Average Joe Read online

  “I’m a gravedigger.”

  He laughed. “Excellent choice. High demand, low intelligence barrier.”

  “Low wages.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers. People like to think they can be what they want – but you and I know that’s bullshit. That’s what’s got the Orphans all ablaze; they’ve got to face the truth now. Best most can do in this world is hold down a job, when people up there just aren’t cut out for the real work.”

  “People up there? On the surface?”

  The casters on Bremmer’s chair clattered over the linoleum tiles. He appeared next to Hal and leaned against a cross bar in the window frame. The lower half of his face was covered in hard gray specks that looked like steal shavings, and the top half was covered by leathery, wind beaten skin.

  Bremmer said, “What do you think she’s doing in her office right now?”

  “I don’t really care.”

  “Have you ever seen the movie about John Nash? Jenny thinks she’s John Nash. She thinks she’s such a genius that her overheated brain is starting to rend under the load. I know about the Kingston’s, even though she’s trying to hide it from me. And I know she’s trying to hang on long enough to make her big discovery. Do you think Jenny’s a beautiful mind, Henry? Or a beautiful anything else? Hell, she’s not even good to look at.”

  Hal didn’t say anything. He was imagining Mr. N. shooting the guard and using his sledgehammer to break through the gate. Was he wandering the halls in search of them now?

  Bremmer said, “Do you want to know what Jenny does for us? She used to be a lab tech. A secretary. She didn’t even finish her doctorate. But what can you do? What Jenny really hates, what she hates most of all – is working around real scientists and having to wake up every day and face the fact that she’s average. People up there can wrap themselves in fantasy, even the Orphans will learn to do it in time. But down here – down here? This ain’t Lake Woebegon. And there’s no escaping that.”

  Bremmer shoved his chair back to his desk and picked up the phone.

  “I’m calling security to lock down the premises.” He said. “And I’m calling the police to come pick her up.”

  After a few seconds on the phone, Bremmer grew quiet. “Let me talk.” He must’ve been talking to Mr. N. now. “We’ll wait on the police, okay? Okay? We’ll give you a chance. But we are going to lock down.”

  Just as Bremmer put the phone down, his computer beeped at him. He clicked and Jenny’s face appeared on the screen. She was sitting in a tiny, windowless office and everything in it was a mess. Papers were littered about, drawers were upturned, and a filing cabinet was tipped into a corner. Jenny was sitting and looked calm, but her hands vibrated against her lap. Hal stood and walked toward the screen.

  “Where is he?” Jenny said.

  Bremmer was standing just out of the camera’s field of view.

  “He’s closing the place down.” As Hal said that, emergency lights in the chamber outside flashed on.

  “Jon.” Said Jenny. “Your phone was busy, so I know you’re there somewhere. Where did you put my private work?”

  As she said that, she started rifling through her papers again. Then she stopped and pulled one page from a file. She looked it over and the vibrations in her hands grew even more violent. Her mouth gaped and her eyes rose back to the camera, this time with a hollowed out look.

  “What the hell is this?” she said. “What have you done?”

  Bremmer closed the video conferencing program. Jenny disappeared. Bremmer put his hands on Hal’s shoulders.

  He said, “You have to understand that there’s no point in arguing with her. She’s not well, and hasn’t been for a long time. There’s no work to steal. Now – stay here. Don’t move.”

  * * * *

  Bremmer was gone and Hal was left to watch the massive spider’s web twinkle in the flashing red emergency lights. There was no sound; it was peaceful.

  Jenny came crashing through the door. Hal spun and saw her standing there with a hunting gun hanging from one arm. A name was stenciled along the side: Gregory Noyes, Hal’s eleventh grade English teacher. Jenny lifted the gun and put her eye to the scope. She walked toward him, and Hal kept his position with his back against the glass. The gun rattled in Jenny’s quaking hands.

  Hal said, “You know how to use that?”

  “I didn’t know what I’d taken it for.” She said. “But I found a note stuck to this.” She held up a computer memory card. “It told me to play the recording.”

  Without moving her eyes from Hal, Jenny walked backwards and slipped the card into Bremmer’s computer. When she opened a video file on it, Hal saw himself and Jenny sitting in a circle with other people – and with Clara.

  She said, “Now that I have this pointed at you, are you going to tell me again that we haven’t known each other since high school?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Jenny. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “What is this? What are we doing in that video?”

  “Clara ran this therapy session. I was there because she made me. It was just by chance that you happened to come because you’d found out about it online. The group was for people like us. People who feel trapped.”

  “This isn’t the only thing on here. There’s a stack of emails between us which I haven’t even begun to read. But what I have read doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in you.”

  She put the muzzle against his chest and pushed it until it hurt his sternum.

  “Why?” Hal said. “Go ahead and read the rest. You’ll see that I’m the only one who believed in you, and I’m the only one you told about what you’re really up to. Bremmer thinks you’re working on particle physics, and he thinks you’re a joke because he knows you’re not cut out for it. I know you’re just in the wrong place. You told me what you’ve really discovered.”

  “You tricked it out of me. You made me trust you. Then you slipped your business card in with my things, so that the next time I had an episode it would be handy and I’d call you. Then you’d kidnap me.”

  “I think it was your dad who wanted to kidnap you - remember the old boy? Why do you hate him? I know. He’s been trying to catch you for some time, hasn’t he? That’s what you told me. You were getting more and more worried each time we met, and that’s what made you slip into psychosis.”

  “What if my dad paid you?”

  “What if he paid me to take you back here? The place he wanted to get you away from? Think about it. Your dad didn’t believe in you. Bremmer doesn’t believe in you. Hell, even Clara was trying to help you get over this notion that you’re special in some way. But you are special. You figured it out.”

  “You don’t know what it is, do you? You’re still trying to get it out of me.”

  “Of course I know. You told me yourself. You found a cure for the Hollow Orphans.”

  Jenny let the gun lift of his chest just a little.

  Hal lifted a hand. “It’s all there on your computer. That kind of thing will make you millions.”

  Her finger twitched. Hal swung his arm up into the gun and banged it to one side, as Jenny pulled the trigger. The pellets took out the entire window and the kickback knocked Jenny to the floor. She tried to push herself up, but her left leg was writhing to its own rhythm now, and she couldn’t keep a grip on the gun. Jenny stuck one hand in her pocket and pulled out another shell, but it slipped from her and rolled across the floor. There were voices shouting now, coming from down the hall. One of them was Bremmer, screaming about something. Hal kicked the gun from Jenny and then lifted her up by her armpits. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, he thought. This disease really was eating her up. She struggled and stepped on the shell. Hal tried to keep his hands on her but she was falling.

  Something in his brain told him to just finish it. Be honest with yourself, Hal. A part of you might have wanted to do something for her, but now’s the time to decide. Take a look at what Clara sh
owed you. Be honest about the kind of man you are.

  At that moment, he wasn’t sure if Jenny slipped, or if he was listening to the voices in his head.

  Jenny fell over backward through the hole in the window. She didn’t scream. She emitted a small startled chirp, the words “oh shit” – and then there were two seconds of silence, followed by a dull thump.

  Hal saw her twisted up on the spectrometer chamber floor, a faint movement still pumping in her chest.

  * * * *

  They were all standing in the cold, in the space between the fence and the pyramid. There was a cluster of police cars near the guard house and Jenny was packed away in the ambulance. Bremmer was off to one side, shouting into his cell phone. The was no Gregory Noyes. Only a woman. She was standing near the fence, so close that she was pressing her face into the chain links. As the ambulance sped off, the woman hooked the fingers of one hand around the fence wire, as if trying to keep herself standing.

  “Sue.” Hal said to the woman. “You didn’t go with her in the ambulance.”

  Sue said, “I don’t think I should be around when she wakes up.”

  “Someone’s got to be there.”

  Sue faced him. “Maybe you?”

  Because she chose me?

  “You don’t even know me. She needs to know at least one of her parents is sane.”

  Sue almost smiled. The tiny movement in her face was just enough to let Hal know that she’d believed every word he’d told her about what had happened.

  “You’re right. But you went through so much to help her. I wasn’t there. I was afraid.”

  Hal didn’t ask her what she was afraid of.

  Sue said, “Most of all - I don’t want her to know about what happened to her father; not yet. It was just a chance thing, you know? I happened to come back to the house tonight, because I knew he’d be out and I wanted to find our engagement ring. He’d stolen it from me when I was sleeping – do you believe it? It turns out he’d sold it for five grand.”

  Hal ventured, “Does he know you’re here?”

  “He’s dead and freezing. I finally went into the little office he’d set up for himself in the basement. I forced open the drawers and found maps and newspaper clippings – all about the fifty – and photos of Jenny and her coworkers. That was the whole reason I’d left him; I was just too scarred of him. And he’d been keeping it up all the time that I was gone. That’s when you called about taking Jenny here. I let it ring, and as I was checking the message he came home.”

  “When I didn’t get him at home, I called the cell phone.” Said Hal.

  “I know. He turned around and left before he’d even found me in the basement. I don’t know if he knew I was there; he might not have seen my car parked in the street.”

  “You followed him?”

  She nodded.

  “Is he out there in the fields?”

  “There was so much blood, when I finally swung the hammer down on him.”

  Hal went back to his Plymouth. Bremmer was climbing into an Audi A4. Hal noticed an empty box of sleeping pills crushed into a fold on one of the leather seats.

  Before Bremmer closed the door, Hal said, “I think she’ll be all right. Won’t help her recovery from Kingston’s any.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Is she going to have a job when she gets back?”

  “Why do you care?”

  Hal shrugged. “I care.”

  “I’m not sentimental. Sometimes, you got to read the cards and know when to fold.”

  Hal caught his eyes darting at the empty box. Bremmber knew it. He slammed the door and sped off, honking away at the police cars in his path. Before starting his engine, Hal took a final glance at Susan Noyes. Then he reached into his pocket and felt the comforting shape of Jenny’s memory card. He almost whistled. Everyone was wrong about him. Every goddamn last one of them. But Clara showed him the way. He may have been below average in any other way, but he was the best damn con man ever.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Connect With Peter Sargent

  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/petersargentscifi

  eBooks by Peter Sargent

  Unhaunting The Hours

  Divide The Sea

  The Dead Reckoner Volume One: Absolution and Desolation

  Average Joe

  Sleeping Sickness

  Lanterns In The Morning