Eve of Destruction (3 page)

“I was different back then. I'm not that person anymore.”

“None of us are the same as we were before we came here, Will,” said Ben, and I felt like he was trying to understand. “Why does that matter?”

“If you had been like me, wouldn't you have wanted to know?”

“Know what?” asked Ben.

“If you were afraid of being around a lot of people, wouldn't you have done everything you could to know what you were getting yourself into?”

“God, Will, just spill it already.” Kate was running low on patience as she popped two Tylenol in her mouth and choked them down with no water.

“I know what Will is trying to tell you,” Marisa said. She had moved her hand to my forearm, gripping it tightly like she, too, was about to be on the wrong side of the group.

“No, Marisa, it's more than that,” I said, staring into her eyes as my own started to pool with fear. My voice was shaking when I told them the first of what I needed to say.

“I knew about you all. Before this place. I knew.”

It was not the revelation that would ruin everything. No, that part would be much worse.

They stared back at me, unsure of what I meant, so I went on.

“We all had the same doctor—”

“Wait a second,” said Kate, leaning forward with her sharp elbows on the table. She had a kind of beauty that was at its most powerful when she was furious. Connor and Ben couldn't take their eyes off her. “Are you telling us you took that
thing
in there and recorded our sessions?”

“Like with a remote control from the sidewalk or what?” asked Alex, who seemed thoroughly confused.

I explained what I'd really done, which unfortunately sounded a little bit worse than what Kate had guessed.

“Dr. Stevens recorded all of us, every session. I just figured out the password on her computer and uploaded them all to my Recorder.”

“Harsh,” said Ben. He wouldn't look me in the eye. “So you listened to all my private sessions?”

“No, only a few.”

“Face it, you're not that interesting, bro,” said Connor, which loosened everyone up at least a little. But what he said next made me his fan for life. “Come on, you guys, be real. If you'd have thought of it and had the guts to do it and had the brains to pull it off, you'd have done the same thing.”

Everyone sort of looked at the table, even Kate seemed to lose some of her steam as her attractiveness scaled back from an 11 out of 10 to a 9.7.

“And I for one am glad Will has that stuff,” said Marisa, coming to my defense for what I was sure would be the last time ever. “Dr. Stevens wouldn't have given those files to us. Now we can get them from Will if we ever want to go back and remember what freaks we all were.”

There was nervous laughter as she stared up at me with those endlessly deep brown eyes, and I knew what she was feeling: proud. Proud that I'd told my secret.

Now to obliterate all hope of ever having a girlfriend again.

“There's more,” I said, and even then,
right
then, I saw something in Marisa's eyes change.

Wait, what do you mean, more? What didn't you tell me?

Oh, nothing much, on
ly a secret the size of
Texas, I thought.

“Come on, Will, get it all out,” said Connor, who seemed to think anything from the past was fair game, harmless, not a huge deal. I was starting to see that this was really what it was all about for him: making a molehill out of a mountain. If he downplayed the situation, none of it would mean anything.

Sorry, Connor. No one would be happier than me if that were true.

I was just about to spill the beans when the side door leading down to the Bunker basement flew open and a metal cart rolled into the room. A flash of memories washed over me at the sound of the wobbly wheel on the cart as she pushed it toward us.

The bomb shelter, the monitors, the cures.

The hypnotic, whispering voice of Rainsford.

Keith, my dead brother, in his lime green baseball cap.

That son of a bitch Davis and his flash of teeth when he smiled.

Avery. Where was Avery?

“Move it or lose it!” Mrs. Goring screamed as she shoved the cart toward us. Ben and Alex had to push back in their chairs in order to miss being clobbered, and the cart bashed against the table, upsetting a plastic jar of peanut butter that rolled off the cart and onto the floor.

“Someone pick that up,” Mrs. Goring said. “And plug this in. I assume Mr. Besting has failed to get to the point and it will be up to me.”

There were several things on the cart besides the empty space where the jar of peanut butter had been (a jar I was more than happy to go in search of so the attention would be off me for a few seconds). On the cart sat seven or eight gigantic pancakes stacked on a single plate, a small pile of butter knives, and a computer monitor. The monitor was attached to a dusty old computer sitting on the bottom shelf of the cart, from which a cord dangled like a tail.

“You,” she said, pointing at me as I returned to my seat, peanut butter jar in hand. “Plug this stupid thing in. You had your chance.”

Part of me was incredibly bummed out by this turn of events, but another part was glad not to have to do the deed myself. This way, I could blame it on her. She'd made me stay quiet against my will. As I plugged in the computer and listened to it whirl to life, I put this plan into play.

Whatever she tells them, just remember: she made me keep it secret.

Mrs. Goring picked up the plate of Frisbee-size pancakes and dropped it with a crash on the table. She grabbed all the butter knives with one hand and sort of punched Ben Dugan in the shoulder with her balled-up fist of metal. He took this to mean he should pass out the knives and began doing so.

She gazed at Marisa long and hard. “You knew he was a coward when you kissed him. Don't act so surprised.”

The only person brave enough or hungry enough to actually start pasting peanut butter on a giant cold pancake was Connor Bloom. The rest of us just sat there staring as the monitor flashed to life, first with a pale green sort of light, then more brightly with a bluish twang of fuzz. Mrs. Goring began fumbling with the keys on the computer keyboard, looking at the monitor like she was staring into a fogged mirror trying to make out her own face.

“If you haven't taken a pancake by the time I start this show, you won't get one,” she said, not looking at anyone. “And it may be a while before you eat again.”

What was that supposed to mean?
I thought as I watched every single person take a floppy pancake off the plate. I picked one up, too. It felt like something cold and dead draped across my hand.

“I will not go into detail,” said Mrs. Goring, picking up the plate just as Connor stole the last one (also his second). “I will tell you only two things, nothing more. If you want details beyond that, you'll have to ask him. He knows everything, even if he tells you he doesn't.”

Her cold gaze didn't move from my face during everything she said, which felt like an anvil resting on top of any resolve I might have had to defend myself. I was powerless against this fierce little woman with her boots and her white hair.

“The first is this,” she said, and my heart dropped into my stomach. I tore a piece of the pancake off and shoved it in my mouth so I'd have something else to do besides freak out. Marisa's hand lay soft in my own, not holding mine, not yet pulling away. “You all have ailments you didn't possess when you got here. You know you have them and you know they're getting worse.”

“My parents are suing Dr. Stevens about that,” said Alex. “Only they can't find her.”

“Shut up! One more word and I take the pancake.”

Sometimes Mrs. Goring was amusing despite herself.

“You've all taken on one element of
his
. You're not hurt or sick. Not really. You're just old, as he was once old.”

Connor leaned over next to me and whispered, “What the hell is she talking about?”

“Give it,” she said, holding out her hand, and even Connor didn't have the guts to say no. He handed over one of his two pancakes.

“Rainsford, the person who cured you,” Mrs. Goring went on, dropping the heavy pancake onto the cart. “He also stole something from you. He stole your youth. Not all of it, just a piece of it. And what he left behind in your body are the ailments you now endure. Will! Can you hear me, Will?”

I could, but not that well. My hearing was halfway shot.

“You're crazy, you know that?” Kate went on, emboldened by a new idea: maybe Mrs. Goring was insane. “What does that even mean? He made us old?”

“You think I'm nuts?” asked Mrs. Goring, and then, looking at me, “Ask him. Am I crazy, Will Besting?
Am
I!?”

I didn't speak. I couldn't. And in that moment Mrs. Goring pressed her finger to the keyboard and the screen for the oldest computer I'd seen in a long time began to play a video I'd witnessed many, many times. Hundreds of times. It was on my Recorder. I'd watched it in bed, over and over again, trying to understand.

The video showed Rainsford, the old and sinister man who had cured us of our fears. It was his face in close-up as he stared back at the camera, a face that began to twitch and move, to convulse. And then it began to change. The skin tightened and the face filled with life. The man grew younger before our eyes until finally, with alarming finality, it was clear who he was.
⁴

“Davis?” Ben Dugan muttered.

Mrs. Goring didn't speak, she simply stood erect, gauging the expressions on our faces. Davis, who had acted like our friend and our helper. It was Rainsford all along. The two people were one and the same.

“Let me get this straight,” said Alex, scratching the side of his face like he actually had any kind of stubble at all, which he did not. “You're telling us that Rainsford, the guy that cured us, was taking something from us that made him young again?”

“That's what I'm telling you,” said Mrs. Goring. “It's what he does. There is no more Rainsford. Now there is only Davis, at least for another fifty years or so. Then he'll do it again. And again. And again!”

“The Dude is a vampire,” said Connor. “That's twisted.”

But even in his attempt to ease the fear around us, he glared at me.

They were all glaring at me.

“You
knew
this?” Marisa asked me, her hand slipping away. “But how? How did you know?”

I shook my head.

“I knew because she told me everything,” I finally managed. “And because I didn't listen to Rainsford. I wasn't in there with you guys. I didn't listen, so he couldn't make me forget.”

Mrs. Goring's first name was Eve, and like the biblical Eve, she had stripped them of their innocence, opening their minds to the truth and blowing my world apart in the process.

Marisa's warm, soft hand slipped completely away from mine, and I knew everything had suddenly changed.

She'd stopped trusting me.

It took some convincing.

Mrs. Goring had to tell more than she wanted to and so did I, but finally, a half hour later, all the pancakes but one were gone and everyone believed. Old Rainsford had become young Davis. He had taken something from each of us in order to make that happen. He had figured out a way to become young again at our expense.

Mrs. Goring picked up the one remaining pancake and took a bite out of it; then she spoke with her mouth full.

“What creature in the morning goes on four legs, at midday on two, and in the evening on three, and the more legs it has, the weaker it be?”

Kate was in no mood for riddles as she pushed away from the table and stood up.

“I'm leaving. Who's with me?”

“Sit down,” said Mrs. Goring. Her words were slow, measured, and powerful—but not powerful enough to stop Kate Hollander.

“News flash! You can't make me stay here. You can't make
any
of us stay.”

Alex got up, too. Then Marisa and Connor. This potential mass exodus rattled Mrs. Goring as she looked at me for help.

“Sorry, Mrs. Goring,
I
don't even know why we're here,” I said, and it was true.

Mrs. Goring watched as Ben Dugan also got up and the whole procession began moving for the door. It was only me at the table, alone. I stared at the empty chairs around me and answered Mrs. Goring's question.

“It's man,” I said, which was a strange enough thing to say that it got Kate to turn on her heels and glare at me.

“You're as loony as she is.”

“I'm just looking for answers. Don't you want some answers, Kate?”

“Yeah, I want answers. Ones that make sense!” Kate started moving back toward me, her enraged splendor in full bloom. “
It's man?
You're a freak, Will. A total freak.”

“All I know is I have at least one answer right.”

Mrs. Goring repeated the riddle.

“What creature in the morning goes on four legs, at midday on two, and in the evening on three, and the more legs it has, the weaker it be?”

“Man?” Connor said, as he and the gang slowly walked back toward the table. “How is it man? I don't get it.”

“It's the riddle of the sphinx,” I said. “It's mythology.”

“Hey, I remember that!” Ben was back at the table, bolstered with memory. “We went through the whole thing in eighth grade. He's right, it's man. We start on four legs, you know, like babies crawling around on the floor. Then we stand up and walk until we get old. Then we get a cane to help us walk, that's the three legs.”

“Then we die,” Marisa concluded. She'd returned to the table, too, but she was no longer next to me.