AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Can I get my recorder? And my flashlight?”
“Go ahead.”
She reached in her briefcase, found the flashlight by feel, took her recorder out of her pocket before turning the light on, aiming it in the direction of T.J.’s voice.
A big guy, she thought, a broad-shouldered black man with fierce black eyes. The stubble thickening on his head told her he’d likely shaved it routinely until recently.
“You’ll call me Ben.”
“All right, Ben. I’m turning on the recorder. This is Arlys Reid. I’m speaking to Ben. I’ve asked him to tell me, tell all of us, his story. The pandemic has changed everything for everyone. How do you cope?”
“You get up in the morning, and do what you have to do. You get up, thinking for just a split second, everything’s the way it was. Then you know it’s not. It’s never going to be, but you get up and keep going. Three weeks and two days ago, I lost my husband. The best man I ever knew. A police officer, decorated. When things started to go bad, he went out every day, trying to help people. To serve and protect. It cost him his life.”
“He was killed in the line of duty?”
“Yeah, he was. But not by a bullet or a knife. That would’ve been easier for him. He got infected, he got sick. By that time, the hospitals were so overloaded … He wouldn’t go. No point in it, he told me. He wanted to die at home, in our home. His worry was he’d infected me, but I didn’t get sick.”
He paused a minute, seemed to gather himself.
“I did everything I could for him, for two terrible days. Two days, that’s all it took when we realized we couldn’t keep pretending it was just exhaustion from working doubles, but the Doom. I’m not going to talk about those two days. I’ll just say he died like he wanted. At home. And I took him … where I took him to rest.”
“I’m so sorry, Ben.”
“Everybody thinks their loss is the worst that can happen to them. And this, this fucking scourge, it’s taken from everybody. We all had the worst that can happen.”
“But you got through it. You’re still getting through it.”
“I wanted to die, too. I wanted to get sick and die, but I didn’t. I thought I could take his gun, take his service weapon, and that’d be a way to die. I thought about that while people were rioting in the streets, when people started acting like animals. And I thought of what he’d say to me, I thought how disappointed in me he’d be for not cherishing life, and doing something to help. And still, I wavered.”
He fell silent for nearly thirty seconds, but Arlys said nothing, gave him the time, the space.
“Where I live,” he continued, “the building, people were dying or running or going out to join the animals in the streets. I thought: There’s nothing left but the dark now. But I could hear my husband’s voice in my head saying: Don’t you do it. Don’t you give up.”
“And you didn’t.”
“Nearly did. I went out one day, started to. Maybe I’d get some food, maybe I’d just keep walking. I didn’t know. And there was a boy sitting on the stairs. He lived in the building. I didn’t know his name—I’m not going to say his name.”
“We’ll call him John.”
“All right. John was sitting there crying. Both his parents and his brother, all dead. He couldn’t stay in his apartment. You can imagine why.”
“Yes.”
“He thought I meant to harm him at first. He didn’t run. He was going to stand and fight, that scared, grieving little boy. He’d fight, and what was I doing but wallowing? So I sat down on the steps, and we talked awhile. I took his mama first, and we were going to take her to where I’d laid my husband. When we went out with her, somebody came up. I’m not going to say a name,” he added, but Arlys saw his gaze cut to Fred. “She asked if she could help us. She knew others who could help. So we got that help and we laid John’s family to rest.
“And he came to live with me. So we get up in the morning, and we have some breakfast. We do some reading, and some math and such. It’s important a boy still learns. I’m teaching him to fight, in case he needs to. We play games because play’s as important as learning. We get up and do what we have to do, and that’s how we get through it. When he’s ready—it’s only been a couple weeks—I’m going to get him out of the city. Get him out and find someplace clean. And we’ll get up in the morning there, and do what needs to be done. We’ll build a life, because death can’t be all there is.”
He looked at Arlys now, right into her. “This won’t be the end of it,” he said, repeating her words. “We won’t let it be the end of it.”
“Thank you, Ben. I hope your story reaches people who need to hear it. I needed to hear it. This is Arlys Reid, grateful for everyone who’s doing what needs to be done.”
She switched off the recorder. “Don’t wait until he’s ready. Get John out as soon as you can.”
“His name is Noah.” T.J.’s eyes flicked between the two women before fixing on her. “You know something you’re not telling.”
“I know it’s going to get worse here. I know if I had a child depending on me, I’d get him out. Fred said there are people who can help you with that. Pack and ask them to help you. You should go with them,” she said to Fred.
“I’ll stick with you. You know who to contact, T.J. Honest, if Arlys says you should go, you should go. For Noah.”
“I’ll go talk to him. He knows it’s coming. I’m going to miss you, Fred.”
He moved over, wrapped arms around her, towering over her.
“Miss you back, and Noah. But, you know, if it’s meant, we’ll find each other again.”
“I want it to be meant.” He held out a hand to Arlys. “I thought it would make me angry to tell my story. It didn’t. Watch out for yourself.”
“I intend to. Good luck, T.J.”
He picked up the bag he’d brought in to gather supplies, took one last look, and slipped out through the boards.
“It’s going to be a good segment. A powerful one. I think he was here because he needed to tell his story, and he needed you to tell him to get Noah and go.”
“Lucky all around.”
“Not lucky. Meant. I have something to tell you—off the record.”
“Okay, let’s grab that soup, and you can tell me on the way back to the station. I want to put this together.”
“I really better show you, and here, where it’s safe. Don’t freak, okay?”
“Why would I…”
Arlys trailed off, her jaw dropping, when Fred wiggled her fingers and sparkling lights danced around her.
“How did you—”
“I wanted you to be able to see better.” Now she held her hands out to the sides.
Before Arlys’s dazzled eyes, iridescent wings flowed out of Fred’s back, shimmering right through the jacket she wore. And she rose a foot from the floor, circling in the air with the wings waving.
“What is this? What is this?”
“I got a little freaked at first—it just sort of happened one day. Then it was like, this is so beyond all coolness. It turns out I’m a faerie!”
“A what—a faerie? That’s crazy. Would you stop doing that!”
Fluid as water, Fred lowered to the ground, but the wings remained. “It’s so much fun, but okay. You can’t report on this, Arlys—I mean not about me. They call us the Uncanny—I can’t figure out if I like that or not, but it’s growing on me. I can tell by the way you do the stories, you’re like: Oh, yeah, right. But hey.” Fred lifted up again. “Oh, yeah, right!”
“It’s not possible.”
“It shouldn’t be possible that more than a billion people are dead in a month. But it is possible. And this? Me? Others like me? It’s not only possible, it’s as real as anything else. Maybe it’s some sort of balance. I don’t know. I can’t figure it out, either, so I accept.”
“Others. Like you?”
“Faeries, elves, witches, sirens, sorcerers—and that’s just people I’ve met
since.”
As if the idea delighted her, Fred fluttered up another foot in the air.
“We have to be careful. Magickal people have the good and the bad, too. So we’ve got the bad who’d do us harm—and the regular people, who don’t get it, who would, too.”
She lowered again, touched a hand to Arlys’s arm. “I showed you and I’m telling you because something inside me said I should. I’ve always trusted the something inside me, even when I didn’t know it was there.”
“Maybe I fell asleep at my desk, and this is all a dream.”
On a laugh, Fred gave her a light punch on the arm. “You know you didn’t, and it’s not.”
“I … we really need to talk about this.”
“Yeah, sure. We have to get back, get that segment up. Maybe after the evening broadcast, when we shut down for the day. We can have some wine and talk about it. I’ve got some wine squirreled away.”
“I think it’s going to take a lot of wine.”
“Okay, but let’s get that soup. You should punch up your makeup, redo your hair before you go on the air.”
“Right.”
“You freaked?”
“I’m pretty freaked.”
Fred smiled. “But you’ll do what you need to do. You won’t betray me, just like you won’t betray your source, or T.J. and Noah. You’ve got integrity.”
* * *
Back at the station, Jim called it something else. He called it recklessness and gave Arlys and Fred a heated lecture. A lecture that would have annoyed Arlys down to the core if she hadn’t seen the worry on his face, heard it under the anger.
But he couldn’t fault the interview. He listened to it twice, then sat back. “It’s exceptional. You let him narrate it, let him speak from the heart. A lot of reporters would have inserted a lot of questions, tried to steer him. You didn’t.”
