The Conformity (17 page)

Tap raises his hand to hail the figure, but I stop him. The eye and the word
panopticon
and the silence all around make me wary.

Let's not contact anyone until we find the clinic. That's the job. That's why we're here,
I send.

I'm freezing, Jack. We've got to get there soon. Let's fly the rest of the way, since we know where it is now, generally.

I gesture off to the left of the road we're walking. Drapes fall quickly as Tap turns to look. Up ahead, the down-clad figure has stopped and turns in our direction.
They've spotted us, Tap. Flying now would be especially bad.

Explain to me why again,
Tap says. Of all of us Irregulars, Tap's probably the best at expressing tone and feeling mind-to-mind. Almost like Shreve. The problem with Tap is that it's usually only one tone and one feeling.

Come on,
I respond.

We make the intersection—the figure scurries off, head down and hustling—and trudge down the white-blanketed street, among the whisper of evergreen needles and the shushing of our feet through the snow. I feel watched. Like an old fairy tale, children lost in the woods. And maybe we are.

A grocery with its big front plate-glass windows boarded up with plywood and decorated with one large eye. Black streaks rise on the cinder blocks above the windows and doors—it looks like there's been a fire. Ahead of us, a thin dribble of oily black smoke rises skyward from the remains of a convenience store, its building husked and the gas pumps a twisted mess of petroleum-stinking black metal. Gas explosion.

And the panopticon eye is scratched into the char on the hood of a blackened car.

Well, that's seriously fucked up. Looks like the apocalypse happened while we've been playing house,
Tap says.
That eye creeps me the fuck out.

What could've happened here?
A picture is forming. The world's been sleepless, and now there's the Conformity. Shreve said that New York was disintegrating before the entity rose. I can't help but think it's gotten worse and the infection has spread to these smaller towns.

“The center cannot hold,” Shreve would say. If he says anything ever again

Let's hurry,
I say, and Tap nods vigorously.

There's an open lot, and the snow has drifted on the roadside as we trot forward. We pass a low-slung dark log building with a Payette Library sign in front of it and on our left—between the marina, condo, and boat rental signs—the glimmer of a wide, white expanse that must be the lake. The wind now comes off the lake in gusts. Cuts through the jackets and numbs my already frozen arms, hands, legs. I see a small strip mall. Fir trees along the front walk, with a small sign that reads
D. Willamette, MD
, along with some other names with strings of letters after them. A dentist. A veterinarian. Bingo: a medical center.

A woman's voice interrupts our beeline to the door with Willamette's name. “That's far enough.”

Only now that she's moving can we see her. She's draped in some sort of white camouflage, perfect for the snow, and holds a hunting rifle in her hands. She'd been sitting on a bench. She must have been watching us for a long while.

“You with
them
?” she asks.

“The eye people? No,” I respond.

She looks at me. It's hard to tell her age; she's heavily dressed in winter gear, and the camouflage she's got draped around her makes her seem a white blob against the snow and the off-white of the building's painted walls. The rifle's black bore points directly at my chest. Does not waver.

“Well, move along. Nothing for you here. No drugs. No booze. There's a liquor store if you keep going the way you were headed. And a pharmacy past that.”

“We don't want drugs. We need help. Our friend's hurt. In a coma. Are you a doctor?”

She's silent for a long while.

“Veterinarian. And a coma's bad news.”

“Is there a people-doctor in town?” Tap asks.

“No. This new church …” Her face sours. “They don't like people who go their own way. Like doctors. Or police. You're either with them or against them. Once the crazies started marking houses and holding their prayer sessions, those who had cabins or places to go lit out.”

“Why didn't you go?”

“This is all I've got.” She gestures at the building behind her.

She shifts her weight and pulls away the camouflage and the cowl of her heavy coat, revealing her face. Mid-fifties, with a lot of laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. Smart blue eyes. Lips tight with unhappiness.

“And that's why you're sitting out here with a rifle,” Tap says.

She looks at Tap and nods slowly, as if reluctant to admit it. She's proud, it's easy to see. And rugged. Protecting what's hers. Like a frontier woman.

“Can we come inside and warm up?” I ask, tugging my blanket—no, cape—around my shoulders.

“No.” Zero hesitation.

Tap turns to me as if she's not even there. “So, this old broad is a dead end. Where to next? Do we go back?”

“Shreve will die if we don't get help.”

“What's wrong with your friend?” the woman asks.

“He fell. A long way. He's got some internal injuries, we think. And a huge knock on the head,” I say.

“What'd he fall from?”

“A plane.” I probably should lie, but something makes me think she'd know it.

She laughs. “Okay. Stop wasting my time and move along. If they haven't got wind of you yet, the crazies will be sniffing around here soon enough.”

“I'm not lying. The plane we were in crashed near Devil's Throne.”

“Then how did you get here? That's twenty miles away, as the crow flies.”

I say nothing and look at Tap, shaking my head.

We should tell her. Show her,
Tap sends.

She's got a gun. She's already freaked out as it is. What if she just blasts us?

Screw it.

“Like this,” Tap says, twisting his body into the air and holding it aloft, five feet from the ground, hands out.

Her eyes bug out and she raises the rifle, pointing it at Tap. I raise my hand and show her my palm. Ready for the worst.

“You're part of that … that—”

“No, we're not,” I say, trying to make my voice sound firmer than it feels.

“That
thing.
We saw it on the news, before the power went out. You're part of it. You've come to take us over.
Get out of here.”

She sights on Tap, still hovering there.

“We're not part of the Conformity. We're not! We're just trying to help our injured friend. Please—”

“Go. I should kill you before you can hurt anyone.
Get out of here before I shoot!”

“Ma'am, you're making a terrible mistake.” For the second time today, I back away with my hands up. She holds the gun on us, unwavering. Tap settles back on the earth. He backs away, not turning, hands up. Twenty yards away, beyond the cars, we turn and trudge back the way we came.

So, that's it? That's all we get?
Can't tell if Tap's angry with her response at his show of extranatural ability or if he's pissed because we're still out in the snow.

No. Let's go to the library. There's no one there. Get warm. And then figure something out. It's getting dark anyway, so we're not going to be able to make it back to the lodge tonight, not unless they've got a bonfire blazing outside.

We could force the old lady,
Tap sends. It's a mental message that's empty of tone. It's an idea, and Tap doesn't really know how to feel about it.

Kidnapping? Really? I'm not ready to lose all my self-respect,
I say.

Suit yourself. It's just Shreve we're talking about. No big whoop.

We can wait until after full dark and break into the medical office and take some drugs,
I offer. I hate giving in. Becoming looters. Part of the chaos. Too much of my life's been lived without order. I want it. Tap can say whatever he wants about Shreve and our little band, but Shreve was always pressing some kind of schedule on me, little rituals. On the run from Quincrux, our practice sessions, cooked dinners wherever we squatted, the same shows on television. The same tired jokes. All of Shreve's energy was spent in keeping the chaos at bay in small ways. I think deep down he was as desperate for that as I was—like a little boy still. And Tap couldn't care less. And now I have to become the disorder in order to keep it at bay. To save Shreve.

Tap nods, grinding his teeth. Lots of anger in him and not all of it due to the hand he was dealt in life. He must have been born angry. There are folks like that. Shreve's kinda like that. Maybe I am too. But I don't want to be that way forever.

The inside of the Payette Library has been wrecked. Hard to tell if that's from kids looting, or the crazy eye-church people, or what. Shelves knocked over, books everywhere. Near the circulation desk there's a stain on the floor. Dried blood, maybe. Even inside, I can see our breath pluming in the dim light, but it's marginally better than being outside. At least there's no wind. Or painted eyes. Or people pointing rifles at us.

“Let's make a fire,” Tap says, his voice loud in the empty building. “I brought matches.”

“Where? With what?”

He looks at me. I guess it is a silly question, but burning books just seems wrong to me. When I was growing up—a year ago? Two at the most—I moved from foster home to foster home, and the only thing that kept me sane was books. The libraries—always welcoming and warm and orderly. And now Tap's proposing to burn one to stay warm. Goddamn. There's so much we give up to keep ourselves going.

“Doesn't look like anyone's gonna give a shit. Look at this mess.”

“Let's start with periodicals, at least. Newspapers.”

In a far corner of the library, near the large-print paperbacks, Tap grabs an old-school metal trash can, his blanket-cape hanging limp and wet from his shoulders, and plops it down unceremoniously. He begins wadding newspaper up and tearing paperbacks in half. He lights a match (and I can't help but notice the unsteadiness of his hands; shivers rack his body), making the shadows loom and flicker for a moment before lighting the newspaper. The paper catches. The room turns yellow. I can feel the heat on my face. For a long while we feed the licking flames newspaper and cheap romance and crime novels while we huddle over the trash can. More like cavemen than hobos. Turning our hands over and over and putting our boots right on the burning metal of the can. The smoke is whisked out the broken window into the gathering dark.

I can't tell how much time has passed, but it must be a long while of us just watching the flames and heating our hands before Tap stands up, walks out of the circle of light, and returns with a huge book. Well-worn spine, easily eight inches thick.
Oxford American Dictionary
. Tap and vocabulary don't usually go together, but I can guess the word he's looking up.

He tears through pages, holding the book down and away so that the light of the trash-can fire shows the words. I feed more paperbacks into the flames.

Tap reads, “Panopticon. Noun. A building, as a prison, hospital, library, or the like, so arranged that all parts of the interior are visible from a single point.”

“What does that mean?”

“Fuck if I know.”

I stand myself and walk back toward where I think the reference area is. After a few moments of squinting in the dark, I return with a brown leather book embossed with a P. The
Encyclopaedia Britannica
.

A little sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. Tap must see my expression because he says, “What, man? You're killing me.”

“Panopticon. The architectural form for a prison, the drawings for which were published by Jeremy Bentham in 1791. It consisted of a circular, glass-roofed, tanklike structure with cells along the external wall facing toward a central rotunda. Guards stationed in the rotunda could keep all the inmates in the surrounding cells under constant surveillance.
Pan
means ‘many,' I guess.
Opticon
means ‘seeing.' So a prison where the captors see everything.”

“Fuck me with a rake,” Tap says. A new one to me, even after all my time with Shreve. Hard to picture. “It's crazy. So these people are what? The captors? The prisoners?”

“Who knows? We won't be around here long enough to have to worry about it.”

Tap nods, drops the dictionary, and shoves it away. “It's dark now. We should see if there's anything left here.” He jerks his head toward the rear of the library where there are a few doors to offices and administration.

It's a small library. It's a small town. There's not much to explore.