The Next Ten: Beginnings Series Books 11 - 20

by Jacqueline Druga

  “I think we have to look at the circumstances and history of everything. If a person screws up once, I don’t know if that can be construed as mistrust. But if there’s a seeded history of acts and when you look back you can see them all then, yeah, you can say he’s not trustworthy. Did I help?”

  After a glance past Dean, Ellen looked at him with a smile. “Yes, you did. Thank you.” As Ellen turned to go to her bedroom she knew Dean didn’t quite understand what he answered or rather who he answered the question about, but he did. For that Ellen was grateful. Aside from heading in the direction of her bedroom, she knew which direction to take with Johnny.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  November 17th

  There weren’t that many stupid reports for Ellen to do. She expected the two new survivors to be ready to go, but she had somehow forgotten that the month in the future was only a second in the present. She could hear the copy machine make a copy then Frank count out. ‘One seventeen’. She smiled, looked at him, and then finished that last line of the report.

  “Hey . . . hey El.” Richie came into the office. “Frank.”

  “Shh.” Frank held up his hand. “I’ll lose it. Shit. No. Wait. OK. One-nineteen.”

  “One eighteen, Frank.” Ellen corrected.

  “Thanks, El.”

  “No problem.” She looked at Richie. “What’s up?”

  “Are you . . . are you going to New Bowman to see Ha . . . Hal?” Richie asked with a twitch of his head.

  “Yes, I am. Why?”

  “Can you give him this?” Richie tossed an envelope on the desk. “It’s a, it’s a note.”

  Frank looked over his shoulder. “A love note?”

  “Yeah.” Richie grinned. “Frank said to write, to write him a love note. Yeah. How’s my hair.”

  “Good,” Ellen answered.

  “One twenty-four,” Frank called out. “Almost halfway there.”

  “Is it neat?” Ellen asked.

  “Yeah, it’s, it’s neat. Yeah. I’d say see it. But it’s, it’s sealed.”

  “O.K.” Ellen tapped the envelope. “I’ll give it to him.”

  “Thanks.” Richie walked to the door.

  “Richie.” Ellen stopped him. “Make sure you do some reading today. Dean said if you want that drug to wear off . . .” Ellen paused. Her mind drifted elsewhere.

  “I’m free!” Richie raced from containment.

  “Johnny! Stop him!” Ellen called when she saw Johnny approaching.

  “Ow.” Ellen jolted when she felt a flick to her head. “Richie, stop.”

  “You stopped. You stopped talking. You sound . . . sound like me, me. Yeah.”

  “Just read,” Ellen instructed, then slowly began to gather her work. Her mind took off again.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ellen asked Johnny as she watched a diminished Richie in Containment.

  “It’s his microchip, El. It’s gone bad,” Johnny told her.

  Standing up, Ellen’s thought were far from that moment. In fact they swirled back and forth from moment to moment.

  Danny Hoi shut his lap top. “Is that proof enough, El.? He doesn’t have a microchip.”

  “It’s his microchip, El. It’s gone bad,” Johnny said.

  “He doesn’t have a micro chip.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Christ Almighty! There you are!” Joe’s crass yell snapped.

  “Me?” Ellen jolted.

  “No, him.” Joe pointed. “Christ, Frank, what in God’s name is taking you so long?”

  “Dad, please.” Frank held up his hand and pressed the button. His head went to the left watching the copy. “One thirty-one.” He pressed the button again. “If you wouldn’t have made me make so many copies . . . One thirty-two. . . . I’d be done. Fuck, this is taking forever. One thirty-four.”

  Joe blinked long, “Ellen, have you been in here while he made copies like that?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Ellen nodded. “It’s funny. Plus, you know, it’s was a great view of Frank’s butt.”

  “What a task,” Frank exhaled. “Being a sex symbol. Fuck. I lost count.”

  Ellen looked to him. “One thirty-five.”

  “Thanks.”

  She smiled. “I have to go to the clinic. Let me know when you’re done, Frank.”

  Frank only lifted a hand since he didn’t want to lose his count. He had already done that too many times. “One-thirty . . . thirty fuck.”

  “Frank!” Joe yelled.

  “What!” He jumped. “God! Don’t interrupt me. I’ve made enough mistakes as it is and have had to start over.”

  “Start over?” Joe questioned. “You’re making copies? How are you screwing up?”

  “Like now.” Frank shook his head in disgust and tossed the stack on the floor. He pressed the button. “One,” he grunted loudly.

  Joe peered at the floor and at the stack of ballot copies a foot high. “Stop.”

  “Four. No.”

  “Frank.” Joe reached around and grabbed his hand. “Stop it. You have enough.”

  “Dad, I said ‘four’, not four hundred.”

  “Frank, you asshole. What the hell are those on the floor?”

  “Mistakes.”

  “They still count!” Joe barked.

  “Dad! Enough! How can they count! I don’t know how many are there.”

  “There’s certainly more than four hundred.”

  “How can you tell? I lost count.”

  Joe held back. In fact, he used a passive voice. “Because, Frank. See. One inch of paper means, um, a hundred copies.”

  “Whoa.” Frank shook his head. “And this whole time I was counting. All I had to do was measure about . . .” He paused to think.

  “Four,” Joe told him.

  “No, wait, that’s wrong. No, it’s right. Is it?”

  “Yeah, Frank.”

  “Man, you’re fast with math. Thanks for telling me now, though. Fuck. I put in eight hours of this shit.” He bent down and lifted the huge messy stack.

  “For future reference, Frank.” Joe waved Frank to the copy machine. “Take a look.” He pointed to the keypad and used his best explaining tone. “Even though this is an old model, it can make multiple copies. Up to ninety-nine.”

  Frank stared at Joe for a second. “O.K.”

  “You understand? It can make up to ninety-nine copies at a time.”

  “But I needed four hundred. How would that have helped me?” Frank asked.

  “Frank . . .”

  “I can see if I needed ninety-nine or ninety eight, even ninety-seven it . . .”

  “Frank!”

  “What!” Frank snapped back.

  “Never mind. Get that stack together for Ellen to take with her.”

  “I am. I am. Man, you’re fuckin testy today.” Frank walked to the door with papers sticking out of the huge stack. “Oh, hey, Dad. Is it all right if I get the Containment rejects to copulate these?”

  “Collate.”

  “No, copulate. They’re copies.”

  Joe opened his mouth but he stopped himself. He already had a headache starting and it didn’t need any more help. “Um, sure, Frank. Go ahead.”

  “Thanks.”

  After Frank walked out, Joe, though aggravated, couldn’t help but chuckle.

  ^^^^

  Perturbed and in a huff, Dean flung open the bottom cupboards under the main counter in the clinic lab. “Out. Let’s go. Back to school.”

  Underneath, Billy sat huddled up. “I’m not going back there.”

  “Billy, I will not fight with you over this.”

  “It’s dumb enough when Jenny teaches us. Now we have that old lady and Forrest with his broken English.”

  Dean stood up. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I can help you here.”

  Dean peered down. “If you were bigger then I could use you.”

  “Dean,” Frank’s voice called into the lab. “Perhaps the size of it isn’t
the reason it isn’t getting used.”

  Dean looked up. “What?”

  “Aren’t you talking to it?”

  “What’s ‘it’.”

  “It,” Frank reiterated with a nod.

  Dean still looked confused.

  From his hiding place in the cupboard, Billy spoke. “He means your penis.”

  With the utmost look of curiosity, Frank, in a slight lean, walked over to the counter and looked. “Oh,” he breathed out. “I thought you gained a new talent.”

  Dean rolled his eyes and reached down for Billy. “Out. Let’s go.”

  “I hate school,” Billy complained. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Dean, why does he have to go?” Frank asked.

  “He’s a kid, Frank.”

  “Yeah, but you can teach him more than any school.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have time.”

  “True.” Frank bobbed his head, then snapped his fingers. “I got it. I don’t have a lot of time, but I can, maybe once a week. Hey, Bill, would you like to learn some different stuff/”

  Billy looked at his annoyed father then at Frank. “Yeah. Sure. O.K.”

  “Let’s go.” Frank took his hand. “I’m taking him, Dean. First he has to change into something militant.”

  “Frank,” Dean called out, “what are you gonna teach him?”

  Frank pointed to his own temple. “Frank knowledge. My own home school.”

  “Swell.” Dean shook his head.

  In a routine ‘stop and squeak’ of his boot, Frank turned around. “If you see El, tell her the copies are ready to take to New Bowman. Man, I’ll never say anything about secretaries again. Fuckin copy shit is hard. It took me eight hours.”

  “Eight hours?” Dean asked in shock. “How many copies did you make?”

  “Um . . .” Frank paused to think. “Seven thousand. Yeah.”

  Dean’s eyes widened. “Seven thousand? Why in the world would you make seven thousand?”

  “Dean, my Dad said to.”

  “Joe told you to make seven thousand copies?” Dean asked

  “No, he said to make four hundred. I screwed up and made too many.”

  A glutton for punishment maybe, but Dean had to know. “Frank? How did you screw up that much?”

  “I don’t know. I lost count and ended up with seven inches.”

  “Of?”

  “Uh, Dean?” Frank nudged Billy and spoke with sarcasm. “Copies?”

  “Seven inches of paper doesn’t make for seven thousand copies, Frank.”

  “That’s what my Dad said. One inch equals a thousand sheets. Or was it a hundred. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Same difference. Let’s go, Bill.”

  “This ought to be fun.” Billy smiled and as he left, he gave an arrogant smirk to his father.

  Mumbling to himself, Dean walked to the medication cooler. “Maybe Billy will rub off on him.” Shaking his head at that thought, Dean tried to lift the lid. It was locked. Thinking ‘odd’, he reached for his keys. For as much as he was surprised that the case was locked in the first place, he was much more surprised that his key didn’t work either.

  ^^^^

  With her hand flush to the joint near Robbie’s right shoulder, Ellen pushed with all her might. “One more.”

  Robbie lifted with ease. “El, I hate to tell you this, but if this is to build my strength, it’s not gonna cut it with you.”

  Ellen smiled and sat next to him. “Right now it’s more for movement. I’m gonna get Frank to hook you up with some special weights. I don’t want the muscle to diminish in your shoulder or biceps. It’ll look odd.”

  Robbie just stared at her. “El, think about what you just said.”

  “O.K.”

  “I’m missing most of my arm. What will look odd?”

  “If your shoulder loses definition.”

  With a shake of his head, Robbie gave a sad smirk. “I look odd period.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yeah, El. I do.” He lifted his eyes to her. “I looked in the mirror today, really looked. God it looks pathetic.”

  “That’s only until it heals, Robbie. Then we can get you ready for a prosthesis.”

  “El, I’m not walking around with a rubber arm. It serves no purpose. It’ll flop. I’ll look worse.”

  Ellen smiled. “That’s not what were gonna do. Dean and I have already talked about this. Danny Hoi is brilliant. If he can’t construct the insides of a viable arm, then Dean will go with Frank to this institute in North Dakota. They have awesome prosthetics. We can reconstruct the outside using the same skin formula we used on Jeff’s face. It’ll look real, Robbie.”

  “Furry?”

  “Probably at first,” Ellen winked.

  “It won’t work though,” Robbie said sadly. “It’ll look good but it still won’t work.” He shook his head. “Too bad we can’t give me back my arm like Dean got back his sight.”

  Ellen’s eyes met Robbie’s and the same thought must have transpired. “Robbie.”

  “El, you don’t think . . .”

  “It’s really possible. If anyone can do it, Danny can.”

  Dean knocked before walking in. “El?”

  “Oh.” Ellen smiled. “Here’s Dean. I have to go. Talk to him about it.” She kissed Robbie.

  “O.K,.” Robbie agreed.

  “Talk to me about what?” Dean asked.

  “He’ll tell you,” Ellen said. “Dean, did you see Frank at all?”

  “Yeah, you’re ready to go,” Dean told her.

  “That’s what I figured once Joe caught on. I’ll be back by dinner and remember I have Alex.”

  “Ellen,” Dean stopped her. “Listen, my key won’t work to the med cooler. What’s up?”

  Ellen cringed. “I’m sorry.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her keys. “Here. I broke my old key in there this morning and I had the locks changed. But Dean, only you and I are to distribute meds from now on. OK? I want that cooler locked at all times.”

  “Can I ask why all of the sudden we’re doing this?” Dean took the keys.

  “It has to do with what we discussed last night. Trust.” Ellen nodded and waved. “See you guys.”

  With almost a whistle, Dean blew out and shook his head. “Man, Henry really had an impact on her.”

  “Henry?” Robbie asked.

  “You don’t know. Well, I guess because of your situation, you’ll enjoy this. You especially.” Dean pulled up a chair to Robbie’s bedside and sat down.

  ^^^^

  Alexandra looked so upbeat as she stood at the back of the truck with Ellen, Frank, and Billy. “I’m so excited about shopping today.”

  “We’ll have fun.” Ellen smiled. “Thanks for your card, Frank.”

  “I like to spoil my girls.” Frank kissed Ellen on the cheek. “You didn’t say what you thought about Billy. Huh?” Frank motioned his head to Billy in camouflage pants and a tee shirt. “I have been waiting forever to put those on him. Gemma made those awhile ago. Good thing he didn’t grow.” With squealing enthusiasm, Frank snickered. “And doesn’t he look so cute in his little headset.” Frank calmed down. “Can we dye his hair black?”

  “No.” Ellen shook her head, cleared her throat, and whispered “He doesn’t look enthused, Frank.”

  “Sure he does. He doesn’t want Alex to get jealous. Right, Bill?”

  Billy nodded.

  Ellen held back her chuckle. “Just don’t teach him anything demented.”

  “El, I will be the perfect teacher. Have fun in New Bowman and pass those out.”

  “I will.” Ellen saw Johnny approaching. “Frank, just like you wanted, I’ll call you in an hour so be at your dad’s office.”

  Frank didn’t remember that, but just so not to get in any trouble for not paying attention, he nodded. “O.K., I’ll be there, but we have to go.” He laid his hand on Billy’s back. “Let’s go.” They started walking. “Stand up straight. Look tough. Put some f
ear in those eyes.”

  Ellen smiled as she watched them walk away.

  “Ready, El?” Johnny asked.

  “Um, yeah.” Ellen reached for Alexandra’s hand.

  “Ellen,” Henry’s voice carried to her.

  Ellen looked at Johnny. “Could you wait in the truck?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Sure.”

  “El.” Henry caught up to her. “I need to know what this is.” He held up a folded piece of paper.

  “Alex, go wait in the truck.” Ellen waited until Alexandra left. “I thought it was self explanatory, Henry.”

  “It’s bullshit, El. We’re friends.”

  “Were,” she stated. “Not anymore. I have to go.”

  “Ellen.” He reached out and grabbed her arm. “We have a son. How do you suppose we not have contact if I need to see him?”

  “I suggest you find a good middle man.” She moved to the passenger’s door of the truck. “I like Hector. I’ll deal with him.” She slipped inside.

  Henry stood there and watched the truck move. “Fuck.” He shook his head in disgust. Then without thinking and without realizing what he would start, Henry crumbled the note, tossed I,t and walked away.

  ^^^^

  Hal was preparing his own speech. Not that he had to but since his entire class was writing a new Gettysburg address, he figured he would too. After numerous attempts, he had a great opening right on the tip of his brain, ready to travel down his arm to his fingers. Hal smiled and then, Hal whined.

  “Captain,” Elliott whispered from the classroom door.

  Hal clenched his jaws, rumbled a grunt, and stood up. “What?” he whispered as he walked to Elliott.

  Elliott waited until Hal made it into the hall. “I spoke to them.”

  “Oh,” Hal nodded with sarcasm. “So they’re rested enough to speak to us.”

  “Captain, the scouts didn’t return until after dawn.”

  “I don’t care, Elliott. They could have waited to sleep. What did they say? Did they find anything?”

  Elliott handed Hal an envelope. “For you.”

  “What? Are they writing me notes now?”

  “Not them,” Elliott stated. “It appears that is from the leader of a small town in north Texas.”