The loop, p.17
The Loop, page 17
“Any tinfoil under there?”
“No, dude. I just told you, we only have the microwave. You think I’m throwing tinfoil in there?”
Judah sounded on edge, but also restrained in a way she hadn’t heard from him before.
“What about a mini fridge for leftovers or drinks? Maybe there’s some old food wrapped in foil?”
“Nope. I am a proud first-round finisher of burritos, and Toni brings homemade stuff inside a little plastic freezer bag.”
“Okay… fuck.” The older man—Steve?—forced a breath out through his nose, clearly frustrated. “How’s your cell signal here?”
“It’s shit. I mostly have to browse on the work computer and get landline calls. These old brick building are pretty, but they definitely don’t help my signal.”
“That’s good, then. We’ve got that going for us. Any idea if there’s a metal frame under the masonry? Have you seen any exposed metal beams?”
“No. I mean, I have no idea. Why?”
“If there was some way… a generator in a nearby building, or maybe if we could kill the breaker and tap the main electric line and run it to the metal, we could turn this whole place into some kind of Faraday cage… but even then we couldn’t do any kind of frequency control to match the satellite—”
“Wait. You want to send a countersignal? Didn’t Iran do something like that when they didn’t want people seeing the news about the revolution?”
“Yeah, they did. But how the hell do you know about that?”
“Dude, I work at a record store. All I have is time. I mostly read and take care of Blumpers, so…”
“Salt. What about salt? You have any by the microwave?”
“Now you’re talking, dude. No canister of Morton’s, but we have a big-ass bowl of take-out condiments, and there are a bunch of salt packets in there.”
“Good.” Lucy startled as the man clapped his hands. “That’s something. You pour those out, and I’ll sort the salt.”
“All right, man.”
“And we’ll need some kind of plastic or metal basin. Best if it’s metal. Please tell me you have something like that.”
“Maybe in storage.”
“What about water? Is the bathroom sink all you use for that?”
“No. We’ve got a spigot in the receiving bay that we use to fill the mop bucket.”
“Even better. We need that mop bucket filled with fresh, clean water, and we need to saturate it with as much salt as we possibly can.”
“I’m on it. But you mind telling me what we’re doing? I’m not about to waterboard that little girl…”
“No. No! Of course not. Listen… there’s a device inside that girl’s neck, in Marisol’s neck, and it’s malfunctioning very, very badly, and despite that she’s been able to control what’s happening to her in a way that most of the test… most people have not been able to. And if we’re going to try to stop what’s happening, we need to find out what makes her different and then maybe we can help the others who have been affected. But that device in her neck wants to communicate with a satellite with an incredibly strong, very specific signal, and if they get back on a full uplink…”
“Those things will find us.”
“They’ll find us. They’ll know what we’re trying to do. And they will tear us, and her, to pieces.”
Lucy heard Judah crossing the store toward the receiving bay, moving with new urgency.
* * *
“Istrue? Yer a… dancer over at Boiler?” Jake’s speech was improving.
“It’s true. I am a dancer,” said Toni. “Or I was. Your friends burned that place to the ground tonight. Killed my friend too. I think they would have killed me. Some girl wearing a Coach backpack jumped on me the same time your pals started kicking my bouncer to death.”
“Not my pals.”
Lucy heard the hurt in his voice.
Is he seriously mad that his Brower Butte buddies hadn’t brought him into their fucked-up fold? Is this his first time feeling rejected?
“Really. You guys aren’t friends anymore?”
“Theybeenweird since, uh… since the incident. Said I screamed too much when I got attacked. Said I was a little bitch.”
“Have any of them had their eyes gouged out?”
“No.”
“So how do they know how you’re supposed to act?”
“I know. They said I shouldabeen able to beat Chris back. Brumke said it wasn’t like Chris had any muscles because all he ate was government cheese. But theydin’tfeel how strong he was. How crazy.”
Jake sat in the silence of his memory for a moment, then said, “Can I ask you ’nother question?”
The tone in his voice changed. He’s embarrassed. He feels weak. He’s going to try to push that away.
Toni said, “Sure,” and Jake said, “Is it true you suck parking lot dick for money?”
Toni made a clicking sound with her tongue—a tiny noise that Lucy managed to hear as both disappointment and This motherfucker—then asked, “Do I look like your mother?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Because you seem to have mistaken me for a whore.”
Lucy heard the hard clack-clack of Toni walking away and then she heard Jake’s voice, quiet and sad.
“Shit… I’m sorry.”
Toni turned. “Really? Sorry because I walked away? Or sorry because you said some stupid, disrespectful shit?”
“Both, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Don’t call my mom a whore, though. That’s how my dad talks.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Well… that sucks, kid. I’m sorry for that. But you don’t have to be like your dad, all right?”
“Okay… okay.”
And then Lucy heard Jake sniffle back snot, and she thought he might be crying. To her further surprise, she felt Brewer’s breath warm on the side of her face and heard him say, “What do you know? Maybe all that head trauma did Jake some good,” and she realized that he’d been sitting on the floor beside her for who knew how long.
* * *
The thought of Brewer beside her had lulled her into the smallest sleep, and she tried to stay inside that peaceful place, but then she felt his hands on her shoulders and he was saying, “You gotta wake up, Lucy. Wake up,” in a way that sent a bolt of electricity through her entire body.
Something’s wrong.
They found us.
She sat up too fast and the pressure in her head thudded from front to back and threatened to spill her over, but she wouldn’t allow it, and her hands searched the cold concrete floor for her wrench because they had to go, they had to fight, they had to…
Brewer’s arms wrapped around her, and she tried to push back at first, but then she managed to open her right eye just a slit and the look on his face didn’t say panic.
It said something worse.
“It’s Bucket, Lu. They think he’s goin’.”
Brewer lifted Toni’s shawl from Lucy’s chest and then wrapped his left arm through and under Lucy’s and helped her to stand.
She knew what Brewer meant, knew it right away, but she told herself she wouldn’t believe it until she saw Bucket. They took a series of gentle steps through the store, passed Jake, who had converted his crusty hoodie into a pillow and fallen asleep on the floor, then passed the corner of the jazz and bluegrass vinyl bins, and finally she saw the crumpled shape on the beige love seat by the listening station, and she knew they were right.
Brewer said, “He was the worst off, so we gave him the couch. Steve thinks he’s got a rupture inside, from the wreck.”
“The wreck. We were distracted. I wanted his shirt. That was my plan. He should have been holding on to that handle. Maybe…”
“No. That’s bullshit. We were being chased. They did this, Lucy.”
She looked at how small Bucket seemed. They’d folded his thin arms over his chest, and it reminded her of the time a baby bird ran into the big bay window at Bill and Carol’s house and they buried it in a shoe box in the backyard.
The man that had to be Steve stood frowning near the head of the couch, his dress shirt now rumpled and half-untucked and smeared with blood from rescuing them from Brewer’s truck.
“We don’t have the facilities… I’m sorry. His blood pressure is dropping fast. He’s already in hypovolemic shock, but he might be able to hear you. I thought you’d want a chance…”
“Yeah.” She shook her head yes as her voice caught in her throat. “I do.”
Lucy walked to the edge of the couch and gently lowered herself onto her knees.
They had used paper towels to wipe away most of the blood that had covered him after the wreck, but even without that, it was clear his face had been torn in five directions at once when he hit the windshield. Lucy wanted to kiss his forehead, but she was afraid that his face was one touch away from sliding off his skull, and so instead she lifted her right hand and placed it on his left and tried not to gasp at how cold he already felt.
How is this happening?
It’s not. Still dreaming.
But it feels real.
Is real.
Goddamnit.
No.
She looked at him and leaned in toward his ear to help him hear, and she only managed to say, “Hey.” before the tears came. And she thought that two days ago she might have felt embarrassed—all these people watching her, the sound of her crying so ugly and deeply personal to her—but when she looked at Bucket, and how certain it was that his life was ending, she no longer cared. Let them watch—this moment was hers and Bucket’s and no one else’s.
“I hope you can still hear me, Buck, because I need you to know that I love you, all right? I really do. I feel like I’m so, so grateful and lucky to have met you. I mean, you know that. You know all that. You made me feel like I wasn’t so alone. Even when you were being a dick, it was like… oh god… we saw each other. We understood each other. And now, I don’t know. This is fucked up. It sucks, it just fucking sucks, because we were supposed to leave this place together, right? And now you get to leave, you get to fucking bail, and I’m fucking stuck here all alone. And I don’t know if I can do this without you. I didn’t think I would have to. But I hope you hear me, Bucket. I hope you do. Because I love you, and I want you to know that you were a good person while you were here, okay? You were good.”
And then she felt quite suddenly as if there was nothing more to be said, and she sat there with her hand on his and cried and felt her tears hot on her split and swollen face. Then she sensed a delicate hand on the center of her back, and she heard Toni say, “Can you help me? I want to help him go,” and somehow Lucy understood, and so she worked quietly with Toni to lift his tortured head and narrow shoulders, and then Toni slid into the couch and laid Bucket’s head across her lap. Lucy placed her hand back on Bucket’s and Toni placed one hand on his barely rising chest and began to whisper, “It’s okay, Bakhit. It’s okay. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay,” and they stayed that way until the boy’s chest failed to rise at all.
chapter twelve MARISOL & STEVE
Lucy believed it was a good death, as far as those final moments were concerned, and even in her grief she found herself surprised that Bucket, the king of inappropriate bodily responses, had not recognized Toni’s voice and touch and left them all with a stunning display of angel lust.
She nearly laughed at the thought until she realized his internal bleeding had probably killed his ability to erect that final gravestone. Instead she felt embarrassed, and a new wave of grief rolled through her.
My best friend is gone.
He found a way out of the nightmare. But he left me here, and I’m thinking about hard-ons next to his dead body.
Really healthy mind you got in here, Lucy.
She looked back at Bucket’s face, so small and awfully pale.
It doesn’t matter what I think. He thought filthy, depraved shit all the time and told me most of it. Imagine the stuff he wouldn’t tell me.
And he was awesome. So it doesn’t matter. We’re all fucked up.
With that decided, she realized that she no longer felt any desire to be near the stillness of Bucket’s body, so she stood and shook the tingles from the legs she’d trapped beneath her.
She looked at Toni. “Thank you.”
Toni nodded.
“You want up?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
They lifted Bucket once more, and Toni extricated herself and shook and shivered.
Toni said, “You feel him move through you when he went?”
“No.”
“My mom was a nurse, and she told me that sometimes you feel them slide through you. Like their last energy or whatever it was that made them truly alive flows into you for a moment, then out, then they’re gone. For what it’s worth, I didn’t feel it either, but…”
Lucy swayed for a second, and from beneath her she felt the surety and finality of Bucket’s death reaching up to pull her down to the floor, deeper into her grief than she was willing to go, so she stepped forward and grabbed on to Toni and wrapped her arms around her and pressed the slightly less pummeled side of her face tight against the woman’s chest and felt the beating of her heart.
One-two. One-two. One-two. One-two. The beating came into her, strong and steady, and there was joy in the sound of life continuing, the persistent motion of the heart and the feeling of it reverberating against her skin. She knew that she wanted to stay in that place for longer than Toni or the world would allow, so she held tight.
Then, as she had suspected, the world decided that Lucy could not stay inside that beautiful feeling, because there was a louder noise in the distance—thumping and muffled screams from what was probably the receiving bay—and then Judah emerged from behind the door with a panicked look on his face and yelled to them, “She’s awake!”
* * *
The room smelled of cardboard shipping boxes and sweat and something worse beneath those which made Lucy think of seaweed rotting on the shoreline, swarming with sand fleas. The girl sat, restrained by a mixture of bungee cords and plastic stretch wrap, in a cheap wooden chair which creaked with her incessant movement. A rickety metal storage rack had been placed above her, its lower shelves removed, its top shelf holding what Lucy assumed was the saltwater-filled mop bucket. The girl’s black hair emerged wild and curly from the edges of the foil wrapped around the top of her head, and her face stayed in motion, the same series of vacillating tics Lucy had seen on Ben Brumke when he pursued her in the tunnel.
“Can’t feel like this… Make it stop…”
Steve slid past Judah and Toni and pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and hunched close to the girl and said, “Marisol, I need you to look straight at me if you can.”
Marisol’s head shook violently, but Lucy saw her jaw clench and the vibrations waned and she managed to slow her body to a low tremor and look into Steve’s flashlight. And while one eye still radiated an unnatural smear of bright blue, which seemed to have seeped beyond the iris, Marisol’s other eye, though bloodshot, was a plain brown.
“What does that mean?” asked Judah. “Is she getting better?”
“Quiet, please.” Steve sounded both excited and irritated. “I need to speak with her.”
Lucy felt Brewer come into the room, close over her right shoulder.
“Where were you?” whispered Lucy.
“I, uh… I used that shawl to cover Bucket. Seemed right.”
Lucy wondered for a moment where and how this boy found the decency and kindness that he radiated, and she felt a little less alone. But then she pictured Bucket, so small and motionless beneath the shawl, and she shivered.
Steve placed a hand on Marisol’s knee and said, “I’m sorry we did all this to you. We couldn’t risk it if you lost control. Or if they could see through you. Can you hear them right now?”
Lucy thought that the girl was about her age, maybe a year younger, but her voice emerged like a ninety-year-old’s, thin and cracked and wavering with her uncontrolled movements. “I’m off, but I feel it calling. It itches, inside my skull. It wants back in. I need it, to stop this feeling. Please. Can I… can I let it in?”
“I wish you could, Marisol. I know this hurts. But if you connect to them, they’ll pull you back into their loop. You’ll want to hurt us. They’ll come to help you hurt us, and we can’t have that. If that happens, I can’t help you.”
“Please? Please. Please. It hurts.”
“No.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Do you remember what you did to Dr. Spencer?”
“Yes.” Her face was pained for a second, then dull, then angry, then Marisol squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t help it. I don’t want to do anything like that ever again. I’m trying.”
“I know. I know. It wasn’t your fault. You have to know that. I’m not blaming you, all right? But that kind of thing can’t happen again.”
“Can you at least press on the spot, then?”
Lucy remembered the first time she’d seen Marisol, seconds before the crash, hunched and dazed and probing the back of her swollen neck with slick, shiny fingers. For a moment she blamed the girl for Bucket’s death, but then she looked at her again and realized what Brewer told Judah was right: that was as fair as blaming a rabid dog.
“I’m not sure we should do that anymore, Marisol.”
He keeps using her name. Humanizing her. Reminding her who she is.
Steve continued. “I think if you keep pressing, you might kill it. Then we won’t be able to remove it, and if your body thinks the device is an infection then it’ll attack itself and your brain will swell and—”
“That’s fine. I can die. You can let me die. I deserve it for what I did.”
“No. You don’t deserve it. None of you deserve what’s happened to you. This is our fault. Me, Marisol—it’s my fault. And the other doctors. The engineers. The programmers. Everybody. We all should have known. But they’re dead now, and I’m not sure what to do. I only know that if I don’t fix this, it’ll all get worse. So I need you to help me stop what’s happening, okay?”
