“All in good time, Mr. Tolley. All in good time.”
After food—a meal of fish and vegetable stew that came in a rich gravy, which even Nathan had to admit was pretty good—Nathan was ready to find out more from their host.
What wasn’t so good was that there was no digging down through the details to be had from Strickland. He insisted they ate and relaxed first. “I’ll hear of nothing else, Mr. Tolley. Let our hospitality wash over you with its bounty.”
And so the party was led back to the elevator, and taken up three floors by Michaela Grange.
The sourness of the air was soon acclimatized to, but the overly bright lighting was still an issue. When Nathan mentioned the brightness to Michaela, though, she shrugged and said, “It’s not my department. I think they have two settings, on and off. That’s all.”
Nathan squinted up at the LEDs in the ceiling of the corridor. “I hope you have a lifetime’s supply of Advil to cope with the headaches.”
Michaela smiled and said, without a trace of irony, “I don’t get headaches.”
The apartment they were shown to was unfinished. The lights worked, but a lot of the furniture hadn’t yet been assembled; it lay in flat packs against the gray concrete wall. There was a sink in the kitchen that produced cold water, but no warm water from the faucet. Cyndi informed them that the oven and the range were in working order, but that the refrigerator was not. There were cupboards full of tins and dried food packs, but no can opener in the kitchen drawers.
The beds in the bedroom also had yet to be assembled, and there were mattresses on the floor without blankets. Everything was covered in a thin patina of concrete dust, and when Michaela had gone after promising to send someone up with more bedding, Lucy swore like a dock worker, causing Tony to look at his parents and not really know how to respond.
Lucy patted him on the head. “Don’t worry, kid—stick around with me and you’ll hear much worse. But come on, guys, look at this place. They haven’t even put the beds up! One-point-five-mil doesn’t get you what it used to, does it?” she breathed out, plonking herself down on a mattress and taking in the whole unfinished look of the curve-walled apartment.
“It’s luxury after living in a tent for a month,” Donie commented.
Lucy shrugged. “Your idea of luxury and mine aren’t even on the same Venn diagram, baby.”
Dave had taken his laptop out of his bag and was setting it up on the dusty work surface in the kitchen area. “There’s Wi-Fi here, but it’s password protected.” He typed some complicated code, pressed enter, clicked his fingers, and then said, “Well, it was.”
Donie high-fived her boyfriend and Freeson smiled widely at the little slice of rebellion playing out before him. Nathan loved his friend’s desire to walk an alternative path to those around him, and in very much the same way his relationship with Lucy was unexpected, Freeson’s fondness for the two young hackers was also difficult to have predicted. Politically, they were miles apart, and on different spectrums—in another life, Freeson would have called them snowflake dropout libtards or something similar, but his opportunity to rub along with the couple over the last few months and grown into a mutual respect and affection for them, especially after the role they’d played in the rescue from the clutches of the gang who had taken him, Cyndi, and Tony hostage at a truck stop way before they’d reached Detroit. Freeson had been tied to two gas pumps in the freezing cold without outside clothes or even shoes, and beaten savagely—just for fun, it had seemed—and Dave and Donie’s technical skills had provided the diversion Nathan needed to release his friend. Since then, Freeson had often hung out with the kids, as he called them, and they seemed to get as much out of it as he did. He high-fived Dave and Donie now, and Lucy just rolled her eyes.
Dave worked at the computer for a few minutes while Nathan and Cyndi made an inventory of the apartment and checked it for cameras and bugs. Cyndi didn’t need to articulate the fact that she was as suspicious of Strickland as Nathan was. Even though he’d regretted smuggling in the guns, he wasn’t yet ready to take everything they were being told at face value.
If the room was wired for sound, then he and Cyndi could find no evidence of it.
“What do you think?” Cyndi asked him as Lucy cradled Brandon on a mattress and Dave and Donie worked at the laptop.
“I honestly don’t know, but you can feel it, too, can’t you?”
“Oh yes. There’s something… I dunno… skewed about this place, and for all his welcoming and openness, Strickland isn’t fooling me.” Cyndi dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans and rocked on her heels.
Lucy, rocking Brandon gently and smoothing his hair over his scalp with a surprisingly gentle hand, offered, “I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Or his wives”
Nathan raised his eyebrows at Lucy. “You think all three are…?”
“Oh yes. That’s not a regular family unit. I have nothing against the idea in principle, Nathan—people can do what they want as long as it’s not imposed on me—but, man, Strickland? Yuck. The woman aren’t real blondes, either. Since when has hair dye and style mattered in the Big Winter? There’s a set of priorities that seem well out of whack.”
“We’re still, what? Seven hundred miles from Casper?” Freeson asked, sitting down on a mattress with his legs crossed like a swami.
Nathan nodded.
“And we don’t even know what Casper is going to be like, or what the welcome is going to be. At least here there’s electricity, there’s food, shelter, security. Those plusses buy off a considerable amount of negative weird.”
“We’re not saying that we should leave straightaway,” Cyndi said, stripping open one of the cardboard boxes containing a flat-packed bed, and beginning to search out the instruction sheet. “All we’re saying is, until we know what the real deal is here, we should not put all our eggs in one basket.”
Lucy shook her head. “All I need to know is this. Is there gin? If there is, I could see myself staying for a very long time.”
“I don’t think there’s gonna be gin,” Dave said, lifting his fingers from the keyboard. “I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of fun here at all. And I suspect I know exactly how the decision is going to be made about who the ‘right people’ are for this place. Look at this. I knew I’d heard the name Strickland Grange before. He’s a Nazi.”
20
“Oh no, no, no. Please excuse a case of youthful exuberance on my part. That was twenty or more years ago. Back before I found my true calling.”
Nathan pointed to the picture on the screen of the laptop. “But that is you, Strickland?”
The picture Dave had managed to find on what was left of the internet showed Strickland Grange from some years past. His mouth was screaming. The camera had caught spittle flying from his lips like snake venom and his eyes were alight, reflecting the flickering flames of the torch in his left hand. His right arm was raised in the straight-armed salute of another time, another war, and another abomination.
“Yes, that is me. But the rashness of youth should not be used to color judgements against a man who has lived his life in a very different way since. Surely, you did things in your early youth that you would not want held against you now, Mr. Tolley?”
“I was never a Nazi,” Nathan said.
“I didn’t even know what the word meant. I was just following my friends, seeking affirmation and camaraderie.”
They were back in the mess, but it had been cleared of the other residents. Even the cooks from the kitchen were no longer there. Nathan, Dave, and Cyndi had been taken from the apartment upon their request for a meeting with Strickland after Dave had shown them what he had uncovered.
“It may have been before I was born,” Dave said, his eyes burning into Strickland, “but that doesn’t look like youthful hijinks to me. That looks like a lot of hate and rage balled up into one face. And it’s people with my skin color, and others who have taken the brunt of that hatred fo
r a very long time, Mr. Grange. If you’re going to want us to take up with you, then you’re going to have to convince us that what’s in your heart now doesn’t match what was in your heart then.”
Strickland smiled. If he was being thrown by Nathan’s and Dave’s questions, he was making a pretty good attempt at not showing it. Michaela, who stood behind him at one shoulder while Pamela stood at his other, bent over and whispered into his ear.
Strickland gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head and waved her to back up away from him with a gentle twirl of his index finger. “Mr. Tolley, I assure you, I am no longer concerned with the things I was concerned with back then. I am a changed… no, a reformed character now. Perhaps if I were to show you something that would put all of this doubt you are feeling to bed, it would convince you?”
“It would have to be pretty convincing,” Nathan said truthfully, because right now he was all for heading towards the door and getting the hell out of this place, safety and security be damned.
“Then, if you will follow me, it’s about time you met the others, and get yourself a slice of life from here in Calgary. See how the land lies. Normally, we wouldn’t invite you along to a gathering until you were accepted into the fold, so to speak, but I can see I’m going to have to be extra open with you, your wife, and the young man. So be it. Please, if you will, follow me.”
Strickland led them to the elevator and pressed for five floors above the mess. “The very center of our world. Please, all I ask is that you be respectful of the people you see here and what they are doing, and once you have seen how truly wonderful this place is, then I’m sure any issues you have with my past transgressions can be viewed with a sense of forgiveness. Yes?”
“I hope so,” Nathan said as the elevator door swished open.
There was no quick acclimatizing to the smell of the people in the room. The elevator opened onto a wide, concrete-lined area with a wide semi-circle of chair rows arranged to seat their occupants all pointing in the same direction, to a raised dais covered in pots of rubber plants and other foliage growing against and curling around a latticework of white, wooden screens. Stained glass friezes were hung around the room at regular intervals on the wide sweep of the arcing walls. The glass in the friezes offered representations of the Stations of the Cross, with the figure of Jesus moving towards his eventual crucifixion. Nathan felt Dave stiffen next to him and suddenly recalled finding the boy nailed to the tenement floor in Detroit. It wasn’t reasonable to think Dave wouldn’t be reminded of what had happened to him at regular intervals, but the final frieze was so agonizingly detailed… the light from the LEDs in the ceiling sparkled and twinkled over it, so that Jesus’ form seemed to writhe and strain against his fixing points, and his eyes, black and glassy, stared out across the room imploringly. There was nowhere in the room that, if you were sitting in the chairs and facing the dais, would leave you in any doubt of the utter brutality of crucifixion, and Dave was being fully reminded of it now.
“Come,” Strickland said. “Join the congregation.”
There were only a few spare chairs in the main body of the church level, as all the others were filled with boiler-suited figures, their heads bowed to look at books in their hands or open on their laps. Only one or two folks looked around to see who was exiting the elevator, but they looked back quickly—Nathan couldn’t tell if it was because they were uninterested or if they were concerned Strickland might see them looking when they should, like all the others around them, have been in silent contemplation.
The stench of humanity in the room cloyed at the back of Nathan’s throat and almost made him gag. As he looked sideways at Cyndi, he could tell from her face that the aroma of sour bodies and warm skin being so concentrated in one place for the first time was having a similar effect on her.
“Don’t worry,” Strickland said. “You really do get used to it after a time. Everyone, I’m sure, washes as much as they should, and we don’t really know what causes the buildup in the ventilation systems, but it’s a small price to pay for the privilege of living here.”
Under any other normal circumstances, Nathan would have offered his services to Strickland, to have a look at the filters of their air filtration system in the silo. Now that he could smell it in all its glory, he realized it wasn’t necessarily coming from the people themselves, but that when more high numbers were gathered in one place, the ambient heat would get the air to work harder to stabilize the system, trying to balance it out. If there were mold or other matter caught in the filters, then when the backups came on, the smell would permeate the whole of the facility, just like it was now. But Nathan wasn’t going to offer anything yet—not until he was sure what the deal was.
Nathan wasn’t a religious man per se; he didn’t have anything he would describe as faith, and didn’t go to church or pray. He didn’t discourage his son from finding things out for himself, and his daddy before him, who had been a believer, had left it to Nathan to find his own way spiritually.
You and God can find each other without my help, he’d said, if, that is, you’re looking for each other.
Nathan had appreciated his daddy’s wishes on the matter, unlike some of his friends who had been brought up to be believers whether they’d wanted to or not. Nathan had always promised himself that’s what he would do for Tony, and now Brandon.
He also had a natural wariness of any kind of organized thinking, whether it was that of a church or a fan club or even a Dodge wrecker owners’ group. Nathan was not a joiner in the classic sense, and Cyndi had told him once that this was one of the things she loved about him the most. His reliance on himself to find answers logically and not accept anything without the evidence of his own eyes.
But with all that said, Nathan had admitted to himself over the last long months since leaving Glens Falls that there had been moments when he’d wished he did believe, that he did have a certainty to fall back on, something outside of himself to pull reserves of strength from. His failings and screw-ups had been more than he would have wished for, and seriously dangerous at times. It would have been good to have the certainty that it had all been God’s plan, or what was wanted for Nathan by some higher power. But then, the words his daddy would have said to him would come back at times when he felt himself slipping towards a spiritual explanation for his woes.
No one who’s already happy converts to a religion, son.
Even though his daddy had been a believer who attended church in his later years more often than not, and who would never blaspheme or take the Lord’s name in vain, he had transmitted that singular truth to Nathan. It was those words, more than any others Nathan ascribed to him, that made him agnostic, at least, if not a fully paid up member of the atheist club.
Who knew how unhappy he’d be in the future, though, and how he would deal with that psychologically and spiritually?
Strickland asked some of the congregation to move apart and make room for Nathan, Cyndi, and Dave to sit.
Nathan could see Dave’s stiffness had transformed into him rubbing his hands together, the pads of his fingers stopping briefly on the scars at either side of his hands each time he did. Dave had still not talked in-depth, to Nathan at least, about his ordeal, and it was clear to see there was probably some talking he would need to do in the very near future, or every time they came across Christian iconography, if the boy was going to be as distressed as he was now.
Nathan hated the fact it was as much as he could do to take care of the physical needs of those around him, let alone their psychological needs. Who knew how they might be affected, or would be in the months and years to come?
Once Nathan, Cyndi, and Dave were seated, Strickland and his wives went to the dais and, at a signal from him to Pamela, she operated a control on the white sheet-covered table behind them; it looked far too humble to be called an altar, and religious music, possibly a hymn that Nathan only half recognized, began to play from concealed speakers somewhere in the ceiling.
A lectern rose from the dais in front of Strickland. When it smoothly locked into place, Strickland leaned forward. It was interesting, Nathan thought, to note that the air system was fritzed, and no one seemed to mind the smell; the walls were not plastered or finished, and the furniture in the room was still in flat packs, and yet expensive and well-maintained electronics worked the sound system and the activated lectern. There was an interesting set of priorities at play here. Maybe ones that extended to how they’d know the ‘right people’ to join the Calgary group. They had certainly not thought to make sure they brought someone down into the community who could service the air conditioning.
Nathan glanced over to see that Cyndi appeared just as worried about Dave as he was. She had placed a calming hand on his knee and was trying to gain the boy’s attention to give him something different to focus on. Nathan’s own experiences with his panic attacks back in Detroit told him that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea for Dave to sit here and ride this one out. The boy’s eyes were glazed over already and he was staring hard ahead at the crucifixion frieze, his fingers still moving absently at his scars. Nathan leant in and suggested, “Dave, why don’t you go back to the others? Get some rest? We can handle this from here…”
Dave shook his head. “Gotta deal with it sooner or later. Might as well be now.” A thin smile crept onto his lips and his eyes finally moved away from the frieze causing him anguish. He puffed out his cheeks and took some deep breaths. “Won’t be the first time this happened to me. Remind me… remind me to tell you about Philly one day.”
“I will.” Nathan squeezed the boy’s trembling arm, and the music came to an end.
“Friends of Calgary!”
At some point, while Nathan had been looking to Dave, Strickland had been handed a radio microphone. Strickland wasn’t the kind of orator who started small and built his way up to a frenzy like the televangelists Nathan had caught from time to time while flicking through late night cable. Strickland turned it up to eleven from the get-go. The audience immediately sat to attention, closing their bibles and folding their hands across them on their laps. It was almost like a military parade, how it happened all at once.
After the Shift: The Complete Series Page 46
