“We know there’s a saboteur,” he said to them. “And now we know that it may not have been Cameron, after all. The explosives used in the attack came out of the storage lockers...lockers that only we have keys for. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that means.”
Kelly and Henry looked at one another, their faces serious.
“It’s so hard to believe,” Kelly said. “We’ve worked together for years, worked so hard to make things better. How could any one of us just throw that away?”
“So who is it?” Henry asked him. His anger was evident on his face. “Who could Tristan have gotten to?”
Samuel shrugged and heavily shook his head.
“We have no way of knowing, yet. But...we need to check inventory on those lockers so we know exactly how many explosives are missing, and then post a guard on them, around the clock. Then, everyone on the team needs to submit their keys to the lockers. We need to collect them, so we can be sure no one has access, and we need to do it now. The next incident might not target machines.”
Kelly nodded curtly. “I’ll round them up, and see what I can do about the guard.”
Henry dug around in his overalls. When he withdrew his hand, he was holding a jingling key ring. Kelly did the same.
“I’ll keep them all here, locked in my room,” Samuel said, not thinking.
Henry looked uneasy.
“Well, ahh...I dunno, Samuel,” he said. “I mean, not that I’d ever suspect you, but...it’s just that we don’t know anything right now, and...maybe...I dunno, maybe none of us should...y’know....”
Samuel suddenly saw his hypocrisy, and chastised himself.
“No...yeah, of course...sorry. I wasn’t thinking. We’ll find a neutral place to keep them.”
“Gorman’s office?” Kelly suggested. “If he can’t be trusted, then we’d all better lay down and give up now...right?”
“Yeah,” Samuel said. “That’ll do. Mine should be in my coveralls. Check the closet.” He gestured vaguely at the door, next to the bathroom.
Henry slapped his keys into Kelly’s hand. She went to the closet and produced Samuel’s set from his work clothes. Then, as a show of good faith, she dug out her own and added them to the others.
“Okay,” she breathed. “I’ll get these, along with the rest, to Gorman.”
“Thanks, Kelly.”
“Well, this has been fun,” Henry joked, and waved at the door. “I’d better get back to it.”
“Okay,” Samuel said. “Give me half an hour. I’ll be out.”
Both of them looked at him in alarm.
“I told you we shouldn’t have told him right away,” Kelly hissed at Henry.
“Oh,” Henry said, ignoring her. “Sam, I didn’t mean to get you up and out...I only wanted to make sure you knew what was going on. I figured you’d want me to. We can handle this for now...you just rest.”
“Bullshit,” Samuel said. “Go on, get back and help. I’ll meet you when I can.”
Henry glanced at Kelly, and gave a little shrug and shake of his head. She was openly displaying her annoyance.
“Uh, okay Samuel,” Henry said. “Whatever you say. See you out there.”
He turned and opened the door to leave.
“Oh, and Henry,” Samuel said, stopping him. “Good job, and...thanks.”
Henry smiled, nodded, and then disappeared through the doorway.
“Sam,” Kelly said after Henry had left, “you don’t have to do this. At least wait until this afternoon.”
Samuel let his head fall back onto the pillow, and searched the ceiling for answers to their problems, finding it barren and unhelpful.
“I can’t, Kelly. And I’m pretty sure you’d do the same, in my place. They need all the help they can get. Hell, all of us do.”
Now that he knew everything, now that they were alone, Samuel felt his mood nose-diving. It all was heaping on his shoulders, all the struggle and arid hope. He felt like he’d been working himself to the bone just to get out of the pit he was in, but every time he got his fingers over the lip, something always seemed to reach up and pull him all the way down again.
“There’s never a break, is there?” he asked nobody in particular. “We go and go, we scurry around this place, thinking we’re going to make a difference. And what have we done? What have we accomplished?”
He knew he shouldn’t be saying it, but he couldn’t help it. He was tired of keeping it together. Just for once, he wanted to let go, and say what he really wanted to without worrying how it would affect everyone else. His hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“All this time—all the lost sleep and back-breaking work—and we haven’t really fixed anything! Yeah, sure, maybe we’ve tightened a bolt here, hammered out a dent there, but then some psychotic with twisted ideas comes along and blows it all up, and we’re back down to zero! I don’t want to spend my life plugging holes, keeping the rest of the shit from seeping in, but there’s no other choice, is there? There’s nothing else. This is all there is. Just an ant hill in a desert. And the sun comes up and goes down, and things get worse, until that one day when everything finally comes crashing down on all of us. When that happens, and there’s no time left, I’m going to look back at my life, and do you know what I’m going to see? A man who may have tried, but didn’t make a damn bit of difference.”
“Sam….”
“I might as well have planted those bombs, myself. Maybe whoever did it has the right idea, after all; maybe the best idea is to just get this over with. The world is dead, and nothing anyone can do can bring it back.”
“Sam, stop.” Her voice carried an edge, but he was too wrapped up in his ranting to hear it.
“There’s just no fucking point to any of it! When you live your life you want it to count for something, but none of us can have that kind of fulfillment, because we’re too busy getting crushed under that...that ever-present, planet-sized boulder on our backs! I challenge anyone to paint me a picture where we all get out of this—“
Her hand connected with his cheek, squarely. The sound of the slap filled the room, and he gasped, both at the cold-water-to-the-face shock he felt, and the re-aggravated pounding in his lacerated forehead. He had been so buried in his own tirade that he hadn’t even seen her approach the bed. It silenced him immediately, and he could only look up at her in shock. The rest of his body was paralyzed. She was looming over him in a cold anger, eyes stern and jaw clenched. He’d never seen her that way, before.
“You can think that way, if you want to,” she said. “Even say it, if you want, when you’re by yourself and you can’t poison anyone else with it. Do you think you’re the only one who’s thought about giving up? I have that conversation with myself every time I wake up. Will this be the day? Is this the day I finally stop trying?”
Her eyes flashed.
“I know you, Sam, and I know that you usually don’t let your personal shit take over your better judgment. I know that, under all this emotion, that you agree with everything I’m saying. And hell, I’m all for throwing a tantrum or two if it helps get out what needs to get out. But, you can’t...can not...do it in front of me, or anybody else. You have your moment, if you need one, but you wait until I’m out of the damned room, first.”
She went over and opened the door. She gave him a hard look, the lights from outside casting half of her face in shadow.
“I’m sorry if this isn’t the sensitivity you were hoping for, but this isn’t the part of you that we need. We need the other guy; the guy who’s looking for answers, no matter what. I heard he’ll be ready in about a half an hour. Please send him out when you find him.”
She slipped through into the main room of the habmod, and the door slid closed behind her.
He put a hand to his burning face and rubbed his stinging cheek, feeling like a perfect idiot. She was right, of course; he’d lost control and let the weakness in. Sometimes that was okay, but to do it in front of another as he
had done, to do it as though he was the only one suffering? It was selfish at best. He’d forgotten that even the most optimistic person among them was only superficially so, and under the thin, external layers of cheer, there were oceans of doubt and despair. It had taken a hand to the face to remind him. He vowed internally never to let himself go like that again, and to find Kelly later and make it right.
It was the attack. It had sawed into his resolve. It had carved out a place in him to fill with more fear.
Despite all his other personal failings, Cameron hadn’t set the explosives. And now, his innocence left a vacuum that Samuel didn’t know how to fill. Somebody had done this...somebody with access, which still pointed to his team. Tristan had gotten to one or more of them with his twisted ideology.
But, who? And how many more lives would be sacrificed for him to find out?
There was only one place he could think of to start. Helping the others would have to wait.
He slowly disconnected himself from the monitor and the IV, wincing as he pulled the needle out. It took him forever to get dressed...this time in a simple, white tunic, hardy workman’s pants, and boots that he found next to the bed. As he pulled them on, he swore he felt the ache...the painful stretch and contraction…of every muscle fiber.
He grabbed a hand radio, and the remote to the security lock on the server room, both of which had been placed in the drawer of his bedside table for him. The remote still displayed a steady green light, confirming that the lock had not been tampered with and the door on the third sub-level was secure.
Then, looking down at the remote in his hand, he had an idea.
Samuel swayed to his feet and experienced a substantial head rush. Colors swam and blended, reminding him that he’d emptied some blood during his ordeal in the tower. He begrudgingly acknowledged that he’d have to take it slow, if he didn’t want to end up on the ground.
He rummaged around his personal lockers, and then came up with what he was looking for: An extra security lock with its own matching remote. He stuffed them into his pant pockets, along with the other items he’d procured.
Now ready to go, Samuel made his way out of the habmod, back into the early sunlight, and made a stumbling bee line for the cluster of habmods surrounding the Church of the Reclamation. Kelly’s slap to the face had put him back in his right mind, and now, he was focused.
He had more than a few questions for the mad prophet.
* * *
Chapter 14 – Ejelano
One foot, and then the other.
The voice, usually so boisterously wicked, had fallen noticeably silent since it had reacquainted him with his name. Whether it was continuing to sulk, or simply pensive or some other thing, Ejelano wasn’t sure. Usually he had insight into the voice’s mood; considering their number of years together, he had probably come to know the temperament of the spirit better than he had any other being in his life, no matter how the thought might repulse him. But ever since imparting the revelation of his identity, the spirit had curled back into whatever ether it had come from, leaving a distance between them.
OH, YOU MISS ME. I’M TOUCHED.
“So you are still there. I was beginning to think that I’d offended you.”
SHUT UP.
Ejelano had continued to speak out loud, to strengthen the latent ability. He did it instinctively, pulling words out of his head that something told him he hadn’t been born with. His memory was still filled with holes, like the land and sky behind him, but he knew just enough to suspect that the language he now spoke wasn’t the original one he’d used as a mortal man. Assuming that was true, it was surprising to him that he’d absorbed so much of the strange, modern tongue. During his immortal life, a cloak of numbness had gathered around him…a disregard for the external. When he’d been...changed...into his current form, it had made him more like a visiting alien to the world, rather than someone born on its soil.
Culture. Language. Philosophy. Such things had ceased to be important to him a long time ago, for they were contrivances that only existed to enrich the living. His was another concern. His was the business of ending of things.
THAT WAS YOUR DOING.
Ejelano ignored the spirit, certain it was the beginning of another session of verbal bullying.
NO...THE NUMBNESS, I MEAN. YOU WEREN’T ALWAYS THAT WAY. IT’S A DEFENSE MECHANISM. LET’S FACE IT; ANYBODY WOULD GO NUTS AFTER SNUFFING OUT EVEN A FRACTION OF LIVES THAT YOU HAVE. YOU DRANK IN SO MUCH OF THE HORROR THAT YOU HAD TO FIND SOMETHING TO MIX IT WITH TO WIPE OUT THE TASTE. I PERSONALLY DON’T GET IT...I MEAN, FOR ME, ALL OF THIS HAS BEEN PRETTY FUN. RIGHT UP UNTIL THE SCARY WHITE HOLE BUSINESS, I MEAN.
UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU, YOU STILL HAVE THE MENTAL FRAGILITY OF A HUMAN, AND SO THE CHALLENGE FOR BOTH OF US IS TO KEEP YOUR BRAIN FROM JUST DOWNRIGHT MELTING FROM ALL THE TRAUMA. SO I HELP YOU FORGET THINGS, AND YOU GET NUMB TO THE WORLD TO INSULATE YOURSELF FROM THE HORRIBLE SHIT YOU DO. IT’S A PRETTY GOOD SYSTEM, REALLY.
He scowled. Somehow he couldn’t share the spirit’s appreciation of the so-called “system”. It was true, though...he’d shut himself off as much as possible from his actions. Still, some things got in. If only he could find the last lever to close himself up all the way...cocoon himself in pure apathy so nothing could touch him.
NOPE. THAT’S NOT GONNA HAPPEN. I CAN’T LET YOU COMPLETELY SHUT YOURSELF OFF. IF I DID, YOU WOULDN’T MAKE ANY PROGRESS, NOW WOULD YOU? AND SPEAKING OF THAT...WE’RE RIGHT ON TIME.
“What? What do you mean?”
YOU’LL SEE.
He had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t seen the building on his left drawing near, until that moment. His head snapped up when he caught it in his periphery.
It was an old farm house, with almost nonexistent scraps of white paint stubbornly clinging to it and extremely faded, blue shutters. The windows themselves were mostly broken, and the weak breeze pushed mini-tornadoes of dust through them without impediment.
It wasn’t the sudden presence of the dilapidated house that had surprised him so. He was used to ruins and wrecks, and generally passed by them without a thought.
The thing that caught his attention was the thing he sensed inside. Faint breath. An irregular heartbeat.
“There’s...there’s a life inside,” he said.
SEEMS SO.
“Strange. I didn’t feel it until just now.”
MMM. BETTER CHECK IT OUT.
A set of ancient-looking, wooden stairs led up to the dingy porch. Ejelano put a foot on the lowest step, which immediately collapsed. The second and third held his weight, however, and he made his way up to the front door. Well, front opening, really...the door had long since rotted off its hinges; now it lay flat in front of the portal, still and silent. He stepped into the house, curious to find the source of the life beat, mildly perplexed that he hadn’t sensed it earlier.
The interior of the house was every bit as degraded as the exterior. Everything was covered in a layer of dust of varying thickness, and the air was heavy with a putrid, earthy smell. He mentally noted that, despite the indications of someone living here, it was obvious that dry rot was the home’s primary resident. There was also a faint scent of decay, just behind the musty aroma.
The main room into which he stepped was mostly empty, save for a few piles of cloth that appeared to be arranged purposefully, perhaps to serve as crude furniture. The floor was bare, with small patches of shapeless black fuzziness that might have once been pieces of carpeting.
Ejelano also noted that the dust on the floor had been disturbed, recently. There were streaks in it that indicated the recent passage of feet.
There were three exits from the room. One, back through the door he has just entered, and one through a wide opening on the far right, which led to another large room with gaping, door-less cabinets. An array of venerable, dented machines sat on the counters, the kind that were used in food preparation...or at least had been, before time had crippled th
em with rust. The kitchen.
The final exit was down the hallway in front of him, back through the left side of the room. He could see several doors there, leading into a handful of adjoining chambers beyond. It was from the hallway that he detected the smell of decay, as well as the frail pulse of a living heart.
“What could possibly live in such a place?” he softly asked.
The voice did not reply.
He made his way down the hallway, ducking his head into rooms as he went. They were mostly as featureless as the front room was, with more cloth piles on the barren floors. As he went on, the glow emanating from the horrid hole in his chest weakly illuminated the gloom ahead, and he could see that the floor was disturbed here as well by diminutive footprints in the ubiquitous dust. The unmistakable smell of death grew more pungent, and the life he sought drew nearer.
And then, his ears picked up a small, mewling sound, like an animal in distress. His ears could hear better than any human could; why hadn’t he detected it earlier?
He found what he was looking for, the source, in the room farthest down the hallway on the left hand side. He stepped into the chamber, noticing more disintegrated walls and shattered windows facing two separate directions into the Wastes, obviously marking the room at the corner of the house.
A large, flat pile of more cloth-like material had been placed in the far corner, assembled into a makeshift bed. On the bed lay two corpses. Despite their advanced states of decomposition, Ejelano could still tell that they had been adults; one, a man...the other a woman. The woman was against the wall on her side, facing the man, who was flat on his back, his lifeless, sunken head angled toward her. Both were dressed in rags.
They held no life, and so he had no business with them. What he sought, what he had unexpectedly sensed while he was walking by, was curled on the floor on the opposite side of the room.
The Footsteps of Cain Page 13
