Super Pulse (Book 4): Defect Page 15

  Matt stared, wide-eyed, but it didn’t take him long to understand. “Wait. You mean, back there?” he stammered, pointing over his shoulder with a thumb. “Are you saying that one of those men was your brother?”

  Levan nodded slowly. “They were on their way here. Supposed to get here before daylight. Something musta’ come up along the way.” His head dropped between his knees. “I saw what you all did to them.”

  Matt held up his hands. “Not me, Levan. Not even the guy I was with. Rollie, I mean. The men who did it popped up out of nowhere.”

  “Whatever,” Levan said. “Same thing.”

  “Look, I don’t mean to pick the scab,” Matt said, “but what’s going on here?” He stared out over the bay. “This place is crazy. I can’t figure anything out. Why was your brother coming?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Levan mumbled. “Whatever you’re here for, why don’t we get it over with.”

  “I think I know,” Matt said. “You give them water, right? Otherwise, how could they even be alive? And food, too, I’ll bet. Whatever you can get your hands on without anybody knowing.”

  “I ain’t sayin’,” Levan answered as he looked up. But Matt knew the answer by the defiance in Levan’s eyes. There was more in his expression than simple anger and grief about watching his own brother being beaten to death. There was a lot going on that Rollie didn’t know about. “But usually they come by boat. An old canoe. And always in the dark.”

  “Dangerous place I came to,” Matt said softly.

  “You got that right,” Levan mumbled.

  ~~~

  “So, basically, what you do is take barrels of water from the bay and boil it?” Matt asked a few minutes later. They were back in the kitchen, where huge pots and vats were arranged around the perimeter. Two were on the burners, which Levan had just fired up. “And then you’re done, and you pass it on?”

  “Yep,” Levan answered. “I boil it to clean it out, and get the salt out.”

  “See, here’s the problem,” Matt said. Levan looked down, and then out the window. “Hey, are you up for this right now?”

  Levan turned back toward Matt. “Yeah, sure, why not? Lay it on me. What am I doing wrong? If I don’t get this fixed, I’ll end up like my brother.”

  “What was his name?” Matt asked.

  “Kelvin,” Levan said. “Everybody called him ‘Kel’.”

  “I’m sorry about it,” Matt said. “I had no idea what was happening. Maybe I should have done something about it.”

  “You’re kiddin’ me, right?” Levan said. “You couldn’t have done nothin’ but watch. And that’s what you did. Let’s get on with it.”

  Matt nodded. “Well, here’s the problem. Boiling it doesn’t take the salt out. When it cools down, the salt’s still there. Most of it. It’s cleaner, but still salty.”

  “You sure about that?” Levan asked.

  “There’s a reason places like California were running out of clean water when they had an ocean right there to take water from,” Matt said, knowing in his heart that Levan couldn’t care less about California and its problems.

  “I thought the salt gets boiled out,” Levan insisted.

  “Boiling could work,” Matt said. “But, see, what you’d have to do is find a way to trap the steam. That’s where the salt-free water goes when you boil it. If you captured the steam, and let it cool back down, you’d have fresh water. But, you know, easier said than done. It would take a lot of equipment. Stuff we may not have on the island.”

  “You sure about all this?” Levan asked suspiciously.

  “Yeah, I am,” Matt said. “Look, I didn’t know anything about this until we needed clean water ourselves. We have a library. I spent a lot of time in there reading up on it. And this is part of what I learned. We were luckier. We have a fresh water lake. In fact, that’s probably why they picked where they did for us to live.”

  “Well, all we got is this bay,” Levan said. “People are dyin’. They’ll get us what we need, man. Just tell me what it is.”

  “Maybe,” Matt allowed. “But getting the salt out is hard. Look at California. It’s expensive to build the facilities they’d need. Instead, they go to all the trouble of getting it from inland. And right now I’m wondering if that’s what you should do here. You got trucks here, right?”

  “Yeah, I see them drivin’ around,” Levan said with a shrug. “And they just got some shiny new vans recently. Problem with that, at least for me, is that if we do that, they don’t need me no more.”

  “That’s not true,” Matt said. “They’d still need it picked up, cleaned, and delivered. That’s what I do at my place. It’s a full-time job.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Levan said.

  “Of course they would,” Matt said. “And you’re the guy to do it. Here’s what I think we should do. We’ll sketch up some diagrams of what we’d need to build to use bay water. We’ll make it look complicated. Which it really is. We’ll do the best we can with what we know. Then we’ll show it to Rollie. He’ll have to either find us the equipment we need, or we tell him we have to go to Plan B. We go get fresh water from someplace else and bring it here to clean it.”

  Levan nodded. “Go for it.”

  Matt rubbed his bearded chin for a moment before speaking again. “Plan B isn’t going to be easy, either. Getting all that water here on a regular basis is gonna’ be a bear.” He leaned against the counter, watching Levan adjust the dials on the front of the stove like he was preparing to boil up another batch. “I know there’s lots of fish to eat here, but even so, God only knows why they decided to come here to live.”

  “I know a lot of people who wish they hadn’t,” Levan answered without looking up. “We’d be better off without ‘em.”

  “Let me ask you this, Levan,” Matt said. “Why’d you stay here? It sounds horrible.”

  “I just got sucked in, man,” he said. “Now that I’m Water Man, there’s no way they’d let me leave.”

  “But all you have to do is get over there,” Matt said as he gestured across the water. “And you’re free. And don’t tell me it’s the guards keeping you in. All you need is a boat.”

  “Until today, I had family here,” Levan said. “So I stayed. And it wasn’t always like this, or I woulda’ grabbed my brother and got out of here. It was different at first. Before your buddy and the rest of them came here.”

  “Yeah?” Matt asked. “In what way?”

  “In every way,” Levan said emphatically. “The mayor of the city, the real mayor, was in charge, and it was good. We were all working together, you know? That’s when I volunteered to work on the water. None of this Nazi stuff we have now, where you’re afraid to show your face on the street if you’re not one of them.”

  “By mayor, you mean the elected Mayor of Atlantic City?” Matt asked.

  “What did I say?” Levan snapped.

  “And Rollie’s people pushed him out?”

  “Well, he’s still alive, if that’s what you mean,” Levan said. “And he’s still here. I see him in the courtyard in front of City Hall sometimes. That’s where he lives, I think. But the man isn’t in charge of anything anymore, that’s for sure.”

  “Hmm,” Matt said, not sure what to make of this. “Where’s City Hall? I’d like to meet this guy, being that I’m stuck here anyway.”

  “Uptown,” Levan said. “It’s a glass high-rise. Black. You can’t miss it. Up by South Carolina and Tennessee.”

  “What’s his name?” Matt asked. “What’s he look like?”

  “Donald Sargent,” Levan said. “He’s a little white guy. Wears a bow tie, or at least he did. That was his thing. But I doubt your new friends are gonna’ like it if they see you wandering around uptown on your own like that. Especially if you drop in to see the Mayor.”

  Seventeen

  Somebody banged on the door of the Blacksmith Shop just as Nick was poking at the bed of smoldering embers later that afternoon, exposing what was left
of the fire to fresh oxygen before dumping a healthy scoop of fresh charcoal on top. His hammers were already laid out, even though he usually used just the one with the rusty head because it felt natural in his hand. He’d finished off a few miscellaneous chores since arriving at the shop and was about to dive into what had become the most rewarding part of his seemingly bleak life. He didn’t even mind working alone, although he had asked for an assistant. He was just glad to have something useful to do.

  Depending on who was outside his door, however, this might have to wait. Not long, hopefully, he told himself as he put aside the iron rod that served as a poker and made his way to the door. Most or all campers should have been at work, just like he was, given that it was only noon. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad when it came to guessing who had come calling.

  He’d been working day and night in the shop for weeks now, trying to meet the dual quotas for spears and shovels. There’d been several days when he’d been assigned to other work, but each time he’d ignored it and returned to his shop. So far there’d been no consequences, except for the exhaustion of doing hot, physical work for most of his waking hours. The once-lofty heap of homemade charcoal was nearly gone, but before long that was going to be somebody else’s problem, he told himself grimly every time he took a load off the top and dumped it into the forge. It gave him satisfaction that there were plenty of others in camp who knew how to make it, because he’d been the one who taught them.

  Nobody understood why he was spending nearly all of his waking hours working in the shop. As far as everybody else was concerned, his deadlines were a long way off. He knew otherwise. Spring planting was several weeks away, nearly a month, but he knew he had to finish sooner. By the time these shovels were used to dig into the earth, he’d be long gone. And nobody knew it but him. Well, him and maybe Linda Brown.

  “You in there, Nick?” He knew it was Sarah even before he pulled the door open. She was the one person that he wanted to see, the only one, so it was a nice surprise.

  “Hey, Sarah,” Nick said with as much energy as he could muster after going so long with so little sleep. She was bundled in an ill-fitting parka, with a ski cap pulled tight over her head and a strip of dirty cloth wrapped around her neck. In Tabernacle they called that a scarf these days. “Come on inside,” he urged, brushing the white flakes from her shoulders before gently guiding her in by the arm. He hadn’t realized that it was snowing. “I take it you didn’t go on duty after I saw you this morning?” he said, more of a statement than a question.

  For Sarah, “on duty” meant a guard shift nowadays. She’d honored a promise made way back in Crestview and signed on with the Sec Forces just before Christmas, and had been issued a well-insulated uniform to keep body and soul together on days like this when she was guarding the camp perimeter. But she wasn’t wearing it at the moment.

  “Nope,” she answered. “Had the day off. They’re reorganizing the Armory today. That’s where I would have been, but anyone who’s not in a guard shack has the day off.” She looked around. “Everybody’s been telling me about your shop, but this is the first time I’ve seen it.” She nodded approvingly, as if she was innately aware of what a blacksmith’s work area should look like, which Nick doubted.

  “You’ve never been in here before?” he asked incredulously. “I thought you came by at least once.”

  “Nope,” she answered. “Only heard about it from my man,” she said as she wrapped an arm around his waist.

  It was the first time she’d ever said anything like that. It was going to make leaving much harder when the time came for that. But the hardest part would be telling her about it. That time was coming soon. But not yet. Certainly not today.

  “Well, here it is,” he said, a tight-lipped smile of pride crossing his face. “Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village blacksmith, uh, flexes his bulging biceps, or whatever that poem was,” he said. “I had to learn it when I was a kid, anyway.” He waved at the primitive tools and equipment that surrounded him. “I do love it in here. I can do this. I don’t need Roethke or anybody else to help me. And it’s important. We have to learn to make things for ourselves so we’re ready after all the stores out there are picked clean.” His habit, or maybe his obsession, with repeating himself when it came to this topic was starting to get to him. Could he think of nothing else?

  “It’s nice to see you smile, even if that little one is the best you can do,” she said. “You haven’t done a lot of that lately. So how about a tour, Mr. Poet?” She pointed behind him. “That looks like the I-beam we had in our basement back home.”

  “That’s exactly what it is,” Nick said. “Or used to be, anyway. Now it’s my anvil.”

  “Oh yeah?” she asked. “It doesn’t look like the ones the Roadrunner dropped on that coyote in the cartoons.”

  “It’s the best I could do,” Nick said. “Carly found it for me. It works pretty well, actually. I can hammer stuff out on it into just about any shape. It’s indestructible. And now that I have it fastened down onto those logs, it’s not going anywhere.”

  She noticed a single flame flickering as it rose from a glowing orange bed of coals across the room and walked over to warm her hands on it. “This was worth the trip already. My fingers are frozen solid.”

  “That’s my forge,” Nick explained. “I have to heat the metal up before I can work with it. It used to be a brake drum, or something Carly took off an old truck. The bricks help keep the heat in. And Del gave me all that tin ductwork to vent the smoke outside.”

  “Always pays to know a good plumber,” Sarah said.

  He kicked at something on the floor. “This pedal pumps a bellows that throws air on the fire to help it burn hotter. I’m still a little clumsy with that.”

  “So, are you melting down swords and turning them into plowshares?” Sarah asked.

  Nick smiled. “Now who’s the poet?” he asked. “Nah, I’m years away from anything that advanced. Melting stuff is harder than it sounds. Right now I’m just learning how to turn hunks of metal from one shape to another, to be honest. Eventually I might even make something that somebody around here can use.” He shrugged. “I think I already have. I finished a run of spears, and the shovels are nearly done, too.”

  “You have a lot to be proud of, Nick,” she said. “There aren’t many people around here who did anything this significant, especially without any help like you did.”

  “It feels pretty good,” he admitted. “I mean, it would, except it doesn’t matter for me around here. Not anymore.”

  “We’re not doing this conversation again,” Sarah said. “I have to give you credit, though. You found a new way to say it.”

  “Okay,” he said flatly. “We won’t have it, then.”

  “I saw a lot of metal out front,” Sarah said. “What’s that all about?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “It just came today. Carly sent it. I ran through everything she sent me last time, so she scrounged up more for me. I’ll finish the shovels, try to do some spades or hoes, and then I’ll look through the new pile and see if there’s anything I can use for more weapons, if there’s time.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Sarah asked. “What are you not telling me, Nick?”

  “No, nothing,” he said. “I just meant that the tools have to get done in time for Spring planting.”

  “But the spears don’t,” she countered. “And that’s what you were talking about. What gives, Nick? Why wouldn’t there be time?”

  “It just came out wrong,” Nick said. “That’s all.”

  She stared at him momentarily before looking around the shop again. “This is so great, Nick,” Sarah said. “I’m proud of you. I can’t believe how much you’ve already gotten done. I don’t even know how you set this shop up in the first place. You aren’t a blacksmith. You weren’t, I should say. But you are now.”

  “Thanks, Sarah,” he said. “I appreciate that. Hopefully I’ll have some help to finish the s
hovels on time. This is a two-man job. I’m still waiting for somebody to get assigned to work with me. I’d love to have Dewey, if they’d let me have him. But Roethke doesn’t like it when I get what I want.”

  “But you need an apprentice,” Sarah said.

  “I don’t think that’s the right word,” Nick replied. ‘It’ll be the blind leading the blind. I’ll be learning it all as I go, just like my assistant.”

  “I can see with my own eyes that you’re further along than you’re giving yourself credit for,” she said. “Just look at this place.”

  “And it’s better if there are two of us who learn how to do this,” he continued. “That way, if anything happens, then--”

  “That’s it,” Sarah said. “You’re up to something. It’s almost like you’re trying to force me to drag it out of you. So what is it?”

  He turned back to the shovel blanks that were stacked against one of the walls, and selected two of them, which he carried back to his anvil. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sarah,” he said. “I just keep getting tongue-tied and saying the wrong things. That’s all there is to it.” He reached for his favorite hammer. “I better get back to work, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Hey, stop by tonight whenever you get back to the Village, okay?”

  After she was gone, he wondered if she was right. How many hints had he dropped about his plans? Maybe, somewhere, deep down, he did want to give her a chance to talk him out of it. Maybe he wanted her to give him a reason to stay.

  ~~~

  It wasn’t much more than an hour later, just as Nick was imagining his fellow campers finishing up dinner and bundling up for the evening in their chilly cabins, that the door flew open and his roommate stepped inside. The snow had picked up, Nick could see by the accumulation on the shoulders of Dewey’s well-worn coat. That was all the more reason for Nick to be surprised to have a visitor. He’d expected to work on shovels alone until he collapsed in exhaustion, and then crawl back to The Village to get some sleep. Now it looked like he might have some help.