Where Page 5

  People catch the tune and echo like Baptists at a revival, agreeing, “We need to talk,” “We need to talk,” “We need to make things right!”

  “Back here for a meeting, everybody. After we check out our new quarters and settle in. I’ll get the word out when it’s time.” He points to the building behind us, the big block letters mysteriously incised in its formerly blank face:

  MEETING HALL

  “Over there.”

  7

  Davy

  Thursday, late afternoon

  Davy sprays smashed oyster shell, rushing back the way he came. Slow, this is too. Gets bogged down. Too long. Again. Too damn long. Foraging for dead branches and sprays from travelers’ palms to get traction in the bad places, he consoles himself. Everybody else trying to cross Poynter’s is either stuck in the five-mile stream of traffic backed up halfway to Charlton, or advancing on foot, swarming to join the mob at the causeway.

  At least the shore road is deserted. Better for me, he thinks, not sure what he means.

  Crazy, but at every bend in the road he stops and gets out of the car, fanning his phone like a mad witch doctor. Usually you can get at least one green bar out here, but things are seriously fucked up. He makes five stops before he can pick up a signal.

  Naturally he phones home— rather, Merrill’s cell. It rings and rings. He keeps trying, hitting redial the way you do when you’re sure she’s in the shower, has it on silent, dropped it in the car. Worst-case scenario, he’ll leave voicemail. Anything to put them in touch. No Merrill. Worse, no voicemail prompt. No matter how long he lets it ring, no velvety Merrill message: “Whisper your darkest secrets here, and I’ll get back to you.” Davy persists the way you do when there’s an incurable glitch. Given what he’s seen today and what little he knows, he keeps trying in spite of the reality that he’s too messed up to admit.

  It isn’t only that Merrill doesn’t pick up. Her cell is offline in some new, alarming way. It’s ringing somewhere, somehow, but the threads that connect them are hopelessly snarled. He could hang on from now until the world ends and that’s all it will do: ring. He fires off a text, in case. As if Merrill is anyplace he knows. As if she’s in a position to text him back.

  Where is she?

  Her office phone is dead, the town hall switchboard is dead. So are the phones at home. Correction. At her house, is he still welcome there? Is every land line on Kraven island dead? He scrolls through every local number in his phone. He’ll talk to anybody, friends, business contacts, cops, the twenty-four-hour clinic, whatever works. Nothing does. Yes he is not in his right mind. If he hangs in here long enough, he tells himself, somebody will pick up. Unless they’re all dead.

  His heart clenches. Not them, Ribault. Not her, you idiot. The phones. Again. Again!

  It’s like yelling into a cosmic void. He loves her, he can’t reach her, he can’t reach anybody on Kraven island and he needs to know what happened, where Merrill is, how she is; Davy is crazy with not knowing. He needs to go back inside himself and think, which he isn’t doing very well right now.

  Asshole. Get there.

  Is he crazy, coming back this way? The crowd at the barricades was multiplying like cancer cells, ignorant gawkers mixed in with anxious homefolks and clueless supernumeraries with homemade armbands and TV crews, and the men in charge? Pit bulls and swamp things, most of them, like half the warm bodies in the county got rounded up this morning and supplied with an armband or a badge. One whiff of power turns them into armed forces bent on keeping the line they just drew. There are homeboys in uniform guarding the shore access ramps and homeboys at the causeway barricade, and the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers among them are armed and resolute. People he knew and people he didn’t know turned on him, breathing through their noses for once, with their jaws tight-shut and their eyeballs jittering like they’d just as soon blow your head off as not. He could turn back and charge the ramp again, he supposes, but for every Jack Stankey out there, there’s an armed and dangerous Goethe brother or one of the Fripp cousins, twice removed, vigilante wannabes like Willie Deloach that used to slouch around school bashing kids’ heads into locker doors.

  Hell, he thinks, rolling across the rattling plank bridge at Pinckney Creek; a couple more miles and he’ll be at Earl’s. Why did I not think of this, why the hell did I not think of this? This is where he should have come in the first place.

  He will damn well get home and find Merrill wherever she is, no problem, and he’ll do it the best way he knows— by boat.

  8

  Merrill

  Deep night

  I still feel guilty.

  I was so anxious to get shut of Father that I hurried toward the list of assigned quarters. I spotted my place at the far end of the map, at a comfortable distance from the one marked Poulnot, N., Poulnot, H.— just the way it is at home. Odd. On the map, this place looks to be laid out just like Kraventown. Odder yet. We were expected to stay where we were put.

  This meant Father and my kid brother would be in the first house off the plaza, at the near end of the street leading out of the plaza. I didn’t want to leave Neddy there— where’s Patrice? But we had instructions. The air— whatever they pumped into the plaza— made it hard to think. I tugged at Ray. “Neddy. What am I going to do?”

  “Right now, whatever they tell us.”

  “But. Father.” I didn’t have to explain.

  He turned me back to the plaza. “Look at him.”

  Minutes ago, the crowd was ready to fall on him and beat him to death, but the air changed and for the moment, they forgot. They had orders. Places to go. Defeated, Father stood in the plaza with his head down, like a steer waiting for the knacker’s hammer to put out its lights.

  Our neighbors, his people, forgot, and it broke him in two.

  Ray said, “He can’t hurt anybody now,” and he was right.

  Father shuffled in place, blinking and confused, while angry islanders who had threatened to kill him took off, eager to find their places in this undefined new world. He stood with his head down, diminished.

  Ray and I marched Father out of the plaza, with the Dawson brothers riding post. We delivered him to his new front door and saw him inside with orders to stay put. The old bastard went in with his head down, so stupefied that I had to wonder if he knew where he was. I couldn’t wait to shut the door on him.

  Then I turned and saw my brother’s face. I tried, “You’re supposed to.” I couldn’t finish.

  “Not me. Not in there with him.”

  “It’s on the list.” I put my hands on his shoulders, but I couldn’t find words. My mind ran to a dozen different places and came back with, He’s too far gone to hurt you. It’s true, but I felt bad, even thinking it. I couldn’t find the right thing to say. It was awful. I blurted, “I just want you to be safe!”

  “I can take care of myself!”

  “You have to stay where they put you,” Ray told him and then— does everybody know the old man is broken inside?— “It’s OK, he can’t hurt anybody now.”

  Shit, if Neddy cried, I’d cry … But he hung tough. “No way!”

  Ray took him by the elbows, man to man. “It’s your job. Until we find out what we’ve got here, there are certain things that we have to do.”

  The look Ned shot me broke my heart.

  I think I said, “Hang in, kid.” I hugged him goodbye for now and closed the door on Father and him, thinking, At least he’s safe.

  Ray went from door to door at twilight, collecting us. I went by the house assigned to Father and Ned. I heard the others fretting and grumbling, getting louder as they headed for the meeting hall. Feelings were high. Never mind what I felt in the moment when they turned on Father at the end of the long, hot half-day in the plaza, I ran ahead to warn him.

  It was like warning a gargoyle. He sat like a stone in his new all-white dining room with his elbows planted on the all-white dining room table in a house laid out exactly like our own. He was
drained of color. I could swear that his hair was turning white, unless it was a trick of the light.

  “Father,” I said, but he was too broken to look up. I did what I used to do when I had to get his attention. I tried to make him mad. I poked him, but he didn’t budge. I baited him with, “Dad.” I knuckled his bicep. “Hey, zombie man!”

  He just stared into the glossy tabletop, too shattered to speak.

  Neddy jogged my elbow. “What’s up?”

  “I came to warn Father. He can’t come to the meeting.”

  “Like he even knows there is one.” Ned flew a hand past Father’s face, doing that deranged bird tweet. “Like he’s even here. So you’re taking me, right?”

  “Not really.” What was I afraid of? You can’t know the future, but you know enough to be afraid of it. There would be close to a hundred of us there, every one with a dozen different questions, conflicting ideas. Bad blood. If I said, You might get hurt, he’d say, I can take care of myself, so I said, “I think Ray said no kids.”

  “I’m not a kid!” Oh Ned. Oh, Ned!

  “Besides,” I said. “Father. It’s important. Somebody has to take care of him.”

  “Father is over,” he said. “Look at him!”

  “Keep an eye on him, OK?” What did I think Father would do? You don’t really want to know. “Just keep him here.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a bad feeling about this meeting,” I said. “I need you to stay back.” I couldn’t say, I don’t want you to get hurt. I said, “And whatever happens, don’t let him leave.”

  “Why?”

  Everything bubbled to the surface. “If they see him, they’ll tear him apart.”

  “Fine. Let them.”

  I said what I had to, to keep my brother safe. “Really. Please.” Translated, stay inside. “For me.”

  * * *

  Now we’re here.

  Inscribed above the building’s double doors, the legend promises a possible end to our confusion. Assuming we can make them forget about Father, at least for now:

  MEETING HALL

  Outside, the bland, neutral face of the building is blank.

  Inside, the pristine walls mimic our nineteenth-century clapboard grange hall on Kraven island. Some intelligence has ridged the brilliant white synthetic to make it look like whitewashed wood. Down front, a pulpit protrudes from the wall like a basin in some gigantic washroom, like this is church and if we wait long enough, somebody will climb up there and explain God. The stark white wooden benches are the only things made of anything natural in this pseudo American Gothic country church. As if every one of us will bow our heads and submit, or. I don’t know. Cry to heaven?

  No. As if we’ll tell all.

  Somebody assumed we were that docile, or that stupid.

  Anyone with half a brain can see the cameras mounted in all four corners of the meeting room, with more cameras in the balcony above. As though we’re dumb enough to squabble and scheme and play out all our confrontations, for the unknown audience.

  That first night, we are that dumb.

  People file in trashed and disconnected, a displaced, mystified community with everybody so scared, so wired and disrupted that they can’t think anything through, not the cameras or what they’re about or what happens when this many scared and angry humans come together in one place. The mood in MEETING HALL is toxic.

  The worst thing about the night isn’t them excoriating Father, muttering threats as they file in; he damn well deserves it. He did, after all, start the riot that brought on the electronic shutdown, but that isn’t what sparks the fight. In highly charged situations, it’s the small, stupid things that make people you thought you knew growl and struggle like a pack of werewolves in the middle of the change.

  Inside, our neighbors mutter and jostle, strung tight and jonesing for an explanation, and in the void that yawns at the center of this sterile nightmare, theories swarm, buzzing like wasps, armed to sting:

  “It’s the government, they never explain,” “No. Scientists, messing with us,” “Chill, we’re getting pranked,” “Surprise, you’re on TV.” “Worse. It’s Guantanamo, damn CIA got us for some crime we never did.” “… gassed and airlifted to some heathen country God knows where…” “… high school kids from Walterboro, looking to punk the Charlton Tidal Wave.” “It’s the Chinese,” “It’s…”

  Some woman— who?— shrills, “It’s the hand of God!”

  Ray’s low, clear voice fills the hall. “We don’t know what it is. That’s why we’re here. Now, hush,” he says. He says into the silence, and for the moment, it works. “We’re here to figure it out.”

  Then it doesn’t. Jammed together like this, writhing with uncertainty, strung tight and miserable, our friends and neighbors self-destruct.

  Big old Gert Taggart stands; she was an air traffic controller for years. “Don’t worry. By now they’re out looking for us, you know, just like that airplane, you know the one.”

  Rebel Dawson shouts, “How they’re gonna do that?”

  “Technology, asshole. Satellite cameras, sonar, drones, you know, all that stuff we saw on the TV, they can find anything on earth…”

  Errol Root stands up, fixing her with those crazy eyes: “What makes you think this is earth?”

  Gert overrides him, “… Like they’re still looking for some in that building collapse, you know the one, not dead, they just wandered off … and there’s some still out there from 9/11 that they never confirmed. We’re just missing is all. They’ll keep looking until they find us.”

  Missing.

  I hear Kara Maxwell’s heart break all over again. “They quit, but you don’t. He’s still out there somewhere, they just can’t find him is all, so you don’t give up.” Bill Maxwell, Missing in Action, somewhere in Syria, unless …

  “Shh, honey. It’s not like that, but this is different. Hang in and they will find us, they will!”

  “How they’re gonna find us when we don’t know where this is?” Marlon Weisbuch kept hold of his apron and tied it on over his scrubs, in a show of … go figure. He would have been firing up the grill when it happened, while Boogie opened the store, and where is Boogie anyway?

  Errol Root yells, “We’re in a fucking desert.”

  “Fucking A-rabs,” Bud Dawson says, and it starts.

  Gert shouts, “We don’t know what’s out there!”

  Rebel shoves Gert aside and jumps up on a bench; his voice is huge. “We fight the bastards!”

  She screams, “We don’t know what’s out there!”

  “Look outside, assholes,” Rebel says, knowing it’s too dark to see anything. “It’s terrorists.”

  The men’s voices rise, shouts overlapping. “It’s the Russians.” “The Chinese.” “’Od damn scientists.”

  “Towelheads, dammit,” Rebel hollers, him with the battery of AK-47s in his armory back home, along with handguns and double-barreled shotguns that could take down a roaring bear. “WE HAVE TO ARM OURSELVES.”

  “Wipe ’em out.”

  Ray raises his arm and brings it down like a starter’s flag. “Enough!”

  “Kill ’em, whoever they are.” “String ’em up.” “Shoot ’em dead.” “Kill ’em all.” “Blow the place to hell.” Rage spills over, reason obscured by the hundred voices that rise and overlap, melding into a mass buddabuddabudda that escalates, filling the room.

  Until Gene Goethe, who hardly ever says anything, jumps up on one of the wooden benches, shouting loud enough to be heard over the fury, “Now, how are we going to do that?”

  Rebel’s voice overtakes his. “STORM THE ARMORY.”

  Then Jim Deloach drags Gene down off the bench and punches him in the gut and Rebel head-butts Jim, knocking him flat.

  It’s too late to reason. It’s too late to do anything. We’re stretched so thin that no one can say what we’re thinking. Dislocated in time and space like this, nobody thinks. When systems break down and something has to give, what
crumples is the personnel. Seeing Delroy Root’s brother Errol going at Rebel Dawson over who will climb that pulpit and take over clinches it. Errol rips out Rebel’s earring and the first blood flies.

  Now our friends and neighbors morph into a mob. Fear and outrage collide and everybody in that hall sprouts fangs and claws. Men and women take sides, tugging back and forth over procedure until Ray’s meeting explodes in a screaming free-for-all that ends in sobbing and smashed teeth, torn clothes and recriminations that rage on until everybody Ray and I had gathered to identify the problem and help us solve it is exhausted. Defeated by the explosion of frustration and raw fury, they can’t organize themselves to strike another blow, unless …

  Wait. The air changed. What did it? An infusion we don’t know about or an unexpected chill? It’s as if some new element entered the room and shut these people down.

  Stunned by the sudden silence, people I know and people I hardly know tuck their butts under them like whipped hyenas and turn tail. Defeated, they go slinking off to their appointed homes, leaving Ray and me to— what?

  At the end, alone in the wreckage, Ray and I study the mess. Our pristine meeting hall doesn’t look so sterile anymore, what with all the snot and blood spots on the jigsaw of overturned white benches, and the plank that Errol broke when he threw down Rebel Dawson and stomped him. Our busted meeting is beyond fixing. The story is spelled out in bodily fluids smeared on the brilliant white walls.

  In his time, Ray’s seen everything, but tonight he’s shaken. “We can’t stay here.” He means it on a dozen levels.

  I’m probably more messed up than he is, so I hit on the one part of tonight that I can work with. “Not like this.”

  “And we can’t leave it like this.”

  “Not if we want to get back to our lives. Oh, Ray. What are we going to do?”

  “Whatever it is, we can’t do it alone.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We need another meeting.” He didn’t have to say, “It’s not about the cleanup.”