Each fact was an impossible quandary on its own. The Basement Dog was still trapped, but it was pressing harder against the door now, its hot breath drifting through the keyhole, and Jenny knew that if much time passed without a clear plan, the dog would push through and chase her from one end of the house to the other, perhaps forcing her to lock herself in the bathroom where she would cower in the tub, hoping the dog would go away on its own and knowing it wouldn’t. No, the Basement Dog was sly and knew that it might be a long time before it tasted freedom again, so it would try to enjoy it as long as possible.
Just long enough, maybe, to ruin any chance Jenny had of saving herself.
It was not lost on her that she’d been in this situation twice already: First outside Fairfield, where Victor had found her, and a second time after fleeing through the storm sewer where Oswald had ambushed her and Victor (which also happened to be where she had first met Shadow). Both times someone had been there to help her, but this time she had only Shadow—an intelligent, loyal animal, no doubt, but probably not one capable of sniffing out a shelter stocked with food, water, and firewood.
No cheating this time. This time, girl, you have to figure it out on your own.
Was she capable? Could she keep her back against that basement door and still think clearly enough to decide what to do? After all, just wandering blindly was not going to cut it. If she used that method, she might very well fall into a pit and freeze to death.
She recalled a distinction Allen had once made between danger and fear.
Danger spoke with the cold voice of logic: You will die of hypothermia if you do not find a way to stay warm; next it will be thirst; third will be hunger. Danger was based on fact, and you ignored it at your peril.
The voice of fear, however, was hysterical with emotion, shouting at her that she should get up and do something, because time was running out and her fingers were already going numb, and pretty soon it was all going to be over for her.
The second voice demanded thoughtless action. The first one warned her that a hasty decision could just as easily worsen her chances as improve them.
She needed a sounding board, someone who could tell her when she was being realistic and when she was not. But she had only Shadow, and aside from groaning when she gently released his fur and stood, he offered no opinion at all.
What time was it, early afternoon? Say one or two o’clock. It must be late October now, or early November, so the sun would set around…six? Five? That gave her four or so hours to find a shelter where she could stay warm for the night. Her thirst was a close runner-up, but like hunger, it would have to wait.
Clearly she could not stay where she was. She was still outside, exposed to the wind. Most of the snow avoided her, which suggested she was beneath an overhang. Maybe on a street corner? It was possible. Meatloaf had hurried her along, not even pausing long enough to check his bearings, and now that Jenny thought about it, she did not recall taking any sharp turns. They must have followed the same street all the way.
She felt along the brick wall until she came to a door. The door was locked, and it did not budge in the slightest when she tried to force it. She sighed, not really surprised to find it would not be so easy.
Planting her back against the wall, Jenny drew an imaginary line going straight into the distance. This line was at a ninety-degree angle to the street Meatloaf had followed (at least she supposed it was), so whatever else might happen, she should not have to worry about crossing paths with him again.
Which meant she would not cross paths with Victor or Khan, either.
Oh, well. It was just about time for her to look after herself, wasn’t it? Sink or swim?
If the blind lead the blind, she thought, and started walking.
Chapter 59
The boat was where it was supposed to be, a tiny, paint-peeling dinghy hardly large enough to carry two people, much less three and a backpack of explosives. A pair of wooden paddles were propped in the stern like two old men in a peanut gallery.
“Will this hold us?” Dante asked, eying the boat anxiously.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Victor answered. He seized the boat and pulled it toward the water with his good arm. It held at first, clinging to the frozen ground, then broke free and rattled across the rocky shore.
A cold wind rushed across the water. The bridge rose mountainous in the midst of the thickening snowstorm, and on the opposite shore Victor could just make out high-rise buildings and docks and overgrown gardens and parking lots full of Mercedes and BMWs. Some part of him had expected to see a solid wall of stone or concrete with razor-wire and broken glass, an unmistakable declaration of the Baron’s claim to that side of the river.
This sight, by comparison, was relatively modest.
He held the boat parallel to the shore while the other two climbed in. Dante moved to the back and grabbed a paddle, the Lemming - Mr. Hines - stumbled to the middle, and then Victor pushed off and climbed into the front.
Water cascaded like glass with every swoop of Victor’s paddle. He went on for a few minutes, long enough to maneuver them into the channel, before grimacing and setting the paddle back into the boat. He twisted in the seat to meet Mr. Hines’s eyes.
“Walter is fine,” the man said before Victor could pose his question. “And yes, I’ll spell you, though I haven’t forgiven you for nearly breaking my finger. But don’t expect us to make much progress. It’s been a while since I did this.” His eyes twitched about as he spoke—a sign, Victor thought, of nervous energy.
“Hines, as in the ketchup?” Dante asked.
“What did you do before all this?” Victor asked, passing him the paddle.
Walter dipped the paddle into the water and guided them forward. “Clocks,” he answered. “I was a clockmaker. I sat in a dusty basement listening to oldies on the radio. My brother worked upstairs, he had a pawnshop, he could get his hands on plenty of antique clocks but most of them didn’t work. You know who wants a broken clock?”
“Who?”
Walter shrugged. “Beats me. Would have saved myself a lot of trouble if I’d known the answer to that. Didn’t really mind that much, though. It’s calming. Stops you from thinking. The music just sort of pushes you along, like the current of this river. You lose track of time—ironic when you’re staring all day at a machine supposed to remind you of it.”
Victor took a deep breath. The more Walter spoke, the faster he said it, as if he was just warming up to the idea of conversing with other human beings.
“That’s fascinating,” Victor said. “But tell me, Walter—”
“You want to know how I came to make bombs.”
I want to know if I can trust you not to blow us up, Victor thought, but only nodded his head.
“It might not surprise you to hear that fixing clocks teaches you to mind the details. When I first saw what was happening on the news, Ron - that was my brother - told me he was going out for a quick grocery run. I knew it was cigarettes he was after. He never thought I knew but I always did.”
His rabbit-trail came to a sudden halt and he frowned. They were drifting close to the bridge’s pilings now, discolored legs that jutted up from the gray water.
“Cigarettes,” Dante prompted.
“Right. He loved his Royals, the cheap bastard. And they killed him, too. He never came back to the shop. So I went out, rode on down to the nearest supermarket.”
“Did you find him?” Dante asked.
Walter twisted around to frown at him. “You think I was looking for him? I went there to stock up on canned goods. Used Ron’s credit card, too. He hadn’t paid me rent in close to a month, so I figured he owed it.
“Anyway, I was able to stay down there a few months without surfacing. Learned to like a lot of new things: sauerkraut, pickled beets, dog food, even those packets of Asian noodles. What are those called?”
“Ramen,” Victor said.
“That’s right. Ramen.” He pronounce
d it RAY-men. “Usually I stay away from anything made overseas, but that stuff was actually pretty good.”
“I’m struggling to see what this has to do with explosives,” Victor said, trying not to lose the last frayed strands of his patience.
“Maybe if you stop interrupting me you’ll find out,” Walter retorted. “Sheesh. What I was about to say was that’s how I met William Yates.”
“What?”
“What do you mean, what?”
“What was how you met him? How did—”
“Well it wasn’t him directly, not at first. When I finally left the shop, I was expecting to find the National Guard strolling around, assigning work details, arresting looters—whatever stuff they usually do. Instead I found a bunch of Commies. It was like waking up to learn we’d lost the Cold War.”
The boat drifted along, sucked into the river’s current, and as the three men fell beneath the shadow of the bridge, Walter revealed he had been “apprenticed” to a bomb-maker who later lost most of his face to a workshop accident. Since then Walter had served as the demolitions “expert.”
“You sure know how to inspire confidence,” Victor muttered.
“We should have gotten the other Walter,” Dante said.
They reached the first piling, a large concrete I resting on a support a few feet above the waterline. Walter climbed atop the support, Dante handed him the backpack, and the brothers waited while Walter taped the explosives to the support and then primed them.
As Walter was shuffling through the backpack, a handheld military detonator surfaced, then disappeared again.
The snow was falling thicker outside, the flakes swallowed by the greedy water. With nothing to do except hold themselves to the support and wait for Walter to finish, Victor found himself thinking about what was to come next. Choices and consequences. Could you ever undo what you had already set in motion?
“Are you sure about this, Dante?” he asked in a low voice, hoping Walter was too busy to overhear.
“Sure about what?”
“We could take this boat to the other side, just you and I. We won’t be harmed. We could start over there.”
“What about the Commune?”
“Fuck the Commune! You think we can trust Yates? You think he won’t discard us as soon as we’ve served our purpose?”
Dante watched Walter, the gears in his mind silently turning. It came to Victor in a flash, all the times he could have spoken with Dante before, tried to convince him, instead of gambling it all on the final roll. But here they were, and what if Dante would not go with him? Could he leave his own flesh and blood, his only family?
“This isn’t about Yates,” Dante finally said. “This is about the Baron. There’s only one thing I don’t understand. When you talked with Khan outside the clubhouse, why didn’t you just go with him right then?”
“Because you wouldn’t have gone with me,” Victor replied. “And because I was angry.”
Dante laughed humorlessly. “But now that you’re thinking rationally, you think the best idea is to join the man who kidnapped me? The same one who nearly got both of us killed?”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Victor answered, but he could feel the heat flushing his face. Was it because he knew Dante was right, or because Dante was in a better position to judge since he was the one who had been kidnapped?
“A misunderstanding? Oh, like when you ask for mustard on your burger and you get ketchup instead, right? Is that what you mean?”
“You were never supposed to get hurt.”
“Well, Vic, I did, so forgive me if I’d rather stick a rusty nail in my eye than get anywhere near that maniac.”
Victor’s hands clenched into fists. “That “maniac” is my friend.”
Dante shook his head ruefully. “You sure know how to pick them.”
“So that’s a flat-out no, then?”
Dante laughed again, bitter, derisive. “You’re the numbers guy. Seriously, what did you think were the odds I’d say yes? Twenty to one? Fifty?”
“Forgive me for thinking my brother had an inkling about what was in his best interest.”
Dante’s nostrils flared. “Don’t play that card with me. This is about you—it always has been. You and the Baron, kings and pawns, playing captain while the Titanic goes down.”
They were on the third piling now. Or maybe it was the fourth—Victor had lost track. Around them the snow turned to sleet, their voices rose louder, and the wind gave a ghostly howl.
“All I’m asking,” Victor was saying, “is for you to dream bigger—bigger than scrounging for food every day, hoping the water you drink isn’t tainted by parasites, cowering at every gunshot you hear in the distance. Why should you aim so low?”
“Low?” Dante answered. “Since when is it low to be content with having food and shelter and knowing you’re safe? Why is it so wrong that I would be happy just to know I don’t have to worry about basic necessities?”
“Happy?” Victor repeated. “Really?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You wouldn’t know what happiness was if it slapped you in the face. You’re always whining about, “I don’t know what my purpose is,” or “What should I be doing with my life?” Well, you want to know the answer to that, kid? Whatever the hell you want.”
The boat rocked as Walter stepped between them, the last of the charges set. He motioned for them to start paddling back to shore. This time, however, they were fighting against the current, and as they paddled sharp pains sprang up Victor’s arm and through his shoulder.
He could feel venom pulsing in his veins, all the terrible things he wanted to say to Dante. Why was his brother such a fool? Why couldn’t he listen for once in his life?
The boat ground against the rocks and Victor immediately climbed out, not bothering to keep the boat from slipping back into the water. Walter hobbled out, the detonator in his hand, and then Dante. One glance told Victor that Dante had something to say, something he had been holding inside since they started paddling back, and oh boy did it look like a doozy.
“So I’m a fuck-up,” Dante said, raising his voice above the storm. “That’s what it all comes down to, right? I’m not like you, therefore there’s something wrong with me.”
Victor spread his arms. “You convinced yourself of that on your own. I didn’t force you to start snorting coke.”
Dante smiled bitterly. “Ah, the coke. You like talking about that, don’t you? It makes you feel so righteous. But I have news for you, buddy. You’re snorting something, too—it’s called power, and it may give you a buzz for a while, but there’s a serious crash that comes after.”
“Gentlemen, this really isn’t the time,” Walter said, but they both ignored him.
Victor pointed his finger at Dante’s face. “I’ve looked after you since you were a little kid! I got you out of the city when everything was at it’s worst, found you shooting up on the bathroom floor!”
“I didn’t ask for your—”
“And now you talk to me like you owe me nothing, like we’re somehow equals. Well guess what? You owe me your life, and now I’m calling in the favor.”
Without warning, he turned and punched Walter in the face. Walter’s hand slackened as he fell, the detonator dropping from his limp fingers.
Chapter 60
She must have looked something like a crab as she advanced, crouched low and shifting her limbs tentatively forward. Shadow would trot ahead, his footsteps fading to the snow, and then bound back and press against her, nearly spilling her onto the ground. Jenny would have been cheered by all this - Shadow’s antics, the kiss of snowflakes on her face, the quilted silence of the city - if not for the muttering of that other, inner, dog.
His breath, carrying an odor of rotting fish, seemed to tickle her ear. I’ll see you soon, real soon.
Her leg brushed against the bumper of a car. She navigated around the side, found a second car after the first, then a
nother—a whole line of them parked along the curb. Like a novice artist, the blank page of her mind’s eye slowly took on lines, shapes, even colors (she could still remember colors, of course, and would have given anything to watch Fantasia again). But where did she fit into this picture? Was she the girl huddled in a doorway with her dog, the plumes of their breath merging in a thought-cloud above their heads, or was she the lump of snow with two sneakers poking out?
Please God—
That was where the prayer ended, because faith or no faith, the onus was on her now. God helps those who help themselves, as the saying went. But no, she didn’t care for that one much. A better one was, Blessings come to those who wait, not to those who hesitate.
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