Aftermath

28

Art began to regret their decision the moment Seth climbed into the body drawer alongside Oliver Guest.

“All right,” Seth whispered. “Close it.”

Art hesitated, then leaned down toward him. “Don’t get any cute ideas, Seth. You’d never have made it this far without Dana and me.”

“I know that, for Christ’s sake. You think I’m gonna head for the hills with Ollie here?”

“I’d look for you forever if you tried it.”

“I know that. I don’t want you chasin’ my ass. ’Til we get our treatment goin’, we’re in this together. Come on, close the damn drawer!”

Art, finally ready to slide the drawer shut, paused again. “Where will we meet?”

“Jeez. We never talked about that. Gotta be someplace we’re sure of. We might have to hole up for a while.”

“The Treasure Inn?” Dana suggested.

“Nah. Not safe enough. Better be your cabin, Art, up on Catoctin Mountain.”

“You don’t know where it is.”

“I do. I looked at the maps when we were back at the Treasure Inn gettin’ ready to play sewer-men.”

“But—” Art began.

“I can find the place. Trust me.”

“Hurry up,” Dana said urgently. “I can hear them moving around down below.”

The drawer slid closed, while Art stood and worried. It was too late to change, and there was no other choice. Art in the drawer with Oliver Guest? He was older than Seth, and he lacked the killer spirit. Dana with Oliver Guest? Even worse. And the body drawer held only two, even with a squeeze. It had to be Seth and Oliver Guest. Maybe they were vicious enough to cancel each other out. But the thought of them at Art’s cabin made him awfully uneasy.

“Come on.” The candle was out, and Dana was whispering to him in the darkness. “We have to try and get all the way down before anyone knows we’re in the building. We don’t want them coming up here.”

She took his hand and they tiptoed to the staircase and crept down from floor to floor. There was enough noise from below to cover any small creaking of the metal rails and grilles.

Art could see a dozen people now, each with an electric flashlight. He leaned close to Dana and whispered, “They’re spreading out. If we can get all the way down and outside and they don’t notice . . .”

They moved faster. The lights had dispersed and moved into the aisles. Art and Dana were at the bottom of the stairs and heading for the open double doors when a man’s voice called loudly, “Over here. I think this, is the one.”

Half a dozen people popped into view from the other aisles. Most rushed right past Art and Dana, but an older man in a dark blue uniform took a second look and halted in front of them. He had a gun in a holster on his left hip, and he put his hand on it.

“You’re not with us. This is a secured facility. What are you doing here?”

They had not rehearsed a story. Dana, faster than Art, said at once, “My uncle is in here. We thought that after the supernova things wouldn’t be working. We came to see if he’s all right.”

“You broke in?” The officer gestured to them to walk with him.

“No. The doors were already open.”

That happened to be true, but apparently it was not enough.

“What’s your uncle’s name?”

Dana hesitated, but Art jumped in. “Desmond Lota.” He hoped he had remembered the name correctly. “He’s my cousin. He ought to be over there.”

He pointed back the way they had come. The other man nodded, but he motioned to them to keep walking with him. “We’ll check in a minute.” His nose wrinkled at the stink, stronger the farther they went inside the building. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

The other people were standing in two small clusters halfway down one of the aisles. They took no notice at all of the new arrivals.

“Don’t come any nearer,” one man in the farther cluster said, but he was not addressing Art and Dana. He was talking to two women, the older one with her arm around the other’s shoulder.

Another man was standing by an open body drawer. After a few more seconds he turned away and shook his head. “I’m sorry. This is the right one, Raymond Silvers. I am afraid he is dead.”

“Oh, Raymond.” The younger woman made a low, mewing sound. “I want to see him.” She tried to pull free and walk forward. Two men stood in front of her, and the other woman held her more firmly.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, miss,” one of the men said politely. “It would be best if you get outside, into the fresh air. We’ll take care of the formalities here.”

The rest of the group turned. Art and Dana found themselves swept along, the uniformed officer still close at their side. When they were at the double doors, he halted.

“Do you know where your uncle is?” he asked Dana.

“I do,” Art said. In daylight, he could see how pale Dana had become. Fatigue and the nauseating smell in the steadily warming building had brought her close to the edge. “Does she really have to go in? After what you found already?”

“I don’t see why.” The officer gestured to one of the other men. “Keep an eye on her, please. For the moment she’s in your custody.” He turned to Art. “What’s your name?”

“Art Ferrand.” The old principle: the fewer lies you told, the easier it was to keep track of them; and he had no idea what questions Dana might be asked.

“Lieutenant Commander Strasser.” He did not offer Art his hand. “Come on. Let’s take a look. Can you stand it?”

Art did not know what Lieutenant Commander Strasser was referring to, the smell or the prospect of identifying the body of a dead relative. He simply nodded, and they returned to the dark depths of the building.

“He ought to be on the third level up.” Art did not want to say the name again, in case he had it wrong. He was walking slightly in front of Strasser, while the officer shone his flashlight on the serried banks of body drawers.

To change the subject, Art asked, “Was that her father back there?”

“Her brother, I gather.” Strasser’s manner became slightly less formal. “Horrible business, this whole thing. Maybe we ought to have worried about this place sooner, but with everything else going on it has low priority. And they are all criminals. Is this the one?”

In the beam of the flashlight, Art saw the name, Desmond Lota. “That’s it.”

“Can you stand to do this?”

“I’ll be fine.” Art already knew what was coming. It would actually be easier on him than on the other man. “Let’s do it.”

They slid the drawer open. The body of Desmond Lota, bloated and purple, lay before them. Strasser quickly pushed the drawer closed again.

“I’m sorry.” He was breathing hard. “Sorry about your uncle.”

“Cousin. Desmond was supposed to be awakened in another year.” Art did his best to sound heartbroken. “It was never supposed to be a death sentence.”

“Tough.” Strasser breathed again, loudly, as though he had been trying not to. “But you break the law, you take your chances.”

“I guess so.” Art began to walk back toward the entrance, not waiting for Strasser’s approval. The longer he and Dana were separated, the greater the danger that they would tell inconsistent versions of events.

Strasser didn’t object. He seemed in just as much of a hurry, and his face was pale when they emerged from the building. The awful sight and stench had broken through his official attitude that squeamishness was for civilians. He even seemed to regard Art with a bit more respect.

Dana was waiting anxiously by the doors. Art shook his head. “I’m afraid that it’s bad news.”

She was much better at acting than he was. The change in her face from hope to grief was totally convincing. “Can I—”

“You don’t want to see him, Dana.”

Strasser nodded his agreement. “You really don’t. He’s . . . well, we’ll take care of the suitable disposal of the body. I’m afraid that in the circumstances there can be no formal funeral ceremony at this time.”

“We understand that. Thank you, Commander.” Art was itching to get away, before more questions were asked about his fictitious cousin, Desmond Lota.

He nodded and started to back off, but Strasser held up a hand.

“Excuse me, but there is one other matter that must be resolved. This is a government detention facility, and someone has broken into it. Now, you say that it was this way when you arrived—”

“It was.”

“But if that’s the case, it leaves open the question, who did break in? And why?”

“I don’t know,” Dana said. “But when we arrived there were marks around the side of the building as though something heavy had been pulled along the ground there. And when we came inside there were wet footsteps on the metal staircase.”

Art stared in disbelief. She was inviting them to explore the higher levels of the syncope facility, where otherwise they had no reason to go. Did she want Seth and Oliver Guest discovered? But she was staring at him in turn, expectantly, as though waiting for him to speak.

“They must have gone upstairs,” he said at last. He had it now. Dana couldn’t tell the Navy people about the empty body drawer of Pearl Lazenby, because there was supposedly no reason for Art and her to have gone up there. She wanted them to go up and “discover” it.

“I can help to check what’s going on there,” he went on. “The stink inside doesn’t bother me all that much.”

He had added the reference to the smell deliberately. Strasser nodded. He looked far from happy. He could order a subordinate to go with Art but apparently that was in conflict with his ideas of the proper duties of a leader. Finally he turned to the rest of the waiting group and said, “Any volunteers?”

The young civilian woman whose brother had been found dead stood alone, facing away from the building and apparently blind to everything. The others looked at each other. After a few moments two enlisted men, both approaching Art’s age, stepped forward.

“Pratt and Jarnile. Very good.” Strasser handed his flashlight to Art, the final statement that he himself would not be going. “Be as quick as you can.”

No question about that in Art’s mind; again, there was the problem of what Dana might be asked while he was gone. He walked back through the familiar double doors, half a step behind the two enlisted men. They ought to find the empty body drawer, but he must find a way to make them go straight to it. Leading from behind. It was a concept not totally alien to the military.

As the beam of his flashlight played on the steps of the staircase, he realized that there really were footsteps on the stairs — his, Dana’s, and Seth’s. He let Pratt and Jarnile discover the footmarks for themselves and lead the way. Only when they were coming to the twelfth floor did he push past them, flash his light in the right direction, and say, “Here. This way.”

After that he could follow and watch and take no further action. Jarnile spotted the open drawer along the fifth aisle, and led the way excitedly to it. While Art stood and watched, Pratt read aloud the name of its former occupant. It was obvious it meant nothing to him or to Jarnile.

“Get the ID number, too,” Jarnile said.

“I will. Do you think there might be others?”

“It would take ages to find out.” Art shone his flashlight up and along, to emphasize the spaciousness of the interior. “Didn’t your commander say to get back quick?”

“He did.” Pratt stuffed pencil and paper back in his pocket. “Come on, Nat. Any more decisions, they better come from above.”

Art trailed a step behind on the way down. His knee was sore again, and he didn’t want to steal Pratt and Jarnile’s moment of glory. As he emerged into sunlight he glanced at Dana. She winked. Everything’s all right!

Pratt was telling the story. Open body drawer, ID number, original release date. Strasser was nodding approval in a formal way. When it came to the name, though, the civilian woman swung around suddenly.

“Who was that?”

Art realized that he had read things wrong. Somehow, she outranked all the Navy people. She had been crying, but in a pent-up, tightly controlled way that made her face puffy but left no tear marks on her cheeks. When she was not so upset, with those features, eyes, and skin she would be beautiful in a foreign and exotic way.

“She’s a strong woman,” Dana said softly at his side. “No whining and moaning, even though it’s her own brother.”

He nodded. “Gorgeous, too.”

There was little chance that the comments would be heard. Pratt was again pronouncing the name on the body drawer, in a near shout as though volume added to clarity.

“Pearl Lazenby,” the woman said, far more quietly but with great intensity. “I had no idea that she is in this syncope facility.”

“Was,” Pratt volunteered, while Commander Strasser glared at him. “She’s gone. The drawer was empty when we got to it. Who is she?”

Strasser shot at him flames of coming retribution, but the woman answered as though indifferent to military protocol.

“Pearl Lazenby is the Divine Seer, the Eye of God. The head of the Legion of Argos. Now does she sound familiar?”

“Chief Loony in the Loony Legion,” Jarnile exclaimed. “Lordy. You mean that somebody let her out?”

“I mean exactly that,” the woman said. With the new information she was energized, freed for the moment from grief. “Not only that, I bet I know when it happened. Last night there was all that activity down this way on the river. Her followers came over the river and took her, dead or alive, conscious or unconscious. There’s supposed to be more than a million of them, scattered through Virginia and West Virginia and North Carolina. She could be absolutely anywhere by now. We have to let people know about this. I have to call, then I must get back to Washington.”

She turned to Art and Dana. “You must have been here first, after they escaped with her.”

Art’s faint hope that he and Dana would be overlooked in the new excitement and free to go their own way vanished. “I suppose we were.”

“Then you must come with me. You may be able to add important details. I can’t tell you how much trouble Pearl Lazenby might cause — especially now, after the supernova disaster.”

It wasn’t couched as an outright order, but it might as well have been. Art also realized that it was the fastest way to get the whole group away from the syncope facility. Seth might have Oliver Guest under total control, but they couldn’t lie squeezed in a body drawer forever.

He walked along the path away from the building, aware that Dana was following. In the road stood two purring gray behemoths. It was hard to know what they had been originally — troop carriers, dump trucks, heavy weapons transporters — but now they were buses, with rows of open metal seats below a blue awning of canvas.

Art made sure that Dana was right behind, then chose a half seat at the rear hardly wide enough for two people.

She smiled as she squeezed in next to him. “So far, so good.”

He couldn’t answer, because the other woman had moved to stand next to where they were sitting.

“I really appreciate your cooperation,” she said. “I only just learned of your own loss.”

Art nodded, and felt totally bogus.

“My name is Yasmin Silvers.” She paused expectantly and held out her hand.

“Dana Berlitz.”

Art leaned across. “Art Ferrand.”

“Were you going back to Washington anyway?”

“North of there,” Dana said, and Art was glad she was not more specific.

“Well, then this trip won’t be totally wasted for you. And you will be doing a valuable service.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dana said, while Art wished she would just shut up so the woman would go away. “It’s my impression that Washington wouldn’t recognize a service if it fell on them. The sooner I’m out of there, the better.”

“You’ve had bad experiences?”

“More like no experiences. Even before the supernova, I could never get anywhere with the government. What it’s like today I can’t even imagine. It’s always an endless trail of forwarded messages and useless holograms. I can never tell if it’s the people who are halfwits or the smart programs derived from them. We’ll get there this time, and either have to talk to a machine or some dim gas cloud of a bureaucrat.”

Art caught on to what Dana was doing. People who are in trouble rarely cause more trouble; they want to draw as little attention to themselves as possible, so they keep quiet and don’t complain. Dana’s aggrieved air was very persuasive.

The woman smiled for the first time. It lit up her face and made her even more attractive.

“I’m sorry you’ve had such rotten experiences in the past, and have such a low view of government services. But tomorrow, I really think you’ll have the ear of someone who can get things done.”

She walked away to a seat closer to the front of the converted bus.

“And you thought she was gorgeous before she smiled,” Dana said. “Tomorrow, eh? I guess we’re stuck with a night in Washington.”

“And a bed,” Art added. “I can feel my skeleton poking through and touching the metal. A bed, a bed, my kingdom for a bed.”

“Me, too. And a shower, even more than a bed. I wonder where Seth will sleep tonight?”

It was the wrong question. Art, just beginning to feel that he could relax, thought again of his cabin in Catoctin Mountain Park. Dana, sensing the change in his mood, said nothing more. The buses started moving and rumbled their way north, while the two sat in silence. Snow still lay on the fields and by the side of the road, but the air was warm as early summer. The solid partition across the bus’s cargo compartment supported Art on his right, Dana’s thigh was a comfortable presence on his left. Despite the discomfort of the seat he found himself drifting off.

It was a change in the note of the engine that brought him back to the present. The bus had stopped. It was deep dusk.

“Are we there?”

“No.” Dana was leaning far out over the side. “We’re nowhere. There’s a kid standing by the side of the road. Maybe seven years old. He only has pants and a shirt — no shoes — and he’s crying. We’ve picked him up.”

“Good.” They were moving again. Art was ready to settle into a dazed but hungry torpor when Dana suddenly asked, “What’s the current world population?”

“Eh? The population. Today it has to be anybody’s guess. Before Supernova Alpha I think it was about eight billion.”

“Right.” She leaned toward him and laid her head on his shoulder. After another minute she added, “You know, we get it all wrong. We say the supernova was a disaster.”

“Are you suggesting it wasn’t?” Art loved Dana’s head on his shoulder and the soft hair against his cheek, but her comment made no sense at all.

“I’m telling you it wasn’t. It wasn’t a disaster, a single disaster. It was eight billion separate and individual disasters — to you and me and Yasmin Silvers who lost her brother, and Desmond Lota’s family, even if they don’t know he’s dead and that poor little boy we just picked up. They are all disasters. Every one of them was awful, and every one is important. But all we’ll ever learn about in detail is maybe half a dozen.”

“Mm.” She was right, of course.

“But you don’t feel like discussing it,” she said, reading Art’s mind. “That’s all right. You don’t have to. I’m just talking philosophy.”

“Mm.”

“Better that than politics, if I know you. Don’t worry, I won’t talk either one. Have your nap, sweetheart.”

Art felt like saying he had been doing fine with the sleeping before he was interrupted. Instead he closed his eyes and decided that he was just like Joe’s dogs. You could cuss and swear at any one of them as much as you liked, and all the dumb thing heard was its own name. The mutt sat there and thumped the ground with its tail every time it heard that one word.

What Dana had been saying for the past few minutes was already fading. The only thing Art had transferred to long-term memory was that she called him sweetheart.