by Ike Hamill
She slipped off when her father put his arm around her and pulled her into his warmth.
When she woke up, Janelle had no idea how long they had been asleep. Her father began to stir as well and then Jim was up, shuffling to the bathroom.
“What time is it?” Janelle asked.
Her father pushed himself up and propped the pillow against the headboard. He didn’t answer the question.
Jim came back in the room and flopped down in the chair.
Janelle was sure that he was going to complain about the incarceration or demand to know how long until they would be freed. He surprised her with his question.
“So, you and Uncle Brad were going to backtrack and set up another repeater?” Jim asked.
Jim was prompting their father to finish the story about how he had met their mother. It seemed like a month since their father had started to tell the story.
“That’s right,” their father said. “We backtracked.”
“I don’t trust it,” Brad said, pointing up at the trees. “That one is about to fall and it would take out the building if it did.”
“It hasn’t fallen yet,” Robby said. Brad was right—the tree did look like it was about to topple. The ground was saturated and when the wind blew the ground at the base of the tree looked almost like it was breathing. There probably wasn’t much topsoil over the rock ledge. But Robby just wanted to do the installation and get out of there.
“You’re hoping it will get crushed,” Brad said.
“Huh?”
“If we lose communication with this station, you’ll have an excuse to come back out and check up on that girl,” Brad said with a smile and nod.
“I don’t need an excuse,” Robby said. “If I want to go check on her, I will.”
Brad only raised his eyebrows.
“By now, they must have realized that the food I took them is good. Maybe they will have decided that I’m trustworthy. Maybe they’ll be ready to hear me out.”
Brad smiled and looked like he was trying to stifle a laugh.
“What?” Robby asked.
“You’re smarter than I am, Robby,” Brad said. Before Robby could ask what he meant by that, Brad continued. “We don’t have a deadline for installing these stations. It’s marginally faster if we work together, but there’s no real reason that both of us have to continue on.”
Robby knew the point that Brad was going to make.
“We don’t even have that much more ground to cover. If you want to go back to those people, you don’t need my permission.”
“We said that we would set up this link,” Robby said. “We said that we would create a permanent communication link between Donnelly and Gladstone.”
“And we will,” Brad said. “But there’s no…”
“Deadline,” Robby said, finishing the thought for Brad. “You’re right.”
“So, go back and make contact. If they wanted you dead, they would have already killed you, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Please don’t get yourself killed,” Brad said. He opened the back of the truck and got out his toolbox. “Romie and Lisa would never forgive me if I let you get yourself killed. Wait, what am I doing? This site is no good. We just talked about this.”
Robby watched as Brad put his toolbox back in the truck. He watched as Brad climbed back in the truck and started it up.
“You coming?” Brad asked.
Robby shook his head.
“I’ll catch up with you.”
Brad smiled and nodded.
“You have one week,” Brad said. “After that, I’m coming back and I’m bringing Romie and Lisa with me.”
Brad drove off before Robby had a chance to reconsider.
“Uncle Brad just left you in the middle of nowhere?” Jim asked. It was one of Jim’s favorite questions at this point in the story. Their father always smiled and gave a cryptic answer whenever Jim asked it.
“He knew that’s what I needed,” Robby said.
Jim shook his head.
Their father continued the story.
“It took me a while to find a car. I kept changing my mind if I should just walk back to the post office or drive back. I decided that it would be best to drive. The car would make enough noise to announce my presence. The last thing I wanted to do was surprise them.”
Robby stopped the vehicle where he had left the cart full of food. There was no trace of the cart—that was a good sign. Robby started on again slowly, glancing into the woods, wondering if he was being watched.
When he was still a good distance from the trap that had been laid across the road, Robby stopped the vehicle again, honked twice, and then killed the engine. He got out with his hands up. He took a step and then heard a woman’s voice call out from somewhere up ahead.
“You bring more food?”
“No,” Robby called. “I can show you where to get it though.”
“We know where Hilliard’s is.”
“Then come with me. I’ll help you get more food.”
“You go get it and bring it back,” she said.
Robby shook his head. “I brought you a fish last time. This time I want to show you how to fish.”
“Mind your own business,” she said.
Robby lowered his hands to his sides. She was hiding behind the fallen tree, he decided. She must have heard his approach and then taken that position to keep an eye on him. She could be armed. It would be safer to do what she said and mind his own business. He wasn’t there to be safe.
Instead, he leaned against the hood of the car and folded his arms across his chest.
“Bring food,” she called.
“Which is it?” he asked. “Should I mind my own business or bring you food?”
“Both.”
“Come with me,” Robby said. “I’ll help you get food.”
There was a long pause. Robby began to believe that there would be no answer.
She sighed so loud that it was almost a growl.
“I won’t leave him alone that long,” she said.
“I understand,” Robby said. “Can he be moved?”
After another sigh, she said, “Yes.”
She emerged from behind a jagged stump. Robby thought that she must have thrown her voice somehow—bounced it off of the brick sign for the post office, perhaps—and fooled him.
“Come help me,” she said with a wave. The young woman didn’t move while Robby approached. With a gesture, she showed him which way to go. He could feel her eyes moving over him, teasing out his secrets while he walked. Robby had nothing to hide. He wasn’t trying to trick her, and he wasn’t carrying any concealed weapons.
“What’s in your pocket?” she asked.
It occurred to him before she was even through asking the question.
“My Leatherman,” he said. The tool had a knife on it, along with a dozen other useful things. It was hardly a weapon.
She took his answer and didn’t make him produce it.
“What’s your name, if I can ask?” he asked as she marched him toward the post office.
“May,” she said.
He wasn’t sure if she was answering him or correcting his grammar. He didn’t dare to ask again, for fear that he might offend her.
Before he could reach for the door of the post office, she was directing him to veer around the side. Robby got the impression that the front door had been booby trapped. It was something about the way that the granite was scuffed and dirtied. The entrance appeared staged. In comparison, the side entrance showed no indication that it was ever used. Robby looked to the young woman for permission and then swung the door out. He stepped over to the rock on the side to avoid the patch of dirt and then moved through into the darkness. Behind him, the girl came through and pulled the door shut, closing the darkness around them.
A moment later, a match flared and a lantern puffed to life.
“That way,” she said, pointing.
“Hasp!�
�� she yelled. “Just me and the kid. We’re coming in.”
Robby must have hesitated because she leaned forward as they walked and said, “It’s okay. He’s not going to attack.”
Robby nodded. He didn’t let his eyes wander, but he couldn’t help but see their storeroom as they passed. There were boxes of empty packages on the floor and very little on the shelves. He recognized some of the cans that he had brought to her on his last visit.
“Hasp, coming around the corner,” she called.
With all the warnings, Robby expected that Hasp would be armed or at least ready to jump him as he came into the doorway. Instead, he saw the old man cowering on a cot, backed into the corner.
“He’s not having a great day,” she whispered to Robby.
“Just do me in, if that’s what you intend,” Hasp said with a quavering voice. “Why do you torture me day in and day out?”
She moved around Robby, setting the lantern down on a low table so she could settle on the cot next to Hasp’s legs.
“It’s okay, Hasp. It’s just me and a visitor. We don’t intend to do you in.”
Her voice changed completely when she addressed the old man. Robby wouldn’t have recognized it if he hadn’t seen the words come from her lips. Robby moved slowly, keeping his arms out in front of himself, as he went to the other cot and sat on the edge. Hasp’s shifting eyes were locked on Robby. The woman reached out and took Hasp’s hand, stroking it until it stopped shaking.
“It’s okay, Hasp. We’re going to get more food. You’ll be fatter than a rat by the end of the week.”
“It’s a trap. Can’t you see that?” Hasp asked. His voice was a ragged whisper.
“I do,” she said. “I really do. This kid is from the government though, remember?”
She gestured toward Robby. He didn’t know if her lie was a good thing or a bad thing until Hasp looked at him with hope in his eyes.
“The government?”
“Yes,” she said.
Robby nodded, going along with the fiction.
“Prove it,” Hasp said, his eyes suddenly narrowing.
Robby froze until the young woman looked over her shoulder at him. She begged him with her eyes, hoping that he could prove himself to Hasp.
“I can’t,” Robby said. He registered the disappointment in her gaze and then quickly added. “I’m not allowed until I know your clearance level.”
“Of course,” Hasp said, relaxing a little. The old man raised a finger and wagged it at him. “Of course. And my credentials aren’t here either. When I get them…”
The old man trailed off as he unfolded his leg from beneath the other. Robby saw the foot that Hasp had been hiding. The sock looked half empty. Robby felt the young woman looking at him, so he averted his eyes from the old man’s deformed foot.
“You want to come with us in the government car, Hasp?” she asked. “He’s going to take us down to Hilliard’s to get more food.”
The old man started shaking his head immediately. His jaw clenched and unclenched several times before he formed his response. “I told you once and again, we can’t go there.”
“It’s okay, Hasp. He’s with the government, remember?”
“No.”
She pleaded and pleaded, but Hasp would only shake his head and say, “No.”
Robby wondered how the two had met. He wondered if she had known Hasp before he had lost his knack for rational thought. Was she seeing him the way he was now, or some previous version of the man?
She eventually gave up trying to argue with him.
“We can go,” Robby said. “He’ll be okay here alone, won’t he.”
At the suggestion, there was sad terror in her face. It was clear that Hasp could not be left alone. For a moment, Robby wanted to give in and tell her that he would transport the food back for them. He could bring them more fish and perhaps teach them to fish another day. It was the wrong thing to do though. The longer he kept them dependent on himself for food, the less likely it was that they would ever regain their independence. He couldn’t do that to them—to her.
“Hasp? You’re worried about the countermeasures, is that it?”
“Countermeasures?”
“I take it that you ran afoul of the anti-looting system that was put into place,” Robby said. “It wasn’t meant for good folks like you, Hasp, but I’m afraid to guess that maybe it caused that injury to your foot.”
“That was…” Hasp took a moment to process what he had heard, and then asked, “Those were countermeasures?”
“It’s a special type of acid,” Robby said. “It was developed after the riots in ninety-two.”
Hasp’s eyes lit up and locked onto Robby. The young woman looked back and forth between them.
“Why would you use them on our own people?” Hasp asked.
“They weren’t supposed to be, sorry to say. It was a mistake, Hasp. You know how the government works.”
With a sigh, Hasp agreed. “Not at all,” Hasp said.
The woman looked confused and Robby wanted to explain. He couldn’t without destroying the rapport he had developed with Hasp, so he continued on with his lie.
“I would have to slightly disagree with you, Hasp. My answer would be, ‘Sometimes. Eventually.’”
Hasp smiled and grunted, enjoying Robby’s amendment.
“In this case,” Robby continued, “the good news is that the countermeasures have been deactivated and Hilliard’s is now safe ground. If you two would come with me, I would be happy to give you a guided tour.”
“And the others?” Hasp asked.
Robby looked to the young woman for help. It was his best guess that there were no others, but she would know for sure.
“I told you, they’ve already been evacuated,” she said.
Robby understood. “That’s right,” Robby agreed. “We’re counting on you to hold down the fort here, but we don’t expect you to do it alone. That’s why I’ve been sent.”
Hasp sat up, accepting the responsibility that Robby was putting on him.
“So you lied,” Jim said.
“Well, yes,” their father said.
Janelle was surprised. She had never thought of it like that. In her mind, their father had gone along with what their mother had said in order to help her and the old man.
“We know how he died,” Jim said. “Did you ever confess to him before he did?”
Their father studied Jim and then looked down. “No, son. I never did. I thought it would be easier for him to not know the truth.”
“But you know what’s beyond death,” Jim said. “Isn’t that what you believe? You believe that you’ve seen what happens to people after they die. They go into that portal to the other dimension, right?”
“That is what I believe, yes,” their father said.
Janelle had never heard the matter discussed in that way. When their father talked about dying, he always made it sound like a mystical, wondrous place. The way that Jim was talking, it might as well have been some sci-fi movie.
“So, then you sent him there with lies in his head,” Jim said. “Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to know the truth?”
“I don’t know,” their father said. “Honestly, the world had broken poor Hasp. He wasn’t able to understand or comprehend all the things that had happened. Looking back, I’m surprised that it didn’t happen more often. People are malleable and adaptable, but they will only bend so far before they break. It’s a miracle that I didn’t meet more than a couple of folks who were crushed by that pressure. Think about your Aunt Romie. She’s pragmatic and logical. She won’t accept that it’s raining until she goes outside and feels it on her own face. And yet she was able to adapt as the world crashed down around her.”
“But not Hasp,” Jim said.
“Nope. Not Hasp. I didn’t want to make his last moments in this life a confusing mess. I didn’t want him to have to confront that. And, moreover, I didn’t want to put your mother thr
ough the pain of watching her friend die in confusion. I think it would have caused more misery, and I needed there to be less.”
Jim considered this carefully, working his jaw from side to side like he was actually chewing on what their father had said.
“So I took them to get food,” their father said. “I showed them that it was okay to go into Hilliard’s again and I realized that your mom didn’t have any superstitions about the place. The only reason that she was starving up on the hill was because Hasp couldn’t be left alone and because he refused to go any farther than the grounds of the post office. Unfortunately, our trip didn’t solve anything.”
The old man limped on his bad foot, even when it was wrapped up and stuffed into a shoe. He was missing too much of it, and it had been taken from him when he was too old to properly adapt. Still, Robby smiled while he watched Hasp move down the aisle, filling his basket with food from the shelves of Hilliard’s.
“Don’t eat the corn chips,” Robby said to the young woman. “Some of them might be good, but I wouldn’t trust them not to be rancid. We’ve had some incidents.”
“How many of you are there?” she asked.
“Scores,” he said, purposely vague for the moment. “We have a couple of big settlements that are geographically far apart, for safety.”
She nodded at that without further explanation.
“We have a communication network that we’re establishing. I can give you a unit that will put you in contact. You’ll have to wire up a generator or solar panels once the batteries go out.”
“You think I’m dumb,” she said.
Robby started to answer—of course he didn’t think that she was dumb—when he realized that it wasn’t smart to answer a question that wasn’t asked. She was telling him a fact about how she felt. There was no use in disputing it. He merely had to show her the truth.
“In your travels, if you happen on a CB radio, tune to channel nine. We use it for emergencies and there’s also a recorded message at the top of the hour. It’s not updated all the time, but if there’s big news, you’ll hear it there.”
