The Great Forgetting (14 page)

“According to an article published in
The Observer
in April 2002, the MOD used airplanes to disperse large amounts of zinc cadmium sulfide over residential neighborhoods in an experiment that lasted from 1955 to 1963. They wanted to know how biological weapons would spread if the Soviets ever bombed them. It was an epidemiological study, like the fluoride experiments in America. Of course, we now know that cadmium causes lung cancer.”

Cole scribbled notes in the margins of the printout.

“It gets worse,” said Jack. “From 1961 to 1968, the MOD sprayed an aerosolized form of
E. coli
above an English village from a ship off the Dorset coast, exposing a million people to the bacteria. To this day, people in Dorset suffer higher rates of birth defects and miscarriages.”

He paused and Cole looked at him with an expression Jack thought might be relief. “If they could spray
E. coli
from a ship,” said Cole, “they could rig something to spray from a jet. And if the U.K. is doing it, don't you think we are, too?”

“In fact,” said Jack, “the CIA has admitted to using civilians as guinea pigs for chemical and psychological warfare experiments in the past. In the sixties and seventies they dropped acid in the drinks of strangers in bars to test the effects of LSD. From 1959 to 1962, the CIA funded a ‘stress' experiment using live, unwitting subjects at Harvard, under the direction of Dr. Henry Murray. To test levels of psychological stress, Murray and his group isolated certain students and then belittled and berated them until they thought they were worthless. They broke those poor kids. One particular subject, dubbed ‘Lawful,' did not take well to the test and began writing threatening letters and then a rambling manifesto. You probably know Lawful's other nickname better, the Unabomber. The CIA created Ted Kaczynski.” Jack set his notebook down. “But secret chemicals mixed in with commercial jet fuel? Too many people would have to know.”

“So maybe what you do is you get them to forget,” said Cole.

“What do you mean?”

The boy shook his head.

“So what's next?” asked Jack.

“Impossibility Number Three is something I can actually prove,” said Cole. “I can show you.”

“Something here at Haven?”

“No. But close by.”

“Wait. You want me to drive you somewhere?”

“I wish,” said Cole. He pulled something out of his pocket. It looked like a modified Bluetooth. He tossed it to Jack.

“What's this?”

“It's a Looxcie,” the boy said. “I ordered it off Amazon. It's a camera. You put it around your ear. Streams live video to a secure URL I can access on my laptop. I'll give you directions over the phone. Cool, huh?”

Jack considered this, weighing the risk. “All right,” he said. “But I want you to show me
exactly
what Tony saw. I want to go where he went.”

“Deal.”

They shook hands. The boy's was clammy and Jack wondered, again, if Cole was trying to pass delusion to him like some communicable sickness, like something an epidemiologist might study.

“Grenade launchers in the Temple, then?” asked Cole.

“Let's roll,” said Jack.

6
    Later, Jack sat on Sam's porch sipping a Diet Coke, watching jets paint a crisscross grid over the sky. It was beautiful, in a way. Humanity's mark on the heavens. Cole was right; the contrails, chemtrails, or whatever, didn't dissipate. It was like they'd been drawn in permanent marker.

He wasn't crazy. He'd seen crazy. He knew crazy.

Jack wasn't crazy.

I'm not crazy.

No, he wasn't.

Sam joined him on the porch. By then the chemtrails were tinged a warm rose as the sun played with the tops of the trees.

“Whatcha lookin' at?”

“Nothing,” he lied. “Just thinking.”

“I thought I smelled some old engine trying to turn out here.”

“Funny.”

She sat next to him and twisted the hairs at the back of his head with her fingers.

He smiled. “Everything you do makes me feel nineteen again.”

She rested her head on his shoulder.

“Where'd you go today?” he asked.

“Into town. Started the paperwork.”

“Paperwork for what?”

“Divorce, Jack. If Tony's still alive, I have to make it official.”

Above the horizon the first star appeared, a dim beacon on the red. Its light was millions of years old and only just arriving.

“I like it here,” he said.

“Franklin Mills?”

“Here, with you.”

She tugged his earlobe. “You can be a real cheeseball. But I love you, too. Now come inside and take off my clothes.”

7
    “Ready,” said Jack as he started his car the next morning. He sipped from a small thermos and studied his reflection in the rearview mirror. He looked like a cheap cyborg. The Looxcie was hooked around his right ear and his Bluetooth was attached to his left. Back at Haven, Cole could see what Jack was seeing, streaming live on his computer, and they could speak to each other using the Bluetooth. The future really was now.

“Ready,” said Cole.

Jack pulled out of Sam's driveway and onto Giddings, steering the Saturn toward Tallmadge.

“Looks good,” said Cole. “Head for the highway.”

“What am I looking for?” asked Jack.

“TacMars. Ever heard of TacMars?”

“Is that something astronomical?”

“TacMars. As in Tactical Markings. TacMars are directional markers placed out in the open, on road signs. Directions to secret government bases.” He spoke calmly, earnestly, and for all his preparation, Jack found himself wanting to believe.

He turned right onto Tallmadge, passing Mr. Bunts's squab farm. “How did you learn about these TacMars?” he asked.

“My father worked for a government agency,” said Cole. “They called themselves ‘the Collectors' or ‘the Twelve Angry Men,' because there were only a dozen of them for the whole world and they were all men, I think. Don't know if they were always angry. Man, Dad had a temper sometimes, though. Anyway, that's what they called themselves. He worked in the financial district, like he told my mother. But he didn't trade stocks. Technically, he worked for the NSA, but nobody at the NSA would have known who he was. Where his office was, was the thirteenth story of a skyscraper. These Collectors hunted down certain artifacts. If these artifacts fell into the wrong hands, they could reveal the Big Mystery—the mystery that made Tony run away.”

Cole paused for a moment while a nurse came in to give him his morning meds. Jack could hear her in the background. Through the open window he could smell the blooming lilac and dandelion. Spring had finally come to Franklin Mills, just a week before summer.

“Sometimes my father would take me with him,” Cole continued when the nurse was gone. “Once, we drove all the way to Buffalo to pick up an artifact. We kept to back roads in this weird car he drove for work, this shiny brownish thing that hummed like a vacuum cleaner. A man who lived in a double-wide trailer in the mountains had it. It was a plaque. Looked like something you'd win for being employee of the month somewhere. Except the engraved date said 2031. My dad bought it off this guy. Collecting was only half his job, really. What he had to do then was deposit the artifact. There are drop-off points hidden all over the United States—the world, in fact. And to find these facilities you have to follow the TacMars.”

“Okay.”

“The code is relatively simple. Once you understand it, you'll see TacMars everywhere. Here's one coming up now, Jack. Look.”

Up ahead, Jack saw a brown sign directing traffic to the baseball fields behind Nostalgia.
GILMOUR PARK
, it read.
BASEBALL
,
HIKING TRAIL
,
PUBLIC RESTROOMS
. There were three white arrows pointing to the right.

“Three arrows is the key. Three arrows on a sign always means ‘Collector Facility, this way.' It's always three arrows. Get it? If you see a sign with one or two arrows, that's just a normal sign. If there are three, that's a TacMar.”

“Your dad told you this?”

“He showed me. There's another one!” On the shoulder just before the on-ramp to I-76 was a small green sign. It had three arrows pointing northwest toward the highway:
KENT, AKRON, CLEVELAND
, it read. A fourth arrow pointed up, toward
RAVENNA
.

“The extra ‘up' arrow means ‘airlift,'” said Cole. “If the Collectors ever got in trouble, that's where they could get airlifted back to headquarters.”

“All right.”

“All right I believe you or all right, what?”

“I mean … the Ohio Department of Transportation is in on the conspiracy, too?”

“Hey, don't be a jerk.”

“Just trying to understand your theory.”

“ODOT just puts the signs up. The agency designs them.”

“Okay.”

“I told you I'd show you.”

“Arrows on road signs aren't enough to sell me on secret government drop points,” said Jack. “But it's a cool idea.”

“No,” said Cole. “I mean, I'll show you. I'm taking you to one of the drop-off points. You can go in and see for yourself.”

8
    About an hour later Jack found himself cruising a dirt road in that desolate, overgrown region of Ohio near the Pennsylvania border. He thought their destination might be Pymatuning State Park. Jack could smell the lake through the open windows. Pymatuning was an enormous man-made reservoir that had drowned seventeen thousand acres of prime farmland a century ago. Cole directed Jack down a two-lane road that wound through the village of Jamestown, where a Tastee Freez was being overrun by Little Leaguers. “Are we getting close?” he asked.

“Have you seen any TacMars?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Look!”

A maroon sign appeared on the right.
PYMATUNING STATE PARK
, it read.
DAM. SPILLWAY. RESTROOMS
. Three arrows pointed to the right. A forth arrow, this one tilted, pointed northeast.

“What's with the tilted arrow?”

“That's code for ‘drop point.' You know, where they could get rid of the artifacts.”

“So…”

“Just follow the signs.”

Jamestown gave way to rural countryside, quiltwork patches of corn and alfalfa. Old Victorians in stages of disrepair leaned easterly on single-acre lawns. Jack passed a tackle shop that doubled as a grocery, then followed the TacMars onto a dirt road. The lake appeared through the trees on his left, a wide expanse of deep brown that sparkled in the sun. It was full of boaters. Fishermen cast lines from shore, white contractor buckets full of sunfish at their feet.

“Before white men, this was Mound Builder territory,” Cole whispered in his ear. “The Indians built giant rock mounds here to honor dead warriors. But it's all hidden underwater now.”

“Are there angry Indian ghosts here, too?”

“There's no such thing as ghosts, Jack.”

Around a corner, the dam appeared. It was a quarter mile long, lined by slabs of granite that sloped to the water. The lee side was a sharp hill that cut to a creek fed by the reservoir's steady release of water. Jutting from the dam was an odd medieval-looking cottage made of stone. It seemed out of place, ancient. It had a single wooden door and windows barred against the world. A cast-iron weather vane twisted in the breeze above its slate roof. It sat above the water, and the bridge connecting it to the dam looked like the kind a troll might live under.
THE GATE HOUSE
, a sign said.

“The Gate House is one of the ways into the Underground,” said Cole. “Everything we need is in the Underground. My dad only really went there to deposit the stuff he collected. He took me inside. I'll show you.”

What happens when I go inside the Gate House and all that's in there is a bunch of stinky lawn mowers?
Jack wondered. What might the boy do when confronted with the evidence of his own insanity? Of course, that wasn't what he was most afraid of. What he was most afraid of was opening the Gate House door and finding a staircase leading into the darkness, into some capital-
U
Underground where incongruous Nazi artifacts were being stored for purposes unknown.

He turned the car into a gravel lot across from the Gate House. He got out and looked at the old rock building.

“What if it's locked?” asked Jack.

“I know the combination.”

Jack was about to cross the road when the Gate House door opened and a figure dressed in a charcoal suit and a Panama hat stepped out. The man was too far away and the sky too overcast for Jack to make out further details.

Cole screamed in his ear and Jack jumped at the sound. “A Hound!” he shouted. “Holy shit, a Hound!”

“What is a Hound?” asked Jack.

“It will kill you. It will kill you if it sees you. Run!”

Jack didn't run. But he did turn around, away from the Gate House, and walked down the other side of the dam to a line of trees below the parking lot.

“What do you want me to do, Cole?”

“Get into the woods,” he said. “Hide behind a tree. Be quiet.”

“Why?”

“I don't care if you believe me or not,” Cole whispered. “Please just humor me for the next few minutes. If you don't, that thing will kill you.”

Jack sighed and stepped into the woods, onto a carpet of fern and skunkweed. When he was a hundred feet in, he turned around. The man in the Panama hat was standing between the gravel lot and the forest now. He was holding some tool, twisting it together in his hands. Part of it looked like a small radar dish.

“Fuck,” whispered Cole. “In a second the Hound is going to be able to hear your thoughts. You have to empty your mind.”