Hello
Walter looked at his radio in dismay. It had been turned off. Walter didn’t use it that much anymore, except whenever he wanted to listen to an audiobook or something of that nature.
First things first, this is like a walkie-talkie. We cannot both speak at the same time. So I’m going to talk right now, and then I’ll wait for your response.
My name is Kent. I was the thing with no arms or legs that you might have seen earlier. I didn’t see you, but I heard you, as I hear you now. Talking through radio waves is sort of my thing. Our leader, Matt, who I hope you have the chance to meet, has instructed me to tell you that if you leave the highway, we will kill you. We are following you as we speak, and if you stray off the highway, Jolie here will arc a bolt of lightning through your car, killing you.
So, what is your name?
Walter didn’t speak at first. The whole situation seemed so crazy that he was afraid that if he did speak, it would become true. But there was a girl in the truck with him, and he had already seen some weird stuff earlier. If he was afraid of validating the craziness, he was much too late for something like that.
“Hello.”
Oh, you sound older than I imagined you would. Well, “hello” isn’t a name, or at least I hope it isn’t. You’ll have to excuse me, in my current situation, humor is all that gets me out of bed in the morning.
“Walter.”
Walter, old name, strong name, a simple name as well, for a simple fellow. I’m not calling you stupid. I’m guessing that when you got out of bed this morning, you didn’t expect to be in the middle of all this. I can empathize. So Walter, what’s the plan here? I’m guessing that Becca is still recovering from her NaU usage earlier, so I’m just talking to you at the moment. She hasn’t killed you . . . yet, that is. I will warn you, though, she did kill her father about twelve hours earlier. She didn’t shed a tear for him, and I doubt that she would hesitate to kill you if she was given a choice.
So what’s the deal here, Walter, what are you going to do?
“Why do you want her?”
Do you really want to know? Ignorance is bliss, as they say, and I’m sure that you would much rather have preferred to stay ignorant on this entire topic. So why would you want to learn more? Do you want to get more involved, or do you want to make peace with us, and hand the girl over?
To be clear, we can take her if we want, but we want what’s best for you here as well, Walter. If only Matt could speak to you now and tell you of our plight, I’m sure you wouldn’t even hesitate to hand the girl over. It is that heart throbbing. I can guarantee it.
Walter looked over at the girl next to him. What did he really know about her? Nothing really, save for the fact that she did threaten to kill him about ten minutes ago, or about as far as he could imagine it was.
He looked out the window.
The snow fell hard, and he hadn’t seen a plow drive by in a while. Maybe they decided to throw the towel in or something like that. With the weather being as bad as it was, they might figure that there were more important places for the plows to go to then the New York state thruway. If so, then no one would notice the ruined Stop 17 for some time, possibly not until after the storm ended. When they asked him what happened, he would say that he never got around to checking it or that he did, and when he left, everything was in order. Gas leaks happened all the time at establishments that have food in them, and he could blame it on that. Walter doubted that they would believe that a man crashed through the ceiling and then fought a girl with a white blade coming out of her arms.
I’m waiting, Walter.
“I’m bringing her to Stop 15,” he said. “After I bring her inside, then we can all talk this through.”
That’s the best news I’ve heard today. I will let the relevant parties know of your very wise choice.
The radio cut out, and the truck was filled with nothing but silence.
“Stop fifteen isn’t exactly the border,” Rebecca said.
“One of you is going to have to tell me what’s going on,” Walter said. “I don’t know what happened back there at the stop seventeen, and I need to hear some answers. You said to bring you to shelter, and that’s what I’m doing.”
Rebecca stayed silent. Walter looked back at the road ahead of them, watching the snowflakes pound onto the windshield in front of them.
The two of them arrived at Stop 15 a few minutes later. Walter had to turn through the small road in-between the northbound side of the thruway and the southbound side, the road that was usually only used by state troopers and utility vehicles. The trees ahead kept most of the snow off the little stretch of road, for which Walter was thankful. Those giant plows wouldn’t have been able to get into these spots with how large they were. If the trees weren’t there, then there would have been no way for him to get back to the northbound side.
The two of them got out. In the distance, Walter saw the light up in the sky.
“Get inside,” Rebecca said.
“We’re going to talk to them first.”
“You can do that from inside. As for this . . ..”
Rebecca’s body grew bright purple. Every vein and artery in her body was filled with light. Walter shielded his eyes for a second.
The air around them grew very still. The stillness seemed to spread, creating a dome around the rest stop. Flakes of snow landed on it and melted away, running down the side of the dome in droplets.
Walter looked over all of it.
“What is that?” he said.
“Kinetic disturbance field,” Rebecca said, turning around to him. “No one will jump on us this time, and Jolie can’t use her NaU on it. My father’s NaU is very flexible and adaptable.”
“Rebecca, who are these people, truly? Why are they after you? Did you really kill your father?”
Walter had so many questions that he was ready to burst. Rebecca had answered one question, but he had many that could replace it and be next in line for her to shine a light on.
“You will get your answers soon,” Rebecca said, walking past him and back up to the rest stop. He followed her, looking around at the dome around them.
Yep, this is crazy, he thought, opening the door and walking into the office after her.
****
The office was how plain and ordinary as Walter had left it. He and Rebecca sat down across from one another. All of the hostility seemed to be out of the girl, which Walter preferred. He wasn’t ready to have another blade shoved in his face for not saying what she wanted to hear.
“What would you like to know?” Rebecca said.
“What is all of this?” Walter said.
“The ‘this’ you are referring to is the result of failed experiments with nanite clusters interacting with the human body. My father tried to save my mother from dying with them. It worked, but it did horrible things to those all around when it happened. They are called NaU, or rather, that’s what my parents called them.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call the ability to fly and shoot light from your body as being horrible.”
“Everything has a cost. All of us with them inside us are dying because of them.”
“You seem healthy.”
“We can talk more on that later.”
“So, that’s why they’re after you?” Walter said. “For your NaU?”
“Not exactly,” Rebecca said.
“I thought you said that I would get some answers.”
“You will, you will,” she said. “But honestly, Walter, Kent’s question is an important one. How much do you really want to know? Ignorance is a gift, and I would much rather have then my current situation, believe me.”
“No more riddles,” Walter said. “I need the truth now, please.”
Rebecca opened her mouth to speak, and Walter was confident that it was going to be more lies.
But they never got the chance to speak on that.
The others had arrived.
****
/> Walter approached the end of the field.
The four people up close were even worse than before. They all appeared to be young, with different colored veins and lights emitting from their bodies. The red one was shoving her head into the field repeatedly, not seeming to do anything.
Walter approached the one who appeared to be the leader. He looked like a Matt kind of guy. He was shirtless, and his body rippled with orange light. Next to him must have been Kent and Jolie. Kent was as awful to look at as Walter had imagined, with no legs and feet, hovering above the ground, pink veins running through his body like circuitry. Jolie appeared to the tallest out of the group, but with Matt levitating, it was hard to tell.
Walter walked right up to Matt.
“You are Walter?” Matt said, looking down at him.
Walter nodded.
“We need to take Becca with us. It’s very important.”
“And why should I hand her—”
“No, not hand,” Matt said. “You couldn’t get Becca to do anything anyway. We need you to convince her to come with us to come with me.”
“Come with you to die.”
“Yes.”
“And why would she do that?”
“Because,” Matt said, snow falling all around him. “She is my sister.”
Chapter Six
People will judge me, I know that. I know that they won’t take the time to try and see things from my perspective. I was dying, Carol was dying, and Matt was sick. What would they do in my situation? I seriously doubt that they would have the wherewithal to not do what I did.
-Robbie’s Journal
“What is the slope of the line represented by the equation 4x + 3y = 7?”
Kent rolled his green eyes and avoided Becca’s gaze. Through the open window, the far off, distant sounds of the Washington County Fair tractor pull was in full swing. Becca wished she was there, but someone had to help Kent. No one else would.
“Try writing it out,” she said, pointing down at the sheet below him on the desk. She handed him his graphing calculator and looked over his shoulder.
He was doing it wrong, but Becca didn’t want to stop him yet. Stopping Kent midway through what he was doing, even if it was wrong, was a surefire way to get him to give up. She tried not to listen to the sounds of her mother’s machines downstairs.
Becca’s room was on the second story of the McCarthy house. It was an old farmhouse, as most of the houses in Washington County were. The McCarthys weren’t farmers, though someone might be able to make the argument that they still grew things, but in labs and not out in fields covered with cow manure.
And that was the main scent of the town as of late. Whenever summer hit its halfway point, and all of the fields were being prepared for next spring’s harvest, manure was the name of the game.
Luckily, her windows were closed, though the smell still persisted. She loved Greendale with about every fiber of her being, but she could do without the cow manure. She really could.
“I don’t know,” Kent said, putting down his pencil.
“Have you been studying?” she asked.
“Why do I need to study?” Kent said. “Isn’t this whole tutoring supposed to replace that? You know I don’t have time to study for algebra, of all things. Why the hell does it even matter?”
Becca listened with patience, as she often had to whenever Kent got this way about his studying. Greendale South High School wasn’t exactly known for its high academic scores since most of the people that went there often went back to the farm fields as soon as they got home.
Robbie had complained that they should try and change school districts. It was too late for Matt, but Becca had at least a shot at a different school. Besides, though Becca didn’t say it outright, she knew that her father cared more for her then he did for Matt.
Robbie could do his research anywhere, and with the funding of the Argyle Research Lab hanging by a thread, he might as well try his research elsewhere. He was overqualified to work there, but they were the only lab in the area that agreed to try his theories and research. Her mom had grown up in Washington County her entire life, and she liked it. She didn’t like many things now, or at least if she did, she wasn’t able to express it, along with anything else for that matter.
Becca did like Washington County too, but like her father, she was overqualified. She was currently the top of her eighth-grade class, and she taught high schoolers algebra, which was what she was doing the night her life ended.
“Here, let me show you,” Becca said.
She took the calculator from Kent’s disgruntled hands and typed in the right commands. He watched with meager interest.
“I don’t see the point of all this,” he said, sweeping his hands. “It’s a waste of both of our times. It’s summer, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yes,” Becca said. “And that’s why you need to be prepared for the special examination for Integrated Algebra so that you’ll be ready to take geometry as soon as the year starts.”
“Admit it,” Kent said. “You don’t want me here. You’d rather be at the fair tonight like everyone else.”
“Trying to make sure you can graduate high school is a point as good as any,” she said.
“You’re only doing this because my mom made you,” he said, looking down. “You’d much rather be anywhere else than here with me.”
That was true, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Kent might not be all that great at algebra, but he was good at figuring out why people did certain things.
Kent’s mother had indeed asked if Becca wouldn’t mind but try and help her son graduate high school. She wasn’t confident that he’d end up going to college, but she didn’t want him to make the same mistake she did and drop out of high school. Kent’s mom worked as the caretaker for Becca’s mom during the day when Matt and Becca were at school, and Robbie was off at the lab. She was a nice woman, and she had cash. Becca agreed.
Kent was as stubborn as a new calf, though, constantly wanting to throw himself down in the mud rather than try and learn how to calculate the slopes of multi-level algebraic equations.
They were making progress, even if it was a slow. She showed him how to do the problem.
“The answer is -4/3,” Becca said.
“Well, of course, it is,” Kent said, with mock amusement. “Why didn’t I think of that, super easy to understand the answer?”
There was a crash from downstairs.
“Fuck,” Becca’s father said. Downstairs, there was the sound of cracking and the sound of a broom. He said something else, and then the sliding door opened and closed.
“Don’t eavesdrop,” she said.
Becca pointed to another problem in their Regent’s Prep book. The question had a diagram of a bird falling to the ground from the top of a sunflower, and its shadow beneath it, making a right triangle. One of the sides was labeled “x.”
“To the nearest tenth of a degree, what is the measure of angle x?” Becca said, sliding him back his notebook.
Becca walked over to her window and opened it.
Cow manure greeted her, along with a smell she hoped she’d never have to smell again. She slipped out of the window and into the old fire escape. The metal creaked as she did so, and then she was on the ground. She walked around, listening to the creepers, and crickets. She walked over to the back porch.
She was an hour away from her life ending.
Her father was on the back porch, looking out into the trees behind their house. Robbie McCarthy looked a lot older than Becca had ever seen him. He was a man of usually quick and honest temperament. Lately, though, he hadn’t been as nice. His hands were shaking, although the night wasn’t cold. He dropped his cigarette when she approached.
“Geez, you scared me,” he said. He looked down at the cigarette. “Do you know how long it took me to light that?”
“I’ll help you,” Becca said.
For a moment, he looked as though he was offended,
frowning, and looking down at his daughter. Finally, though, he shrugged and took out the carton and the lighter. Both of the objects shook in his hands as he handed them to her.
“I told you I was going to quit,” he said as Becca lit him a cigarette.
“That was before,” she said, handing him the cigarette. His shaking hands snatched it, and for a moment, she was afraid that he might drop this one as well.
But he didn’t. He took it, brought it to his lips, and inhaled.
“That’s an excuse,” he said.
“It’s still true,” Becca said.
“I need more time,” he said, not turning to look at Becca. “If I had more time, I could make all of this work.”
“You don’t have to,” Becca said, walking up beside him. His hands were still shaking, so he put them in his pockets, hoping that doing so would make the Parkinson’s go away, if not forever, then at least this moment between the two of them.
Moonlight shimmered in his water-filled eyes.
“I do, I do,” he said.
“What was the crash about?” she said.
“I dropped a bowl,” he said. “It was wet and slippery. I would have dropped it anyway, even if not for the—” He held out his hand for her to watch as it shook around in the moonlight. He held the cigarette in his mouth as though it were a toothpick, perhaps afraid to go up and grab it, lest he drop it again.
“Anyway,” he said, dropping his hand. “I startled your mother, and then I tried to tell her everything was fine, and then I came out here for a minute or two. In my defense, I hadn’t planned on smoking.”
“You still carry around a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, though?”
“Yep,” he said. “How’s Kent?”
“He’s fine. He’ll probably pass this time.”
“I hope he does,” her dad said. “Kent’s a good kid, and he’s smarter than he thinks. I hope you’ll be able to show him that.”
Becca knew full well that Robbie didn’t care one bit for Kent. But it wouldn’t do either of them any good to argue about that. It was Kent, after all.
“How do you think the fair is going tonight?” her father said.
“Matt’s fine,” Becca said. “He’s with his friends. They won’t let anything bad happen to him.”
The Keeper Page 5
