The loop, p.10
The Loop, page 10
“Always a pleasure, Jim.”
PART TWO DARK/DRIVES
chapter seven LOCAL NEWS
The ambulance was on its side, emergency lights running, top side of the frame caved in where the massive Ford truck had slammed into it and rammed it over the soft shoulder and into the desert drop-off.
Bucket and Lucy had hung back in Brewer’s truck, unsure of who’d been driving the huge, swerving Ford and positive it was better to not find out. Lucy told Bucket to kill the headlights, but with no moon and no streetlights Bucket said that was just a different kind of death sentence. They were about one hundred yards back when the Ford overtook the zooming ambulance and slammed into it at top speed.
They had not expected that the Ford would follow the ambulance over the shoulder, and it wasn’t until they passed through the light-streaked wall of dust from the accident that they saw what was happening.
Three boys had hopped from the truck and were moving toward the smoking ambulance, one of them holding a hammer, another trembling so severely he could barely keep up. Lucy recognized the sticker on the back of the rig—an illustration of a rifle scope sighting in three wolves, the text reading “Smoke a Pack a Day!”—and wondered if Luke Olsen had been the one driving his truck or if he was back at East Bear bleeding out on the rocky ground.
Bucket stayed lead-footed on the pedal. Lucy looked back just in time to see the ambulance quaking.
The boys had made it inside.
“We have to follow these impulses.”
Lucy imagined them smiling, hands suddenly steady. Feeling better already.
* * *
The lights were out at the Hendersons’, aside from the flicker of the TV on their sheer window blinds.
“We run in, we warn them, and we call your parents from the landline. Maybe they’ll know what we should do next. There could be an emergency meeting place, or maybe we call the cops and then bail out of town. But we have to be fast.”
Lucy still had Brewer’s wrench in her hands, and her voice sounded oddly confident, alien to even her own ears.
Brewer’s truck lurched and died. Bucket had forgotten to shift out of fourth when he slid to a stop in front of Lucy’s house.
“Smooth, huh?”
“Yeah. You did good, Bucket. Make sure you grab the keys.”
Who is talking right now? Lucy questioned her sanity. First, she’d felt broken, reeling from seeing Chris and Mr. Chambers die. Unsure of everything. But now—now—she felt strong in a way she wasn’t ready to abandon.
Well, Dr. Nielsen, I was having a lot of confidence and trust issues, and let’s not forget the perpetual fear of abandonment, and as you know, the PTSD from the incident at Spring Meadow, but then I kissed a boy and a little bit after that I killed a girl with a rock and now I’m feeling fine. Should I assume this is the end of our sessions together?
Lucy was certain she’d gone mad. And once she’d survived the night and made it to a safe place with the Hendersons, she was certain she’d be headed for catatonia.
But for the moment she felt strong. She hopped out of Brewer’s truck armed with a wrench and ready to swing on anyone who got in her way.
* * *
Except: no one tried to stop her.
Though she wished they would have, once she made it inside.
Bill and Carol were in the living room, eyes transfixed by their sixty-inch flat screen. They sat low in their La-Z-Boys, heads tilted slightly. Both had crusted streams of blood running from their noses to the hollows of their necks. It didn’t shine in the strange blue light from the screen, so whatever caused it must have happened earlier.
Bucket said, “You feel that, Lucy?” and pointed at the TV and the fluctuating static and snippets of sound emanating into the room.
She looked at the screen and instantly felt her bones turn to concrete. Her eyes floated back inside her head, ten feet, then twenty, the TV an abyss she floated above, the sensation in her body a reminder of the time Bucket had talked her into drinking a bottle of Tussin DM with him.
A voice came to her, but not through her ears. She felt the voice vibrating at the base of her skull and caught snippets of a man’s urgent, slightly worried voice:
… message from the emergency broadcast system… potential leak in the storage of underground toxic waste at the now-defunct Handsome Valley Nuclear Power Plant. A low-level earthquake, barely detect… may have caused a fracture in the twenty-foot-thick concrete surround… Travelers… turned back for a thirty-mile radius around the Turner Falls area. Communication difficulties created by high-intensity scanners being used to assess damage without actually unearthing… Handsome Valley site workers and federal and state officials are on-site and working diligently to assure safe repair… vised to remain inside until further notice, and youth may be partic… effects including confusion, hallucination, paranoia, and…
Lucy felt the trickle of blood roll from her nose right before she felt Bucket’s body slamming full speed into her ribs. Then they were both on the carpet and Lucy couldn’t see straight, but she could smell the dust in the Hendersons’ house and the faint odor of the pot roast Carol had cooked and then a wave of too-sweet cologne from Bucket, who lay on top of her.
She tried to say, “Jesus, Bucket, get off of me,” but she was still hearing the transmission in her head and something wasn’t connecting between her brain and her mouth and the best she could muster was, “Jeeb.” Somehow he understood, pushing up and away.
“Sorry, Lu. I didn’t know what else to do, and I thought of what the electric co-op people taught us to do when someone’s being shocked, so I… Are you okay?”
Static stayed in her vision. The voice pushed at her mind. She closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears. The intra-brain broadcast faded. She was afraid to take her hands away from her ears, so she kept them there and yelled to Bucket.
“YES! I’BOKAY!”
“We have to turn off the TV.”
Lucy couldn’t agree more. She pointed with her head at the wrench she’d dropped on the ground. “DOANGETCLOSE! THOWIT!” Lucy felt fluid running from her face. More blood from her nose? Drool from her barely controlled mouth?
Did I have a fucking stroke?
Years of friendship and the occasional night of drinking forties must have taught Bucket how to understand Lucy in slur mode, because he reached over, grabbed the wrench, and popped above Bill’s chair long enough to wing the tool into the heart of the brain-fogging broadcast. Thin shards of pricey nonreflective glass fell to the floor, followed by the brief but surprisingly loud sound of the television’s wiring shorting out. The blue light and insidious sound echoed in Lucy’s mind, but faded by the second. She stood and rushed to Carol.
“Carol. Wake up! It’s Lucy.” She shook Carol by the shoulders, afraid that slapping her might be too much for the woman’s mind. “We shut it off. It’ll go away in a second.”
Carol’s chest rose and fell, but beyond that there was no sign of life. She stared straight ahead, eyes fixed on the shattered television, which had held sway moments before.
Lucy moved to Bill, giving him a stern shake, then putting a hand on his face.
He didn’t shave tonight.
He always shaves.
They were worried about me. Up late. Watching TV.
Waiting for me.
“I’m sorry, Bill.” She put her other hand on the opposite side of his face. “I should have stayed after dinner. I’m sorry.”
Looking at him she felt paralyzed in her own way by how pure the Hendersons’ love for her had always been. She thought about all the moments where she’d wondered if she could return that love, and how she hated herself when she couldn’t. Worse, they knew how she’d lived as a young child, so they understood why she was distant and loved her still, and always.
She felt she might cry. She imagined that old Lucy coming back. So confused. A wreck.
No. Do something.
She stood as tall as she could and swung an open palm across Bill’s face. The slap landed. Fresh blood rolled from Bill’s nose. He looked back toward Lucy.
He’s seeing me.
Bill opened his mouth, letting loose a low moan. Then, slowly, he looked up.
“Can you see me, Bill?”
Bill’s eyes fogged, but he spoke. “Tonight we come to you live with an emergency broadcast to alert you to a potential leak in the storage of underground toxic waste at the now-defunct Handsome Valley Nuclear Power Plant.”
“No, Bill… no.”
Lucy hung her head.
His voice carried the same unaccented inflections as the news broadcast. He continued his recitation. “Handsome Valley site workers and federal and state officials are on-site and working diligently to assure safe repair of the barrier. All citizens are advised to remain inside until further notice, and youth may be particularly vulnerable to the toxins believed to have been released. Be on watch for effects including confusion, hallucination, paranoia, and even unexpected or violent behavior.”
“NO! Bill! Come on!”
And Carol began, to Lucy’s right.
“A low-level earthquake, barely detectable at the surface level, may have caused a fracture in the twenty-foot-thick concrete surrounding the PUREX plant. Travelers are being turned back for a thirty-mile radius around the Turner Falls area. Communication difficulties…”
The broadcast was back in stereo, Bill and Carol running on dead-eyed loop, fresh blood darkening their teeth.
Part of Lucy that had always been waiting for this day, waiting for Bill and Carol to disappear as her parents had done. But another part of her had come to trust in them, over time, to let herself feel soft and safe in their arms, and that was the part of her that remembered that her life had become a living, breathing nightmare and all she could do was survive.
She turned her back on Bill and Carol and their incessant, repetitive lies on loop. She walked toward the destroyed television and reclaimed her wrench and thought to herself, I am going to hurt whoever tries to stop me from escaping this dream. And it’s going to feel good.
chapter eight PROTECTION PLAN
After the accident in Peru, Lucy never saw her parents again. She was informed they had died in the crash, and by the end of that night she’d been cleared by the emergency medical staff and unceremoniously bused to the orphanage, where she did her damnedest to ignore the taunts and threats of the other children by hiding under the thin blanket on her assigned bed.
With Bill and Carol, things were different. She felt abandoned again, but it wasn’t their fault, not really, and she wanted to protect them from whatever plans those twitching animals who had emerged from the cave might have for the town. And who knew how many of them were out there? Lucy recalled the rushing cop cars she’d seen before dinner and realized whatever was happening to the town might have already been spreading before the party. She remembered the way something on Chris’s neck had squealed when Mr. Chambers grabbed him, and how Jason Ward had a bandage on his neck before he disappeared. And what had Jason said to Carrie before he ran away?
“They don’t care; it won’t stop.”
How long has this been going on?
Bucket walked back into the living room with the Hendersons’ old-school portable phone in his hand.
“You got through to your parents?” Lucy asked.
Bucket shook his head. “Couldn’t even get a dial tone. And listen, but only for a second.” His voice was thick, on the verge of tears.
She held the receiver to her ear, and right away she recognized the odd warbling tone and the words emerging in her mind.
“Handsome Valley site workers and federal and state officials are on-site and working diligently to assure safe—”
Bucket ripped the phone from Lucy’s hand, which she noticed had already begin to curl tightly around the beige plastic.
“No.” She looked at Bucket, both of them wide-eyed with realization.
“Yup. It’s on the TV. The phone lines. Probably all the local radio stations too. Only that message, over and over again, and that weird pulsing sound underneath.”
“Fuck. How the hell do we…” Lucy went silent for a moment, thinking about all the houses surrounding them, and the way television light glowed in the living rooms of most on any given evening. Did it matter if you were watching cable when the broadcast began? Or was it infecting all forms of digital transmission? Did the town’s cell phones finally light up all at once, carrying the broadcast? She pictured houses, bars, police stations, fire stations, 911 call centers, even the hospitals, all of them now coma wards filled with the bleeding blind, barely breathing and mumbling false warnings in tune with that awful thrumming frequency.
How can this be? It… can’t. Or maybe the broadcast is telling the truth. There was a leak in Handsome Valley. East Bear is closer than the town. We all caught a megadose. Some of us lost our minds. But if that’s true, what did I really do to Ashley? Did that even happen? What am I seeing now? Where am I? Strapped to a gurney, raving through radiation sickness?
Lucy lifted her right hand and moved it in front of her face. She breathed deep and took in the familiar smells of home—vanilla-scented candles, the evening’s dinner, Carol’s perfume. She stretched out her toes and felt a hole in one of her socks. She licked her lips, and they were chapped and a bit chewed. Her mind tumbled through a catalog of all the little things that made waking life less pleasant than dreams, and the truth was that she was here and hungry and thirsty and all of it felt oppressively, terrifyingly real.
Lucy started shaking. Bucket, seemingly unsure of what else to do, stepped toward her and gave her a hug. He said, “It’s crazy, right?”
Lucy nodded and then gently broke away from him, fearing that being held any longer would throw her into a total meltdown.
“This is real, Bucket.”
It was his turn to nod. “Yeah.”
“How do we make it stop?”
“How the fuck do I know?” A panicked look spread across Bucket’s face. “I think we need to run. Hop back in the truck and gun it for anywhere else.”
“Oh, sure.” Even if she was willing to leave Bill and Carol, Lucy imagined it wouldn’t take long before she and Bucket were discovered by those twitching bastards. Run off the road like the ambulance, stomped in the wreckage. And if her murderous cohorts weren’t in some way responsible for the paralytic transmission, then who was? And would those people let them leave town? They didn’t even want anyone moving. Were they waiting at the outskirts with walls of speakers, waiting to drown leftover citizens under waves of weaponized sound?
But Bucket saved me from the broadcast. Maybe he’s immune to it!
Lucy pointed at the shattered TV. “Wait, why didn’t the broadcast pull you in when we first got here?”
“Well, I had a bad feeling about that when I saw that your parents didn’t turn to look at us.”
My parents. I never call them that, even after all they’ve done…
Bucket continued, “So I didn’t look right at the screen, and I turned my busted ear toward the TV.”
“What busted ear?”
Bucket tapped his right ear. “Got an infection when I was twelve. Eardrum burst twice, and my parents didn’t want to risk any more infections after what happened with Dalir, so they had the doctor put in a little plastic tube. It never healed right after that. Sometimes it makes a whining noise after I sneeze, so I think there’s still a hole in there.”
“Whoa. Why didn’t you ever tell me…”
“What? Brag about my gimpy ear? It’s embarrassing. Sometimes when the volume is up loud in my car I can’t even tell what you’re talking about. That’s why I always just nod and say, ‘Yeah,’ like I agree with you.”
“Son of a bitch.” Lucy smiled at him, even though it felt oddly dangerous.
I need to be the other Lucy now. That’s the only version I can be, or I’ll collapse, paralyzed like in Mr. Chambers’s room.
“Well, your shitty ear saved me tonight. So thank you.”
“No worries. I owed you, right? After Ashley?”
Ashley. The sound of stone collapsing her beautiful face. The strange noise that came from her neck.
The other boys, free of the cave, running toward the ambulance. Heading into town. And they knew where she lived.
They’re coming.
No more overthinking. Protect Bill and Carol. Protect yourself.
Keep moving.
* * *
Lucy and Bucket had argued about the plan at first. He thought they might wait a little longer to see if the effects of the broadcast would wear off, thinking Bill and Carol would snap to and be able to help them. Lucy shook each of them again—this time more sternly than before—but when she looked at the dimness in their eyes she figured that even if they returned, they might not ever come all the way back to her. She pinched the top of Carol’s hand, digging her fingernails into the skin. Not a flinch. No retraction. She moved to Bill and said, “I’m sorry.” and then slapped him full force, hoping his eyes might clear once more. Nothing.
Fucking nothing.
Each effort made the pain of the forced separation even more apparent. She wasn’t sure she could bear to try anything else. And she couldn’t stand to see them mumbling that bullshit message anymore—each round of stimulus seemed to induce a new round of hypnotic chatter.
Bucket wanted to check his phone for ways to wake people, thinking ice water or bright lights might jolt Bill and Carol back to consciousness. Lucy sighed but relented, and was thankful when he discovered that his cell signal was finally one hundred percent dead. She was less thankful when he discovered there was a notification for a single voice mail from “Unknown Number.” He and Lucy agreed it should be deleted immediately, but the phone would not allow Bucket to remove the file, so Lucy grabbed it from him, placed it on the floor, and bashed it three times with her wrench before he could even protest.
