Peg sighed. “Well, you might want to stop wanting eggs. Or sausage. Or whole wheat toast. And the only cereal we have left is Frosted Flakes.”
“You didn’t get any supplies either?” Ellie asked. “How big was that truck that overturned? For crying out loud, can’t they send another?”
“Oh, they sent one,” Peg said. “From what I understand it was turned back on the barrier once those explosions started. Something about it being a security risk. Like starving to death isn’t.” She set the hot pot down on the table and pulled out her pad. “In better news, we’re having a great deal on pancakes. While they last, of course.”
Bing tapped his finger against his coffee cup. “How many can we have?”
Peg glanced out the window and then back toward the kitchen. “All you want.”
“Sounds good to me,” Bing said. “We’ll pay you in kind.”
Peg nodded and turned back toward the kitchen. Ellie watched her go and then grabbed Bing’s arm. “What does that mean? Why did she say that?”
He blew out a nervous breath. “I’m not entirely sure. But it means something.”
“Holy crap, you’re faking it? Why did you say that about paying in kind?”
“Because that’s what Torrez said to me, remember?” Bing lowered his voice. “It’s like some kind of signal.”
Ellie leaned back in her chair and shook her head. “You mean to tell me all this time that you have been yammering on about conspiracies and underground movements, you didn’t even know for sure they were happening?”
“I know plenty. Trust me. It’s just that this is different. And keep your voice down.”
Bing looked around the empty diner. “We don’t know who to trust.”
“For what?” Ellie laughed. “Pancakes? Weed? I know who to trust for both of them. Shit, this is what I get for staying high all the time. Yesterday I was sure the whole world was turning on me. Now it turns out it’s just some junior superhero league passing messages with their decoder rings. God, I’m such an idiot.”
Bing leaned in close over the table. “You think it was a decoder ring that blew up our building yesterday? You think you got those bruises from a junior superhero?”
Ellie turned from him, not wanting to get back into that fearful state of mind. For the first time in weeks, she felt rested and level. Her rage seemed to have been lulled back into submission. She didn’t want to climb back up on that treacherous branch. “It was just a misunderstanding. The only reason I got pulled out of the line was because you told me to lie.”
“Oh, I get it, sure. The only superhero allowed in your story is Guy ‘My-Dick’s-As-Big-As-My-Biceps’ Roman.”
“What exactly is your issue with Guy? Seriously, every time we argue about something you always bring it back to Guy. Have you got a crush on him or something?”
“Have you had some sort of head injury?” Bing asked. “Because the Ellie I knew would have burned the building down if she found out that someone had read her file. She would have fed him his spleen with a grapefruit spoon. The Ellie I knew wouldn’t care how good he was in bed; she’d have—”
“The Ellie you knew is tired of being the Ellie you knew.” They both leaned back as Peg returned with a bowl of butter pats and a bottle of syrup. She raised an eyebrow at their heated silence and turned without a word. When she was beyond earshot, Ellie leaned forward on her elbows. “I’m tired, Bing. Yesterday when Guy brought up East Fifth and those early days, and I was staring out at that barrier zone, I just kept thinking, ‘This is my life. This is my whole life. This is all I have.’ And I realized I’ve spent half a decade either numb or enraged, and I’m really tired. I’m tired of being so mad; I’m tired of feeling that black dog inside of me.”
Bing poured sugar into his coffee. “Do you think it might be the QOL meds? Like maybe they’re tranquilizing you?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Bing, what next? Think maybe I’m getting my period?”
“Clearly you’ve gotten over your anger.” He stared at her over his cup until she laughed and shook her head. “I know, you hate me.”
“I do, seriously, I hate you.”
“How long have we known each other, Ellie? Four years? Four and a half?”
She shrugged. “It was cold when we met.”
“Yeah, so winter, four years ago. Do you remember what it was like? Do you remember how it was when we first met?”
“To be honest, no.” Ellie smoothed out the paper napkin before her. “I was heavily medicated for most of it. The first year or so is kind of a trippy nightmare.”
“Well, you didn’t miss much. As bad as it might have been in lockdown, it wasn’t much better outside. The med center goons busting everybody’s heads, the shitty quarters, nobody ever knew what the next day would bring, but everybody knew it would suck.”
Ellie nodded. “I have a vague recollection of that sensation.”
Bing rested his chin in his hand. “We’ve seen each other at our worst. You were there when they brought me in. They were pumping my stomach and you threw a chair at the nurse, told them to leave me alone.” Ellie laughed. Bing had told her this story many times, filling in the gaps of her drug-clouded memories. “They were wheeling me out when they took you down, and I could hear you roaring. I’d never heard anyone actually roar before.”
Peg returned with two plates of pancakes. Ellie cut into hers with her fork and smiled. “And then they let us eat together. It always comes back to food with us, doesn’t it?”
Bing talked around a mouthful of pancake. “Do you remember the first thing you said to me that day in the dining room?”
“That I knew you.”
He dropped his eyes back to the plate and swallowed. “That’s right. I forgot about that. You kept saying that you knew me from somewhere. You said I used to visit you at night.”
“That made the guards nervous.” Ellie laughed and poured out more syrup. “Those were some serious drugs they were giving us. I was sure of it, though. As soon as I saw you, I knew you. I just knew I could talk to you.”
“But do you remember what you said?”
Ellie shook her head. “There were a lot of drugs, remember?”
“I told you about trying to kill myself, and that the first chance I got, I was going to do it again. You reached across the table and, as serious as a heart attack, asked that if I succeeded, could you have my room.” Ellie laughed out loud, bits of pancakes landing on the table across from them. Bing grinned. “I knew right then that I wasn’t going to kill myself because finally I had found someone in Flowertown who would tell me the truth.”
“Well, I was never known for my subtlety.”
“But you were always known for your keen aversion to bullshit. That’s why I don’t understand this thing with Guy.”
“Bing…”
“I don’t, Ellie, I’m sorry. I mean even if, and this is a big if, if you believe the army has the well-being of the people at heart,” he pointed his fork at her, “you said that Guy has signed with Feno, which officially makes him one of the bad guys. He’s arrested you and interrogated you; he’s read your private files.”
“He also tried to warn me.”
“Warn you. About what?”
“He didn’t say. But when he brought my phone back last night he said—”
“What do you mean last night? Guy came to your room last night?”
“Yeah, I don’t know what time it was. You were gone.” Ellie watched Bing stab at his pancakes. “Rachel saw him. He brought my phone back to me.”
“He came all the way from the compound just to bring you your phone? And you just let him in? No questions asked?”
“He let himself in. Don’t look at me like that, Bing. You know we never lock our door, and even if we did, you could break in with a hangnail. He knows where I live, he had my phone, and he brought it to me. And he apologized.”
“I bet that was sincere.” He rolled his eyes. “Apologized for what? Arrest
ing you or just turning his goons on you?”
Ellie ignored the sarcasm. “He also warned me to be careful.” Bing dropped his silverware and fell back in his seat. His cheeks were red, and Ellie recognized the anger in the white line around his lips. “What?”
“What? For four years I’ve been telling you something is going on and you pass it off as crazy. One word from Guy and you’re on full alert.”
“Is that what this is about? You think I don’t listen to—”
“Four years, Ellie.” Bing pushed back from the table. “Four years I’ve been watching you roll your eyes at me and dismiss me and make fun of me. ‘Oh, that’s just Crazy Bing.’ Now one word from a guy you probably wouldn’t even recognize if he had pants on and suddenly you’re worried. You know why? Because you’re an authority whore.”
“Bing, what the hell—”
“You claim to be above it all, too cool for it all, but the truth is, Ellie, you’re still waiting for somebody to come in and make it all okay, to come in and take care of it all for you.” He jumped up from the table, toppling his chair behind him, jabbing his finger in the air at her. “You’re a goddamn follower, Ellie, and I don’t know why I waste my time on you.”
Ellie could only gape at her friend’s outburst. She was used to him flying off the handle, but never so publicly and never so hatefully. She watched as he threw down his napkin and stormed out the door.
Peg came near with the coffee pot. “Everything okay?”
“I have no idea.” Ellie rose, her only thought trying to figure out what had just happened. She waved her hand over the table. “Can I get this later? I’ll be back. I have to…”
Peg nodded to the door. “Go on. You can’t piss off Bing. We need the weed.”
Ellie ran out into the street and saw Bing stomping around the corner. She ran after him, calling for him, but he didn’t stop. By the time Ellie made it to the corner, he was gone. She stood there, hands on her hips, trying to think where he might have gone and what on earth could have gotten into him. She knew Bing was tightly wound. Their little dustups were frequent, but something about his tone, that furious look in his eyes when she told him Guy had been in her room, made the scene more unpleasant than necessary. She wandered forward, looking in the windows of the buildings, trying to spot her friend.
Two blocks later and she was at the site of the records office explosion. The cordon had been removed from the end of the block and most of the work trucks were gone. It still stank. Ellie wandered through the remaining puddles toward the wreckage. Only the lower half of the framework remained of the building, bare wires and steel bars jutting up from the blackened mess like broken bones. All the desks had been removed, although there were still some bent and blackened office chairs cast aside. Ellie wondered if one of those chairs belonged to Bing.
He was right, she knew. In a lot of ways, he knew her better than she knew herself, mostly because when she looked inside herself, she hated what she saw. There was a part of her, a large part, that did want someone to come and take care of everything. She used to be so independent. When she lived in Chicago, she was the picture of a strong-minded rising executive. It was one of the things that had made her boyfriend, Josh, fall in love with her. She had made the plans for Spain; she had made all the arrangements. It had been her idea to move out of Chicago early, to spend the time with Josh’s parents to save money. She was the reason Josh had returned to Iowa. She was the reason Josh was dead.
Ellie closed her eyes, trying to empty her mind of that thought and all thought. She wished she hadn’t turned down Bing’s offer to smoke earlier. If she hadn’t turned it down, she would be high and she wouldn’t have started a fight with her best friend and they would be sitting and laughing over pancakes at Crispin’s right now. Another thing that was her fault.
No. Ellie opened her eyes. This wasn’t her fault. Not Josh, not the fight, not the weed or the anger. This was Feno’s fault. Every stinking, filthy second of the past six years was the fault of the greedy, careless bastards at Feno Chemical, with their top-secret compounds and their heavily armed goons. Bing thought she was a follower, that her rebellion was an act, but Bing didn’t know she had stolen classified files from the enemy. She knew it was probably the equivalent of throwing a deck chair off the Titanic, but she had acted out. She had struck a blow, and Ellie wanted to prove to her friend that he was wrong about her.
She glanced at the runoff grate where she had stashed the bag. A few maintenance workers argued about something at a nearby dumpster, but they didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Trying not to be obvious or look like she had a destination, Ellie strolled toward the grate. One of the maintenance men noticed her and she pretended to poke around in the grass as if looking for something. When he turned away from her, she knelt and pulled back the grate.
The bag was filthy, part of it torn away from the debris that had flooded the grate, but the files were intact within it, still wrapped in the newspaper. Ellie tugged them from their spot wedged between the metal plate and a length of pipe. The plastic bag shredded, caught on something hidden within, so she was forced to pull the files and newspapers out uncovered. The oyster cracker box was crushed in one corner of the bag, but Ellie pulled it out and put it on top of the pile. She had no choice; she was going to have to carry the bundle exposed in her arms.
Moving slow enough to not catch the workers’ attention, Ellie strolled out of the work zone, looking for all the world as if she belonged there. She listened for someone to yell at her or raise some sort of alarm. She wanted to get the files back to her room, and after two blocks, she began to relax. Nobody had seen her digging in the runoff grate. Nobody had noticed the files. She clutched the bundle to her chest as it occurred to her that these might be the only files that had made it out of the records office. These were the only link to her old job. Her thoughts turned once again to Big Martha, and she decided that, after she had tucked the files away in a safe place, she would head to the care center and ask around for her boss. Hopefully Bing would be home by then and would be over his anger enough to go with her.
When she passed Dingle’s Market on the other side of the street, she looked into the window and waved to Annabeth, who stood at the front of the store, picking through the nearly empty produce bins with a customer. Ellie glanced past the other person, catching sight of little more than a ponytail. Then she stopped. She had seen more than a ponytail. Ellie turned back to be sure. There was no pale blue med tech coat, but even from across the street Ellie recognized the large strawberry birthmark. Annabeth Dingle was talking to Olivia, the med tech who had drawn her blood when the med center was supposedly closed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A blaring horn made Ellie jump back from the street. The passenger in the dump truck flipped her off as the truck roared past with debris from the explosion. Ellie hardly noticed the obscenity, intent on getting to Dingle’s and confronting Olivia, but when the truck passed and an army truck crossed going the other direction, the window of the market was empty. Ellie hurried across the street, making a Feno truck stop to let her cross, and hurried inside.
“Hi, Ellie.” Annabeth waved from behind the toilet paper display. “Glad to see you’re okay. When I heard about that explosion you were the first person I thought of. Such a terrible thing. So many people were injured.”
“Yeah, I know. It was awful.” Ellie didn’t want to be rude to the older woman, but she had to find Olivia. She moved quickly past each aisle but saw only two young men and a teenage girl in the store. “Where is that woman you were talking to?”
“Woman?” Annabeth peeked around the endcap.
“A young woman. Dark hair in a ponytail, birthmark on her neck.”
Annabeth shook her head. “I don’t remember seeing anyone like that. But don’t tell the kids, I don’t pay that much attention. It’s not like there’s so much to shoplift anymore.”
“No, no, you were just talking to her. Just a second ago.�
� Ellie pointed to the produce bins. “She was standing right there. You all were looking at potatoes or something.”
The old woman laughed. “I’d need mighty good eyesight to see a potato in here, Ellie. We haven’t had potatoes in two weeks.”
“It doesn’t matter if it was potatoes. You were talking to her.” Ellie noticed one of the young men look down the aisle at her, his attention caught by the rise in her voice. Ellie lowered her voice. “I mean, I don’t know what you were talking about. I just wondered if you knew her.”
Annabeth headed back to her cash register. “Well, I know just about everyone in Flowertown, it seems. The locals at least. Of course, I guess nowadays we’re all locals, aren’t we? What’s her name, do you know?”
“Olivia.” Ellie followed her back, remembering the stitching on the med tech coat. She knew she had seen her, both at the med center that Guy had said was closed and talking to Annabeth, who now said she didn’t remember. But she had seen her. She wished she sounded more confident when she spoke. “She’s a, um, med tech.”
“A med tech? In here?” Annabeth climbed onto her stool. “I doubt that, Ellie. They don’t bother with the likes of Dingle’s. They have their own commissary, and from what I hear it’s pretty sweet. You must have her confused with someone else.”
“No, I’m sure it was her. Her name is Olivia and she’s local. She said so.” She had said so while she drew the blood that couldn’t possibly have been drawn. Ellie looked down into the crook of her elbow. The sight of the puncture wound steadied her, but when she looked back at the old woman, she doubted herself once again. Why would Annabeth lie?
“You all right, Ellie? You look a little peaked.” Annabeth squinted at her. “Your color’s off. Sort of yellow. You need to sit down?”
“No, I’m okay.” But her hand went to her forehead to feel the dampness there.
“Honey, you’ve had a tough go there. I heard about them rounding everybody up. Maybe you’re not quite up to snuff, if you know what I mean.” Ellie nodded at her soft words. “Here, let me get you a cold drink. On me. It’s a Shasta. I always keep a few cold ones back here because sometimes I don’t feel like walking all the way up front to the cooler.” She bent down under the counter and came up with a can of soda, dripping from the ice water. Popping the top, she passed it across the counter. “Do you need to take your meds?”
Flowertown Page 16
