ZerOes Page 6

  That’s how he feels. Like he’s being pulled down. Slowly. Surely. Everything constricting—with every breath out it gets harder to breathe.

  He’s losing it all. His home. His wife, Janine. His daughter, Sue—graduating this year from Georgetown. His practice. The lawyers have made sure of that. His wife has made sure of the rest.

  He knows that if she’s been vile to him, he made her that way. His indiscretions with patients whetted her into a serrated blade. Bright and flashing and angry. And now she’s sawing his life apart.

  He doesn’t blame her. He hates her, a little. But he doesn’t blame her.

  It’s this pacemaker. That’s what he blames. He’s got an arrhythmia. An uneven heartbeat. For a long time the meds worked well enough—enough to control the fainting spells and shortness of breath. But then he had the heart attack. Tachycardia. Again, that feeling of being crushed in a vise, by a snake, under a hard and heavy boot. He thought he was dead. He was dead—clinically, for twenty-three seconds. And those twenty-three seconds—meaningless in any other context—changed everything. They changed his world. His outlook.

  He was alive again. A second chance.

  Some folks become newly religious. Gordon became something of a hedonist. New foods. New exercise equipment. New trips abroad. The indiscretions. Nine of them.

  Now he’s living through lawsuits and divorce and—

  A light flutter in his chest stops him in his tracks. It’s a tickle. No—an itch. Deep, beneath the breastbone. The kind of itch he can’t scratch, though he’s certainly going to try. He has this moment, this revelatory, Saul-becoming-Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment, this sudden epiphany when he thinks he should call Sue, should call Janine, should call all his patients and tell them he’s sorry.

  But that doesn’t last long. Because suddenly his limbs seize. Pain goes through his chest as if a locomotive is punching a hole through the mountain that is his body. He feels like a Christmas tree lit up from tip to stump, every branch and needle alive with pain and electric with fire.

  One moment he’s standing. The next he’s on the ground. Trying to speak. Trying to say something. My heart, he thinks. No. The pacemaker. Damn thing. He always said it was too weird, sticking something like that in his chest. His computer gives him a blue screen full of illegal operations twice weekly. Last week his toaster shorted out, almost caught fire. And he’s supposed to believe a pacemaker won’t go south? Now it has.

  He tries to get up, but he’s weak. The world wobbles. He hears sounds. Like his own pacing footsteps still echoing, even though here he is, flat on his back.

  A shadow falls over him.

  Those aren’t imagined footsteps. They’re real.

  A ghoul stands tall over him. A man, or something that was one once. Greasy dark hair barely managing to cover up the unevenness of his skull—like someone bashed him in the side of the head with a bat, collapsing the bone without ever letting it heal. His eyes are cold and dark, like chips of flint. A scar runs from the base of his left eye all the way down to his thin, froglike lips—lips that, on that side, tug upward in an uncomfortable facsimile of a half smile. Tattoos like ants crawl up arms that are long and lean as braided ropes—inked all the way from his wrists to the sleeves of his black T-shirt. Little symbols. Words that don’t make sense. Numbers, too. Like a code, a cipher.

  Gordon tries to say something. Help. Get away. Who are you? But all that comes out is mush-mouthed burble, his lips stuck together with strings of spit, his tongue like a roll of bloody gauze in his mouth.

  He reaches out. Paws at the monster man’s steel-toe boot.

  The boot rises, lands on his hand. The bones pop and break. Gordon cries out.

  “Don’t need your hand,” the man says. His voice is devoid of inflection, empty of emotion. “Just need this.” He grabs Gordon by the back of the head. With his free hand, he sticks a syringe in the side of Gordon’s neck.

  Everything starts to slew sideways, like a car on black ice. Gordon hears snippets of a conversation, one-sided. Then a handful of words, clear as a bell ringing in the darkness:

  “It’s done,” the man says. “We have number thirteen.”

  PART TWØ

  THE LØDGE

  CHAPTER 9

  Hackaway House

  THE POCONO MOUNTAINS, PENNSYLVANIA

  The SUV carves its way through dark pine forests. Morning sun passes through the pleached trees, dappling the windows of the vehicle. Chance can tell they’re heading up. Ascending. Into the mountains, he guesses, though what mountains, he’s not sure. His head still feels gummy from whatever drug cocktail they gave him last night.

  He woke up in this car about an hour ago. The driver—an implacable dude, stone faced and staring forward—never once acknowledged Chance’s presence. Chance tried talking to him. Making faces. Yelling. Kicking the chair. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Nothing. Big-jawed guy stayed silent as a brick wall.

  The doors on the SUV won’t open. No handles. Like what you get in a cop car. Chance was in a cop car once. In high school he got drunk with Jay-Jay Burgos on Yukon Jack and the two of them hung out on the shoulder of a defunct overpass, spitting on the cars below—until Jay-Jay thought it would be funnier instead to piss on the cars below. And damn if it wasn’t—at least, until he whizzed right on a cop cruiser. (Hell, it was funny even then.)

  The car takes a hard bounce as it cuts off the narrow road on which they’ve been driving and turns onto a red gravel drive. Chance’s teeth vibrate together. That plus his empty stomach and the drugs from the night before have him feeling suddenly queasy.

  And hungry.

  Hungweasy.

  Ugh.

  This stretch of bumpy gravel is long—not a driveway as much as it is a road. They go for five minutes, maybe ten, and then tires skid on loose stone. Out front, Chance sees a chain-link fence and a gate. The fence is tall—thrice his height, easy. Ringed with loops of razor wire, in which are caught leaves and branches. The gate is mechanized: nobody around but them to watch it click, hum, and drift open.

  The car passes through. The gate whirs, then closes behind them. The chain link rattles as it shuts. Stone-Face moves the car forward again.

  Another ten minutes go by. Forest all around. Rocks, too—boulders painted with green moss. They pass by a little waterfall not far off the “road,” white water frothing and gushing like a stab wound.

  Then, ahead, Chance sees it.

  Hollis Copper called it the Hunting Lodge, but this isn’t one building; it’s a whole damn complex—a series of cabins and pods connected by decking walkway, lots of redwood and dark wood. The cabins are modern—boxy and clean, like something out of an Ikea catalog, plunked down in the middle of this tract of mountain forest. All of it stands surrounded by another—shorter, just above head height—fence. Another drunken loop of razor wire decorating the top.

  Another mechanized gate. Stone-Face eases the car through and they park in a line of identical SUVs underneath a broad metal awning.

  “Are we there yet?” Chance asks, as snarkily as he can muster.

  Stone-Face gets out of the SUV, stone faced, and opens Chance’s door: “Yeah. Get out.”

  Stone-Face pulls a long duffel bag out of the back of the car and shoves it into Chance’s arms. Oof. “The hell’s in this?” Chance asks.

  “Your clothes.”

  “I didn’t pack anything.”

  Stone-Face shrugs. “We packed for you.”

  “I hope you remembered to pack underwear. I don’t wanna have to go commando in this place. It’s damp up here, man, I don’t wanna get some kinda crotch fungus—”

  Stone-Face suddenly grabs him by the ear and slams his head into the back of the SUV. Chance cries out, pulling away. Ear ringing like a bell.

  “Shut your mouth,” Stone-Face says. “You keep babbling that brook and we’ll dam it up for you. You’re here to serve a purpose, you little skidmark. That purpose is not to irritat
e me. Thinking you’re a fucking comedian.” Chance gives him a sneer, but that just sets the man off further. Asshole reaches out, grabs for Chance again, cups a meaty hand around the back of Chance’s neck. “You wanna have a go at me? I’ll throw you in the Dep so fast your dick will shrivel. You know what happens—”

  “Roach,” comes a voice. “That’s enough.”

  Stone-Face—or, apparently, Roach—gives Chance’s neck one last squeeze, then fakes a laugh. “Sorry, Agent Copper. Just giving our newbie a short, sharp shock.”

  Chance pulls away. “Whatever, dickhead.”

  Roach’s jaw tightens.

  Hollis Copper comes up, steps between them, gives Chance a look. “You don’t know when to shut up, do you?”

  Chance shrugs. “I figure it says as much in my file.”

  “It does. Let’s go. Bring the bag. You have some people to meet.”

  Roach gives him one last look as they head up a set of aluminum stairs.

  Chance gives him the finger. It’s a dumb move, but nobody ever said he was smart.

  Hollis strides along, long limbs swinging like branches. Chance loops the duffel around his back and grunts as he bears its weight, hurrying to catch up. As they walk up over the gravel lot, Chance can see that the tops of the parking canopies are lined with solar panels—photovoltaic octagons. There’s a big building in the center of the complex; standing near it is a tall white post with a trio of triangle-shaped pieces framing it, each like a rack for billiard balls. Chance knows what it is, because they’d put one in not far from his house: a cell tower.

  “Hey, ain’t you gonna give me the nickel tour?” Chance asks.

  Hollis, without stopping, points. “That’s the main building. That’s where you eat. There’s a rec room in there, too. On the other side, basketball court and lap pool. Over there”—he points to gray composite pods with black windows, windows through which Chance can see the smeary glow of monitors—“is where you’ll work. Some of the pods are individual. Some of them are team pods. You get assigned ’em as they come up. Past that—”

  Coming up on them is a young Indian or Pakistani kid staring out from behind a set of too-big glasses, like the kind a shop teacher might wear. Walking with him is a wispy sylph in a long tie-dyed dress, her skin so pale that she might as well be one of those see-through anatomy dolls in science class. She’s older by a good bit—not old enough to be Chance’s mother, but definitely, like, older sister age. She turns her gaze away as they pass, looking frightened.

  The boy gives a nervous nod and an anxious laugh (heh-heh).

  Hollis gives them a nod. “Dipesh. Miranda. Past that,” he continues, “are the cabins.”

  “And the Dep? Where is that?”

  “You don’t wanna know about the Dep. Where it is doesn’t matter.”

  “What the hell is it?”

  “Like I said, Mr. Dalton, you don’t want to know.”

  Chance grunts. “All right, fine. Those two that just passed. They hackers, too? Everybody here a hacker?”

  Hollis stops. Turns toward Chance. “Two types of people here, Mr. Dalton. Prisoners and guards. Are the prisoners all hackers? To the number, yes. Are the guards all capable servants of the government who know how to extract results? Yes. All that being said, on a good day, this place is pretty cushy. Not everybody gets along, but everyone plays well together, and on those good days, our relationship is more like babysitters and children. On days when folks don’t get along, that’s when it becomes clear that no matter how nice the view, no matter how fresh the mountain air, you’re still trapped in here until your time is done. And you do what we say.”

  “That’s, uhh, real good to know.” Chance offers a stiff smile.

  “So everyone here is a hacker. Question is, Dalton—are you?”

  I’m not, he thinks. I’m a poser. But he nods. “Yep, yeah, sure.”

  “Then let’s go meet your bunkmates.”

  Chance steps into the cabin. The doors must be pretty well sealed against sound inside and out, because soon as he opens the door, the noise of the argument is like a slap to the face.

  “—I said I’m an atheist, okay? You don’t need to use language like that around me. I find it offensive,” a young woman says as she plucks shirts out of a carry-on bag. Chance is struck by the intensity of her eyes—dark yet bright at the same time, like chips of shiny coal catching light. She pulls out each article of clothing and folds it with stiff hands and bloodless knuckles, like at any point she might let a shirt drop and haul back and pop the older fella with the gray mop of hair right in his gin blossom nose.

  The old fella says, “Quit it with the politically correct word-police horseshit. I didn’t mean jihad like jihad-jihad, I just meant you were really doing a jihad on those clothes—I mean, hell, look at you. You’re folding them like it’s a religious war.”

  The woman spins around, eyes narrow, lips curled in a scowl. “Oh really? You would’ve used that same word if you were speaking to her?” She gestures first toward another young woman, in a loft space above—a big girl splayed out on a bed, using a duffel as a pillow, a wide grin that could only be described as shit-eating smeared across her face. “Or him?” Now she points to a lanky black dude—maybe Chance’s age, early twenties or so.

  That dude says, “Naw, no way, uh-uh, don’t drag me into whatever this is.”

  Hesitantly, Chance steps in through the door with Copper just behind him. The cabin’s an A-frame—narrow at the top, like some kind of ski chalet. Not much in there except three beds down below and two on the loft. Couple of bookshelves: all fiction from a quick glance, nothing nonfiction. A couch at the far wall. No kitchen. A small door that Chance guesses might be a bathroom and shower?

  But most important: No TV. No computers. No phones. No connection to the outside world.

  “Kids today,” the older man says. “I swear, you are about as tough as a rain-soaked Kleenex. Everybody’s so easily offended. As if that’s the worst thing that’s ever gonna happen to you, somebody saying something that puts a little grit in your panties? I was born in 1950, which means I saw some time in ’Nam, and let me tell you—”

  Up on the loft, the big girl guffaws. “Man, really? We’re shut up in this place with a crotchety old vet?” She laughs so hard she almost cries. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type, gramps. You look like Ben & Jerry, not John Rambo.”

  The old vet waves her off. “Well, you look like you eat a lot of Ben & Jerry’s.”

  That just makes her laugh harder. “Fuck, man, we haven’t known each for a whole hour and”—here she wipes laugh-tears from her eyes—“already with the fat jokes? Suck it, old man. You know I’m a prime piece of real estate up here. My homie down there knows what I mean.”

  “Goddamn,” the black guy says, “can’t y’all just shut up for five minutes?”

  Their voices all start to rise together again.

  Hollis has obviously had enough, because he pushes his way in. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

  Everyone shuts up. They don’t quite scatter like cockroaches in the light, but they do freeze in place like spooked mice.

  Hollis clears his throat, then nods. “Good. Here’s the last of you. Chance Dalton, meet your pod. In order left to right: DeAndre Mitchell, Wade Earthman, Aleena Kattan, and up there in the loft, Reagan Stolper.”

  “’Sup,” DeAndre says.

  Wade gives a clumsy salute. “Dalton.”

  Aleena looks away.

  Reagan gives him an obnoxious waggle of her fingers. “Ahoy, script kiddie. Welcome to the Good Ship Dipshit.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The Babysat

  THE LODGE

  DeAndre thinks as he walks:

  Keep your head low.

  Do your time.

  These people gonna dangle bait in front of you—don’t take it. Just do the bare minimum of what they say and run for the hills soon as they let you out.

  His “pod”—man, how he hates that
term, sounds like something out of some science fiction film, something out of Cronenberg—follows their new babysitter, Hollis Copper, back toward the main building. A building Hollis refers to as the Ziggurat, “because it is your temple.”

  The little know-it-all, Aleena, corrects him: “Ziggurats weren’t necessarily temples. They were towers, on which a temple usually featured.”

  “Thank you for the history lesson, Miss Kattan,” Hollis grumps.

  The white boy, Chance, speaks up: “Shoot, I thought it looked like something out of an Ikea catalog. The funky angles and that blue frosted glass.”

  “The Billy Bookcase Building,” Reagan snarks. “The Triple-B, bitch.”

  “Everybody pipe down,” Hollis says. “Before we hit breakfast, you gotta know some rules.” Here he stops walking and pivots like a revolving door. “The Lodge has, as I understand it, one helluva lot of bandwidth. This bandwidth is for use by the United States government and in service to our government’s many needs, actions, and ideals. It is not for personal use.”

  He rattles on: No cell phones. No smartphones. No iPads or iPods. No pagers. (Reagan mutters: “Who the hell uses pagers?” DeAndre: “Time-traveling drug dealers from 2004.”) No connection to the outside world—when he says this, that’s when people lose their shit. Aleena starts talking about her family. Wade goes on about “I got a whole network of friends and family who you don’t want trying to hunt me down.” Reagan shrugs, says: “I got a sister and she’s kind of a twat, but she’ll worry.” DeAndre’s about to speak up, talk about his moms, but then he reminds himself again: Head low, do your time, shut your mouth. Repeats it inside his head like a mantra.

  Chance looks at DeAndre, laughs a little like he’s trying to cover up a deeper feeling, and then whispers to DeAndre: “I don’t really have nobody to worry about me.”