by Steven John
“Bad call?” Matteson asked so no one else could hear, gesturing toward the phone with a tilt of his head.
“Bad call.”
8
Dreg had chewed the inside of his left cheek bloody. He was livid. Furious. The flesh of his face was literally red. Not just pink or flushed—red. He had been pacing a box of approximately fifteen by fifteen feet for more than half an hour now. His route was well trod into the snow on the tarmac. Seven paces then a ninety degree turn to the right; seven paces then another turn. And so on.
Twenty yards away his private jet was perched on the runway. Its batteries were at full charge and the engines were humming, just as they had been all day. It was nearing 3 p.m. on Wednesday, east coast time, and The Mayor had expected to take off hours ago. The snowstorm had lifted for a while during the night and in the dawn hours Colonel Strayer had awoken Dreg, saying that they could likely make it into the air if they moved fast.
By the time the executive retinue had reached the airport a few miles outside Boston, the weather had again turned grim. The forecast called for at least another twenty-four hours of constant snow, but Franklin had insisted on waiting with the plane in case there was a window. For the fifth time that afternoon he broke from his diminutive parade route and stalked over to the pilot, huddled near the jet.
“You’re good and goddamn certain you can’t just force this thing into the air?”
“Sir, with the thunder storms all the way up to forty thousand feet, we just can’t risk it. A few thousand feet lower and we’d be able to suck enough air in with the water to edge above the system, but we’re begging for trouble like this. If you can find an old plane that runs on jet fuel, hell, I’ll fly it for you. But this plane with this much precipitation at these temperatures? Begging for a short-out.” The pilot paused, blowing hot breath between his interwoven fingers. He looked down, adding: “It’s begging for a disaster, Mayor. I won’t fly in this.”
“I oughtta find someone who fucking will,” Dreg muttered as he turned away and stamped his feet. He caught Strayer staring at him. The colonel immediately looked away, pretending to check his phone. A dozen other pairs of eyes flitted to and from The Mayor in turn. It was clear that no one was going anywhere soon, but Dreg was indignant and determined to wait indefinitely. No matter that everyone else had to wait also, he had business to attend to.
If only he could recall what that business was—Hale hadn’t answered his phone all day. I could snap his fucking neck! Dreg raged to himself. What the hell had Timothy said yesterday? What the hell was he now keeping to himself? The Mayor had slept until 7 p.m. the previous day and, upon awakening, immediately began drinking to quell his rampant hangover.
It hadn’t been until early this morning when Dreg had erupted from his sleep sober and wide awake that he even realized there was a problem. Had Hale said there were drainers? That New Las Vegas was being drained? How could he have said something like that, the small-minded fool? The Mayor could swear it had been a dream, but there in his call log was a fifteen minute conversation with the secretary general.
Once again he dialed his right hand man. Two thousand three hundred and seventy-five miles away, Timothy Hale looked down at his cell phone. He lay draped across a couch in his apartment, half drunk at noon. With a long sigh, he tossed the phone aside.
“What do you want me to say, Mr. Mayor? We’re fucked and I can’t do a thing about it?” He had been checking the meteorological reports for New England every half hour all morning long. “Enjoy the snow, Frank. When you get back here it’s all fun and games.”
Reese had been at a full gallop for miles. It felt good to rise and fall in rhythm with the horse. Her sinuous body churned below him as the desert flew past. It felt good to be alone on the open sands. Scofield knew that at any moment he’d spot Kretch, but for now it was just him and his mare. He knew he’d likely sail past a tap line or two, but this was his last chance for a good solo ride for more than a week. He and Wilton were to patrol the western border together for three days and then it was time to head in for Round Up.
The sun shone above, brilliant but without fangs, bathing the land in light free of heat. The days had finally taken a turn toward winter. It always amazed Scofield how quickly a season could change. It could go from baking heat to nightly frost in a matter of a week and, what’s more, it would stay that way for good. One season, at a given point, just stepped aside, making way for the next.
The outrider reined Reese down to a trot. “Good girl. Take it easy for a bit—you earned it.” He leaned forward and vigorously scratched both sides of her neck the way she liked. Sitting back up with a final pat on the horse’s withers, Scofield fished about in the pocket of his vest and found a cigarette and lighter. He lit the smoke and took several long, slow drags, letting the last drift out of his mouth without inhaling. The smoke trailed off slowly in a thin blue-gray tendril. The air was near perfectly still. Scofield clicked his tongue once, slowing Reese further to a plodding walk.
Turning his head until he couldn’t see the sunfield, Scofield let his mind wander. For as far as he could see there was no trace that mankind had ever touched these lands. There was no sound but Reese’s hooves and steady breathing. In the crate under his bed, lying among the ammunition and bottles of rye, was a dog-eared copy of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Try as he might, Scofield had never been able to read the damn book cover to cover. But over the years he had read the whole thing piecemeal more times than he could count on his fingers and toes. The passage that always struck him was Thoreau describing his displeasure at hearing distant trains from his secluded pond. If you’d lived today, old boy, hell if you wouldn’t a shot yourself or started in on the rest of us, Scofield thought. Walden Pond had likely been filled in, built over, bulldozed, and built up again a half dozen times by now. And he couldn’t imagine a place like it left on earth or a man who could relive what it meant. What it was. Thoreau had captured lightning in a jar—or rather on paper—at its last flickering. There wasn’t a soul alive who wasn’t to some degree plugged in; connected. Scofield knew he’d read excerpts of the book as a schoolboy but couldn’t for the life of him remember if its words had helped draw him out into the fields or if the fields had led him back to the book.
It didn’t much matter. He spent eleven out of twelve months in one of the few places on the planet where one couldn’t be plugged in to the rest of it even if he wanted. So maybe he’d found his Walden Pond, at least as best as one ever could again. But it was by definition an itinerant life the outriders led. Settling down was so much more in Scofield’s nature, if only he could have found a place without so much goddamn noise. And without so many people. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever been in love but he knew what it would mean to have that. If he could find a good woman and relative quiet he’d be happy enough. Barring the completion of that equation, only solitude and silence would serve. So for the moment, alone beneath the open skies, Scofield was happy. But he also had a job to do. He took one more drag off his cigarette and exhaled with a wistful sigh.
“OK girl. Let’s ride.” With two gentle boot taps, Reese lurched into a steady canter. The horse and rider headed west by north west, making their way toward the end of the sunfield.
“Sloooow out here, I tell ya!” Kretch bellowed when Scofield was finally in earshot. He was standing next to Shady, having dismounted to take a piss just as his compatriot came into view past a line of QV pillars.
“Yeah? Well, that’s good for business!” Scofield called back over his mare’s pounding hooves. He rode Reese hard to within five yards of Kretch before reining her to a quick stop. Scofield stretched his neck and kicked off the stirrups, then jumped down off his horse. “Howya doin’, Wilton?” He asked, reaching out a hand.
“Not bad, Scofe, not bad. Been boring but easy,” Kretch replied, taking Scofield’s hand in a hearty shake. “You got any loose tobacco? I been dyin’ for a stout smoke.”
“Sure. Lemme dig it out
,” Scofield answered, turning to look through a saddle bag. He found a pouch of rolling tobacco and tossed it to Wilton. “Need papers?”
“Nah, got them,” Wilton said, fishing about in a pocket of his long beige duster. “Just went and smoked all my shake leaf early. Been stuck with stogies for two days.” He set about rolling a thick cigarette while leaning against Shady. Kretch had let his beard come in during the past few weeks. His face was half covered in coarse blonde hair and half ruddy where the wind, sand, and sun could find flesh. “How was your ridin’?”
“OK mostly. Got one, though. You?”
“Uneventful is the word.” Kretch licked his cigarette closed, clutching the sack of tobacco between his elbow and side. He blew on the cigarette to dry it and then placed one end in his mouth. Wilton slid the sack of shake leaf into a pocket of his duster and drew out a book of matches.
“Save ’em,” Scofield said as he walked toward the other rider, a lighter extended in one hand. “And remember your manners.”
“Well, shit, right you are,” Wilton grinned, pulling the bag of tobacco back out from his pocket and trading it for the lighter. “Thought you might not notice.”
“I always notice.”
“Tell me about yer leech.”
“Strange one, Wil,” the outrider said, taking back his lighter. His usual distaste for conversation temporarily suppressed by days spent in silence punctuated only by unpleasant talk with Sebastian, Scofield started right in chatting.
“Ugly son of a bitch. Maybe thirty five but he looked like hell. Said he had cancer and that was why he started leeching but I’d bet that was a goddamn line,” Scofield spat, strangely aware that he did, in fact, believe every word Sebastian had said to him, save for the lie about working alone. The veins and tight wrinkles of the leech’s face flickered briefly before his mind’s eye, then Scofield shook his head and went on. “He was a two timer.”
“You mark him?”
“Yup. Man, I hate that part. We had to spend the night at the station over by mile ten. Fun fucking night—the sumbitch tried to get the drop on me twice. I clocked him and dragged his ass the better part of an hour.”
Kretch tossed back his head and let out a hearty, savage laugh. He found genuine delight in the image of a two-timing leech dragged unconscious across the sands. Scofield cast a sidelong glance at his compatriot. There was something deeply unsettling about the pleasure Wilton took from suffering; this was far from the first time Scofield had noted the trait.
“Laid him out, huh?”
“Yeah,” Scofield replied, looking away. He had meant to tell Kretch all the rest of it—about the radio and generator, about Sebastian there on his knees, begging for death. He had even thought up a line of conversation the two men could share about the life of a desk-bound accountant; he had planned to raise the topic as soon as their conversation went flat. But now, not ten minutes after the reunion, all Scofield wanted was to be alone. Or at least not near Wilton Kretch.
“Well, what about you? Not a soul, huh?” Scofield asked, turning to straighten out a few straps and buckles on Reese’ saddle.
“Nah. Cut a few tap lines. Saw an old broken down collector. It was all quiet on the western front, as they say. What day is this, even?”
“Thursday I think.” Scofield slid one foot into a stirrup, grasped the saddle horn and vaulted atop his mare. “Yeah, Thursday. Definitely.” He ran a hand across one side of his face. He had shaved that morning and his skin was smooth on the down stroke, like sand paper as he slid his palm back up the other cheek, wiping off a few grains of sand.
Unconsciously, Kretch mirrored Scofield’s motions, scratching at his beard. He took a few more drags off the cigarette then stamped it out under a heel. Wilton turned to face Shady and grabbed the saddle, one hand on either side of it. He leaped up and hauled himself onto the colt—which sidestepped and shook its mane—then slung onto the saddle, leaving his boots free of the stirrups.
“Well, let’s find us some trouble.”
“That’s why they pay us the big bucks.” Scofield took the reins in both hands and wheeled Reese to face west. The two riders set out at a trot toward the end of the sunfield.
They rode in silence for a good while, each man occasionally coughing or spitting or muttering something to his horse. Kretch had his hat tied to the side of the bridle and his naked head bobbed along above Shady, his eyes squinting in the bright sun. Finally, he turned to Scofield.
“You hear anything strange the past few days? Last night, too?”
“Nah.”
“Hm.” Kretch looked away again. “Thought I heard something a couple times. Like a . . . I dunno, like kind of a moaning or something. Like the way the wind will blow through trees or between buildings. Ain’t ever heard anything like it out here, though.”
Standing beside the fire two nights ago Scofield had indeed thought he’d heard some odd noise drifting faintly across the land, but he had been unsure of himself then and was in no mood to speculate now. He tried in vain to remember what it had sounded like but by the time he’d moved away from the crackling logs it had already stopped. He could recall it now only as if from a fading dream.
“Don’t think I heard anything. Got any theories?”
“Probably just my head playing with me.”
“Probably was. Gets that way out here after days alone, y’know.”
“Oh yeah!” Kretch snorted. “Man, you get to thinking some goddamn bent up things after that much time by your lonesome. Hearing things. Seeing shadows. Sometimes I’ll just plan what I’m gonna say next time I find me a real asshole of a leech. Or what I’m gonna do to a lady next time I got a dollar and an hour. I tell you, Scofe, the night after Round Up ‘ol Wilton here is gonna paint the town so fuckin’ red they’re gonna need some bastard with a can of primer and a brush to follow me ‘round!” (Kretch had thought of this phrase a week ago.) “I been ridin’ too many goddamn miles lately. Hutton gotta send some of the new blood out here and give us some R&R.”
Scofield nodded one and a half times, looking away. Kretch continued talking about all the things he would do back in New Las Vegas but his partner was no longer paying any attention. The two men were riding just inside the western line of pillars, keeping in the shade of the PV arrays as much as possible. As Wilton droned on, something caught Scofield’s eye. Far out across the desert—easily twenty miles distant, the land here was oppressively flat—he thought he could see a mirage. The air rippled and danced. Though it was bright out it was not hot; certainly not hot enough for heat waves. He squinted, straining to get a better look at the remote phenomenon, but when for a second he looked down from the shimmering sight to scratch the corner of one eye, it disappeared entirely. Scofield scanned the horizon repeatedly, finding nothing but sand and stones and scrub brush.
“You listening, Scofield?”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear ya.”
“Because she was a fuckin’ ten. Or at least maybe a seven but I was ten beers deep, you get me?”
Scofield forced a convincing laugh, then turned his eyes back west. But there was nothing to see.
“Good evening, Maria.”
“Ay—shit! You scared me!” Maria Rodrigues exclaimed, her voice taking on a strange aspect in her surprise. She did her best to collect herself, having just spilled the contents of her handbag on the sidewalk. It was 5:03 in the afternoon. She had packed her things, left her desk, and jogged down the stairs just the same as she did every day. Her routine had become so ingrained—reading glasses off as she rose, hair let down at the door to the stairs, phony smile dropped as she passed through the lobby—that Timothy Hale’s quiet greeting had been enough to startle her as she stepped out onto the street.
He was leaning against the doorframe, dressed in blue jeans and a black t-shirt. Maria had never seen him in anything but a suit and tie. It had taken a second for his face to register perched above such casual attire.
“Didn’t mean to frighten you.”<
br />
“No, it’s alright. I just . . . um I . . .” she trailed off, scooping up her phone and makeup case and wallet. Hale remained still against the door. As she shoved the last downed item—a brass lighter—into her purse, she noticed that in stark contrast to his clothes he was wearing polished wingtips. As she rose, Maria wondered, do you not even own a pair of sneakers?
Hale looked directly into Maria’s eyes. She held his gaze for a moment then began to organize things in her handbag,
“How are you, Maria?”
“I’m fine. I’m doing well,” she began to say “Mr. Hale” but quickly diverted to “Timothy. I’m fine.” Maria fished about for her cigarettes and, finally finding the pack, drew one out and placed it between her lips, an embarrassing tremble in her hand. “How, uh, how are you?”
“Me? I’m fine too, Maria . . . I’m fine. I’m just so . . . I’m so drained. So tired.”
“Good old nine to five, right?” She said, her voice fluttering up an octave, eyes on his with a sudden sharpness.
“Good . . . old . . .” Hale looked away and then dropped his chin against his chest, an awkward, nasal laugh sputtering out.
Maria wrapped her left hand around her right elbow and held the cigarette butt close to her lips, her head facing forward but her eyes still on Hale. She was nervous; confused.
“So you’re OK? Really? You seem . . . rather . . .”
“Seem what?” he spat angrily, eyes darting up.
“No, I . . . Timothy, are you drunk?”
“Drunk? Am I—are you . . . drunk? Who’s to decide that? You?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“No, not at all!” he interrupted. “You look very nice tonight, Ms. Rodrigues. Nice skirt and jacket and all.” She was wearing her standard attire, but demurred with a quiet ‘thank you’ and then turned away, again digging about in her purse.
“Would you like to go have a, uh . . . to grab a drink?” Hale asked, finally pushing away from the wall and standing up. He swayed slightly.
