Their flesh tore like paper, and gore tumbled from their wounds at slow, syrupy speeds. The tunnel outside floated by, piping and tubing drifting along like logs in a stream. The boy wept as he lashed out at them, tearing at the still figures that slowly fell to the ground once he stabbed them, wafting down like thistle seeds in a summer breeze. It was like a dreamy dance, sinking to the trolley floor with red streams twirling up and away from their necks and backs and chests. Their faces quiet and thoughtful as though they did not yet know they were dead. And then when the scissors broke he stopped and moved to the man at the front, the pilot-man in the uniform with the shiny brass buttons, but he knew not to hurt him because once his daddy had said those men were very good men and would get him home if he was lost, and to just ask them for help.
Which is what the boy did then. Asked him how to get home, and for help. But the man sat still as stone like the other frozen people, and said nothing. And so the boy turned to look at the little trolley behind him and all the colorless people still falling to the ground or slumping over like marionettes with their strings cut, and he dropped the scissor handles and walked out to the dark tunnel and the distant lights beyond.
Hayes shut his eyes. “I know, Jack,” he said. “I know.”
“Kill all of you,” the child gasped. “All of you. Every one. Even the ones who got away, I found them, too. You can’t hide. You can’t.”
Then Hayes looked into the boy’s heart once more and saw how broken he was. How mad, how hungry. He was not a boy anymore but something irreparably damaged, something vicious, like a rabid dog seeking a hand to bite.
There could be no return from this. No way back. Not from this.
Hayes waited until the boy was quiet. Then he swallowed and said, “Why don’t you get into bed?”
“Bed?” said the boy.
“Yes. It’s bedtime.”
“But it’s light out.”
“Aren’t you tired, though?”
“I guess. I guess I am.”
There was a flurry and then the boy was gone. Hayes looked around and saw he was in bed, staring out the window. Hayes walked to him and sat down beside him.
“Jack?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“I want you to close your eyes, Jack.”
“Why?”
Hayes swallowed again and took a breath. “Because you’re going to sleep now.”
“Oh.” The boy looked at him a moment longer, then did as he asked.
“Now I want you to think of something for me, Jack.”
“What?”
“I want you to think of your old home. Your old house. Before this place. With your daddy. Can you do that for me now?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it, please.”
Hayes saw the memory swell up in the boy. Fall leaves tumbling over the porch gate. Neighbors coming over and bringing leftovers on plates. The sound of crickets, lost in the din of the city now, so lost.
“I remember that,” the boy said. “I remember crickets.”
“Do you remember your daddy?”
“I do. Of course I do.”
Hayes picked up a pillow. “I want you to think of him. Think of him very hard. Okay?”
He saw Skiller’s face in the boy’s mind. Smelled his aftershave. The rough feeling of his pants as the boy sat in his lap. His voice in the darkness, low and calm. Reassuring him that everything would be all right.
“Now go to sleep,” Hayes said. “Go to sleep, Jack. Sleep.”
The boy dropped off. Hayes waited until his breathing was steady. Then he clamped the pillow over the child’s face and held it there.
There was no struggle. Perhaps the boy had known what Hayes was going to do and did not mind. Hayes held the pillow there until the breathing stopped and as he did he noticed drops forming on the pillowcase and realized he was crying again. Still he held it. He waited until the mind and the thoughts he sensed wavered and died, like a candle flame burning low. Then they were gone, perhaps to parts unknown or maybe evaporated into nothing like dew in morning light.
He took the pillow away and stared at the little creature in the bed. He sat on the bed opposite it for some time, clutching himself as though he were cold. Then he began rocking back and forth, moaning quietly. He fought the scream rising within him, tried to choke it out, but then he gave up and howled, a strangled cry that did not even sound human to his ears.
When he was done he walked downstairs to the abandoned street and began heading toward the Department. And as afternoon began to advance and he neared the police station something drifted down to him from up above, some thought or worry from someone near, and Hayes stopped where he was and knew that Garvey was dead.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Hayes went to him in the morgue. At first he did not want to look at all. But then he decided he must. Someone has to look, he told himself. Someone has to look, for things like that.
He was not sure which cabinet was his so he began pulling them out at random. Garvey’s was on the far wall. When Hayes found him he looked nothing like how he remembered him. He was just a thing now. An object, cold and pallid. A casualty, perhaps.
Hayes looked at his friend laid out on the slab, his legs and chest and hands dotted with wounds. He felt grief grip his chest and he knew then as he had perhaps known all his life that in this fading world the good were forever fated to die young and die violently. Fated to change the world only in their remembrance left behind in the hearts of those who lived on. In the sinners. In those who unjustly survived the slain.
“It should have been you,” Hayes said.
A young boy in a white coat came walking in. He saw Hayes standing there and said, “Who the hell are you?”
Hayes turned around. The young man saw the gun in Hayes’s hand and paled and drew back.
“Whoa,” he said. “Whoa, hey.”
“Shut up,” said Hayes.
The young man was quiet. Hayes walked past him and up the stairs of the Department, and then outside.
It was growing dark now. An uneasy hush rolled throughout the city. Tattered clouds made bird’s nests around the yellow eye of the moon overhead. A crowd of drunks tottered over the lanes nearby. Hayes thought he heard one of them singing but when he stopped to listen he realized they were not.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
It was not hard for Hayes to get into the office. The Nail was shut down at these hours, claiming emergency. Those few who were left behind did not see him, not if Hayes didn’t want them to. So he came to the office and sat in the dark and waited.
Brightly came in while it was still dark out. He walked in and sat down, tossing a few papers down as he did so, and he reached over and turned on the desk light. Then he glanced up and cried out as he saw what was sitting on the other side of the desk, pale-white with bone-bleached hair and skin that was sooty and ashen and scarred.
“Hello, Brightly,” said Hayes.
Brightly squinted at him, horrified. “Hayes?”
“Yes,” said Hayes softly. “Yes, it’s me.”
“Dear God, man, what happened to you?”
He shrugged.
“You can’t be in here. How did you get in here?”
“That’s not what you should be worrying about.” He took a breath and said, “Do you know where I’ve been?”
“Where you’ve been?” Brightly began glancing to the sides, trying to find some escape or weapon.
“Yes.”
“I’ve… I’m sure I have no idea.”
“I was at the morgue. Do you want to know why?”
“I… Well, I suppose,” said Brightly.
“I went there to see Garvey,” he said. “To see my friend.”
Brightly froze, staring at him. “W-what?”
“Garvey. The detective. You remember him?”
“Well, I… I never met the man personally, but…”
“He was shot,” said Hayes. “Just today. Shot dead. Did you know that?”
/>
“N-no. No, I didn’t, I’m… I’m terribly sorry to hear that.”
“To hear that,” echoed Hayes.
“Yes.”
Hayes’s pale eyes flicked up and down Brightly behind the desk. “You’re lying.”
“What?”
“You’re lying to me, Brightly. I know Collins called you yesterday. And he told you what Garvey knew, and what he was going to do. And I know the precautions you took.”
“That’s preposterous,” said Brightly.
“No. It isn’t. You had him killed.”
“Why on Earth would I ever have… have a policeman killed?”
“Because he found out about Gerald Crimley,” Hayes said.
Brightly flinched and took a breath.
“You don’t like that, do you?” Hayes said. “That name? That man, perhaps?”
“How do you know that name?”
“I know all about him.”
“You can’t… you can’t come in here and start…”
“I can. Because if anyone in this town finds out that all those fires started under your watch or the watch of McNaughton, you’ll be hung from a window by your ankles, won’t you?”
Brightly grew very still. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes you do. You certainly do.”
“I don’t. I don’t, and I… I want you out of this office, Hayes. I want you…”
“I know he brought in the guns,” Hayes said thoughtfully. “But I’m just not sure what they were meant for. You remember them, don’t you? The guns?”
Brightly was silent at that.
Hayes looked away, thinking. “I’m going to assume you didn’t intend for them to actually use the guns, did you? Come on, Brightly. Give it up. Just stonewalling me isn’t going to get anywhere. So. Did you?”
Brightly swallowed. Then shook his head.
“No. You just wanted them to be caught with them, yes?”
Brightly did not answer.
“Yes? Is that it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes. To dirty the names of Tazz and unions. Show them as violent and untrustworthy. But you know what, I’m going to guess that Mr. Crimley went native. He started living his Tazz role, didn’t he? Started to become hard to communicate with? That happens with long jobs. To men who’re deep inside. So Mr. Crimley-or perhaps Mr. Tazz-tells his boys to go all Old West on us and then he leaves in the middle of the night. Is that it?”
Brightly looked away.
“What were me and Sam there for?” Hayes asked. “To make it easy? You get Crimley to set up the unions, then you get me and Sam to tear them down, one after the other? That’s why we never made any arrests, isn’t it? Because you wanted us to build it up naturally until we got to the guns.”
He still did not answer.
“All that,” said Hayes quietly. “All that, for just a little bit of money.”
“Not a little bit of money,” said Brightly. “For a lot of it. Unimaginable amounts. Fortunes many times over.”
“All money is little,” said Hayes. “In the long run.”
“Damn it, we’re almost our own country, Hayes,” said Brightly. “We have to defend ourselves! This is war, practically. Countries depend on us, the whole world, for God’s sake. You would have done it, too! You’re no lamb yourself, you would have done the same!”
Hayes nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s true. The saddest thing is that I can understand what you did. To protect your own, at any cost.”
“Then what is it you want?” Brightly demanded. “Money? Is that it?”
“I have money of my own. You know that, of all people.”
“Then what?”
Hayes took out a revolver and laid it in his lap. Then he sat and stared into the front of Brightly’s desk, unmoving.
“Oh, God,” said Brightly.
“Yes,” said Hayes.
“Cyril. Cyril, listen. Don’t do anything rash, now.”
Hayes nodded again, apparently lost in thought.
“Don’t do anything silly,” Brightly said. “You’re company, Cyril, you’re one of our boys, you shouldn’t-”
“I’m not company,” Hayes said. “No one is. There’s no union. No company. No city. Just people. Alone. And unwatched.”
“I was… I was just doing my job.”
“So was he. And he died for it.”
“I can get you whatever you want…”
“Larry, I am not in the mood for negotiating right now!” shouted Hayes. He looked up at Brightly, breathing hard. “I killed a ten-year-old boy today,” he whispered.
“Oh, my God,” moaned Brightly. “Oh, God. Please, Cyril.”
“It’s worse than you think, Brightly.”
“God, Cyril…”
“I killed him because he found out what was in the mountains,” Hayes said.
“What?” said Brightly, confused. “What mountains?”
“I found it there, too,” said Hayes softly. “What’s hiding up there. I stumbled across it. I know why this company never moved away from this spot. And I know where the machines come from. The discoveries.”
“What do you mean? What’s in the mountains?”
Hayes stopped, looking him over closely. “You don’t know. You really don’t know, do you? You don’t even know what that thing in your bunker is, do you?”
“Know what? What’s in the damn mountains?”
“God, who does know?” spat Hayes, standing up. “Who really knows what started this company? Christ almighty, someone has to know. Someone on the board has to have some idea!” Hayes shook his head, furious that there was not someone to throw this in front of, no real enemy to attack.
“What do you mean?” asked Brightly. “What are you talking about?”
“I went up there, Brightly,” said Hayes. “Up in the mountains. To see what Kulahee had found long ago. And I found it, too. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what I found. When I came back down Garvey was dead. All the people in the fire, they were dead. And there’s nothing I can do to change what happened. He was my friend, Brightly.”
“God, Hayes, please don’t. Please…”
Hayes pointed the gun at Brightly, who fell backward out of his chair and lay on the floor, trying to inch away. Hayes walked around, still pointing the gun. Brightly lifted his arm and shielded his face with it, staring over the top.
“He was my friend,” Hayes said. “He was just doing his job. He just died because he cared. Because he was the only one.”
Brightly swallowed and closed his eyes.
The barrel of the gun quivered and Hayes lowered it. He shook his head and sat down on the floor next to Brightly, the big man and the little man sitting together in the dark. Neither of them moved for a great while.
Hayes whispered, “I don’t want to do this anymore, Brightly.”
“All… all right.”
“I don’t want this. No more of this. No more. No more killing. No more killing, Brightly. Do you understand that?”
“Yes. Yes, I understand, no more killing,” Brightly said quickly.
“Things are going to change here. Be ready. Be somewhere else, if you need. You can try and send men after me. If you’re stupid. But I’m not what I was before. And I’ll see them coming.” Then he got up and began to walk away.
“Cyril,” said Brightly. “Cyril. What’s up there? What did you see in the mountains?”
Hayes turned, looking back, a blank figure in the shadows. Then he said, “The future,” and walked out.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
He went to Samantha just before dawn, guessing easily where she would have run to. He walked down the canal and knocked on the door. Then he waited and knocked again. It opened just a crack and he saw her peek through. Then she opened the door the rest of the way and said, “Oh my… my God, Hayes? Is that you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What happened to you? My God, what happened?”
H
ayes walked forward and embraced her without a word. She drew back, shocked by the display of affection. Then she slowly embraced him back.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What? Where’s Donald? Mr. Hayes, where’s Donald?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
She began shaking in his arms. “What are you doing? What’s happened? What’s going on? What’s happened, Mr. Hayes?”
He did not answer. He just kept holding her.
“Please,” she said. “Please tell me. Please, you just have to… You just have to tell me! Please, just tell me, please!”
He kept holding her. She kept asking questions, one after the other, but she knew the answers now. Eventually she collapsed and sat on the floor and sobbed, rocking back and forth. Hayes sat with her and waited, patiently. After a while he shut the door.
He gently led her to a cab and directed the driver toward the downtown cradle. She leaned against the cab window like a drugged woman, hands limp in her lap.
“We shouldn’t leave,” she said.
“I know.”
“We should see him buried. I should at least see him.”
“It’s dangerous. He wouldn’t have wanted you to be in danger. And you are the last good thing in my life,” said Hayes. “I won’t risk you. You are too precious to lose.”
“We should… find the men who did this and…”
“No,” said Hayes. “No more. No more of that.”
She shut her eyes and began crying again.
When they got to the cradle he led her to the central lift. They climbed inside and stood in the glass tube, the windows wreathed with condensation, the street traffic just below their toes. Something hissed above and they began to rise up, floating up above the shops and the cars, then above the crinkled rooftops of the houses, then finally above the sodden tops of the office buildings, gray and wet and graveled. Finally they were in the cradle itself. Men and women in starched suits and sharp dresses strolled about the tiled platform, smoking and casually speaking to one another as though they were on the deck of a cruise ship. In the distant heart of the dawning sky they could see the nose of the airship approaching, slowly swiveling to position its passenger cell for the center of the cradle. It would only be a few minutes.
The Company Man Page 42
