Flowertown

by S. G. Redling

  Ellie rubbed his back, feeling the muscles and tension there. Her throat closed as she finally found the words she had to say. “You were so close. You were out. Two months and you were out.” She blinked back tears and choked back the scream that wanted to tear from her chest. “Why would you stay? If you could get out, why would you stay?”

  He looked up at her and she was startled at the tears she saw in his eyes. His mouth twitched, fighting for control, and when he spoke his voice was a hoarse whisper. “You’ve got to promise me. Promise me you won’t say anything. To anyone, not even Bing. Especially not Bing, that fucking nutcase.”

  “I promise.” Ellie’s stomach cramped and the words were just air. She wasn’t sure she was ready for one more surprise today. Guy pulled in a ragged breath.

  “I’m contaminated.”

  “What?”

  He dropped his head into his hands and scrubbed his face hard.

  “Are you sure? How did it happen? You guys are on all those meds.”

  “Nobody’s sure. Not yet.” He took her hand in his. “But there are signs, you know? Fletcher and Porter, they’re both showing more than me. They signed yesterday. You got to swear you’re not going to tell anybody, anybody, because if word gets out…”

  “Geez, Guy, they’re going to know. You think you’re going to keep it a secret?”

  “For now, yeah, I’ve got to.” He squeezed her hand tight between his own. “Ellie, you’ve got to listen to me. Nobody can know this. I don’t have a med check for two weeks, and if they even think I’m contaminated, I lose everything. I’m in here forever, and I’ve got nothing.”

  “They won’t kick you out of the army.” She turned his face up to look at her. “There are tons of contaminated soldiers here, all the first responders, everybody.”

  “Yeah, and they got shit to show for it. They got no choice, no hazard pay, nothing. They get their army pay and that’s it. It’s no different from any other fucking job in here. If I can sign with Feno, the money goes in the bank. I got a contract for two years. My family doesn’t have to know, nobody at home has to know.”

  “Why don’t you want your family to know?”

  “That I’m stained?” He couldn’t catch the word before he said it and saw the insult hit home with Ellie. Stained was the outside term for the contaminated, with all the unclean implications that came with it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that. I don’t want them to worry. You know, my mom, she’s not doing so well, and if she thinks I’m sick…This way Mary Catherine can use the money to pay Tommy’s tuition and nobody has to worry.”

  Ellie wrapped her fingers up in his. “Have you told them you’re staying?”

  “Yeah. They were pissed. My mom told me to stop being a stupid fucking hero.”

  “Your mom said fucking?”

  “Like I said, she was pissed.” Guy let out a deep breath and his body relaxed. Ellie freed her hands from his and swung herself onto him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, her bare legs around his waist. He put his head down on her shoulder and let her hold him, and when he spoke, his lips brushed her throat.

  “What are those flowers called?”

  “Which ones?” Ellie asked, breathing in the smell of his hair.

  “The ones in the funeral bouquets, that everyone smells like. Some kind of lily.”

  “Stargazers.”

  Guy sighed. “It’s a pretty name for such a stinking flower. I guess I’m going to have to get used to a whole new set of meds now. Can’t be that bad, right? They don’t seem to bother you much.”

  “No, they don’t bother me much.” Ellie rubbed his back. “But then I’m tough. You’re kind of a pussy.”

  He laughed and wrapped his arms around her more tightly. “Is that right? I guess I’ll have to man up a little bit.”

  “I guess you will.” She leaned back and rested her forehead against his. He kissed her once and then again.

  “Do you think I could wait until tomorrow to man up? Tonight, I’d kind of like to just lay here. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah.” She slid off him, lay back on the bed, and held her arms open. “That’ll be okay.” He lowered himself beside her, draping his arm and his leg over hers, pressing his face into her neck. They lay still for a long moment, their breathing falling into the same relaxed rhythm. Guy snored softly and Ellie was just beginning to dream when the explosions started.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The iron grating rattled in the windows as the glass absorbed the shock of the nearest blast. Guy was out of bed in an instant, reaching for the radio that came alive in between the second and third explosions. It sounded like gibberish to Ellie, but Guy barked back a series of answers as he grabbed a set of riot gear stowed behind the door. He was holstering his weapon by the time Ellie could think.

  “What’s happening? Why do you need a gun?”

  “You’ve got to get out of here.” He snapped his vest in place and then stopped. “No, stay here. Ellie, listen to me. I don’t know what’s going on out there, but you’ve got to stay inside. Lock the door. Don’t touch anything. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t answer the phone or the radio, do you understand me?”

  Ellie nodded, the sounds of sirens growing, only barely drowning out the rising sound of people screaming. Guy yelled into the radio once more and headed out into the night. Not thinking about his orders or the fact that she had no pants on, Ellie followed him as far as the top step of the power station. The night burned red with harsh black ribbons of smoke that tore into her throat and made her eyes tear up. Sirens wailed so loud and so close her eardrums vibrated and she could just hear Guy swearing as he fought his way through a panicked crowd that was rushing to get away from the blaze shooting from the building at the end of the street. He made a point of fastening the power station gate, although Ellie doubted any of those fleeing the explosion would want to linger so close to the blast. A terrible sound, like a monster exhaling, rolled down the street, and Ellie saw the fire trucks had gotten the first wall of water onto the flames.

  It was a storage depot for the maintenance division. Whatever had exploded hadn’t taken out much of the building, and the steady stream from the fire hoses replaced the red and yellow flames with a puffing cloud of vapor and chemical stink. Someone had the sense to turn the sirens off, but the throbbing still lingered in Ellie’s ears. From where she stood, she could make out flashes of emergency lights pulsing through columns of smoke coming up from across Flowertown. People stopped rushing and herding and began milling about outside the power station gates, trying to see the rescue workers at work. Realizing she was half naked, Ellie ducked back inside the station and fished around the floor to find the cell phone in her pocket.

  She dialed Bing but heard only a busy tone. On the screen flashed the message “Network Unavailable.” Just her luck. She tried dialing twice more. If one of those explosions had interrupted the relay tower that serviced the spill zone, it would wreak havoc on all communications. Ellie searched around the desktop for the remote to the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. The cable was on. ESPN, of course. One time she had come in on Guy and Fletcher watching Golden Girls and had never let them live it down.

  She flipped through the channels, looking for the local news channel to see if they would break in with a story about the explosions. Dalesbrook was not a large city, and although technically Flowertown existed separately, surely the news of an explosion in the contaminated zone would raise some eyebrows. She flipped through channel after channel, seeing nothing but TV dramas and sitcoms. On one station she caught sight of the containment fence around the east end of Flowertown and stopped, hoping for a news bulletin, but it was only another cop show using the threat of contamination for some artificial thrills.

  She thought of trying to reach Bing on the power station’s landline. Maybe her friend’s paranoia was getting to her, maybe she just didn’t want to get Guy in trouble for leaving a civilian in a secure area, but she couldn’t b
ring herself to pick up the receiver, much less dial her friend’s number. Police sirens started up outside the window, and the red and blue flashing lights illuminated the room enough for her to pull her pants on and make sure she was leaving nothing behind. Guy would no doubt be pissed that she had disobeyed his order to stay put, but locked in a power station twenty feet from an explosion didn’t strike Ellie as an evening well spent. Plus she wanted to find Bing. If anyone knew what was going on tonight, he would.

  Rumors flew as people shouted to each other on the smoke-filled street. Ellie ducked her head and pushed through the crowds. From what she could gather, it sounded like nobody had been hurt in the depot blast. No ambulances had arrived, although one angry cluster on the corner of Sixth Street insisted that the ambulances had all been called to a different blast, that the people on “the low end” of Flowertown were somehow less important than those injured on “the high end.” Ellie didn’t bother to correct them. There were only three ambulances in Flowertown. With three blasts in the zone, odds were all three trucks were busy. She knew that the rescue workers and military personnel were all trained EMTs. It was the sort of multi-tasking required for work in the quarantine zone.

  A military blockade stopped Ellie at the corner of her block. Two army soldiers with gas masks and guns stopped her and everyone around her, while a bullhorn ordered everyone within earshot to stay where they were with their hands in plain sight. Yellow emergency lights flashing from a Feno security truck were the only illumination; the streetlights and all the windows on the surrounding blocks were dark. The smell of smoke and burning rubber put a bitter taste in her mouth, and Ellie had to blink back tears from the noxious fumes. All around her people shouted up to the darkened windows above, ignoring the orders from the soldiers to remain quiet. Three times Ellie got jostled hard enough to make her stumble, and it wasn’t until she felt her shoulder being jerked hard enough to bring her to her knees did she realize a soldier was screaming at her.

  “What is your business here?” It was hard to make out his words behind the gas mask, and the flashing yellow lights created a surreal strobe effect in the reflection of his goggles. “Tell me your business here!”

  Ellie pulled her arm free of his grasp and tried to tell him that she lived on the block he had barricaded, but as she spoke, the bullhorn voice announced an immediate curfew for all residents. Every time she tried to speak over the sirens and the shouting, the bullhorn would cut her off, repeating the command for all residents to return to their apartments. People surged around her, trying to push past her, past the soldiers, past the barricades in both directions. There seemed to be no consensus of direction. People were just moving. The soldier grabbed Ellie’s elbow once more, squeezing it hard enough to hurt, as if she were the ringleader of the chaos. It seemed he believed if he could control her, he could control the madness around him. Finally Ellie leaned in close enough to shout in his ear.

  “My apartment!” She pointed past him to East Fifth Towers and then back to herself.

  He shouted something back at her, his grip on her elbow making her fingers ache, but all she could make out was “identification.” It was absurd. The only proof of her address was on her medical tags, and those would have to be scanned electronically. If this joker thought he was going to whip out a hand scanner and leisurely read through her personal information in the middle of this bedlam, he had obviously gotten his gas mask on too late.

  She shook her head at him, but before she could argue, glass shattered somewhere very close, as if a bottle had been thrown. The soldier spun around, whipping Ellie with him, and she used the momentum of his turn to break free from his grasp and run. She didn’t check to see if he pursued her. She brought her elbows up high before her and crashed her way through the senseless crowd until she made it to the steps of East Fifth. People pounded on the metal doors and shouted obscenities at the guards, but when Ellie pulled the handle, the doors swung open and none of those pounding followed her in. She slammed the door behind her and took the stairs two at a time.

  When she made it to the eighth and top floor, Ellie bent at the waist, gasping for air and praying her legs would hold out. It didn’t occur to her until she threw herself against Bing’s door that he might not be home, but as she pounded, fear at the thought flushed through her body. Panic hung in the air like a smell. As she pounded she heard the dead bolt being thrown, but the door remained shut.

  “Bing! Bing!” She pounded harder. “It’s me. It’s Ellie!” Before she could repeat herself, the door flew open and she was yanked into the room. Bing slammed the door behind her and threw the bolt once more. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Be quiet!” Bing dragged her farther into the room, toward the windows, over which thick drapes hung. “Nobody knows I’m here. How did you know I was here?”

  “You live here.”

  Bing held her by the shoulders, staring into her wild eyes, until they both realized the absurdity of their conversation. Bing blew out a sigh so hard it whistled as he let his head fall back. “I don’t know what the hell is going on out there. All I know is I was halfway up the stairs when the power went off and then there were these explosions and people just started running everywhere. All I could think was ‘save the weed,’ so I ran up here and locked the door.”

  Ellie looked around the cramped room, full of planters with lush marijuana plants and half-melted candles. Every surface had something growing or glowing on it. As the adrenaline ebbed, she began to giggle. “You thought they were blowing up your weed?”

  “Hey, don’t judge.” Bing tried not to laugh. “It was chaos. It was a gut reaction.”

  “Maybe we’d better test a few plants to make sure nobody tampered with them in all the hubbub.” She pointed to the carved wooden box he used to store his personal stash.

  “That’s probably a wise idea.”

  He made certain the door was bolted. Two bowls full and a heavy coughing fit later, Ellie could feel that familiar looseness in her neck and spine. Bing always saved the best weed for himself. They moved a heavy plastic planter away from the window, pulled the curtains apart, and watched the simmering chaos on the street below. The barricade had fallen apart, and the soldiers, both army and Feno security, moved through the crowd uselessly. With no electricity, the buildings were getting stuffy, and people hung out open windows and shouted down to friends on the ground. The energy of the situation seemed to be ebbing, transforming the crowd from a panicked mass to bored party guests. The yellow emergency lights still flashed from security vehicles, but the bullhorn blowers had long given up on clearing the crowds.

  “Why did they block off the street?” Ellie asked, leaning out over the sill.

  “I don’t know.” Bing pulled out his cell phone. “Probably just a gut reaction. You know how the military is—when in doubt, shut it down.”

  “Was one of the explosions close?”

  “What do you mean one of them? How many were there?”

  Ellie waved her hand out over the darkened skyline. Patches of darker than dark could be seen in the sky. “I think at least three. That’s what it sounded like. Don’t bother trying to call out. I think that one of the explosions knocked out the cell tower.” Bing swore as his phone buzzed the busy signal. “Let’s check the news. Maybe’s there’s something on by now.”

  “If the phones are down, the cable is too.”

  “No.” Ellie shook her head. “The cable was on at the power station. I checked before I left. All the channels were on.”

  “That’s impossible.” Bing tossed his useless phone onto a nearby table. “The phones and the cable run on the same power relay. If one goes down, they both do.”

  “Well, the cable was on when I left and my phone wasn’t working. There was nothing on the news, but that was just a few minutes after the explosion at the supply depot. Besides, how do you know what ‘power relay’ the phones and cable are on? What does that even mean?” When Bing said nothing, just shru
gged and lit a cigarette, Ellie laughed. The weed was making her lips feel fat and soft. “Let me guess. You’ve downloaded the schematics for the resistance, right?”

  “Think that’s funny?” Bing leaned far out the window. “Look around you, Ellie. What do you think is happening out here?” The smell of bitter smoke still drifted by in waves. “You think it’s a coincidence that buildings just start blowing up? That the military is losing control of Flowertown? That supplies have been cut off and the government is turning a blind eye to us?”

  His bird image had returned, which always made Ellie struggle not to laugh. She was tired and she was very high. “Maybe you’re right, Bing. Maybe this is it, but to tell you the truth, after a day like this, I don’t really give a shit.” When he reared up for the obligatory impassioned Bing retort, she waved him down. “No, don’t. Please, not tonight. I’m too high and way too tired to fight with you.”

  “The fight’s not with me, Ellie. Look out there. What do you see?”

  Night was fully upon them, and with the fires almost extinguished and the emergency vehicles shutting off their lights, there was very little to see. Rather than put her mind at ease, the darkness, the invisibility of the small world of Flowertown, sent a new wave of anxiety and disorientation over her, and she had to steady herself against the window frame.

  “There’s not much to see out there.”

  “No, but there’s plenty going on. Trust me.”

  Ellie sighed and closed her eyes, trying to stop a building sensation of dizziness. “What’s the endgame, Bing? I mean, what’s the point of it all? If someone inside really did blow up the buildings, what are they trying to achieve? To get the army to withdraw? And leave us with no supplies? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It’s complicated, Ellie. There are a lot of factors at play.”