The cramp in my wounded leg began to recede. My right hand reached for Mr. Stabby. Mr. Stabby was gone, just as he had been in the dream.
“I took away your weapons,” Tate said in a very nearly playful tone. “Like I wouldn’t search you, silly bean.”
I didn’t look away from Tate. “Where are we?”
“In the belly of the beast,” Tate said, the tone promptly losing its playfulness. He looked around him. “It’s not a bad place. It keeps me sane.”
I blinked.
“Literally,” he added. “While I’m in the…what did you call it? The tech bubble? Right? While I’m in here, I’m almost…normal.”
I stared at him. My mind raced with a list. What to do, how to treat this lunatic, how to get away from it… If my heart continued to beat then I could get past nearly everything. And there was my odd dream about Landers to consider.
Not a dream.
Landers could speak to people telepathically. He’d had to meet them, and possibly touch them, too. I couldn’t remember ever touching him. Then there was a sudden realization. Landers had tried to prevent Sophie from opening the door of the train when some very large moths had tried to attack the choo-choo. (That sounded worse in my head than it actually had been.) I had consequently discouraged Landers with my favorite piercing implement. I must have touched him then, or he had touched me. Either that, or it had been a wishful dream, wanting someone to come and rescue my dumb ass.
“That’s what we call places like this,” I said. It wouldn’t hurt to admit that to Tate. I could start a friendly dialogue. One never knew to where it might lead. We could be eating Cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew before too long.
Tate nodded. His face appeared as if he was deep in thought. After a few moments, he crouched in place and pushed the large bottle of water at me with his solitary hand. “You’ll need some of this. You’ve been out, oh, at least ten hours.”
I spared the bottle a disbelieving look. “You frigging tasered me,” I said. “Why should I trust you about water?” So much for dialogue, Cheetos, and Mountain Dew.
Tate rubbed his face, and I swore he looked weary and drained. “That’s just it. You didn’t trust me. You weren’t going to let me help you off the stake and out of the pit. You’ll remember that I warned you not to move. I didn’t want you going into the pit. Pointy sticks and all that.”
“So you were helping me,” I said, trying to keep the skepticism and sarcasm out of my tone. It didn’t really work.
“Did you not hear me when I said this place literally keeps me sane?” Tate asked, and well, it sounded almost sensible.
“So you’re not feeling a need for long pig?”
“I’m not a monster when I’m inside the zone,” Tate said. “I can read books. I can be reasonable. I haven’t had a homicidal thought for weeks. And believe me—” he held up the stub of arm—“I have reasons to be homicidal.”
“You were holding a child hostage,” I said coldly. “You were going to kill Elan. You were going to kill Sophie. I think she had reason to do what she did.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Tate said shortly. He sighed and yanked the bottle of water back to him. He held it between the upper part of the disabled arm and his body while he loosened the cap with his hand. He dropped the cap to the concrete floor and lifted the bottle to his lips. He drank deeply, and I watched while he swallowed. Then he held it out to me.
I reached out and took the bottle, wincing at the pain in my leg while I tried to be clandestine about not touching him.
Drinking from the bottle, I tried to keep my eyes on Tate. After several gulps he said, “Easy. You don’t want to throw up. You’re already dehydrated, and vomiting won’t help you.”
“Why would you care?” I asked, lowering the bottle.
Tate rubbed the side of his face. “I do care about people. I’m not the kind of person most people have as a friend, but I was never the monster I later became.” He sighed heavily. “I used to be a fisherman. I used to live in this tiny little town on the Oregon coast. We were out to sea when it happened. I guess you know the boat wouldn’t start. I rowed back in and found out I was all by myself. I thought the very first person I ran into was a demon and that I had to kill him before he killed me. I can remember it now. Then there were some others. And finally there was Sophie. Her little friends, your little friends, too, they caused me to get burned and to fall off the cliff. I would have died except the turtle-spiders, as you call them, saved me. They healed me. They have hunter society. The strongest are the leaders. They believe that one supports the whole, and the whole supports the one. They were willing to do almost anything for me because I was connected to them. Then my psychosis jumped in with both feet. So now they’ve come for me.”
“Sounds like you’re the one who’s trapped,” I said. I might have made a deal with a man who was trapped in a bubble like Clora was trapped in the bubble at Sunshine. However, I wasn’t going to make a deal with a mass murderer. I didn’t care what kind of mood-stabilizing effect the bubble had on Tate, if that was even really true.
“I’ve been out,” Tate said. “And I came back as soon as I could. I happened on this place by accident. As soon as I passed through the edge, I knew what it meant. You might not believe it, but I have no desire to be the person I was. Before the change I tended to be a loner, but I wasn’t a murderer. I wasn’t a cannibal. I wasn’t warped.” He sighed at the expression on my face. “I don’t expect you to believe it.”
“I don’t,” I said. I took another sip of water. It was amazing what a little H20 could do for a girl. I almost instantly felt about a thousand percent better. I would have asked for some ibuprofen or something similar, but that was another crapshoot of which I didn’t want to partake.
Tate nodded. “I have some food. MREs. They’re about five years old, but they’re still good. There’s Asian beef strips, chicken and dumplings, or chicken fajita. I don’t recommend the chicken fajita, but each to their own. The snack bars are usually pretty okay, too. I will say that there’s a good reason these were called Meals Requiring Enemas, or I heard someone once say Meals Refused by Ethiopians. My point is that it’s better than eating nothing.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t think I was going to eat for the next ten years.
Tate nodded again. He took a brown-colored packet out of his jacket and dropped it by my feet. “There’s one of the MREs if you change your mind. That’s the Asian beef strips, by the way. They’re really the best of the lot. So if you decide not to eat it, let me know so I can have it.”
I held the bottle of water and studied Tate. He didn’t sound like a crazy person, but he had when I had first appeared on the horizon. He was calm and collected at the moment. “What are you planning?” I asked.
“I’d like to survive.” Tate stood up. “I’d like to be free from that psychosis that held me in thrall. I can do that here. I can even be productive.” He pursed his lips for a moment as if he was thinking intensely for a moment. “You ever watch CNN before?”
I inclined my head. Not really. I had watched E! Stuff about fashion and reality shows that required little coherent thought. CNN? Bwahaha. Why would I have done that?
“Court case shows, you know,” Tate said conversationally, “when they have a person who pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, it brings up a horrible topic.”
I gathered where Tate was going.
“When the person is ‘cured,’ should they be tried at that point? It’s like saying, ‘Okay, you get better and then we’ll judge you.’ If a person was insane when they committed a crime, then they’d still be insane if they were tried for that same crime, except of course, they’d be sane for the trial.”
“So people should judge you based on the way you are now,” I said. Damn if that didn’t sound reasonable to me. If it was true. If, if, if.
Tate reached behind him and brought out a big knife. The sharpened edge of the black knife
glinted in the light as he turned it slightly so that I could better see it. I knew the knife; it was my old friend, Mr. Stabby. I shifted my body so that I could kick at him if he came near me.
Instead, Tate stared at me. “Maybe you know something about being judged about who you were before you were the person you are now.” He tossed the knife in my lap. “I wouldn’t wander too far away from this room if I were you. The bathroom is off to the right. There’s running water. It has hot and cold. Well, not hot, but lukewarm and cold, anyway. I’m sure there’s soap in there. I expect you don’t want my help, so I left a crutch over there.” He pointed at a corner with his hand. “They have a whole medical wing here. All kinds of stuff. Crutches, needles, penicillin, and oh yes, sealed packets of pain killers.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out three little white packets, which he dropped next to Mr. Stabby.
Then Tate, former lunatic and cannibal, left the room with me in it.
Tate didn’t lock the door. He didn’t leave some kind of guard. He just left. I grabbed Mr. Stabby and sat up, systematically looking around me. The room looked like some kind of cafeteria. The tables were the kind with the built-in benches. One of the walls had a set of health warnings on it. There was a poster with the food pyramid on it. Another poster entreated the reader to “EAT 3 Servings of VEGGIES Every DAY!” Someone had crossed out VEGGIES and written “Save a vegetable; eat a vegan!” above it in black marker. Nearby was a framed photograph of Jimmy Carter. (No peanuts in sight.)
In one corner was a stainless steel tray table that held two tidy rows of plastic salt and pepper shakers. A wooden crutch was propped between the wall and the tray table. A neat row of five lanterns lined up on the floor nearby like a file of soldiers ready to do battle. Only the one in the front was lit. As I looked closer I saw that the lanterns were rechargeable, which was really cool and was something that would only work in a tech bubble if a person could figure out how to recharge them. Landers had brought some of those back to Sunshine a few months before. He’d found them at a sporting goods store in Denver. The things would last up to 200 hours on a single charge. I’d looked at the directions and discovered that the lantern even had a USB port, so that you could charge up your cellphone. (Cellphones might work in a tech bubble, but everything they needed outside of the bubble didn’t work, so they were slim little smartphone paperweights. However, you could still play some of the games until they decided they needed an update they would never get.)
I slowly panned around the hollow place and saw that I was by myself. I lay on a thick military-style sleeping bag, and there was a heavy pillow behind me, which happened to be the soft thing I’d felt earlier. I had a knife, a bottle of water, and three packets of painkillers. I selected a packet that was Tylenol-3, ripped it open, let the pills bounce onto my palm, and used the water to swallow the dose.
Acetaminophen and codeine: the breakfast of champions. Then I remembered the MRE. Mr. Stabby was employed to cut open the heavy-duty plastic. I examined the contents with little fanfare. I had seen MREs before. Entrée-size dish, dessert, crackers, spread, condiments, candy, drink mix, et cetera. These had been used occasionally when we were at the Capitol, but food was still fairly plentiful in can form, and there had been more choices.
The people at Sunshine had begun growing crops outside the bubble. Furthermore, they were trading with people who had set up farms in the vicinity. In another ten years, Sunshine would be a major city; it would be a hub for interchange and commerce. In any case, the food supply was transitioning from what we could grow. Not too long ago, I’d eaten pork chops and corn on the cob. There had even been freshly churned butter for the corn.
I pushed the MRE away from me. I drank some more water, reconsidered, and ate the crackers from the MRE, adding the fortified cheese spread for good measure, then wiped crumbs from the side of my mouth. My stomach nearly rebelled, but I took deep breaths and tried to mentally urge everything to stay put. By the time I finished the crackers and cheese, the pain in my leg was beginning to retreat to a distant throb.
The next problem was to find the bathroom Tate had mentioned. It took me a few agonizing minutes to get to the crutch, but crawling/dragging worked alright. I attached one of the handy-dandy lanterns on the side of the crutch because the lanterns came with hooks. (Some long gone lantern designer deserved a post-change award for making life a little easier for me.)
What was better than the rechargeable lantern was the fully operational bathroom. The hot water was lukewarm. The cold water was cold. They both ran wonderfully. There was a set of showers in the back of the cavernous room. Someone had thoughtfully provided a large pile of Army-brown towels. They weren’t the softest towels, but they were fresh and helped me dry off after I gave myself the most thorough cleaning that a girl with a big wound in her leg was going to get. I even got to use the large bottle of Lubriderm that someone had left on the sink. It wasn’t a spa, but I felt somewhat pampered. (Pampered maybe, but I had blocked the door with a chair all the same.)
I almost felt normal as I looked into one of the mirrors.
The woman looking back at me didn’t really look familiar. She was my height. Her eyes were the same color of blue. Her hair was cut fairly short in a gamine cut. (Zizi begged me to let her change it, but I wasn’t interested.) The color was about a shade lighter than platinum blonde. (Constant outdoor exposure had a certain effect on bleaching the strands out, and did I happen to notice that it was almost the same shade as Landers? I did notice, but I was determined not to think about him at the moment.) The woman’s skin was tanned because she spent a lot of time outside. Her cheekbones were knife points going from the edge of her eyes down to the corners of her chin. Her lips were the only splash of red on her face. Full lips. I knew a boy who once described them as a cupid’s bow.
I was startled at my reflection. It was me, but it wasn’t me.
The t-shirt was dirty and stained with blood, as were my jeans, and I didn’t even want to mention the gaping hole in the denim where the stake had punctured me and where Tate had clearly ripped it to treat me. I wished for my backpack and its contents, but I didn’t think that was going to happen. I knew where it was, if I could just figure out where I was. The firefly pixies would simply leave it in the elements when they left.
The pixies. They knew exactly where I was. The dream Landers had referred to them. The question of the day was whether I had truly been having a conversation with him or if had been a pain-addled dream.
There were stranger things that had happened, to be certain. However, I was in a tech bubble, and if the pixies couldn’t come into this one, didn’t that mean that Landers had certain limitations, as well?
I brushed the t-shirt off as best as I could. I wiped away some of the blood and steeled my shoulders. I didn’t want to stay in this place any longer than I had to, and there was only one way out.
I used the crutch to go into the hallway, gingerly working my muscles until I limbered up.
“I wouldn’t wander too far away from this room if I were you,” Tate had said.
I glanced left and then right. The hallways stretched away in both directions. I could hear some distant noise down to my right.
“Well, I’m not you, Tate,” I muttered.
Chapter 7
In the Beginning Lulu
Committed a Crime
The Past – San Francisco, California
Chained to a church pew was a sucky way to start any apocalypse. Of course, I hadn’t been chained to anything for the first few days. That had only happened after I ran into my first human being. There had been about five days of wandering around trying to find someone, which had happened to be Theophilus. That was followed by Theo shackling me to a bench and trying to “save” me in ways that were illegal in all fifty states. Of course, legality didn’t have squat to do with it because he didn’t have to worry about the law anymore. Because of all the stressors, I hadn’t started marking days off until at least two or three days
in captivity. I had marked about three weeks’ worth by the time something else happened to tip me over the edge. That was the whole issue of Theo bringing Bathsheba back to the nest and killing her. He followed that up by beating the holy hell out of me, (but not all of it, I’m thankful to say) and when I woke up, he’d made a strategic error.
However, I made a worse error in my timing. I was, as I’ve emphasized over and over, chained to a pew, and I wasn’t thinking straight. The manacle was tight around my ankle and fixed with a small lock. The chain was firmly attached to the wooden part of the pew. It was wrapped around the seat part and fastened with a large padlock. The pew was bolted to the floor with thirty-six bolts. (I did count them several times to be precise.) I was left with two dead people and my imagination. I didn’t have water, food, or any way to free myself.
When I was done crying, I started laughing. Louise had messed up. She’d trusted a complete stranger in a changed world. She’d put herself into a spot where no one was as they had been before. She was an imbecile of the highest order. Queen of the screw-ups. All of the Bronson family money wasn’t going to make a difference. Poppops and Mumsy weren’t coming for her. Daddy wasn’t flying in with the Marines to save her from eventual doom. Louise was sitting on the floor of a church, unable to free her leg, feeling incredibly sorry for herself, and wondering how long it was going to take before she died of dehydration.
Two days? Three days? I looked at the empty bottle of sacramental wine. There might be a drop or two left if Theo hadn’t sucked it dry, but alcohol wasn’t going to help me.
Forest of Dreams Page 6
