The Book (27 page)

Holden took a breath, locked himself in his daughter’s eyes again and said, “I love you, Jane. Whatever they say about me…don’t believe it. It’s all lies. Don’t read The Book, Jane. It’s being controlled.”

The door broke open.

Holden saw, from the corner of his teary vision, three men wearing dark suits and green striped ties with blonde, delicately cropped hair. Their sharp, green eyes locked onto him and one of the robotic men smiled and said, “If it isn’t the Tin Soldier.”

He had seconds. Pieces of seconds.

“Don’t listen to them, Jane,” he said, standing with awkward abruptness as the men approached. She nodded and Eve yanked her to the kitchen. “Whatever they say about your father, don’t listen to them.”

“I won’t, Daddy.” Jane blinked, tears streaming in bullets from her eyes.

“Look at me, Jane,” he cried, “I want to tell you everything is going to be alright. For you and your friends…and your friend’s families…but I can’t…”

Holden felt the grip of many arms as the men seized him by the shoulders. Jane shrieked and Eve clamored to shield her daughter’s eyes. Holden struggled against their grip like an untamed tiger. Under their sudden weight, while they grappled for a piece of Holden they could restrain, he turned to see Eve’s face and the immediate regret that rested there. She was frightened. She was guilty. What was happening in her home, in her living room, was wrong. But there was nothing she could do to stop it at that point. Those men hadn’t come to take her husband away for questioning. They were fighting him. By calling the police, she had done something horribly wrong and, as she watched them struggle to take him to the ground, Eve already knew that Holden was right. She would never see him again.

One of the larger men let go of Holden’s arm to reach one of his legs and, in the process, accidentally switched on the branding machine. There was no noise or light to indicate that it had happened. Holden knew because he felt his palm growing warm. As another man, a mass of neckless meat, strolled casually into the room holding a stun gun, Holden reacted in the only way that made sense. He loosened his right shoulder, swung his palm at the man and it caught him directly in the face.

There was a guttural wail. The man jackknifed away with a hand clutched to his smoking face, and he was screaming a high-pitched, alien squeal of utterly agonizing pain. The others, entirely confused by what had happened during the struggle, loosened their grip and Holden pushed himself free. Eve had done the same with Jane and the young girl ran. At that moment, all her eleven-year-old mind understood was that she wanted to lock herself onto her father, hoping that the presence of a little girl would make the bad men leave him alone. That they would see her crying, hear her plea and leave. What did happen was all together different.

As Jane rushed forward, one of the men shoved her powerfully into the dumpy couch. Holden retaliated with mad rage, kicking the man in the stomach and bashing his jaw to fragments with a sturdy left hook. After hearing one of their own screaming a high-pitched alien squeal of utterly agonizing pain, two other Agents had entered the house. When they saw their comrade on the floor, gripping his face, the cyborgian men joined the others in attempt to lock Holden in place. The Agents strode boldly across the carpeting, their faces maddening and their shoes working traces of filth into the fresh, white fibers.

In a last ditch effort, Holden flailed, kicked and wriggled in place, knowing the fight that was coming. He used his weight to take two of them down, but there were three more grappling for his limbs. He was so aggressive and too focused on taking it to them in a desperate attempt to get away, too lost in the hope of freedom, that he didn’t notice where his right arm was swinging.

Jane hadn’t seen it coming either.

She didn’t know what her father had in his hand. She had seen him hit the man that was still squirming on the floor in pain, but hadn’t tried to understand. That man, whose tie strung through his shivering fingers, had been holding his face and she knew he was hurt. But when her father’s struggling arm swung and caught her across the chest, all Jane knew was the sting. The pain as his palm collided with her before she was launched into the coffee table, her nylon t-shirt melted to her skin.

Things were moving so quickly. Holden didn’t know who he had hit. His strategy was to swing at everything and hope for the best. But when he heard the sound that escaped his daughter’s lips, he turned and he screamed.

“Jane! No!
NO!
”

His eyes gushed with tears, the instant he saw that innocent face staring back at him with eyes that only asked why, as pain she had never imagined launched itself into her chest and wouldn’t go away no matter how hard she focused or how loud she cried our or how insanely she writhed.

Holden knew the man had risen from the floor, but he wasn’t looking and he didn’t care. The neckless Agent with burns across his face was approaching with a wail in his voice that was louder than the smoke alarm and wilder still than the dog that howled in the next room, but all Holden heard was his daughter as she scratched violently at her shirt. When the man came close, Holden could hear the sound of his teeth gnashing in vengeance, he could see the stun gun in the man’s hand and closed his eyes, welcoming the sweet shock of unconsciousness. For, in the volts it would bring, he would not have to hear the pain he had inflicted on his daughter.

Ever again.

* * * * *

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Holden couldn’t remember why his face was so cold. How often did he forget things? He felt so stupid. It was like every day he was forgetting something new. Where could he go from here? Vitamins. He never took his vitamins. Maybe if someone came out with a beer that was infused with vitamins. But then, that didn’t explain why his face was so cold, did it? Numb almost. As he pushed himself up to settle his sleepy mind, an image of Jane’s face –

Holden thunderbolted to an upright stance, locked his knees and yanked his eyes open with a voice-cracking shriek. A sudden dizziness overtook him and he lost his balance. He tried to remain standing, but his shoes were missing and he fell back to where he had been sitting. Laying. A dull gong of cold metal and a tiny scratch swept the room around him as he pushed himself up, blinking every millisecond to adjust his eyes to the brightness.

His shoes. Where were his shoes?

Eve’s carpet was new. He took them off at the door.

If his shoes were there, where was he?

He was in a room. A large, white-walled room with no windows, standing on a lush, loop pile green carpet that resembled a lawn of grass below a ceiling painted in sky blue. He couldn’t recall how he had gotten there and, from the way his vision was swimming, assumed that he had been drugged. Despite his complete dislocation, he felt eerily comfortable. At peace. There were no clouds painted in blurry cotton balls of white or hokey drawings of trees on the walls, but he wasn’t stupid. Holden knew that the materials and colors chosen throughout the room, even down to the brown metal bench he had slept upon, were all chosen for the specific task of keeping the room’s occupants calm. This realization quickly increased his tension.

Why did he need to be calm?

Holden rolled his shoulders. He was sore all throughout his body and he was wearing the same clothes he had worn when he arrived at Eve’s. Although he was lighter now, wasn’t he. Yes, the shoes. But, more importantly, the branding machine had been removed along with his wallet and watch. Even the change from his pockets was missing. He was left in a mysterious indoor park with nothing but the clothes on his back, with socks that had holes in the toes. Holden cracked his neck and stood up to look around the room for some identification of where he was, steadying himself as the dizziness returned. Those men who had taken him were Agents from the Publishing House, he knew that. At least that was how they described themselves before taking him for a stroll through Lincoln Park on an oh-so-sunny day.

Thanks again for the umbrella guys.
First you try to kill me with a cold and then…this. Whatever this is.

Along the shortest wall, there was a rectangular window as tall as him that didn’t reach the ground. It stepped out from the flat, white surface with a smooth, metal edge that beveled toward a vibrantly glossy, black-green glass. It seemed to hang like a bedroom mirror and as Holden approached it, he could see his reflection in the darkness. He touched the smooth surface lightly and the window awoke. The black-green glass morphed to the most peaceful white. Holden stepped back a few paces and noticed as the recycling icon of the Publishing House gently broke through the white like a rising bubble in a bottle of milk. The curved, brown arrows that coiled in a triangle wove like silent, hungry snakes, bound for infinity to chase one another’s tails. Noiseless and slow, they followed the one before them.

Holden believed, at that moment, that if he continued to watch the icon weaving on the milky screen, he would be drawn into it. Before long he would be a different person. He would be one of The Book’s foremost defenders. One of its abdicators, leading the cheering section for technology and convenience. All this was in his head, of course (of course), but wasn’t that where the triangle of arrows was attempting to bore its way into?

Standing before the black-green glass, gazing strangely into its depths, Holden felt at once that if he was in that space, that outdoor room, for more than an hour, staring at that stupid icon, he would lose himself in anger and break the glass with his elbow. Maybe his head. Whatever would stop the spinning. Because it seemed to laugh at him. It seemed to stand before him, crisp behind its unblemished frame in that clean, vacuumed environment, laughing the words: REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE.

RECYCLE