by D. J. Molles
He looked out the window briefly as he drove. The late-night moon cast a silver glow over everything and it ran alongside of him as he drove down the road, keeping pace with him as it slid effortlessly across the tractor rails and hydroponics lines.
The house they lived in—the house that Walt had grown up in—was small for the Baucom family when things had started. When it had been Grandpa Clarence, and Mom, and Pops, and Roy and him. They fit tightly into the three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
Now, with only Carolyn and him, it was ample. But still cozy.
They had no property to speak of. They were hemmed in on all sides by hydroponics, just about ten feet off the house in any direction. The orb weaver spiders loved to build their giant webs between the tall corn when it came up and the corners of the house. Carolyn couldn’t stand them, so it was his job to clear them out every few days when they showed up in late summer.
Secretly, he couldn’t stand them either. But it was a labor of love.
As the dirt drive leveled out and straightened up, and he could see ahead of him, his house amongst the fields. It was a pleasant effect. He felt the monotonous troubles begin to peel off of him as his truck rumbled down the drive towards the quaint white box of plastic siding and black shutters. The lights burned yellow inside.
Most of the troubles, anyways.
Things still whisked around in the back of his mind, like debris caught in a cyclone.
Who the hell were the Eudys?
Were they the ones kidnapping New Breed soldiers? And why?
And of course, the white box of Chinese cancer meds that did him absolutely no good at all, they were in his mind too.
He shook his head to get the thoughts to leave him alone.
No. It was his day off. And it was Carolyn’s day off.
Finally. They had time to spend together. He wasn’t going to screw that up with a bunch of hand-wringing and mental enigmas that, ultimately, had no effect on him.
He didn’t give a shit who the Eudys were.
He didn’t give a shit who was kidnapping New Breeds.
He didn’t give a shit about dead men in plastic tarps.
It was a nice evening. Maybe Carolyn would like to grab the jar of lemondrop and sit outside with him for an hour or so. Yes. It was going to be a good night. A relaxing night. Maybe they’d even make love, which was a bit overdue in Walt’s estimation.
He pulled to a stop in the driveway, the house off to the right side of his truck. He could see that, apparently, Carolyn agreed with him on how pleasant the night was. The front door was open.
He felt a minor flicker of irritation, the thought of dammit, woman that every husband has from time to time.
It was a nice night, but it was also April, which is when the bugs started coming out. And they didn’t have a screen door. So he could just imagine the number of things that were hurrying through the fields towards the bright yellow nirvana of his houselights.
He pushed his truck door open and slid out. Slammed the door and locked it behind him.
As if to reinforce his minor bother, no less than a dozen moths, flies and some other winged insects were buzzing around in the glow of his headlamps, wings flashing, bodies reflecting the light like they were luminous themselves.
He swished through them, unconsciously holding his breath.
On the other side, as the headlights of his truck finally shut off, he called out, “Carolyn, you’re gonna let the bugs in, babe.”
He climbed the steps to their little front porch.
He stopped.
From where he was, he could see the door.
He could see straight into the living room.
The front door was not just open. It was hanging off of splintered hinges.
And there in the center of the living room was the crescent-shaped scorch mark of a diversionary grenade.
Chapter 8
Walter stared.
The splintered door. The scorch mark on the floor.
This isn’t real. Not real.
But why was a clenched breath beginning to burn in his chest?
Why was his heart snapping like a snare drum, fast and hectic?
He knew what he was seeing. He’d seen it before.
He gasped, pushing stale, fiery, oxygen-depleted air out of his lungs and sucking in new air, and was it him or could he taste and smell the powder burn from that scorch mark?
He realized his hands were shaking. He stepped through the door and found his feet unsteady. There in those brief moments, his mind and his body were disconnected. Unreality was putting him into a stupor. His body was surging, pounding, screaming at him to do something, like fire shut up in his bones.
He lurched. Like that ancient pickup of his teenage years, the gears catching a second or so after he’d already pressed the accelerator, and then bang, he was flying forward.
“Carolyn!” he yelled, hoarsely.
And he was almost sure that she would call back to him, that this was some sort of mistake, that she was indeed somewhere in the house with a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this, and things weren’t bad, no, they weren’t bad, they would be okay, his heart would slow down and in twenty minutes they would have laughed all of this off and they’d be watching TV together…
“Carolyn!” he screamed again.
There was only silence in the house.
He moved into the bedroom. Buzzing. Twitching. He walked like a man that couldn’t feel his feet.
He checked the bathroom, moving slow and deliberate, like he was caught in that sludgy-air of a nightmare, that air that won’t let you move your legs, won’t let you move as fast as you want to move.
He floated to the back door, mouth slack like a drunkard.
But his eyes were sharp. Wide open. Flying here and there.
He went out onto the porch. Stared out at the fields, just a little bit of them visible in the circular glow created by the lights around his house.
“Carolyn!” he called into the dark fields.
The fields swallowed his voice. There was no echo.
Must be some other explanation.
Must be. Must be. Must be.
He turned, very suddenly, and he staggered back into the house, realizing that his breathing was much faster than it should be. He could feel the cold wetness on his forehead, on his chest, at the small of his back.
But he was managing to move faster now.
He was being sucked into the reality of the situation.
As he stepped shakily back into his house, his hands slid across the jam. He felt the rough wood, which was not supposed to be rough, but he didn’t think anything about it. Splinters slid into his skin, but he failed to register them at that moment.
He looked around, forcing cohesion. Forcing logic. Because it certainly wasn’t going to come on its own.
He brought an unsteady hand up to his face and wiped cold, greasy sweat from his forehead and temples.
Broken door.
Crescent scorch mark.
He looked up and saw three moths circling the single living room light. Battering themselves against it.
He needed to calm down. He needed to breathe. To think rationally about everything he was seeing. He knew what the signs pointed to, but…but…he had to test every other possibility before he could accept it.
He flipped his PD open, sliding his fingers across the monitor as it hovered in the air above his forearm. He had to call Carolyn. Had to call her. And when he did, she would answer. Of course she would.
He stood there, staring at the monitor.
Ringing. Ringing.
Come on, baby. Answer your phone.
Ringing. Ringing.
Tell me anything but what it looks like.
Ringing. Ringing.
No answer.
A voice that was not hers reassured him that his call would be forwarded to her when she was available again.
He started pacing the living room floor. Feet mov
ing fast. Nervous. Choppy.
He called her again. And when that wasn’t answered either, he sent her a message.
Then he called her again, desperate now, desperate for her voice, desperate for that wake-up call in a nightmare, the reason you shout out, knowing it’s a nightmare, hoping someone will hear you and pull you out of the dream and back into reality.
He called her work. He asked her manager in the lightest, fakest tones he could muster, if he had seen Carolyn. Walter’s voice sounded strange and stale in his own head. A bad actor reading bad lines.
But if the manager could hear the growing insanity, he didn’t say so.
“Nah, she left normal time, Walt. Everything okay?”
“Ayuh,” he said, the words flat. Two-dimensional. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
They said perfunctory goodbyes and disconnected.
Walter walked his hollow self to a kitchen chair and sank into it, like his knees were melting. The chair, one of the two wooden ones that sat at the small, round table. His usual chair. The one on the other side was Carolyn’s.
He blinked a few times, trying to focus himself, trying to look at the truth. And what was it that he was seeing? He knew. He knew damn well.
Ram mark on the door.
Scorch mark on the floor.
Carolyn.
Disappeared.
He let out a groan and folded over in his chair, putting his head between his knees. He focused on breathing. And thinking. That’s what he needed to do. Think. Please think. Please, brain, start working. Figure something out. Come up with something that you can do. Something that isn’t just pissing into the wind. There has to be something. Some solution. Some way…
Why? Why would they take her?
Because they threw rocks when they were kids? Because they said “Fuck the CoAx” a few times? They were adults now. They hadn’t said anything anti-CoAx in years.
Why now? Why this?
He sat upright in his chair, all frozen except for his eyes which switched back and forth, back and forth, across the room, like he was reading some words that were hanging there in the dead space.
Is this about me?
He put a hand up to his mouth. “Oh, fuck.” His breath smelled like stale cigarettes and sour, adrenaline-sweat coming off his palm. “Oh, no. No. No.”
He stood up suddenly. He looked around him.
Shit, shit, shit.
An hour ago he’d been in a rundown trailer tucked back in the woods. And in the dilapidated bedroom of that dark safe house, there’d been a body rolled up into a plastic tarp. A New Breed. An officer. And there’d been gunships prowling the skies. And guntrucks rolling in force through the town center.
And here he sat like a dolt with his thumb up his ass, wondering why they’d come after his Carolyn.
But maybe they hadn’t.
Maybe they’d come after him.
He clawed his hair.
Of course they’d come after him!
“Sonofabitch!” Walt shouted into the stillness of his house.
Walt started looking around his house now. Not just in shock. There was something else now too. There was fear. What if they weren’t gone like he thought? What if he was standing around in the bear trap, prancing around on that pressure plate, and any second it was about to snap closed?
Goddammit, Virgil, what the fuck have you gotten me into?
He would’ve never done any of this shit if it hadn’t been for Virgil popping up after years of virtual silence, acting like they were buddies, acting like Virgil was doing him a goddamned favor by offering him a job, when the reality was that he would’ve never come knocking except that he needed something!
Just like he and Roy would’ve never dragged him to all those stupid poker games, except that they needed something.
Walter was just a means to an end.
The concept of being used was a black little seed that settled into the soil of his mind and immediately began to send out crawlers, vines, roots.
Walt snapped open his PD again and tried to focus on the glow of the monitor. He realized everything was blurring. He blinked rapidly, felt hot tears come out of the corners of his eyes, felt a hitch in his breathing.
Blame all you want, but Carolyn’s gone because of you.
But that bitter little seed, and the angry things that came out of it just continued to grow.
He ripped through his contacts with shaking hands and unsteady fingers and stabbed the air where Virgil’s contact hovered. It rang. Walt waited.
Every ring, every warbling little electronic tone pushed him like a dozer blade, edged him closer and closer to completely losing it.
He eyed the kitchen chair he’d been sitting in. He had a brief image of picking it up and dashing it to pieces. He wasn’t sure whether he was angry, or sad. Wasn’t sure whether it was directed at Virgil or himself.
Blame all you want, his mind told him again. But you did this. You did this, not Virgil. You thought you were slick. You thought you were gonna be the one that got away with it. But you’re just an idiot. You let them use you, and now you’re the fool. And now Carolyn’s gonna pay for it. Now Carolyn’s gone. She’s gone.
Your one good thing.
His PD spouted the same message that it had given him when Carolyn hadn’t answered his call.
The urge to break something was almost insurmountable now. Why wasn’t anyone answering their phones? There was a goddamned reason why you had that shit strapped to your FUCKING WRIST!
There was another option.
One that Virgil had told him very coldly was only for emergencies. Only for emergencies, he’d said, while the look on his face said don’t go calling it every time you get a wild hare about something, you inexperienced, non-resistance civvy.
But fuck Virgil.
If anything counted as an emergency, it was this.
Walt accessed the encrypted file and sent out the ping through the ether of invisible signals.
It only rang once.
Virgil’s voice, cold as a slab of concrete in winter: “How’d you get this?”
Walter stared at the monitor, mystified for a moment. “You gave it to me!” he said, a little louder, a little angrier than he’d intended.
Virgil started to speak.
Walt blurted over him. “They hit my house. They hit my house, and they took Carolyn.”
Silence on the line.
Walt stared, his mouth open. What was next? What should he say next—
“Get out,” Virgil said, flatly. “Don’t take anything with you. And don’t drive your truck. Go on foot. Go to the bridge. Go now.”
Chapter 9
Get out.
Go now.
The words clanged around in a mind about as blank as a white canvas, which is not truly blank at all, but rife with terrible potential.
Anything was possible at that moment, and those possibilities swirled in a maelstrom around him, and he waited for something real to coalesce from it.
He realized he was still staring at his PD screen, and he snapped it shut, hard.
Get out.
He looked around him, and found that suddenly, very suddenly, this house had become a hostile place. Like a murder scene, it had bled into every other aspect of his thoughts, turning them dark, tainting them, coloring them.
This place screamed to him of Carolyn.
The memories poured out of the walls all in a single instant, all at once, like a right hook that you didn’t see coming and it sends you reeling into vivid dreamscapes.
The memories, sweet, but bittered and darkened by his fear, by his panic, by the gaping openness that he felt in his chest.
She was hanging the old horse collar that she’d used to decorate the blank wall of the entryway. Getting frustrated with the mounts in the polyboard wall, and then telling him to back off when he tried to help, telling him she could hang the damn thing just fine by herself, brow scrunched in concentration as she zeroed in on the off
ending mount.
Get out.
And when the frustration was gone, she touched his arm and kissed him and told him that she appreciated his offer to help, but she wanted to do some things for herself. And Walt looked at her work and nodded and told her that it looked good.
Go now.
She was in the kitchen, paring apples for a holiday dessert, because she swiped some extras from the messhall. He moved up behind her, put his arms around her waist and kissed the spot on her neck, right there at her shoulder. She smiled and tilted her head, letting him closer, the curlicue hairs that she could never quite gather into her ponytail, tickling his face.
Don’t take anything with you.
He saw himself sitting at their tiny table, bitching about this deduction or that bill, as he stared at the blue glow of his PD monitor and felt that old familiar feeling of It’s Not Fair! And Carolyn slid him a jar of lemondrop and told him, “So the wind blows, cowboy. Drink with me and we’ll talk about it later. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
Go…
Walt drew a breath and felt it hitch, halfway in.
This place was haunted.
The flood of memories took no more than a second or two.
He went to the back door and threw it open, and he took a moment to close it behind him, gently.
That was how he and Roy had always snuck out of the house when Grandpa Clarence had passed out in his chair, a bottle of whisky on the coffee table next to him. The two boys would edge out the back door, gently closing the door behind them, pulling the latch so that the sound of it falling into place would be quiet.
The heat at their backs, the sun pulling the air-conditioning from around their skin.
And then they would turn, as Walter turned in that moment, and they would run, just like Walter was running now. And when he was a young boy he would watch his brother, just a few paces ahead, and Roy would look over his shoulder with a daring half-grin that knew that trouble was just around the corner.
All around them the corn would be summer-tall and the bugs were sun-lit meteors in a hazy July afternoon sky, and they would run, they would run into the fields, and away, and the hard, sharp leaves of the cornstalks would lash at their arms, but they didn’t care, they were escaping through it like a portal into another world, leaving war behind, leaving real life behind, seeking adventure.
