Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (11 page)

“You don’t know this, Angel, but you are actually help-
 ing me. Not the other way around.”
“I’m helping you by dragging you into a hospital filled
 with armed soldiers against the express wishes of your
 boss?”
“Father.”
“Right.”
“And yes, that’s correct.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I have my reasons.”
“No doubt very stupid, self-destructive ones.”
He shrugs. “Aren’t those the best kind?”
I look around, trying to get my bearings. Snow blows
 into my face, and for the next few seconds I see nothing
 at all. Then I turn toward Pierce. His scarf covers his nose
 and mouth. He lifts his goggles. All I see are his black-
 brown eyes.
“My name’s not really Pierce, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’d tell you what it really is, except 8-Bit made me
 swear never to tell anyone. He said it could get us both
 killed.”
“Then you definitely shouldn’t tell me.”
“No, I want you to know. Every time you call me Pierce
 it reminds me that I’m lying to you.”
He’s just staring at me. I know he wants me to know
 that he trusts me, but he’s afraid. There must be a good
 reason why.  
“I forbid you to tell me,” I say.
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“You forbid me?”
“Yes.” I put both forefingers to my temples. “I remem-
 ber now. Yes . . . it’s hazy, but I must admit that under
 even mild stress, I blurt out other people’s deepest, darkest
 secrets.”
“I think someone could threaten to cut off your head
 and you wouldn’t tell them your shoe size.”
I put my hands on my hips. “How about this? If you tell
 me your real name, I won’t let you come along to help me.”
“You won’t let me come?”
“That’s right, and then you’ll have to find some other
 way to satisfy your self-destructive urges. And let’s be hon-
 est, this is kind of a golden opportunity for self-destruction.
I’d hate for you to miss it.”
The warmth of his smile cuts through the freezing gusts
 of snow.
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
“Swear?”
“I swear I will not tell you my real name.”
“All right then. I’ll let you come with me and risk get-
 ting killed.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate the chance you’re giving
 me here.”
I put out my hand to shake, but then suddenly let it
 drop.  
“Hey! I thought we had a deal!”
“It’s not that. It’s . . . ”
I’ve caught something on the wind. A scent. Just for a
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moment. It’s a neutral kind of smell, but one I instantly
 recognize as the laundry detergent they used to wash our
 hospital gowns, robes, and bedding. I walk away from him,
 my head cocked slightly, trying to catch it again.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
I put my hand up. Close my eyes and sniff again. I turn
 and look toward the construction site, straining my eyes,
 willing them to penetrate the snow.
There it is. In this sea of white, I can see a different
 shade.
“Someone’s there,” I say, pointing.
I hunch down and run across an open area between
 some of the construction equipment and a trailer parked
 at the edge of the excavation pit. The person I see is not
 moving. She is small. I run faster, but I don’t know why I’m
 bothering. I already know. I just know.
It’s Jori. She is leaning with her back up against one of
 the big black rubber tires of a cement mixer. I don’t think I
 would have seen her at all if I hadn’t been trying. She was
 so pale to begin with, and the snow is already covering half
 her body. She’s in her hospital gown; her legs and feet are
 bare and blue.
I use my teeth to get one of my gloves off, hoping I’m
 wrong. I touch her chest. If it’s possible, she’s colder than
 the snow around her.
I remember the fire on her wing, the way I left her
 behind. I take one of her hands in mine, and I see that it’s
 blistered. She burned and then she froze. For some reason,
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I think of Hodges. A seething rage surges through me.
Pierce walks up behind me. “Oh man.”
I kick the tire of the cement mixer, only succeeding in
 hurting myself. But I don’t care.
“Someone you knew?”
“The girl I told you about. Jori.”
In death, she’s so small. My hot tears go cold almost
 instantly in the wind. I wipe my runny nose, and it hurts.
The ice on my glove makes it feel like I’m rubbing sandpa-
 per across my face. I feel like I deserve this pain.
“We should move her,” I say.
I don’t even know where to take her. I just know I don’t
 want to leave her here, forgotten under the snow.
Pierce takes her by the armpits and I lift up her legs. As
 we shift her body, I see the snow swirl and realize that I’m
 seeing two sets of footprints. Hers and a much larger set.
Not boot prints, either. Footprints. As in, bare feet.
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CHAPTER 13
 he footprints lead toward the construction pit, toward
Ta double-wide trailer that sits on high ground next to
 the excavation area. The roof of the trailer is completely
 covered with solar panels, one or two of which are lifting
 up slightly as the wind gusts. The satellite dish that was
 once mounted at the top of the trailer has come loose and
 is rattling in the wind like a garbage can lid.  
We carry Jori’s body toward the trailer, and as we
 approach the door blows open. It smacks against the side of
 the trailer again and again. If it had been open earlier when
 we were heading toward the yurt, I’m sure we would have
 heard the door banging.
When we reach the trailer, I put one foot on the three-
 step staircase leading to the doorway, still holding Jori’s
 upper body. Pierce stops, and for a moment we are pulling
 her in different directions.
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“I don’t mean to be, you know, gross or whatever,”
 he says, “but it’s probably better if we keep her outside.
Decomposition, and all.”
I know he’s right, but I hate it.
Now that we’re right up against the trailer, I notice
 something else. Near the door, I see a hospital gown
 snagged on a length of rebar that is sticking up through the
 snow. It can’t be Jori’s. She’s still wearing hers.
We set her down in the snow. I turn her on her side
 and push her legs and arms together so she’s somewhat in
 the fetal position. Pierce steps back and gives me a min-
 ute. Not that I have anything to say to Jori. Really, I
 didn’t know her, and she didn’t know me. If I measured it
 in hours, we probably shared a sum total of a few weeks
 together. But I know I gave her comfort and I wish I
 could give her comfort now. But I can’t. The whole world
 seems like it’s full of nothing but “I can’t” and wishing I
 could have done more. The dead must be so disappointed
 in all of us.
Pierce is crouching near stacks of what look like the
 fancy, faceted concrete blocks they used to build this place.
The flimsy trailer door is now whipping back and forth,
 smacking so hard against the side of the trailer, I’m sure it’s
 going to snap off its hinges.
I automatically crouch down as I approach the door. I
 must have spent a lot of time sneaking around construction
 sites back when I was Angel, and now my reflexes have
 taken over. I pull my nailer out of the deep inside pocket of
 my coat. The trailer is dark. All the blinds are pulled tight,
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and I motion for Pierce to give me one of the flashlights
 he’s packed. Instead he hands me his headlamp.
I put it on and step inside, Pierce close behind me. As I
 turn my head to look around, the white beam travels over
 the walls. We’re in some sort of fancy, temporary construc-
 tion office. There are leather chairs, a couch, even a Persian
 rug. I see the usual desk stuff: pens, paper, a desk lamp, a
 stapler. I look at the framed pictures on the walls. They’re
 all line drawings of whatever the building is supposed to
 look like when it’s completed.
At the opposite end of the trailer is a small kitchenette.
I walk toward it and notice the clock on the microwave is
flashing the wrong time, but it’s still working.
I let the light sweep around the trailer again. Pierce
 is standing in the doorway. I turn to him, and I’m about
 to say that I think the trailer is empty when he points to
 something and pulls me back toward the door.
“There. Look.”
I see the bottom of a bare foot. Someone is curled up on
 the floor, under the desk. Judging by the size of the foot,
 it’s got to be a guy.
“Hey,” I say.
I get no response.
“Are you okay?”
I move closer and around the corner of the desk. I shine
 the light on the person lying beneath it.
“Oh, geez,” I say.
“Is it . . . is it another body?”
“Yes.”
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He pulls the trailer door shut and walks toward me.
“Dead?”
“Nope. Buck naked, though.”
He points a flashlight at the guy curled up under the
 desk. How the kid has even managed to squash himself in
 there, I don’t know.
“Anyone you know?”
It’s the tattoo-covered kid. “He was on my ward. But I
 only saw him once before now.”
I’m about to say that this might be a problem. My ward
 was . . . well, my ward. The locked ward. But Pierce’s
 voice is suddenly urgent.
“He’s hypothermic.”  
“What?”
“He’s burrowing. Help me get him out of there.”
Pierce begins removing things from his pack. Then he
 takes off his jacket.
“What are you doing?”
“Body heat. Burrowing is a sign of advanced hypother-
 mia. That’s why he was stripping off his clothes.”
“What?”
“It’s what people do before freezing to death. They take
 their clothes off and find some place to curl up in the fetal
 position. Help me. Get on the other side of him.”
Pierce takes his pullover off. I must look horrified,
 because he tells me, “You don’t have to take your shirt off.
Just get on the other side of him and we’ll kind of sandwich
 him between us.”
Pierce rummages through his pack and comes out with
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a blanket that looks like a giant silver garbage bag. We pull
 the kid out from under the desk and roll him into the cen-
 ter of the blanket. Then I take one side of the blanket and
Pierce takes the other and we wrap ourselves up with him.
“Ugh. It’s like hugging an Alaskan mailbox,” Pierce
 says.
We stay there for about half an hour, until the kid starts
 feeling warmer and begins shivering. Pierce says this is a
 good sign. “We need to get some clothes for him, and he’s
 not going to fit into any of my stuff. See if there’s anything
 around here.”
I get up and poke around the trailer, looking for some-
 thing that might pass as clothing. I find a pair of dirty
 overalls that crackle when I try to fold them over my arm
 and a yellow Windbreaker-type thing with an orange
 reflective triangle on the front. I also find a long, stretched-
 out sweater with a poinsettia design on the front. It has the
 name “Collins” written on the tag. I show it to Pierce.
“I guess even ugly holiday sweaters have their uses.”  
“You do the pants,” I say, turning my head as Pierce
 pulls the overalls up over the guy’s naked lower body. I
 help him put the sweater and windbreaker on the kid. I
 feel like I’m dressing an overgrown, tattoo-covered child
 to go sledding.
Pierce takes a pair of socks out of his backpack, looks at
 the kid, and sighs loudly.
“What’s the matter?”
“This dude better appreciate this. These are my favorite
 socks.”
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CHAPTER 14
 spend most of the day exploring the drawers and cabi-
I  nets of the trailer, minding the tattooed kid, and trying
 to distract myself from the bitter cold, which is pretty
 much impossible. Pierce has spent hours trying to find a
 way to get us inside without being detected, and so far
 that’s proven to be equally impossible.
I look through the desk drawer for a key that might
 unlock some of the cabinets, but as time drags on, my
 patience runs out, so I start unlocking them with my boot.
“I’m trying to concentrate over here!” Pierce complains.
“And I’m foraging.”
“Please forage more quietly, okay?”
I kick another door. Kick it again. The third try is the
 charm. Inside the cabinet I find something more valuable
 to me right now than my memory.
“A space heater!”
Pierce looks up and blows into his hands to keep them
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warm. “We can plug it in for a little while, but not too
 long. It’ll drain the batteries.” He points to a cord running
 up the wall and into the ceiling. It says, Powered by Green-
Power! “Powering a few computers is a lot different than
 heating an entire trailer. We’ll be lucky to get thirty min-
 utes of heat out of it, seeing as the batteries haven’t been
 able to charge much in this storm.”
“I don’t care. I’ll take it.”
I carry the space heater over and bring it close to where
 the kid is lying on the floor. I turn it on full blast. After
 a few minutes, the kid’s shivering lessens, and the trailer
 starts getting so warm, I take my jacket off and hang it over
 the back of the desk chair.
Pierce’s watch starts beeping.
“What’s that?”
“I set my alarm to remind you to take your meds.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
I walk to the watercooler and knock on the plastic bot-
 tle. It’s frozen solid. In the corner I find a mini-fridge and
 open the door. Inside are a bunch of paper bags and, on
 the door, a small carton of orange juice that’s already been
 opened. I throw the pill into my mouth and wash it down
 with what’s left of the orange juice.
I start coughing and gagging. “Gah! Awful!”
Pierce jumps up and rushes over to me. He takes me by
 the shoulders and squeezes, trying to get me to look him
 in the face.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“It’s rancid!”
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He sighs at me and rolls his eyes. “Don’t do that again,
 okay?”
I smile at him, just a little. “Sorry.” He’s a surprisingly
 easy person to smile at. Maybe that’s been my problem all
 along. I’ll smile as much as anyone if I have a good reason
 to.
“I thought you were dying.”
“Not yet.”
I think for a moment that he’s actually really mad at me,
 but then his face relaxes and his eyes go wide.
“That’s it! I should hack the medication timetables right
 now, so we can open the med locker. They might even
 have the locations of the pills listed in there!” He hugs
 me roughly, crushing my face into his chest. “Angel, that’s
 brilliant!”
I push back from him, rubbing my nose, wondering if I
 should point out that it was his idea, not mine. “They keep
 the meds in a locker?”
“Definitely the painkillers and the sedatives. That’s
 where most hospitals keep them, anyway, and we’ll assume
 they’ve done the same thing here. Probably the pills you
 need will be even higher priority. All we need to do is find
 one of the lockers, unlock it, and then get back out again
 with the pill you need.”  
Pierce sits down and within seconds he’s swimming
 through the lines of code on the screen, oblivious to every-
 thing around him. I hover over the tattooed kid for a while.
He looks like he’s trying to wake up but can’t. I spend
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