Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (13 page)

He hurries to close his laptop and turn off the desk
 lamp. I pull the door shut and lock it and then run to the
 opposite end of the trailer. I push the blinds out of the
 way and look out the window, but all I see is empty black
 night.
Thomas is looking out the window on the other end of
 the trailer. “Snowcats. Two of them.”
“Heading toward the building or away?” I ask.
“Seem to be going away.”
“Toward the fence?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe they won’t see the snowmobile,” I say.
“Of course they will, and when they do, they’re going
 to know someone’s creeping around out here. We need to
 go.”
The wind is battering the trailer now. I can feel the cold
 air blowing through seams in the walls and up through the
floor. Thomas is at one end of the darkness and I’m at the
 other. I walk toward his voice and then get down on my
 hands and knees to feel around for my jacket, wishing I
 hadn’t taken the thing off in the first place.
In the darkness, I bump into Thomas, who’s also search-
 ing the floor for something. I reach around for the nailer
 but can’t find it. My hand touches something soft on the
floor.
“Your hat,” I say.  
We stand up at the same time, both of us holding on to
 his hat.
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I hear someone rattling the doorknob. Thomas exhales
 in annoyance, and says, “Who can that be at this hour?”
“Maybe Oscar finally realized that it’s cold outside.”
I walk toward the trailer door.
“Don’t let him back in! Are you nuts?”
“But if they see him, they’ll come over and investigate.”
He groans. “I suppose.”
I unlock the door and it instantly swings open. Some-
 one grabs the front of my coveralls and pulls me out into
 the snow.    
The back of my skull smacks against the frozen ground,
 and I see lights popping against a dark background and
 then afterimages of burned-out stars. I try to roll over, but
 there’s a soldier sitting on my back, pinning my arms against
 my sides with his legs. When I strain to get up again, he
 backhands me across the face with his glove, which is cov-
 ered with jagged bits of ice. He’s about to speak into the
 radio clipped to his collar when suddenly a blur of move-
 ment dislodges him.
I see a bright yellow flash and hear someone growl.
Oscar. He pummels the soldier, his fists flying so fast, so
 hard, I’m sure the soldier’s face must be shredding like wet
 paper. Oscar clasps his hands together and begins pound-
 ing the soldier’s chest, like he’s doing ultraviolent CPR.
The soldier kicks both legs up in the air, but Oscar holds
 on to him with his legs and keeps squeezing. I hear a snap.
I think it’s one of the soldier’s ribs. Oscar lets go, maybe
 thinking the soldier is now hobbled, but the guy rolls to
 the side and tries to reach for his weapon. Oscar grabs the
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rifle away from him and momentarily tries to figure out
 how to fire it. He puts his finger on the trigger, but noth-
 ing happens. The soldier manages to get a hand on the end
 of the gun and pulls on it. I can see the soldier has some
 kind of computer screen attached to his arm, just above his
 wrist.
Oscar kicks the soldier in the face, wrenches the rifle
 free, and tosses it as far as he can into the darkness, throw-
 ing it like a boomerang. I hear the sound of jingling metal
 coming from wherever it lands.
I look up at the trailer and see that Thomas has been
 watching this, too. I need to see where that gun landed.
“Turn the lights on!”
Thomas is confused, but he does it. The lights from
 inside illuminate a small patch of ground, and I now see
 that the trailer is about fifteen feet from the edge of the
 construction pit. Between the trailer and the pit there’s a
 series of chain-link fence sections. They’re not sunk into
 the ground. The posts are anchored in buckets of hardened
 concrete, maybe to make the fence movable.  
Now we can all see where the rifle landed. It’s hanging
 by its strap from the top of one of the fence sections. The
 soldier is gasping for air, but he runs toward it. Oscar stays
 put, squatting in the snow, his black eyes blazing. When
 the soldier gets to the fence, he tries to lift the gun up, but
 he’s having trouble getting the strap free.
Oscar looks over his shoulder and smiles at me with an
 expression that says, Watch this.
He sets himself up like a sprinter and takes off running
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full tilt toward the fence. The soldier has just about untan-
 gled his gun when Oscar plows into his back and drives the
 guy headfirst into the fence, flattening both of them to the
 ground. The soldier must be unconscious, or at least dazed
 by the impact, because he hardly fights as Oscar grabs him
 by the front of his jacket and drags him toward the edge
 of the pit.
“Oscar, no!”
It’s too late. Oscar positions the guy at the edge and rolls
 him into the darkness with his foot. I run to Oscar’s side
 and stare into the black mouth in the earth. All I can hear
 is the moaning of the wind. There is no sound from below.
Oscar waves sweetly at the abyss. “Adios.”
I take a few steps back. I notice that Oscar found some
 footwear—a pair of rubber boots. He’s laughing hysteri-
 cally as he slaps me on the back and points at the pit below.
Then we hear the sound of someone talking, calling
 out. Followed by a beep. The soldier’s radio had been
 clipped to his collar, but it must have come loose in the
 struggle.
“Come back,” a man’s voice says. “Hey, where you at,
Simmons? Answer me.”
I search in the snow, trying to find the radio. When the
 guy at the other end calls out again, I find it, along with
 the soldier’s pack. I shake the snow off the radio and press
 the call button. I hear a blip of static, followed by a beep.
“That you? Where you at? I’ve got nothing out here
 except frostbite.”
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“Go back in the trailer, Oscar. Turn all the lights out
 again. Now!”
He smiles at me and says, “Si, si, mija. Whatever you
 say.” He takes his time walking toward the trailer, still
 laughing to himself. I press the radio button to speak as
Oscar steps into the trailer. The lights go out. Suddenly,
Thomas is at my side.
“I’m not staying inside the trailer alone with that guy.”
Again the soldier on the radio speaks. “Simmons, man,
 what’s up?”
I press the button and say, “He’s dead.”
Thomas hisses at me, “Angel! What are you doing?”
He tries to take the radio, but I swat his hand away and
 say, “Grab the backpack! It’s your turn to trust me now.”
Thomas snatches the pack off the ground.  
“He’s dead,” I say into the radio again. “I . . . I don’t
 know what happened. He fell. He fell into the construc-
 tion pit.”
“You better be lying to me or I’m coming for you!”
Thomas is freaking out pretty good now, but he steps
 back when I press the radio button again. “I’m sorry. It was
 an accident. Really, it was.”
“Where are you?”
“Don’t hurt me,” I say. I’m trying to sound like Jori. It
 seems like the kind of thing she would say and the world
 would ignore. “I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to do it.”
The guy’s voice softens a little as he says, “Yeah. Okay.
I’m sure it was an accident. Just tell me where you are.”
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I motion for Thomas to follow me, and we go back
 to where we put Jori. An inch of snow has covered her.
I brush it off, startled at how much she resembles a child.
“Help me move her over near the fence,” I say.  
As we pick her up, her flimsy hospital gown rides up to
 her waist. I whisper to her again and again, “I’m so sorry
 for this.”
“Are you still there?” I hear the soldier say over the
 radio after a minute.
I press the button. “Yes. I just want to go back inside.
I’m so cold.”
“I can help you with that. Tell me what’s around you.
I’ll find you.”
I prop Jori’s body up against a section of the fence that
 rings the construction pit. We’re now a good fifty yards
 from the trailer. I say into the radio, “I’m sitting by some
 big machine. It’s orange with a big drill.”
“I think I know where you are,” he says. “I’ll be there
 in a second. Do not move.”
Thomas and I quickly scurry into the shadows. A few
 minutes pass. Then a shot rings out. It hits Jori in the chest,
 and her body momentarily jerks up into the air.
Thomas whispers to me, “And I thought I was smart.
You’re a genius. Holey head or no.”
I don’t feel like a genius. I feel sick as I watch the soldier
 walk up to Jori and give her a push with his boot. She falls
 over.
He speaks into his radio. “Simmons is dead.”
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Another voice on the radio. The same one I heard ear-
 lier. “Get his computer and pack and get back up here.”
“Can’t. They’re both gone. The little nut-job pushed
 him into the construction pit.”
The robot-voiced soldier on the other end says, “You’re
 going to have to retrieve them before we leave.”
“Understood.”
The soldier takes a last look around and heads back
 toward the research building. Thomas whispers to me,
“What computer is he talking about?”
“The guy had something strapped to his arm. Right
 here,” I say as I point at my forearm. “What do you think
 it could be?”
Thomas’s eyes narrow. “I’m not sure, but the fact that
 they want it back so badly makes me want it even more.”
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CHAPTER 17
 ne hour, one scavenged rope, and many slipknots later,
OThomas is standing on the edge of the construction pit,
 looking scared to death but ready to descend. I explained
 to him that my experiences with freestyle climbing were
 exclusively on urban terrain. Giant black pits in the earth
 during a blizzard? I don’t do those.
“Just go slowly,” Thomas says. “And remember, if you
 drop me, I will kill you both.”
Oscar gives his squinty-eyed smile and says, “I got
 you.” Oscar seems to warm up to Thomas the crabbier he
 becomes, like he finds Thomas’s annoyance amusing.
Thomas and I exchange looks of terror. Oscar is still
 suffering from a case of the psycho giggles, which is worry-
 ing, because each time he starts laughing, he lets go of the
 rope a little. But we both realize that I need Oscar’s help. I
 don’t think I can lower Thomas down on my own.
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“Here we go,” Thomas says as he positions himself and
 then leans back into the pit. I feel the rope go taut as he
 starts to rappel down.  
Thomas had looked over the drawings in the trailer and
 determined that the pit was about fifty feet deep. What
 wasn’t clear was how much progress they’d made in pour-
 ing the concrete for whatever this underground bunker
 was going to be.
I feel the rope tacking back and forth. I look over at
Oscar, who has the rope braced against his back, his hands
 gripping it on either side of his hips. He’s doing most of
 the work, and really, other than the fact that he might be
 a remorseless killer, he’s just the kind of person you’d want
 as a spotter.  
The rope goes momentarily slack and then taut, again
 and again. Just as I’m getting into the rhythm of lowering
Thomas down, the rope goes limp. I wait for the pull of
 his weight again, but it doesn’t come. The time seems to
 stretch out. He can’t be more than halfway down.
“Thomas!” I shout, trying not to be too loud. I have
 no idea who else might be around, but it’s hard to shout
 quietly.
“Thomas, can you hear me?”
I’m answered by nothing but silence for a long, fright-
 ening moment. Then I hear Thomas’s voice. “I landed
 right on top of the guy. We’re on some kind of scaffolding.
Hold on.”
Two minutes later, he calls for us to pull him up. Oscar
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wastes no time hauling on the rope, pulling hand over
 hand like a machine. We soon see the light from Thomas’s
 headlamp, and a second later his head emerges from the
 blackness. Oscar lets out a whoop.
Then he lets go of the rope.
He walks away with his head cocked in this weird way,
 menace and glee spreading across his face as he laughs to
 himself.  
I still have the rope, but I’m not expecting to take the
 full brunt of Thomas’s weight and I get pulled forward
 off my feet. Thomas is able to get a hand onto the section
 of the fence that had fallen over and hangs on. Then the
 whole fence section starts to slide toward the edge of the
 pit.
I push myself forward with my elbows and grab hold
 of the fence even as I’m still holding the rope, but it’s not
 enough to counter Thomas’s weight against the pull of
 gravity. I crawl onto the fence, thinking my weight will
 anchor it in place, but as Thomas pulls himself up, the
 fence starts sliding down with both of us on it.
We’re going over the edge. There’s nothing I can do to
 stop it. The fence shoots forward, gaining speed, and I’m
 frozen to it, staring ahead into the void.
I think two things at the same time: I’m going to die and
Do something.
I don’t know how long this moment lasts, but even as
I feel myself tipping forward, about to plunge into the pit,
 somehow I have time to wonder if I should hold on to the
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fence or let go of it. I grab the lattice with my fingers just
 as the fence jerks to a stop.
The fence sticks out like a diving board from the edge
 of the pit. It teeters slowly, and I hold my breath until it
 levels out again. The snow whips around my face, and a
 gust of wind unbalances me. I tip forward, my fingers fro-
 zen to the metal. I try to inch back slowly, but as I shift my
 weight, the fence dips again, sinking even farther this time.
Suddenly it snaps back.
“It’s all right,” Thomas says. “I’ve got you.”
Somehow he must have scrambled up the fence as it was
 falling, like he was going up a down escalator.
“Angel. You need to come back. Come on. Just a little
 at a time.”
The metal is bowing underneath my body, and my head
 and shoulders are hanging in midair. I can’t make myself
 move, though. Not until I hear Thomas’s voice again.
“I’ve got you. Come on back, Angel.”  
I crawl backward slowly, shaking more and more  the
 closer I get to frozen ground. Finally, I feel the toes of my
 boots against the dirt. Two arms circle me, and Thomas
 pulls me the rest of the way.
The moment I’m clear, the fence plummets down into
 the darkness below, landing a few seconds later with a jin-
 gling crash. We both sit there, panting.
“We’re okay. We’re safe now.”
I look over at Oscar, who is doing some kind of shadow-
 boxing thing. He jogs around raising his hands in victory
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