Virtual Light

32. Fallonville

Must be getting closer” Rydell said.

Chevette Washington sort of grunted. Then she drank some of the water they’d gotten at the Shell station, and offered the bottle to him.

When he’d crashed out of that mall, he’d felt like they were sure to be right by a major highway. From the outside, the mall was just this low tumble of tan brick, windows boarded up with sheets of that really ugly hot-pressed recyc they ran off from chopped scrap, the color of day-old vomit. He’d gone screeching around this big empty parking lot, just a few dead clunkers and old mattresses to get in the way, until he’d found a way out through the chain link.

But there wasn’t any highway there, just some deserted four-lane feeder, and it looked like Loveless had put a bullet into the navigation hardware, because the map was locked on downtown Santa Ana and just sat there, sort of flickering. Where he was had the feel of one of those fallen-in edge-cities, the kind of place that went down when the Euro-money imploded.

Chevette Washington was curled up by the fridge with her eyes closed, and she wouldn’t answer him. He was scared Loveless had put one through her, too, but he knew he couldn’t afford to stop until he’d put at least a little distance between them and the mall. And he couldn’t see any blood on her or anything.

Finally he’d come to this Shell station. You could tell it had been Shell because of the shape of the metal things up on the poles that had supported the signs. The men’s room door was ripped off the hinges; the women’s chained and padlocked. Somehody had taken an automatic weapon to the pop machine, it looked like. He swung the RV around to the back and saw this real old Airstream trailer there, the same kind a neighbor of his father’s had lived in down in Tampa. There was a man there kneeling beside a hibachi, doing something with a pot, and these two black Labradors watching him.

Rydell parked, checked to see Chevette Washington was breathing, and got down out of the cab. He walked over to the man beside the hibachi, who’d gotten up now and was wiping the palms of his hands on the thighs of his red coveralls. He had on an old khaki fishing cap with about a nine-inch bill sticking straight out. The threads on the embroidered Shell patch on his coveralls had sort of frayed and fuzzed-out.

“You just lost” the man said, “or is there some kind of problem?” Rydell figured him to be at least seventy.

“No sir, no problem, but I’m definitely lost.” Rydell looked at the black Labs. They looked right back. “Those dogs of yours there, they don’t look too happy to see me.”

“Don’t see a lot of strangers” the man said.

“No sir” Rydell said, “I don’t imagine they do.”

“Got a couple of cats, too. Right now I’m feeding ’em all on dry kibble. The cats get a bird sometimes, maybe mice. Say you’re lost?”

“Yes sir, I am. I couldn’t even tell you what state we’re in, right now.”

The man spat on the ground. “Welcome to the goddamn club, son. I was your age, it was all of this California, just like God meant it to be. Now it’s Southern, so they tell me, but you know what it really is?”

“No sir. What?”

“A lot of that same happy horseshit. Like that woman camping in the goddamn White House.” He took the fishing cap off, exposing a couple of silver-white cancer-scars, wiped his brow with a grease-stained handkerchief, then pulled the cap hack on. “Say you’re lost, are you?”

“Yes sir. My map’s broken.”

“Know how to read a paper one?”

“Yes sir, I do.”

“What the hell’d she do to her head?” Looking past Rydell.

Rydell turned and saw Chevette Washington leaning over the driver’s bucket, looking out at them.

“How she cuts her hair” Rydell said.

“I’ll be damned” the man said. “Might be sort of good-looking, otherwise.”

“Yes sir” Rydell said.

“See that box of Cream o’ Wheat there? Think you can stir me up a cup of that into this water when it boils?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, I’ll go find you a map to look at. Skeeter and Whitey here, they’ll just keep you company.”

“Yes sir…”

PARADISE, so. CALIFORNIA

A CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

THREE MILES

NO CAMPING

CONCRETE PADS

FULL HOOKUPS

ELECTRIFIED SECURITY PERIMETER

FREE SWIMMING

LICENSED CHRISTIAN DAYCARE (STATE OF so. CAL.)

327 CHANNELS ON DOWNLINK

And a taller cross rising beyond that, this one welded from rusty railroad track, a sort of framework stuck full of old televisions, their dead screens all looking out toward the road there.

Chevette Washington was asleep now, so she missed that.

Rydell thought about how he’d used Codes’s phone to get through to Sublett’s number in L.A., and gotten this funny ring, which had nearly made him hang up right then, but it had turned out to be call-forwarding, because Sublett had this leave to go and stay with his mother, who was feeling kind of sick.

“You mean you’re in Texas?”

“Paradise, Berry. Mom’s sick ’cause she ’n’ a bunch of others got moved up here to SoCal.”

“Paradise?”

Sublett had explained where it was while Rydell looked at the Shell man’s map.

“Hey” Rydell had said, when he had a general idea where it was, “how about I drive over and see you?”

“Thought you had you a job up in San Francisco.”

“Well, I’ll tell you about that when I get there.”

“You know they’re saying I’m an apostate here?” Sublett hadn’t sounded happy about that.

“A what?”

“An apostate. ’Cause I showed my mom this Cronenberg film, Berry? This Videodrome? And they said it was from the Devil.”

“I thought all those movies were supposed to have God in ’em.”

“There’s movies that are clearly of the Devil, Berry. Or anyway that’s what Reverend Fallon says. Says all of Cronenberg’s are.”

“He in Paradise, too?”

“Lord no” Sublett had said, “he’s in these tunnels out on the Channel Islands, between England and France. Can’t leave there, either, because he needs the shelter.”

“From what?”

“Taxes. You know who dug those same tunnels, Berry?”

“Who?”

“Hitler did, with slave labor.”

“I didn’t know that” Rydell had said, imagining this scary little guy with a black mustache, standing up on a rock and cracking a big whip.

Now here came another sign, this one not nearly as professional as the first one, just black spraypaint letters on a couple of boards.

R.U. READY FOR ETERNITY?

HE LIVES! WILL YOU?

WATCH TELEVISION

“Watch television?” She was awake now.

“Well” Rydell said, “Fallonites believe God’s sort of just there. On television, I mean.”

“God’s on television?”

“Yeah. Kind of like in the background or something. Sublett’s mother, she’s in the church herself, but Sublett’s kind of lapsed.”

“So they watch tv and pray, or what?”

“Well, I think it’s more like kind of a meditation, you know? What they mostly watch is all these old movies, and they figure if they watch enough of them, long enough, the spirit will sort of enter into them.”

“We had Revealed Aryan Nazarenes, up in Oregon” she said. “First Church of Jesus, Survivalist. As soon shoot you as look at you.”

“Bad news” Rydell agreed, the RV cresting a little ridge there, “those kind of Christians…” Then he saw Paradise, down there, all lit up with these lights on poles.

The security perimeter they advertised was just coils of razor-wire circling maybe an acre and a half. Rydell doubted if it actually was electrified, but he could see screamers hanging on it, every ten feet or so, so it would be pretty effective anyway. There was a sort of blockhouse-and-gate set-up where the road ran in, but all it seemed to be protecting were about a dozen campers, trailers, and semi-rigs, parked on cement beds around what looked like an old-fashioned radio tower they’d topped with a whole cluster of satellite dishes, those little expensive ones that looked sort of like giant gray plastic marshmallows. Somebody had dammed a creek, to make a sort of pond for swimming, but the creek itself looked like the kind of industrial runoff you wouldn’t even find bugs around, let alone birds.

Sure had the whole place lit up, though. He could hear the drumming of big generators as they drove down the incline.

“Jesus” Chevette Washington said.

Rydell pulled up by the blockhouse and powered his window down, glad it still worked. A man in a blaze-orange fleece jacket and a matching cap came out, carrying some kind of shotgun with a skeletal metal stock. “Private property” he said, looking at where the windshield should’ve been. “What happened to your windshield there, mister?”

“Deer” Chevette Washington said.

“Here to visit our friends, the Subletts?” Rydell said, hoping he could distract the guard before he’d notice the bullet holes or anything. “Expecting us, if you wanna go call ’em.”

“Can’t say you much look like Christians.”

Chevette Washington sort of leaned across Rydell and gave the guard this stare. “I don’t know about you, brother, but we’re Aryan Nazarene, out of Eugene. We wouldn’t want to even come in there, say you got any mud people, any kind of race-mixing. Race-traitors all over, these days.”

The guard looked at her. “You Nazarene, how come you ain’t skins?”

She touched the front of her crazy haircut, the short spikey part. “Next thing you’re gonna tell me, Jesus was a Jew. Don’t know what this means?”

He looked more than maybe just a little worried, now.

“Got us some sanctified nails in the back, here. Maybe that gives you some idea.”

Rydell saw the guard hesitate, swallow.

“Hey, good buddy” Rydell said, “you gonna call tip ol’ Sublett for us, or what?”

The man went back into the blockhouse.

“What’s that about nails?” RydeE asked.

“Something Skinner told me about once” she said. “Scared me.”

Dora, Sublett’s mother, drank Coke and Mexican vodka. Rydell had seen people drink that before, but never at room temperature. And the Coke was flat, because she bought it and the vodka in these big plastic supermarket bottles, and they looked as though they’d already lasted her a while. Rydell decided he didn’t feel like drinking anyway.

The living room of Dora’s trailer had a matching couch and reclining lounger. Dora lay back in the lounger with her feet up, for her circulation she said, Rydell and Chevette Washington sat side by side on the couch, which was more a loveseat, and Sublett sat on the floor, his knees drawn up almost under his chin. There was a lot of stuff on the walls, and on little ornamental shelves, but it was all very clean. Rydell figured that was because of Sublett’s allergies. There sure was a lot of it, though: plaques and pictures and figurines and things Rydell figured had to be those prayer hankies. There was a flat type of hologram of Rev. Fallon, looking as much like a possum as ever, but a possum that had gotten a tan and maybe had plastic surgery. There was a life-size head of J.D. Shapely that Rydell didn’t like because the eyes seemed to follow you. Most of the good stuff was sort of grouped around the television, which was big and shiny but the old kind from before they started to get real big and flat. It was on now, showing this black and white movie, but the sound was off.

“You’re sure you won’t have a drink, Mr. Rydell?”

“No ma’am, thank you” Rydell said.

“Joel doesn’t drink. He has allergies, YOU know.”

“Yes ma’am.” Rydell hadn’t ever known Sublett’s first name before.

Sublett was wearing brand-new white denim jeans, a white t-shirt, white cotton socks, and disposable white paper hospital slippers.

“He was always a sensitive boy, Mr. Rydell. I remember one time he sucked on the handle of this other boy’s Big Wheel. Well, his mouth like to turned inside-out.”

“Momma” Sublett said, “you know the doctor said you ought to get more sleep than you been getting.”

Mrs. Sublett sighed. “Yes, well, Joel, I know you young people want a chance to talk.” She peered at Chevette Washington. “That’s a shame about your hair, honey. You’re just as pretty as can be, though, and you know it’ll just grow in so nice. I tried to light the broiler on this gas range we had, down in Galveston, that was when Joel was just a baby, he was so sensitive, and that stove about blew up. I just had had this perm, dear and, well…”

Chevette Washington didn’t say anything.

“Momma” Sublett said, “now you know you’ve had your nice drink…”

Rydell watched Sublett lead the old woman off to bed.

“Jesus Christ” Chevette Washington said, “what’s wrong with his eyes?”

“Just light-sensitive” Rydell said.

“It’s spooky, is what it is.”

“He wouldn’t hurt a fly” Rydell said.

Sublett came back, looked at the picture on the tv, then sighed and shut it off. “You know I’m not supposed to leave the trailer, Berry?”

“How’s that?”

“It’s a condition of my apostasy. They say I might corrupt the congregation by contact.” He perched on the edge of the recliner so he wouldn’t have to actually recline in it.

“I thought you’d blown Fallon off when you came out to LA.”

Sublett looked embarrassed. “Well, she’s been sick, Berry, so when I came here I told ’em I was here to reconsider. Meditate on the box ’n’ all.” He wrung his long pale hands. “Then they caught me watching Videodrome. You ever see, uh, Deborah Harry, Rydell?” Sublett sighed and sort of quivered.

“How’d they catch you?”

“They’ve got it set up so they can monitor what you’re watching.”

“How come they’re out here anyway?”

Sublett ran his fingers back through his dry, straw-colored hair. “Hard to say, but I’d figure it’s got something to do with Reverend Fallon’s tax problems. Most of what he does, lately, it’s about that. Didn’t your job in San Francisco work out, Berry?”

“No” Rydell said, “it didn’t.”

“You want to tell me about it?” Rydell said he did.

“I think he shot through something to do with the damned heater, too” Rydell said. They were back in the RV, outside the perimeter.

“I like your friend” she said. “I do too.”

“No, I mean he really cares about what’s going to happen to you. He really does.”

“You take the bed” he said. “I’ll sleep up front.”

“There’s no windshield. You’ll freeze.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Sleep back here. We did before. It’s okay.”

He woke in the dark and listened to the sound of her breathing, to the creak of stiff old leather from the jacket spread over her shoulder.

Sublett had listened to his story, nodding sometimes, asking a question here and there, his mirrored contacts reflecting tiny convex images of them sitting there on that loveseat. In the end he’d just whistled softly and said, “Berry, it sounds to me like you’re really in trouble now. Bad trouble.”

Really in trouble now.

Rydell slid his hand down, brushing one of hers by accident as he did it, and touched the bulge of his wallet in his back pocket. What money he had was in there, but Wellington Ma’s card was in there, too. Or what was left of it. The last time he’d looked, it had broken into three pieces.

“Big trouble” he said to the dark, and Chevette Washington lifted the edge of her jacket and sort of snuggled in closer, her breathing never changing, so he knew she was still asleep.

He lay there, thinking, and after a while he started to get this idea. About the craziest idea he’d ever had.

“That boyfriend of yours” he said to her, in the tiny kitchen of Sublett’s mother’s trailer, “that Lowell?”

“What about him?”

“Got a number we could reach him at?”

She poured milk on her cornflakes. It was the kind you mixed up from powder. Had that thin chalky look. The only kind Sublett’s mother had. Sublett was allergic to milk. “Why?”

“I think maybe I want to talk to him about something.”

“About what?”

“Something I think maybe he could help me with.”

“Lowell? Lowell’s not gonna help you. Lowell doesn’t give a rat’s ass for anybody.”

“Well” Rydell said, “why don’t you just let me talk to him.”

“If you tell him where we are, or he has it traced back through the cd-net, he’ll turn us in. Or he would if he knew anybody was after us.”

“Why?”

“He’s just like that.” But then she gave Rydell the phone and the numher.

“Hey, Lowell?”

“Who the fuck is this?”

“How you doin’?”

“Who gave you—”

“Don’t hang up.”

“Listen, motherf—”

“SFPD Homicide.”

He could hear Lowell draw on a cigarette. “what did you say?” Lowell said.

“Orlovsky. SFPD Homicide, Lowell. That big fucker with the great big fucking gun? Came in the bar there? You remember. Just before the lights went out. I was over there by the bar, talking with Eddie the Shit.”

Lowell took another drag, shallower by the sound of it. “Look, I don’t know what you—”

“You don’t have to. You can just hang up right now, Lowell. But if you do, boy, you just better kiss your ass goodbye. Because you saw Orlovsky come in there for the girl, Lowell, didn’t you? You saw him. He didn’t want you to. He wasn’t in there on any SFPD business, Lowell. He was there on his own stick. And that’s one serious bad oficer, Lowell. Serious as cancer.”

Silence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then you just listen, Lowell. Listen up. You don’t listen, I’ll tell Orlovsky you saw him. I’ll give him this number. I’ll give him your description, and that skinhead’s, too. Tell him you been talking about him. And you know what he’ll do, Lowell? He’ll come out there and shoot your ass dead, that’s what he’ll do. And nobody to stop him. Homicide, Lowell. Then he can investigate it himself, he wants to. Man’s heavy, Lowell, I gotta tell ya.”

Lowell coughed, a couple of times. Cleared his throat. “This is a joke, right?”

“I don’t hear you laughing.”

“Okay” Lowell said, “say it’s for real. Then what? What’re you after?”

“I hear you know people can get things done. With computers and things.” He could hear Lowell lighting a fresh cigarette.

“Well” Lowell said, “sort of.”

“Republic of Desire” Rydell said. “I need you to get them to do me a favor.”

“No names” Lowell said, fast. “There’s scans set to pick things out of traffic—”

“Them.”

“ ‘Them’ okay? Need you to get them to do something for me.”

“It’ll cost you” Lowell said, “and it won’t be cheap.”

“No” Rydell said, “it’ll cost you.”

He pressed the button that broke the connection. Give old Lowell a little time to think about it; maybe look Orlovsky up on the Civil List, see he was there and he was Homicide. He flipped the little phone shut and went back into the trailer. Sublett’s mother kept the air-conditioning up about two clicks too high.

Sublett was sitting on the loveseat. His white clothes made him look sort of like a painter, a plasterer or something, except he was too clean. “You know, Berry, I’m thinking maybe I better get back to Los Angeles.”

“What about your mother?”

“Well, Mrs. Baker’s here now, from Galveston? They been neighbors for years. Mrs. Baker can watch out for her.”

“That apostate crap getting to you?”

“Sure is” Sublett said, turning to look at the hologram of Fallon. “I still believe in the Lord, Berry, and I know I’ve seen His face in the media, just like Reverend Fallon teaches. I have. But the rest of it, I swear, it might as well be just a flatout hustle.” Sublett almost looked like he might be about to cry. The silver eyes swung around, met Rydell’s. “And I been thinking about IntenSecure, Berry. What you told me last night. I don’t see how I can go back there and work, knowing the kinds of things they’ll condone. I thought I was at least helping to protect people from a few of the evils in this world, Berry, but now I know I’d just be working for a company with no morals at all.”

Rydell walked over and had a closer look at the prayer-hankies. He wondered which one of them was supposed to keep the AIDS off. “No” he said, finally, “you go back to work. You are protecting people. That part’s real. You got to make a living, Sublett.”

“What about you?”

“Well, what about me?”

“They’ll just find you and kill you, Berry. You and her.”

“You, too, probably, if they knew what I’d told you. I shouldn’t ought’ve done that, Sublett. That’s one reason Chevette and I have to get out of here. So there won’t be any hassle for you and your mom.”

“Well” Sublett said, “I’m not working for them anymore, Berry. But I’m leaving here, too. I just have to.”

Rydell looked at Sublett, seeing him, somehow, in his full IntenSecure outfit, Glock and all, and suddenly that big crazy idea-thing sort of up and shook itself, and rolled over, revealing all these new angles. But you can’t get him involved, Rydell told himself, it just wouldn’t be fair.

“Sublett” Rydell heard himself saying, about a minute later, “I bet I got a career-option here you haven’t ever even considered.”

“What’s that?” Sublett said.

“Getting in trouble” Rydell said.