A/N1 And on we go. Some events come into better focus.
Thanks for the reviews so very much. Writing is lonely work. A fountain pen ain't much company. Lovely to hear from you.
Don't own Chuck.
Too Old For This
CHAPTER THREE
One Silken Thread
Instead of answering Rider's question, Sarah pushed the catcher's mask back down over his face. Looking at him sternly but not unkindly through the bars, she gave him an order: "Come with me. Let's make sure there aren't any more of those hairy...monsters down here. But be careful!" She knew it would be pointless to tell him to wait. He's his father's son.
She saw that the grin on his face grew even more, although she could also see that he had noted her dodge. "Brazilian Wandering Spiders, Mom. But they usually don't act like this, hunting...people...in broad daylight. Weird." He then registered the dimness of the safehouse. "Well, they were in daylight at our house, anyway."
Sarah turned to lead the way toward the kitchen and armory. "Gina, stay with us, but behind us." Sarah glanced over her shoulder at Gina. Her eyes were big and she was still panting, and Sarah could see the heap of questions in Gina's eyes. So much for leaving the past in the past. She'd talk to Gina in a little while. One mission at a time.
Sarah and Rider worked cautiously through the kitchen and armory, making sure to check corners and crevices and to check anything, like a large pot or a backpack, into which one of the spiders could squeeze and hide. But they found nothing.
They got the same result in the bedrooms. When they got back into the main room, Sarah went upstairs and found a broom, a dustpan, and a garbage bag. She and Rider swept up the mangled spiders and dumped them in the bag while Gina held it open. She held it as far from her body as possible, making a horrible face as each spider dropped inside. Sarah was impressed, though; Gina was holding it together even in the midst of all this craziness.
As they finished the gruesome task, Sarah began asking Rider questions. She kept her tone light, wanting answers but also hoping the talk would help to settle Gina.
"Rider," she commenced, "how did you find this place?"
He looked up at her, right into her eyes. The confrontation of eyes was strange. Her own blue eyes, warm, but guarded, non-committal, stared back at her. She knew for the first time what it must be like for Chuck so often when he looked into her eyes, even after all these years. Chuck! But then Rider's eyes softened, melted, still her blue but now his father's openness.
"Mom, I'm smart. Every time we pass the road to this place, you and Dad stare in this direction, both of you with weird looks on your faces. Then you look at each other, and then you hold hands.
"One day when Auntie Gina and I were out driving around, I asked her to drive up the road so we could look around. When I saw this place, I knew it was what you two were thinking about." Sarah cocked her head and looked at Gina, who was closing the garbage bag. She shrugged at Sarah, conceding that her part in Rider's story was true.
"I had no idea," Gina apologized. Sarah smiled at her.
"And since…" Rider looked at Gina, moving his eyes but not his head, a gesture, and Sarah nodded, just enough for him to see, an answering gesture, "...since you and Dad used to be spies, I figured this place had something to do with your old life."
Gina had gasped at 'spies' but Sarah kept her gaze focused on Rider, muffling her shock. "And you knew we used to be spies...how?"
Rider grinned again. "C'mon, spy-kid, Mom. I think. I watch. I listen. I hear things." His face clouded. "Like your bad dreams, the ones you wake up from, scared…and yelling, sometimes." His voice choked, went soft. "I'm glad those hardly happen anymore, Mom."
Sarah blinked back the immediate tears. She grabbed Rider and hugged him to her. "Me, too, Rider. Me, too."
He pulled back and looked up at her. "And Dad, well, he never told me on purpose, but he must've been the worst spy ever. He used to tell me bedtime stories when you were out of town-they were always about a beautiful, deadly spy and the nerd who loved her. How could Dad think I wouldn't know who he was really talking about?"
Sarah shook her head. She had loved the man forever and she had no answer to that question. She hugged Rider again. "Ok, so you figured out the house had something to do with our past lives, but why did you think I would be here today?"
"Because something's happened with Dad, right?" Rider's smile evaporated; a frown materialized; Sarah could see the fear in his face. "Dad doesn't just leave, Mom. He packs. Two of everything. And he'd never leave you or leave me. Never." He said the last word vehemently. And suddenly her son seemed eight to her again, insecure and in need of reassurance. She squeezed him.
"It's ok, Rider. Yes, something's happened...and I don't know what. But I will figure it out. I've...lost him before-and found him again. We find each other. It's...kind of been our thing." She could see curiosity overcome the fear on her son's face, but he didn't ask any questions. He just hugged her again, then he went on, talking as he hugged her.
"So, I knew something had happened with Dad and I knew you'd come here. This is some kind of spy house, right. I mean, what dummy'd keep up all those flower boxes outside but never paint the house?"
"What dummy, indeed?" It was Beckman's voice. They all looked up. Her face was showing on the large monitor on the wall.
Beckman smiled. "Good morning again, Rider." She shifted her gaze. "And you must be Gina." Gina nodded slowly, unsure what to make of the tiny General on the big screen.
Rider piped up, his head turning to Sarah then back to Beckman. "So, Mom, I got Auntie Gina to drive me here, and I called General Beckman. She...overrode, is that the word again, General?," Rider looked up and Beckman nodded, "...she overrode the locks so we could get to you."
Ignoring the General for the moment, Sarah returned her attention to Rider. "Did you notice anything...odd...about Dad last night, Rider?"
The boy's face pinched as he thought. "He was moping a little between games last night, but he's been doing that lately, hasn't he, at night?"
The question stopped Sarah short. Chuck had been moping lately, particularly sometimes in the evenings. Sarah had taken it to be his disappointment about their failure to get pregnant again. She expected that he'd talk when he was ready; he always did. Unlike her, he didn't tend to ignore his sadness or disappointment. Chuck bled, suffered. And maybe the moping had been partly that. They'd both been saddened by their failure. But she hadn't thought before about why the moping would happen so often in the evenings. In the evenings…
In the evenings, after the mail had arrived.
Maybe that evening mopiness was something else. Sarah looked up at Beckman. "Maybe you should have all the circulars from the pizza place examined. Maybe the one last night was just the most recent one, not the only one."
"Ok, Sarah. I will tell the team. Is everyone there ok?"
Sarah nodded. "We are going to head home. Call me there, as we talked about." Then Sarah snapped her head around to Rider. "What a minute, Rider. How did you call General Beckman?"
Rider looked nervous, a little unsure. Then he shrugged and dug a phone out of his pocket. "I called her on my phone."
"Your phone? You don't have a phone, Rider."
He waved the obvious phone at her, suppressing a guilty smile. "Yeah, Mom, I do. Dad told me I could have one if I helped him build it, so I did. It took us a long time, but I learned a lot, and it works." His face lit up, then dimmed. "Although Dad forbid me to use it except in emergencies. He put the General's number in it, along with a few others. Carina. Casey. Grandpa Jack and Grandma Emma, Grandma Frost…"
Sarah stiffened. "We will talk about this later, young man. And your father and I, well, we need to talk too." She knew how much Chuck loved it when she used that phrase. "General, do you know where Frost is? She was Wheelwright's handler, more or less, for Volkoff. She might be able to help us. She'd want to know about Chuck."
"Yes, she would. I have been trying to contact her. But she is unreachable. No one at Langley can tell me anything, or will tell me anything." Beckman audibly ground her teeth. "I will keep trying. Maybe you should check the number in Rider's phone...Maybe it is one we don't have?"
"I will, General. I'd like a look at my son's contact list and call log." She glanced at Rider out of the corner of her eyes. He was toeing the floor with one of his rubber boots, keeping his head down. His phone had disappeared. Back in his pocket, presumably. Out of Mom-sight, hopefully out of Mom-mind. Doesn't work that way, kid; spy-mom, remember?
"General, can you send someone here to collect some of these spider things? Rider thinks they behaved oddly. We should see if there's any explanation in their...corpses? Bodies? Remains? Carcasses?"
"Yes, a team from Bozeman has already been dispatched. Do you want them to go on to your house next?" Sarah shook her head. "Alright. They should be there soon, Sarah. Gina," Beckman shifted her gaze, her tone, "I hope you understand that all you have heard and seen today is reckoned a matter of National Security. I will expect you to act appropriately."
Gina, who had been standing with her jaw imitating a porch swing, shut her mouth in a pointed way. She gave the General a sober nod.
"Good. Sarah, I leave what you tell her at your discretion, except for any mention of…you know," Beckman rolled her eyes upward as if she were trying to see her own forehead.
Sarah fought back an impulse to laugh. "Yes, General, I know. I think we can avoid that." Damn Intersect. The thing's like a zombie. You kill it and it rises to fight again. But wait, Chuck doesn't have the Intersect…
Sarah shot Beckman a sudden, questioning glare. Beckman's screen went blank, but not before Sarah thought she saw Beckman avert her eyes and swallow hard. What the hell?
"Does she always just...hang up...like that?" Rider wondered.
Sarah responded, "Pretty much. 'With the high and mighty…'"
"'...Always a little patience.'" Rider completed the line. It was from an old movie he had watched with Sarah and Chuck several times, a favorite of hers.
Rider smiled a sneaky smile. "Except the General's mighty, but not so high. I am taller than she is." He stretched himself skyward, laughter bubbling from him, irrepressible, even then, even there.
Then the three of them laughed together. That seemed to dispel some of the tension that had remained thick in the room. Sarah looked at the screen Beckman had been on. A little patience...
Sarah lifted the backpack, peered into the main compartment one more time, just to be sure, and shuddered at the memory of that hairy thing in her hair. She wasn't sure there was a hot shower long enough or a bottle of shampoo large enough to help her get past that. The three went up the stairs into the farmhouse kitchen, and then out into the daylight.
ooOoo
The team from Bozeman arrived soon and Sarah met them in the driveway. She had a quick, hushed conversation with them, and then she asked Gina to come back to the house. She and Rider got in her Porsche and they drove homeward.
Sarah sneaked looks at Rider during the silent drive. The silence was pregnant but not uncomfortable; they were both processing the morning, its events and what those events had revealed or confirmed. Rider watched Montana pass outside the passenger window. She could see him bouncing one leg, a nervous twitch he had inherited from his father. She was unsure what to do about...everything. Rider was eight. She had not wanted him exposed to the spy life, to their past, not at all, and certainly not at this age. But it turned out that he had been exposed, all along. He was too smart for her good, maybe for his own. He was Chuck all over, able to see and feel at the same time, his heart as trustworthy a guide as his eyes, even a supplement to them. That was a feature of Chuck's Sarah dearly loved; it had been, in many ways, what saved her in the past: her husband's gift of seeing more than met his eyes. He'd certainly done that where she was concerned.
Evidently, Rider had done that too, because, although he was clearly worried about his Dad, he seemed unfazed by the confirmation that his mother had been a spy, and he even seemed to intuit that her life as a spy had forced her into actions that she had regretted. He didn't know what they were, true, but she could guess that he could guess, in general, anyway. And yet he had hugged her like always. Mom. He did not seem the least bit afraid of her or changed toward her. If anything, his manner toward her suggested that he was relieved. Relieved: he was no longer forced to carry as a secret something that he knew but was not supposed to know. She now knew he knew. And she had to confess, although her feelings were certainly mixed, there was some relief in that for her too.
When they got to the house, after Sarah and Rider cautiously searched through the house and the barn, they garbage-bagged the dead spiders and washed down the living room wall, as well as scrubbed the spots on the floor. Gina pitched in and they did the work silently, together, the three of them.
Sarah sent Rider to his room to change and rest. She took Gina into the kitchen and made a fresh pot of coffee. She offered Gina an abridged, Intersect-less version of her and Chuck's story. Gina listened quietly, shaking her head here and there in sheer disbelief. At one point she confessed, "You know, I guessed something like this, but I thought it was too...outlandish. I could see you as a spy, but Chuck..."
Sarah had smiled and responded, simply, "I've always had the same trouble."
Gina volunteered to spend the day, but Sarah gently sent her home. "We may need you again soon, Gina. And thank you! Please, as General Beckman...ordered, never tell anyone about this."
Gina nodded. "My husband was law enforcement, you know, Sarah. I kept secrets for him. I can do it for you folks too." They hugged outside, next to her car, and Gina drove away. Sarah watched the dust trail of her car for a few minutes, forcing herself to breathe calmly. Her mind and heart were jumbled, worry for Chuck, shock about the events of the day, concern for Rider, they tumbled and gyrated in her chest. She shook her head and went inside.
She checked her phone. No call from Beckman yet. She looked at her watch. Early afternoon. She'd give the General a while longer. But at some point, she and the General were going to have a serious conversation. Something was up, something that Beckman knew and Sarah didn't, and it involved her husband. It was almost certainly related to what had happened.
Sarah was washing coffee cups, just to have a way to keep her hands from fidgeting, when she hear Rider shout: "Mom!" She dropped the cup, heard it smash on the floor as she ran to Rider's room.
He was standing next to his small desk, a torn piece of paper, a page from a book, grasped tightly in his hand.
Sarah had drawn her pistol as she ran. When she saw that nothing was wrong, she quickly put it away before Rider saw it.
"What is it, Rider? You scared me to death."
He stared urgently up at her. "Dad left us a clue, Mom. I knew he'd figure out something. I knew it!" She could hear the mixture of relief, hope, and pride in Rider's voice. He handed her the page. It had been torn from an old poetry anthology. The anthology was on the desk.
It was a poem by E. B. White, entitled "Natural History":
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.
"What's it mean, Mom? I mean it's a warning about the spiders. I wish I had seen it sooner. But is it more? Dad found the poem for me back when I did my arachnid project, read it to me. But it was still in the book, the page was still in the book, not torn out. It must be more than a warning."
Sarah forced herself to focus and read through the poem once again. She knew Chuck. Rider was right. Chuck'd left this. But why not leave a note, something else? Maybe because this was the best he could do. What would that mean, though?
The poem was the silken thread it mentioned. Chuck had attached it to her and Rider. He was planning to return home. But she was sure he would need their help.
Sarah knelt down to look directly into Rider's face, her hands gentle on his shoulders. "It is more than a warning, Rider. It's also a promise."
ooOoo
Wheelwright eased back in the comfortable seat of the chartered jet. The plan had worked. It had worked! He had Bartowski. Now, to get away with him and get to work.
He glanced at Chuck, slumped in the seat opposite, a thick string of drool leaking from his mouth. Chuck twitched occasionally but never awakened. Wheelwright almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Chuck Bartowski was going to plumb terrors no man, no woman had yet sounded. He would be the Neil Armstrong of horror, but he would step onto the darkest side of the moon. Soon, Chuck Bartowski would be a monster. Wheelwright's monster. Created by Wheelwright's dark, unhallowed arts. Chuck would be The Patient Zero, an Adam, in a new, electronic outbreak, a new age.
It was Chuck's destiny. It had been waiting for him, waiting, all along, all these years.
Wheelwright could hear the spiders behind him, crawling in their cages.
A/N2 I start teaching Monday. Syllabi to finish. Lectures to write. College students to bedazzle. No schedule for the next chapter. Might be a few days, a week. But who knows? Might be sooner. It'll arrive when it arrives. (Always a sound strategy, hiding in tautology.)
So, tune in next time for Chapter 4, "Greylag Gulag". Fun will be had. Hey, and leave a review, you know, for my returning.
