The Siege (18 page)

The monitor lit up with a white flag flying across it.

“I can see who the disciplinarian is going to be in your household,” Cid said.

“All you have to do is think like a kid,” Ted bragged.

“No great feat, considering you’ve never matured,” Cid said.

A large checkmark landed under Cid’s score, and all three screens erupted in firework displays. 
Game Cid
was displayed in large orange letters.

Cid laughed.

“What’s all the…” Mia said sleepily from the doorway.  She saw the monitors and finished, “fuss about?”

“Just a battle of words.  I won,” Cid gloated.

“Nerd games,” Mia said, shaking her head.  “Mia the pregnant Martin had a very sleepy head.  All she wanted to do was grab her husband and get in bed…” she sang in her off-key way.

“Please stop,” Cid asked.

“I haven’t gotten to the nerd games part yet,” Mia complained.

Ted got up and took his wife’s hand.  “Minnie Mouse, time to get you back into the house and up to bed.”

“Have all of our guests left?”

“Yes, all but Dave, and he’s out cold.  I suspect that he’s worn out from verbally battling with Amanda.  Burt just left,” Cid reported.

“Thanks for holding the fort,” Mia said in mid-yawn.  “I thought Murphy could use some company after his stressful day.”

“You’re a horrible hostess but a wonderful friend,” Cid commented.

“Ouch, and thank you, I think.”

Ted swept his wife up in his arms, and if Cid wasn’t there, he would have dropped Mia on the floor.  The pain reliever masked that Ted’s muscles hadn’t recovered yet.

“What happened to my arms?”

“Geek arms have no muscles,” Cid sniffed.  He set Mia gently on her own two feet.

“You try chopping through concrete and then dig your own grave.”

“I really wish you would state that differently, Teddy Bear.”

“You’re not cut out for physical labor,” Cid stated.  “Geeks don’t dig holes, not intentionally.”

“You’re a geek, and you have muscles,” Ted argued.

“I’m a Geek Contractor, a hybrid,” Cid said proudly, pulling back his sleeve to show his arm muscles.

Mia looked at the gun show for a few seconds and then took Ted’s hand.  “Come on, dear, let’s leave Cid to his own delusions.”

Cid expected this from Mia. She would always have Ted’s back even in a well-intentioned argument.

Ted pulled the zipper up on Mia’s parka.  “Do you know Cid thinks he’s going to get laid?”

“Honey, it can happen,” Mia said, opening the office door.  “It’s not impossible, look at you?”

The door shut on Ted’s embarrassment.  Cid reached out and used the landline extension and dialed Burt’s number.

After a few rings he picked up.

“Sorry, I forgot I had this phone until it rang,” an out-of-breath Burt explained.

“Just checking to see that you made it home safe.”

“Well, I’ve made it as far as the garage.  There was quite a lot of activity going on in town when I went through.  The fire trucks were rolling, and there were only two cars left in the lot of the sheriff’s station.”

“Do you think it has something to do with us having no cell reception?”

“Could be.  The trucks were headed north towards 109,” Burt guessed.

“Terrorists?”

“In Big Bear Lake? I don’t think so.  The only terrorists interested in our little hamlet are the dead ones.”

“Clever,” Cid acknowledged.

“Any sign of the spirit in the barn?” Burt asked.

“No.  Ted, Mia and Murphy were in there all evening.  I’m sure one of them would have noticed a lamenting ghost drifting around.”

“Guess so.  I hear a winter storm is on its way. It should be hitting us by nightfall tomorrow night.  I’m calling off the Saturday PEEPs meeting just in case it arrives sooner than expected.”

“Good plan.  I’ll let the PEEPers here know.  Since I have a free day, I’m going to head out and finish up the factory job with Dave.  I could use a paycheck; Christmas is coming,” Cid said wistfully.

“Are you going to Bev’s party?” Burt asked.

“Ted and Mia are.  I thought I’d ask Marta.  Maybe I can impress her with the
swells
I know.”

“It sounds like you’re serious about the gal,” Burt said.

“Too early to tell, but she’s in the running,” Cid said with a confidence he didn’t feel.  “Well, I’m off to bed, early day tomorrow.”

Cid replaced the handset and closed up the office.  He waved to Murphy who seemed to be marathoning
Fact or Fiction
.

~

“I don’t give a flying reindeer if it’s a swamp here.  I want the area flooded with light.  We have a missing deputy.  One of our own is missing!” John Ryan shouted.

The team of deputies was joined by the fire department.  Together they scoured the site, working their way methodically through the twisted steel.

Tom had exhausted himself screaming inside of the overturned dish.  Whatever sound he made was magnified back at him.  His head throbbed, and he feared a migraine would kill him long before exposure to the cold and damp did.  He tried to call, but the only source for his data plan had contained him.  His radio, too, had not been able to breach the microwave dish.  He estimated he had been trapped for two hours now.  He knew there had to be searchers there.  He had felt the vibrations from the approaching vehicles.  He just couldn’t get anyone’s attention.  He went through his pockets.  Aside from his flashlight, there was little there to help him in his present situation.  In his frustration, he hit the inner edge of the dish with his flashlight.  The ping was almost immediately absorbed, but it did
ping
.  With his hope renewed, he began tapping out a SOS.

“Fall in!”  John called to the deputies.

The rescuers were talking amongst themselves, most of the people complaining about the sheriff’s over-the-top attitude.  When the voices died down, John tried again to speak.

“Who the hell is tapping? Come on, people, the temperature’s falling, and Braverman is still out there somewhere!”

The tapping continued, and one bright EMT called out, “It’s not us.  It’s Morse.”

“Well, tell Morse to shut the…  You mean Morse code?”

The young uniformed officer put his hand to his ear.  “It’s an SOS, sir,” he called out.

“Well, answer it,” John spat.

The EMT took a loose piece of the tower and headed over to the largest metal piece he could find and started banging out a response on the large dish.

Where are you?

The tapping stopped the SOS for a heartbreaking moment, then answered the EMT.

Inside the dome
.

“He’s under this dish!” the EMT called out.

John and several others tried to budge the dish without success.

He radioed back to dispatch to get a crane to the area.  After a few minutes, the dispatcher gave the ETA of the crane.

“What do you mean four hours?  Braverman won’t make it four hours!”

“Sir, we could dig under it.  Just a body size tunnel.  Brace it with that broken concrete,” suggested a fireman. “Or a hole just big enough to pump in fresh air.”

John hadn’t thought about air.  He’d assumed, incorrectly, that the dish wasn’t airtight.  He pushed his hands through his spiked hair and thought it was time for him to retire.  He just wasn’t thinking straight.

Tom rubbed his arms and contemplated putting his waders back on in the hope of possibly retaining more of his body heat.  The tapper had told him that help was several hours away.  Tom thought about burning his ticket book in order to start a fire, to heat the rocks he had collected, but he didn’t see anywhere that the smoke could leave the dish.  His air supply was finite, and he didn’t need to rush his demise by adding CO2.

The extreme silence was the worst part of this adventure.  Tom had reconciled himself to certain death a while ago.  Having died once already had assured him that life didn’t stop just because your heart did.  Well, it did in the corporeal state, he admitted to himself.  However, the soul did live on. He decided that he didn’t want to exist for eternity in silence, alone with only his own thoughts for company.  These few hours, aside from the tapping of the Morse transmissions, were the limit of the quiet solitude he felt that he could take.  He decided, that if he couldn’t surround himself with people he loved, then he would move to a city where he could live out his bachelor days in the noise of strangers.

A scratching sound reached his ears and stopped him from circling the drain with his morbid fantasies of a decaying man surrounded by noisy neighbors.

He crawled to where he suspected the emergency extraction team was digging.  At first it was just the scratching sound.  Next, he saw the frost-dead grass waver.  Then it disappeared altogether as a round air hose popped out of the earth like a curious meerkat.  The hiss of fresh air followed.  Tom sat near the oxygen, enjoying a bit of a buzz.

It took another hour for the hole to be widened enough for Tom to wiggle out and under the edge of the massive dish.  A few seconds after the extraction, the earth shuddered, and the dish sunk further into the ground.  Tom estimated that, had he been inside, that would have been that.  No more Tom.

“How the hell did you end up in there?” John questioned him.

“I don’t know. Lucky, I guess.  When the tower began to collapse, I was thinking more of avoiding being crushed, sliced and diced by the steel.  I had no thoughts about the microwave dish.  It probably saved my life in the beginning.  But, with all things, the Lord gives, and then she rips it out from under you.”

“She?”

“Oh, my mother assures me that God is a woman,” Tom said over his shoulder as he walked over to where the EMTs were packing up to get another hit off that oxygen before they left.

Chapter Fourteen

“Am I living in the third world?” Dave asked as he pounded on the kitchen table.

Mia looked over at the twenty-year-old and mentally wished time would fly until he was heading down to spend the Christmas holiday with his mother.

“I take it dialup and your internet games don’t mix well,” Mia said, wiping the counter down.

“It’s not just that, but Ted has put a kibosh on the whole enterprise.  Something about being cut off from the outside world.”

“I think Cid’s gone for a splitter. Then you’ll be up and running.”

“Up and crawling you mean.  I’m going back to Burt’s.”

“Burt’s cut off too, as is the whole town, perhaps four counties.  I’ll be glad to drive you to the bus station.”

Dave glared at the overeager Mia.  “I can’t leave for a few days.  My mother is having our house fumigated.”

“Well, then I suggest you find something else to do in the meanwhile,” Mia said unsympathetically.  “The boys are playing robots; maybe they’ll let you hold a wrench or something.”

Dave resumed glaring at Mia.  She didn’t have to read his mind to know what series of curse words were being used to describe her, her mother, and an activity that was nonexistent to her until after the kid was born.

“I’m going over to the Bravermans today.  Tom was released from the hospital, and his mother couldn’t get out of work.  I’m going to babysit our famous deputy,” Mia said, tapping the newspaper column she had cut out and fixed to the refrigerator door.

“I don’t know why he got a write up. It wasn’t like he stopped the vandals.”

“He tried and, for his pleasure, spent the night trapped in a sinking bell jar.”

“Microwave dish,” Dave corrected.  “Cid and I discussed that at length during work yesterday.”

Mia was amused.  Dave followed Cid around an abandoned factory taking notes - it wasn’t exactly
at work -
but he did seem to have a sense of pride over the endeavor so Mia refrained from correcting him.

“How did it go at the factory?”

“It’s hard to believe that they can find any use for those abandoned buildings.  Aside from a collection of beer bottles, condoms and needles, I didn’t see anything that said, ‘Future Home of the Veterans Rehabilitation Association,’ about it.”

Mia ignored the coldhearted dig.  “From what I gather, it’s space and a firm foundation they’re looking for.  The rest will be rehabbed.”

“That’s what Audrey and Cid explained.  I don’t understand why they just don’t tear it down and build over it?”

“They may, but wouldn’t it be nice to save some of that prewar construction?”

Dave gave her a look of disgust.

Mia was saved from trying another nonstarter conversation with Dave by Ted’s arrival.

“The truck’s warmed up and out front.  Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

“Nah, it’ll just bore you.  My job is to keep Tom entertained and in the house until his mother comes home.”

“The guy’s almost as old as you are, and he lives with his parents.  What a loser,” Dave said.

“You live with your mother,” Ted pointed out.  “Tom isn’t a loser, just a slow starter.”

“Says the man who left home only two years ago,” Dave sniped.

“Boys,” Mia warned, picking up the basket of baked goods she spent all day yesterday preparing.  “We all know that times have changed.  It’s too expensive to move out.”

“When did you leave home?” Dave asked.

“Home left me at fourteen,” Mia retorted and relinquished her hold on the basket so Ted could carry it out for her.  “Forcibly-emancipated minors have a healthy respect for parents that actually open their home and hearts to their adult children.”

“So your mom and pop aren’t nurturing?”

“Keep that in mind when you’re interning for them,” Mia said over her shoulder.  “You’re so going to miss us.”

~

Burt got in his car only to find that the battery had died again overnight.  It was a new battery.  This was unacceptable.  He searched his pockets and realized Mia must have picked up the receipt.  He also suspected she had paid for the battery.  He picked up the garage extension and began dialing her when he felt a presence behind him.

He turned around slowly and saw a distortion on the far end of the garage.  He reached down to where Mia still had a healthy supply of road salt, and pocketed a handful before approaching the distortion.  “Hello, my name is Burt. Can I help you?”