be enough to spark rumors.
Too late to worry. Too late, at least, to do anything that would assuage his worries. Doyle has a bad vibe about this, but then he has bad vibes about so many things these days. Really, what cause is there for any other kind? As he pushes through double doors into the administrative wing, he can feel the first stirrings of a headache coming on. Though rationally he knows that superstition is a privilege he can’t allow himself, Doyle has grown to associate his headaches with trouble, like a buildup of pressure before a storm.
It’s not a sign, he thinks. Damn you, a headache is not some portent.
But he can’t quite make himself believe.
* * *
At the last instant, Ben feels almost uncontrollably nervous. On top of the bubbling unease he’s already suffering, that anxiety makes acid rise perilously toward his gullet. Is he scared of his own girlfriend now? Yet, in that moment, he’s afraid of everything.
Johnson regards him without concern or interest, but with distant impatience. “I’ll wait upstairs,” he says. “Don’t be long.”
“Sure.” Ben can’t stop his mind returning to the meeting with Plan John, and as soon as it does, he begins to panic.
Time we find out what’s going on.
Plan John talks at Ben sometimes, never to him, but sometimes, not often, at him. When he does, his monologues have the air of free-flowing thought, jazzlike in the way they set up ideas and roll them around and test them against each other, drifting from subject to subject before looping back to try a seemingly abandoned concept in a new light. At first, Ben felt he was being invited to share an intimate secret, a special, threatening feeling. By the third time, he’d come to understand that Plan John tells him nothing, not one syllable, that he doesn’t want him to hear.
Now, Ben has no desire to ever be taken into Plan John’s confidence. Whatever Plan John tells him, it’s not intended for his benefit. It doesn’t raise him up. Or if it does, it’s only because – step by step, word by word – he’s ascending the gallows stairs.
Time we find out what’s going on, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Silensky?
Ben shudders, and lets himself into the infirmary.
Carlita is sitting on her bed. “Hey baby,” she croons. She’s made an effort for him: worn a skirt and a clean blouse, a skimpy, semitranslucent thing, and neatened her hair, pinning glossy strands into some kind of order. Yet up close, her skin smells sour. When he moves to kiss her, so does her breath.
There’s a tub in one corner, for washing. On those rare occasions when their strictly rationed power is used to pump water from the well, Aaronovich w
ill let Carlita shower briefly in her apartment. Neither can emulate the standards of hygiene they both took for granted mere weeks ago. Ben has had to grow used to irregular bucket baths, and likely he doesn’t smell a great deal better. But at least he hasn’t been sealed in one room until its odors began to permeate his clothes, his hair, his very flesh.
“It’s good to see you,” Carlita says, almost hesitantly. “These last few days…it’s been so bad.”
“I know,” he replies – and he does. In that moment, he appreciates the nature of her existence with painful clarity.
“But, Ben—”
“I know, okay?” he repeats, his helplessness turning to vexation. “I know how this is for you. But what do you want me to do? Either we try to get out of here, and if somehow we make it, all we’ll have to worry about is no food and Sickers and drinking infected water and a million other things, or we stay and deal. It’s not like any of this was my idea.”
Suddenly Carlita is on her feet. “Don’t you dare.”
“What?”
“Fernando. You don’t criticize him. Not a word. He was a good man, he did his best for us, and maybe if he hadn’t…if he hadn’t, then—”
“What? This would all be different if he hadn’t died? Plan John would have set us up with a nice little place in the Big House?” Ben slams a hand against the wall, not marking the tiles but jolting needles through his fingers. “Hell,” he mutters over the pain. “I didn’t come here to argue.”
Carlita sits again, crosses her legs, and tests the edge of a nail with her teeth. “Just, please, don’t badmouth Fernando,” she says, with a touch less anger. “He did his best for us.”
I wonder if he’d have gone to such trouble if his cousin had been some fat old sow? Ben thinks, but this time he has the sense to keep his mouth shut.
After a minute, Carlita says, “Okay. You didn’t come here to argue.” She teases at the nail again, and then lets her hands flop in her lap. “So…Doyle said you’re worried about something.”
Ben nods, trying to arrange his thoughts. He’s worried about so much. It’s hard to recall what apprehension first tipped him over into deciding the risk of coming was worth taking. That would be Foster, but Foster has already been superseded, and by an entire order of magnitude.
“I think Plan John is going to talk to one of the guards,” he says. “I mean, talk to. Whoever he picks, he might hurt them if he doesn’t get the answers he wants. It won’t be Foster, because that would be a declaration of war. That leaves three candidates.”
Carlita’s eyes go wide. “Oh no.”
“Look, it’s okay. Probably he’ll go for Houseman. But if he doesn’t….”
If he doesn’t, that leaves the only other two men in Funland who know you exist.
He realizes how thoughtless he’s been. The fear remains there in her eyes, making them deeper, darker. “It’s okay,” Ben says again. “Whatever happens, I’ll be there. I’ll keep it in check.”
Still feeling her tension, endeavoring to press it down, Ben sits beside Carlita, straddling the narrow gurney-cum-bed to face her. He brushes a hand over her knee. “Baby. Really. It’s okay.” Liking the tautness of the skin there, he leaves his hand on the inside of her leg, where knee meets thigh, and massages with the tips of his fingers. She gives him a faint smile.
“I’m just worried, is all,” he says. “I wanted to warn you to be extra cautious. I should be able to keep a check on the Plan John situation. But on top of that, I’m pretty sure Foster’s planning some kind of a move. He’s not even being careful anymore.”
“Perhaps he thinks it’s too late to be careful.”
Ben tries to judge whether there’s something disparaging in the statement. “Well, it’s easy for Foster. He’s not having to play nice with Plan John every day.” He wishes she’d understand his predicament, and is forced to accept that her own circumstances preclude any possibility of empathy. So instead, he says, “But I wanted to see you, too. This is hard for me, you know? I miss you. I have to keep up this pretense, walk this line. I don’t know what the right thing to do is sometimes.”
He’s still massaging Carlita’s inner thigh, and he discovers, almost with shock, that he’s starting to get aroused. How long has it been? Two weeks or more. “What do I do without my bomboncita to look out for me?”
Carlita smiles at the pet name, genuinely this time, and places one hand on his cheek. “What have you said to Foster?”
“Nothing. I didn’t want to commit to anything I can’t get out of.”
She strokes his cheek with her fingertips. “I think you should talk to him. Maybe he’ll help us, if things go his way.”
“Foster’s an asshole.” Moving his own hand farther up the inside of her thigh, Ben leans in closer. “We can’t trust him.”
“Worse than Plan John?”
He shakes his head, not so much disagreeing as not knowing. Such men, the dangers they pose, are beyond his ability to compare. Eager to change the subject, he remembers what’s in his pocket. With the hand that isn’t on her thigh, he draws out the bright crimson panties he unearthed during the search. “Hey,” he says. “I saw these and thought of you.”
Carlita gives a small, fragile laugh. “I’m not sure they’re my size.”
He hadn’t considered that. “I guess not,” he agrees, and tilts his fingers, so that the panties – absurd-seeming now, not at all sexy – slide free and to the floor. Then, lust and frustration flowing abruptly together, he edges nearer and kisses her hard on the mouth. At the same time, his fingers stray farther, brushing cotton and the tight coils around her pubis. He’s pleased to find that both are warmly damp, more pleased when she presses into the kiss and groans softly. With his right hand, he cups her breast, outside her blouse to begin with and then sliding his fingers up within. He marvels at how small and perfect it is, how adamantine the nipple beneath his thumb.
She breaks the kiss first. “So you’ll talk to him?”
There’s a note to the question, yet in that moment, he can’t even remember who him is. Ben stays exactly where he is, Carlita’s face close enough for him to feel the stale wash of her breath. His right hand still envelops her breast. The fingers of his left are pressed in the tangle of her pubic hair, the tips just barely inside her. “Sure,” he says, struggling to make the word sound normal. “I’ll talk to Foster.”
“Mm. Good.” Then her mouth is over his again, her tongue hunting, and simultaneously she edges forward against his fingers. Her own hand fumbles at his jeans. She tries to open his belt, fails, and settles for dragging down the zipper. She shuffles forward, so that his fingers are partly inside her and partly between the cheeks of her ass. She draws his cock out, not gently.
“Oh. Fuck.” Ben frees his left hand, and uses both together to work clumsily at the buttons of her blouse. She doesn’t help him. Her hand is still around the root of his cock, her face still pushed into his, her kisses so furious that they’re nearly bites. He finally gets the blouse off and reaches for her, a thumb on the underside of each breast. Like that, he lifts her. She claws up her skirt and puts both hands in his lap, so as to guide him.
When he enters her, she sobs. He feels the noise before he hears it, battling to liberate itself from the cage of her ribs.
Ben slides to get the wall at his back, bringing her with him. She’s already moving against him, quickly, violently, her breath coming in fierce explosions. He thrusts to meet her, but he can’t find any rhythm to her sudden passion.
The gurney creaks. He’s afraid it will pull away from the wall. There’s something alarming in the unpredictability of the pleasure hammering from his groin. He wonders if he can slow Carlita somehow, calm her. Ben slides his hands down to her ass and clasps it. But he has no purchase. Her ass and the small of her back are clammy with sweat. He attempts to edge his arms up, to cradle her.
&nb
sp; Then she’s pulling out of his grip, retreating into the corner where she was when he entered, legs once more tucked up, struggling into her blouse. When he catches her eye, she looks as if she’s about to cry.
“I’m sorry,” Carlita says.
“What?” He doesn’t understand.
“I’m sorry, I’m just….”
“Just what?”
“It’s…here, like this. This place. Like a dungeon.”
It seems to Ben as though his emotions are so many and so jumbled that picking one out and interpreting how he’s feeling would be impossible. Then he recognizes that, stronger than the anger or confusion or the curious impression of loss, is embarrassment. His erection, the fact that it’s still there, strikes him as shameful. He tucks his cock back inside his jeans and emulates her posture, hauling his knees against his chest.
“Shit, Carlita.” He doesn’t know what he means, whether it’s a complaint or an apology. He feels ridiculous.
“How can I be here, all day long,” she whispers. “All day, alone, no one to talk to and nothing to do, and then want to fuck? I try and think about it. To feel excited. But it’s like something out of another world. Afterward, I can’t even wash. I’m sick of sweat and filth.”
Ben gets down from the gurney. “Look,” he says, “I only came to tell you to be careful.” His voice sounds small to his own ears. “I’ll talk to Foster. Maybe I can get on his good side.”
Carlita nods. “I’m sorry, baby. If I can just get out of here….”
She pauses to fix her skirt and the last two buttons of her blouse. The gesture seems to Ben like a door slamming shut.
“If I could get out,” she finishes softly, “it would all be different.”
Chapter Thirteen
The headache has come, as Doyle knew it would.
Except that headache is so small a word. Rachel had claimed sometimes that she got migraines. That’s closer, but not much. What Doyle needs is a word that conveys the unfeasible weight, as though his head has been occupied by some alien matter that the space of his skull is too narrow to contain. The pain is almost secondary to that sheer sense of wrongness, as if his cranium should split like a rotted fruit at any moment. Still, the pain is bad enough, a roving drill bit churning at the tender meat of his cerebrum.
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