by Lucas Alpay
“No. Why’d you ask?”
Fritz was about to tell but thought better of it. Maybe he just dreamed all of those in his mind, a nightmare, perhaps inspired by the lovely desolated playground and some creepy trees he had been looking at last night. The only form of entertainment he had.
“On my way up here, I thought this place would be filled with dreams, you know what I mean? Erik as the California elect and all.”
“That was a long time ago.” She then found a folder, opened it, but then immediately discarded it as she read the first page. “So, where do we start? You’ll be calling the shots here because you have more experience.”
The question surprised Fritz, it seemed for him that he overestimated her quality. Because frankly, Natasha had a smart demeanor, a trait that made Fritz think that she was one of those know-it-all types, someone who didn’t ask questions because she’d rather search for the answer herself.
“What?” she asked after a long uncomfortable pause from Fritz.
“Nothing,” he said and looked away, trying to suppress the smile. “Let’s start with why. Why whoever doing this first attacked San Francisco and then Los Angeles. We need the offices that have been attacked, their written reports, and, like I said earlier, witnesses. They are more reliable than the anecdotes.”
Natasha then pulled out a couple of folders and gave them to Fritz. They were the places where the attacks had started. As he read each folder, the reports weren’t detailed. They were at best written by an eighth-grader. There were also drops of blood in some of the pages, brown in the center, crimson on their edges.
Fritz found empathy as he saw those drops. Just like us.
He looked at Natasha and said, “We are going out.”
She immediately moved towards the door, “I’ll inform the heads of the offices.”
They first ate outside, “You should eat first before going to any investigation,” he said to Natasha. But she was reluctant as the food lay still in front of her. She was just holding the folders gingerly on her lap and looking outside, as if she were searching for something.
“Are we going to see dead bodies?” she asked, a question that made Fritz stop eating.
He looked at her. “How old are you?”
“I’m 23.”
Fritz didn’t know what to say. He expected about an ageless 49, considering that she’d been designed to look as Erik’s late wife. But 23? That would be a minute in sandmen time. She was a pup, inexperienced.
“I volunteered for this, and I want to say now that I’m strong, I can do whatever you can do, I can endure whatever you can endure—”
“Stop there.” Inexperienced. But as those wide eyes and thin lips faced him, he couldn’t act how a senior investigator would act towards a rookie. He immediately knew that this was unprofessional, very so, but she was so irresistible that staying angry would be pointless. Maybe that was the main talent Erik had given her—being extremely desirable. You would woo her until she gave you her acceptance, even though she wasn’t asking for one.
“Yes, most likely we will be seeing dead bodies,” Fritz finally said. “We will be also seeing those who are injured.” He then looked at his burger and thought such a waste. The gentleman in him ticked. He couldn’t let himself eat while this beautiful girl did not. So, he wrapped his food, bought a plastic bag, and then put everything needed eating.
They moved to the car, and on the way they went.
23…
Wearing their invisibility rings, they entered at one of the three offices that had been attacked last night. Fritz could smell a burnt object in the air as they moved farther towards the reception desk. Something horrible. Something tragic. And as Fritz had expected, it was the same story. The first sandman they saw told them almost all of the occupants were in the infirmary at the fourth floor. Half of them were dead, the other half were either critical or had lost a limb.
Fritz said that he was sorry to hear it, and if he could lead them to the room of the Head of the building that would be great.
An elevator, a ring, cubicles, and then finally the office of the Head.
You wouldn’t expect him to be a head officer at first glance. He was small, thin; he was something that could be easily blown by a strong wind. Fritz almost asked if he needed some sandwich, or a protein bar. If he and Mark were in this case, he probably already did. And they would’ve both laughed at it while this man be conscious of his meek physique. They were bullies, Mark and him.
“Call me Bruce,” the thin man said using a deep, sexy voice as he shook Fritz’s hand. At least there is one thing masculine about him. “Natasha!” Bruce called, moved towards her, and gave her a kiss on the cheek just like how the Italians would do it, and French. “Take a seat, please.” He then sat on his own chair behind the desk and kept the smile he had for Natasha.
Fritz pulled out a pen from his pocket, and a small notebook. He was now all ears.
What to ask first? he thought, and by this he knew that he was rusty. He looked at Natasha in that awkward pause and gave her a wink that was saying everything’s fine, that he had this. He badly hoped he had.
“How is the attack been commenced?” he began. “And where?”
“Just north from here, about 10 blocks.”
“How?”
Bruce seemed to think, constructing his response very carefully. But ultimately failed… “It was… I don’t know… almost planned… As if someone has studied us. Those who have survived said that those who attacked them were only limited to two. As if, if I’m putting this correctly, these assassins have been also going for tandems.” He paused and looked at Fritz intently. “Was that the same thing that happened to your office?”
“Worse.” Fritz wrote and left it at that. “How many men you stationed there?”
“Six.”
“Alive?”
“Only two survived,” he said this with a croak in his voice, as if he were on the verge of crying.
“They are in the infirmary I guess.”
“Only one of them, the other is up and walking, helping with whatever she can.”
Fritz asked for her name. Lara. “This is the closest office from the elect’s home, am I correct? And in the reports, this was the last one that had been attacked…?”
Both Bruce and Natasha said yes.
Fritz wrote some more and decided that this Bruce wouldn’t help in anything much. He hadn’t been there when the attack had happened. He just had an overview, like a president towards his country. He would be useful in another time, but not now. He needed to find Lara.
He asked him. “She could be in the morgue,” Bruce said, “it’s in the basement, has a blue door, maybe she’s helping to burn the bodies. That’s my best bet.” That would be the smell. Tragic smell. How could I forget?
“Last question. Where is the exact street where the first attack happened?”
Before they went to the morgue where the building’s own incinerator was at, Fritz first asked Natasha, “Do you have the stomach to see what could be down there?” Because there could be smashed faces in there, jelly-brains too.
At first Natasha looked disinclined, but absolutely said, “I haven’t eaten breakfast yet. I think if I would throw up it would only be a dry heave.” And then suddenly, Fritz found something extraordinary from her. Something mysterious. A moment he would forever remember.
She smiled. She actually smiled…
It would be over exaggeration to say that he died and went to heaven. So Fritz wouldn’t say that. He would just say that what she did took all the breath in his lungs. He felt pain, and odd as it sounds, he felt sadness from that smile. He didn’t know why that emotion had been chosen by his brain… It was an enigma, and maybe, someday the investigator in him would solve it.
He smiled back and said let’s move on.
They walked through a small hall and found the door described by Bruce. It was the blue door that said “do not enter”, Fritz didn’t know who the
hell was it for. He turned the knob, and immediately the invisible scent from the burning bodies hit him full force. It smelled like phlegm being deep-fried with a small cut of tire-rubber.
When he looked back at Natasha, she was already covering her nose, her eyes wincing and tearing up from the smell.
They went downstairs and found bodies piled up with each other. Most of them were the normal dreams people had thought about last night, but some of them were sandmen and the assassins who killed them. It was a private piece of Holocaust.
Fritz’s eyes started to search the people who were arranging all the carcasses for burning. There were a lot. He reckoned that these sandmen were from other offices, offices that didn’t see that much action every night. Thank God for dreamless people.
He called for Natasha, and Natasha gave him the folder-file for Lara. He opened it and found her picture; staring at him he saw a blonde woman who had brown eyes and a jaw only given to the genetically thankful runway models.
Natasha went to the closest sandman and asked him where Lara was. It took a moment before she was given an answer because the man stared first, memorizing every detail of her face. Fritz couldn’t blame him.
The sandman tilted his head everywhere, and when he finally saw what he was looking for, he pointed at a girl far away, and gave Natasha a warm smile. All of this he did without even looking at Fritz.
“Lara?” Fritz asked. And Lara turned. He offered a hand for shaking and introduced himself: “My name is Fritz, this is Natasha, we’ve been sent by the California elect to investigate and find who did this. Can we have a little bit of your time?” It sounded like he was selling a car seat.
Lara let go of the cart containing a few body bags and nodded to his request.
“Where is your cafeteria?” this was Natasha. “I think we can do our interview there,” she looked at Fritz, “What do you say?”
She was already pale from not eating anything, and after seeing this view Fritz was positive that she still wouldn’t be eating anything. Nothing at all.
Chapter 14
On their way to the cafeteria, Fritz noticed that Natasha almost stumbled a couple of times (he was sure she was only a step more in complete fainting). And when they reached their destination, she immediately rushed towards the drinking section and fixed herself a cup of water. Fritz didn’t know how much she’d gulped before she decided that she was full of nothing but liquid. She really needs something in that belly, Fritz thought, and tutted as he watched her wobble as she walked.
Fritz directed Lara towards the table nearest to the window. It was always near the window. He liked it that way so he could see things outside, to let his mind drift whenever the conversation itself was drifting into the dull. He waited for Natasha to join them and asked Lara if she wanted anything, if she wanted to grab a bite first before recalling the night before.
“I’m fine, thank you for the offer,” Lara said and fixed herself on the seat, as if she were a Catholic girl in front of a headmistress.
“Don’t be nervous, we will be quick, and tell me if the questions are getting uncomfortable, okay?” Fritz said. Lara agreed. Natasha finally joined them, her lips paler than before. Fritz then reached for his pocket and grabbed a packet of crackers he’d been saving for later. He went closer to Natasha and whispered over her ear: “Eat this… You don’t want to fade in front of a witness. It’s unprofessional,” and he handed over the biscuit.
Opening his small notebook, Fritz suddenly wished that he had brought a tape recorder. But then he remembered this was the 21st century. He pulled out his phone and swiped and swiped on the touchscreen until he found the application that mimicked a tape recorder. Thank God for science.
He pressed record and asked: “Tell me how you started your day last night. If you can use details that would be best.”
Lara nodded and let her eyes drift and suck her into the night before.
“It would be silly to say this, but it was just like any other night.” She smiled, and it seemed that she couldn’t believe how ridiculous she sounded. “We got to our cubicles, Bruce told us to be careful and call for backup if there were myths. It was really the usual stuff.” She shrugged, “Another day in eternity, am I right?”
That would sum it up, yes. Fritz offered a smile. He could see beside him that Natasha was finally opening the packet of biscuits.
“I grabbed my gun in my room,” Lara continued, “and then I met up with my partner at the reception hall. We actually went out late because Bianca forgot her book, she always read whenever we were in the field… It was a mystery novel, murder-mystery to be exact.” She looked at her hands, her eyes suddenly red. She smiled. “We were just waiting there, feeling for that cold wind dreams emit, waiting for the compass to move. We looked like hookers, if weren’t for the rings a guy in a Camaro might have already picked us up.” Her smile went wider and then it was gone. “And when the compass did point out a possible dream, we moved to it. We found it waiting beside a streetlight… We—we felt that it was looking at us, actually waiting for us. Us.” Her lips shivered. “It was the first time for many years that we didn’t chase a dream immediately. We just stood there, studying everything, if it was safe to step forward. Bianca even looked if there were cars passing by when we crossed the road. We looked stupid. We looked like novices.”
“It didn’t move when we approached it, the dream, and when we were a few feet away it did. He walked slowly towards darkness. We followed it and prepared our weapons, I held the gun while Bianca pulled out her machete. She liked it rough, when blood is squirting on her face. But I promise you, in her own way she was a peaceful person… It’s just when we were hunting, she became different. Feral.” She shook her head. “And then when we reached it, another dream emerged. It was so fast that I froze right there. The blade was even faster. I saw Bianca’s head cut halfway through her neck. I never thought that there would be less blood, it just squirted, not like a splash in the movies. The movies are lying.” She cried. “They were wearing black so we couldn’t see, I haven’t seen them clearly. I watched Bianca’s body drop on the ground—I ran… nothing to do but run.”
“I knew they were behind me, I knew they were quick, but I held my gun and started shooting. Maybe I hit one of them, I really don’t know, but when I passed a couple of blocks, that was the time I started to scream. But I still ran… Since then,” she swallowed, “since then I looked at darkness differently, and I decided I’m afraid of the night.” She put her hands on her face, still had that behavior of a Catholic girl. Prim. Proper.
Fritz waited for a few moments for her to calm down. It was Natasha who went closer to her and put a palm on her back. Fritz could see in Natasha’s face that she was thinking of something to say, but no words came out of her lips. It’s fine to say nothing, Fritz thought, because it was hard to think of anything, you couldn’t just say it will be okay, that it was all over, because that would be a lie whatever you do. And the night would definitely come a few hours from now, tormenting this poor Lara, making her remember what had occurred. It seemed that there would be sandmen that had a phobia of the dark. It sounded like a non-humorous joke. And just as Lara had said, it looked stupid.
When Lara finally calmed down, she thanked Natasha and looked at Fritz again. “Is that all?”
“I want to know how old you are,” Fritz asked, but if you are wondering what was Lara’s superficial age, that would be 25.
“I’m 52… 40 years as a sandman.”
“And your partner, Bianca?”
“She’s 76. That’s the age she told me.”
Fritz couldn’t believe how young they had the sandmen in Los Angeles. He wondered what happened to the old ones. Maybe they were assigned to a more active area?
“What was your location when the attack on both of you happened?”
Lara said the street, her eyes looking out, “It would be 16 blocks from here if I’m correct, it’s on the side of the restaurant—it’s called
Russian cuisine. West, go west.”
Now with none of their invisibility rings, they ate at a fast-food chain and in result Natasha puked. Fritz awkwardly stood next to the door of the girl’s restroom, waiting for her and asking her if she were all right. He imagined if Natasha’s puking would turn him off, that it would turn against her perfection. And Fritz really did think carefully about this, which should then ultimately resulted to a big fat ‘No’. Because there was an urge to take care of her, to hold her hair when the gastric contents came out from her mouth.
He knocked again, and asked, “Are you done? Do you want me to come in?”
But the door immediately flung open. Natasha went out without saying a word, her face less pale than before. With the keys in hand, Fritz decided that he would be the one to drive to the place where Lara had seen her friend die. It only took them a few minutes until they reached the street. They parked first and approached the side of this small restaurant to see if there were still blood splatters on the ground. There were, but they were almost indistinguishable; they looked like stains on the soil now, and if you didn’t know what they were, you could easily mistake it as a smear of dog shit.
“Why did we even come here if Lara already told us?” Natasha asked, her cheeks moving as she chewed another biscuit.
“I want to know if she is telling the truth—”
Natasha was offended. “Of course she’s telling the truth. You’ve seen her, right?”
“—wait, wait, that came out wrong. I want to know if what she described is correct.” He looked up and further assessed the surroundings, his eyes squinting in the breath of the sun. “Most of the times the statements of the eyewitnesses are unreliable. Looks like Lara is one of the sometimes.” He brushed a finger on the stain of blood, lifted that finger and smelled it. Its scent was of iron.
“Don’t get too attached with the case,” Fritz said, “I could hear your concern, keep it professional, not personal. If you do, it will make you crazy. Trust me, I know.” In his mind, he suddenly heard a voice call his name: William…