PART TWO: Francine
Empty is the sky before the sun wakes up.
Empty is the eyes of animals in cages.
Empty, faces of women mourning
When everything's been taken from them.
Me, don't ask me about empty.
Empty is a string of dirty days
Held together by some rain.
And the cold winds drumming at the trees again.
Empty is the color of the fears
Long about September when the days
Go marching in a line toward November.
Empty is the hour before sleep kills you every night
And pushes you to safety away from every kind of light.
Empty is me. Empty is me.
-"Empty Is", Frank Sinatra
Chapter 11: We're Off to Never-Never Land
T-118 days, 5 hours, 26 minutes and 45 seconds (February 14, 7:33 PM EST).
It was Saint Valentine's Day. The world chose to ignore this fact.
It was a cold and miserable night. It had rained, and then a plummeting drop in temperatures at sunset had caused the water to freeze. The trees had become locked in a permanent appearance of weeping, and the city streets with their black ice had been converted into death traps. On the lonely forest road, darkness and silence reigned beneath the stony cloudbanks.
There was both life, and death, dwelling in the woods on either side of the road. The life consisted of birds, mammals, assorted invertebrates, fungi, mildew and above all the frozen trees. The life was sleeping, but not dreaming, waiting, but not knowing what it was waiting for. The death consisted of those who had waited their entire brief lives without ever learning their purpose. Most of this death took the form of crumbling stone statues, things that had once been human before the War. No one now living remembered the origins of those misshapen lumps of rock, not even their few survivors and descendants, who even then futilely sought the secret of their fate. The wood nursed its secrets, and was jealous of those who might expose them.
Down the lonely forest road rolled a small Army jeep, its pale yellow headlights rapidly swallowed by the darkness all around. It edged forward as if aware of the forest's malevolence towards it. In the driver's seat sat a short little fat man in a tight, badly fitting army uniform. His face was clean-shaven, so clean in fact that he looked incapable of sprouting facial hair.
Lou didn't like driving through the woods, especially at night. Bud would tell him he was a scaredy-cat, if he were here, but he never was there when it got really scary. Lou told himself what Bud had always told him, that there was no such thing as spooks, that they were simply the inventions of scaredy-cats with overactive imaginations. Of course, he wasn't imagining the eyes, so many eyes that were watching him from the woods. He started driving a lot faster then, black ice or no black ice.
After only a few near-death experiences, he reached his destination, a point on the road no different than any other point, other than the fact that it was exactly halfway between the city and the sanitarium. There, a small cabin, called "the shack" by anybody who had ever set eyes upon it, had been constructed according to specifications and a checkpoint set up to screen passing motorists, a patent absurdity as the only traffic the road ever saw was when a new pair of guards was sent out every twelve hours to relieve the checkpoint. Once on duty, the pair was never to be separated, which made Lou's little trip to the city even more dangerous. But Bud wanted a few things, and he could be very persuasive.
Lou parked the jeep in the designated parking spot next to the cabin, got out, and walked halfway to the cabin door, then stopped and walked back to turn off the headlights of the jeep. He got halfway to the door again before turning to retrieve the bag of supplies. Finally he walked through the door.
"It's about time!" exclaimed Bud as Lou entered and closed the door behind him. Bud was a tall thin man with a long thin mustache. His army uniform was impeccably fitted and pressed. He was sitting in a wooden chair leaned back against the wall, his arm snaked out to one side to adjust the frequency of a contraband radio. He suddenly stood, strode the two paces of the narrow room that separated him from his partner, and pulled an open bag of Heinrich's Chocolate-Anchovy Strudel out of the bag he was holding. "Hey!" he exclaimed, "you ate nearly half the bag!"
"I can't help it," Lou explained. "I eat when I'm nervous."
"You didn't get caught, did you?" Bud asked in an accusing tone.
"No, but those woods..."
"How many times do I have to tell you? There's nothing wrong with those woods. It's all in your head-you're like Little Miss Muffet: a spider would give you a heart attack." He poked his head in the paper bag. "Now, did you at least get a newspaper?"
"You mean this?" Lou said with a wink, pulling the item from his back pocket.
"Give me that!" Bud exclaimed, yanking the paper from his hands. With an eager Lou following, he walked over to a small desk and started separating out the sections of the paper. News, Sports, Business, Ads and Personal Ads were all cast aside as the Entertainment section was opened and eagerly perused by the pair. They soon found what they were looking for: the box office breakdowns of movies playing in theaters that weekend.
Bud handed the paper to Lou as he retrieved a notepad from his breast pocket. "Alright," he said, "what's the number one movie?"
"It's...aw, not the boat movie again! When will people stop watching the boat movie! The ending is so depressing!"
Bud chuckled. "That it is. What's number two?"
"The depressing detective movie."
"Number three?"
"The depressing political thriller."
"Number four?"
"The really depressing historical romance."
"And number five?"
"The chase movie. I liked that one."
Bud checked his notes. "Yeah, but I still predicted four of the five. Pay up."
"But," Lou blustered, digging out $50 and handing it over, "that's not fair!"
Bud leaned over Lou as he pocketed the sum. "Are you accusing me of being unfair?"
"No!" protested Lou. "Not you! This paper's got to be wrong. Those can't be the top-grossing movies."
"And why not?" Bud asked, as he picked up the News section. The headline proclaimed "Detroit Standoff Enters Third Week", and the photograph beneath it showed a smoke-enveloped city surrounded by what appeared to be a ring of giants.
"They're all so depressing!"
"Exactly," Bud said, he head buried in the paper. "Don't know how the chase movie got in there. Must have been the blues music."
"Where are the rest of the happy movies? Where's the Jack Nicholson movie?"
"He was completely out of character, smiling like that."
"The big vs. little movie?"
"Dodgy accents."
"The one they made from that book? Great Vibes?"
"What? Oh, I know which one you mean. That one blew the romance subplot completely out of proportion to the doom and gloom subplot."
"But that was the best part!"
"Lou, when will you wake up? People want their movies to match their lives."
"Hopelessly depressing?"
"Exactly," agreed Bud. "Well," he reconsidered, "not exactly. But happy endings haven't worked since the '30's. The only reason Hollywood keeps using them is for the kiddies." He looked up to see Lou's hurt expression, then rolled his eyes and sighed. "Ah, don't look at me like that, Lou. I'm sorry. Now does that make you feel better?"
"It'd help if I got your half of the Cracker Jacks."
Bud, his head back in the newspaper, waved his hand absently. "Fine."
"Goodie!" Bud pulled the box of candy out of the paper bag and started in on the comics. He was up to "Family Circus" when Bud plunked his paper down in front of him.
"Take a look at that!"
"'Commander Cellini To Be Released'," read Lou. "Waitaminute, wait a minute! Is this the same Commander Cellini who last year got locked in the loony bin we're guarding because he said Earth was in danger?"
"The same," Bud agreed, nodding.
"The same Commander Cellini who was your 'close personal friend'?"
"The same."
"The same Commander Cellini who promised us a transfer right before his Ultra Probe launched?"
"The very same."
"Hooray!" Lou sang. "We don't have to live in the shack! We don't have to live in the shack!" Then a thought came to him. "Hey, Bud?"
"Yeah?"
"Why'd the Army take so long to let him go? Everybody knew he was right months ago."
"Because the Army never admits when it's wrong, kid. This article-it's buried in the back of the paper, on a Friday. They let him go because Cellini's friend Captain Koenig has friends in high places, but that doesn't mean anybody has to know about it, see?"
"Yeah, I guess." He sat there for a bit before resuming the refrain of "we don't have to live in the shack!" He looked around to see Bud at the window of the cabin, looking out at a car honking at him from the checkpoint. The rain had started up again.
"It's your turn, Lou. Go out there and see what that lady wants."
"Oh, no!" Lou protested. "It's your turn. Besides, I'm not finished with the comics yet."
"I'll pay you five bucks to do it."
"Twenty."
"Ten?"
"Deal." Lou said, putting down the paper. He put on a rain slicker that was hanging on a peg near the door, walked back to Bud, grabbed the clipboard that was hanging on the wall next to him, and held out his hand.
Bud checked his wallet, which was mostly full of money he had won from Lou. "I haven't got a ten," he explained. "Give me two tens for a five."
Without thinking, Lou handed over two ten-dollar bills, and got a five in return. "And here's what I owe you," Bud said unctuously, returning one of the tens while pushing Lou out the door.
Lou stood outside the door for a minute, reviewing the transaction in his head. "Hey!" he exclaimed. He turned to go back in the cabin, but found the door locked. "Hey, Bud!" he yelled, rattling the handle.
"Go take care of that woman!" Bud yelled through the window. To emphasize this point, the car horn honked again.
"Alright," Lou reluctantly agreed. "But we're not finished!"
Putting on his best authoritative air, Lou sauntered up and knocked on the driver's side window of the car, a beige 1960 Plymouth Suburban Wagon in very used condition. "I need to see some identification, ma'am," he announced.
The driver rolled down the window to reveal a middle-aged person (you had to look a bit to be sure it was a woman), wearing wrinkled powder blue coveralls. Her hair was red, long and stringy. Her pearl-rimmed glasses only served to emphasize her age.
The two instantly recognized each other. "You!" they proclaimed in unison.
"Hiya, Frankie!" Lou greeted her as he regained his composure.
"Never call me Frankie!" she snapped in response.
"Uh, sorry, Francine."
She raised a red eyebrow at him.
"Mrs. Nulton?"
"That's better. I should have known it was you the moment I smelled your breath." She glanced over to take in Bud through the cabin window. "Aren't you two supposed to be guarding the Vostaach Space Center?"
"Ah..." Lou stalled, rubbing the back of his neck. "There was the little matter of the first Ultra Probe blowing up on Launchpad Seven. Nobody was in there, but..."
"That was you two?" Mrs. Nulton asked, raising her eyebrows. "I should have known."
Lou looked nervously at his clipboard, then waved it for her to see. "The Army's keeping a tight lid on the Mitty Sanitarium. We have to keep track of everybody who comes or goes." He pulled out a pen and started writing. "Francine Nulton," he said and wrote. Checking his watch, he added, "7:46 P.M." He looked at the clipboard. "It says here I need to write down why you're going there."
"You're getting nosy," the woman noted.
"Hey, if it was up to me you could go waltzing down the road, no questions asked!" Lou attempted to illustrate this, and nearly tripped over his own feet. "So it's not me being nosy, it's the Army. Now what should I write down?"
Mrs. Nulton rolled her eyes. "Write down that I've come to pick up my husband."
"...pick up her husband," he repeated, writing that down. "Okay, then I can raise the barrier," he read off of the clipboard.
Mrs. Nulton looked at Lou. Lou smiled back at her. Mrs. Nulton waited.
"Oh, I'm supposed to raise the barrier!" Lou said. He raced over and operated the mechanism.
Mrs. Nulton put the car into drive and started driving through the gate.
"I'll see you later!" Lou said as her car turned a corner. "With your husband!" he added.
Lou walked back into the cabin, lost in thought and dripping rainwater onto the floor. "Hey, Bud?" he asked.
Bud was leaning against the wall again, still studying the article he had found. "Yeah, Lou?"
"That lady was Francine Nulton."
"I noticed."
"She said she was going to pick up her husband from the loony bin. I didn't know he was in the loony bin."
"You weren't paying attention," Bud informed him, referring to the article. "He cracked up right after the invasion started. The Army snuck the news of his release right at the end of the Cellini story: 'Also being released from the Mitty Sanitarium tonight will be Norris Nulton, failed inventor.' 'Failed inventor'," he repeated. "Now there's the understatement of the year."
