LIGHTNOVELONLINE Picking Up the Pieces
CHAPTER 2-1: PICKING UP THE PIECES
"Cat, what do we have?" Cyrus asked, as he finished twisting the wires around the contacts.
"About ten minutes before we have to head out to see your parents," Catalina said, as she glanced between the clipboard and the needles, jumping back and forth under their glass casings. Catalina was a fairly tall woman, with straight black hair and a face that was a bit too long for the rest of her head. That and her slender build made her look stretched out, a bit of a beanpole. Cyrus didn't mind that. She was a few years his senior, too, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, and Cyrus minded that less and less with every day that passed.
But time wasn't on their side, and every day that passed, was another reminder that they had to crack the current problem. And if he didn't get answers on those numbers, then they wouldn't be making any progress today.
"My parents can wait. Been waitin' on them enough, lately," Cyrus said, putting down the screwdriver and mopping his face, squinching his eye shut to keep the sweat out of it. He'd left the other eye in Korea, along with entirely too much of his skin and sanity. There wasn't a day that went by that his skin grafts didn't itch him badly, and today was no exception. He shook a bit as what felt like a stream of ants pattered along his left leg. Once Cyrus felt composed enough, he glanced back to her. "Gonna need those numbers, por favor."
She rolled her eyes and rattled off the numbers on the dials, and he scribbled them on the paper next to the device. Once she was done he eyeballed them, made some final adjustments on the contacts, then nodded. "Okay. Fire her up."
Catalina hadn't known much about operating electronics when they'd started this, but she'd learned quickly. She learned almost everything quickly. She was smart in a way that Cyrus could respect; but then, most teachers were, and that was what she'd been doing stateside ever since she fled Guatemala.
That was good. If she hadn't been smart, then Cyrus' current employers wouldn't have allowed her the freedoms she had. And Cyrus found as each day went by, that she made life infinitely easier for him.
She pulled on the heavy gloves, closed her eyes, and threw the switch.
Instantly, the inside of the old shack filled with the heavy scent of ozone, and sparks flew as the wires filled with enough electricity to stun a bull. Cyrus flipped switch after switch on the device before him, a thick tube mounted on supports that were soldered into the nearby support beams and studded with lights that lit up one by one, red ones first, then yellow, and finally as he flipped the last switch, all to green.
Then, and only then, did Cyrus uncover the viewer and put his eye to the glass of the small, round eyepiece.
The world was grainy and gray, and the only thing that the viewer showed him, was the other side of the shed, with its closed door.
"Shit," Cyrus said, and squeezed his eye shut. "Shit!"
"Nothing?"
"Nothing," Cyrus felt his head throb. He looked back at Catalina, lips pulled tight over his teeth. "It has to be the transistors. That's the only thing I can think of. That's the only significant difference."
"Oh mierde." She frowned back at him. "You know what this means."
"Yeah. So… let's shut her down and get on the road."
"Now you want to visit your family?"
"It's easier than spending the rest of the day in a meeting to explain that we're going to need to do a complete rebuild. He won't be happy about that."
"Well, you're right about that," came a voice from behind them, and Cyrus about jumped out of his skin. He turned, leaning heavily on the device, and saw a familiar figure had come in through the back door, while they were busy with the test.
Agent Solomon Gable was an older man in his sixties, with a bit of a paunch over a once-fit body. He wore both his years and his fine suit well, his short-trimmed gray hair slicked back with brylcreem, and piercing, faded blue eyes that could hold a man's gaze like a hawk paralyzing a mouse. Right now he was wearing a beige trenchcoat over his suit. It was stained with dust from the early-evening winds across the scree, breath steaming a bit in the chill of a Texas December.
"If you have problems, give me the short of it now, so I can prepare to spend a day getting yelled at by the bean counters." Solomon shook out a cigarette, crumpled the empty pack, and lit it with a bronze lighter. "Don't worry about me getting upset. What you're doing is literally magic. I didn't expect this to be easy."
Cyrus nodded, slowly. Gable had done his damnedest to emphasize that he was a good boss. But he was still government, and Cyrus had been fucked over a few too many times to give his trust freely.
Still, he'd kept his word so far. So Cyrus gave it to him straight. "We're going to need vacuum tubes. And a few other parts. It's… there's some quality to them that the transistors don't have. I can get you a parts list tomorrow, after I get back from home. I'd need to go there anyway, the mailing receipts for the parts are in the strongbox in what's left of my workshop, and I want to make sure it matches my notes."
"Can you get it to me tonight, after the visit's done?" Gable asked, taking a puff as he thought, his eyes flicking back and forth, seeing variables that Cyrus could only get at. The older man seemed to finish his internal calculations, and puffed out smoke through his nostrils before explaining. "I hate to cut your last goodbyes short, but the more time I have to prepare, the less I'll get my ears bashed over this. And we've got a couple of sharks nosing around, trying to horn in on the action. If we put too many feet wrong, they'll try to get a slice of the pie."
Cyrus opened his mouth to say that sure, he didn't need a lot of time with his family, but Catalina got there first.
"You ask a lot of him already," she said, putting her hands on her hips, and glaring at Solomon Gable. "This is the last time he will see his brothers and sisters for God knows how long? And you can't even give him the rest of the day? You know how many hours he's been working here, for you?"
Cyrus shut his mouth.
Agent Solomon Gable raised an eyebrow, and looked down at his cigarette. "Actually, I do. And I wouldn't ask it if it wasn't important."
"If all you need are the receipts, I can run those back. You can bring your notes, Cyrus, and I'll help you do the check after the young ones are in bed. But if you don't spend time with them now, then what happens if…" she bit her lip, and fell silent.
"Cat. It's all right." Cyrus said, picking up his cane. "That's actually a good idea. I'm pretty sure my notes are solid so it shouldn't take long. And there's not much more I can tell you, Solomon… this is the fifth test with this configuration, and everything else lines up. It's got to be the materials."
Solomon considered, then nodded. "All right. Good luck with your family. And tell your Dad to stay dry. Once everything is sorted, I'll want him in here tomorrow, bright and early. Your… sister's been getting antsy. The sooner he gets here, the less I have to worry about her. Good luck, and do what you have to. I'll see you shortly, miss Morales."
"Hasta luego, senor Gable," she nodded back, and the agent took his leave.
Cyrus focused on finishing his lab notes, and Catalina shut down the device, making sure to cover it up properly with the tarps. Then they left the shed, shutting the door behind them, inserting each of their keys into the dual locks, and turning them simultaneously. That done, Cyrus nodded to the two solemn-looking uniformed guards to either side of the doorway, before walking out into the central part of the compound.
Over half a year ago, this particular patch of land had belonged to Shawn Cooper. It was mostly a sandy spit of nothing up against a pretty deep gorge. The soil was rough and rocky, the water was so deep below that the wells struggled at the best of times, and it was far from any kind of infrastructure.
All this suited Shawn just fine. He was his father's only son, and once the old man shoved off the mortal coil he'd sold most of his family's property in the town that his ancestors had founded, and used the profits to buy a few trailer trucks full of scrap metal and old machinery, and spent years assembling a junk-filled fortress in the wastes, complete with watch towers, wall, and its own generators. The time that Shawn Cooper didn't spend building he spent preaching the gospel, though his ideas of gospel were radically different than just about any church that Cyrus knew, to put it politely.
While Cyrus had been growing up and tagging along with his father on the occasional trip into town, Shawn had become a familiar sight in Cooperston, yelling about how World War Two had been a sign that the end was coming soon, and how God would end the world in nuclear fire and cleanse the wicked. The solution to avoiding fiery judgment, according to Shawn, was to accept Jesus as god and Shawn as his prophet, and come live with him in the compound that he'd declared to be Heaven's Door.
Some folks had gone with him, but many had come back, or moved on from there, telling stories about endless hard work for no pay, constant harsh sermons from Shawn, and increasingly strict and petty rules that made little sense.
But though Cyrus hadn't noticed it at the time, most of the ones that moved on were men. And as he got older, he started to get the notion that Shawn was treating the women that ended up in his "care" a little differently.
After he got back from the war, a quiet talk with his father about Shawn Cooper confirmed that yeah, they weren't going to let any of his sisters go anywhere near the son of a bitch. The whole town was in agreement with that at that point, but Shawn still had enough money and good old boys in power who knew his daddy that there wasn't much that could be done. Just another Texas tragedy, and if an occasional somber woman with a bruised face came into town now and again to buy diapers and baby formula, well… maybe God would sort it out. Thoughts and prayers, and praise Jesus on Sundays and turn the other cheek. The unbruised one, so your neighbors didn't feel as guilty.
For Shawn, it had probably been a pretty good life, out on his own personal village full of his wives and bastard children.
But all that had changed when the wizards came to Texas.
Shawn was gone, as were his wives and children and anyone else he might've had under his thumb. Now only his compound remained… and that was undergoing renovations, as well.
The bulk of the compound had been a few weathered cabins of sheet metal and scrap wood, surrounded by a barbed wire and sheet metal fence, with a few clacking windmills and worn electrical cables tracing pathos in the dirt to a central shack that housed the generators. Most of the fence was still there, but it had been expanded upon in all directions, creeping up the dirt drive towards the main road back to town. Much of the wall had been torn down and replaced by concrete cinder blocks, mortared into place by migrant laborers who didn't speak a lick of English, didn't know why there were guards watching them closely while they worked, and didn't ask questions. And around the walled off courtyard of the original compound, quonset huts were erected like children's couch forts.
It wasn't Old Man Cooper's compound anymore. Now it was Site 713.
And it was the only hope that Cy had of repairing his broken family again.
But that was for later; right now, he had to keep the cracks from widening further.
"I'll drive," said Catalina, as they reached the parking area, and Cyrus pulled out the keys for the Ford that he'd filled out six pages of paperwork to be allowed to borrow.
"You sure?"
"I need the practice," she said. "Besides, I will be back here anyway, with the receipts, yes?"
Cyrus couldn't argue with that. And his legs were aching from hovering over the device all day, trying to get it to work the way it should. He clambered into the passenger side, as Catalina tucked her skirt and settled into the driver's seat.
And neither of them noticed as the truck bed rocked slightly, as if something unseen had clambered into the truck bed. Each assumed that the other was the reason for the slight bouncing.
Neither of them suspected that an invisible entity had decided to go on a ride with them.
*****
It was a long drive back. Site 713 was on the other side of Cooperston from the Colfax farm, and there wasn't much in between. Cyrus and Catalina couldn't take the main roads back through town, not after the… difficulties… they'd had with the townies, almost two months ago. Though Cyrus was pretty sure things were quieting down on that front, he still didn't trust everyone involved to let them get through without trouble.
So that meant they spent a lot of time on dusty back roads, as the sun slipped down below the horizon in the rear view mirror, and the scrublands went from a bit chilly to colder than a witch's heart at night. Catalina's full attention was on the road, with that anxious focus that only new drivers could really suffer through, so Cyrus had free reign to twiddle the knobs on the radio. And as President Eisenhower gushed about how that Deim fellow over in Vietnam was a true ally to America and pulling his weight by fighting off commies in southeast asia, and Elvis crooned his way through a Blue Christmas, Cyrus let himself sag back into the seat more and more. He was tired, he realized, and hungry. Catalina had bullied him into eating a sandwich in the mess hall they'd erected outside the site's courtyard earlier in the day, he remembered. Ham? Yeah, ham and swiss. But he'd had nothing since then, save for a few sips of brackish water. Every minute had been devoted to working on the device.
Just thinking about it must have triggered something, because his stomach gurgled noisily. Catalina snorted. "We'll be there soon enough. Your mother won't let you go to bed without dinner."
"I'm pretty sure it's against our… against her religion," Cyrus said. He hadn't had much use for churches before the local congregation had tried to ventilate him with thirty-aught-six bullets.
"On this we agree. Perhaps not much else, but this is agreeable." Catalina's smile flashed white teeth in the mirror. She was Catholic, Cy had gathered. Most of the migrants were. That was just another reason that the local yokels had come gunning for them, recently.
That and a whole complicated mess involving a drug runner, that Cyrus had the sinking feeling wouldn't be done anytime soon.
Elvis finished his Blue Christmas, and Frankie Sinatra and Bing Crosby started crooning a duet. Cyrus settled back into the seat a little further, felt his eyelids droop. It wasn't a bad night, even if they'd hit setbacks. He had a way forward, a friend who had his back, and the people he was working with respected him. Given hard work and patience, they'd be able to handle anything, even the bastards who had broken his family.
*****
"I'm sunk," Dad told him, leaning mournfully against the railing of the back porch. "She doesn't trust me any more. Doesn't respect me. There's no way forward for us." Steven Colfax heaved a sigh that seemed to almost double the breadth of his thin frame, as he let out his breath to drift up and steam against the starlight. "Worst part of it is, I can't blame her. I screwed… no, I fucked up long ago, and the bill's come due."
Cyrus looked away.
There hadn't been any dinner ready at the Colfax residence.
There hadn't been any Judith Colfax waiting to hug them goodbye.
There hadn't been any of his brothers or sisters remaining, to see one last time.
No, Judith Colfax's mother had arrived early, and Mom had gathered the rest of the family up while his father slumbered late into the day, and they'd piled into the old school bus that grandma had rented and left without a word. Heading north, to Oklahoma, and grandpa's house.
They'd found Steven Colfax on the back porch, crying. Carmina had taken one look and gone into the kitchen, to fix something with whatever food had been left behind, and left Cyrus to try to pull his father back together.
Problem was, this was a mess that Cyrus wasn't sure he could fix.
Still, Colfaxes were a stubborn breed, and he had to try.
"She didn't leave any kind of note or letter?"
"No. We'd pretty much said everything that could be said over the last couple weeks," dad said, staring out across the back yard, towards the glittering ribbon of the creek. "I… don't tell that spook you're working for, but I broke my promise and told her. Everything."
Cyrus inhaled a shocked breath. That was… bad. Potentially.
"Don't worry. She didn't believe me. You've been working some late nights, sleeping at that camp, so you weren't around to hear her hollering at me. I'll admit I might have hollered back a time or two. Wasn't a good thing to do in front of the kids. But I'm pretty sure she just thought that whole mess we got into was a drunk hallucination."
"Yeah. Been hard not being able to tell them." Cyrus confessed. "Especially about Beth."
Dad looked away, his lips twisting. "She's alive. She's with Rusty. He'll take care of her."
"Yeah, but she doesn't know that. Or if you told her, she doesn't believe it." Beth was Cyrus' little sister. She'd been incredibly brave, and tried to help them rescue their missing brother. But things had not gone to plan, and hopefully they could get her out of the mess they'd gotten her into.
But that wasn't everything, and Cyrus' eye bored into dad, as the senior Colfax looked back, then away again. Finally dad muttered a curse that would have gotten him even deeper into mom's bad books, and met his son's gaze. "Yes. I came clean about Carmina, too. That was the final nail in the coffin, I reckon."
Cyrus almost punched him.
Instead, he closed his eye and gripped the railing so tightly the edge of the sun-dried wood cracked a bit. And he breathed deeply until he could look at his father without murder on his mind.
The window above the porch creaked a bit. Catalina was listening in. The thought calmed him a bit, let him measure his words carefully. Dad didn't seem to realize they had an audience.
But the anger was still there. So he did what he always did when he got pissed off and couldn't blow off steam, and he tried to analyze things. Tried to get more information, so he could understand the situation. "Tell me about her. Tell me about why I got a bast— a half-sister." You son-of-a-bitch, he added in his head.
Dad looked away again. "I need a drink."
"You ain't getting one." Cyrus said, pulling his hand away from the railing, feeling splinters gouging his palm as he went. He might have been leaving blood, and he didn't care. "Talk."
"I was younger. Dumber. You know how we used to hire migrants to help with the crops?"
"I know." Cyrus vaguely remembered those days. They'd stopped without explanation almost a decade ago.
"There was a man, Jorge. Good fellow. We got along. Used to talk politics and laugh at how silly it all was. He'd eat dinner with us. And he'd bring his wife around. Helena.was her name. Then one day, Jorge stopped showing up."
Cyrus squinted. He seemed to vaguely recall them… maybe? There had been a few of the fieldhands that had shared the Colfax table. You could get away with that this far out of town, having dinner with the migrants. Anyone who tried doing that too close to Cooperston risked a midnight visit by angry guys wearing sheets and hoods. "I don't remember them, sorry," he told his father.
"No reason you should. They were good people, but… I messed it up. I was worried for Jorge, so I went over to Bunktown one afternoon. And I found Helena in tears. Jorge had been jumped by some rowdies on the way back from another job. The folks who found him got him to Dallas, got him hospitalized. But it was pretty bad, and she didn't have the money to visit him or pay the bills. So I helped."
"You loaned them money?"
"A little. Her friends at Bunktown pitched in, too. But mainly I drove her there and back again so she could visit her husband. And… one thing led to another." Dad closed his eyes. "I was weak. She was lonely and scared. I could make excuses, but… I knew it was a sin. I didn't care. At the time it felt right. I rationalized it by telling myself that if it wasn't me, she'd just find comfort in someone else's arms, and why not me then? Stupid. Arrogant. I shouldn't have done it."
More creaking from the upstairs, as Catalina took a few steps back from the window. Cyrus looked up, looked back to Dad, but his father hadn't seemed to notice. He was lost in his own reverie.
"How long was this going on?"
"Not long. A few… weeks. Jorge died in the hospital. She remarried not long after. We both agreed it had been a mistake. But a few months later, she started showing."
"God damn it." Cyrus clenched a fist, immediately regretting it. Those splinters were deep.
"It gets worse. You might want to sock me after this, and I'll understand. Just warn me beforehand."
"Just… keep going." Cyrus shut his eye again.
Dad sighed. "By then I'd told Judith about my weakness. And oh, she was mad. She went down to Bunktown and gave Helena an earful. And things got rough between us for a while. They never quite fixed up after that. So when I found out that Helena was expecting, and it was probably mine, I just… neglected to tell your mother about it. Safer that way. Hell, maybe it wasn't mine."
"But she was."
"Yup." Dad ran a hand through his thinning hair. "And when Helena and her husband hit hard times, I started helping them. And… she had it rough. Thanks to Judith's tirade at the camp, everyone knew she was a gringo's kid. She knew from early on. I tried to visit… hell, a lot of those times you all thought I was at the bar blowing money away, I was actually over there, giving what money I could, and reminding her she had nothing to be ashamed of. But as the years passed, and the drought got worse, I had to stay away more and more. Eventually I stopped going. Safer for everyone that way."
"How convenient for you," Cyrus said.
"I messed up. But the kid… she's innocent," his father said, turning to glare at him. "I don't want you taking any of that out on her, not for a moment. You got that?"
"Wouldn't dream of it. She's a good kid," Cyrus said. "I'm glad we got her back. You, though… I'm not going to sock you." Mind you, some of that's because I got splinters so deep in there I can taste oak in the back of my throat, he thought sourly. "But I ain't going to forgive you for putting that Helena lady through this. I'm guessing she and her husband probably had to leave fast when Bunktown burned."
"I don't know. Probably. I… they would have thought Carmina was gone long before then. I don't reckon they'd have much else tying them here. They're probably not coming back."
The window slammed shut upstairs, and Dad glanced up. "What?"
"Nevermind, that's just Catalina. Come on." Cyrus said. "Let's go see what she made us for dinner. She must be finished if she's got time to eavesdrop."
Catalina wasn't finished. When they came back through the house, Catalina was in the kitchen halfway through boiling potatoes.
"Then who was upstairs?" His dad looked to Cyrus, eyes flicking back and forth with alarm.
"Better question," Cyrus said, whispering to him. "Who IS upstairs?" They'd shut the back door behind them, and he hadn't heard it open. "Stay here
Cyrus was always armed, now. That was one of the conditions he'd agreed to, when he started working with Solomon Gable, and he agreed with it. Every time he went off the compound, a shiny Colt 1911 came with him. He slid the safety off as he took the stairs, walking as quietly as he could.
Halfway up there, he put the safety back on.
Someone was crying. Someone small, who was obviously trying and failing to muffle their tears.
And there in one of the rooms that his sisters had up until recently packed like peas in a pod, sitting on the bare and worn mattress of a bed that his mom had probably stripped of sheets during her exodus, was a small, twelve-year-old figure that he recognized instantly. It was the worst possible person to have been listening through that window.
My fucking luck, Cyrus groused to himself. Then he sighed, and spoke. "Hola, Carmina."
"I was a mistake."
"You… no. No you weren't," Cyrus said, sitting down on the mattress next to her, and stretching out an arm. "C'mere."
She hugged him, straining to wrap her arms around his barrel-chested torso, and sobbed snot and tears into his shirt. He folded his arm around her, and let her go. Catalina would give him hell about the laundry later, but that was a tomorrow sort of problem. "What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked her.
"I, I, I…" she sniffed. "I wanted to see my brothers and sisters before they left. I… well I snuck out. I used my rune."
"Solomon's going to flip his wig," Cyrus said. "Surprised he ain't here already."
No sooner had he said that, then the phone rang downstairs. "Well, shit. Tell him she's here! It's fine. We'll bring her back after we're done."
"What?" Catalina shouted back.
Carmina took the opportunity to blow her nose on Cyrus' sleeve, and he rolled his eye. "You'll understand!" he called back, then looked down at his half-sister. "Hey. It's fine. I'll introduce you later. Yeah, dad botched it, but mom… well, she just needs some time to cool off. And look. She didn't leave because of you. She left because dad lied to her. And covered it up for years. This is nothing against you."
He didn't add that his mom had given him an angry earful about losing Beth. About how his mad quest to save his brother had only managed to lose another sibling forever. Cyrus couldn't face the guilt on that, not now, not in case it happened to be true. He didn't want to start crying, either.
Eventually, Carmina cried herself out, a little."It doesn't matter if your mother blames me or not," She whispered. "Now I have nobody. My parents are gone and they're never coming back. My real father thinks I'm a mistake. My brothers and sisters, I never knew them, and…"
"You do know them. You met two of them. And you met ME." Cyrus hugged her tighter, and used his free hand to give her a noogie. She squeaked in surprise, and punched his back. "You might come to regret that!" he noogied her skull harder, and she giggled, snorting through the tears.
He let up, let her go, and she stared at him, lost and hopeful and sad all warring on her face. "I don't have a choice, do I?"
"On what? You always got choices," he told her, examining his wrecked sleeve.
"I have to go back. We have to go back."
Downstairs Cyrus could vaguely make out Catalina's voice, probably telling Gable that no, his most convincing piece of evidence in this whole mess was still accounted for. "We've come too far not to go back. Not to try," Cyrus said. "Rusty's still trapped, and Beth is with him." Hopefully, if they're not dead already, the devil whispered in the back of his mind.
"And they're back there." Her voice dripped with anger, sorrow leaving, draining like blood from a wound. "I want to kill them. I want to kill all the wizards."
"Don't worry none on that score," Cyrus said, feeling his lips pull back against his teeth. "And now? It was already personal, but now it's about survival. I ain't getting my family back, until they're gone. We both will. I'll bring Beth and Rusty home, and Mom'll be so glad to see 'em that she'll come back with open arms. And Gable will be so happy to end this, that he'll use all the G-men he's got to track down your folks."
She smiled then, and hugged him once more, but he couldn't help but wonder as he hugged her back and ruffled her hair. Would Gable be happy, just ending this threat? Was that what he was after? The jury was still out on that. They were getting a lot of support here, which had to cost money. In his experience, the government didn't dole out money just to be altruistic. There was something else going on, he was sure of it. Just needed a little more time to watch, and listen, and pick up what those cats were putting down.
But that was for later. For now he hugged his mistaken, unexpected sister, and when she nodded off, he shifted her to his shoulder and brought her downstairs for dinner.
Whatever Gable planned, whatever mistakes dad had made, whatever those fucking wizards were doing, none of it mattered in the end. He had one goal now, and his family was on the line.
He had to open the way to the other world. And he had to do it fast, because if he took too long, he didn't know if his little brother and little sister could hold out.