IX: Poor Poor Pitiful Me
Do the smart thing: Lie there in the daylight with your eyes barely open, listen to the ticking in the next room. If they don't know you're not asleep, they stop talking to you after a while. The ticking is almost like a second heartbeat by now, and Sawyer's learned to count the hours by each time it stops and the beeping starts. He needs fresh air, sunlight, a girl, some beer, something. He's got none of that, but he's got a hell of a puzzle to figure out.
For starters, who the hell lived down here anyway? The guy liked to read weird books, and from what Sawyer can tell of the record collection, he listened to stuff Sawyer's younger aunts and uncles might have found interesting. Hippie music. The stuff that he was too young to listen to when a kid, and too old to find fashionably retro as an adult. The music that he thought he'd heard on the trail. It's as real as the dog-tags. He knows that now.
Secondly, did the poor dumb bastard that lived here wear those dog-tags? Next time the Arab gets a shift doing whatever they do to make the beeping stop, Sawyer will ask him. For now, all he can do is mimic a smile at Chewie's wife, eat whatever that weird Korean crap she feeds him is, and listen to her talk in halting but oddly musical English.
Maybe he'll ask her to teach him a few curse words in Korean. A knowledge of curse words is all anyone needs to communicate. A bunch of migrant Mexicans taught him that much. He doesn't know if Sun (he still can't believe the name) knows any, though. From the looks of her, she's never let one slip.
In any case, he has to find the spot where he saw those dog-tags, in his vision. Maybe there's more there. He'll do it, too. He's been lying here, doing nothing, for way too long. Time to make himself useful, even if it's a use only he can appreciate.
"Hey!" His voice sounds sharp, demanding, even to him. He props himself up in bed, waving a hand like he's casting around for something in the dark. It attracts the foreign woman's attention, and she heads over to him. "Got a favor to ask of you."
Her eyes widen. She doesn't bother asking him what the favor is. He's noticed that she's one of those girls that won't talk if they don't have to. If only all the women on the island were like that – especially Rambina.
"I want you to go to my stuff, wherever you guys put it when we took off on the raft, and I want you to go find my cigarettes. I need a smoke." He pauses, and adds, "Thanks," his voice strained and suddenly, uncomfortably dry.
"You can't smoke down here. Especially not in your condition." From the tone of the woman's voice, it's as simple as that.
Now he's got to persuade her otherwise. He licks his lips, swallows, tries to moisten his mouth so he can talk properly. "Look – Sun, Sunshine – I need a cigarette. I've been down here for three damn days without a cigarette." He widens his eyes, turns his lips down into his best pitiful frown, trying his best to gull her into getting the cigs.
Nothing. He blinks, shakes his head, drops the act. Time to try again. "Sorry." A small smile, or at least he tries for one. "I need cigarettes, though. I mean, I haven't had a chance to smoke since I got down here. Health hazards, right? That's what Jack says." He laces his tone with as much resentment as he can do on the last phrase, then shrugs, going casual. "But he'd know best, right? I mean, he's the one with all the medical experience around here. And anyway, look, you just did whatever you do to make that beeping stop. You don't have to hang around here for, what, five hours?" He knows it's six.
"Six," she confirms.
He feigns surprise. "Right, six. In any case, you don't have to be here. But since the doc said I can't smoke, well, I guess he knows best, huh? Ain't nobody else around here that knows enough to say otherwise."
There. He's got it. The woman draws herself away from him, the look on her face thoughtful. "I'm not sure about that,"she replies, sounding like an admission. He stares at her, careful, inspecting. "Because I know you'll keep nagging at me until I do this, I will get you one cigarette. That is all. Do you understand?" From the sound of her, she's not about to brook an argument.
He's not about to argue. He doesn't need to. A few more exchanges, a handshake to seal the deal, her hand rough from gardening, and she's on her way. He files that away, remembering a few weeks ago. Eucalyptus for the blonde chick. Maybe she does know better after all. He'll figure that out later. She's gone for his tent, to find cigarettes – one, at least – and he's got to get out of here while he's got the chance.
Have they moved his stuff? He supposes not. They'd have told him if they'd have done something with it, probably, thinking they'd have hell to pay. Still, it's probably best to split the difference. Wherever the hell he is, he figures it's at least a four-minute walk to the beach, from the way the trails looked so overgrown and forested. Four minutes there, four minutes back. Eight minutes, plus two to get the stuff. Ten minutes, if he pushes it.
He aims to be gone from wherever the hell he is within five.
One, and he's pushing himself off the bed with a grunt of effort. There's some weird tech about the place, despite the retro feel. Maybe there's hidden cameras. He raises a middle finger in the air just in case. If anyone's watching him on the cameras, it'll be Jack. That'll be something good for him to watch.
Then shuffle, reach out for the spare chair that still hangs out in the room, the bookcase, the pole lamp. Anything to keep upright, and he's stumbling out of the room, feeling like nothing but a drunk. It's embarrassing, but he's thankful there's no one around to see what he looks like, dragging himself along like he's punch-drunk after a bar fight. Pathetic, he thinks.
Are his legs about to give already? That would be funny for everyone but him. Here he's trying to get out of here and he can't even make it out of the room. It suits the way things have gone, though. Constant fuck-ups.
He spins away from the pole lamp like he'd just dealt it a good punch, and somehow manages to propel himself into the next room. A kitchen, with a ping-pong table. That strikes him as incongruous, and he lets out a laugh. There's a real kitchen here, and he is surprised to see it. Talk about conveniences. How long have they been living here without these sorts of creature comforts? That suit against Oceanic he'd suggested to Rambina just had a few more zeroes added onto the end of it.
Two. He moves from the kitchen to a circular room beyond, and stares in shock at what he sees there. It freezes him momentarily, but who wouldn't it freeze? Only someone with ice-water already in their veins and a determination not to be surprised.
It's lit up like Christmas, all over the room, looking glittery. He can see that much out of his peripheral vision, and he lifts his gaze to the massive, old-fashioned computer – one that the Boswells had; he recognizes it, or close enough – the tape-reel machines behind it, stuff that not even he's old enough to have used in school.
Jesus Christ, it's as if I Love the '70s and 2001: A Space Odyssey had a baby. There's even a goddamn lava lamp in the kitchen. It takes him a few moments to adjust to his new surrounding, feeling his knees buckle under him all the while and willing them to lock for at least a few moments.
Tick. Tick. Three. And he stands there and stares, momentarily rapt at what he's seeing. He cranes his neck around, looking above the doorway from which he's come, and there's a counter there, a flip-chart that looks like the waitress-signal system that they used to use at the diner where he used to wash dishes as a teenager.
He moves over to the computer, curious about it, before he thinks better of it. No. Better not mess with it. Leave it to people who know what they're doing. It nags at him, but he knows his place, and that's sure as hell not behind a computer monitor, pounding away on a keyboard. He'd sooner shoot the computer than deal with it, and, oddly enough, it looks like someone already has.
Strange. What went on down here? He probably missed a firefight. Right. That would be perfect, to be wandering through the jungle like some explorer in some hokey safari movie, while all the while the Showdown at the O.K. Corral is happening without him.
He can't try and figure this out, though. He has to get to where he saw those dogtags. If Sayid can't give him an answer on them, he'll find out for himself. If only he didn't feel like he had to throw up already, just from the exertion of walking a few steps. He has to sit down. He plops in a couch, stares at the back of that computer, at the controls blinking and flashing incessantly behind the old-fashioned computer tower.
If anyone were watching, he wouldn't do this, but as it is, he can afford it. He dry-retches, puts his head in his hands, lets the bout of nausea pass, feeling his shoulders shake. He has to get out of here, though. Besides, maybe it's this place that's making him sick. If it's making him have visions that turn out to be true, it can make him get sick.
It's not just pathetic. It's downright pitiful.
He's got to keep moving. He doesn't have long before Sun comes back. He picks himself off the couch, drags himself to the corridor. It looks like some sort of World War Two bunker out here, all metal and bolts and pipes. Maybe this thing was built for a Dresden bombing. He wouldn't have put it past – whoever made it – to do that, either. Things are so strange here on the island that it makes perfect sense that there should be a bunker here built to withstand World War Three.
Four.
Forty two. Four. Eight. I left my wife with forty-eight children in shoddy conditions and thought it was right, right, right in the middle of a bomb explosion. Everyone was killed and I was left, left, left my wife…
He remembers the ROTC guys before they were shipped off to last-ditch efforts. He was four or five, and these kids were still being shipped over there, collegiate and clean-shaven and utterly stupid, and they returned home crazy as shithouse rats. They chanted things like that, and he chants it now as he makes his way down the corridor. Every inch of it looks different, but dull and metal and still utterly alike.
And then he starts running, because it's close to five, and he has to make it out of there. The steps are slippery and treacherous, and he collapses on one, but up, up, up into God knows where, and through the open door, and Oh my God, it's night.
It was day back on the bed, and he can feel the seconds ticking down, and his chest grows tight and his fists grow tighter, and he's determined to stay awake and see the count through. Sun's not back yet. He can take the chance. He hasn't shouted aloud in a while, and as he gathers the energy for it, it's a terrific feeling, a sudden release that he had missed, starting somewhere deep down within him and filling his lungs and his head. The potential of the shout to come is almost intoxicating.
"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU BASTARDS WANT?"
His voice echoes amongst the trees, hits the metal of the hatch and reverberates, a sickening echo. It doesn't help his queasiness any, to be sure, but it feels good to get it out, to hear his voice again as something more than pleading and prying.
"LET'S GO, YOU SONS OF BITCHES. YOU WANT TO MESS WITH US? WELL, COME ON!"
His voice fails, then, and his knees give. His head spins, and he drops, his hands clutching at the dirt to try and thrust himself upright again, get his legs back under him and keep him steady. He can't do it, though. His legs are jelly.
Before him in the dirt, something glints. Metal. The dog-tags, maybe. He squints at them for a moment, trying to see if they're the same ones that he'd seen twice already. He doesn't get the chance. The click of a gun tells him he had better pay attention to what's going on around him, and he looks up.