Community

by Graham Masterton

  When he went inside the clinic, the receptionist told him that Catherine was still engaged with another patient, so he sat in the waiting room, next to the tropical aquarium. The two security men were hunched on a couch on the opposite side of the room, going over a duty roster together, by the sound of it. One of them glanced up at him over his sunglasses, but he quickly looked down again when Michael gave him a hard, challenging stare.

  A young gingery-haired man on crutches came out of Catherine’s office, and Catherine beckoned Michael inside.

  ‘I can only repeat what I said to you this morning,’ she said, as they sat down. ‘What your Natasha decided to do … it was selfless beyond all imagination. But you and she could have led a very fulfilling life together here in Trinity.’

  ‘Oh … you think?’

  ‘So many of our residents do, you know. Living here in Trinity, in their afterlife, they can continue all of the important work that they were doing before they died.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Michael, suspiciously.

  ‘You may have thought that you recognized some of the residents here. That’s because most of them, in their physical life, were leading scientists and mathematicians and authors and artists.’

  ‘Walter Kruger,’ said Michael. ‘I thought I knew who he was. Nuclear physicist, who discovered the Kruger particle. But he must have died years ago.’

  ‘Two thousand five, to be exact. But they brought him here to the clinic and we gave him his afterlife. Then of course there’s your own Isobel Weston. A remarkable literary figure. And the list goes on. When geniuses die, they take with them all of their knowledge and all of their inspiration and all of their remarkable way of looking at the world. It’s all gone. It’s all lost. It’s a tragedy.

  ‘But then Kingsley Vane approached the government and suggested that whenever a genius dies, we should bring him or her to Mount Shasta and resurrect them as semi-substantials, so that we can carry on taking advantage of everything they have to offer us. Walter Kruger invented the narrow-band accelerator three years after his physical death from old age, and Susan Kirschbaum synthesized Malgon, the anti-malaria drug, eighteen months after she died of breast cancer.

  ‘In the past few years, some of the greatest advances in science and medicine and engineering have come from this community. Trinity is literally a hotbed of inventiveness.’

  ‘Deathbed, more like,’ said Michael. ‘But all of these geniuses … what about their companions? Where do they come from? Don’t tell me they all come from auto wrecks on the interstate, like me, and Tasha, and Jack Barr, and Lloyd Hammers?’

  ‘Not all of them. Some of them come from other situations, like Bethany Thomson, who was involved in a house fire, or Kevin Moskowitz, who was badly crushed by a crane.’

  ‘But a lot of them come from auto wrecks?’

  ‘The majority, yes. Car crash victims are much more likely to have suffered severe concussion or post-traumatic amnesia, and so it’s much easier to help them fit into this community.’

  In a sudden flood-tide of recollection, Michael saw the halogen headlights in his rear-view mirror, and felt the pick-up truck bumping into the back of his Torrent. He could remember Tasha screaming ‘Oh my God! He’s going to kill us!’ and then the Torrent rolling over and over.

  And at last he was able to pick out of his consciousness the single question that had been irritating him like a sharp fragment of shrapnel ever since he had first opened his eyes and found himself in the Trinity-Shasta Clinic.

  ‘Those auto wrecks. They’re deliberate, aren’t they?’

  Catherine looked down and sideways, but she didn’t answer.

  ‘Where else are you going to find people to volunteer to be companions?’ Michael persisted. ‘“Come to live in a small, dull community for the rest of your life, where nothing ever happens except really weird shit like your neighbors gathering outside of your house in the middle of the night and staring at you. Come to live with dead people. They walk, they talk, they’ll even bake cookies for you. But they’re as cold as the Arctic Circle and they’ll never let you leave.”’

  Catherine at last said, ‘Michael – you have no idea how important this community is. Our country depends on Trinity to keep us ahead! Imagine what it would have been like, if we could have given Albert Einstein an afterlife! Or Niels Bohr! All of you companions, you’re doing such a service for America!’

  ‘And that’s what you meant when you said you were going to appeal to my better nature?’

  ‘Yes, Michael, it is. Please stay here. Please stay with Isobel. Please try to forgive us for what happened with your Natasha. She was technically dead already and we were only trying to do what was best for all concerned.’

  Michael stood up, and went to the window. Outside, he could see the first signs of a thaw. Patches of grass were beginning to appear through the snow, and the icicles along the gutter were all dripping.

  ‘I wonder what it felt like,’ he said. ‘Driving along, and gradually becoming transparent. There must have come a point when she went blind, because the light could shine right through her optic nerves.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Catherine. ‘I suppose that would have happened, yes.’

  ‘And then she just vanished, as if she had never been, leaving nothing but her clothes and her shoes?’

  ‘Yes. But that always happens when people die, doesn’t it?’

  Michael suddenly turned away from the window, crossed over to Catherine’s desk, and picked up her letter-opener, which was shaped like a silver dagger. Before she could snatch it away from him, he wrapped his arm around her neck and heaved her upward, so that her chair tipped over sideways on to the floor. He dug the point of the letter-opener into the side of her neck and hissed at her, ‘You fucking killed her! You killed her the first time, by ramming us on the interstate, and then you brought her back to life and you killed her again! What she suffered, because of you! What I’ve suffered, because of you!’

  ‘Michael,’ said Catherine, in a strangled voice. ‘Michael, don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what? Don’t kill you, like you killed Tasha? Don’t hurt you, the way you hurt her?’

  ‘What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?’

  ‘I don’t want you to do anything, or to say anything. You’re going to come outside with me now and we’re going to go see Kingsley Vane’s office, and we’re going to ask his personal assistant to print me out all of the names of all of the companions you have living in Trinity.’

  ‘They’re all confidential,’ Catherine gasped. ‘She’s not allowed to do it.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see about that.’

  Michael frogmarched her across to the door. ‘Open it!’ he told her, and she reached out with her left hand and pushed down the handle. Michael kicked the door wide and forced her out into the reception area.

  ‘Help me!’ shouted Catherine, and immediately, the two security men jumped up from the couch. One of them reached into his coat and tugged out a gun – the same security man who had threatened Michael when he tried to escape from Trinity with Natasha.

  ‘Put it down!’ Michael ordered him.

  The security man aimed his gun at him, holding it two-handed, but then Michael tilted his elbow higher, as if he were preparing to stab Catherine through the neck.

  ‘Put the gun down on the table – now! Or I’ll kill her. You think I’m joking?’

  The security man hesitated for a moment more, but then he carefully set the automatic down on top of a stack of magazines.

  ‘Right now – back off!’ said Michael. ‘Go on – right back to the wall!’

  He dragged Catherine across the room, and then he reached down and picked up the gun, which was surprisingly heavy. Once he had done that, he pushed her roughly away from him, cocked the gun and pointed it at them.

  ‘OK – now we’re all going to go into Kingsley Vane’s office and we’re going to stand there quietly in the corner while I ask his assistant to do me a
favor.’

  Catherine said, ‘Michael, this isn’t going to do anybody any good. Please. I’m sure we can come to some kind of a compromise.’

  ‘Catherine – Tasha is dead and you killed her. How can we reach a compromise about that? Now, let’s get going, before somebody gets hurt. Namely you three.’

  They walked down the corridor until they reached Kingsley Vane’s office. One of the security men knocked on the door and when Kingsley Vane’s personal assistant Valerie called out, ‘Come!’ they all trooped inside.

  When Valerie saw that Michael was pointing a gun at them she immediately reached across her desk for her phone, but Michael snapped at her, ‘Valerie! Don’t even think about it!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Valerie. ‘Doctor Connor – you’re not hurt, are you?’

  Catherine said, ‘I’m all right, Valerie, don’t worry. Michael is a little stressed out, that’s all. I think for the time being we need to do what he says.’

  ‘Well, you got that right,’ said Michael. ‘Now, Valerie – I want you to do me a big favor. I want you to print out all of the names and addresses of the companions you have here in Trinity.’

  ‘What? I can’t do that! All of that information is highly confidential.’

  Michael walked up to her desk and pointed the gun in her face so that it was almost touching the tip of her nose.

  ‘You have a choice here, Valerie. Either you print out all of those names or addresses or I’m going to redecorate this office with your brains.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, with her nostrils flaring.

  At that moment, the door to Kingsley Vane’s office opened up, and Kingsley Vane himself stepped out, in his shirtsleeves and suspenders, fastening up a cufflink as he came, and smelling of aftershave. He looked around and said, ‘What’s going on here? Jesus, Michael – what are you doing with that gun?’

  ‘Michael wants some information from us,’ put in Catherine, quickly.

  ‘What information?’

  ‘He wants to know the names and addresses of all our companions.’

  Kingsley Vane looked at Michael and said, ‘What do you want those for?’

  ‘That’s my business. Now, are you going to print them out for me, or am I going to start shooting people – because, believe me, I will.’

  Kingsley Vane looked toward Catherine, and Catherine gave him a hard look which meant he means it.

  ‘All right,’ said Kingsley Vane. ‘Valerie – give him what he wants, will you?’

  Valerie turned to her computer screen and frantically started typing, her long red nails clicking on the keyboard.

  Kingsley Vane said, ‘Michael … I hope you realize that this will be a serious breach of national security, and what the consequences could be.’

  Michael was beginning to feel strained, and his voice was shaking. ‘Catherine’s explained to me exactly what you’re doing here in Trinity, yes. You’re giving our country’s greatest thinkers another lease of life, after they’re dead.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Kingsley Vane, and he was about to continue when Michael interrupted him.

  ‘She also told me the means that you’ve been employing to achieve this miracle – including vehicular assault and vehicular homicide, false imprisonment, maladministration of prescription drugs and generally lying your fucking heads off.’

  Valerie’s printer beeped into life, and five sheets of paper were spat out into its print tray, one by one. Michael picked them up and quickly scanned them. He found his own name, and Jack Barr, and Lloyd Hammers, as well as George Kelly’s companion, Hedda, she of the upswept spectacles.

  ‘OK,’ he said, folding up the sheets of paper and tucking them left-handed into the inside pocket of his coat. He looked around the office, and saw another door, at the far end, on the right-hand side of the window.

  ‘What’s in there?’ he asked Valerie.

  ‘Nothing. Just stationery, and the clinic’s computer server.’

  Michael crossed the room and opened it up. She was right. The room was windowless, with nothing but shelves stacked with paper and files and envelopes, and a tower server.

  ‘All right, all of you,’ he said. ‘Take out your cells and put them on to Valerie’s desk, then get in here.’

  ‘Michael,’ said Kingsley Vane, but Michael stiffened his arm and pointed the gun directly at him.

  ‘Don’t tempt me,’ he said. ‘Get in here.’

  The two security men took out their cells and left them on Valerie’s desk. Then all of them crowded into the stationery store. Kingsley Vane was the last.

  ‘You will regret this,’ he said. ‘I promise you.’

  Michael said nothing, but closed the door and turned the key in the lock.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Now he knew that he had no time to lose. He tucked the gun into the back of his jeans and went out through the front entrance, down the steps, and across to Isobel’s Jeep. He opened up the tailgate and lifted out the two-gallon gas container that Samuel had given him, still full of gas. Then he hurried back up the steps and across the shiny reception area.

  The receptionist was talking on her headphones and polishing her nails purple and she didn’t even notice him, or the bright red container that he was carrying.

  He went right down to the end of the corridor, to the room where Natasha had been treated. He went inside and shut the door behind him. Unscrewing the cap from the gas container, he sloshed fuel into the bathroom, and across the floor, and finally emptied it over the bed, so that the mattress was soaked. Coughing because of the fumes, he opened up the door again and stepped out into the corridor.

  There was nobody in sight, so he took the book of matches out of his pocket, folded all the matches over and struck one of them, so that the whole book flared up. He tossed it into the room and quickly shut the door.

  He heard a soft whoomphh and the sharp crack of the window in the door breaking, but by then he was already halfway back along the corridor. The receptionist was still on the phone as he pushed his way out of the clinic and jogged back to Isobel’s Jeep.

  Henry didn’t even look up from his newspaper as Michael sped past him, and down the slope.

  He slewed to a stop at the first house he came to. He checked the name on his list and then he climbed out of the Jeep and went up to the front door and rang the doorbell.

  It seemed to take several minutes before anybody answered. Eventually, an elderly man with wild white hair and enormously magnifying spectacles opened the door.

  ‘Yes? Can I help you?’

  ‘Professor Marowitz?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me. What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve come from the clinic, Professor. There’s an emergency. I don’t have time to explain the whole thing now, because I have to warn everybody in the whole community. It’s Mount Shasta. The US Geological Survey says that it’s about to erupt, literally at any minute, and Trinity’s right in the path of the predicted volcanic mudslide. We all have to get out of here, fast.’

  ‘But we need to stay near to Mount Shasta,’ said Professor Marowitz. ‘I mean, if we don’t—’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Michael told him. ‘We’ll actually be going closer to the mountain, not further away. We just have to evacuate Trinity, as a precaution. You know what happened when Mount St Helens blew. More than fifty people got killed.’

  ‘So what are we supposed to do?’

  ‘You have a companion here, right? Jane Buchanan? Get her to drive you down to the community center. We’re going to form a convoy, and I’ll lead you all out of here.’

  Doctor Marowitz said, ‘Very well, then.’ He turned around and called out, ‘Jane! Jane! Get yourself down here, will you? We have a crisis!’

  ‘Make it as quick as you can,’ Michael told him. ‘Mount Shasta could erupt at any moment.’

  He went to the first five houses in the street, telling the same story. When he walked away from the fifth house, he saw that smoke wa
s rising from behind the clinic wall, and immediately afterward he heard the shrilling of fire-alarm bells.

  When he knocked at the sixth house, a young woman answered, in her early thirties. She was very pale, with plum-colored circles under her eyes.

  ‘Lily French?’ he asked her, checking his list.

  ‘No … Audrey O’Sullivan. I’m only staying here temporarily. I saw you at the last community meeting, didn’t I?’

  ‘Sure. More than likely. But we have an emergency on our hands here.’

  When he had told her about the imminent eruption, she said, ‘How are you going to warn everybody here, just on your own?’

  ‘Well … I was hoping that if I gave you a page out of my list, you could maybe warn six or seven other people. Then I’ll ask more residents to do the same.’

  ‘OK. Yes. I’ll see you later then, down at the community center.’

  During the next forty minutes, Michael’s evacuation gained more and more momentum, with residents hurrying from door to door, warning their neighbors that Trinity was in danger of being buried under thousands of tons of volcanic mud. Nobody questioned it. In 1980, the mudslides from Mount St Helens had reached the Columbia River, more than fifty miles away. The afternoon echoed with the sound of vehicle doors slamming and engines starting up, like the beginning of a motor race.

  The sense of panic was heightened by the thick black smoke that was now billowing up from the clinic, and the honking and wailing of fire trucks, which had just arrived from Weed Volunteer Fire Department. It was difficult for Michael to judge how far the fire had spread, but the chilly air was thick with the acrid smell of burning timber.

  He managed to call on more than twenty houses himself, but he handed out his list of names, mostly to companions, and the rest of the community were alerted by their neighbors, from Summit View to the loop where the Endersbys lived. By the time he returned to Isobel’s house, there were more than a hundred cars and SUVs parked around the circle outside the community center, and even more lined up along the side of the slope beyond it.