The Only Ones (3 page)

He went to Lab 3 again and came back with a regular coat, the Pak from Queens, and the Mobile.

“I!” So he could say it without coughing now. “Let’s go!” I take my coat too and we head off into the night.

iii

The rain or snow was still coming down, and it is hard sloshing through the slush to get to the truck in the dark, but Rauden started talking before we finished sloshing, like I could even hear him, in the rain or snow.

“Guy who was the original owner of the Farm? And in case you wondered,” he goes, like I even did, “it’s not a working farm. Never was. Everyone just called it that.” He stamped his boots on the side of the truck, then climbed in. “Dewey Sylvain.” I climbed in too. “A very smart man. A little paranoid at the end,” he starts the motor, “but who could blame him? Set up all kinds of security, alarms, failsafes, firewalls, worms, you name it.” We go down the road, with the rain or snow hitting the windows and roof.

“Plus customized search programs, flag Alerts, buzzing hoo-has—the guy loved a gizmo! Some of this software goes back twenty, thirty years. Still works—well, what’s left of it. My brother Henry used to call it SOTA, when we were kids. State Of The Art. Ha, ha. We weren’t allowed to touch most of it, so now that we bought the goddamn place, we can’t make heads or tails of it. What’s the word, Larraine?”

We had stopped for the gate and he is on the phone. “Oh shit, oh shit. Well! I’m a-turnin’ off my lights.” He turned the truck lights off, said to me, “We do not want to attract attention on the roads tonight,” and drove into a bush. He steered us out. Hit another bush and so on till we got to the road at the end that we had took from the Terminal? Then he stopped the truck, rolled down the window, leaned his head out and listened, and when he finished listening, drove us on this road but the other way from the Terminal, up a hill, or seemed to be a hill, in the dark.

There was a moon in the sky but so many clouds it was hard to see anything, and he drove very slow. He would roll the window down to listen. Once, after he had gone off the regular road to a smaller one, he said, “Better not,” and backed us to the regular road again. “Larraine,” he’s on his Mobile, “I’m on old Route 9. Thought it was safer than the back roads.”

So this is a front road.

By now some clouds have cleared. You could see the moon better and it showed some things alongside this front road, mainly snow and big snow puddles but also a few trees and fences, plus something burnt that I didn’t know what it was.

“Larraine is way up in the hills,” Rauden told me, “but she keeps tabs. Has a very SOTA tracking system. Ha, ha.”

I just look out the window at the snow. He doesn’t notice. He is on the phone.

“Those fucking cretins,” he says, then, “I’ll go the old way, past Hyman’s place.” He drove off this road onto some small road, very dark, where I think he hits a fence and also the wheel with his hand a few times, saying, “Fucking cretins!” till we end up on some other regular road but very soon are on a different road that seems to be wide, though bumpy, with trees very close, and right away he started coughing so hard he had to stop the truck and roll down the window. Then he started sniffing the air. “Oh! Shit!” he said.

Well, it was smoke—I smelled it too. He turned right around and backed us straight off the road into a mess of branches, turned the motor off, and jumped out in the dark. I heard him throwing something on the truck, maybe branches—I’m just sitting there alone till he is back beside me, whispering, “Not a word. Not one fucking word.” And we both sat there in the dark with him putting one puffy finger on his lips, till I heard a sound I never heard before, and it got louder. Then louder. Like rocks that fall, one at a time, but fast, and I could see what looks like lights, but not exactly lights, getting closer. This is through trees in the dark and the lights seem blurry, like little fires? And the fires are bobbing up and down behind the trees with that sound getting louder, till it’s not one at a time but all together, like all the rocks fell down right near me, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, through the trees, and then it’s gone.

But Rauden kept his fingers on his lips. He stayed a long time like that, then got out of the truck and walked a few steps in the dark, listening, both ways. Listen, listen. Now back in his seat. Slammed the wheel a few times with his hand, then said, “You have just had a first-hand sighting of the Knights of fucking Life.” He took a few deep breaths like he had told Delmore to do. It seems to calm him down. “Just a bunch of very foolish local vigilantes who come out of the hills from time to time to burn our farms down.”

Then he yelled again, “FUCKING CRETINS!” And he looked at me.

So I look back, like, cretins. Right. I know exactly what that is. Cretins.

He starts the motor up and is on the phone again. “The Ks passed right by the goddamn truck. Yup, torches and horses.”

Man! That was horses?

“Seemed to be coming from—oh, shit, that’s Harold’s. On my way.”

We race down that same dark, bumpy road till we turn down some other regular road that is so open we could see all the way to where a pretty big fire was showing a ways off down a long hill, and we went down that hill to there and could see other fat guys in overalls throwing snow and other things at the fire, and Rauden put the truck under some trees, got a blanket, told me stay underneath and do not move, and he went running to the fire, yelling, “Fucking cretins!”

It was a long time till I saw him again. I just stayed under the blanket and listen to shouts and smelled smoke, till I saw him right by the truck, and he put his head on it and cried. I guarantee I never saw a Tech do that. Then he kicked the truck. He already had one of those metal bottles out when he got in his seat and took quite a few drinks before we headed off to the regular road, or one of them. This time he turned the lights on—I guess whatever he was scared would happen already did. You could see this was a pretty big road, with hills on both sides.

“I mean, shit!” He kept smacking the steering wheel, and the truck would bounce around. “We’re talking cows here. Cows! And, I mean—” he got the bottle from his pocket and waved it around, “—these wussies think they are so fucking hot? They should have seen the nuts who chased us out of Minnesota—one of those godawful End of Days groups from back then—we had to drive halfway cross the country to lose those fucking maniacs—we were in trucks—Henry and me, Dad, old Phil Delize and that whole group—landed at Dewey Sylvain’s door in the middle of the night, Henry and I are little kids in our friggin jammies, Dewey took one look at us all, burst out laughing and said, what a bunch of rubes. That’s how we got our name. You might have heard of us.”

I didn’t. But I don’t say it. I just look out my window. We are passing a fence.

“Bernie!” On the phone again. “I’ll be a little late. Yup, the Ks hit Harold’s. Everyone’s all right. They torched the barn but Harold and Weezie had already moved Daisy and the little Daisies into the big house. I’m going to check in with Walter and Larraine. Bernie came a little later”—What? Oh he is talking to me now—“on the run from Ohio. He was the only one of us who was a bona fide MD—Dad’s group were DVMs—veterinarians, for God’s sake—and Dewey Sylvain with so many goddamn degrees he couldn’t remember them himself. That was the original rubes.”

So let me stop a little minute and say something, because maybe from what I said back at the Farm you think, well this girl have done everything. Well, I did things that night I never did before, and one of them is, I never heard anybody talk as much as this rube talked. I never heard anything like it. Sometimes on the Mobile, sometimes to himself—it’s like he cannot shut himself up.

“Ever see a baby?”

Oh! So he is talking to me this time. I shook my head.

We went under some trees.

I heard a baby crying in a building once. But I don’t feel like telling him that.

He had another drink. “I saw Dewey Sylvain deliver one once. Back when there was still much need for that kind of work.” He shut up a minute. “Real Renaissance man. He went out on a job with Dad once and delivered a pair of goddamn lambs! The guy was a research fucking scientist! Literally! Got his hands into everything. Used to say, it’s all about the hands. To be fair, I don’t think he was any better than Dad when it came to enucleating cells under a goddamn microscope! That’s tricky.”

Now out of trees.

Here is another thing this rube will do. He will say something, then look over at me like, you agree, right?

So I’m like, I agree. Sounds tricky to me.

Yup.

We pass, I think it is a house, but dark. No lights.

When he smacked the wheel this time, the truck slid sideways, and when he tries to steer the other way we slid almost to a tree on the other side, till he finally got us going straight, but we did go off the road, even with the lights, so many times that maybe you are starting to wonder do I have second thoughts about this job? And not because of the Knights of fucking Life, who were pretty interesting, to tell the truth, with those lights and that noise, and, I mean, they rode horses—horses! But how this guy drove? You could say I’m lucky to be alive.

Phone in one hand, bottle in the other, we go sliding back and forth across the road—the guy’s steering with his elbows—bounce over a bump, and, splash! Slush at the bottom. Mess on the windows. He jumped out and cleaned them all around, front and back, and he left the door open, so I just smelled whatever is out there which, whatever it is, I never smelled it before. We head off again and he hit another bump and the whole thing happens again.

I never had so much fun in my life.

Bump! Splash! Slide!

Go through trees again. Hit something in the dark. Come out on a great big open space and now he shut up. He will do that sometimes. Talk, talk, talk. Then shut up.

He turned on a side road with one of those blinking lights like at the Farm. Some fat guy in overalls opens up and leads us down his road to a little house. Rauden set up a cable from the truck to the side of the house for a charge, and I went in where a woman in a long check dress let me use the toilet, and here’s something else I never did, saw a toilet like that, so shiny. Jars with pink things in them. Pictures on the wall of little girls in hats.

Rauden had come in the house for a hot Beverage and bread while the truck charged, and the woman gave me some too while Rauden told them how Daisy is doing, and the guy told Rauden he heard an Inspector is coming around tomorrow, and Rauden says thanks for the heads up, Walter. So this was Walter. I didn’t hear the woman’s name. She didn’t hear mine either. Rauden just said he’s bringing me to Bernie. When he told them that, they just look the other way. Walter and the woman walked us to our truck and patted Rauden on the back. We’re off.

You could see real good now with the truck lights, and the moon helped too. There was a kind of metal tower far off. We seem to head toward it. Then we come around a bend so you can’t see the tower any more but are turned so we got a view of smoke coming up even now from Harold’s, behind a hill, and Rauden whispered, “Fucking cretins.”

Then he shut up.

Ok, let me say something else about how this guy talked. You could not understand a word he said. Like DVM. So that is veter whatever. That is a big help, right? Well they are both doctor for animals. DVM and vet. They got a doctor for animals! Who ever heard of that? But sometimes you hear vet and it means GI, so watch out. Words could mean two things or more. MD is regular doctor, and you are going to hear about OBGYN which is another kind of regular doctor, though shady. IV, IVF, PBJ, SCNT, ASAP, ova, solos, sperms, somatic this, embry on that, plus you already heard enuke whatever. Rubes need to talk a funny way so no one will know what they mean or they will end up in jail or worse, but sometimes I think Rauden just liked to mix people up. And I will tell you this. It worked.

“Genes were Dewey’s main interest. Got carried away sometimes—well! Dad always said that first Subject in the modification Project would have died anyway, how things turned out in fucking Baltimore. Never figured out why that flu hit them so bad, when DC got out of it with just a few thousand deaths.”

Ok, that worked. I am mixed up.

“See that?” Now he’s pointing to something downhill on his side of the truck. “One of Dewey’s later Projects—started in ’42. That’s two fucking years after the Big One. Most people who were still alive were just ready to roll over and die. Dewey said, let’s make the best of our situation. We all felt that way. All the rubes.”

I looked where he pointed, downhill. It seems to be poles coming out of the snow with fans on the end? Then big plexi boxes with something in them, maybe vegetables. You could see this real good under the moon. Then more poles, with wheels on them, going around and around. Then nothing.

“The college let Dewey teach here after Hopkins threw him out, and I guess he was lucky to get a job, but they were lucky too. Dewey would do fucking anything. Plants—soil—software. Very gifted hacker. And of course the medical work—not even in his area of specialization—brilliant guy. What he did for those poor little kids who ended up at the clinic here—well, you wouldn’t know what he did even if I told you, but it doesn’t always work. He got it to work. The problems those poor kids had—the thing with the eyes, dear God. Henry and I were barely in our teens but Dewey said bring them into the Project. They’ll learn something about human beings. We fucking did.”

Then he shut up and drove.

“Larraine? Wake you up? Could we stop by?”

We’re heading uphill now, and on both sides are that kind of tree you would see in a picture of Christmas? He has been quiet for a little while but I guess can’t stand it for very long.

“Do you see a lot of kids in Queens?”

So now I got to talk too. Ok. “Sure. The mothers like to hide them, but a lot of times you could see them hiding in the toilet in some park.”

“In the toilet? What do they hide from? Vigilantes?”

“Inspectors.”

“Inspectors. Do you get a lot of those?”

“Well, the ones from Staten Island Dome,” I go, “not so much. That’s Ethics. They got a uniform.”