The Compound

  My eyes were full of tears. I couldn’t look at my mother or my sister. They were staring at me. I felt their eyes.

  Mom’s hand touched my arm. I moved away.

  “It’s done, Eli. And if Eddy were here, you couldn’t have contacted him out there. Everyone would still think we were dead.”

  Lexie didn’t say anything to me. She just wiped off the fresh tears finding their way down her face. Mom’s hand caressed my face. I went to the other side of the room. She followed.

  Both her hands went to my face, holding me. She hadn’t been this close to me since I was nine. She smelled of lilacs. Her voice was gentle. “Eli.”

  Her touch had been only a childhood memory for so long. It was hard for me to believe it was real.

  My eyes shut. Hot tears still squeezed out. My head went from side to side. “I’m not …”

  Mom’s grip on my face got stronger. “You’re not what, Eli?”

  The word came out in a racking sob. “Worthy.”

  “Oh, Eli. You’ve always been worthy.” She pulled me to her and held me. I let her. “You were a child. Children make mistakes.”

  My arms went around her. “I’m so sorry.” My mouth open against her shoulder, I wept. I wept for Eddy, for what I’d done. So many things I’d done. But mostly, my tears were for the loss of the last six years with my brother.

  I wanted them back.

  When I stopped blubbering, Mom backed away. Her shoulders straightened as she took a deep breath. Her eyes darkened as they went from me to Lexie and her voice was clear of any fear or sadness. “Let’s do what we have to and get out of here.”

  Mom and Lexie stayed with Dad.

  Wiping my face as I ran, I tore down the corridor to his office. As I suspected, it was locked. I could have used Terese’s lock-picking skills, but there was no time. At the closest fire extinguisher panel, I broke out the glass and grabbed the axe. Seven whacks later, the office door swung on its hinges.

  Once inside, I took a deep breath. I had to find what we needed. I grabbed the phone, hoping for a dial tone. Nothing. How easy that would have been, to just pick up the phone and call out? I imagined that was how he talked to Phil, his accountant. I couldn’t think of anyone else he would have trusted with this secret. That guy would probably sell his own internal organs for the right price.

  The laptop from Eddy’s room was on a shelf. I switched it on, drumming my fingers as I waited for the wireless signal.

  Wireless Server Not Available.

  I groaned.

  It was off. Of course.

  Starting with the books on the shelves, I looked everywhere. Book by book, I emptied the shelves and ran my hands over each dusty one. Nothing. The piles of National Geographics ended up on the floor in heaps. I yanked on the drawers of his desk. Locked tight.

  I picked up his chair and heaved it at them until they broke open. Papers, notes, lists: proof I was right about everything, but none of it mattered. Nothing gave me the code to the door or the passwords to his computers. I tore the office apart looking for a switch, some way to get on the Internet, the phone, anything. But I kept coming up dry.

  I looked over at the door to the secret lab. I couldn’t imagine any Internet switch being there. I had to keep moving.

  Our only hope was Dad. Maybe he would relent and tell me what I needed to know.

  BACK IN THE INFIRMARY, MOM SAT ON THE BED AND LEXIE stood beside her, an arm around her shoulder. Dad’s bruised face was clean, and he lay under several layers of blankets, shivering. His eyes were open, but they seemed to be vacant, unfocused. If he noticed me come in, he gave no sign.

  Mom looked up at me, her eyebrows raised hopefully. “Any luck?”

  I shook my head. “How is he?”

  “We took his temperature. It’s low.”

  “That’s good, right?” I asked, as I took in what I’d done to his face. Some son.

  She shook her head. “No, it’s not a good thing. His temperature is low.”

  “What do you mean by low?”

  “Below normal. Below 98.6.”

  Lexie pulled a blue blanket out of the warmer and we both spread it over Dad. His eyes widened, seemed to focus for a moment. “Oh God.” Leaning over the side of the bed, he retched.

  Ugh. Turning away, I said, “Got it.” I found the mop and bucket in the closet and cleaned up the mess.

  Before long Dad had diarrhea, too. He was no more coherent, but we managed to get him to the bathroom. Mom went in with him and shut the door.

  Lexie waited for a minute. “I’m gonna go help Terese with the Supp—” She paused. “I mean with the little kids.” She left.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, wondering what kind of bug Dad had. How bad he had it. Whether we would all end up with it.

  “Eli, are you out there?”

  “Yeah, Mom. Right here.”

  She opened the bathroom door. “He needs to lie down again. Can you help?”

  Dad leaned totally on me as we started back to the bed. Suddenly he went limp.

  I couldn’t hold him.

  He dropped to the floor. His head thrashed from side to side. “No!” he screamed. He began to babble, many of the words incoherent.

  Mom knelt by him. “Rex? What’s wrong?”

  Dad seized me by the collar. His breath was hot and stinking in my face. His hands were ice against my skin. “I won’t let you do it. I won’t.” He was agitated, angry, and then he stopped. He fell back on the floor, and then looked up at my mom, pleading. “Clea, don’t let them do it.”

  “Do what, Rex?” She looked as confused as I felt.

  “Mom, he’s delirious.”

  Mom sighed. “We’ve got to find out what’s wrong. Maybe we’ve got medicine for it.”

  Suddenly Dad seemed to be calm again. Grunting at the effort, I slid him across the floor and lifted him into the bed. I said, “I’ll go see what I can find out. You stay here but be careful. If he starts to get violent or seems like he might hurt you, just leave, okay?”

  Mom nodded.

  In the library, I grabbed several thick medical books. It would have been so much easier to just go on the Internet, find out what I needed. But then I could have gotten us out. I wouldn’t have had to play a half-assed doctor.

  Back in the room with Dad, Mom and I paged through the reference books. “Mom, what are his symptoms?”

  “For weeks now he’s been drinking antacid like it’s water.”

  “So … heartburn?”

  She shook her head. “And the vomiting and diarrhea. Although today may be the first time that’s happened.”

  I frowned. “Those are symptoms for a million things. Let’s focus on the unique things.”

  Mom nodded. “Like his low body temperature.”

  “Yeah. And being delirious.” I kept flipping pages. Then my eyes caught a paragraph about low body temperature. “This couldn’t be it.”

  Mom looked up from the book she held. “What?”

  “Well, it lists all those symptoms. Plus seizures, headaches …” I caught my breath. “And itching.” I met Mom’s stare.

  “He’s been scratching like crazy.”

  Reading further, I jammed my finger into the page. “And pins and needles. He said that the other day, that his hands felt like pins and needles.”

  “Eli, what’s the condition?”

  I hadn’t even looked at that yet. I’d been too busy matching up the symptoms. “Ergotism.”

  “What is it?”

  I kept reading. My heart sunk when I found out what it was. I didn’t want to tell my mom. But she was waiting for me.

  I read the definition aloud. “Poisoning by ingesting ergot-infected grains.”

  Her face registered confusion. She paled as she understood. “The flour.”

  I scanned a bit more, trying to find out what I could. “There must have been some rye in it that was already infected with the ergot when it came into the Compound.”

  Her eyes
widened. “I … I did this.”

  I started to shake my head, but she grabbed my arm. “I did. But I didn’t mean to … I just thought … I thought it would make him sick, make him weak, so that we all wouldn’t have to worry so much about …”

  “About him doing something crazy?”

  She nodded.

  We both looked at Dad. He seemed to be asleep. “But it made him crazier.”

  She looked at me. “Do you think his workers planted the flour?”

  I didn’t know. “He wouldn’t have wanted us to get sick. I really believe that.” Too ironic, that he went to the trouble to have someone sabotage the food supply and he was sabotaged himself by the flour.

  Mom stood up and walked to the bed. She tucked the blankets in around Dad. “Is there a cure?”

  “Yeah. According to this, a derivative of ergot gets used to treat migraines. Once in a while a patient overdoses and they have to treat them for ergotism. Intravenous sodium nitroprusside.” Further reading revealed that medicine’s own dangers.

  “Do we have it?” Mom looked like she was holding her breath.

  “Yes.” Dad’s voice was raspy and weak.

  I scratched my head. It was such an obscure medication. “Dad, why would we have that?” Maybe he had planned the ergot poisoning. Why else would he have the antidote?

  He swallowed. One of his hands reached up to scratch his face. “I had to have that, of all things. Because of what it becomes if … if you take too much.”

  Mom and I both leaned in, waiting.

  “Just in case. In case it came to that for some reason.” Dad’s eyes had been clear, but then they seemed to glaze over. He recited part of a poem.

  … In this last of meeting places

  We grope together

  And avoid speech

  Gathered on this beach of the tumid river …

  The poem was one I knew all too well. I joined him for the next part.

  This is the way the world ends

  This is the way the world ends

  This is the way the world ends

  Not with a bang but a whimper.

  T. S. Eliot’s poem from the beginning of On the Beach.

  Dad leaned back, trying to catch his breath. He didn’t have to tell me more. I understood why he had sodium nitroprusside. I explained to Mom. “Too much of it gives you cyanide poisoning.”

  Mom gasped. “But that’s deadly.”

  I nodded. “That’s the point.”

  Dad’s voice was weak. “Can’t survive a nuclear war without cyanide.”

  Among everything else, my dad turned out to be a walking cliché.

  I sighed. “Mom, do you know how to put in an IV?”

  “No.”

  Pity they didn’t cover that at the commune.

  I leaned in. “Dad. You’ve got to give me the code for the door. Let me go out and get you help. You have to or you’re going to die.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Yes. The code. Of course. We must have the code.” His eyes were strange again, not clear.

  I could tell there wasn’t much behind them. “Dad, if you just hold on. Please, just hold on, stay with me. Can you tell me the code?”

  He grabbed my hand.

  I wanted to pull away. I tried.

  But his grip was so strong. His eyes cleared again. “Eli. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.”

  It was a little late. Maybe it would be enough to get him to give me the code. “Dad, can you tell me the code? Please, that will make up for everything.” Not quite, but it would be a decent start.

  His lips formed the words. “The numbers …”

  I squeezed his hand even harder than he was squeezing mine. “Tell me the numbers.”

  He started to recite numbers, so many numbers they blended into each other. “Nineteen … four … five … eight … six …”

  “Dad, wait … Mom! I need pen and paper!”

  Mom started ripping open drawers, searching.

  “Eight … two … nine …” He kept on with the numbers, so many they didn’t even begin to start sinking in. Like a phone number from hell.

  “Dad, please! Hold on, I can’t remember them all.”

  Mom was still banging drawers. “I can’t find anything to write with!”

  Dad squeezed my hand again. “Son—”

  I paused, leaning over him. My hair cascaded in front of my face and I pushed it aside. “Dad, I’m here.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “You can save them. You can.”

  I breathed out, not knowing if he was right or not. I hoped he was. “I know, Dad. You’ll give me the numbers and I’ll get us out.”

  He started again, reciting numbers, so fast that I wanted to scream.

  The numbers stopped. Dad began to convulse, his limbs thrashing.

  “Mom!”

  She ran to my side. Together, we tried to hold him down as his whole body jerked.

  Before it got so bad that he passed out, he managed to spit out one word.

  “Turducken.”

  DAD WAS STILL AND UNRESPONSIVE. MOM AND I LOOKED AT each other.

  I rubbed my chin. “Do you know anything? Did Dad ever say anything about this?”

  She put her hand over her mouth. “Early on, I asked your father once, about the code to the door. How we would get out if something happened to him. Of course he said nothing would happen to him. Still, he promised he would leave a way for us to get out.”

  I wasn’t sure how much weight a promise from my father carried anymore. “But he went crazy since then. He didn’t want us to leave.”

  Mom met my eyes. She hesitated.

  I wanted to grab her shoulders and shake, anything to get the words to come out faster. “Mom? What?”

  She looked down at her belly as she rubbed it. “He told me he’d leave a clue. That there was a clue that would lead to another and another, eventually leading to the answer.”

  “So that’s it. Turducken must be the clue.”

  Mom let out a breath. “That wasn’t all. The first time he told me about it, he was still nice. He acted like it was just matter-of-fact, a little scavenger hunt. Then, later, when he started to get mean …”

  “Mom?”

  “I was afraid he would go back on his word. But then he laughed, said he would leave the clue, even though he didn’t think any of us would be able to figure it out.”

  I looked at Dad, lying in the bed. “I think he’s sorry for it. For everything. And he wants us to get out. Maybe it’s just to save himself, but it doesn’t matter.” I sighed. “I need to think. To figure this out.”

  Mom nodded. “Why don’t you take some time?”

  “No, I need to—”

  Reaching over Dad, she grabbed my hand. “Take some time. Even just a half hour. I’ll stay here.” I tried to protest.

  “Promise me. You don’t come back here for thirty minutes.”

  I promised.

  Despite everything that had just happened, I was hungry. On my way to the kitchen, I heard giggles coming from one of the rooms. The salon. Inside, Lexie was trimming the little girl’s hair.

  How could she be doing that when our world was ripping apart? I stepped closer, planning to give her hell.

  Lexie told the little girl to sit still, and said her name. Cara.

  Cara sat in a booster seat on the swivel chair, smiling at herself in the mirror. Lexie’s eyes met mine in our reflections.

  My mouth opened, ready to yell, ask her how she could just be standing there like nothing was wrong.

  She saw the look in my eyes. “They don’t know anything.” Her eyes drifted down to Cara. “They don’t know about worry or sadness. All they know is that life is simple and secure and every day will be like the one before it.” She looked back at me. “That’s a gift. Do you want to be the one responsible for taking it away?”

  I leaned against the doorway, my throat tight.

  “You’re done, sweetie.” Lexie helped Ca
ra get down and led her over to some blocks, then came over to me and spoke so Cara couldn’t hear. “What’s going on?”

  I told her the truth. “I’m not sure.”

  “Then I’m going to keep helping with the little kids. It’s my routine and routine is good.” Lexie went in front of the mirror and took out her bun, letting her hair cascade around her shoulders. She combed through it and started to trim.

  My eyes went to my reflection in the mirror. My own hair. I pulled it forward and let it cover my face so I could no longer see. As I pushed it back, my fingers ran through it. My hair was my shield, a wall, to keep everyone out. Or was it? Did it keep something in? My reflection smiled a bit. I had no secrets left. “Want to cut mine?”

  Lexie stopped trimming. “Are you kidding me?”

  I shook my head.

  “You trust me to cut your hair?”

  “Hell, no.” I smiled.

  “Then …”

  “It could use a trim.” I sat down in the chair. “And I have thirty minutes to kill. Mom’s orders.”

  Lexie set down the scissors and picked up a wide-toothed comb. She hesitated, and then began.

  My hair was thick, hard to comb through. “Ow.”

  “Sorry.” She stopped.

  “I’m used to it.”

  She finished combing and started to cut, barely taking off more than an inch. She paused. “Can I ask you something?”

  “I’m kind of at your mercy right now, so go ahead.” In my lap, my fingers were wringing the hair band as my knuckles turned white.

  “What do you remember of me, from before? When we didn’t live here?” She started cutting again.

  “Grapes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Frozen grapes. I hated to watch you eat them, it was like someone scratching a blackboard.”

  Lexie smiled. “I loved frozen grapes. The way the cold almost hurt.” She shook her head. “I miss them. I was mad that Dad couldn’t even throw some in the freezers down here.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She just stood there. “It wasn’t even that. You know what bothered me?” I shrugged.

  “That maybe he didn’t stock any because he had no idea they were my favorite food. That’s what really bothered me.”

  “There’s a lot Dad didn’t know about all of us. And even more we didn’t know about him.” Lexie kept cutting. I grabbed her arm. “Wait.”