The Nothing Men, page 24
part #1 of The Nothing Men Series
BEEEP!
Red.
A third time.
BEEEP!
Still red.
“Oh, shit,” Ben whispered.
Out. He had to get out now. With the file tucked securely under his arm, he crossed the landing to the exit. The door was stenciled with the words EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY – ALARM WILL SOUND.
He scanned the access panel with the card one last time, but again, the box beeped its unhappy beep.
Screw it, he thought. He turned toward the emergency exit and depressed the lock-release bar, steeling himself for the chaos of the klaxon alarms howling in his ear but anticipating the sweet breath of fresh air. As he pressed the bar, he kept moving, not wanting to break stride as he made his way outside.
And so it was to his great surprise when his shoulder connected with the very recalcitrant door. He pressed the release bar again, and then a third time, but the door remained shut. Fear bloomed into full-blown panic, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since the moment that woman’s teeth had sunk into his calf so many moons ago. He rattled the door, he kicked the door, but it held firm. He was trapped in the stairwell.
Well then.
At least he could finally find out what he’d come here to learn. Even if it wouldn’t do anyone else any good. He sat down and opened the folder that he’d purloined from Robert Bowen. It wasn’t a huge file, maybe half an inch thick. He could get through a little bit before they took him back into custody. Like a hungry man eyeing an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, he flipped the file open and began to read.
The first page was a cover memorandum, titled Eisenhower Interstate Highway Reconstruction Protocol 2027-2030. Confused, he flipped through the rest of the report, looking for any reference to Tranquility, something that might pull the curtain back a little, but he found nothing. Instead, he came across maps of the interstate highway system marked with little red crosses indicating areas needing repair, bid sheets from highway contractors, civil engineering reports. He closed the folder and set it in his lap, fully aware that this file he’d stolen didn’t have the first goddamn thing to do with Tranquility.
He laughed out loud at himself, first an insane-sounding high-pitched giggle, quickly escalating into a belly-shaking, body-trembling roar of laughter, as though he’d seen the holy grail of keyboard-playing cats on YouTube.
Had he really thought that he would accomplish anything? That had been silly. A lie he’d told himself to make himself feel useful. A lie so convincing that he’d managed to pull Ellie along in his wake of naïve stupidity. He felt stupid and small, his wasted life lying before him broken and ruined, like a crime scene, waiting for a seasoned investigator to roll up in a dark brown sedan and sort through the mess that was left behind, to make some sense of how things had gone so terribly wrong.
He was nothing. A nothing man. Just another statistic, another sad story from humanity’s biggest sad face. When they taught the Panic in history books fifty years down the road, Ben would be just another one of the faceless millions who were lost, another anonymous soul in a sea of them. One day, Gavin would tell his future wife that his father had died in the Panic, and maybe she’d have a similar story about her father or mother or uncle or best friend. And that would tie them together, the way it tied them all together.
The sound of a door clattering open broke him from his trance; a stampede of boots and shouts filled the stairwell in a tsunami of chaos barreling down toward him. He looked at the automatic rifle leaned up against the step and wondered if he should just eat a bullet right now; it would probably be preferable to the fate that certainly awaited him once they arrived. Or maybe he should just hunker down and take out as many Volunteers as he could before he ran out of ammunition. At least he would have done something to make these assholes pay for the carnage back at the Haven. But it seemed like more trouble than it was worth.
They’d locked down the stairwell.
They’d caught him.
And he had nothing.
He lifted the gun, aimed it at the landing.
He rested his finger on the trigger.
25
In the end, Ben did not make a suicidal last stand in the stairwell. They’d found him on the landing, his hands on his head in the universal language of surrender. He debated turning to face the wall to show how little a threat he posed, lest a Volunteer with an itchy trigger finger mistake his decision to face them head on as an offensive maneuver, but he decided against it. He wanted to look them in the face, and he wanted them to see his red eyes and be a little bit afraid.
They confiscated his weapon and cuffed him. A quartet of Volunteers escorted him to a holding room on the third floor and guarded him until Whitmore arrived. Ben sat with his cuffed hands folded on the square table in the center of the room while Whitmore took report from one of the guards.
“Your carriage has turned into a pumpkin, Mr. Sullivan,” he said, taking the seat across from Ben.
“Meaning what?”
“You’ll be held pending a detention hearing.”
“What’s the charge?”
“Same ones from before,” Whitmore said. “Plus six counts of murder.”
Ben laughed out loud at this and wondered if Whitmore actually thought that Ben believed he would see an ounce of due process before they remanded him to a detention facility or, more likely, shot him in the head and dumped his body in a landfill.
“I didn’t realize I’d said something funny, Mr. Sullivan,” he had said.
“This idea of a detention hearing is funny,” Ben had replied. “This whole goddamn thing is funny.”
“I don’t think it’s funny at all, Mr. Sullivan.”
Ben hated being addressed as Mr. Sullivan, even when it wasn’t coming from a self-righteous douchebag like Whitmore. It stank of insincerity and it stank of contempt.
“Too bad.”
And so Whitmore had left him there for another hour, or maybe it was two, or maybe it was three minutes because after a few seconds, it quickly became difficult to gauge the passage of time, and Ben spent the rest of his time in that holding room pondering the difficulty of marking time. It kept him from having to think about Sarah or Gavin or the Haven or Ellie or the millions of Redeyes that the Department seemed hell-bent on screwing over.
After a while, he needed to use the bathroom, but they ignored his pleas for a restroom break, and so he ended up peeing in the corner of the room.Then he’d had to sit in the room stinking of urine for yet another indeterminate period of time. By the time they came and got him, he no longer gave a shit what they did.
They marched him down the hallway, through a series of corridors and onto a loading dock, where a white box truck emblazoned with the Department logo awaited them. His two escorts followed him up the truck’s ramp, and Mr. Whitmore joined them a few minutes later. The truck had been retrofitted with hard metal benches bolted to the wall of the cargo bay and leg chains dangling from each bench. Each of Ben’s ankles was fastened to a cuff, but being the good sport that he was, Whitmore had left Ben’s hands free. Ben wore an orange prison jumpsuit and baby blue paper booties, the point of which were completely lost on him.
Whitmore, of course, was immaculately dressed, his suit neat and ironed, his shirt a brilliant white, virtually crackling with starch. It was warm in the truck, but the knot of his expensive tie, of course, was perfect and uncompromised, an unspoiled field, because Mr. Whitmore was a serious man doing serious things, whereas Ben was simply old gum stuck in the treads of the struggling country’s shoe.
Time dragged by, more slowly and maddeningly than Ben could ever remember feeling in his whole life. The combination of not knowing where he was, where they were going, and how much longer he had to live was warping his ability to assess the passage of time. The two soldiers sat ramrod straight, one on either side of him. Whitmore sat across from him and seemed to enjoy studying Ben’s reaction to the circumstances in which he found himself. He smoked a cigarette, and then another and then a third. The smoke smelled rancid and acidic and burned Ben’s eyes.
“That was pretty clever what you did back there,” Whitmore said. “Bowen’s a pretty smart guy, one of our brightest. You stroll into just about anyone else’s office, you probably walk out with what you’re looking for. I think it was just dumb luck that we caught you.”
Ben didn’t reply; instead he returned Whitmore’s gaze, tracking the man’s eyes with his own. However long this took, he wanted Whitmore to know that he wasn’t afraid of him. Whatever they did to him, he wasn’t afraid anymore. He was in no hurry to die, but he was not afraid.
“I blame myself, actually,” Whitmore said, leaning back in his chair. “I guess I didn’t really expect you to show up here. That took guts, Mr. Sullivan.”
And the bitch of it was that Whitmore probably did respect him a little for his dumb-ass move.
“Although for the life of me, I can’t imagine why you would take such a risk.”
You and me both, brother.
“Care to share?”
Ben continued to sit stone still.
“Let’s make a game of it,” Whitmore said, a delighted grin blooming on his face.
Ben couldn’t bear to look at him anymore so he picked out a spot on the floor of the cargo bay and stared at that instead.
“You really don’t know what Tranquility is, do you?” Whitmore said.
Ben looked up at him, and he sort of wished he hadn’t, because Whitmore’s grin had evolved into a full-on smile, full of sparkling white teeth, the mouth of a man who didn’t struggle for basic necessities. He probably continued to use one of the electric toothbrushes with the spinning heads, his middle finger to the rolling blackouts that continued across the nation.
Whitmore had the look of a man who knew he’d won, who knew that he’d gotten his man. The last thread that needed to be snipped. The final piece of the puzzle. He looked back at the floor, back at the tiny spot in the shape of a crescent moon, and wondered about its origin. A coffee stain. Maybe dried blood.
“Mr. Sullivan,” Whitmore said. “Aren’t you the least bit curious where we’re taking you?”
Ben looked back up at Whitmore, annoyed with the man for distracting him from the stain on the floor.
“No. Not particularly.”
He looked back down at the stain and thought about Ellie. He wondered how long she would wait for him before she realized he wasn’t coming back. He wondered how long it would take her to start the next chapter of her life now that this one was drawing to a close. He hoped that she would find some solace. She hadn’t been any more to blame for killing her husband than he had been for trying to kill her. He hoped that she would be able to move on and that she wouldn’t stay rooted in the past, anchored by the memory of a terrible thing she had had to do. Because eventually life would rise around her like floodwaters, and if she couldn’t rise with it, she would drown. He didn’t want that to happen.
He still wasn’t afraid. He could control it. He could hide it from them. If he could hide that from them, by ignoring them, not rising to the bait, he’d be okay. It was hard to fear a situation that you controlled. That’s why it was easy to be afraid of the dark or that strange lump or that weird noise late night, just loud enough to wake you up. Beyond your control. And so he sat there, quietly, letting Whitmore and his lackeys think whatever they were going to think.
Ben went back to the spot on the floor.
He must have fallen asleep because the sensation of the truck hitching to a stop startled him, and for a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was. But then he saw the two Volunteers and Whitmore’s stupid face, and it all came rushing back. He sighed softly. At least he’d gotten some sleep. It was, in fact, the first decent snooze he’d had in a while. His head was clear, and despite a bit of a kink in his neck, he felt remarkably refreshed. Amazing how well one could sleep when the mind was unoccupied with a bunch of useless clutter.
Whitmore stood up and stretched. As he did so, his cell phone began to chirp.
“Whitmore.”
He listened intently for a moment.
“We’ll disembark here and walk the rest of the way,” he said.
Another pause as he listened to the party on the other end of the line.
“Excellent.”
He ended the call and slipped the phone inside his jacket pocket.
“We’re here,” he said.
A moment later, Ben heard the squelch and squeal of the truck’s metal door as it rolled open, revealing the early evening gloom beyond. The driver, a third Volunteer, extended the metal ramp from a hidden slot under the floor of the truck. The other two unhooked Ben’s leg chains and escorted him off the truck.
The air was fresh and clean, as though it had been laundered. After years of the post-Panic miasma, he’d forgotten what fresh air smelled like. The scent was a shock to the system. It was so fragrant and crisp that he sneezed twice. He looked off to the east, back in the direction they’d come from and saw nothing but undeveloped land, the road they were on the sole concession to human development, cutting through the land like a black vein.
“That air is something, eh, Sullivan?” Whitmore said as he followed Ben down the ramp.
They’d stopped in front of a small building. A Department banner, rippling in the breeze, had been strung across the structure’s façade. The road they were on plunged away from them into the falling twilight. Behind him, tall barbed-wire fence stretched away in either direction, following the slope of the land. About a half-mile off, the fence lines suddenly ended, and in the dim twilight, he could just make out the fence turning north. There were a dozen watchtowers spaced apart along the perimeter fence. Dozens of buildings dotted the complex.
It was quiet here, the silence magnified by the white blast of the spotlights. It felt like the calm before the storm. As though the place was now ready for whatever it had been designed for.
A feeling of unease began to nibble at Ben like a lost puppy scratching at a back door.
“Where are we?”
The question got away from him like an unruly child. He wished he hadn’t asked, because he wasn’t particularly sure that he wanted to know the answer, and he didn’t like giving Whitmore that kind of power over him. But there it was, hanging out there for Whitmore to return however he saw fit. There were so many ways he could return serve. He could lie, he could mock, and he could refuse to answer the question at all.
Or, and this was what scared Ben most of all, he could tell the truth. And Ben wasn’t sure he wanted to know it.
“Ben, this is your new home.”
It was the first time Whitmore had ever addressed him as Ben, and it sounded twisted and awful, and he now hated the sound of his own name. It was tainted now, corrupted, anathema to hear the name that his parents had chosen for him, the name of his maternal grandfather, uttered by this piece of human garbage.
Ben bit his lip so he wouldn’t rise to the bait. He ignored the mystery of his new surroundings and stared at his captor, this anonymous agent of the Department. He really looked at him for the first time. Ben was terrible at deducing how old someone was, but Whitmore looked to be about his age. In another life, they may have been contemporaries. Maybe even friends. Who was this man? What had he done before the Panic? Did he have a wife? A husband? Kids? A dog? Did he like to read fiction? Did he go to dogfights? Did he drink too much? Why did he hate Ben so much? Why did he hate the Reds so much? How could he derive so much pleasure from Ben’s suffering? Had Redeyes murdered his family? Or had his family become infected?
Did any of that matter?
Whitmore had said something.
“What was that?”
“Jesus Christ, I said if you need to take a piss, now would be the time.”
“I’m fine.”
Whitmore stepped up to the side of the building and relieved himself. “I’m getting to that age I gotta get up in the middle of the night to piss.”
No, Ben didn’t have to use the bathroom because he hadn’t had anything to drink in the last twenty-four hours.
Ben was suddenly annoyed with Whitmore and his little slice-of-life tale of middle age. He was rubbing Ben’s face in the wonder of the ordinary, the little checkpoints that every man expected to face on that long journey to old age.
Ben scanned the quiet landscape, dotted with old farmhouses and dead cornfields, and briefly considered making a run for it. He wouldn’t make it far before the grind of the M4 rifles cut him down, leaving him a bloody mess on the ground. It might be worth it, though, just to screw Whitmore’s life up; he’d probably be in a lot of hot water for failing to deliver the prisoner to wherever the hell they were going.
On the other hand, Whitmore would probably enjoy ordering these yahoos to gun him down; for him, it might actually be worth the dressing down he’d get back at DRR headquarters. They could always find another Redeye troublemaker. Overhead, a flock of geese streamed south, squawking in the evening air. Ben looked up, watching the birds fly in perfect formation. It was things like this, little subtle things that popped up out of nowhere, like an apocalyptic jack-in-the-box, to remind you that holy shit, the world nearly came to an end.
As Ben turned back to face his captors, Whitmore punched him in the stomach, leaving him doubled over, gasping for air. Despite the sudden burst of agony, Ben couldn’t explain the joy that was coursing through his body as he listened to Whitmore dress him down. He’d never been religious, and what all with the Panic and everything, he was hard-pressed to think that he’d been wrong about it, but he thought this ecstasy he was now feeling must have been something like finding God. Never in his life had anything brought him the kind of joy like pushing Whitmore’s buttons.
After taking a minute to catch his breath, his hands on his knees like a winded basketball player, Ben rose back up to his full height.
“Where were we?” Whitmore asked.
“You were going to tell me about what we were doing here.”
