Cold Silence

by James Abel

  Aya said, “Can we see your house, Joe?”

  I thought, Did you want to see colleges? Or did you want your mom to come here?

  I could not say no. She was my partner. She was a kid but more, my partner, just as much as Eddie. She’d had my back when I needed help. She’d believed me and I owed her forever. You don’t send away people whom you owe forever, if they show up at your house.

  “I insist you stay with me tonight. There’s a guest room upstairs.”

  Aya beamed, and turned to her mom. “See?” she said. “See?”

  I sensed conversations within conversations. This kid was really something. But on the social end, she was about as good at playing matchmaker as Harlan Maas had been at being God. I put my arm around her. I hugged her. I wanted to put my arm around her mother, too, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Wow! It’s so isolated out here,” Aya said as we picked our way home on the road. In the dark, my flashlight beam playing over woods, boulders, rain gulleys, a shadow, a box-shaped form, two feet high, moving fast across the road. Lynx maybe. We get them sometimes.

  “What was that?” Chris said.

  Midnight. We were still talking. We were in the living room, and in a safe area of conversation, one which Chris and I could discuss with equal enthusiasm. Her daughter. The women had their patter down. Chris did the bragging, Aya the blushing. Chris gave the headlines, Aya the text.

  The White House? And the President said anytime I wanted to come over, just call his secretary!

  Her high school? Mr. St. John said winning the science fair was nothing compared to what we figured out, Joe.

  Her friends. They can’t believe it!

  “Sleepy, Aya?”

  “Not a bit!”

  “Want some more coffee, Dr. Vekey?”

  “I won’t sleep if I do, Dr. Rush.”

  At two they went upstairs. I got the shotgun out, and my Beretta handgun, a Brigadier. I’d done guard duty many times over the years; at Quantico, in Canberra, at an embassy; in war camps, in Iraq.

  I sat in the chair at 3 A.M. I emptied my mind of thought and willed myself to stay awake. Understand that I had no sense that anyone was coming. I was simply doing what you do to protect people you must shield. The moon came up full and hard and so bright that night was day, silver day, the tips of leaves trembling and glinting. The moonlight glowed on my gravel/grass driveway, the top of Chris’s packed-up Ford Focus, on my woodpile, on the grudgy porcupine who, tiny hands like a monkey’s, climbed a maple tree each night, slow as a sloth, inch at a time.

  Three twenty.

  At three fifty-five, the dot of red light—the alarm system—at the junction of wall and ceiling went out.

  I sat up.

  There was no light on the digital clock either.

  Which meant no electricity.

  No electricity, and no storm outside.

  My heartbeat picked up. Slowly, I moved out of the chair, and slid sideways across the floor, to take up position in a corner that provided a view out the sliding glass door to the deck.

  Upstairs, no sound. They slept.

  Nothing.

  Then a creak outside. Or maybe it had been the house settling. Or the bad-tempered moose, who, every couple of years, actually brushed up against the house at night. Don’t ask me why. Maybe he’s scratching his flank.

  An owl out there somewhere went, Oooooooooooh!

  It’s possible that a power line went out in town. An old tree fell. It hit a wire. It hit a junction box. It’s possible that too many air conditioners are on in Pittsfield and Hartford and Boston, and there’s a power surge somewhere, and lots of rural towns have gone dark.

  I saw the shadow before I saw the man. It seemed to puncture the coned moonlight on the plank decking. A bump became a head, which elongated into shoulders. The shoulders grew a shadow chest, a square darkness. The man was trying to peer in through the double glass.

  A hand touched the pane. He was shielding his eyes. I saw the rapid breath condense on the outside of the glass.

  He did not see me yet.

  It wasn’t his body that I recognized. Last time he had worn a parka. It wasn’t his face, which was so heavily bearded that the shadow resembled a Charles Manson or a San Francisco Giants pitcher now. It wasn’t the features; because with the bright moon behind him, his front was indistinct.

  But the shadow cradling a shotgun was distinct enough. The intent was clear and genuine. I recognized intent.

  I stepped out into his view and fired.

  BOOM . . . BOOM . . .

  He was moving already. The moonlight must have glinted off my weapon, or—flooding in—illuminated my movement. The picture window blew apart but he was gone. Glass shards fell. I saw his foot scrabbling left, out of view, and now I was the one getting out of the way as the remaining fringe of window shattered and more blasts raked the walls. A fixture shattered behind me, and so did the TV. The table seemed to move back by itself.

  Shielded by the wall, I stuck the shotgun out and fired again and heard dragging footsteps. I heard a muffled stumping that usually marked someone going down the deck steps behind my house. From the bottom he could flee fifty feet across a grass clearing into the forest, or duck beneath the deck, and shoot up if I stepped outside. He could sink into the massed three-foot-high ferns at the base of the steps . . . weeds which I’d been putting off whacking, and which could now conceal him.

  It’s always the job you put off that screws you up.

  Inside, Chris stood on the balcony by the second-story guest bedroom, looking down at me in the cathedral-roofed living/dining room. The bedroom door was closed, as if she’d ordered Aya to stay inside, and could protect her daughter by being there. If I shouted up instructions, Orrin Sykes would hear them. I cursed but jammed the Brigadier into my belt and slipped up the stairs to Chris.

  I should be outside, not here.

  “Do you know how to use a shotgun?”

  “A shotgun?” Her voice was weak.

  “Put it firmly against your shoulder. The spread pattern is wide so if he steps into the house, just fire. And keep the goddamn thing snug against your shoulder or the recoil could dislocate your arms.”

  “Don’t go out,” she said. “We’ll call 911.”

  “Stay in this spot. Only this spot. You can see the front door and sliding door both. I’ll call out if it’s me coming in, get it? Say you heard me. Say it. I want to hear you say it.”

  “Joe, I—”

  “Just say it!”

  I moved rapidly back down the stairs, keeping my eye on the shattered sliding door. It would have been better for me to keep the shotgun with me, for close combat, but Chris needed a weapon that had the bigger spread pattern. Downstairs I used up four seconds pulling a quilted winter jacket from a closet and slipping it on. I’d need the heavy fabric on if I jumped out onto shattered glass. I grabbed a bulky cushion off the couch and slipped back to the wall, by the blasted sliding glass door. If he was out there, he’d fire when I came through.

  If he’d run, he had a four-minute head start.

  I don’t think he’ll run. He came all the way here to finish me. He’ll know that even if we call 911, the state police need a half hour to reach here. He’ll try to end it now, while he has a chance.

  The picture window was so shattered that I could step through it. The house smelled of forest, mulch, and fired weaponry. I saw no blood on the deck. Then again, it was night and dark. I tossed the cushion out and jump/rolled through the opening in the opposite direction.

  Fire at the cushion if you are there, I hoped.

  Nothing happened except that my bad shoulder hit the deck. The pain made my breath go shallow and it radiated down into my chest.

  Silence.

  I scrambled off the deck, keeping low, crabbing down the s
tairs and into the ferns. I zigzagged toward the tree line. Behind me the house was like a boat anchored in a cove rimmed by forest. The trees, under a full moon, were bright as if in a photographic negative, a silver and black world, inside out.

  Nothing.

  “Orrin!”

  I’d reached the trees and, shielded by a fat hundred-year-old pine, heard myself breathing, smelled sap, heard an owl . . . ooooh.

  “Orrin, the cops won’t be here for twenty minutes! Here’s your chance to finish it! You screwed up in Washington!”

  I moved left, to a different tree, an oak, judging from the thick, ridged bark at my back. He was close, he was somewhere close. He was fucking close and he was waiting. A Beretta Brigadier carries fifteen rounds, and is accurate up to fifty yards. Clouds scudded above and silver light disappeared and reappeared and slid left to right. In the glint I saw battered-down ferns, a fresh place between trees. Either Orrin had passed this way or an animal had. Several areas showed flattened ferns. Which ferns had been flattened by Orrin?

  “Hey, Orrin! You got Harlan killed! If you had taken me out in D.C., he would still be alive!”

  I avoided a moonbeam and kept to deep shadow. I stepped as quietly as possible over rotting trunks and foot-deep holes. He was not behind the freestanding granite boulder, deposited here by a glacier a hundred thousand years ago. He wasn’t coming out from behind the birch trees or maples. Something small skittered away through the brush. I almost shot it. Possum maybe. Or raccoon. Pet cat maybe. Fisher.

  Every step I took carried me farther from Chris and Aya. If I wanted to protect them, I needed to stay close. But I also needed to finish things with Orrin. And maybe I needed to finish things with myself.

  “You’re a loser, Orrin.”

  I was making too much noise, even when I was trying to be quiet. I wondered if he had night vision goggles, if his world was a clear, underwater green. The moonlight made some spots bright as day. I smelled rancid musk, bear. East Coast bears are small and harmless. Well, they’re not harmless if you get between a mom and cub. This time of year was when moms and cubs moved around near my house.

  I only realized I’d stepped into a stream when I felt the shock of cold water on my ankles.

  “Orrin! You had me in the car! You should have finished it! I don’t know how Harlan ever trusted a jerk like—”

  He ran into me from the right side, smashing me back against a tree. Either he was out of bullets or, maddened, he wanted to finish it by hand. The Brigadier was gone. He was howling like an animal, not in words, just with a high, crazed rage. I lashed out even before striking the ground but missed his face. I must have struck a root because my lower spine exploded with pain. There was no finesse to his attack, just brute vengeance. We were rolling, going for eyes, nose, soft spots, death spots. At the bottom of the slope we rammed into a boulder, and the breath went out of me.

  I saw his eyes in moonlight, but the lower face, the screaming, was all shadow. As if the earth itself or the night created the sound. It was not human. It seemed to come out of time. The ferns were in my face and mouth. He gripped my wrist and slammed it into the moss-slick boulder. I parried an elbow launched toward my face. He was on top of me.

  Warriors scream to ratchet up energy, but the scream is energy, concentrated adrenaline, and his waste of it was a mistake. As he pulled in more air, I felt the smallest opening, the briefest weakening. I twisted my wrist and pulled free as my other hand jabbed into the shadow area below his eyes. I struck something soft and pliable. He reared up and jerked back.

  Orrin Sykes’s hands stopped clawing at me, and started clawing at his own face. Pushing him off was easy. He was gagging. My own ragged breathing was hard but regular. Orrin’s was begging, a plea for oxygen, but one which could never get enough of it through a trachea that had been half crushed. He was up on his knees. He kept clawing at his collar.

  It was over.

  Orrin Sykes was still alive as I stood over him. A hollow gurgling came from his throat. The eyes were blinking and I smelled a gut wound, too, a mix of blood, rot, and viscera. Maybe I’d shot him before or he’d injured himself in the forest. Orrin Sykes was dying.

  He had lied and crawled and snuck his way across a nation. He’d come to finish what Harlan had told him to do. Maybe it was out of vengeance. Maybe like Harlan Maas, he was sick, if that psychologist who’d visited me was right. Maybe he’d come because I had robbed him of membership in something, and cast him back into loneliness. I’d never know.

  Things take a long time to build up. Sometimes they end in a few seconds.

  He might have realized that I looked down at him. From the way his eyes moved, he saw something, that was sure, but what it was may have been beyond my ability to comprehend. He was trying to talk. I leaned over to listen.

  “I’m not . . . the last . . . one,” he said.

  And he died.

  When I got back to the house—ten minutes later—Chris and Aya were on the deck, waiting. I was angry at them for leaving the protected interior of the building—what if I’d been killed, and Orrin was the one coming back—but no one was listening to anyone else tonight. The relief on their faces was so profound that I bit off my retort and didn’t mention Orrin’s last words. I surrendered to exhaustion. It had been a while since I’d felt anyone’s arms around me. The two of them hugged me. The sensation felt strange.

  That Orrin had come alone was certain. I had no doubt of that. If he’d come with help, the fight might have ended differently. But what had he meant, I’m not the last one? Had he lied? Had it been a useless threat? Or were there really more cult members out there? And someday would another show up?

  Thirty minutes later we heard the thin wail of a siren. A glow of light appeared above the treetops, two hundred yards away, and then red lights were pulsating, and the first headlights turned into my driveway, throwing up gravel the way a dog digs at dirt with its hind legs. Within the hour would come more headlights. And then local reporters. And then a chopper, hovering.

  —

  What I remember most about that night now, six months later, is the way Aya’s face changed, that last vestige of kid disappearing as she stared down at Orrin’s body, before the cops came. Aya pushing away her mom, just looking and not crying, perfectly alone. Aya had lost innocence. We can’t protect the people we love. We can only try. When we can’t approximate trying anymore, we let them go away.

  Karen had taught me that.

  That Orrin Sykes had chosen that night to show up was no coincidence. That he had come when Chris and Aya were there was part of the great game I played. I’d told Reverend Nadine that I believed myself to be in a macabre tug-of-war with God, or some force approximating God—fate, humor, coincidence, you name it—and the notion that for whatever reason, it kept coming back.

  Joe Rush, superstitious fool.

  I let them stay the night, of course. In the morning they were brought to the state police barracks to be questioned by detectives, and FBI, and days later, allowed to leave and continue Aya’s alleged college tour, as if nothing, no outbreak, no deaths, no bacteria, none of it had happened. Out beyond my town four hundred million people were trying to do the same thing: get back on commuter trains, shop at Costco for apples and wines, go to the beach, repair houses, go to church.

  Chris and Aya stopped in to say good-bye. I kept it quick. I told Aya we could e-mail each other. I shook hands with Chris, felt the small fingers, and her grip, and the coolness of the departing touch. Then their car backed out of my driveway and the last pebbles sprayed out and settled and the world was still. It wasn’t just people leaving. It wasn’t just love. It wasn’t even God leaving. To me, it was different. It was more. And it was right.

  There’s been no evidence found so far that other cult members are still out there. But maybe that is wrong, and someday one will come for me.

  Th
at day, I scraped off the blood on the deck with a sharp spatula, and applied brown deck stain. I probably got all of the blood off, but you never know, probably some bacteria-sized bits remained.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although leprosy has been mostly eliminated as a health hazard around the world, in 2013, there were 215,456 new cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organization. Pockets of the disease still remain, mostly in third world countries. The key to eliminating the disease and cutting down on transmission remains early detection, and rapid treatment with multidrug therapy.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author wishes to thank the following people for their help during the writing of Cold Silence.

  Huge thanks to fellow authors and good friends: Charles Salzberg, Jim Grady, and Phil Gerard, for giving plot advice and for reading versions of the manuscript.

  At Montclair State University, thanks to Dean Robert Prezent for providing an intellectual home during writing and to Dr. Jack Gaynor for the hours he spent educating me on issues regarding DNA and experiments with it.

  To forensic psychologist Dr. Xavier Amador and to cult expert Rick Ross, my respect and my gratitude.

  A very special thanks to my dad, Jerome Reiss, who is a genius at envisioning what certain characters would do in a tricky situation. Go Dad!

  Lizzy Hanson, thanks for the advice!

  To Stuart Harris, head of Wilderness Medicine at Harvard, thanks for letting Joe Rush affiliate with your fine program, and thanks for walking me through how Joe would handle a problem in Africa.

  Novels often come out of past experience, and this story would not have come about without terrific magazine editors like David Hirshey, formerly of Esquire, who sent me to Northern Kenya and Sudan on assignment, and Walter Anderson, formerly of Parade, who sent me to Somalia.

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