Hystopia: A Novel (24 page)

“What about it?”

“You know. Admit it to me is all I ask.” Someone else was definitely listening on the line, there was a click and then another click.

“OK, why not?” Singleton said. “I’m with Wendy right now and we’ve been together all summer, fucking each other senseless, and now we’re striking out on our own.”

“There,” Klein said, “I’ll send that statement to Command,” his voice lowered. “I’m going to confirm that you’re officially wayward, that you’ve gone AWOL, but I’ll use the Corps lingo. Now, if you were to say, I mean if you were to draw a conclusion looking back, accessing all of your actions and everything you learned in your training—if you were to look back, the way I taught you to look back, would you remember our talk about the proper way to write an operations report?”

“Yes, sir,” Singleton said. The pop of gunfire came from the distance. A single pop followed by another. Brittle small-arms fire. Another pop—deeper, woody, a different tenor, a rifle—that seemed timed in response. Snap and woof. Another exchange of some kind. Behind that the dry, lonely sizzle of cicadas going about their afternoon business.

“So if you were to write a proper operations report, you might find a pattern…” There was a faint wheezing sound, and Klein coughed. He was lighting his pipe, speaking around the stem. “Again, I can’t say it because it would be a betrayal of a promise I made to Command, but if
you
were to say something along the lines of, well, along the lines of being suddenly aware that you’re tracking Rake, who from your unfoldings—I’m just speculating that you had a vision of Rake, that you’re aware that he’s in your Causal Events Package, that you might also conclude—and if I were to hear you say it I could confirm or rather, at least, send your understanding to Command—that you are under a form of advanced treatment.” He began to cough the way he did when a bit of tobacco somehow traveled up the length of the pipe and got to his throat. The gunfire was getting close.

“I’m unclear, sir. Are you saying that you want me to say to you that I’m aware that Rake is part of my CEP, part of my past, enfolded in treatment, and that I somehow figured out that I’m under a form of advanced treatment?”

“Did you say it, or are you just asking?” Klein snapped.

“I’m saying it, I guess,” Singleton said. Wendy was beckoning to him. The man in the station had his gun pointed out at the field.

“There you have it. I’ll pass it up to Command. You not only went AWOL, but you also—to put it in the proper lingo—became aware of advanced treatment methods and thereby nullified said treatment. You drew your own conclusions.”

“Got to go, sir,” Singleton said.

“Take care, Singleton.” A paternal urgency had entered his voice. “Shoot and then ask the dead questions. Get to the safe house if you can. Locate Rake. Get up there and terminate him. Don’t ever quote me on that.”

“Got to go, sir,” Singleton said. He left the phone dangling and went to the car.

“Sounds like a firefight,” the gas station attendant said. “You folks better get moving.”

“Who’s fighting?”

“That would be anybody with a gun,” the man said.

“Get in the car,” Wendy said. She had a look of fear on her face that he had never seen before.

Two more pops—closer this time. The attendant aimed at the sky and fired two shots into the air. Then he waited a few seconds and fired another shot. “They won’t bring their firefight into my firefight.”

*   *   *

Singleton drove with both hands on the wheel.

“What did Klein say?” Wendy said.

“Let me think through what he said and get back to you. I was distracted by the gunfire.”

“You get back to me.” She climbed into the backseat and began taking an inventory, lifting one gun and then another, putting them back. There was a kit bag from the Corps with pills. There was a first-aid kit and her mother’s wedding dress. When he looked in the rearview her face was shrouded by the veil. When he looked again she had it flipped back over her head and was talking about her mother, who had married when she was eighteen, just before her father went into the service. Then she was explaining that she’d never agree to marry a man who kept secrets. She climbed back over the seat, still wearing the veil, and remained quiet.

“Well, he asked me to say and I said that I’m under some kind of advanced form of treatment. Rake was part of my CEP. He was there with me in Nam.”

“An advanced form of treatment,” Wendy said. She took the veil off, folded it, lifted it to her nose, sniffed it, and then put it gently on her lap.

“That’s about it. Some form of treatment.”

“As if he knew we were together in the afternoons, and that was part of the treatment?”

“I’m thinking, if I’m reading him correctly, they took me out of enfolding, put me into Psych Corps, made damn sure I connected with you, and that’s as far as I can go, because it seems virtually impossible. It’s like what he was alluding to was not a treatment structured by the Corps, but some kind of impromptu field operation, a seat-of-the-pants thing of his own devising.”

“You’re saying Klein figured out we were fraternizing together. He saw that and decided it would be good treatment for you?”

“I’m saying he saw that I was breaking the Credo, going off with another agent, and he made note of the reality in the field. That’s the kind of thing he was always talking about, the reality in the field.”

“You’re saying he went renegade. He knows we’re heading up on this mission and it’s against orders and all that but he is sanctioning it on a personal level?”

“It’s one way to figure it,” Singleton said.

*   *   *

A half hour later, there was nothing along the roadside to indicate they were in the Year of Hate, or that the riots had bled far out from the urban centers. This part of the state had been desolate to begin with, folks eking out a living from bad tillage, land overused, dejected-looking homesteads spaced far about, yards filled with trash. He wanted to tell her about the face in the file, but he was unsure how to proceed because she’d been quiet for miles, not moving, the veil resting in her lap, and he guessed that she was thinking about her mother, or her past history with the Zomboid. I’m the kind of man who doesn’t know how to respond to a woman’s deeper silences, at least in the car, he thought. There’s only so much you can do in a car. A car has its limits. Yes, he felt her emitting sadness when he glanced over, something in the position of her fingers resting on the faded tulle. Finally, he found a quiet, straight stretch of road and pulled over so they could get out and move their legs, get the blood flowing. They stepped out into the lingering smells of a hot day, tar and dust and a hint of something—lavender, bindweed? It was an inland smell, far away from the lake, although they were only ten or fifteen miles from shore. Together they walked a few yards from the car, keeping an eye out for movement, down a slight decline, through a gully, to a clear spot between two trees, hidden in shadow. He turned and gave her a kiss and felt destabilized, as if they might settle down at that spot, slide to the ground, two young pioneers staking a claim on a barren patch of land, full of hope, the wide expanse of emptiness quivering around them on all sides, full of portent and possibility in a land unsettled but waiting eagerly. Then he told her about the photo in the file, the face of the burned man, the termination stamp, and he watched as she turned away from him and took a few steps toward the field. Her body was tense and it seemed to him that at any moment she might bolt. Then she turned around and walked past him, up the verge, to the car. “Let’s get going,” she said.

KILLDEER

The world’s not gonna end with a whimper but with a bang, Hank said. It was just a thought. It came to mind and he said it, channeling deep into Old Hank, who knew that the best way to cut into the illogic of Rake when he was super high was to throw a non sequitur back at him, pushing him further away from a train of thoughts, because a train of thoughts always led to violence. They’d been exchanging non sequiturs deep into the night.

The only way to die is to kill the death within, Hank said.

You hear a whimper you want to make a bang, Rake said.

A good ship has a captain who doesn’t know he’s a captain, Hank said.

The only bad war is a war that I haven’t started yet, Rake said.

Drugs that really hit hard hit the hardness first and the softness second, Hank said

Meg’s a token of something I want to feed to the slot machine of death, Rake said.

A tree that needs to be cut says so before the wind picks up the scent, Hank said.

When I feel a hankering to kill I appreciate the fact that blood is still flowing from the top of the state to the bottom, Rake said.

If I kill Haze it’ll be because he’s already close to dead, Rake said. I still have a little bit of honor left, such as it is.

June is the month of killing. April might be cruel, but June is pure murder, Rake said.

The day had been hot and the evening was only a bit cooler and there was a strange, unnatural silence. The lake sat shimmering and quiet, unusually smooth—two days straight of no movement, nothing at all—and in the woods the birds were silent, too, even the chickadees, and because of the airlessness he hadn’t caught the scent of a single tree, not one, on which to pin his hopes. Meg was inside resting, tired, her face healing. His father was out there, navigating by starlight or with a compass, reading charts, whatever he did as second mate.

What do you mean by that? I’m going to make damn sure it ends with both a bang and a fucking whimper, Rake said. He gripped the chair and screamed. That’s how it was in Nam, not that I want to talk about it, not that I give a shit, that part of me is dead and buried in the best way. You’d hear a little whimper and that meant shoot.

*   *   *

For two days he had been packing his gear, readying himself for another drug run, and then unpacking and repacking, testing everyone. When they could, Hank and Meg whispered assurances to each other, or exchanged meaningful glances. A plan will shape up, Hank assured her when he could. We’ll take action soon, but the timing has to be right or we’ll be the ones who end up dead.

Haze staggered around the yard with his arms out and practiced being blind because that’s what Rake had told him to do. Get used to what it might be like because that other eye of yours has seen almost all it’s gonna see, he said.

I’m not sure I’m sensing what I’m sensing, but it might be that one of you is trying to scheme against me, Rake said one afternoon. He held an ax over the kitchen table, swung it around. A sound came from outside, high-pitched, canine.

In the yard, MomMom was throwing another fit. She spoke of God as a friendly presence, as someone right on the edge of the yard, as a deity she knew personally, someone who would come charging to her rescue when the time came. Then she said she was the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Seven bowls of angels will be fed the lamb of God.

Tell her to shut up. Make her shut up, Rake said, lifting the ax.

Hank went to her and lifted her off her feet and carried her back to the shed.

Mom, he said. MomMom, please, please, it’s me, Hank, you remember Hank, he said, and then he watched her eyes sway, unable to focus, up at the sky and then to the east and then, finally, when he lifted his index finger and waved it, asking her to follow it, she focused.

Sweet Hank, she said. Your mother loves you.

Rake sat in a lawn chair with his ax across his knees.

You get her fixed? If I hear the word
God
again I’m going to remove her head.

She’s might continue to mention God, but you know she’s crazy so it doesn’t mean anything.

Well, it means to me what it means. And I’m on edge.

I’ll keep her away, Rake. Whatever works. Or I’ll get rid of them both if that’s what you want.

Yeah, whatever works, Rake said. Meg was approaching from the house and he fixed his eyes on her and touched the blade and began to explain how it was going to be him first who took care of the girl, if anyone, and that was an order, and that if he wanted both MomMom dead and Meg dead he’d do it himself. To keep himself calm, Hank looked into the sky and tried to catch the scent of a tree. He imagined a group of men tearing into the trunk of an old tree, not cutting with a clean notch on top and then another on the bottom but hacking at all angles, opening a big fat wound, and leaving the tree standing to be invaded by insects. The image forced him deeper into the role. He shook his head in agreement and Rake gave him a brotherly nod, as if to say: We’ll both do what we have to do, and we’ll do it together as brothers in arms.

If he doesn’t kill her I might, Meg said, her voice loose and casual.

That’s a good girl, Rake said. That’s what I want to hear.

*   *   *

Hank glanced back at the trees and told her to pull away, to make it look as if she wanted to lunge for the water. She did as he asked and he pushed her down, holding her shoulders gently, but pushing hard, and then he gave her a fake kick to the groin and she gave a fake response so that Rake, who was up in the trees, hiding, watching, could rest assured. He had been trailing them daily—his footprints along the path, the feeling of being watched, his eyes in the trees, down in the grass.

Now let me help you up, he whispered.

I really do want to go in the water. I want to hear Billy-T again. I need to hear him.

The lake was shimmering with the last light of the day. It was still cold but would slowly warm up, the sunlight plunging down through the water, searching in vain for something solid.

Don’t cry. If you cry, he’ll know something’s wrong. I’m going to move you over there and I’m going to lecture you on that bird, you see it, the killdeer. He pointed, keeping his hand up so Rake could see if he was still watching. The river came out through the trees and spread in a small delta.

You clear forest and they come to nest, he said. Rake is going to go out on another run because he’s like that bird. He has to follow his internal compass, however messed up it might be, he said, pulling her. Now stumble a little bit and resist and let me pull you back again.