by Sean Platt
He scooped more onto his plate, smiling at Emily.
“I’m gonna start some coffee,” Jane said, finding an excuse to leave the table.
“OK, I’m just gonna finish up all these green beans.”
“You do that,” she said, laughing on her way out of the room.
Brent scooped a fifth spoonful of green beans onto this plate and then looked at Emily with a huge grin and said, “I hope you’re hungry!”
He scraped the whole pile of green beans onto her plate, smiling.
“Hey! I don’t want all those!”
Just then, Jane came back into the room and sat back down, and noticed Brent’s green beans were all gone. “Wow, you really DO love them!”
“Yeah, and Emily was so jealous, she decided to have a bunch of ‘em, too.”
Emily looked at her plate with an exaggerated frown, which only made Brent laugh harder. He reached over, then took her plate and scooped half the green beans onto his. “Okay, I’ll help you,” he said.
She giggled again, and they both dug into their green beans. Even though Brent had to hide his distaste, the laughs were totally worth it.
A while later, Brent asked Emily if she’d like him to read her a story before bedtime. She ran into her room as he and Jane sat beside one another on the sofa. He flashed back to their last moment alone on the sofa and flushed.
Emily ran back and hopped up on his lap, holding a book, “Can you read this one?”
He took the book, turned it over, saw Stanley Train smiling back, and thought of Ben, scared, clinging to a mother who no longer recognized him in the chamber on Level 6. It was all Brent could do not to disappear down the rabbit hole of thought that would surely reduce him to tears. He smiled and said, “Sure, I’ll read Stanley Train Saves the Day.”
As he read the book aloud, one he’d read to Ben countless times before, he thought back to the many nights he stayed up with Ben, rocking him to sleep, reading to him, and the last time he’d simply lain next to him in bed as his son’s breath rose and fell like a sleeping angel beside him.
Brent started to cough, trying to hold back the tears, and excused himself to go into the kitchen to get a drink.
Instead of water, he chose a bottle of beer from Jane’s fridge. It tasted like shit, but it would help. Despite his best efforts, his eyes were still full of water.
Jane appeared behind him, “Are you okay?” she whispered. Her eyes were concerned, but also scared, he thought. She probably didn’t want the mistake of the other night to ruin their friendship. Or perhaps, she liked him a lot more than she’d let on earlier, and was afraid of rejection.
He wanted to tell her the truth — that his family was still alive. She deserved to know. But he also wanted to tell her because he needed someone who could advise him, someone who might help him from making the biggest mistake of his life. But Sullivan had warned him not to tell a soul. And while he trusted Jane as much as almost anyone he’d ever known, and certainly as much as anyone he knew now, he didn’t want to put her at risk. Nor did he want to make her feel guilty about what had happened between them.
For now, he had to keep the secret.
“I can’t talk about it,” he said. “It’s not about us, though. Something at work.”
He took another few sips, returned Jane’s thin smile, the headed back to the couch to finish the tale of the brave train who saved the day.
After Emily went to bed, Brent said he had to leave, saying that tomorrow promised to be a long day. The goodbye was as awkward as a high school first date; he didn’t know whether to hug her, kiss her, or leave her with a peck on the cheek. Prior to the other night, they usually hugged their farewell for the evening, as you would with any good friend or family member. Brent went with the hug, which felt deep, and lingered longer than expected, each holding onto the embrace as if it might be their last together.
Brent stopped by the dining hall to get another beer, which he popped open and sipped on his way to the elevator. He’d finish the beer, hit the sack, and pray he’d be able to sleep without dreams of Gina and Ben tormenting him. As the elevator descended, he found himself thinking back on dinner, laughing with Emily, reading to her, then hugging Jane goodbye. He was torn between the world he couldn’t give up on and the world he couldn’t allow himself to have.
As long as there was hope that he could save his family, he had to try. Even if that meant risking his life, or happiness with another.
The elevator door slid open, and he began walking to his room, beer in hand, tumbling the plan again in his head. There was something there; he could feel it as if it were just beneath the ice, ready for discovery if only he struck the right center. He was inches from the missing ingredient that would make the plan come together perfectly. Perhaps another half hour scribbling in his journal would help put some plan into shape.
He fumbled in his pocket, found the keycard, and slid it into the door’s handle. The door clicked open, and he stumbled into the dark.
Only it wasn’t dark. A dim light over his dining table was on. Beneath it, sat Keenan, reading Brent’s journal.
“So, who you gonna infect?” Keenan said, accusing eyes looking up from the pages.
The beer bottle smashed against the ground, shattering before Brent even realized he’d dropped it.
Brent stumbled back, and slipped, falling to the ground in the beer.
Keenan was up in seconds, lightning-quick for a guy in his 40s.
“Don’t move,” Keenan said, training his gun on Brent before Brent could even consider his next move.
Keenan reached down with his left hand, patting Brent down, then offered the hand to help him up.
“We need to talk,” Keenan said simply.
“ ... ”
“Mr. Foster, we need to talk, now.” Keenan repeated with added mettle, hand still extended.
Brent remained frozen on the floor, dumbstruck. How the fuck did he find the journal? SHIT! But he didn’t shoot me? Why the hell not? And why didn’t he haul me away to be condemned to some unfathomable misery at the hands of Sullivan?
“Um ... OK,” Brent stammered, his voice betraying his every weakness. He slowly extended his left arm and took Keenan’s left hand in his own. Keenan clamped down and yanked up with the force of an ox, sling-shotting Brent into a full and upright position. After Brent checked to make sure his fingers were still intact, he followed Keenan to the table, ignoring the spilled beer, broken glass, and his freshly soaked pants.
Brent sat. Keenan stood, gun still on Brent. “What the hell are you thinking?”
“What?” Brent said, offering a ridiculous ruse.
“Don’t dick around. I want to know what you’re gonna do. Now. Or I go to the brass with this, and you’ll be reunited with your family quicker than you think.”
Brent had never considered that as an option for how Black Island Research might get rid of him. Hell, they could probably use more infected “subjects.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Brent confessed. “I was trying to figure out a way to get my family out of there. I wasn’t planning to infect anyone. Well, not seriously, anyway. I was just writing down different ways I might be able to get to my family and get them out of here.”
Keenan sat down and placed the gun on the table between them. Close enough to dare Brent to make a play, but far enough to ensure Keenan would have it in his hands and trained on Brent in seconds.
“Get them out of here?” Keenan said, shaking his head, as if it was the damnedest thing he’d ever heard. “And then what? Where you gonna go? Who can help you? And what the hell are you gonna do, keep your family in a cage somewhere? How long you gonna do that before you shoot them and then yourself in the head?”
“I don’t know,” Brent said sheepishly, staring at the floor, embarrassed and ashamed, like a scolded child who’d not thought out the very obvious consequences of a very stupid plan. “What am I supposed to do, though? Give up? They’re my family
. You fight for your family. You never give up. It’s what you’re supposed to do. Right?”
Keenan stared at him for a long time as silence grew a thick skin between them.
“I need to tell you something that can’t leave this room, which is bugged, by the way.”
“Bugged?” Brent said, surprised.
“Yeah,” Keenan said, holding up a black box with a red light. “But right now, they’re not hearing shit.” Keenan leaned forward. “What I’m about to tell you must stay between us. OK?”
This is either going to be incredibly good or impossibly bad.
“OK.”
“That’s not your family down there.”
“What?” Brent asked, more skeptical than surprised, wondering if Keenan was about to rattle off the whole, ‘they used to be your family and now they’re aliens’ routine, though something told him he wasn’t.
“Let me ask you a question, Brent. What happened on October 15?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just answer the question. What happened on October 15?”
“Everyone disappeared,” Brent said as nonchalantly as if commenting on grass growing. “Well, everyone but us.”
“No,” Keenan said. “They didn’t vanish . . . We did.”
TO BE CONTINUED …
::Episode 9::
(Third Episode Of Season Two)
“SNOWFALL”
Nineteen
Rebecca Snow
May 13
Five months BEFORE the world went away . . .
Rebecca didn’t remember falling asleep, but now her eyes were slowly blinking as she gazed around her room and tried to pull herself from the frayed edges of her expiring dream.
The moon hung fat in the window, bathing her room in a milky luminescence. She looked at her alarm clock: 10:14 p.m.
It was the same dream she’d been having for two weeks now, though this one felt clearer. Usually, Mother was blurred in the dream. This time she was clearer, closer, almost there. She was angry, like she sometimes was in real life, with fire in her eyes and a sting in her slap. Mother didn’t hit her in the dream, but she probably would have if Rebecca hadn’t woken up when she did. The last thing she remembered was Mother’s blur fading as she came closer into view, dragging Alexis behind her, Mother’s long fingers coiled inside her sister’s soft, blonde hair.
Rebecca had been waking up each morning, remembering the end of the dream with Mother still a blur. And each morning, Rebecca felt a weird sense of dread.
She shook away the stupid fear that came from the stupid dream, then left the bed to answer the bladder telling her to hit the bathroom. Her small feet hit the wood floor, and carried her from the room and down the hallway to the bathroom. She peed what felt like a gallon, then headed back toward her room, stopping by the blackened crack at Alexis’ room.
Alexis was 15 years old, three years older than Rebecca, and always in trouble. Rebecca used to hate it when Alexis was in trouble, since sisters were supposed to stick together and all. But Alexis had been getting in an awful lot of trouble lately, pretty much all the time. Mother spent a lot of time yelling at Alexis because Alexis was bad, and did a lot of the bad stuff that girls did when they got older and stopped caring about doing right by God. Rebecca wished Alexis would remember to do right by God more often, but figured it was just as well, since the stuff she did usually made Rebecca look good. Rebecca had been treated like the ugly duckling for most of her life, including by their mother, for her red hair, pale skin, and freckles, while Alexis was treated like the beautiful princess. It was different now, and she enjoyed the positive attention, even if it came at the expense of her sister. Rebecca occasionally felt a tiny twinge of guilt for feeling this way, but it wasn’t like she was forcing Alexis to be bad. Alexis made her choices, and if those choices happened to make Rebecca look good in comparison, was that really so bad?
Rebecca peeked inside her sister’s room. She couldn’t hear or see much of anything. There was a lump beneath the blankets, but Alexis wasn’t snoring. And Alexis always snored. Rebecca sensed something was off, so she widened the crack and crept inside.
Alexis had been acting awfully weird all through last night’s dinner, and a few hours before that. Could she be sick, or, oh my gosh!, on drugs? Rebecca took a tentative step forward and perked her ears, but still heard nothing but silence. Weird. Her final few steps toward the bed took nearly a minute, since she was being extra careful not to make a sound. If her sister rolled over and saw her, there would be a huge fight!
As she drew closer, she realized that the lump beneath the blanket was too short to be Alexis. With that, she rushed the rest of the distance to the bed and pulled back the covers to give light to the lie that a row of pillows created.
Alexis was gone.
Mother was going to be really angry; she was going to completely lose her temper. Alexis was going to be in more trouble than she’d ever been in before. She had asked, no, begged Mother, to go to a dance at the community center tonight. Mother said no, of course, since dancing with boys was a sin and Alexis was obviously already running around with too many sinful thoughts inside her head as it was. She certainly didn’t need to be in a room full of boys whose bodies were practically made of sinful thoughts.
Alexis hated living in the sticks like they did, hated being home-schooled even more. Dances, and the few other events held at the community center, were really the only chances she ever had to meet people her own age and socialize. Rebecca understood that, even felt some of the same feelings herself, but that was still no reason to lie to Mother. Alexis was going to be in big, big trouble. And while her mother could be a bit too strict at times, acts this defiant deserved whatever punishment her mother served up.
Like Mother always said, “Nothing separates a child from God like the evils of their own will. It is a parent’s job to ensure that their child stays on the righteous path.”
Rebecca left Alexis’ room in a fraction of the time she took to enter and ran toward Mother’s. She would be mad at Rebecca for waking her, but madder if she didn’t. Even though Rebecca fell asleep too early to know for sure, she figured Mother must have gone to bed not too long after since tomorrow her mother had the morning shift at the diner. She’d been going in extra early ever since Lydia got pregnant. Trucks started rolling in right around 6, which meant Mother had to have her apron on no later than 5:30. A half hour drive to get there, and another half hour to get ready and paint the tired from her eyes, meant she was getting up at 4:30 sharp each morning.
Rebecca opened Mother’s door to a deafening snore. She approached her mother’s sleeping body, reconsidering every step. Maybe I should just go back to bed. But darn it, Alexis deserved to get caught, and Rebecca deserved some of Mother’s appreciation, and attention. Whenever Alexis was in “big trouble,” Mother spent more time with Rebecca for some reason. Maybe they would even make another rag doll to go with the Raggedy Susie they made in November.
OK, I’ll tell her. But how should I put it so Mother doesn’t get too mad right away, or mad at me?
Rebecca tapped her mother’s shoulder, waited for her to turn, then let loose all at once with everything in her head, “Mother, wake up! Alexis snuck out of the house, and I think, though I’m not certain, that she snuck off to the dance even though you told her not to go!”
Mother was awake on contact of the first word. She offered a quick look at Rebecca with full moon eyes and silent understanding, then launched out of bed and over to her dresser. She opened the bottom drawer, yanked out the first item she saw, and pulled the ragged camel-colored sweater over her bony frame. Then she dashed into the kitchen where she grabbed her keys from the hook, her pack of Pall Malls, then yelled back at Rebecca, standing in the threshold. “You’re not staying here alone. Get in the car. We’re going to get your sister.”
Rebecca climbed into the old El Camino she thought once belonged to her dad, though she wasn’t really sure since Mother had
never really answered the question and her memories of him were too old to sort. They drove the first few minutes in silence, Mother’s anger frosting the windows as her cigarette smoke filled the cabin. The cigarettes made Mother look old. Though the woman looked young for her age, and had beautiful, blonde hair like Alexis, there was something about when she smoked that made her look old. Old and sad, which made Rebecca sad.
She wished things could be like they used to be. But over the past few years, something had changed, made her mother so serious and quick to anger. It must have been big and bad, maybe scary, too. Rebecca wanted to ask her mom what was wrong, so many times, but truth was, she was afraid the answer might be her. It seemed Mother was disappointed in her. She wasn’t sure why. She listened and behaved so much better than Alexis. She even tried to do things that she knew would help her Mother, like get her coffee cup ready before she went to bed, and put coffee in the filter, and other little things like that to make her mother’s life easier, and a little happier. But most times it seemed like her mother hardly noticed these things and only saw the bad things that Rebecca did.
Rebecca finally broke the silence. “I can’t believe Alexis would sneak out of the house,” she said, shaking her head. “This is just like the stuff you’re always warning her about. Things would be a lot better if she would just listen. She’s probably with that Ronnie Hendricks.” Rebecca glanced at Mother, checking for approval, but Mother’s eyes were fixed ahead, mouth sucking on the cigarette with a scowl.
“Ronnie is a bad kid,” Rebecca went on, trying not to hide her discomfort of the smoke. It was too cold to roll the windows down, so she’d just have to suck it up. “I think he probably sins a whole bunch, too. Once I saw him smoking behind the A&W. He had a whole pack of Camels, but the box was nearly empty, so he probably smokes a bunch.”
