My steps were halting, uncertain, and soon I lost sight of Kirk. I inched forward half-blind, until suddenly his hazy figure was standing still before me. I took a few more steps and began to see the outline of something behind him. Something very big. I squinted as I drew up near Kirk, and then took a step past him. I could scarcely believe my eyes. A helicopter.
“Beauty, isn’t she?” Callahan said, walking up beside me.
Quietly, my voice sounding like it came from somewhere far away, I replied, “I can’t tell. I can’t see much of it.”
“Well, we’ll take care of that. Trust me, she’s a goddamn beauty. Great bird.” He clapped me on the shoulder and pulled open both the rear and forward doors. Callahan gestured for me to climb in the back, and then he pulled himself into the front, sliding behind the stick. The soldier climbed into the other seat beside Callahan, and Kirk got in after me, pulling the door to the small cabin shut.
It was quieter inside, but much fog had swirled in and I could barely make out Callahan fiddling with the controls. Kirk took one of the two rear-facing seats, and I settled in diagonally across from him. The engine turned over several times and then roared to life. The craft shuddered and whined as the power came up. Callahan reached back past Kirk’s shoulder and flipped a few switches on the ceiling. A new whirring noise filled that cabin. The fog dissipated, sucked out by a series of small fans I could now see placed around the aircraft.
“You all locked in back there?” Callahan called to us.
I said nothing. Kirk reached forward and clapped Callahan’s burly shoulder and he nodded, adjusted a few controls, and then took the stick in his hand. The helicopter pulsed with life and trembled a bit, and then I felt it begin to rise, the engine roaring above my head.
Slowly at first, we ascended. My mouth grew dry. Fear tinged with anticipation. Maybe confusion more than anything else. As the craft lifted ever faster and higher, the fog seemed to be growing thinner and paler. Higher still, and it was just a fine mist and a very light gray.
Then we rose out of the fog, and above me was the bright blue sky.
“Oh my God.” I whispered, “Oh my God … oh Christ … oh God … blue … blue … Jesus Christ…” Tears filled my eyes, and I began shaking. Callahan craned his neck around and looked at me. He started to laugh. I was barely aware of his laughter; hardly heard him turn to the soldier and mock me. Kirk silenced them with a sharp wave of his hand. I saw them all as if in a fading dream. For me, there was nothing but the sky. Oh beautiful deep azure sky. Soft clouds drifting here and there. Pure milk white—no trace of gray. The glorious sun. Blinding and beautiful brilliant sun. I stared right at it, squinting, overjoyed. Warming shining sun. Caressing my skin. And oh deep blue I knew only from flickering memories. And the lazy lovely clouds. I may have been speaking aloud, maybe babbling. I don’t know. I didn’t care.
I looked at Kirk with the joy of a child on Christmas. He awkwardly returned my smile. There was something in his eyes before he broke my gaze, and my thrill faded. In those moments of euphoria, I had not thought to look down. Slowly, suddenly terrified, I leaned over toward the curved glass of the window and pressed my face against it.
Fields! Rolling hills and trees! The winding river! Houses and roads and the familiar patchwork of perfect, everyday life. There was just so much color: white walls and green grass and black roofs and streets and bursts of orange and red from autumn trees. It was perfect, sylvan, suburban bliss. My joy returned. Briefly. At the same time, a small ember within me began to glow, began to burn hotter and grow larger.
“Where … have I been … all this time…,” I said very quietly, to myself. I was staring down at the land below me, but now turned to face Kirk. My voice wavering, I repeated myself more loudly. “Where have I been? Where have I been for all these years?”
Kirk sighed, his shoulders sagging. His face was grim as he looked toward the opposite window. I followed his gaze, looked back at him once more, and then hurriedly slid across the seat.
It was like one giant storm cloud nesting on the ground. The city. My city. My home of all these years. My prison all these years. One swirling mass of gray, pierced here and there by the tallest buildings. A massive bowl of gray turned upside down and placed over us all. Miles of swirling fog.
“Take me around it,” I said, wheeling to face Kirk.
“What?”
“I want to circle the fucking city!” I screamed, lunging forward to lean past Kirk and getting right in Callahan’s face. Kirk wrapped an arm around me and pushed me back into my seat. The soldier wheeled, his rifle up and trained on me.
“Calm down!” Kirk snapped at the man. He turned back to me, his eyes fiery. “I don’t want to sedate you, Vale, but I will. Callahan, go ahead. Circle the city.”
The pilot shrugged and nodded. He pushed the stick right, and we banked into a wide turn back toward home. As the helicopter straightened out, I could see the mist-enshrouded city more clearly through the cockpit. I leaned forward again, my knees resting on the seat by Kirk, head craned forward.
As we drew nearer, I began to recognize some of the buildings’ profiles. Once these skyscrapers had towered above the entire city; now they barely crested the fog. Callahan drew us into a long, slow arc clockwise around the city. At regular intervals, tall, thin columns of steel stuck up through the hazy canopy. Hundred of little rods protruded from them.
I was about to ask Kirk what they were when something caught my eye. “The cathedral,” I said aloud. I could just barely see the top two spires of the brilliant structure. They disappeared and reappeared several times in the swirling mist. Then we were past them. I was amazed to see that several of the bridges leading across the river into town were intact. I couldn’t be sure if the one I had been assigned to destroy as a soldier was gone or rebuilt.
The more I looked down at the blanket of fog that for years had wrapped around my life, the more my confusion turned to numbness. Eventually I slid back into my seat and looked out the other window, up at the sky. Kirk said something to Callahan, and we made a sharp turn, heading away from the city.
I was silent for a long time, maybe ten full minutes. Then I turned to Kirk. He was gazing out the window.
“Kirk.” My voice was even, strong. He looked at me. “What were those tall columns of metal?”
“It’s what makes the fog.” That’s what I feared he would say, knew he would say.
“Why?”
“Wait a while longer.” He turned back to the window. I was suddenly too overwhelmed to press the issue. A great weight had lowered itself onto my soul, crushing any fight I had in me. A long while passed during which my mind was all but blank. Every few minutes, I repeated silently to myself:
What the fuck? You goddamn bastards. How could you?
I looked out the window again. There were no more houses below us—only green fields and swaths of woodland. Had we been flying that long—or that fast—to be already out in the country? Craning my neck to look in the direction we were traveling, I spotted a massive dam. Easily two hundred yards across, built into the side of a hill. The reservoir behind it was several miles wide. It was entirely new to me.
“Beautiful, isn’t she? That’s my baby.” Kirk’s voice was full of innocent excitement. “It was my first major design job with Research. Better part of two decades ago.”
“Few years too late for nostalgia, Tony!” Callahan called from up front. Kirk ignored him. I was deeply unnerved. This place looked so familiar. The rise of the hills and the patches of forest—it was like something I’d seen in a dream.
“That’s what generates all the power for the city. Every time you flicked on a light switch, it was power from that dam.”
“It powers the vents too, I’ll bet,” I said quietly.
“Yes. Them too. Should have tried it when we had the chance. I should have pushed harder for it. It might have changed everything,” he muttered, easing back into his seat and looking down at his hands. “But nothing would have changed.” Kirk snapped out of his reverie, glancing at me and then out the window beside him. “It probably wouldn’t have generated enough wattage for all the suburbs. So there it sat, a dam on paper.”
“Why did you make the fog?”
He looked over at me. “I didn’t.”
“We’ll be setting down in less than five, boys.” Callahan called over his shoulder, “May want to buckle up before we do.”
9
The helicopter touched down in a large field, rocking back and forth a bit as the heavy skids dug into the soft grass. Callahan powered down the engine, and with a dying whine all was silent. I sat staring out the window at the lush green grass. It was over a foot high and bent that length again back down to the ground under its own weight. Wild flowers dotted the verdant carpet in millions of places along the miles of sun-drenched, gentle hills.
The clicking of harnesses and an opening door snapped me back to the moment. Kirk was waiting expectantly by the open door. I crouched and slid past him and out of the helicopter. The land beneath my feet … the air crisp but the sun in my eyes and on my shoulders … it was surreal. The smell of the moist grass washed over me, and I was assailed by countless memories. Rolling in it at one age, using a lawn mower at another, crawling along with a rifle on my back still later … I took a few halting steps toward nowhere, overwhelmed.
“Should we cuff him?” I heard the soldier ask. I turned and faced the three men.
“No need for that, I’m sure. Right, Vale?” Kirk asked me.
“Where am I going to go?” I shrugged.
“Now that we’re here, I suppose I can answer that, in fact.” He took me by the arm and led me around to the front of the helicopter, pointing up a small hill. Among a stand of trees painted bright by autumn sat a charming home. White bricks and a wraparound porch and dark green shutters. About halfway up the hill, the grass was cut short and there were manicured hedges and bright flower beds. It was beautiful. Norman Rockwell perfect. A postcard from the past.
“I’m going to explain this very directly because I feel you deserve that much, but I don’t want you to ask questions or protest or anything. Just listen and then comply, okay? It’s a bad lot, Tom. I’m sorry. We’re going into that house. You are going to touch what we tell you, and then we’re going to leave. That’s it.”
“You’re framing me.” I said it matter-of-factly at first. “You’re fucking framing me, Kirk? Is that Ayers’s house? Tell me, goddammit!” I shouted, taking hold of his lapels.
“Yes,” he said, knocking my hands away from his jacket.
“I won’t do it. I refuse.”
Callahan walked up behind me. “Hey. Tom. If you put up a fight, we can always just cut your hands off and use them anyway.” He sounded more serious than before. So I kept silent.
“Come on.” Kirk turned and walked up the hill. I glanced back as I began to slowly follow him. Callahan trailed a few paces behind me while the soldier stood attentively by the chopper, a rifle slung across his back.
At the crest of the hill, I could see a gravel driveway leading down to a narrow road. The pavement did not pass the driveway; it started right at its bottom and then continued across the fields and out of sight.
“Pretty private out here, huh?” I muttered.
“Wasn’t always. They cleared the land years ago,” said Callahan, wheezing behind me after the short walk uphill. “This was a suburb at one point. Been a while, though.”
I stopped walking and turned to face Callahan. His face, flushed red, rose and fell with each heaving breath. “What did you do pre-fog, Callahan?”
“Me? Ha! I was a soldier. A sergeant for years.”
“I was a soldier too. Why have you been out here and me in there?”
“I don’t know, Vale.” He looked off across the meadow. “I guess I was a good soldier. I never asked too many questions, I can tell you that. I kept my head down—still do.” He nodded to himself as if in confirmation.
“What’s going to happen to me after you smear my prints all over this dead man’s house?”
“Not my business. I have no idea. I just flew you here.”
“Thomas!” Kirk called out from behind us. I turned to find him standing on the porch, the front door wide open behind him. Aside from his dark overcoat and suit, one might have thought he was welcoming in neighbors for a Sunday supper. “Come on in,” he said, turning and walking inside and out of view.
The interior of the house was dimly lit, but it smelled clean, fresh. From the foyer, I could see furnished rooms and pictures hung on walls and shoes on a little rack by the door; it felt like no one had lived in the house for some time, though. Rather, it seemed as if someone had been maintaining it for something. For my arrival, I guess.
I had not been in a house for years. The off-white couch with a knit blanket draped across its back fascinated me. The rough-hewn wooden end tables were beautiful. A rustic throw rug here, a dining nook there. Despite the sterile feel of the place, it was a lovely home.
I could sense Kirk wanted to start talking, but he let me explore for a while uninterrupted. Callahan stayed in the front room, fidgeting nervously about. He muttered something about “here in a couple hours,” to which Kirk gave no response.
I scanned all the framed pictures in the hallway. People smiled out at me from the past. Then it dawned on me—some of these pictures were not from the past. I pulled a framed photo of Fallon off the wall and studied it. He looked to be the same age as when I had seen him in the cell, here standing in a sun-dappled forest. Another picture showed Fallon with an older man by a waterfall. It was Samuel Ayers. I recognized him from the file photo from Research, and I could see in his face the features of his son, standing there beside him.
Reverently, I returned the frame to the wall. There were several bare spots where a photograph had clearly been removed. I turned to ask Kirk about them, but as soon as our eyes met, he waved for me to follow and left the hallway. We went into the kitchen, and with a touch of remorse in his eyes, he drew a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. After reading for a moment, he pointed to the sink.