The Phone Company

by David Jacob Knight

Steve came to a section where older headstones gave way to modern grave markers sunk into the ground. He scanned them as he threaded between pits and pits and bits of the forest and floating wood crucifixes until he found a familiar name.

  Charles Jones.

  Lucky Chucky, Lucky Chuck, Steve thought, and not far from it, Little Mickey Mackeroy, his cherubic face embossed in bronze. Steve turned left, paced three more graves in, and . . .

  (Lucky Chucky, Lucky Chuck)

  . . . he stopped.

  A shark floated dead in Janice’s grave. Belly up, its sharp mouth gaping, the shark’s stomach had burst. A string of entrails and internal sacs floated like raw eggs with all the limbs and bits of wood.

  Steve stared at it for a long time.

  His eyes flicked to the headstone. It was Janice’s, all right. When he looked back into the dead aquarium, he saw something else floating. A single scrap of dress.

  He would’ve thought maybe the dress had decayed, but then again he didn’t know much about the forensics of time. He just knew it all depended on the environment how certain things break down. And there it was, anyway, floating right there in front of his face, proof, evidence, that Janice’s dress, at least this little scrap of it, had somehow withstood the ravages of decomposition; a bright yellow strawberry flower embroidered on the hem of her summer-white dress.

  Steve reached for it, and the shark rolled over.

  But it wasn’t the shark.

  The shark was dead, with gnawed-out eyes.

  Something smaller, something sinewy like a snake, uncoiled from around the bloated body of the shark, and Steve nearly screamed, nearly stumbled into the grave behind him, which was inexplicably jumping with fish. A mouth and throat, ringed with sharp teeth, lunged at Steve’s hand.

  The lamprey missed and flopped back into the water, swimming seductively against the shark before nestling along its popped belly.

  The scrap of dress was gone.

  “Jesus,” Steve said, balancing on a narrow ledge of dirt a few graves away. His one foot kept sliding on the muddy banks.

  They did this, Steve thought, and a bit of his anger came back. Like at Harcum, The Phone Company had stolen their dead.

  When he finally decided he needed to move on, he needed to go check out this camp, needed to find a place he could take Sarah, where they could care for her and maybe treat his wound, Steve looked up and saw Janice standing by a crumbled mausoleum crowned with a broken cross, waving hello.

  CHAPTER 50

  His first instinct was to run, but he couldn’t really run without falling into a grave teeming with greasy life.

  It wasn’t Janice, he could see that now. She wasn’t even a real blonde. Her roots had started to grow out, and Steve knew exactly who she was. He almost called out to her, but didn’t.

  Too close, he thought. Their camp was right down there, but did it matter? They’d already found him. The last time he had seen Aaron, she had been fully tethered to her phone. She was one of them.

  Steve checked the blonde tangles of hair around Aaron’s ears, but didn’t see an earwig. No blinking light. She wore a dress, too, no pockets. He returned her wave.

  Slowly, methodically, Steve picked his way through the watery graves, trying to keep an eye on Aaron as he went.

  At the road, he stopped. Aaron tensed like a deer and glanced into the woods.

  An act?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t even know whether the camp belonged to The Phone Company. Maybe Aaron was Aaron and they really were saved. Maybe the storm had washed away PCo’s data center, eroding the company’s hold on the town.

  For a long time, Steve and Aaron stared at each other, studying each other. Every now and again, they both glanced toward the voices issuing from the church.

  She looked terrible. Hair mussed. Dress torn. Puffy eyes and trembling mouth. Any minute now she would scream, and those distant voices—those loud men—they’d come raging through the cemetery uphill and Steve would have to run, losing his head start.

  Just run, he thought. Now.

  Aaron glanced once more at the sound of voices, then began to slink off behind the ruins of the mausoleum.

  “Wait,” Steve said, holding up a hand. “Do you have a phone? I need a phone. I need to make a phone ca—”

  “Shhh!” Aaron said, frowning, casting a glance at the camp.

  Steve nodded.

  Any minute now.

  And maybe the scream would be on purpose. Maybe he was right and all this was an act. Steve had no way to tell. He didn’t own a Tether.

  “I need a . . .” He made a fist, extending his pinky and thumb like a phone. This time he mouthed the word.

  Aaron dug in her bra for a second, then held up her Tether. The screen, shattered into a hundred cracks, reflected Steve standing there over and over again.

  “Can I . . .?” He took another step toward her, holding out his hand.

  She nodded and came forward. She reeked. He probably did too. He could see old tear tracks carved into her dirty face. She looked so different without makeup. Younger, more vulnerable. Even younger than she’d looked so many years ago as Steve’s student.

  Usually, Aaron was warm and too friendly, but whatever had happened to her, whatever she had been through, had left the poor girl trembling and withdrawn.

  She handed the busted Tether to Steve. Even broken, the thing emitted an energy, a hum. The black skin of it felt slimy, finely scaled, and the camera, the black fish eye, never blinked. Steve put his thumb over it as he turned the thing over in his hand.

  “Where’d you get this?” he said, noticing the Junior Deputy star on the back of the Tether.

  Aaron looked confused and slightly shook her head.

  “How’d you get Bill’s phone?”

  “Bill’s?” she said, flinching at her own voice. She dropped down to a whisper. “It isn’t. It’s mine.”

  “Really.” Steve looked again at the sticker, how some of the points of the star had been peeled up. He guessed it wasn’t beyond belief that Aaron and Bill had decorated their phones the same way. I guess, he thought.

  This phone, like Bill’s, had black skin. But that could’ve been sheriff’s office standard issue. To match the uniforms, Steve thought.

  He turned the Tether over and examined the touchscreen. “How’d it break?”

  Aaron shrugged. “I really don’t remember much. You know, from before the storm. I was, I don’t know. I wasn’t myself.”

  Steve nodded. At the center of the screen, the glass had broken in a circle, and the cracks sprayed outward from the circle like sunrays. Water had leaked in behind the glass.

  “Looks like someone stepped on it,” Steve said. Or slammed his heel into it.

  Aaron gave another shrug. “Maybe. I have no clue.”

  Steve lowered the phone and searched her eyes. She kept glancing away, skittish, embarrassed.

  “So afterward, after the flood, what happened to you?” Steve asked. “After your phone broke, what was it like?”

  “I don’t know. It was kind of like waking up? Like being blackout drunk and waking up the next day, not knowing. I was so sick. Like having the flu and the worst hangover all at the same time. I was so afraid, Steve.”

  He offered another empty nod.

  Down in the camp someone laughed. Aaron hugged herself. “We need to get out of here.”

  We, Steve thought. He looked through the woods. “I wanted to check out this camp first.”

  “No, you don’t want to go down there.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s them.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Touchy, Steve thought, and changed tack. “It looked like they were helping people. Medics. Supplies. Maybe even phones.”

  Aaron scratched the crook of her arm like a junkie. “Look, I know you need to make a phone call, but we need to go. If they catch us, if they find us up here—”

  “I want to chec
k it out,” Steve said, lifting the binoculars from his chest.

  “Well, I’m not going. I’m leaving.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. Town’s. . . . They’re basically the only thing left there now. I don’t know.”

  “Have you seen anyone else?”

  “No,” Aaron said. “No one normal. Have you?”

  “No.”

  “Please don’t go down there,” she said.

  “I’m only going to the tree line. Just for a peek. You could wait for me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you want to know who’s down there? Who survived? Friends. People you worked with. People you’ve known half your life.”

  Like Bill, Steve thought, and wondered if she’d ask; wondered what it meant if she didn’t.

  “Well,” Steve said, “do what you think’s right. You want this back?” He held out her Tether; the Tether, anyway. More than anything, he wanted to throw the damn thing away, wanted to burn it or smash it more, if only to stop its low-grade hum. But he needed to see how Aaron reacted first.

  She shook her head and kept rubbing her skinny arms. “I don’t even know why I kept it in the first place.”

  “Good.”

  Steve lobbed the slick, black phone into one of the watery graves, which burst to life with more lampreys. The Tether sank and was gone.

  Aaron shuddered, but didn’t seem upset.

  “I’ll be right back,” Steve said and walked toward the timberline.

  Aaron retreated a few steps into the woods, but stopped. Steve, part of him anyway, the teacher part, wanted her to stay, despite all the problems it would cause, all the responsibility it would heap upon his shoulders. He cast one last look back at her, then hid behind some chokecherry at the timberline.

  Through the binoculars, Steve could see everything in the little valley before him. The church, the camp. The earwigs in everyone’s ear, how the people held up their Tethers, recording everything. Sheeple openly rutting.

  The camp looked less like a refugee camp and more like a festival, complete with cotton candy booths and a ring toss.

  Security, medical, and all other personnel wore Dragnet glasses. They all wore blue PCo coats as well.

  The tent stamped with the red cross wasn’t even a medical tent. People lined up outside it, nursing broken limbs, contusions, and bleeding wounds, but instead of medical treatment, the woman at the little kiosk administered replacement Tethers. One lady in line appeared to have sustained a shark bite to the leg, and yet all she wanted was her new phone.

  A banner hung from the front of the kiosk desk, visible every now and again through the shifting crowd:

  Ask, and you will receive.

  Search, and you will find.

  Knock, and the door will be opened for you.

  The Provider Provides

  She was right, Steve thought. These people. Aaron was right. He recognized pretty much all of them. Goff, Caruthers, and Sheriff Perkins formed the backbone of security. Cathy from the diner was serving food trays like some lunch lady.

  Sushi, Steve thought, focusing in on one of the trays. Fresh catch of the day.

  Out in the meadow, kids of all ages lay playing on their Tethers: Meg Disney and the Dick, lying side by side; Mark Moore Jr., still wrapped for his burns; adults, too. Mary McPhail. Steve recognized every single one of them, and yet he didn’t know a single one.

  Yes, you do, Marvin spoke inside his head. They’re all the same thing, man. All one company.

  At the center of the encampment, huge ornate tents had been erected, twelve of them, arranged in a loose honeycomb. The rest of the camp formed a hive around them.

  Out of one of these tents, the first person Steve didn’t recognize breezed through the flaps. An old woman, her robe flowing open to expose sagging wrinkles and bones. Her face, like Sarah’s, looked stretched, except way worse than Sarah’s, as if the old hag had pulled her face so tightly she couldn’t help but grin.

  Then it hit him who the lady was. Something about the way she carried herself. Something about the gray, wavy hair.

  It was his old math teacher, Mrs. Hayworth.

  * * *

  Aaron was gone by the time Steve came back. He checked behind the ruined mausoleum and stared into the woods, but didn’t see her. He prayed to God she hadn’t been some kind of trap.

  Steve marched toward the back of the cemetery, where he could escape.

  “I told you,” Aaron said, coming out from behind one of the trees. “They came to my house. Like, a search party.”

  “Don’t you disappear on me like that,” Steve said. “Don’t you pop up on me like that.”

  Aaron cringed back. “Please,” she said, shooting a worried look toward the camp.

  “For all I know, you could’ve been one of them.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Steve relaxed. “It’s okay.”

  “Do you have any water?” Aaron asked.

  “Yeah. It hasn’t been boiled, though.”

  Aaron licked her lips, which Steve could see were badly cracked. “I don’t care.”

  “I do,” Steve said. “I don’t need another sick person on my hands.”

  “Another sick?” Aaron asked.

  Steve kept his face as straight as possible. He hadn’t meant to let it slip. It was this damn hunger, this damn fog in his brain. He figured Aaron would find out sooner or later. If she didn’t, it would be because one of them was dead.

  “Listen, Aaron, some very bad things have happened. I really don’t want to do this, but do you mind if I search you?”

  She thought about it for a second, then shook her head. “I don’t mind.”

  A bit hot in the face, Steve ran his hand along her body, feeling for anything suspicious beneath the fabric of her dress, which shifted over her skin.

  “Thank you,” he said, stepping back, marveling at how silly it was to be this embarrassed. “Sorry. You can search me if you want.”

  “No, I don’t need to. I trust you.”

  Steve blushed again and looked at the cemetery, at all the flooded holes and fallen limbs.

  The heat left him as he put her through her final test. “Aaron, I, uh, don’t know how to tell you this. Bill’s dead.”

  Her face was the second plate Steve had to watch break. Her one sharp sob convinced him. He needed to get Aaron someplace safe.

  CHAPTER 51

  That’s the benefit, Steve thought on the hike back. Faith.

  Faith that other people were being truthful and authentic. Faith they weren’t showing you false teeth. If you knew everything about everyone, if no one could truly tell a lie . . .

  Take away choice and the value of honesty would recede, along with the waters of faith. And yet still, pushing his bike along the mountainside, Steve would have preferred the ability to read Aaron’s mind.

  There’s an app for that, he thought, tasting his own special brand of irony, like blood in the mouth.

  “Where are we going?” Aaron asked. She picked her way around a huge mud puddle on her side of the logging road, then looked ahead.

  Steve watched where her eyes went. He watched the things she focused on, the way she moved, the way she thought. He listened carefully to her questions.

  He had learned long ago, maybe in student government, maybe from tutoring papers: if you weren’t careful enough, word choice could give you away. Body language, too, but Steve had learned that lesson in entirely different settings.

  “Not much farther now,” he said, spotting the wooded slope. The roads up here weren’t bad, actually. Maybe even drivable.

  At the slope, Steve hid the bike behind a pile of trees and led Aaron down some rocks.

  “This is where you’ve been staying?” she asked, following him through the back door to the McLeans’ bungalow.

  “Well, no,” Steve said, stopping inside, slipping a little on the slick linoleum floor. “I thought maybe you might want to
.”

  Aaron looked around the kitchen, at the toppled refrigerator, the rainbowed puddles by the sink.

  “There’s plenty of water in the toilet tank,” Steve said. “Boil it first, though. I’ll leave you with some matches—”

  “You’re leaving me?”

  “There’s a whole cupboard of pots, but, yeah, I was thinking there’s really no room back where I’m at, and there’s still plenty of canned food here I couldn’t carry out, so . . .” Steve pointed out the pantry for her. “Right there.”

  “I can carry it,” Aaron offered. “Let me carry it with you, I can help. I don’t like it here anyway, I don’t like the puddles. It’s like they’ll come alive and come get me, it’s gross.”

  “I don’t know,” Steve said.

  “Please, Mr. Gregory?”

  He wished she’d stop calling him that. She wasn’t his student anymore. Steve peered out the window at whatever was left of the backyard. “It’s not that much better out there, Aaron, trust me.”

  “It is if I’m with you.”

  “I don’t even have enough water.”

  “Then let’s bring more.”

  “Yeah, but here you could probably bleed the hot water heater. I was thinking about that. Let any rust flush out first, it’s totally potable.”

  Aaron scratched her arm. “I just want to be near you. Wherever you’re staying.”

  “Here.” Steve stepped forward and held out his clamshell phone. “I’ll keep the other one. I figure, turn this on every half hour or so and check for new messages. It’s got about half its battery, so. . . . These old ones last forever, too. It’ll last you, it’s a good little phone.”

  Aaron wrapped her arms around herself. “Yeah, but how many bars?”

  “Full,” Steve said. It was true. He’d checked the phones several times. Roaming, but great signal. As steady as a constant hum.

  Aaron didn’t reach for the phone.

  “Look,” Steve said, “this is the best I can do right now. I promise I’ll be in touch. And I’ll be back for you. As soon as tomorrow morning, I promise. I just can’t take you with me right now, it’s too dangerous.”