The Cloud Seeders, page 16
She runs her hand up the stem, cocks her head.
"A pretty one."
*
We find Dustin sitting on the hood of the cruiser, not looking a bit surprised that we've returned empty-handed.
He's stoic.
That's the only word for it.
Ever since he pulled that trigger.
I turn to Jerusha, ask if she can give me a minute with him. She nods, goes to wait inside the truck.
"What?" he says before I even get started.
"We need to talk about it," I say and his whole body slumps, like I've poured cement over him.
"What's there to say? I just did what you didn't have the balls to."
I wasn't expecting this.
And maybe it's because I think he's right that it stings so much. Maybe we just tell ourselves something is the right thing to do because we're too afraid to do the things we really want.
I don't know.
And the fact that I don't know anymore scares the shit out of me.
"Yeah," I mumble. "Maybe."
"There's no maybe. He killed Mom and Dad. For no reason. And he didn't even fucking care. I hope he dies."
"Dustin…"
"Look, I'm not happy about it, okay. I still don't even know if I really meant to do it or not. But yeah, it sucks. It sucks bad and I'm probably a bad person and if I start to think about it right now, I'll want to dice my wrists up like Mom. So," he says, hopping down from the hood. "If it's okay by you, I'd rather not."
"Dustin," I say, but he walks away, climbs back in the cruiser before I can say anything else.
*
I turn the radio on, more so I don't have to think than anything else, and accidently get the police feed.
…Yellow. I repeat, we have a Code Yellow at Rehabilitation 14. That's a Code Yellow, people. All units respond…
I try to remember what Code Yellow stands for, but Dustin beats me to it.
"Insurgent activity," he says from the back seat. "I always wondered what that meant."
*
We park the cruiser down the road from Twink's and walk just in case they've got the place surrounded. We try the front door, but it's locked.
We go around back, but that's locked, too.
Dustin, not exactly known for his patience, does the very obvious and knocks.
Still nothing.
"Now what?" Jerusha says, scanning the lot of derelict cars. "You think they already got him? That we just didn't see him in Rehab?"
"No," Dustin says. "He's here. I know he is."
Dustin marches off through the cars.
Of course. The swimming pool.
As soon as the pool comes into view, we can see something's different. There's a cover over the top now.
And the ladder's been kicked away.
We hoist it up, put it back how it used to be.
When Dustin starts to climb up, I grab him, gently pull him back down. "Sorry, buddy. But I call dibs on this one."
"Fine," he says. "But shouldn't we warn him or something. What if he's sitting in there with a shotgun?"
"Good point," I say and we begin calling out his name, banging on the sides of the pool as I make my way up. He'd have to be unconscious not to hear. Even so, I call out his name a few more times before I pull the canvas flap back and peek my head in.
The first thing I see is Jerusha's old beater sitting dead center below. The second thing I see is Twink. Or who I think is Twink. He's lost some weight, looks about half the size I remember.
"You okay?" I call down, and I can see him squinting up through the darkness into the sunlight I'm letting in. "It's me. Thomas."
I can make out another ladder across the way that leads down into the pool. I'm about to climb back down, see if we can't position our ladder closer to his, when he finally responds.
"Water," I hear him mumble. "Water…"
"I'll be right back. Just hang in there, okay?"
"Well," Jerusha says when I hit ground again. "How bad is he?"
"Not bad," I lie. "But he needs water. Like now."
Dustin, not wasting any time, starts rummaging around in the cruiser, comes up with two full bottles. We reposition the ladder, but this time I let Dustin go up first. He races off ahead and by the time Jerusha and I catch up, we find Twink kneeling in front of Dustin, hugging him so fiercely I'm afraid he's going to snap him in two.
But it's not Dustin who snaps.
Twink does.
It sounds like one of his Wookie impersonations.
Wookie bawling…
Twink's eyes go from me, to Jerusha, back to Dustin, then to me again before he takes Dustin's face into his hands.
"What did they do to you?"
"It's okay," Dustin says and smiles. "I'm Godzilla now."
Twink looks at me, obviously confused, and, in way of explanation, I say, "It's from one of Mom's poems. Her idea of an artist."
Twink doesn't seem to know what to say to this, so he ruffles Dustin's hair, which, surprisingly, only elicits a minor frown from him.
Then it's Jerusha's turn.
He first checks both sides of her neck to see if she's been Stamped, then squeezes her arms. "They do anything to you?"
"Nothing physical," she lies.
"Good," he says. "We can fix the rest."
Once Twink manages to get a full bottle of water down and everybody gets used to the fact that everybody else is still alive, Twink asks what happened to us.
I explain about Rehab, about our parents being murdered, how we escaped and parked the cruiser down the road. I leave out the part about Dustin shooting Dumb cop though.
And the part about Jerusha.
"We'll put the cruiser in here," Twink says when I finish. "In fact, we better all plan on staying in here until things quiet down. My guess is it won't be long before they start sniffing around here again."
"Again?"
"They were here yesterday. Going through the house. Like they were looking for something."
"Sounds good to me," Dustin says. "Anything's better than the last dump we stayed at."
Understatement of the millennium.
We climb out and while Twink brings the giant crane to life, I run and get the cruiser. I park by the pool and we watch in awe as he lowers a five-foot wide magnet onto the hood and lifts it up, the wheels spinning in the air like the cruiser's trying to make a run for it.
By the look on Dustin's face, I can tell he's salivating for the chance to take the controls. Twink must see the same thing because he waves Dustin over, lets him take the captain's chair. And, for some reason, as Twink goes about explaining what each of the levers are for, I'm not at all nervous. Not even when the crane lurches and swings the truck from side to side.
"Should he be doing that?" Jerusha says.
"He's fine. He needs this sort of thing."
The words a father get stuck in my throat, but I manage to swallow them down.
Not now.
Not today.
We spend the rest of the afternoon packing our gear into the pool, me and Twink working together to tie the canvas-top back down.
"What if we have to pee?" I ask as he secures the last rope, leaving just enough of a flap open so we don't all suffocate.
"I have a portable Recycler set up behind Jerusha's car. I've been emptying it at night."
For light, we use candles.
And, with the blue of the walls and the wavering light, after a while it really does start to feel like we're under water. For dinner we splurge, each getting a food kit from the cruiser. It's pretty much the same fare we used to eat, but I swear even their horse pills taste better than ours.
For dessert, Twink hands us each a salal berry.
"This is all I had left to eat," he says and smiles weakly. "If I never see another berry in my lifetime, that'll be just fine by me."
All the delicious food we ate in Rehab comes to mind, but I decide to tell Twink and Jerusha about it later.
Maybe much later.
Before we go to bed, I see Twink alone in Jerusha's car holding a candle over a photo. It's the photo from his bedroom, the one of his wife. Her face shines up at me in the candlelight and suddenly her name rises to the surface.
Theresa.
That's all it takes for me to connect the dots.
Teeth.
Theresa was Teeth.
There's no mistaking it.
The height, the big smile.
The eyes.
It's her.
But what am I supposed to do? Tell Twink? And cause him to worry even more? Or worse, do something stupid like go back for her?
Not a chance.
I can't risk it.
Instead I keep it to myself and that night Jerusha, Dustin, and I all sleep in the same tent.
A Jerusha sandwich.
That's exactly what Dustin calls it before we fall asleep.
Eat the Rich: A Recipe
Preheat the oven to 451 degrees,
the temperature at which money burns.
Next, take three SUV's,
crack them in two
and remove the whites.
Mix in a bowl with two peels
of self-satisfied laughter
from a soccer mom
and one tablespoon
of crushed summer-home spice.
Bake for a generation.
Garnishing options:
Diced debutante
Julienned CEO
Dash of trustfunder
Ladle of landlord
Pinch of politician
17 Water is Good. Water is Great.
In the morning, after we each scarf down some more food from the cruiser, Twink asks what our plans are.
"Plans? You mean, like, for the future?"
"Sure," he says. "Once things settle down a little."
"Honestly, I hadn't thought about it," I say and turn to Jerusha. "What about you?"
"I want to go home," she says and I can tell it isn't easy for her to say it, that she knows what that might mean. "We can't keep running. I can't anyway."
Dustin comes back from the Recycler just as Jerusha's saying this. "I'm not going back home. I won't," he says, and I realize that the idea of him being anywhere other than right by my side has never really occurred to me before.
"We'll give it a week," I say. "See what happens. Who knows, maybe none of us is going anywhere."
I think of Mom and Dad, wonder what else the cops did to our house, if they had the decency to re-bury their bodies.
Twink, after rummaging around in Jerusha's car for a bit, comes back carrying a box.
The box with Dad's initials on it.
"Your dad sent this to me about a year ago. I tried to reach him, but when he didn't call back, I just assumed he was busy. Now I guess we know differently."
Twink removes the lid and inside there are a stack of blueprints. "This must be what your friends at Rehab were looking for." He rifles through the documents a bit. "I'm no expert, but it looks to me like plans for weather control. If I'm reading correctly, your father figured out a way to reduce a hurricane to a tiny squall. He must have been worried they'd use it for weather warfare."
Twink stops.
Pulls a photo from the box and hands it to me.
It's an old photo of me and Dustin. I've seen it before. It was taken on Dustin's first day of school. One of Mom's favorites.
"He wrote something on the back," Twink says. "I think you should see it."
I read it to myself, then hand it to Dustin.
If anything happens to us, please take care of them. You're the only person I can trust now. All my best, The Seeder.
"Jesus," I say once it sinks in. "He knew it was coming."
"It does appear that way," Twink says. "I only wish I'd done something sooner."
"It wouldn't have helped," I tell him. "Those monsters would have gotten to them sooner or later."
Twink nods his head, and I can tell he's doing his best to hold back the tears. It's funny, but even though the message is beyond grim, it's somehow nice to know Dad had at least one good friend.
I always thought the only person he knew was Mom.
"Well," Twink says, slowly regaining his composure. "I think it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. You all can stay here for as long as you'd like. And that includes you, young lady."
Jerusha gives him a pat on the knee, smiles, but doesn't say a word.
*
Twink's hooked a modified CB up to the Jerusha's battery, one with an extra long antenna for better reception, and throughout the day we check both the radio and the CB intermittently, taking turns flipping through the channels, hoping to hear news of a revolution.
But it isn't the CB that eventually gives us our first real news. Shortly after lunch, a special announcement from the President comes on over the radio.
"As a lot of you may have already heard, there's recently been an attempt to discredit our government. Somebody hacked into our system and broadcast those foul lies. There wasn't, and isn't, any truth to the claims made by the two criminals who took over one of our radio stations. There are some Citizens out there, though you can hardly call them that, some Leftovers, I should say, that would like nothing better than to see this country fail.
"Don't get me wrong now. My heart goes out to those two boys who lost their parents. But the truth is, their parents committed suicide. Horrible as that may be, and while we lost a great Cloud engineer, those boys are going to have to deal with the reality of what happened. And not this, this fantasy they've dreamed up about murder plots and your President wanting to control the weather.
"I can assure that the drought we are in, and have been in, is very, very real. I cannot tell you how disgusted it makes me to listen to these lies when all we've been doing is striving for your well being.
"To the people who still love and trust their country, please rest assured that we understand your concerns and are doing everything possible to catch these animals. And that's exactly what they are: very sick, very disturbed, animals.
"Please, remain calm. Remain Green."
"Remain douche-bag," Dustin mutters.
"You think people will believe him?" Jerusha asks, turning to Twink for an answer.
"I don't see why not. They've believed everything else they've been told. Life's a whole hell of a lot easier that way."
Jerusha and I continue to check the radio throughout the day while Dustin and Twink practice their Jedi skills and Wookie calls. Something I didn't think Dustin would still be interested in.
As I watch him parry with Twink, he seems different somehow though. Like he's just going through the stages. Even the smile he's sporting seems a little off.
Like he's playing, but ironically almost.
*
It's nearly dusk, and I'm fooling with the CB, scanning the channels, when something comes over the airwaves…
"Since when is food and water a perk? Since when is freedom a fucking perk?"
They're replaying it.
Somebody heard Dustin and recorded it.
"Holy shit," Dustin says, staring at the CB along with the rest of us. "That's me. Holy, holy shit."
We spend the next few minutes listening to our President incriminate himself. When it's over, they play it from the beginning again. We flip through the channels.
It's the same thing on each one.
We continue to monitor both the CB and the radio, but spend the majority of the evening dreaming and planning what we're going to do Post-Drought. Dustin says he wants to go back to school, but I can't help but wonder how his classmates will handle the Stamp on his neck.
I tell myself he'll be seen as hero.
I tell myself he'll have to fight the ladies off with a light saber.
*
"Dude, wake up."
It's Dustin.
He doesn't have to say anything more.
I hear it immediately.
Popcorn popping in a microwave.
I climb the ladder and when I poke my head out, I'm hit in the face with the most glorious, most wettest, most delicious thing ever created.
Rain.
And lots of it.
You know how sometimes you wait and wait for something and when you finally get it, it's not as good as you thought it would be?
Well, this isn't like that.
It's better than I could have imagined.
I open my mouth, stick my tongue out like I'm trying to catch snowflakes, and in the distance I can make out an army of clouds marching toward us, shields of rain advancing, Betsy returning with a cavalry of friends.
By the time I convince myself what I'm seeing is real and climb back down, they're all huddled around the CB, Dustin clicking from one state to the next:
(21)…Friends, we have rain in Nebraska! Do you copy? Rain in Nebraska!
(22)…It's a beautiful rainy day in Wisconsin, people! I'm not making this up. It's dumping!
(23) …(We're not sure what state this one is, but there are no human voices, just the sound of rain tap dancing on a tin roof)…
It's begun.
*
It rains all night and into the next, hard, like it's making up for lost time. Which is great, but it turns out the roof of the pool leaks, so we have to evacuate, move our things back into the house before Betsy and her minions drown us.
When I ask Twink if he's going to take the cruiser out, he says no. That it's poetic.
A true baptism.
After we move our things into the house, I see Twink carefully setting the photo of him and his wife back on the nightstand.
"I have to tell you something," I say from the hallway. "I saw her."
"Saw who?"
"Theresa. Your wife."
It's like I've stabbed him. A wince travels across his face before he manages to say, "Inside?"
I nod. "I didn't realize who she was until after. Until I saw the photo of her again."
"She's alive then?"
"She's alive," I tell him. "They're holding her in a cell. But she's okay."
"Did you speak to her?"
I remember her mouthing the words button, button, button. "No," I say. "Not really."
"No," he repeats to himself. "No. Okay. That's okay."
"I'm sorry, Twink. We would have saved her if we could, but there just wasn't any way."
