“Almost four.” Ford didn’t feel like talking about Sam. He made his way across the clutter to a second-hand desk that was practically buried beneath a surplus of scientific tomes. Bookmarks flagged key sections. Notes had been scribbled in the margins. “I thought you were over this stuff.” He sorted through the books, looking over the titles and chapter headings. He picked one after another up, trying to make sense of it all. “Echolocation. Parasitic Communication Patterns.”
Joe took the book from Ford. “Homework,” he said with forced casualness. “I’m studying Bioaccoustics. My new thing.”
As though that explains everything, Ford thought, losing patience. He was too tired and fed up to beat around the bush any longer. He turned away from the desk to confront his father.
“Dad, what the hell were you doing?”
“Ah, that trespassing stuffis nonsense, Ford.” Joe waved it away with a dismissive gesture. “I was just trying to get to the old house—”
“It’s a quarantine zone!”
“Exactly!” Joe’s casual pose fell away, revealing what was really driving him. “That’s exactly it — there’s something happening in there, Ford. I’ve seen pictures. They didn’t quarantine that place because it’s dangerous. They’ve got something going on in there. The new readings are exactly like they were on that day, and if I can just get back in before it’s too late—”
“DAD!”
Ford cut him off, unable to hear anymore. His dad had been spewing this same wild conspiracy stuff for longer than Ford wanted to remember. His outburst stopped Joe short and the two men stared at each other across the physical residue of Joe’s obsessions. A crestfallen look came over Joe’s face as he realized, that his own son thought that he was bat-shit crazy.
His manic energy seeped away. Deflated, he sank into one of the few chairs not covered by scientific journals and reports. He slumped forward, looking defeated.
“You know your mom’s still out there,” he said weakly, his voice barely above a whisper. “For me, she’ll always be there. They evacuated us so quickly I don’t even have a picture of her.”
Sympathy tugged at Ford’s heart, but he had to stay firm.
“This has to stop, Dad. You need to let go.”
“I sent her down there, Ford,” Joe said plaintively. Fifteen years of anguish poured out of him, as though the disaster had happened only yesterday. “I would do anything, anything to bring her back. That haunts me, and I know it haunts you too”
Ford’s resolve melted in the face of his father’s inescapable guilt and grief. He couldn’t help imagining what would be left of him if something happened to Elle… or Sam. He remembered those disappointed but loving parents back at the police station, embracing their son despite everything, and that customs official asking him what his business in Japan was.
Family, he thought. Damn it.
“It’s time to come home, Dad,” he said, his voice softening. “Come home with me.”
The grateful look on his father’s face was enough to break Ford’s heart. He swallowed hard and wiped at his eyes, obviously touched by his son’s offer. Ford prayed that he had finally gotten through to him.
“We’ll leave tomorrow,” Ford said.
Joe hesitated, just for a moment, but then he nodded. Emotionally exhausted, he could only murmur a quiet, “Yes.”
Ford signed in relief. Maybe this could be the start of a whole new beginning for them. He reached out and squeezed his dad’s shoulder.
“Let’s get some sleep,” he said.
At his own insistence, Ford crashed on the futon, letting his father keep his own bed. The flickering screen of a thrift-store TV set cast a phosphor glow over the room as Ford tried to zone out to an old monster movie playing on the late show; sometimes watching vintage movies with the sound down helped him unwind at the end of a long day. His eyelids began to droop as giant prehistoric creatures battled each other amidst balsa-wood sets. He surrendered to sheer exhaustion, and let his eyes close. The brawling monsters could work out their differences without him. He’d done enough for today.
Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow we’ll head back home.
Sleep overcame him, but rest did not. Dreams of Elle and Sam mixed surreally with memories of Afghanistan and that terrible morning, over a decade ago, when the nuclear power plant collapsed before his eyes. If only he could disarm the reactor this time, the same way he could an improvised explosive device, maybe he could somehow save everyone: Mom, Dad, Elle, Sam… Drifting in and out of sleep, he thought he heard a voice whispering urgently in Japanese. The sound of radio distortion intruded on his slumber.
Ford blinked and opened his eyes. The apartment was still dark; the sun had yet to rise, but somebody had switched off the TV at some point. He rested upon the futon, getting his bearings. At first he thought he had just dreamed the voice, but then he heard his father speaking softly in his bedroom. Ford strained his ears to listen in.
“Yes, yes,” Joe whispered, switching into English. “The northeast section, that’s good. There’s never a patrol.”
Ford came fully awake. He rose quietly from the futon and crept toward the bedroom. The light of a single lamp spilled into the living room. Ford checked his wristwatch. It would be dawn soon. He peered into the bedroom to see what his father was doing.
The older man was already up and dressed, his dark clothes more suitable for a burglary than a trip to the airport. He whispered into his phone as he furtively packed a selection of files and electronic equipment into a duffle bag. Ford’s heart sank. Joe didn’t look like he was packing for a trip home.
“Ten minutes,” Joe whispered. “Arigato.”
He ended the call and put away the phone, only to see Ford staring at him from the doorway. Anger and disappointment warred upon the younger man’s features.
I should’ve known, Ford thought bitterly. “What the hell are you doing?”
Caught red-handed, Joe didn’t bother trying to deny anything. “I’m heading out there, Ford — one hour, in and out.”
Ford shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You want closure?” Joe challenged him, not backing down. “You want to go home? That’s where I’m going. Now you can come with me or not, your choice, but I don’t have much time left to work this out and I’ll be damned if I let it happen again!” He kept on packing, defiantly. “I came back here and I wasted six years staring through that barbed wire thinking it was a military mistake or some horrible design flaw they were trying to cover up. I kept looking at the hard science. What I knew. One day I’m tutoring a kid whose studying whale songs. I’m looking at his textbook—‘Soundscape Interpretation,’ ‘Echolocation.’ I’m looking at these graphs and diagrams and I realized that all the data I had been going crazy over before the plant blew wasn’t something structural, it wasn’t a leaking turbine or a submarine. It was language. It was talk. Hard science wasn’t the answer — this was biology.”
Ford had no idea what his dad was talking about. He watched in dismay as Joe fished a ratty old radiation suit from a pile of crap beside the bed. The suit resembled the ones the workers had used at the plant fifteen years ago, the type his mother had supposedly been wearing when she died. He wondered how the hell Joe had managed to get his hands on it.
“I met a guy runs a cargo boat off-shore,” Joe continued, trying to get it all out before Ford could interrupt him. “Every day he goes right past the reactor site. He dropped off a couple monitors on buoys for me.” He shook his head at the memory. “Nothing. A year of nothing. More than a year.” Years of frustration could be heard in Joe’s voice. “Two weeks ago—‘cause I check this thing like every other day just for the kick in the teeth — two weeks ago, I tune in and, ohmigod, there it is. Whatever it is that’s in there, whatever it is they’re guarding so carefully, it started talking again. And I mean talking. I need to get back to the house. I need my old disks if they’re still there. The answer’s in that data. I need to know that what caused this wasn’t just me, Ford. That I’m not who you think I am. I am not crazy. That wasn’t just a reactor meltdown. Something’s going on there. I need to find the truth and end this. Whatever it takes.”