Sometimes in the middle of the night, he’d lie in bed and just listen. The rhythm of Drew’s night sounds was comforting, finding its way across the room and landing softly on the petals of his heart. The snoring had become a soothing reassurance in an otherwise chaotic world. Knowing his brother was nestled safely in the bed across the room was a constant reminder that all would be right again in the morning, as long as the two of them stuck together.
Lucas unplugged the laptop from the wall socket and put the thin-profile device on the floor next to the bed. He slid his body under the edge of the covers, hoping to catch another ten minutes of shuteye. Maybe his stomach pain would subside if he lay still enough and let the thoughts of disgrace melt away against the backdrop of Drew’s breathing.
A split second later, he felt something crawl across his shin and down the inside of his right calf. “Holy shit!” he screamed, tossing off the covers.
A brown scorpion the size of a hockey puck sat on the sheet, with its venomous stinger arched high above its back. It had crawled into his bed, searching for prey.
Lucas grabbed one of the sneakers from the nightstand between the twin double beds and smashed the creature with such force that he jammed his right wrist, but the four-inch beast was still alive and coming his way.
“Die, you bastard!” he shouted, whacking the invader three more times, until its front claws, stinger, and eight legs stopped moving. He hated the stealthy night crawlers almost as much as his adoptive father did, and would’ve gladly used a bazooka to kill it.
“Geeze, Lucas. Did he owe you money or something?” Drew asked, sitting up in his bed. He used the tip of his index finger to pry the sleeper crust from the corners of his watery Italian eyes. His curly hair was flat on one side after pressing against the pillow all night. Some of it had fallen forward, covering his forehead and one eye. His olive skin was usually perfectly smooth, but right now it was covered in temporary wrinkles, matching the creases in the pillowcase.
“Sorry, bro. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“You didn’t. I was awake already,” Drew said, yawning and stretching, which showed off his stout chest and thickly muscled arms. If it weren’t for the car accident that crushed his legs, he could’ve easily passed for a collegiate athlete, or maybe even a pro.
“Anyway, sorry about that. Not like I had much of a choice. Look at the size of this thing,” Lucas said, using the cardboard backing from one of his notebooks to scoop the carcass into a plastic cup. “You’d think we’d be safe on the third floor.”
“Not with the way those things can climb. They’re relentless.”
“I’d give anything to have a few of Dad’s sonic pads to spread around. Those things worked perfectly,” Lucas said, thinking about his father and the device he’d designed specifically to deal with scorpions. “If it wasn’t for the damn EPA, every house in Arizona would have them by now. And we’d probably be rich.”
“Yeah, all he needed was another chance.”
Lucas carried the remains to the bathroom and dumped the creature into the bottom of the toilet and gave it a middle-finger salute. He saw a two-inch black cockroach lying on its back next to the tub, with one set of legs still kicking. It crunched louder than he expected when he stepped on it with the heel of his left foot. He used a Kleenex to pick it up and toss it into the toilet and used the same sheet of tissue to wipe the creature’s runny blood and guts from his foot.
“And we wouldn’t be living in this dump either. We’d have a big house with plenty of room for Mom,” he said loud enough for Drew to hear in the next room.
“Still, you can’t beat the price.”
“Maybe so, but that’s beside the point. We wouldn’t need free rent if they hadn’t killed his invention,” Lucas yelled, flushing the john to send the pair of mangled carcasses swirling around the bowl and into the sewer. He emptied the toilet a second time for good measure before returning to the bedroom.
He took a seat on his bed across from Drew and continued, “He could’ve solved the problem with the dogs. But no . . . all it took was one scathing report from the EPA and the investors go running for the hills. Don’t they know science is all about trial and error? Bunch of wimps. All Dad needed was a little more time. He would’ve worked out the bugs. No pun intended.”
Drew nodded. “Sometimes, all someone needs is a second chance.”
“You got that right, brother,” Lucas said, moving Drew’s wheelchair closer to the bed. He waited for him to slide his frail legs over the edge and onto the floor. “Need any help?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, I got it. Just give me a minute.”
Drew used a handlebar hanging from the ceiling to prop himself up against the side of the raised bed. He was able to stand for short periods, but couldn’t walk, at least not without assistance. He turned around and sat in the wheelchair, then looked at the floor. “What were you doing with the laptop?”
Lucas paused, taking a moment to think. “Nothing. I woke up early and couldn’t sleep, so I was just reading Dr. Green’s blog. Checking out the new submissions and his reviews, You know, to kill some time.”
“Anything interesting today?” Drew asked, bending down to get the computer.
Lucas grabbed it, holding it out of reach. “Just the usual half-baked theories submitted by wannabe scientists. Nothing nearly as cool as what we’re working on in our lab.”
Drew sat upright in his chair. “Maybe someday we’ll publish one of our theories on that website. Then we’ll be as famous as Dr. Green.”
“No thanks. It’s better to stay off the grid. Remain anonymous. Prehistoric dinosaurs like Green steal people’s ideas all the time and cash in. The shitty thing is, people like us can’t do a thing about it. After all, it would be his word against ours, and who are we? Right now, we’re nobodies. You don’t even have your doctorate yet, and I’m just starting my career.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Drew said with a perplexed look on his unshaven face.
Lucas tossed the laptop to the farthest corner of his bed, making sure Drew couldn’t reach it easily. “Trust me. You don’t want to be famous. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. If you ask me, it’s best to be the brains behind the scenes, and not the person out front in the limelight.”
A shiver ran down Lucas’ spine and he wrapped his arms around his rail-thin, nude body—a stark contrast to his foster brother’s handsome Mediterranean looks and muscular upper body. Lucas hated his red hair and freckles, but at least he had blue eyes. One redeeming feature at least. Well, that and his prominent dimples, something his adoptive mother cherished. However, they didn’t do much for his confidence, not with the prominent cheek scars nearby.
He shivered again, inwardly cursing the ancient heating system in their apartment. Most people didn’t realize that even in the desert, the nights turned chilly. He walked four steps to the end of the room, where the in-wall HVAC system was installed, and rubbed his hands over the rattling output vents. “Hardly anything coming out of this piece of crap.”
“What’d you expect? That thing’s probably older than Sputnik.”
“Even so, you’d think Kleezebee’s Super could find a way to keep this thing working. We could hang meat in here.”
Lucas returned and slipped on a pair of navy blue boxers and a long-sleeved faded red t-shirt with ARIZONA printed on the front of it.
Drew pulled out a neatly rolled pair of socks from a custom-built dresser compartment under the bed and tossed it to Lucas. They had raised their mattresses four feet off the ground, using 4x4 redwood posts and birch plywood from their dad’s workshop. Storage space was at a premium in their five-hundred-square-foot apartment.
Lucas walked to the study desk to see what yesterday’s mail had brought them. Three envelopes were sitting on top of the last pile, face up, with fresh postmarks and no doubt, a swatch of Drew’s fingerprints. All three were from someone in the medical field.
“
More bills for Mom? Are you kidding me?”
“They keep multiplying,” Drew answered, his brow furrowed.
Lucas opened the first envelope and almost puked when his eyes locked onto the invoice’s grand total. “Twenty-two grand for three days in urgent care?”
Drew rolled next to Lucas in his wheelchair. “Good thing you had them send the bills here. If Mom finds out, she’ll have another heart attack. I doubt she’d survive another one.”
Lucas opened a second bill—it was even more. He slammed it onto the pile, face down.
Drew snatched the invoice and looked at it with eyes wide. He gasped. “Fifty-two thousand?”
Lucas gritted his teeth and shook his head. “This day just keeps on getting better. It just never ends.”
“You can bet if Mom knew the insurance company was going to deny her claims, she would’ve just told the attending physician to pull the plug. End it right then and there. How are we gonna pay for all this?”
Lucas sighed as he put his elbows on the desk, resting his face in his hands. He didn’t know how much they owed in total, but the figure had to be staggering. He wished he’d told his family the truth—that he’d forgotten to mail the check for his mother’s insurance premium, which was why the claims department denied the coverage. But at this point, he was too embarrassed to come clean. He already felt bad enough, and it wouldn’t change anything, anyway. It was his problem and he needed to solve it.
His original plan was to pay off the medical bills after he proved one of his revolutionary theories and sold the rights to a defense contractor or to NASA. He hoped submitting his paper to Green would’ve been the first step toward funding a project of his own. But after Dr. Green’s harsh public criticism, he knew nothing short of a miracle could help them now.
“I don’t know. We’ll think of something.”
“We could ask Professor Kleezebee.”
“Borrow money from my boss?”
“Why not? He’s loaded. Besides, he might just give us the money.”
“No. We’re not gonna take handouts. Not if I have anything to say about it. We’ll figure it out on our own.”
Just then, his mind played a vision of him walking into a crowded grocery store with a black ski mask, gun, and brown paper sack, only to be shot dead before he reached the cash register by some Weight Watcher flunky in a wrinkled security guard uniform.
A minute later, Lucas looked at the clock. “Damn, it’s almost nine. We’ll have to bust nuts if we’re going to make breakfast with Trevor.”
“Uh, yeah, it’s Friday. Knowing Trevor, he’s probably already in the cafeteria, waiting for us.”
“Which means we’re late—again.”
“He’ll understand. He always does.”
“That man has more patience than me,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, there’s a shock.”
Lucas ignored the dig. “I hope he fixed the computer glitch in his code. I want to run a few more system checks tonight in the lab, while we still can. I’m guessing you’re not going to do your workout today?”
“No, I’ll do my push-ups tomorrow. Besides, I’m pretty sure I’m at DEFCON 1 already. Right Guard only covers up so much.”
Lucas’ sour mood made it easy to hold back a chuckle, now standing in front of his brother’s side of the closet. “What shirt do you want?”
“Come on, that was funny,” Drew said, giving Lucas a playful shove.
“Yeah, it was. I’m laughing on the inside; can’t you tell?”
“Everything ok, bro?”
Lucas wanted to tell Drew what had happened with Green and the insurance premium check, but he couldn’t find the courage to come clean. His brother counted on him to handle everything, and he didn’t want to shatter his confidence. “Yeah, I’m fine. Didn’t sleep well last night. So, I ask again, what shirt do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter. You know, something with long sleeves, as long as it’s—”
“Blue. Yep, it’s Friday. I should’ve known,” Lucas said, retrieving a pullover shirt from a hanger. He removed it from the red hanger and gave it to his brother. He was careful to put the hanger back in the closet precisely where it had been, exactly two fingers away from the hangers on either side of it.
Drew slipped the shirt over his head.
Lucas handed Drew the wallet-sized leather pouch on the nightstand next to the bed. “Don’t forget this.”
“No. Never.” Drew opened the straps and put them around his head and neck. He tied them together and tucked the pouch inside the front of the collared shirt.
* * *
Lucas and Drew were headed east along one of the sidewalks bordering the landscaped student mall. The entrance to the University of Arizona’s Student Union was now only a half a block away, meaning their morning trek was almost complete.
The low angle of the brilliant sunlight cut through the shade trees lining their path, casting a wide array of shapes across the concrete sidewalk. When the gentle breeze rustled the leaves, the changing shadows reminded Lucas of the calculations he and Drew had been working on in the lab all week. For the uninitiated, the endless fractal patterns could’ve been used as a rudimentary demonstration of subatomic space-time turbulence, also known as quantum foam.
“You can always tell when Christmas break hits. The place empties out the minute finals are over,” Lucas said, missing the abundance of stunning eye candy that typically blanketed the mall. Seeing all the girls running around in their skimpy outfits was his favorite part of the day.
“I like it this way,” Drew said. “I hate it when I have to dodge everyone on the mall. Those Ultimate Frisbee players always find a way to hit me when I’m crossing.”
“That’s because you cut right across in the middle of their game.”
“That’s where the sidewalk is. Why should I have to go all the way around?”
Lucas stood behind Drew as he effortlessly wheeled himself up the steep incline to the building’s main entrance. When Drew reached to open the glass entrance door, a tall, gorgeous blond co-ed beat him to it. She was on the inside and held the door open for him, giving Drew a friendly, rainbow smile as he rolled past her.
Lucas couldn’t see her eyes through her sunglasses, but the woman’s body language suggested she knew his brother, or possibly was attracted to him. She wore a short dark miniskirt and tight t-shirt, despite the cool morning temperature. She had legs for days and a toned figure that could only be the result of plenty of gym time. Sometimes he was jealous of his little brother. It was common for women to be intrigued by Drew’s boyishly handsome good looks. If it weren’t for a car accident that mangled his legs, Drew surely would’ve been a world-famous Italian underwear model instead of a PhD candidate.
But on the other hand, Lucas thought, if not for the accident, they never would’ve met in the orphanage and been adopted together by the Ramsay family. The universe works in mysterious ways. The multiverse, he corrected himself.
Before she looked his way, Lucas checked that his shirt was tucked in and his fly was zipped. He rubbed his tongue across the front of his teeth to make sure nothing foreign was attached.
The girl glanced his way and her smile faded. Lucas wasn’t surprised. Women didn’t always go for the jagged scars on his face. He thought they made him look ruggedly handsome, but that obviously wasn’t the case with this chick. Years of living in state-run facilities had taken their toll, leaving him looking more like an Irish gangster than a nerdy scientist.
Despite her reaction, he gave her his best smile and said, “Thanks for your help. It’s much appreciated.”
The cafeteria line extended outside the entrance and past a pair of vending machines in the hall. Two dozen students were waiting in line before the buffet closed its doors until lunchtime. Most were chatting with each other, but a few were rocking on their heels, listening to headphones.
Lucas recognized the elderly woman walking toward him with a cane and swollen ankles. “W
ould you like to go ahead of us, Professor Atkins?” he asked her.
She smiled, but her saggy, spotted skin camouflaged most of the grin. “Why, thank you, young man.”
Lucas moved his brother aside to let the woman waddle past. It took her a good thirty seconds, giving Lucas plenty of time to sample her aroma: a powerful combination of hairspray and Ben Gay. All she was missing was blue hair and support hose.
Lucas waited for her to move ahead before whispering into Drew’s ear, “I wonder if she knew Columbus?”
Drew smiled through a partially held-back laugh, then said, “Maybe one of us should go find Trevor and let him know we’re stuck in line.”
“I’m assuming that someone is me?”
“Wow, that’s awfully nice of you, brother. I’ll stay here and keep our place in line.”
Lucas found their Swedish lab assistant sitting at a table in the back of the dining area, his weightlifting belt and workout clothes still damp with perspiration and clinging to his well-defined physique.
Everyone on campus knew who the imposing blonde figure was—Trevor Johansson, former Olympic wrestler turned scientist, a giant who could block out the sun at six foot seven inches tall. His enormous size rivaled that of a defensive lineman in the NFL—not an old school defensive lineman who was nothing but big and oafish, but one of the freakishly athletic new breed of linemen filling the broadcast screen on Sundays around America. Even his appetite was huge, with four plates sitting in front of him, overflowing with a pile of fruits and vegetables.
“Having a little snack, are we?” Lucas said, using humor to disguise his trepidation around the giant.
Trevor responded, his Swedish accent thick. “Ja, hungry. Vawnt some?”
“No, thanks. I’m not a big fan of fruit. I’ll grab something else.”
Each time Trevor put the fork to his mouth, his biceps came alive as the twisted cords of muscle and vein stretched the skin to the point of eruption. Drew was the only other person Lucas knew with arms close to that size.
Bunker (A Post-Apocalyptic Techno Thriller Book 2) Page 20
