The Next Ten: Beginnings Series Books 11 - 20

by Jacqueline Druga

  “True.”

  “So what do you think?” Dan asked.

  “I say, do what you need to do. Whatever you decide, I’ll say nothing.”

  “Thanks, Rich.” Dan took in a breath. “You do realize he’s gonna cause problems for you.”

  “I know.”

  “You run a tight ship.”

  “I try.”

  “You do,” Dan stated. “Dean’s gonna try to loosen it.”

  “First day. First day here . . .” Richie lifted a single finger. “One day and he’s started. Herb for example. Not only did he eat the poor guy’s breakfast, he ate his lunch too,”

  “That’s not right.”

  Richie continued. “He held up the card making activity for Robbie. We aren’t even done with them yet. We wanted them there today and now Robbie won’t get them until tomorrow. Some of the residents are upset.”

  “He’s trouble.”

  “I’m not done. He finished two mops by himself Dan.”

  Dan sunk back into his chair. “He jumped ahead of the game.”

  “Yes. Three of my people cried.”

  “What can be next?”

  There was a knock on the door.

  Richie looked up. “Come in.”

  Another knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  The door opened and a tall, skinny man stood there. He wore hospital style pajamas with a bright, big, gold star on his chest for the trustee position he carried proudly. “Hey, Richie.”

  “What’s up, Chester?”

  “Hey, Richie.”

  “What’s up, Chester?”

  Dan gave a backwards twitch of his head to Chester. “Is he still repeating?”

  “He’s getting better. He only repeats once now as opposed to four or five times.”

  Dan nodded. “Man, do you make progress.”

  “Thanks.” Richie returned to Chester. “What’s up, Chester?”

  “Hey, Richie.”

  “What’s up?”

  “That Dean guy.”

  “What about him?’

  “That Dean guy.”

  “What about him?” Richie asked.

  “He’s in there starting trouble,” Chester stated.

  “What kind?”

  “He’s in there starting trouble.”

  “What kind?”

  “He’s disrupting the activity.”

  “Goddamn it.” Richie stood up, then sat back down.

  “He’s disrupting the activity.”

  “Goddamn it.” Richie stood up.

  “Can you handle it?”

  “Absolutely.” Richie took a step, stopped, and retracted.

  “Can you handle it?”

  “Absolutely.” Richie walked around the desk and out of the office. With authority, he headed into the Skills Room. The entire group of residents lined up in two rows like soldiers, while Dean stood off just a little to the side. “Dean.” Richie approached him with Chester behind. “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t want to do this,” Dean said adamantly.

  Chester walked into the conversation. “Richie, if he doesn’t do it, the others won’t either.”

  “Dean.” Richie looked at Dean. “Why?”

  Chester repeated, “Richie, if he doesn’t do it, the others won’t either.

  “Dean,” Richie said. “Why?”

  Arrogantly, Dean snickered. “You stand there with him and have to ask why?”

  “Asshole,” Chester gasped out.

  Richie held up his hand. “Chest, I’ll handle this.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Chester I’ll handle this.” Richie calmly returned to Dean. “Dean, you have to do the activity.”

  “It’s the Hokey Pokey,” Dean said.

  “Okay, so.” Richie shrugged.

  “I’ll try this again. It’s the Hokey Pokey with repeat man running it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay!” Dean nearly screamed. ‘It’s not just the regular run of the mill annoying Hokey Pokey. No, in Containment, it’s worst. It’s put your right hand in. Put your right hand in. Put your right hand in. I can’t shake it all about a million and one fuckin times. I don’t even want to think about when I have to put my head in. I’ll get brain damage.”

  “First of all, Dean, Chester is only repeating once. You wouldn’t be sticking your left foot in three or four . . .”

  “I don’t care!”

  “You have to follow the rules, Dean.” Richie stayed in control. “You agreed.”

  “I agreed to follow the rules yes. I didn’t agree to turn myself about, turn myself about, turn myself about. Lord help us if we get to the chicken dance.”

  After a single pacifying nod told Dean ‘I understand your frustration,’ Richie spoke, “The chicken dance isn’t scheduled, just the Hokey Pokey.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “It’s just the Hokey Pokey, Dean.”

  “It serves no purpose. How can you justify that?”

  Richie let out a dramatic breath. “How can I justify it? You’re the scientist and doctor. How can you ask that question? My God, Dean, the Hokey Pokey exercises both sides of the brain.”

  “So does reading comic books. I won’t do that either!”

  “Dean.” Richie took a firm stance. “If you don’t do the Hokey Pokey you will have to take the time out chair.”

  “Fine.” Dean crossed his arms. “I’ll take the damn time out chair. You people keep forgetting who I am.” He stormed to the little blue chair that sat facing the corner. “I won’t like it but it’s better than doing the Hokey Pokey!” After screaming his loudest, Dean squealed out the chair, plopped down, crossed his arms, and faced the corner.

  Dan stepped up behind Richie. “Do you need me to inject him?”

  “Nah, it’s under control.” Richie pointed to Dean. ‘Let’s go back to my office.” Turning, he stopped to face Chester and gave him a good swat to the arm. “All yours. Have fun.”

  “Thanks, Richie.”

  Richie backed up, swatted Chester again. “All yours. Have fun.”

  “Thanks, Richie.”

  Richie walked out. Just as he crossed into the hallway, he saw Frank.

  “Hey, Rich.” Frank approached him. “Is Dean in there?” He pointed then paused when he heard the Hokey Pokey being sung. “Oh, man, is that Chester Hokey Pokey Hokey Pokey?”

  “Yes it is,” Richie answered.

  “Excellent.” Frank smiled. “I fuckin love when he does it. It’s hysterical.”

  “Well, yeah, can you get Dean to share your enthusiasm. He’s killing me. I almost had to get Dan to sedate him.”

  “No way.”

  “Dan’s here isn’t he?” Richie asked.

  “He is.” Frank looked at Dan. “Don’t worry, Richie. I’ll handle Dean.” After giving a thumbs up, Frank walked into the Skills Room. Hands on hips, he nodded in enjoyment as he stopped to watch the people. Not wanting to feel left out and generally because it was always fun, Frank, with perfect timing–as he thought–jumped into the group. His hands lifted in the air and his voice, deep and resonating, lifted above the group. “You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself about.” He turned. “You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself about.” He turned again, laughed at the residents who spun themselves into a dizzy fit, and then Frank walked over to Dean who was seated in the time out chair. “Are we being a bad boy, Dean?”

  “I’m sitting here like a child facing the wall. I would venture to say they think I’m being a bad boy.”

  “Dean . . .”

  “Frank.” Dean glanced slightly over his shoulder. “They want me to do the Hokey Pokey.”

  “Yeah, so.”

  Dean grunted. “The Hokey Pokey?

  “Dean, first, Chester’s running it, so it’s the Hokey Pokey Hokey Pokey. Second, you have to. You agreed to abide by the rules so you can hide out here.”

  “I want out.”

  “Tough on that
one too. You can’t. You are committed in here until you are healed. As far as the rules go, you are mentally disabled until you’re cured. You have to stop. Okay? You set the initial rules.”

  “You told me what to say, Frank.”

  Frank bobbed his head. “Well, yeah.”

  “Well, yeah?” Dean stood up. “Fuck you, Frank!”

  “Dean!” Frank yelled. “You’re on time out.”

  “Dean!” Chester stopped doing the Hokey Pokey. “Sit back down. Dean, sit back down.”

  “Fuck you too, Chester.” Dean walked to the door and stepped. “Fuck you too, Chester.” He stormed into the hall.

  Frank followed. “Dean. Stop.” He grabbed Dean’s arm. “Look.”

  “Sorry, Frank,” Dean spoke in low tones. “I’m above all that.”

  “Are you?”

  “What! Are you insane! Yes! Yes!”

  “No!” Frank shook his head. “Now before you go power blasting that four foot mouth at me, let me let you in on a little fuckin secret. Like these people, there is something wrong with you. Yeah, sure you can still do medical shit and cure things. I’m sure Chester in there, if you put him in front of an air conditioner, he could still fix it. And Herb. Bet me he could still fly a spaceship.”

  “Herb never flew a spaceship.”

  “Oh, yeah, wanna bet.”

  “He just says that.”

  “You think?” Frank asked. “Colonel Herbert Belzthoover, United States Air Force, to the best of my knowledge, flew four shuttle missions and one rescue shuttle mission prior to the plague. You were in the military too, Dean, I’m surprised you didn’t recognize his face. He was always plastered over that stupid paper we got.”

  “I never read that paper.”

  “Neither did I, but I looked at the pictures.”

  “What’s your point, Frank?”

  “My point is, like all of these people, you have valuable skills and like all of these people, you have a mental disability right now. However, unlike this people, you can be fixed. They can’t. This is the way to keep them on track, to make them be routine, and to hope that somehow, someway, that real mind in there will eventually come out. If it doesn’t, they are safe in this environment. They follow. They can’t decide what to do for themselves and if you come in here, disrupt, refuse to do the fuckin Hokey Pokey no matter how lame you think it is, they are gonna think it’s lame and they won’t do it either. You walk out the door, they’re still here. We are back to square one.”

  “The Hokey Pokey, Frank.”

  “Oh, wait until the big Simon Says tournament.”

  “Great.”

  “Dean,” Frank spoke passively. “You know, instead of fighting here, why don’t you use that mind you brag about to figure out ways to help these people?”

  Dean hesitated. “You’re right.”

  “I am.”

  “Swell.”

  “Okay.” Frank clapped his hands together. “Different subject. The reason I’m here.” He took Dean’s arm and led him to the dining room. “Sit.”

  Dean did.

  “All right. Did you do it?”

  Dean tilted his head.

  “Dean.”

  “I tried. It was difficult.”

  “No it wasn’t, Dean.”

  “Frank . . .”

  “Where is it?”

  Grumbling, Dean reached into his back pocket and handed Frank a paper. “I wrote five hundred times.”

  “Uh!” Frank screamed. “Yeah, you wrote five hundred times, but you wrote ‘I love Misha’ five hundred times. You were supposed to write ‘I hate Misha’.”

  “Frank, it was difficult.”

  “Dean, no it wasn’t.”

  “Frank, I couldn’t. I tried.”

  “Try again.” Frank laid the paper before Dean.

  “I can’t.”

  Slam! Frank’s hand with a pen went down on the table causing Dean to jump. ‘Try again.” Frank put his face close to Dean’s. “Now.”

  “All right. All right.”

  “You hate her, Dean.”

  “Yes. No.”

  ‘Yes,” Frank was insistent. “She ruined your life. She’s in cohorts with Ben and Todd from Fabrics.”

  Dean played with the pen.

  “Dean. Write it.”

  “Frank . . .”

  Slam! “Dean!”

  “Fine.” After rolling the pen through his fingers, Dean brought it to the empty spot on the paper. He wrote the word ‘I’, but as he began to slowly write the next word, ‘love’ instead of hate’, appeared.

  “Uh!” Frank screamed again. “What is wrong with you? Hate. Hate. Hate!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Again!”

  “All right!” Doing his signature nervousness, Dean ran his fingers through his hair. He listened to the whispering chant of ‘Dean hates Misha’ that Frank did. Dean concentrated. He really concentrated and then he wrote.

  “No! Again!” Frank blasted, and hovered over Dean’s shoulder. He watched him write, then as soon as Dean began to write the word ‘love’ Frank instinctively, through frustration, swing out and hit Dean in the back of the head. “No!”

  “Ow! Frank, you asshole!”

  “Again!”

  “Okay!” Hurried, and a little scared, Dean scribbled. When he saw what he wrote, he smiled. “Hey.”

  “Oh my God, you did it.”

  “I did.” Dean grunted. “I did. It was tough.”

  “I bet.”

  “Whew.”

  Frank gave a soft pat to Dean’s back. “Progress, Dean. We are making progress. We should try again.”

  “Yeah.” Dean lifted the pen. He hesitated. “I’m not feeling it.”

  “It’ll come. But . . . hold on for one second.” Frank began to leave.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Hold on!” Frank yelled as he raced down the hall. He knocked on the office door. “Richie.”

  “Yeah, Frank.” Richie looked up from behind the desk.

  “I know the rules, but do you think for helping residents, that, I don’t know, it’s Ok to use mild physical abuse to help them along.”

  “Mild?”

  “Nothing major. Nothing that will leave a mark,” Frank said.

  “I’m sure it’s fine. I won’t say anything if you don’t.”

  “Thanks, Richie.”

  “No problem.” Richie winked and leaned back in his chair in a gloating manner.

  After hurrying down the hall, Frank blasted into the dining room. “Dean, I’m hyped now. I know we can do this.”

  “Really?” Dean asked.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m confident. I just got permission to try a new route of therapy.”

  “You think it will work?”

  “Absolutely.” Frank walked to the table and stood behind Dean. He gave a firm swat to Dean’s back. “Let’s get started.” Frank smiled. “Write.”

  ^^^^

  The half-smoked, yet unlit cigar was griped between her index and middle finger as Bertha smoothed her had across the detailed map. “It’s not far from the Pennsylvania border, a hundred miles maybe and located close to Cleveland, Akron, so forth.”

  Slowly, George leaned back in his chair. “And we missed this town the whole time.”

  “Up until they gave us trouble on an invasion attempt.”

  “How?” George asked. “How did we miss it? Life in a dead world and lots of it is there. They have a homemade iron wall made out of . . . “

  ”Cars,” Bertha finished the sentence.

  “Old cars and we missed it?”

  “I don’t believe so.” Bertha finally took a seat. “I believe we knew about them all along and Sgt. Doyle just kept them protected.”

  “That makes sense. What do we know about them?”

  “Distant scouts say Lodi looks pretty established and settled. The number of residents is hard to tell. They farm there, work there, and survive within their own walls, going out only for nee
d.”

  “Like the original concept for the Garfield Project.”

  “Exactly.”

  “In your opinion, what are the odds of this town being responsible for the recent defector action or small attacks?”

  “Slim to none,” Bertha answered. “They aren’t responsible.”

  “They’re up to something. Why did Doyle hide them? To strengthen his alliance?”

  Bertha shook her head. “Perhaps Doyle protected them not out of his need to recruit, but because he was against the Society and since Lodi really wasn’t a threat, he kept them protected in a sense.”

  “Then who? Doyle?”

  “Again a disagreement from me. Doyle is with Beginnings and the UWA. Their numbers are too large to be pulling small time change like this. If they move, they will move big which will be a topic for another meeting.”

  George ran his finger over his eyebrow. “A concern duly noted.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “So this Lodi, if they aren’t for us, why are they still there? Why don’t we go in and wipe them out?”

  “Again, like suggested, you can’t show that sort of tyranny to our people. You go in and wipe out a non-hostile environment for what? Just because they aren’t on our side? Actually, they aren’t on the side of Beginnings either. That’s why I believe Doyle watched them.”

  “So what do we do about them? They are right smack dab in the middle of Society territory.” George’s hand slammed to the map. “If they aren’t a part, they have to get out.”

  “I agree.”

  “So we move them.” George saw Bertha shake her head. “No, we don’t?”

  “Before we assume they are enemy, why don’t we find out for sure where they stand. We don’t really know that, do we?”

  “You want to send in a spy?”

  “No.” Bertha replied. “Why take the back door. Why don’t we just knock on the front?”

  “You mean talk to them.”

  “Negotiate in a way and find out where they stand, and if they want to stay. If they want to stay, then we work out something with them. We can use the power that town has the potential to possess.”

  “And if they don’t want to join the Society?”

  “We go to what we discussed in Colorado. They must realize they are on Society territory. If they don’t want to be a part then they must go. We give them a deadline to leave. If they fail to meet the deadline . . .”

  “We take them out.”