Among These Bones (Book 3): Maybe We'll Remember

by Luzzader, Amanda

  And he split another half dozen pieces of cord-wood, but I’d fallen into musing about what Ruby or Chase or whoever else was questioning Bellington.

  “Al?” said Woolly.

  “Hm?” I replied.

  He gestured at the wood pieces that lay scattered all around him. “I stack, you crack? My shift’s almost over, and I wanna finish up this pile.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” I collected up the shivered hunks of firewood.

  “Listen, Al, we’ll find out soon enough, okay? You got somewhere else to be? Got other plans? Why’re you so impatient? When they’re finished with him, I’m sure we’ll find out what they’ve learned.”

  Woolly was right, of course. But that didn’t stop me from sneaking up behind Ruby’s tent and establishing my own personal listening post. I brought a book with me, and I held it up to my face at first, so that if anyone saw me, I could semi-plausibly claim to be just taking a break to read. And so I sat there straining to hear something, anything.

  The voices were muffled. Bellington was apparently in the far corner of the tent, but I couldn’t go to that side without being spotted by the guard they’d posted out front.

  “Just seems odd, see.” Ruby’s voice. “I mean I understand why you’d never invent something like this for the poor schmucks in the Zones or out in Lotus, but I happen to know a lot of you in management have been scrubbed at one point or other, too, an’ something like this could come in handy for you all almost more’n us.”

  “Sorry.” A man’s voice. Had to be Bellington. “I keep saying this, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Really. Nothing? Never heard anything about nothing like this. Here we got hunnerds ’a thousands ’a people with huge memory losses cuz of a treatment for a disease that really can’t do us no harm anymore, and you’re saying you never heard about someone working on getting those memories back, even just for you mucky-mucks in the upper esh-ee-lons?”

  “No,” said Bellington calmly. “Never. But, look—I’m in project management. There’re dozens of project managers in my region alone. Comms aren’t what they used to be. Maybe this fantasy memory antidote is out there under someone else’s department.”

  “Chase?” said Ruby.

  “Doesn’t smell right,” said Chase. “Seems odd.”

  “Yah,” said Ruby.

  “The complete denial,” said Chase.

  “Uh huh,” said Ruby.

  “You’d think he’d throw out a red herring. You know?”

  “Right.”

  “The cave?” Chase asked.

  “Yah,” replied Ruby. “A week.”

  “Bit harsh,” said Chase.

  “Yah? What were you gonna say?”

  “Couple days.”

  “Couple days? Hell, Becky’s two kids stay in there overnight fer fun.”

  “Yeah, but they have candles. And food. And sleeping bags. And they can come out whenever they want.”

  “Oh, come on,” sneered Bellington. “A cave?”

  “What?” said Ruby. “You okay with a week?”

  “I’m telling you,” he replied, and I thought maybe his smugness was waning a little, “I don’t know where you’re getting these ideas.”

  “And when was the last time you took the serum? When was the last time you got scrubbed?” Ruby asked, her voice raised.

  “I don’t know. It’s been years. Five, I guess. Yeah, five. They diagnosed me virus-free and classified me for no serum. Lots of people are that way. You should know. Here, tell you what—go back and pick up a couple of my co-workers. They’ll tell you the same thing. I’m in project management. I know nothing about medical matters.”

  “Okay,” said Chase. “That’s what we’ll do. It’ll take us some time, though. Let’s get you to the cave and we’ll catch up with you when we get back.”

  “I don’t know anything about this!” he growled, but there was fear in his anger.

  “Right,” said Ruby. “It’s just, see, that ain’t what Eudrich told us.”

  The man paused. “Eudrich? Benjamin Eudrich?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you take him, too? Is he alive? What did you do to him? Where is he?”

  There was a pause in the tent.

  “He’s dead,” Ruby said. “But we had nothing to do with that. How’d you know him?”

  There was another, longer pause. “We worked together. We were friends.”

  I couldn’t hear anything clearly after that. Just movement within the tent, but no talking. I thought I heard Ruby whispering, then Chase. I moved closer to the tent, almost placing my ear on the canvas.

  “Al!” shouted Chase. He was behind me. I startled so hard I practically threw the book across the camp.

  I stood up.

  “What are you doing? You really can’t stop yourself can you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, Ruby says to tell you that if she catches you out here again you’re going on permanent latrine duty,” Chase said.

  I frowned. “I’ll go,” I said. “I’m just wanting to know what’s going on. You guys really should issue some updates or something. The waiting is killing me, Chase. I feel like I’ve won the lottery but then finding out that before you can pick up your prize, you have to jump through ten more hoops and fill out paperwork and do a bunch more requirements and then when you do those you go back and they say, ‘not yet,’ and add even more red tape.”

  “I know, I know.”

  I wrapped my arms around Chase’s neck. “I just want to remember.”

  “You gotta be patient, Al. We’re doing the best we can. I’ll tell you everything that happened when we’re finished.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” he said.

  There was nothing to do but wait.

  CHAPTER 9

  Chase found me late that night. I hadn’t gone to bed, but I was lying on my cot dozing. There was a chill in the air, and I was thinking of making myself some tea when he poked his head through the tent fly.

  “Come in, come in,” I said.

  He stepped inside, hands in his pockets. I could tell before he spoke that he didn’t have any good news for me.

  “We questioned him all day, all evening, and he maintains he doesn’t know anything. Says he’s just a middle-management goon. We did pick up some good intel about how the Agency squads conduct searching, but he’s adamant that he doesn’t know about this memory treatment.”

  “So, nothing? Nothing at all?”

  Chase shook his head slowly. “Even me and Ruby are beginning to believe him. For all we know there might not really be an antidote.”

  “He’s lying,” I said.

  “Maybe,” said Chase, “but what can we do?”

  “Put him in the cave. Beat him up. I don’t know. This is what you guys do. Get the info. Make him talk.”

  “Al, we don’t torture. You know that. Feels wrong even to grab prisoners, sometimes. I don’t know. We are gonna stick him in the cave for a few days. We’re giving him forty-eight hours to change his story, tell us something we can verify, but, I’m thinking, hell, we did our best. If he knows something, he’s not going to tell. We’ll just have to live with that. I mean, think about it—this whole thing was kind of a longshot to begin with.”

  I sighed. For every one step we took forward, it felt like two steps back.

  “So, what are you going to do with him?”

  “Ruby offered to let him stay in the camp, if he could tell us about the treatment, but he didn’t seem to be very enticed by that.”

  “So now what?”

  Here Chase frowned. “Well, we’ll hold him. Work on him. See if we can’t bring him around to our way of thinking. I don’t know. We can’t just let him go, obviously, because he might be able to lead someone back here, even if he was drugged for the trip in.”

  “Well, when you kidnap a person and keep them under guard, it shouldn’t be that surprising that they wouldn’t find
the place all that appealing.”

  “Hey,” snapped Chase, “this isn’t easy. It’s a fine line. We want to better ourselves, but we can’t do that by kicking the shit out of people who have information we need. I suppose you got a better idea?”

  I wasn’t angry at Chase. I could tell he really was doing his best, but it was infuriating—the better life we wanted was always dangling just out of reach. And all of this frustration seemed to aim itself right at Chase, with no help from me.

  “So,” I said, “that’s it?”

  “Like I said, we’re keeping him here for a while. We’ll sweat him out in the cave. After that? Not sure. He hasn’t been mistreated—other than being detained. Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

  “He’s just sitting in the command tent?” I asked.

  “He’ll be under twenty-four-hour guard for a while, yeah. I’m gonna take another shift with him later tonight.

  “And if he doesn’t change his mind and join the camp? What then?” I asked.

  Chase didn’t answer.

  “What do we do then? Kill him?” I asked.

  “What? No! You know better than that.” He looked horrified.

  “Then what?”

  Chase rubbed his forehead. “We’ll figure it out. Maybe we’ll take him east. Drop him off and let him fend for himself. I’m not sure. But I gotta go grab a couple hours of sleep before my shift. I’m exhausted. Gonna be a long night.”

  “Fine,” I said, my voice low and buzzy. Of course I didn’t mean fine. “Fine” was the word I always used when I felt that nothing was fine. And Chase knew it. He’d been around me long enough to have figured that out.

  But he left anyway.

  I tried to sleep that night, but my mind roiled. I felt certain Bellington knew something that he wasn’t saying. I could almost hear it in his voice just in the short time I listened. He was hiding what he knew, and we were losing what could be our only chance to get our real lives back. Something made me certain of all of this.

  And so the fire inside me was stacked and stocked and grew hotter. It was the flames that had first started during my conversation with Arie on the hillside about Sandy and his frustration with the camp’s inaction. The flames had grown with the news of the notebook and the antidote. Now it felt blinding and unquenchable and ready to break out and burn wild. I had to do something.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Hey,” I said.

  Chase was sitting on an up-ended log with his back leaning against the tree, watching the command tent. There was a lantern burning with a low flame, hanging by its bail from a nearby branch, and Chase was listlessly polishing a pair of army boots.

  “Oh, hey, Al,” he said. “What are you up to? Thought you were mad at me.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry about that. I’m not mad at you. Just frustrated with the situation. You’re right. I need to be more patient. Give it time.”

  “So, what are you doing up?” he asked.

  “Couldn’t sleep, so I brewed some tea. Then I got to thinking about you staying up out here all night.”

  “Ah, bless your heart, bun,” he said, setting down his boot and polishing brush. “C’mere. It’s freezing out here and you don’t even have a jacket on.”

  He unzipped his coat, and I slipped my arms underneath it and leaned into the warm pocket of air around him. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on top of my head.

  “How’s your prisoner?” I asked.

  “Sleeping, I hope,” said Chase.

  “And how much longer are you here for?” I asked Chase.

  “Couple more hours. Larson should be coming around three or four to take his shift.”

  “You said you were exhausted, and that was a couple hours ago,” I said. “How you doing now?”

  “Actually, I’m glad you came along when you did. I keep dozing off. Don’t tell Ruby. It’s been kind of a long few days. I think I’ll be fine. I mean I’m really knackered, but I’ll crash later.

  I don’t know when I came up with the plan. It may have started stirring in my mind as I lay in my tent, before I got up out of my sleeping bag and sat on the edge of the cot, and it may have begun to take shape as I tied my boots and crossed the dark camp for the command tent. I don’t know when it became an actual plan. I wasn’t sure if it even was a plan. I just started talking.

  “That tea is in my tent. Still hot. And it’s warm in there. Got a couple coals burning. Go have some tea and take ten minutes. Take twenty. Take a nap, for all I care. You know what, in fact? I think I still have a shot or two of that homemade hooch that Lorenzo and Chester cooked up. Have a drink. I’ll sit here.” I hoped that the moonshine would seal the deal.

  Chase pursed his lips and squinted at the command tent, as though weighing the risks. I looked, too. Everything was still in the soft light of the lantern. There was no light or sound issuing from the tent. Chase unwrapped my arms from his middle and put his finger to his lips. Then he crept to the front flap of the command tent and quietly opened it. He stood there, listening. After what felt like a full minute, he walked softly back to me.

  “He’s asleep, pretty sure,” said Chase. “I can tell by his breathing. And if he’s not, he’s doing an outstanding job of faking it, so, respect to him. And if he’s planning to make a run for it or something, he’s gonna have to get out of a pair of handcuffs and those leg manacles hitched to a twenty-two-pound boat anchor.”

  I nodded. “So, go ahead.”

  “Okay. If he comes out, just scream like hell, okay?”

  “Sounds like a pretty easy job. Maybe you don’t really deserve a break.”

  “You really don’t mind?” said Chase. “You said everything was ‘fine’ just a few hours ago. We all know what that means.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I don’t mind. I said I was sorry about that.”

  “All right,” he replied. “If I’m not back in like, a half-hour, jog over and get me.” He kissed my cheek. “Thanks, hon. I appreciate it.”

  As I watched Chase disappear into the shadows between the command tent and mine, I felt a sudden twinge of guilt form in the pit of my stomach. It dropped there and rolled around a few times. I’d never tried anything like this before, but there was no way Chase would go along with it if I told him what I planned to do, girlfriend or not. And there was no way I could lie in bed and watch the one thing I wanted just evaporate.

  He’d forgive me.

  If I could even pull it off, that is.

  Would he forgive me?

  Would Ruby?

  Of course they would. Because I was certain that the ultimate, eventual pay-off was finding ourselves again, meeting ourselves, and starting again. I wanted to remember. I had to. I wanted Arie to remember. And Chase and Ruby and Woolly and everyone else. It was the first and last thing that been taken from us. It was what we were owed. What we deserved. I had to try. I don’t know if I realized it fully at that time, but the fire inside me had gone wild and tumbled from the andirons and spilled out over the fender and flagstones and into the room and the walls were now ablaze.

  And so I stared at the kerosene lantern Chase had left hanging from the tree branch. Reaching through the darkness I turned the wheel that raised the wick and the flame grew. I had to squint my eyes, accustomed as they were to the dark of the night. I lifted the lantern and went quietly into the command tent.

  Bellington lay on his back on a low, aluminum-framed cot. His wrists were encircled by a pair of Chase’s nickel-plated police cuffs, and his hands and fingers were sort of spraddled across his chest in a way that to me looked very uncomfortable. His feet were likewise cuffed in a set of prison manacles which looked positively indestructible and were, as Chase had said, threaded through a big steel boat anchor. What that particular piece of equipment was doing in this mountainous place was anybody’s guess.

  I set the lantern down and looked at Bellington for a few long moments. He looked to be very peacefully sleeping in spite of his situation.r />
  “Tell me what you know,” I said in a voice almost too quiet even for me to hear. Bellington didn’t stir.

  I slid my hand into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around a folding Buck knife. This was Chase’s, too, but he told me I could have it. It had a dark wood and brass handle, and the locking blade was perhaps five inches long. It wasn’t much of a weapon, and I wasn’t much of a fighter, but the blade itself was terribly sharp, and I supposed I hoped that my appearance in the middle of the night and the blade in the dark and Bellington’s hapless state as a prisoner far from home would give me an advantage in the early going.

  I took the Buck knife from my pocket. The care-polished blade glowed dully in the flame light. When I opened the blade, it locked open with a sharp click that seemed like it might be as a rifle shot in the stillness.

  Then I came closer and crouched at Bellington’s cot, near his head. I took a deep breath to steady myself, but in that moment, I felt panic rising in me. What am I doing here? What am I hoping to accomplish?

  Chase would be so angry. Would he leave me? And Ruby. Ruby would lose her mind completely. Would she banish me? Maybe she’d turn me over to the Agency to have me out of her hair. Did I really think I could get him to talk when no one else could? The seriousness of the situation, along with its absurdity hit me like Woolly’s maul impacting a hunk of firewood. It was all so stupid. My little plan.

  I stood up slowly, moving as quietly as I could manage. My heart thudded like some broken machine. I began backing away from the cot, backing slowly and gingerly toward the tent flap. What if Chase came back? Or Chase’s relief? Or anyone? Or what if Bellington woke—

  He opened his eyes.

  CHAPTER 11

  Maybe, I thought, he wouldn’t see me? Maybe he’d think it was just a dream and roll over and forget the whole thing? Or would he spring up and stick my own knife into my heart.

  A look of terror was on Bellington’s face. I could only imagine the expression on mine. His eyes darted from my face to the knife in my hand and back again. Mine darted from his face to his handcuffs and manacles.

  Running on pure instinct, I lunged, crouched at his side again, and put the knife to his throat. He flinched a little but said nothing.