The Capitol dome was a twilit beacon upon their return. Far in the congregating dark came the sounds of moans and the Bellows’ ceaseless march, but they were punctuated by the frequent booms of detonating land mines.
The captain’s footsteps clocked in the soaring marble halls as he took Michael and Patrick to their own room: the office of the lieutenant governor, which was gloriously boring compared to the chaos of the halls. The captain waited a moment in the doorway before leaving, the hall’s fluorescence silhouetting him: gunslinger, steady, utterly adult.
Later, tucking Patrick in on his cot, Michael glanced out their window, seeing a different view than he’d had in the Senate that morning. There wasn’t much moon to see by; the night was inky, and so the sharp shapes that composed the Charleston skyline were indistinguishable from the dark hulks of the mountains beyond them. And for one moment, Michael had an uneasy notion. The West Virginia that he’d traveled through with Patrick for all those weeks, the West Virginia that was an unmapped nether-zone ruled by insanity and impossibility, the West Virginia that he’d survived only by his exertion to control his thoughts and give shape to his days: that West Virginia was consuming the city.
Well . . . I’ll just stay up for a little while, Michael told himself. To watch the barriers, just to make sure we’re okay.
But by the time he’d brought a bottled water from the next room for Patrick to take his Atipax with, Bub was already deep asleep, without pills to help calm him for the night. And within a minute—for the first time in twenty-four days—Michael was asleep, without waiting up for the Instructions, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The first thing that Michael was aware of, even before he learned that Captain Jopek was in the room, was that he felt good. He woke up on a cot with sunshine on his chest, not freezing, not suffering a whacked-in-the-skull headache, and his anxiety didn’t self-activate.
Still okay, he thought. Still alive.
And that relative calm was the only reason he didn’t cry out when he looked over, expecting Patrick, and instead saw Captain Jopek sitting in the lieutenant governor’s chair.
“Soldier,” the captain said, “welcome back to the land of the livin’.”
Michael tried to not look weirded out by the fact that, uh, the captain had been watching him sleep. “Hey, ’morning,” he replied, not wanting to feel weirded out, either. But out of habit, Michael’s gaze clicked down to the desktop the captain sat behind. The body of a huge green-black rifle sat centered among a spread of metallic parts, apparently in mid-process of being cleaned and reassembled. Some reflex in Michael tried to judge by the progress of the gun’s assembly how long the captain had been here. But besides the fact that you hit the X button to reload them in first-person shooters, Michael knew nada about such heavy-duty weaponry.
“Anybody ever tell you,” the captain said, “you sleep like the dead?”
Michael laughed a little; the captain looked slyly pleased. Michael pushed his blanket aside and sat up. Then the captain did something amazing: still looking at Michael, he went back to reassembling the rifle, intricate fingers seeking out parts and snicking them back into their homes.
“Me, I’m not much of a sleeper. Sleep always feels like wasted time,” the captain said. “How is it that a feller like yourself can get such damn good shut-eye, d’you think?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, is sleeping so good just the gift of the young? Is it good genes? Just a blessin’ from above?” the captain said musingly. “Or do you think it might be”—snick-snick—“that you can sleep”—snick—“because you don’t have nothin’ weighin’ on your conscience?”
Springs, taut-coiled, entering gun guts, snick; bullets, five small morning flashes of gold, eaten in the clip, clack-click.
Michael suddenly thought, He knows I was lying about the soldiers.
“It could just be that I’m a weakling,” Michael said, trying not to sound nervous.
The captain didn’t laugh at Michael’s self-deprecation. He only stared, his eyes oddly unreadable, his expression a blank, and Michael was reminded of that unease he’d felt during his conversation with the captain in the cafeteria, that vague sensation that the captain was somehow dissecting him.
Finally, Michael said, “That’s awesome,” indicating the captain’s assembling skills.
An enormous grin split the captain’s blank face. “Thanks for noticin’!” He seemed to consider Michael for a second. His fingers paused.