20. Lem's Curfew, and iInterlude

They clicked and scrolled and typed far into the night. Melody and Lem visited the usual chat haunts, lurked on bulletin-boards, listened to the police band on Corky's shortwave.

Lem was waggling his fingers at a webcam while Lyle stared back at him through a Skype window. Sister Constance refused to learn how to use it.

"Yeah, this shit is for real bro," Lyle said, stifling a yawn and sipping from a Starbucks cup. "Nine pee-em curfew. They're rousting everyone out of the usual camps in the Commons, arresting anyone panhandling, the whole thing. The cops just left here. They're dropping in on all the shelters,asking questions. They leaned on the Sister to have a look around, but she told them to get a warrant."

Lem smiled at the thought of the short nun standing off a pair of cops. They'd need a bigger army than that. Anyone home at the time? he signed at the camera.

Lyle slurped his coffee. "Nah. Word travels fast. You guys are good at getting gone when you need to."

Comes with the territory. Lem remembered some cartoon he'd seen on YouTube where a caped Bela Lugosi clone poofed himself into a bat to fly into a castle window. He wished he could do that.

Lyle grinned. "Curfew drops at around six A.M., sun comes up at 7. Constance is bringing in some kool-aid for you guys, so don't do anything stupid before coming home, you dig?"

I dig.

"Stay crunchy, Chocula." With that, Lyle clicked off. He never asked Lem where he was holed up or who with, and Lem didn't volunteer it. They were taking a risk talking at all.

He looked over his monitor at Melody, who was staring at him.

Will be okay. He signed slowly, with exaggerated motion for her benefit. She nodded with understanding, if not belief. She looked back at her monitor with a frown.

He got up to see what had her worried. She was reading a news story on the Vanguard's site about the dead bodies found in the condemned apartment building.

She looked up at him. How many dead? When found Pryor. How many dead?

He held up six fingers. The five hunters, and the kid that Pryor had...

Lem smacked himself in the forehead, cursing himself for a dumb son of a bitch. Melody pointed at a paragraph in the article, and Lem's gut told him what it would say.

The cops only reported finding five bodies.

What happened to six? But even as she slowly signed the question, Lem could see understanding dawn on her. Melody wasn't stupid. Lem had told her a few things about their world, about how things worked. Pryor had drained that kid completely, had drank every meth-laced drop like an alcoholic that can't stop while there's anything left in the bottle. Exactly like, in fact. And they'd left him there. Whole.

There would be pain, Lem knew. That always came first. Like dry ice being forced through the veins from a heart that didn't beat. Then the eyes would open. Muscles would be slow to respond, like awakening in a frozen lake, and having to claw through a foot of ice to reach the surface. And the thirst. God, the thirst.

It was always the worst on the first night. And it would never go away.

--

Say what, whitemeat?

I need to borrow your car. I need to look for someone, Corky. Find him before the cops do.

Corky was trying to get work done. That was why he was here late at night, as much as he liked to shoot the shit with Lem, he also liked to be home once in a while. Get some sleep, maybe. He was glaring at Lem over a pile from the drop-box, hoping in vain to get it all checked in before tomorrow.

Find him before the cops do? That isn't the kind of statement that arouses confidence in me, man.

Lem squeezed his hands into fists. Corky was a good friend, the best of
friends, but there was a limit to what he would allow. Lem couldn't
blame him. Corky'd had his own dark patch when he got back after the
war, and his name wasn't unknown to the law. He was trying to walk a
straight line now, and was trying to help Lem do the same.

The first was hard enough without adding the second. Corky had a saying for times like these. Do your own time. You can't do someone else's. Lem had asked him where it came from, but he never answered. There was a lot he never said.

Corky, this kid might be one of...

But the man just raised his hand and shook his head. He never wanted to
know about Lem's world. It was an unspoken condition of their friendship. The more Corky knew, the harder it became to look at Lem like just another wounded, broken jarhead who brought a head full of demons back home with him. As bad as that picture was, Corky understood it. It was a comfortable framework for the sign language, the amnesia, the homelessness and odd hours. So what if Lem never smoked, or drank whiskey with Corky, or never came around in the daytime? As long as Lem didn't bring more to Corky's door than a bag full of books and a few questions about the old days, he didn't have to think about what Lem had been doing before he visited, or after he left. Or who he did it to. He could just think of Lem as a man. He liked it like that.

Lem knew it. He nodded, and backed off. But it didn't change things.

What now? Melody looked worried. Lem was grabbing his stuff.

I'm going out to find number six.

She opened her mouth as if to gasp, then closed it, and rose to go with him. He shook his head. No. You stay. Safer here.

The look on her face told him that she didn't like this at all. He reached
down for a pad and pen, not wanting to take chances on being misunderstood.

Stay here til 6 AM, he wrote, Then go back to the mission and stay upstairs unless Constance calls you down. Don't tell anyone what I'm doing, not even the sister. Understand?

He underlined that last word, and looked at her expectantly. She read, looked at him, then at the floor, and nodded.

He sat down with a piece of paper from the printer, wrote out a note to Constance, borrowed an envelope and a stamp from Corky. He left the letter in the library's outgoing mail.

For the second time, Melody watched him go out into the street without her. She glanced at Corky, who didn't watch him go, and didn't look up at Melody as he pulled the bottle from his desk drawer again.

--
--

As if her night wasn't bad enough, Kennedy had to close up by herself. It was her first week as an assistant manager, and she knew there was some bad blood going around about it, but for Trish and Kyle to call in with flu on the same night? That was just bullshit.

She was shutting down the machines at the Genius Bar when she heard a rattling at the front door. She looked over the counters of dark, de-powered Macbooks and iPads at the guy standing outside under the giant Apple etched into the glass. She waved him off, hoping he would get the message.

He didn't. The door rattled as he gripped the handle, and the man slapped something up against the glass while he glared at her. She squinted to see what it was. It was an iPhone, dark, and its owner didn't look happy about it.

She took a closer look. He didn't look happy about anything. Even from here, Kennedy could tell his suit was filthy, threadbare. Looked like a homeless guy who'd kicked some executive's ass and took his clothes before going on a weekend bender.

Still, it was all about customer service. Kennedy slid her phone out of her pocket and walked to the door, passing the huge poster of Steve Jobs, whose eyes seemed to follow her as he stopped a few feet from the glass.

"We're closed, sir," she said loudly, putting on a bright smile, "We'll open up at nine tomorrow morning, and we'll be glad to help you then..."

Her voice trailed off as she stared into his eyes. Only at his eyes. They were all she knew, like Steve Job's eyes, but warmer. Friendlier. She forgot about closing, about her asshole co-workers, about everything but those eyes.

Kennedy's hands worked on their own. They unlatched the deadbolt on the door and pulled it open. The eyes drew closer. Then, a voice. She felt it more than she heard it, in her spine like one of those massaging chairs at Sharper Image.

It's dead, the voice purred. Need to charge up.

She drank in his eyes. "I can help you with that, sir."  She dropped her phone and raised her head, exposing her neck. "Do you need an adapter?"

He didn't. She felt the pierce in her neck, but the pain vanished as quickly as it came.