"c313" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)

8:27 P.M., Friday, March 3, 2000
Agate, Colorado

Nate sorted out his problems into priority order, writing a list on scrap paper by flashlight: First heat, then lights (if not related to heat), then food. Next came weapons for protection in case whatever maniacs had done this came back after his restored heat, lights, and food. After that, find General Sherman, find Amber, clean up and rebuild. It focused his mind to make the list. He wasn't entirely sanguine about finding the cat. He debated whether to switch finding Amber and General Sherman, and felt himself wasting precious moments agonizing over the loss of both. Amber was better able to fend for herself, he decided, and left the list as it was. The wood stove seemed fine, but his supply of chopped wood had been exhausted. It looked like squatters had been living here for at least a week before they'd run out of wood and were too lazy to chop a tree. He paused to digest that this implied Amber had not called him in Halifax from here. Or perhaps she was calling about this. He filed that for further thought. He chopped down a smallish tree and kindled the green branches until he had a warming but smoky fire. He assumed the generator was the central problem to both main heat and lights. He traced the non-functional generator element by element. The car battery for starting it looked fine, according to his multi-meter. It had fuel, a good third of a tank. This depressed Nate, since he'd hoped it had simply run dry. On the plus side, this meant he didn't have to face finding gasoline just yet. He tried the starter repeatedly. Nothing. He pored over the schematics for the unit, extremely glad he'd secured those. After several hours of poking and prodding with his meter and testing connections, he kicked himself. It was simply a blown fuse whose existence he hadn't known about. Luckily it was the same as the others, and the generator huffed to life near midnight. The furnace seemed to be working, and had sufficient fuel oil. Food was likewise available. He was afraid he'd have to go out and barter or steal food like he had on the trip here. He'd hated that state of perpetual hunger that just balanced his moral aversion to theft. But many of his secret hiding places held their bounty. Military rations, cans of food and powered milk, even his trusty Glock 17. He hoped not revealing these small caches to his brother hadn't hurt them. Of more concern was the dead body he found in a back bedroom. Male, fortyish, scruffy, goodwill clothing. A bullet wound to the head had bled profusely over his hardwood floor. The body was frozen, but it was still a stinky, sickly mess. Nate stumbled to the bathroom and puked. Skin crawling, on the verge of puking again, he dragged the body outside beyond where the wood pile had been. Deal with that later. The sky was beginning to lighten. His bed stunk of someone else's body odor, but he was too wiped out to care. He dreamt that he was stumbling after Amber in a wheat field. The stalks cut his face as he blundered past. Every now and then he could jump up above the stalks and see her, but no matter how fast he ran, she only receded, slowly, like a vision of Mary rising into the clouds on a sunbeam. She had her arms outstretched, and was plaintively calling to him. Calling... calling... calling... The phone was ringing. Nate jumped out of the bed. It was his phone, genuinely ringing! But where the hell was the phone? "Keep ringing baby, just keep ringing." The deedle-deedle-deet came from somewhere amidst a pile of rubbish in his room that had once been his giant flat panel monitor. He couldn't find it, and dashed instead to the front room, his foot dragging a bit of wreckage. "Hello?" A female voice asked, "Is this—" The line went dead. Nate stood in stunned silence for a moment, then loosed a primal scream. Amber. What to do, what to do. Call Amber's apartment? No, don't tie up the phone. He stared at it, willing it to ring. It didn't. He knew she'd try again as soon as he picked it up, of course. Damn USWest for denying him a second line. Drive into town and see if there was a pay phone? No, he'd miss a call here. Wait—if he could find his cell phone... He tore up the house, or at least reshuffled its existing destruction, looking for the phone. He looked in all his secret hiding holes, rifled drawers, scattered old piles into new piles. That was when he found the note. Hidden under his mattress was a folded piece of paper. Nate recognized Russ's handwriting. "2/12/2000. Nate, generator broke, we don't know how to fix it. Most people are going back to their families. Mary Beth and I will be with Uncle Harry, if he'll have us. We're all taking what food we can. We plan to meet back here in a week, maybe elsewhere after that, since the phones are pretty spotty. Here's a list of where everyone else is heading." He scanned the list. His hands trembled when he reached two thirds of the way down. "Amber - Barr Lake Relocation Camp." So she'd been here! Or had at least met someone who had. He gathered together an emergency kit and headed toward the camp northeast of Denver. He didn't know exactly where it was, but suspected he'd see signs once he got in the vicinity of the lake area. Something nagged at him on the drive past the snowswept prairies. Why was Amber at a relocation camp? Was this just since the group's exodus from his farmhouse? Perhaps she had returned there days after he left. Though where was she for all of January? He thought he'd known her; but the closer he drove, the less he was sure. He'd always tried to be a realist, and tried to see Amber for the fickle, shy, independent woman she was. Yet with his heart pumping wilder with every mile, his doubts began to solidify. Knowing exactly where she was made things concrete in a way he hadn't been able to face before. If she was living in a camp, her feelings for him went beyond mere anger at his bad behavior. When he reached the camp, already looking tattered like a beaten army though barely two months old, his heart had calmed itself, but had sunk to the bottom of a deep well. He asked the gatekeeper where he could find Amber's tent. He knew the instant the guard gave him a slightly quizzical look that she was never coming back to him. Their spirits had intertwined for a time, but never meshed. It was no surprise to him when he arrived at the medical quonset hut and found her inside, not sick, but carrying a bedpan and wearing a candy-striped, red-cross-emblazoned nurse's aide vest over her jeans and sweater. She paused mid-stride, briefly, flashed her eyes in momentary surprise, then walked past him toward a work area in back. She'd aged somehow in these past weeks; her face had lost its childhood smoothness. She had dark circles under her eyes, small crows' feet at their corners, and a worn crease to her mouth. He followed her to the counter in the back, where she dumped the bedpan into a biohazard chute. A weasely looking guy, maybe twenty, with a silly small square tuft of black hair under his lip, came up behind Amber and put his arms around her middle. "Hey, bitch, what's going on?" "Not now, Devin." "Whatever." He walked away. Nate stood, too confused to know what to say. She looked at him hard for a moment, a layer of resignation in her face over a bed of anger. "I gotta wash my hands." She stripped off her clear plastic gloves and scrubbed up. "It's really sweet you came looking for me. But I bet you thought I'd be huddled in a tent, freezing, just waiting for a white knight to ride up." Nate blushed; he hadn't put it in those terms, but of course they fit. So many thoughts tumbled toward his mouth. You should have told me. How long has this been going on? What's this loser got that I don't? Why did you leave the house? Glib movie quotes eluded him. "I, uh, thought you'd called." "I did. Left a message with some woman." "You mean today?" That made no sense. "No, weeks ago. They wouldn't say where you were, but connected me to someplace. Some woman, private something-or-other." If she hadn't called today, then who...? But that didn't matter. His vision was pure and focused. "So, this is what you're doing." It came out sounding like an ultimatum, but he wasn't sure why. "Yeah, this is what I'm doing. Look around you, Nate. The world sucks shit right now. Somebody has to fix it. I can't do much, but I'm doing what I can. You opened my eyes to that, but all you could think about was yourself, building your little toy fortress. I've been working with the Red Cross since December, getting ready. That's where I was when I left that two a.m. message that pissed you off so much. I tried to tell you a dozen times last year, but you didn't want to hear it. You were too busy getting yourself ready, you couldn't think of anyone else." He felt stung. He wanted to protest that she wasn't being fair, how the hell did she know how much he'd sacrificed in the CyberCorps, how much help he'd been, how his toy fortress had helped dozens of people. But he couldn't say it, because he knew he shouldn't even be here. He should still be in Halifax, fixing programs. He'd been right to prepare, but she'd extrapolated it further. In the final analysis, he'd been selfish, while she'd been selfless. He wouldn't have believed her even if she'd communicated it to him back in December; he would have thought she was with someone like Devin. His selfishness and disbelief were the same thing that had landed everyone in this mess. He wiped a sleeve across his eyes, embarrassed that his nose was suddenly snuffly. Rationally he understood that he'd never known her; but that didn't make his emotional investment any less. "You were calling to break up." It wasn't a question. "I owed you that. And to tell you that I took your cat over to Jamal's." She sighed. "If it's any consolation, I never slept with Devin until after I called." Nate felt wrung out, knew it would take time to heal, to trust, but at the same time he felt relieved that it was over, that he, like the world, could rebuild better than before. "You're going to dump him too, you know," Nate said with a nod toward Devin, who was changing sheets on a cot in the distance. "That's my problem, isn't it. You never know what the future will hold." Nate nodded, then smiled philosophically. They exchanged emotionless hugs, and call-me-if-you-need-anythings, and Nate began the trek home. The best thing about being at the bottom, he thought, is that it was all up from there.

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Chapter 31.3

8:27 P.M., Friday, March 3, 2000
Agate, Colorado

Nate sorted out his problems into priority order, writing a list on scrap paper by flashlight: First heat, then lights (if not related to heat), then food. Next came weapons for protection in case whatever maniacs had done this came back after his restored heat, lights, and food. After that, find General Sherman, find Amber, clean up and rebuild. It focused his mind to make the list. He wasn't entirely sanguine about finding the cat. He debated whether to switch finding Amber and General Sherman, and felt himself wasting precious moments agonizing over the loss of both. Amber was better able to fend for herself, he decided, and left the list as it was. The wood stove seemed fine, but his supply of chopped wood had been exhausted. It looked like squatters had been living here for at least a week before they'd run out of wood and were too lazy to chop a tree. He paused to digest that this implied Amber had not called him in Halifax from here. Or perhaps she was calling about this. He filed that for further thought. He chopped down a smallish tree and kindled the green branches until he had a warming but smoky fire. He assumed the generator was the central problem to both main heat and lights. He traced the non-functional generator element by element. The car battery for starting it looked fine, according to his multi-meter. It had fuel, a good third of a tank. This depressed Nate, since he'd hoped it had simply run dry. On the plus side, this meant he didn't have to face finding gasoline just yet. He tried the starter repeatedly. Nothing. He pored over the schematics for the unit, extremely glad he'd secured those. After several hours of poking and prodding with his meter and testing connections, he kicked himself. It was simply a blown fuse whose existence he hadn't known about. Luckily it was the same as the others, and the generator huffed to life near midnight. The furnace seemed to be working, and had sufficient fuel oil. Food was likewise available. He was afraid he'd have to go out and barter or steal food like he had on the trip here. He'd hated that state of perpetual hunger that just balanced his moral aversion to theft. But many of his secret hiding places held their bounty. Military rations, cans of food and powered milk, even his trusty Glock 17. He hoped not revealing these small caches to his brother hadn't hurt them. Of more concern was the dead body he found in a back bedroom. Male, fortyish, scruffy, goodwill clothing. A bullet wound to the head had bled profusely over his hardwood floor. The body was frozen, but it was still a stinky, sickly mess. Nate stumbled to the bathroom and puked. Skin crawling, on the verge of puking again, he dragged the body outside beyond where the wood pile had been. Deal with that later. The sky was beginning to lighten. His bed stunk of someone else's body odor, but he was too wiped out to care. He dreamt that he was stumbling after Amber in a wheat field. The stalks cut his face as he blundered past. Every now and then he could jump up above the stalks and see her, but no matter how fast he ran, she only receded, slowly, like a vision of Mary rising into the clouds on a sunbeam. She had her arms outstretched, and was plaintively calling to him. Calling... calling... calling... The phone was ringing. Nate jumped out of the bed. It was his phone, genuinely ringing! But where the hell was the phone? "Keep ringing baby, just keep ringing." The deedle-deedle-deet came from somewhere amidst a pile of rubbish in his room that had once been his giant flat panel monitor. He couldn't find it, and dashed instead to the front room, his foot dragging a bit of wreckage. "Hello?" A female voice asked, "Is this—" The line went dead. Nate stood in stunned silence for a moment, then loosed a primal scream. Amber. What to do, what to do. Call Amber's apartment? No, don't tie up the phone. He stared at it, willing it to ring. It didn't. He knew she'd try again as soon as he picked it up, of course. Damn USWest for denying him a second line. Drive into town and see if there was a pay phone? No, he'd miss a call here. Wait—if he could find his cell phone... He tore up the house, or at least reshuffled its existing destruction, looking for the phone. He looked in all his secret hiding holes, rifled drawers, scattered old piles into new piles. That was when he found the note. Hidden under his mattress was a folded piece of paper. Nate recognized Russ's handwriting. "2/12/2000. Nate, generator broke, we don't know how to fix it. Most people are going back to their families. Mary Beth and I will be with Uncle Harry, if he'll have us. We're all taking what food we can. We plan to meet back here in a week, maybe elsewhere after that, since the phones are pretty spotty. Here's a list of where everyone else is heading." He scanned the list. His hands trembled when he reached two thirds of the way down. "Amber - Barr Lake Relocation Camp." So she'd been here! Or had at least met someone who had. He gathered together an emergency kit and headed toward the camp northeast of Denver. He didn't know exactly where it was, but suspected he'd see signs once he got in the vicinity of the lake area. Something nagged at him on the drive past the snowswept prairies. Why was Amber at a relocation camp? Was this just since the group's exodus from his farmhouse? Perhaps she had returned there days after he left. Though where was she for all of January? He thought he'd known her; but the closer he drove, the less he was sure. He'd always tried to be a realist, and tried to see Amber for the fickle, shy, independent woman she was. Yet with his heart pumping wilder with every mile, his doubts began to solidify. Knowing exactly where she was made things concrete in a way he hadn't been able to face before. If she was living in a camp, her feelings for him went beyond mere anger at his bad behavior. When he reached the camp, already looking tattered like a beaten army though barely two months old, his heart had calmed itself, but had sunk to the bottom of a deep well. He asked the gatekeeper where he could find Amber's tent. He knew the instant the guard gave him a slightly quizzical look that she was never coming back to him. Their spirits had intertwined for a time, but never meshed. It was no surprise to him when he arrived at the medical quonset hut and found her inside, not sick, but carrying a bedpan and wearing a candy-striped, red-cross-emblazoned nurse's aide vest over her jeans and sweater. She paused mid-stride, briefly, flashed her eyes in momentary surprise, then walked past him toward a work area in back. She'd aged somehow in these past weeks; her face had lost its childhood smoothness. She had dark circles under her eyes, small crows' feet at their corners, and a worn crease to her mouth. He followed her to the counter in the back, where she dumped the bedpan into a biohazard chute. A weasely looking guy, maybe twenty, with a silly small square tuft of black hair under his lip, came up behind Amber and put his arms around her middle. "Hey, bitch, what's going on?" "Not now, Devin." "Whatever." He walked away. Nate stood, too confused to know what to say. She looked at him hard for a moment, a layer of resignation in her face over a bed of anger. "I gotta wash my hands." She stripped off her clear plastic gloves and scrubbed up. "It's really sweet you came looking for me. But I bet you thought I'd be huddled in a tent, freezing, just waiting for a white knight to ride up." Nate blushed; he hadn't put it in those terms, but of course they fit. So many thoughts tumbled toward his mouth. You should have told me. How long has this been going on? What's this loser got that I don't? Why did you leave the house? Glib movie quotes eluded him. "I, uh, thought you'd called." "I did. Left a message with some woman." "You mean today?" That made no sense. "No, weeks ago. They wouldn't say where you were, but connected me to someplace. Some woman, private something-or-other." If she hadn't called today, then who...? But that didn't matter. His vision was pure and focused. "So, this is what you're doing." It came out sounding like an ultimatum, but he wasn't sure why. "Yeah, this is what I'm doing. Look around you, Nate. The world sucks shit right now. Somebody has to fix it. I can't do much, but I'm doing what I can. You opened my eyes to that, but all you could think about was yourself, building your little toy fortress. I've been working with the Red Cross since December, getting ready. That's where I was when I left that two a.m. message that pissed you off so much. I tried to tell you a dozen times last year, but you didn't want to hear it. You were too busy getting yourself ready, you couldn't think of anyone else." He felt stung. He wanted to protest that she wasn't being fair, how the hell did she know how much he'd sacrificed in the CyberCorps, how much help he'd been, how his toy fortress had helped dozens of people. But he couldn't say it, because he knew he shouldn't even be here. He should still be in Halifax, fixing programs. He'd been right to prepare, but she'd extrapolated it further. In the final analysis, he'd been selfish, while she'd been selfless. He wouldn't have believed her even if she'd communicated it to him back in December; he would have thought she was with someone like Devin. His selfishness and disbelief were the same thing that had landed everyone in this mess. He wiped a sleeve across his eyes, embarrassed that his nose was suddenly snuffly. Rationally he understood that he'd never known her; but that didn't make his emotional investment any less. "You were calling to break up." It wasn't a question. "I owed you that. And to tell you that I took your cat over to Jamal's." She sighed. "If it's any consolation, I never slept with Devin until after I called." Nate felt wrung out, knew it would take time to heal, to trust, but at the same time he felt relieved that it was over, that he, like the world, could rebuild better than before. "You're going to dump him too, you know," Nate said with a nod toward Devin, who was changing sheets on a cot in the distance. "That's my problem, isn't it. You never know what the future will hold." Nate nodded, then smiled philosophically. They exchanged emotionless hugs, and call-me-if-you-need-anythings, and Nate began the trek home. The best thing about being at the bottom, he thought, is that it was all up from there.


back | next home