“What?’
“Bingo.” He lifted up a newspaper. “There are a bunch here and magazine. None of them much older than the date we went onto stasis.” He swung the light to look around. When he did, the beam of his light caught it. “Nora, come here.”
Nora joined him.
Jason stood center of the waiting area. His flashlight aimed at the wall and illuminated a huge memorial picture of Malcolm, with the words, ‘In Memory of’. At the bottom of the portrait were four family pictures.
“Oh wow.” Nora aimed her flashlight as well. “In memory of our founder. Malcolm A. Lowe. This must be Trey.” She indicated to the bottom right picture. “Malcolm’s oldest. Oh, his wife was beautiful wasn’t she? Is your wife pretty. Never mind, she probably was.”
“Yeah, she was hot.”
Nora snickered. “I wouldn’t think that was a Jason word. This is wonderful.” She stared. “Look how handsome Malcolm looks.”
“See.”
“See what?’
“Never mind, and don’t ask to take it. It’s too heavy.” Jason turned and walked to the reception counter. “Did you find anything over here?”
“Just undisturbed, like they closed shop one evening and never came back.”
As if double checking what Nora said, Jason reviewed the receptionist’s desk. A thick layer of green mold grew up the front, and the surface was covered in a thin layer of dust. Like many places they had been, the more sealed off a building was, the less it was harmed by time.
The complex wasn’t large, in fact it showed signs that they were new and growing. The clipboard on the receptionist’s desk contained a list of job applicant appointments.
The world was in full swing just before it fell to its knees.
Jason made it a point to collect anything newsworthy. Papers, tabloids, magazines. Unlike at the PX at Marshal, the items Jason found were closer to the date of their supposed death. There was a chance the explosion was mentioned.
“Vending machine.” Nora pointed her flashlight in the break room. “Found our sleeping spot. It’s nice in there.”
“How many employees do you think they had?”
“Not a lot of desk people. First floor was sales and techs.”
“You got all that from looking around.”
“Yeah. And the conversation Malcolm and me had when he was fixing the buggies. You were sleeping.” She headed up toward the stairs. “Malcolm’s office has to be up here.”
“Keep in mind he didn’t work here. This was just an input base for his bio cameras.”
“Which means he probably doesn’t have an office here.”
“If he did have an office, where upstairs would it be?” Jason asked. “Corner?”
“No. Somewhere big, open, but away from everyone.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Any time Malcolm worked on something he was far removed from the rest of us.”
“You know a lot about Malcolm.”
“I used the time to learn about everyone. Even you,” she said as she reached the top of the steps. “Let’s try back there.”
“This place is a tomb.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it was just left. Sealed up. It’s sad. Hey Nora?’
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I never saw your comedy routine.”
Nora paused and smiled with an odd look. “Thanks. Um, I’m sorry I never got to see you preach. Maybe because we have so much time on our hands, we can show each other what we did.”
“You mean you make me laugh and I preach God to you?”
“Yeah.”
Jason laughed. “I don’t think preaching God will work under these circumstances.’
“With all the death around, neither will laughter. But it’s worth a try. I need to be me again. Despite everything. While I search for my husband and daughter. I need to feel like me. Don’t you?”
Almost in an inaudible mumble, Jason said, “I’m not sure exactly who ‘me’ is any…”
“Here.” Nora cut him off and pointed to the small nameplate on the door. “Malcolm.”
Like every other room on the second floor, Malcolm’s office was light, the sun peeked through the slats of the blinds, and Nora opened them wider.
“He wasn’t here much,” Jason said standing by the desk. “Not much on this desk at all. Notes left for him. One picture frame.”
Nora turned and faced him. Jason held up a dual frame with two small pictures. “I’ll take that. Anything on the desk of use?”
“Doesn’t look it. I mean they thought he was dead, so his desk may be cleaned out.”
“No, it’s not. It’s empty because he was rarely here, not because they cleaned it. If they did, why would that picture be there?”
“You sure you weren’t a detective?”
“Positive.”
“That was my attempt at humor.”
“Oh,” Nora said dismissively and opened the middle desk drawer. “Check the other drawers, then we’ll do those shelves.”
“What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know exactly, anything. Something. Whatever may be personal so he can have like a life souvenir.”
“What about something for his son?”
Nora stopped rummaging. She glanced to her right, Jason held a large envelope. It was thick. “Where did you find that?”
“Bottom drawer, under a pair of running shoes. His name is Trey, right, the son’s name?”
“Yeah, yeah it is.” Nora reached out and examined the sealed tan envelope. “This is heavy.”
“Do you think Malcolm left it for his son or someone else left it for the son?”
“Maybe Malcolm intended to give it to him, but you know, spent thirty years frozen or…. Seeing how they all thought Malcolm was dead, it was from the company.”
“In the bottom drawer?”
“Apparently, they were waiting for the wife or family to clean the desk, so that makes sense.”
“I wonder what’s in it.”
Nora looked again at the envelope and then to Jason. “One way to find out.”
She opened the clasp.
“No.” Jason stopped her.
“Why?”
“Because if that was from Malcolm it is for him to see. It’s not our business. It’s personal.”
“You’re right. You’re right. Let’s keep looking.” Nora replaced the clasp.
Just about twenty-five feet into their walk, John realized it wasn’t a trap. No one was there to bash in his brains in or take a sexual deviant turn at him. These Wreckers were different. And a part of John started to think that they were afraid of the ‘bad Wreckers’ as well. Or why else would they have guards?
He didn’t know where in the U.S. they were. As near as he could figure they were supposed to be near Deep Creek Maryland. He began to think Meredith headed east instead of northwest.
John packed a lot of things he had taken from the storage room when they were at Genesis. The raid of the Wreckers didn’t diminish the supplies that were hidden in the Buggy. They stole some items, but not the ones John secured. One of the items was a personal radiation detector. It looked like a keychain, and John grabbed it when he grabbed the medical kit.
Readings were good. That was a positive thing.
They came down a path and emerged at the top of a small hill. Or rather, as John believed, a crater. It was a heartbreaking sight, yet something about it was beautiful. Just outside the crater were the remains of a city. Twisted metal, still reaching for the sky, some buried in dirt pushed outward by the bomb. It was without a doubt a bomb.
Mostly everything in the center of the crater was obliterated at one point. But the Wreckers made their homes more on the edges, using the crater’s shape as protection.
A fence created of dead trees protected the outlying areas, at least five Wrecker men walked the perimeter carrying a weapon that looked like a bow.