Nod (18 page)

Chain link fencing surrounded the station itself. The barbed wire-topped security perimeter predated our little apocalypse, having been put into place when the line was built in order to keep panhandlers and the suicidal homeless away from the tracks. Outside, a few dozen of the Awakened milled about, weaving in between the bodies of others who’d fallen to the guards’ rifles. One man approached the fence with a pleading look and pressed his face against the wire, only to have a woman with a long pony tail and heavy eyebrows smash the butt of her rifle into his nose. He recoiled, howling and bleeding, then fell to the ground.

We passed through the station and began to march along the now-elevated rail, past BC Place and GM Place, the city’s two largest arenas. Almost immediately, the streets were fifty feet of falling, flailing dread beneath us. As the Awakened watched us pass over their heads, some screamed obscenities, others prayers. The abuse was clearly audible, but I couldn’t make out the words from so high up. I wondered if God experienced similar reception problems up in heaven.

Soon the next station, Science World, appeared ahead of us—a giant geodesic dome that housed an interpretation centre where, until recently, celebrity Tyrannosaurus skeletons had come and gone while kid-friendly magicians taught surreptitious lessons about gravity and math. The dome’s glass triangles, winking in the sun, reminded me of the shattered UBC mirrors that had heralded my first foray into the Golden Light.

I spoke to Dave’s back.

‘Who are you guys?’

Nothing. Apparently it was flatter-the-mad time again.

‘You’re really organized.’

Nothing. I couldn’t have pinned the feeling down just then, but as Dave and I were drawing nearer and nearer to Science World, he was changing. Maybe his back had stiffened when I started asking questions, perhaps his parched brain was emitting some sort of adrenaline frizzle or maybe it was something else entirely. Human beings can snatch fragments of emotion from the air with the same acuity with which a cougar picks up a whiff of deer blood from miles away. However it happened, though, I suddenly realized that if I was smart, I’d stop talking and just follow along.

* * *

Science World, tone-rich in the orange-ing evening sun, turned out to be the last fortified station. Beyond, the rails were populated by the Awakened. Some were dressed in filthy thrift store mimicry of Dave’s people—crazy commandos holding plastic dollar store Uzis. Maybe they were mocking the Cat Sleepers, poor mice, or maybe they were auditioning in hopes of joining the cast. Once in a while, one would get too close to the fence. Then, like before, a rifle’s patience would snap in two and a rumpled body would tumble in slow motion toward an unheard thud.

Within the compound that had been erected around the dome, however, there was order. Dozens of people, all dressed in that same uniform of khaki pants and T-shirt, strode purposefully about. A fleet of twelve SUVs was parked neatly in one corner. Six trailer trucks, their back doors open, looked to be filled with cases of food. A helicopter stood at the centre of a freshly-painted bull’s-eye, ready to take off and be mistaken for an angel or demon by the denizens of Nod.

‘What do you call this place?’ I asked, sincerely impressed.

He looked disgusted. ‘Science World, Paul. What are you on, man? It’s called Science World. Quebec Street. Vancouver, British Columbia. Holy fuck, has everyone in the world gone crazy?’

* * *

Dr London, when I met him, was a surprise: a fat cat in a world growing leaner by the second. Even before Nod the sight of a stout doctor would have raised at least one if not both of my eyebrows—and London must have tipped the scales at 300 pounds or more. The West Coast doctors I’d known had always been fastidious exercise addicts. It was as though all the dark and terrible secrets of the human body they’d learned in medical school had electro-shocked them into frenetic self-improvement regimes. But not Dr Wallace London.

He was in his early thirties. Thinning blonde hair. Red-cheeks and a double-chin surrounding an embarrassed, teen-aged grin—but a grin I immediately sensed could be vicious, like the fat kid in high school who gets teased and teased and then turns mean.

And so, when Dave presented me to London in the cafeteria, I trod gingerly.

‘Good to meet you!’ The doctor reached forward and held my left hand between his two damp paws.

‘Same here.’

He had a British accent that I was sure was fake before he’d spoken three full sentences. His overall demeanour strove for ‘gracious host’ but he came across as more charmed than charming. A speckless white lab coat was wrapped around his girth and held in place by a wide white belt. He was a Cat Sleeper, too. They all were.

As he studied my face, Dr London was slowly licking his chops. Round and round, doing the full circle every three or four seconds: his fleshy lips were raw with it. Was he even a doctor? Almost certainly not. It was far more likely that, a couple of weeks ago, ‘Dr London’ had been living in his parents’ basement, strung out on video games and Internet porn. In other words, a kissing cousin to Charles.

‘You’ve got quite the set-up happening here.’

‘Thank you. Yes, I’d say we do. Some of us thought we should have made a convoy and headed east into the mountains to wait out the plague. But I disagreed. I felt that we’d want to be here when the madness ended in order to begin to put things back together. In the meantime, we do what we can to make sure those poor, demented bastards out there don’t destroy too much. We’re a government-in-waiting, if you like. We’ll have a jolly difficult time putting things back together as it is, without letting those poor bastards burn the place to the ground first. But they’ll be gone soon enough. Right now we kill the ones we can, but our ammunition is limited, so mostly we confine our activities to securing resources and rescuing people like yourself. Our fellow Sleepers.’

As he checked out my reaction I strove not to have one.

The cafeteria was open for business, with food being prepared on propane stoves. Seeing this, I realized how hungry I was and said as much to London. He gestured to one of his troops who went and got me a large bowl of stew and some freshly-baked flat bread.

While I ate, my stomach groaning with relief, London enthused about his plans.

‘I assume you’ve heard of the Four Weeks timetable? Of course you have. One more week and we can begin to take back the city, I think. We’ll begin in Chinatown—low density compared to downtown proper—and move west, building by building. Then over the Lion’s Gate to the hydro dams on the North Shore. We’ve got a couple of engineers on the team who’ll be able to get the power turned back on. We’ll take it all back. A terrible tragedy, by Jove, but we can only hope something stronger will emerge after all these trials.’

He paused and licked his lips some more.

I focussed on my stew and thought fast. London talked about rescuing Sleepers, but I had yet to see a real one here. What did that mean? Looking up, I saw he was giving me a dead-eye stare.

‘What’s up?’ London scowled, his accent slipping. Then he paused, twitched, and reverted to bad-Gatsby mode. ‘What do you think about it all, old chap?’

Two men at the next table, rifles slung across their backs, stared at me hard. Think? About what? I hadn’t been paying attention. A woman came up and set down two cups of coffee and a small pitcher of cream. As I tried to find the dropped thread of the conversation an odd expression drifted into view on London’s face.

‘Have you visited Stanley Park recently?’ he asked. The question popped out a little too eagerly for my liking. Behind his face, something rattled at a door. I sensed that the correct answer was ‘no’ and replied accordingly.

London rubbed his neck like a poor orphan boy rubbing a magic lamp. He reddened, and the effect was to cause the makeup around his eyes to look like two poached eggs about to slide down his cheeks.

‘Only we hear such strange stories about the park. Have you heard any rumours?’

‘Just the usual ones, I guess.’

‘Such as…’

‘Like about the kids.’

London stopped breathing, as did the rest of the room.

‘Yes,’ he began again after a moment. ‘We’ve heard similar things. What do you know?’

‘The usual stuff. That they sleep but don’t talk. That they live in the park. That the Awakened hate them and are hunting them down and killing them.’

Whispers everywhere, spreading like spider webs.

‘The Awakened? Is that what you call them?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s all you’ve heard?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

My heart was racing and racing but unable to escape the confines of my chest: it understood the danger I had stumbled into better than my poor brain.

London nodded and nodded, all the while stirring his coffee. Up and down. Around and around.

‘Would you like to hear what we’ve heard?’

‘Sure.’

He snorted. ‘Of course you’d like to hear, old chap. But can we trust you? Can you give me a reason? You are on our side, aren’t you? Or maybe you’re a spy…’

His accent was almost gone now, and his face was darkening. All around me rifles shifted in sweaty palms. Suddenly I knew why there were no other true Sleepers here: London wanted reasons from the mice he brought home, but all our pockets were full of holes. Still, I had to give him whatever pieces of lint I was able to pinch between my fingers.

‘There’s one more thing. A group of the Awakened. They’ve got a plan.’

‘A group? What group?’ He was getting angry. ‘And what plan? Why are you hiding things from us after we’ve taken you in and fed you? Wh-what are you up to?’

‘They’re planning to go into the park soon and exterminate the children. They say the kids are demons.’

Uproar all around us. London gasped, but then pulled himself together and raised a hand. Silence fell like a dropped hammer.

‘What do you mean, ‘exterminate’ them?’

‘They plan to march through the park and drive the children into the ocean and drown them.’

‘Where are these people?!’ London was keeping his fury on a choke chain, but just barely. ‘When do they plan on doing this?’

‘I don’t know. Soon.’

‘Then where? And how many?’

London signalled to one of his guards and a rifle muzzle slowly began to rise and point at me.

‘They’re in the West End, down near Davie.’

The rifle drooped. London nodded for me to continue, reassured by the old place names.

‘There are a couple of hundred of them and they’ve taken over a school. They’re the ones who call themselves the Awakened. They’re well-armed.’ This was a lie, but the results were what I’d hoped for. Eyes that had been locked on mine now met each other around and around the room. My stock was rising. ‘I can help you.’

London took his time replying and when he did his accent was back in place. ‘What makes you think you can help us, old chap? What makes you think we need your help?’

‘I didn’t say you needed it. I just said I could offer some assistance. If you choose to accept my offer.’

He nodded, mollified. ‘And what is your offer?’

‘They see me as some sort of prophet. It sounds weird, but they’ll do anything I tell them to. I can keep an eye on their plans, keep you in the loop.’

‘And why are you making this very kind offer?’

‘It sounds like you don’t want the children in the park hurt. Neither do I. That puts us on the same side.’

Dr London chewed on my words for a good long while.

I knew he wouldn’t be able to fault my logic. What I didn’t know, though, was why he didn’t want the kids in the park killed. What did he have in mind for them? A kind of collective cognitive fog cloaked the Cat Sleepers. On some level they had to know their time was as limited as that of the people outside their chain link fences. So what was their game?

The doctor spoke. ‘Do me the kindness of taking a walk around the base while I think your offer over. In fact, it’s late in a busy day, and I need some sleep. We can talk more in the morning.’

‘Sure.’ I stood up and left the cafeteria as London gathered a couple of his people around him and they began to talk in excited whispers.

* * *

The main floor of Science World was large: ten or twenty thousand square feet of mostly open space beneath the dome. For the next few hours, as I wandered around, London’s soldiers watched me out of the corners of their eyes but kept at their tasks, which mostly appeared to consist of arranging and rearranging their formidable arsenals of weapons and food: they must have raided a Costco and a Home Depot back before things went completely apeshit. Nobody wanted to talk, but everywhere I went people stared hard at me.

A couple of dozen cots had been set up in the former gift shop near the front of the building and the windows covered by thick sheets of black felt. I could make out a few of London’s people as they lay on their backs in the dark, eyes closed, faking sleep for the same reason a woman fakes an orgasm or a man professes religious conversion: desperation to belong. Probably, they thought they really were sleeping.

In the furthest corner of the main space, a curtained-off area with two sentries posted outside attracted my attention.

‘What’s in there?’ I asked one.

‘The lab,’ she replied, eyes twitching as she exchanged a nervous look with her partner.

‘What sort of lab?’

‘The doctor’s operating theatre. It’s where he does his—’

‘If you don’t know, you shouldn’t ask,’ her partner butted in angrily. ‘Questions lead to lies.’

I was about to ask about his curious statements, which rang with Orwellian undertones, when I saw something that made me keep my mouth shut. Just behind a gap in the curtains that served as the entrance to London’s ‘operating theatre’ stood a cardboard box filled to overbrimming with running shoes of various sizes. Buzz Lightyear’s face grinned wickedly at me from a tiny pair on top.

Then a voice from behind me: ‘Dr London is ready for you now.’

* * *

Back in the cafeteria, combed and clean, London and six of his people, Dave among them, were all sitting on one side of a table, like a kind of military tribunal.