Flowertown

by S. G. Redling

  Ellie and Bing stepped together to the waiting clerk four stations down the line, who informed them the interviews were one-on-one only. Ellie took a seat and Bing moved to the next available clerk, looking back at Ellie with an encouraging nod.

  The interview took less than ten minutes. Name, ID tag scan, and all the questions Bing had predicted. Against her better judgment, Ellie decided to lie about being out of the building during the blast. Bing was probably right; this was a routine cover-your-ass show Feno had pulled together in a panic to make it look like they were doing something. Still, Ellie faltered for a moment when the woman asked her where she was at the time of the blast. Considering the fact that Cooper had died and he had stood between her and the exit, she couldn’t very well say she had been at her desk. Instead she said she was on her way to bring files to her boss in the front of the office.

  “How did you get out of the building?”

  A veteran liar, Ellie knew to keep it simple. “I don’t remember. The blast threw me and then the next thing I knew I was falling down the stairs. I was on the street. Everyone was screaming.” The clerk nodded, writing notes on her clipboard. She glanced up at Ellie, then reached under the table and came up with a tissue.

  “You have blood on your face.”

  “I do?” She wiped at her face with the tissue. It must have been blood from her arm. The clerk signed off on the report, tore the sheet off the clipboard, and dropped it into a file box behind her. She grabbed a rubber stamp, pressed it in ink, and asked for Ellie’s right hand.

  “Go to the doors at the rear of the building to your left. Show the stamp to the guard and he will instruct you on how to return to your quarters.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you need?”

  The clerk dismissed her with a nod, sighing at the line of incoming people that stretched out the door. Ellie rose, trying not to look too relieved. Her legs trembled as she walked, and she fought the temptation to look over her shoulder for Bing.

  At the rear doors, a guard checked the stamp on her hand and pointed her in the direction of a group of picnic tables where two dozen people waited for a truck to return them to the center of Flowertown. Ellie couldn’t sit, her nerves were too high, so she paced the area waiting for Bing to come out. It seemed to take forever. Typical Bing, she thought, always giving too much information. Finally she saw him walk stiffly through the door and she had to laugh. If this corporate military shit was freaking her out, she could only imagine the effect it was having on her paranoid friend.

  Bing didn’t exhale until he got to her side. They slapped palms and stood side by side, touching, as they waited to be called to the truck.

  “Thanks for the advice,” Ellie said. “You were right. They didn’t blink an eye.”

  “Thank God.” Bing stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Ellie knew it was a long shot but had to ask. “You didn’t happen to see Big Martha anywhere, did you? In the crowd? Was she there?”

  Bing shook his head. “I didn’t see her, but that doesn’t mean anything. We could have just missed her, or she could have been taken out in an ambulance. Try not to worry.”

  Ellie laughed out loud. “I can’t believe I just heard those words come out of your mouth.”

  Bing grinned. “Yeah, well, I mean, don’t worry about that. There’s plenty of other shit you can worry about. I’ll make you a list.”

  “They’re calling us.” She grabbed Bing by the arm and headed toward the trucks. Two guards stood at the rear of the trucks, far more relaxed than their coworkers in the front of the building. Each man held a scanner, and as people got to the truck, their ID tags were scanned. For just a second, Ellie felt a twinge of fear the scan would reveal her blue tag status, and she reminded herself that she had to tell Bing the truth at the next available moment. In the back of a Feno paneled truck, however, was not that moment.

  Bing got to a guard first and, after his tag was scanned, climbed into the truck. Ellie handed her badge over to the other guard. “Save me a seat,” she mouthed to Bing as the guard scanned her tag. The guard stared at his scanner for another several moments and Ellie rolled her eyes. Figures, she thought. I get here and the scanners break down.

  “Eleanor Cauley?” the guard asked, his relaxed stance gone.

  “Yes.”

  “Please step to the side of the vehicle.”

  “What?” She looked at Bing, whose eyes were wide. The guard grabbed her by the elbow until two armed guards stepped forward and took her under both arms. “What the hell are you doing? Let me go! Bing!” she shouted over her shoulder as the tall men lifted her nearly off her feet. She could see Bing being held back from climbing out of the truck until she and her escort turned the corner around the barracks.

  “What are you doing?” She tried to struggle against their grip but couldn’t even get her feet all the way on the ground.

  “Remain calm, ma’am.” The guard on her right never looked at her as he and his comrade marched in step. “You are wanted for additional questioning.”

  “About what?” she asked, already knowing the truth. The fucking med check.

  “Please, ma’am, cooperate and this will be a lot more pleasant.”

  Ellie struggled once more in their grip. “Well, why don’t you let me walk, you meathead? You don’t have to drag me. I have legs.” With that, they dropped her at the door of a squat, unmarked building. It looked like the kind of cinder block buildings she used to see at little league fields, although she seriously doubted there would be any popcorn or hotdogs inside this one.

  The guard on her left stepped forward and held open the door. In the bright sunlight, it was impossible to make out any details of the room inside, and the guard on her right pushed her forward blindly. Ellie stumbled over a loose piece of linoleum inside the door and had to catch herself to keep from falling on her face. The guards slipped out the door behind her, closing it as they went, and Ellie could just make out a figure standing by a lamp at a small wooden table.

  “Aw shit,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Who are you, the inquisitor? Gonna take a rubber hose to me? Fuck you.” She wanted a cigarette at that moment almost as much as she wanted to get away. “I don’t suppose I get a lawyer or an advocate or anything, huh, tough guy? The laws of the United States suspended on this little acre of hell?”

  “Why don’t you take a seat?”

  “Why don’t you kiss my ass?”

  The figure pointed to a chair at the table. “Take a seat, Ellie.”

  Ellie considered taking that seat and bashing him over the head with it. She stepped closer to the table and the figure stepped into the lamplight.

  It was Guy.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ellie could not have been more surprised had Santa Claus been standing there. Her brain struggled to sort through the confusion, finally deciding that Guy’s presence was a good thing, a better thing at least than being interrogated by some Feno goon. He must have seen the revelation on her face and quickly shifted his eyes to an armed guard who stood posted in the shadows. Ellie picked up on his cue and stopped herself from running to Guy. She was so happy to see him, though, that she had a hard time keeping herself from grinning in relief.

  She took a seat at the table, and Guy ordered the guard to leave them. The man, and his machine gun, stopped for a whispered conference with Guy out of earshot of Ellie, and Ellie assumed Guy had convinced him of the wisdom of leaving them alone. The guard eyed her with an unattractive smirk that suggested he was pleased with her situation. It was all she could do to not flip him off.

  When the door closed behind him, Ellie let out a loud sigh. “Are you trying to kill me? You couldn’t just call me?”

  Guy remained standing behind the other chair, leaning on the solid wooden back. “Believe me, this isn’t my doing.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you asked for me. That you saw my name come up.”

  “
I didn’t know it was you until you walked through the door.”

  “Then what am I doing here?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Shit, this has been the longest forty-eight hours of my life. I haven’t slept since…shit, I can’t remember the last time I slept.”

  Ellie could feel her relief at Guy’s presence evaporating under the burn of something far less pleasant. “That’s a real shame. Why don’t you knock off early and let’s get out of here.”

  “I wish we could.”

  “Uh-huh. And we can’t because?”

  “Because you’re in a lot of trouble, Ellie.” He finally looked at her. “Want to tell me about it?” When she said nothing, he dropped a folder on the table. “We know you lied on your statement about where you were.”

  “Shit. Fucking Bing and his big ideas.”

  Guy sat down and leaned in close. “Ellie, tell me Bing hasn’t gotten you involved in anything stupid. I’ve told you that guy is a nut job. If he convinced you to do something…”

  “He told me to lie about my med check.” It sounded ridiculous as she said it, and saying it to Guy made it that much worse. “I know it was a dumb idea. He’s just super paranoid. He thought he was helping me avoid a scene like this and now he’s caused it. I believe that’s known as irony.”

  Guy didn’t smile; he stared at her as if deciding whether to believe her. “Tell me where you were when the bomb went off.”

  “I just told you. I had a med check.”

  “That was yesterday.”

  Jesus, did everyone keep track of her calendar? “I had another one today.”

  “Listen to me, Ellie, and listen very carefully. I want to help you, but you can’t lie to me. Lie to anyone else, but don’t lie to me.” He brought his hands close to hers and Ellie pulled back.

  “I told you. I had a med check at eleven a.m. A blood test.”

  “Two med checks back to back. That’s your story?”

  “It’s not a story, Guy. It’s the truth. I got called in today for another blood test.”

  “No explanation.”

  That wasn’t exactly true. She didn’t doubt it was directly related to her new blue tag status, and she could add Guy to the list of people she had kept this information from. “It’s complicated.” She pulled her badge out and showed him the plastic tag. “See how nice and new my tag is? I didn’t get a new one because I’d been such a good girl.” Her throat tightened as she tried to say aloud the truth she didn’t want to face. “Interesting trivia for you. When you become a blue tag your tag isn’t actually blue. Who knew?”

  “I knew.”

  “Yeah, well,” she sighed, “it was news to me.”

  “No, I mean I knew about you being blue-tagged. I read it last night in your file.”

  Ellie felt that same floor-dropping sensation she had felt when she first saw Guy in the room, only this time her brain opted for a different opinion of the situation. She felt her face redden as familiar rage rose through her body. “You read my file?”

  Guy nodded. “I read a lot of files last night.”

  Her fingertips tingled with adrenaline and her teeth scraped together as Ellie used all her strength not to grab the chair and smash it over Guy’s head. “Looks like you are quite the busy boy. Taking to your new job like a duck to water, I see. What’s up for next week—installing listening devices in people’s houses? Midnight knocks on the door?”

  “You knew I was taking this job, Ellie.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know you’d be taking to it quite so enthusiastically.”

  “At least you knew,” Guy said. “I told you about it. I didn’t keep it a secret.”

  “I don’t recall you mentioning anything about joining the secret police, about reading files on private citizens. What happened to being one of the good guys, huh? Or are you going to tell me the sad story of getting little Tommy into college again?”

  “Hey, fuck you, Ellie.” Guy leaned in, his voice a harsh whisper. “I trusted you.”

  “Good thing I didn’t trust you, eh?” She met his face over the table. “Not that I need to. Why waste my time confiding secrets when you can just look it up? And tell me, Mr. Roman, were you in my file? Did it mention my lurid trysts with one of the army’s bright boys? Or did that get redacted for national security reasons?”

  “I’m not having this conversation with you.” He flipped open the folder before him. “You should be less worried about what’s in your file and more worried about why it was flagged the day before the explosion.”

  Ellie faltered at that. “What do you mean flagged?”

  Guy held up a sheet of paper. “I got a list. My first assignment as a Feno agent was to ascertain the threat level of individuals who had been identified as people of interest.”

  “And I’m on there? Let me see that list.”

  Guy pulled the sheet back from her. “Yeah, that’s going to happen. It’s a long list and people are on it for a variety of reasons.”

  Ellie snorted. “I can imagine the variety of reasons Feno could come up with. Paranoid fuckers. What did I do to make the list? Let me guess, does the name Carpenter show up anywhere on my file? He considers me quite the threat.”

  “Getting pissed isn’t going to fix this, Ellie.” Guy folded his hands over the file and looked into her eyes.

  “Getting pissed is what I do.”

  “I know.”

  He let the words sit there until a horrible truth dawned red on Ellie’s cheeks. He’d read her file. He knew it all. Her throat tightened again so quickly her breath whistled through her lips and she once again felt her chair was falling through the floor. And now she wished it would. Her gaze drifted around the room, unwilling to see the gentle pity on Guy’s face.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Ellie, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Fuck you.” Her voice was low, rasping through her ever-tightening throat. “You have no idea what it was like. You and your little army buddies rolling in with your protection meds and your private quarters—”

  “It’s not the only reason you were flagged—”

  “You didn’t see the bodies. You didn’t lose people.”

  “Ellie—” He reached for her hand, but she pushed her chair back, gripping her knees with white fingers.

  The words tumbled out through her clenched teeth. “You didn’t know what it was like puking and shitting and praying to die. And then when the person next to you did, you’d thank God it wasn’t you and then you’d go back to wishing it was. And all the while those Feno sons of bitches were pumping us with shots and pills and leaving us twisted and fainting in our own filth and nobody came. Nobody came for us. We’d lie there for hours, trying to help each other, each one of us dropping and fainting—”

  “I know it was a terrible time…”

  “You don’t know shit, Guy.” Ellie wanted to pace, she wanted to run, but her legs remembered the weakness and the cramping of those early days of contamination and her mind was powerless to overcome the memory. “When Mrs. McClusky died, when she was dying, she was choking so hard. She couldn’t swallow; her tongue was swollen and she was crying out but couldn’t make any noise, and I remember thinking, if I could just get her a drink of water, just a sip of water, maybe she’d stop that awful gasping. I couldn’t even stand, my stomach was all balled up.” She grabbed her stomach, remembering the pain. “But I got all the way to the end of the med tent, walked through puddles of vomit, deep puddles, but I got all the way to the door where the water was. It was just a bottle of water, for fuck’s sake, and I never even saw him. I just saw that elbow, that white-suited elbow when it came down on my face. He could have knocked me over with a goddamn pencil and had to smash my face like that.”

  “Ellie, you don’t have to—”

  “Is that in my file, Guy?” Ellie focused on him for the first time since she fell into the memory. “Does it mention that I was crawling out of the med tent to get a dying woman a drink of wate
r? No, I bet it doesn’t. I bet it has all kinds of neat stories in it, about my ‘recalcitrance,’ at least that’s the word they used at the time.”

  “You killed a man, Ellie.”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said. “He was already dead. We all were.” Guy sighed and looked down at the file. She knew Feno had painted a different picture for their security team. “Do you want to know what happened?”

  “I read what happened.”

  “No, you read what they told you. Do you want to know what really happened? Will you believe me if I tell you the truth?” Guy thought for a long moment and then nodded. Maybe she was as insane as they said she was, but she believed he would believe her.

  “When he hit me, he broke my nose. My face just exploded, blood went everywhere. I couldn’t think. I didn’t even really know what had happened. We were all as weak as kittens; I’d been puking for days. I was just lying there, trying to figure out what I was tasting when these big arms grabbed me and pulled me up. I thought I was going to pass out when he pulled me up to my feet, and I guess I started to fall because I reached out to him, to the shelf next to him, hell, I don’t know. I was going down and I just reached out. I couldn’t see anything because of the tears in my eyes from my nose breaking, and my hand landed on something, something metal.”

  “A box cutter.” Guy had read the file carefully.

  “Was that what it was? I never did see it.” Ellie closed her eyes, her body once again lost in the memory of the pain. “I just know I was falling and he grabbed me. I thought he was going to help me, but instead I felt this…this stinging sensation and everything started spinning and I realized he was hitting me. He was just slapping me and he was yelling something through that mask. All I wanted was for the spinning to stop and I swung my arm and I felt it hit something. Then there was screaming. It seemed like everybody was screaming. The last thing I remembered seeing was blood, my blood. It was running from my nose like a watering can, and when he fell he pulled me down on top of him and the blood started running into this cut in the suit, this space where the white suit had torn away. He was screaming and pushing me, but when I reached out for him, he just kept punching and screaming. I don’t remember anything after that.”