Zombies of the Galaga
Claire and Jill work at the chopping block of Simon's Butcher Shop, just off Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. Six months have passed since Ajira 316 returned to the mainland, and while getting re-acquainted with Aaron has taken up most of Claire's time, she still appreciates having a job.
Both women wear red-soaked aprons which make them look as if they've been in a war. Which in a sense, they have.
Squat, middle-aged Jill pokes a mound of chicken feet with her knife, a frown on her no-nonsense face. "I always wanted to make chicken-foot soup. Just wasn't sure whether to leave the claws on or off."
Claire points towards the butcher-shop office with a gory, gloved hand. "We can look up a recipe online."
Jill gives the younger woman a severe glance. "What would you do if there were no internet to run to?"
Claire sighs inside. Jill lived on the Island with the Others for years, and even living in California hasn't softened her views. Jacob had similar attitudes about technology, as did his brother. "You miss the Island, don't you?" Claire says.
A cursory nod is all Claire gets in return, but it gives her hope that today may be the day Jill actually opens up. "How long did you live there?"
Jill puts on a large pot of water to boil and studies the pile of chicken feet for an instant. "What the hell, let's try it with the claws." She throws the whole mess into the pot, along with some salt and a bouquet garni.
When Claire has just about given up, when Jill takes a meat cleaver to the plucked, pink chicken bodies lined up on the block, the older woman finally speaks. "It's a long story, if you're up for it."
Of course Claire is.
In 1993 Jill was working at Simon's and sleeping in the office, temporarily homeless because she had just been dumped by the woman who had broken her heart. The two of them had been living in Los Angeles when the woman left abruptly for a job on the East Coast. Their house belonged to the woman's parents, and now they wanted Jill out.
When Charles Widmore first came into the shop to place an order for rib-eye, the fattier the better, something immediately clicked between Jill and him. No, she wasn't one of his popsies, she'd have Claire know. Tall, rangy Kiwi men in their fifties weren't her type, and she most certainly wasn't his.
He showed up every day at four PM sharp, leaving with a package of lamb t-bone, sirloin, or something else to broil. "Forget these pretentious steak houses," he would say. "I'd rather char my own chops. And frozen meat is barbaric, fit only for the hogs."
He didn't flirt, and Jill liked him for that, even though he did invite her more than once to tip a pint at a local pub. Even so, in case he was some kind of con-man or serial killer, she only listened to him spin his yarns at Simon's.
Widmore was in Los Angeles because of a woman. He'd had more than a few in his time, but this one, Eloise, was special. In their youth they had lived together somewhere in Polynesia, but she had left him. Every few years Widmore tried to win her back. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't.
Now Widmore was once again hopeful. Eloise and her son Daniel were visiting Los Angeles for a conference on the spiritual aspects of mathematics. Her son was some kind of mathematical genius, as was Eloise herself.
Widmore couldn't stop talking about her: how beautiful she was, how talented. But how unreasonably jealous, too. It wasn't his fault that another woman had gotten pregnant and given him a daughter. Anyway, that was years before Ellie had borne his son. She had known about it then, so why get into jealous fits now?
She had to speak to him, to see reason: Daniel and his mother needed to come back to the island Ellie had lived on for so long. It would be for the boy's own good. Ellie claimed Daniel was Widmore's, but he found that hard to believe, dark-haired and doe-eyed as the boy was. Weak and womanish, too, always hiding behind books or crouching in front of a computer. That's what happened to boys raised without strong, manly influences. Although if the breeding wasn't there, what could you do?
"Take me, for instance," Widmore said to Jill one afternoon in the shop, thumping his broad chest with a thick muscular hand. He'd taught himself physical chemistry, more even than the eggheads he hired. He also prided himself on being an outdoors-man, a horseman, a man of action. No son of his should be raised Ellie's way, even if the pasty little prawn was his. The Island would be good for him. No one could say that he, Charles Widmore, was acting out of selfishness.
Ultimately the purity of Widmore's obsession with Eloise won Jill over. Out of curiosity she agreed to go with him to the conference and meet the mystery woman who had him so enthralled.
The gathering was an odd mix: mathematicians, astronomers, musicians, with a sprinkling of psychics and astrologers. Eloise gave an incomprehensible talk on the effects of strong magnetic fields on the time-space continuity. Or was it "continuum?" Afterwards, Widmore pushed his way through the people already in line to talk with Eloise as Jill trailed behind.
When Widmore and Eloise started to quarrel, Jill laced her arm in his, hoping to lead him away before the scene got worse. Then Jill saw Daniel, a pale, nervous boy in his mid-teens. He chewed his shirtsleeves, an anxious and frightened rabbit looking for an escape route.
Something clicked inside Jill, perhaps because her own parents had fought so bitterly before their divorce. At that point she wanted to grab Eloise and Widmore by the neck and smack their heads together, for fighting in front of this twitching, frightened boy.
The two of them acted as if Daniel wasn't even there.
As Jill came into Eloise's field of view, Jill felt Eloise's scathing head-to-toe survey, as if she expected Jill to quail and back down. Even in her fifties Eloise was as beautiful as Widmore had described.
Beauty or no, Jill was so irked that she thrust her face in Eloise's. "Are you undressing me with your eyes? Because I'm more than willing to accept your invitation." This broadside delivered, Jill turned to Widmore. "No doubt you'd like to watch."
Then Jill stalked off.
At this point in Jill's story Claire remarks, "You bluff in poker about as well as Sawyer."
"I wouldn't have touched her posh ass if it was laid out on a platter and plugged up with an apple." Jill laughs, and Claire joins her.
For the rest of the evening, Jill watched from afar as Eloise and Widmore continued to squabble. Finally Eloise slapped Widmore with a resounding crack, telling him never to come near her or her son again.
After that public humiliation, Widmore stalked across the crowded room, seized Jill's arm, and dragged her to the taxi-stand. "You can go back to the butcher shop and your sleeping bag under the desk, or come with me." He must have seen the fury in her eyes, because he loosened his grip on her arm and drew back a bit. "No, not in the same room. Don't flatter yourself."
"Fine," Jill said. "As long as you're paying."
"When you're ready to deal, knock on my door. I have an unimaginable offer for you, almost too good to be true."
"Those kind usually are," Jill snapped.
That night she stretched out in her room's Jacuzzi, sipped an excellent dry red wine, nibbled bacon-wrapped liver canapes, and thought about her situation.
She had served in the US Army's military police back when almost no women did, until the Army discharged her for being a lesbian. She learned how to butcher from the gay men friends who owned Simon's, and filled in when they needed her. Teaching women's self-defense classes brought in a few extra bucks. Now she was pushing thirty-five and wasn't sure what her next move would be.
She crossed the corridor to Widmore's hotel room and knocked. She was willing to talk.
An unsurpraised Widmore laid out the plans. They would travel to the Island by submarine right before dawn. She needn't worry about getting much sleep, as there would be plenty of time for that. There were extra spots now that Eloise had refused him, and one was hers if she wanted it.
"You'll have to be knocked out for the trip, though," Widmore concluded.
"No way. Do you think I'm a complete idiot? I'm going to stay awake. Further, I'm bringing my knife, and if you or anyone else tries anything, I'll cut their throats."
Widmore laughed. "You remind me of my friend Isabel. The two of you should get along splendidly."
In the black hour before dawn, Jill and Widmore left the Port of Los Angeles in a small, shabby fishing boat whose crew wore filthy sou'westers. The oil-burning tug didn't do over two or three knots, and Jill demanded to know why they were heading out to sea in such a rust-bucket.
"Coast Guard," Widmore growled. "Does this tub look like it runs drugs?"
Through the day they steamed along, until right before sundown they came upon a small submarine in the open sea. She was called the Galaga.
The harrowing part was getting from the bouncing tug to the Galaga's hull without slipping into the churning surf. Anyone who fell in would have been dragged under and minced by the propellers.
The inside of the Galaga reminded Jill of a horror movie set. The inner passageway which ran down the center of the sub was dark and cramped, and the crew squinted at her oddly as she passed. When she had first come on board, the commander and first mate questioned Widmore sharply about this unusual passenger. They spoke in circles, trying not to say too much.
Widmore ordered Jill to stay in her tiny cabin. It had been her choice; it wasn't his fault if she would be bored over the next two weeks, and at first she did what Widmore asked. A silent ship-man brought her meal trays. The head was smaller than an airplane lavatory, which left her feeling claustrophobic. After a few days she couldn't stand it anymore and crept out into the main passageway, just to have a look around.
When Jill saw another passenger stumbling about looking for the head, she tried to strike up a conversation. The man just muttered something unintelligible and stared at Jill with blank eyes. Three other men sat in a side galley and mechanically ate oatmeal, as if they were robots turned down to the lowest setting.
In another tiny room two women faced the ceiling, strapped into their bunks. Jill stuck her head through the narrow door and called out, "Hello? Excuse me?"
One of the women turned her drooling face to Jill. Mouth open, eyes empty, the woman mumbled a few incoherencies.
Jill backed out of there, trying to swallow her terror. Had these women been given lobotomies or something?
She marched through the whole length of the sub looking for Widmore. She found him at table with the commander, and barely managed to scream out, "What in the hell is going on here?" before a sailor grabbed her from behind.
Widmore yelled for the medical corpsman to come give her a shot.
"You're not turning me into a zombie," Jill shouted, still struggling.
When the corpsman seized her arm, she slipped out of the sailor's grasp, flicked out her knife, and cut the sailor's arm to the bone. Arterial blood spurted everywhere, making a delicate fanlike spray on the metal walls.
The corpsman was too busy trying to save his shipmate's life to notice Jill dashing for the hypodermic syringe. When she plunged it into the commander, he dropped like a brick.
Jill scrambled over the table, seized Widmore by the throat and slid her knife up under his ear. "Anyone so much as breathes, I'll open your carotid, I swear."
"Stand down," Widmore growled to the sailors who had rushed to his aid.
Just to show Widmore that she meant business, Jill nicked him enough to make a thin red thread trickle down his shirt collar. He was a cool customer, though. He didn't react, just slowly bled while crewmen pulled the unconscious commander and the wounded sailor away.
When his men were out of harm's reach, Widmore said to Jill, "Oh, you are going to be perfect."
Jill responded by kicking him in the kneecap, hard. The cartilage gave way with a loud snap, and Widmore dropped to the floor.
What the hell was wrong with these people? Jill expected the sailors to return with guns or worse, and had already said good-bye to her life, but the door stayed closed. Widmore sat on the floor, holding his knee, wearing a red stain on his shirt front and a calm, bemused expression.
"They're drugged," he finally said. "A plant which I discovered on the Island. Very useful and highly profitable for Widmore Industries both as an anesthetic and a psychiatric medication."
"Why?" Jill asked.
"Over our fortnight's travel, neither the commander nor I wish to be inconvenienced by a lot of mewling, questioning passengers. Also, coming within range of the Island can have certain unpleasant side effects. So much tidier to do it this way. We tell them they're going to be sedated, but of course that would be impossible. Think of the adult diapers, the mess, the laundry. Disgusting. Instead, this drug allows for minimal cortical function. Automatic pilot, if you will. They can move about, take directions, eat, use the loo. Then, when we administer the antidote upon arrival, they don't remember a thing. Or if they do, it's only as a vague, confused dream."
Jill kept a close eye on the door while addressing Widmore. "I swear, I will kill you and then myself before I let anyone do that to me. How often does one of them not come out of it?"
Claire sees how hatred still shines in Jill's face, even after all these years. "That rat bastard," she says. "Back then, one in ten didn't make it. Eventually Widmore got it down to about five percent. But if the antidote didn't bring them round in twenty minutes at most, the crew just dumped the bodies into the bay."
Sweet golden sunlight pours through the west-facing butcher-shop windows. The chickens have been cut, wrapped in paper and put in the freezer, and the fragrant herbal smell of chicken stock overcomes the blood. Jill dons a fresh apron, and she and Claire wipe down counters with bleach, as if it was most natural thing in the world to do after recounting such horrors.
"I'm glad John Locke blew up that ship of the damned," Claire says when she gets her voice back.
"Kind of pointless, as it hadn't moved in years." Jill shrugs, then resumes her story. "Widmore didn't touch me the rest of the trip. At that point, I was glad to lock myself in my cabin. Anything to avoid those shambling passengers. At first I barely slept, afraid that if I did, they'd drug me too. I cut a little notch in the waistband of my underwear for every day that passed. That way, if I woke up one morning and if there were less than what I remembered, I'd know they tricked me. But they didn't.
"When we arrived, Widmore slapped me on the back, introduced me around and said that I had more balls than half the men there, and could I please give my extra set to young Benjamin Linus. The hatred in Ben's eyes told me I wasn't the only one who wanted to see Charles Widmore sink to the bottom of Pala Bay."
She became Ben's right-hand woman, helped oust Widmore and got him permanently banished. Isabel and Jill became fast friends as Widmore had predicted, so much that they moved in together, and Jill taught Isabel everything she knew.
"Is she still there? On the Island?" As soon as she says it, Claire wishes she hadn't asked.
Jill's voice grows faint, and sadness rises from her like a mist. "It lasted seven years. When it ended, Ben was kind about it. They needed my skills off the Island, he said. This time I took the drugs, not caring if I woke up in Los Angeles or not."
But Jill did wake up. Ben made her one of his "point men," one tiny spider in the web of Jacob's people all over the mainland.
"Anyway, she's gone now," Jill concludes.
Claire doesn't ask how, or when. But one question still nags at her. "Do you ever want to go back?"
"The place gets under your skin," is all Jill will say.
Claire knows exactly what she means.
At home, Aaron will be waiting for his supper, then a bath and a story before bed-time. Claire looks forward to the predictable routine. It soothes her, and no more nightmares trouble her sleep. Instead, night after night, she walks under soaring palms whose leaves whisper a sweet, inviting chorus. In her dreams there are no dark shadows, no axes through a sternum, no screams, no men who hunt her in the night. No him.
Something has changed on the Island. Something big, even if she doesn't know what that might be.
Her words might sound foolish, but Claire doesn't care. "Perhaps it's not a place of terrors anymore."
Jill smiles. "Perhaps."
(the end)