This Is the Night (24 page)

21.

The search for Lorrie. Three options, the ticket lady told Lance, three ways to begin: option A, a seat on the first-class luxury special that would deliver him directly to Interior City—one piece of fresh fruit included
—
option B: a regular ticket accompanied by plenty of stops and transfers. Or, she said, the power draining from her voice, a third option. Option C. Our most reasonably priced option.

Go on, Lance told her.

The ticket lady paused, frowned, and leaned into the glass window between them. “The Broken Bus.”

Though he had never before heard the term, it was easy to decipher.
Broken
did not refer to the bus itself, but to the people inside it. A bus of vets. And why not? There was, he knew, no better place to hide than right inside the monster’s heart.

“So?” said the ticket lady. She quoted him a price.

The Broken Bus was cheap enough that Lance could now arrive in a strange city with a few extra Currencies in his pocket, expenditures for a new life he would resume with Lorrie, a life in which their reunited love would overtake his lack of money, or perhaps make him so happy he would fail to notice the poor state of his finances. The Broken Bus it was.

In he went, deep into the dark belly of the bus depot, down the concrete walkways lined with small kiosks stuffed with racks of newspapers and the catcalling women selling them, through puddles that stank of piss and various alcohols, beneath archway billboards advertising the Point Line, past a young woman with a desperate smile selling hard-boiled eggs and raw browned turnip tops. Finally he arrived at the gate, a lifeless part of the terminal fallen into disuse. There were no other buses besides the run-down vehicle with rusted rub rails and crooked windows that would chug him across the Homeland. No one, it was clear, wanted to see these men.

The bus itself was unmarked. It made sense; after a series of attacks on Registry buses, everyone was being careful. How perfect, Lance heard a vet remark, would it be to make it out of the jungle only to be killed by some Ideology Fiver back on Homeland soil? At the entrance door of the bus, the driver laid a tilted ramp over the small steps. Up the ramp shuffled the monsters: braced and twisted knees, swollen necks, scarred faces, leaky ears, exploded noses, all exposed and naked in the exhausted light. Men like this could have been his brothers, Lance thought, if any of his brothers had been blessed with just slightly more luck.

Lance boarded last. On the way to the bus station, he had taken seriously the warning that undercover agents were following his every move, but after a series of dramatic loops and turns, it was clear no one was watching him. Of course the Homeland couldn’t monitor every single person it didn’t have room for. As he stepped onto the bus, he could feel the break of the invisible chains that had controlled him from afar. Yes, the pleasure of exposure was sweet.

To form a cover story, he had picked out a newspaper at random, turning straight to the news of a recent jungle skirmish. A quick scan and he now had a military unit, a subtle infirmity, and an area of Foreign territory he hoped he could pronounce well enough to have credibly been in battle in. Even this tactic worried him. Perhaps being able to pronounce the name of the place you had fought at was a sure sign of not having fought there.

Luckily no one on the bus seemed interested in talking. Instead, they just stared at his two arms, his functional, healthy legs, and, he was sure, hated their disproportioned selves even more. Once seated, he let out a few naked yelps and thrust his tongue out at a far angle, just to show these vets that while his body might be intact, it was very possible that his mind was not.

Surrounded by young men in misery, he could not look at any of them. Why would he? Once the Broken Bus stopped, who would be waiting for them? There was no doubt in Lance’s mind that Interior City was the dawn of his new life—which was really just his old life resumed in a new place. Alive and healthy, he was ready to find Lorrie, ready for her to love him again. A small smile crossed his face as he leaned against the window.

A few hours later, a picture of a woman floated before him.

“This is her.” The kid behind him was talking, having seemingly started a conversation without any of the normal formalities or introductions.

Groggy, Lance took the picture from between the kid’s thumb and little finger, the only digits he had available.

“Nice,” he said.

“We were married two days before I left.”

“Okay.”

“Just me and her, no one else at the wedding.”

Lance nodded, and the kid continued.

“Her family was all spread out after First Aggression. Not a lot of them made it out.”

“Common story,” Lance said. Night was giving way to morning.

“You know, it’s the first time I’ll be seeing her.” The kid let out a self-conscious smile. “Sure, my fingers don’t work much, but everything else does.”

“Good to hear.”

“You got a girl?” the kid asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s where you’re headed?”

Lance nodded.

“I’ll bet she’s glad her man’s all in one piece.”

“Hope so.”

“I’d bet my life on it. Strong guy like you? Just showing up at her door will have her shouting up thank-yous to the Young Savior.”

Shouting, yes, Lance thought, but perhaps to the Point Line instead. After a while, the kid got tired of telling his story and leaned back in his seat. In the early light, Lance watched as the dense streetscapes of the city gave way to the endless ripples of fallow farmland, the expressway parallel to a set of tracks, old Homeland trains hauling grains, armaments, and chemicals for the war. Only once had Lance been on a train—he and his father and two of his brothers had gone to visit his grandfather. Now, not so many years later, Lance thought, his father had disappeared, his brothers were killed in action, his grandfather was dead, and the trains were closed to passengers.

In ravines by the side of the road, Lance saw grass-stained washing machines, pyramid stacks of bald tires, and heaps of rusted televisions, all silently blaring the fact that either people could no longer afford to pay to dump their trash or that they could still pay but did not want to and no one was around to catch them. “How much longer?” he asked a guy across the aisle with no flesh beyond the stumps of his elbows.

The man lifted his leg and gestured to the watch around his ankle.

Lance allowed himself another smile, not caring who saw. Nine hours till Lorrie.

22.

Benjamin still hasn’t called. And Daniel still hasn’t spoken.

Mr. Dorton drags himself over to the poker game at his friend Lambert’s. Though it’s unlikely, he hopes one of the regulars will take sick and call Craig Camwell to sub in. Camwell is no good at cards, but Mr. Dorton wants to see him. He wants to make sure Camwell tells his boy Joe to tell Benjamin to call. And why not? No matter the indignity, it was still worth a try. Benny and Joe, they were always together.

Lambert’s kid opens the door. Mr. Dorton can’t even remember his name. His age, if he had to guess, must be somewhere between his oldest son, Daniel, and his youngest son, Benjamin. Everybody in the complex, Mr. Dorton included, knows Lambert’s kid is fresh back from another fourteen-month stint: Lambert never stops yakking about his kid’s five tours in the jungle. Practically the whole prison complex has heard Lambert recount one of his son’s all-night jungle shootouts. Each battle is stretched and amplified with every retelling. But so what? A son’s bravery doesn’t bother Mr. Dorton; his Daniel has two valor medals and a bronze Illustrious Hero bar.

The Lambert kid grips Mr. Dorton’s hand tight and welcomes him into the house. His father, he tells Mr. Dorton, is running late, but can he get him anything? Just a whiskey and some water. The kid comes back to the living room and presses a lowball glass into Mr. Dorton’s hand. He doesn’t offer a seat, and Mr. Dorton doesn’t take one. The Lamberts have installed wall-to-wall carpeting, and Mr. Dorton watches a piece of moisture fall from the rim of his drink onto the thick pile. Lambert’s kid doesn’t notice.

Instead, the kid talks weaponry. The rifle he used, he says, was truly something. Mr. Dorton can see in this kid’s eyes that he misses that rifle. It’s like a bad breakup; Mr. Dorton knows how these Homeland armed services kids get: you watch that rifle at all times, she sleeps in your bed, you anticipate the upward kick each time she sprays her tapered bullets. Letting anyone hurt or even touch her is incomprehensible, and then one day you’ve got your discharge papers and she’s gone.

“Thirty-six hundred rounds,” the kid says. The two of them are still standing.

Mr. Dorton has stopped paying attention for a moment, thought the kid had moved on, but no, the kid is still explaining the intricacies of his combat rifle. Thirty-six hundred rounds a minute, he says again, effective kills at some ridiculously large number of distance-units, a sporting shot from even farther. Next he shows Mr. Dorton a few scars and describes the origins of each. With thick, steady fingers, the kid rolls up his left pant leg and motions for Mr. Dorton to lean in for a better view. First stop: a blotch the size of a fried egg, from a leech, the kid explains, that had fastened to him during a stomp through the jungle on an intelligence-gathering mission outside a Fareon pit.

A what?
Dorton is about to ask, but the kid is onto the next destination, pushing up a sleeve and exposing a bicep. The skin over the kid’s muscle is thin, the result of some sort of jungle infection that went untreated after too many days in the bush. What’s next, Mr. Dorton thinks. Will the kid unbuckle his belt and drop his trousers in the middle of his parents’ living room? Instead, the Lambert kid asks about Daniel, which, Mr. Dorton gathers, means he is closer to his older son’s age than his youngest.

“We played varsity together, you know,” the kid says.

Daniel was on three varsity teams, but Mr. Dorton doesn’t care to know which one of them had been with this kid.

The Lambert kid is all big smiles and ragged grins, even when he talks about the boiling heat of the jungle, where before the day is even started, a layer of sweat covers you from your toes on up, but that’s how you want it because when a breeze finally does come your way, the sweat cools you down even faster. Such new and intimate information about the fighting, Mr. Dorton thinks, should not be given to him by a stranger. A story like this should come from his son.

Mr. Dorton finishes his drink and desperately wants another, but the kid is on a roll. Thirty-six hundred rounds per minute, he tells Mr. Dorton a third time.

“But what’s next?” Mr. Dorton asks him.

Corrections, the kid says. His father is going to help set him up with a job in the prison complex. A growth industry, he jokes, what with all these dodgers. And then more seriously: provided the prime minister stays healthy. Can’t let these Coyotes take over now, can we? But you and me, the kid says, we’ll be colleagues. How about Daniel, he asks, touching Mr. Dorton’s elbow. He have a good time over there?

Daniel is silent and bed-ridden—maybe it’s the pills that have him all clammed up—and Mr. Dorton has no idea what he laid eyes on over there because he won’t say a word. Daniel had a great time, Mr. Dorton says. He’s sinking into the carpeted floor, and this kid is getting taller and taller.

Lambert’s kid goes on about the strange, flat fauna that make a dangerous thicket of the jungle, from gigantic, gnarled trees slathered in deformed flinty bark that send out wide roots to curl around your ankles and bite at your skin to bushes whose berries are so sour just one lick would salt your throat for a week. Then he moves on—Mr. Dorton doesn’t know how, can barely follow—to stories of his unit’s mission as sample gatherers, entering deep into Foreign territory late at night with special scoops and cores, their chrome-plated tools probing the strange soil. What the hell the Homeland needs with Foreign soil samples, Mr. Dorton has no idea, but the kid keeps moving. Somehow, he has transitioned into a story about rules.

If you wanted to stay alive, the kid smiles, you had to break the rules.

Mr. Dorton sinks lower and lower into the Lamberts’ living room carpeting. His Daniel never talked about trees that bit the skin or soil samples, and he never talked about rules, either. No, this Lambert kid was not the right boy to be telling him these stories.

Follow the rules, the Lambert kid says, and you’re dead.

Enough.
How
, Mr. Dorton thinks,
do I get this kid to talk about something else?
“You have a car?” Mr. Dorton asks him. It’s a stab, a nothing remark, but the kid bites.

Eyes wide, the kid says he’s been saving up for a Brand 42, a real sensible choice, doesn’t Mr. Dorton agree? Seventeen different newspapers, the kid says, voted the Brand 42 as one of the best cars in the Homeland, so what could go wrong? What kind of car does Daniel want? the kid wonders.

Mr. Dorton feels just about ready to set this kid’s teeth on edge. Can’t they just talk about cars?

“Brand Thirty-Seven!” the kid says. “With the big grille in front? I bet Danny is a Thirty-Seven type.”

Daniel has become a different type entirely, a type who doesn’t just cry, but now weeps, heavy, bitter wails that push through the polyester curtain ringing his bed and run all around the hospital.

“How’d you know?” Mr. Dorton says, smiling. “A sleek little Thirty-Seven. That’s what he wants.”

“Turbo or regular? I’ll bet Daniel wants that turbo.”

“I’m troubled,” Mr. Dorton tells the kid, “by these Ideology Fivers. Not the Foreigns. We know they hate the Homeland, but the converts, the ones hiding among us.”

The kid nods up and down so vigorously Mr. Dorton thinks his head might pop off. “Last week’s attack was the most messed up yet.”

“The military hospital? The ambulances full of charcoal?”

“No, even more recent. Up in Western City North, they hung an effigy of the Homeland.”

“You mean the prime minister?” Mr. Dorton’s papers have not covered this event.

“No, like a dummy that was labeled
Homeland
. If I could just get my hands on these mother-rapers.”

“Was anybody hurt?”

“If I’d have been there. But no, there was a bomb, but it didn’t go off.”

“Who did it? Foreigns?”

“Nobody knows. But it doesn’t seem like it. Two of the papers said there was a note next to the dud bomb.
If the culture is killing us, then why not kill the culture?
”

“That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard!” Mr. Dorton says.

“Right?” says the kid. “These idiots can’t even build a bomb right.”

“But the idea,” Mr. Dorton presses, “that these attacks could be perpetrated by Homeland citizens. It’s simply not possible. It’s—”

“It’s the times we’re in,” says the kid. “Doesn’t matter, though. Once we finish the Foreigns, these people will have to find something else to complain about. And I think we’ve got them on the ropes. Year twenty-three is our year, Mr. Dorton.”

Ten minutes with this kid and Mr. Dorton has heard more from him than a month of visits with his own boy. Finally Lambert walks through the door, and the other men arrive as well. Everyone who is supposed to come to the poker game does, so there is no need for Craig Camwell to sub in. Mr. Dorton won’t be able to ask him if he’s heard anything about the whereabouts of his Benjamin.

Mr. Dorton shakes the Lambert kid’s hand and gives him best wishes. The kid’s grip is so strong, his smile so thick, that Mr. Dorton doesn’t want to let up. He holds on for as long as he can, soaking all that vigor up until he is over capacity, a little bit left to pass on the next time he sees his Daniel.

“We’re so glad he’s ready to come home,” Mr. Dorton had said to the doctor.

“About that,” the doctor had said.

As the doctor spoke, it became clear the decision to release him was based on factors completely unrelated to Daniel’s health. “Space,” the doctor had mumbled. “Overcrowded corridors, psychological consequences. New boys just keep coming.”

Now Mr. Dorton sits in a reclining chair in his den, his feet extended on the small footrest before him. He leans forward, places a pillow behind his head, and pushes down with his feet, setting the chair in motion. Even in this room, he thinks, his room, he is unable to find comfort.

Ever since Daniel has returned, the house has been cross-sectioned into territories, private areas and alcoves for each member of the family. Only now, an area is under dispute. Mr. Dorton finds the conflict tremendously depressing and finally stands and walks into the living room, his wife’s domain, to address the issue.

“Let’s help him clean out his bedroom,” he says to his wife. She lifts her eyes away from the television and up toward him. “Daniel doesn’t want to be surrounded by those boy things.”

But Sally responds with notions of familiarity, comfort, and free will. If Danny wants to take down his old pennants and posters, she says, then Danny will do it himself.

She’s a coddler, Mr. Dorton thinks, buying their son the fresh fruits they can barely afford, offering a hot breakfast each morning the moment the boy awakes. Sure, Mr. Dorton keeps a few strawberries in his office, but only for appearances. He slinks back toward the den, shoulders low, and leaves his wife to the living room. Removing a bottle of aspirin from his coat pocket, he pops three of the dull white pills into his mouth. The pills go down hard.

On Daniel’s first night home from the hospital, the boy had stayed up late, the two of them staring at the television until the sky had gone completely black. Another failed attack on the Homeland’s Strategic National Stockpile, a reporter tells them.
It’s just a warehouse for flu vaccine,
an official pleads.
We swear it!
Daniel watched silently, saying nothing. Outside, the stars were densely packed; almost no space remained between the pinpricks of light. Daniel had announced he was tired, the first words either of them had spoken in hours. Once he had stated his intent to sleep, Daniel stood and walked up the stairs to his old room. Mr. Dorton had wondered whether his son’s familiar trappings would comfort him. But then he stepped through the door into his old room and vanished.

He did not come out for three days.

“Substance Q? Something harder?” Mr. Dorton asks his wife. The two of them drink decaffeinated coffee around the kitchen table, a neutral zone. “Some of them fell into all sorts of stuff over there, new Substances we haven’t even heard of yet. I saw a report on a few of the news shows.”

“When was the last time there was something true on a news show?”

“Sometimes I hear banging sounds in there. He’s throwing things. Breaking them.”