All previous chapters - CHAPTER 1 - CHAPTER 2 - CHAPTER 3 - CHAPTER 4 - CHAPTER 5 - CHAPTER 6 - Chapter 7 - CHAPTER 8 - CHAPTER 9 - CHAPTER 10 - CHAPTER 11 - CHAPTER 12 - CHAPTER 13
Previously on “The bomb in the shed…”; Camilla is on the verge of starting an unexpected adventure in California when she meets Marie, an old colleague of Arthur’s, who tells her about Elizabeth and warns that Arthur may be in danger.
And here we go with CHAPTER 14…
Chapter 14
New Mexico Desert - 2003
Arthur decided the bar was the best place to write what he had to write. A bar he and Elizabeth had been to many times together and made their own. It was an out of the way kind of place that no one from work would think to go to. He ordered a wine for himself, a beer for the stool next to him, in Elizabeth’s honour, and then a row of shots between them. Because, well, that was what they did.
Before he started writing Arthur read the letter he’d received from Camilla again. There was nothing remarkable about it, no drama. It was just a few lines about what had been happening back in England. Alex was in the middle of her exams and David had just brought his first girlfriend home. Maybe that was the problem: it was all so ordinary, the letter perfunctory. Arthur felt more distant from everything at home than if he’d got no letter at all. It was the same during his occasional visits home. It was clear Camilla wasn’t used to having him round, his whole family weren’t.
Arthur got out the sheets of paper and the pen he’d brought with him and started to write. He knew what he had to say but he wasn’t sure how to say it, so it took a while and he had to start from scratch a number of times. As he wrote he sipped his wine, every five minutes switching to take a shot. When he’d finished the letter all the shot glasses were empty.
Elizabeth. I’ve been a person torn between two places for so long I can’t remember any other way. I’ve never felt more alive than the times that I’m working with you. But every time I hear from my family or go back to England to visit I see that the other side of me is dying. I’ve never talked to you about this, maybe that was a mistake. It’s too late now though. I have to go home and see if I can save that life before it’s gone forever. I’m leaving on a flight first thing in the morning and I will never come back. By the time you get this I’ll be gone. Good luck with your project. I hope you get the breakthrough you were hoping for. Sorry. Bear.
He read it one more time.
Then re-wrote it one last time, signing off as Arthur instead.
He folded the note and put it in the pocket of his jacket and left the bar, abandoning the beer glass still full. It was well past midnight when he got back to the flat. A chance to get some sleep before he caught the taxi to the airport in the morning. He checked his pager before going to bed though, he’d left it behind so he wasn’t interrupted as he wrote. There were half a dozen messages from Elizabeth. Each said call me with an increasing number of exclamation marks. She was the last person he wanted to talk to now. But so many messages from her was unusual. It had to be something important.
He gave her a call.
Elizabeth replied straight away. “Bear? Oh my God, I’ve done it.”
She sounded giddy.
“What are you talking about?”
“The scaling problem, dummy. I know how to solve it.”
Dummy. That was what she called him when she thought she’d done something clever. In all their tests they’d achieved energy gains but only at very low levels. Any attempts to scale the results to meaningful levels had failed. It was all pointless if they couldn’t scale and they’d been wrestling with the problem for months.
“How?”
“I’ll show you. Get your ass down here.”
She must be excited. She never talked like that.
He said, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Fitzpatrick had made it clear Arthur wasn’t welcome at the facility. And he’d been drinking. Mind you, that didn’t seem to be such as issue over here in the US.
“It’s ok, I’m alone. Everyone else went home hours ago. Besides, no one’s going to care once they found out what we’ve done.”
No more hiding? Arthur’s heart leapt at the thought. But then he remembered the note and the flight in the morning. Still, he had to go and see what Elizabeth had discovered. He couldn’t miss that. The roads were quiet on the way out of town, empty once out in the desert. Windows open, it felt good to have the fresh night air on his face, helped to keep his head clear. After a while he saw the lights of the facility ahead. There was no visible horizon, so they twinkled in the featureless dark like stars. The vast array of antennas were out there somewhere too, rising above the surface buildings. But they were invisible in the darkness. The lab was hundreds of feet below the ground, encased in rock.
The first Arthur knew that something was wrong was when the lights of the facility vanished into the inky blackness. One moment they were there, the next they were gone. An instant later he heard a deep booming sound and then felt a vibration that travelled through his car and into his hands and body. He pulled over and got out of the car. If it was an earthquake he didn’t want to get trapped inside. The sound had subsided, but the ground was shaking more violently now. And then it fell from beneath him and the world went black.
---
When he came to, Arthur was lying buried in a deep fissure in the ground, half covered in earth and rocks. His head pounded and he could feel the trickle of blood on his face. The earth beneath him was sinking down further, slowly, the occasional tumble of stones falling past him. If he didn’t get our now he’d sink with it. It was hard to do anything about it. Half his body was trapped. Come on, Bear, you’re strong, pull yourself out. He could almost hear Elizabeth’s voice.
Elizabeth!
She’d been in the lab, hundreds of feet below the surface. He needed to help her. Arthur scrambled desperately with his arms. It was hard to get any purchase, and there was always the danger he might dislodge his support below and fall deeper into the ground. But inch by inch he was able to pull himself out and nearer the surface, until he was up and lying on firm ground. He lay there for a moment and breathed the air deep into his lungs. It tasted of soil and made him cough.
But he couldn’t just lie there.
He had to help Elizabeth.
It wasn’t an earthquake, it was some kind of explosion. It had to be. That was what the deep booming sound was. Arthur couldn’t feel any major injuries on his body, just cuts and bruises. He was lucky. The large fracture in the ground that he had fallen into ran from the source of the explosion, past him, and then on into the distance in the direction he had come from. A few feet over when it struck and Arthur would have disappeared and never come out again. His car was balanced near the edge of the precipice but was in one piece.
He jumped into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine started and he was on his way, continuing his journey towards the facility. Much of the road had been lost to the newly ripped trench in the ground, so he was driving over rough scrubland, navigating by instinct as his headlights revealed the ever changing relief of the desert floor, like frames in a black and white movie.
It didn’t take long for Arthur to get where the facility had once been. He parked up to take a look, his headlights bringing light to the darkness. Where the buildings once stood there was now a huge crater in the ground, hundreds of feet wide. The two nearest antennas lay broken and twisted, fallen into the hollow. The rest still stood in their long rows, like tall forbidding giants.
It was clear now.
Elizabeth was gone.
Even if she’d survived the explosion there was no means for her to escape, or Arthur to attempt any kind of rescue. The buildings with the lifts down to the lower levels were gone. There was nothing left. She was burred hundreds of feet below ground. Arthur stared into the huge pit. It was almost impossible to process it all.
What had happened?
What should he do?
There was no reason for him to be anywhere near the facility. If he was caught at the scene imagine all the questions he would have to face. No good could come from him being here. He had to get away as quickly as possible. Elizabeth was dead, that much was clear. She was the only reason for staying in the US and she was gone. He had a flight out of the country first thing in the morning, he could catch the flight and leave all of this behind him.
Arthur jumped back into the car and retraced his steps. He drove across the desert floor until he was able to re-join the road. Everything looked normal again. It was hard to believe what he’d seen was real. Then he was passed by the first military vehicle travelling at great speed toward the scene of devastation. This was followed by more vehicles passing him at sporadic intervals, which soon became a constant stream, joined by the sound of helicopters overhead.
Whatever had happened was definitely real.
It was easy to imagine he might be stopped at any moment. But he wasn’t. The vehicles just races by. When he arrived back at his flat there was no one waiting for him. He’d packed earlier in the evening so he was ready to go. He grabbed his bags and headed straight out for the airport, his letter to Elizabeth still in his pocket.
---
As soon as she’d heard Arthur was coming home Camilla phoned everyone up to organise a welcome celebration at their house. It felt like the natural thing to do. It was all very last minute and unexpected but there wasn’t much she could do about that. Arthur’s return was a huge occasion they’d been anticipating for two years. But she didn’t quite know how she felt about it now it was here. She’d tried to sound excited when inviting the guests, but to be honest she was nervous too. It was all so sudden.
Awful as it sounded she’d got used to Arthur not being around. The letters and phone calls had become something of a formality, a duty more than a joy. Not that she didn’t love Arthur any more, it’s just whoever this Arthur was who lived in the US and came home to visit for a few days wasn’t the person she knew. She adored the time they had spent together before, their time as a family. The small but wonderful day-to-day moments that made up their lives. But it felt like those days were gone. Each time they saw Arthur he felt a little different, more distant.
But now Arthur was back for good it would be different, wouldn’t it? It wasn’t clear why he was back, but they needed to make the most of it. Surely things could be how they were before Arthur had left.
The kids joined Camilla in the car to pick Arthur up from the airport. Everyone was quiet. Camilla didn’t know what to say and Alex and David, normally chatty, didn’t seem to know either.
“Do you think Dad’s ok?” asked Alex, finally breaking the silence.
The thought had crossed Camilla’s mind too. One moment he wasn’t coming home any time soon, the next he was on his way. Was he ill? Dying even? You couldn’t help but imagine the worst.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” she replied, unconvinced.
They waited in arrivals holding a ‘Welcome home Arthur’ sign Camilla had made. It had seemed like a nice idea at the time, but now standing there surrounded by strangers and taxi drivers it felt strange. It was a relief when he finally appeared. But that relief proved short lived. Arthur looked totally vacant. He tried to say hello to everyone but it felt stilted, not the joyful reunion Camilla had imagined. Stupid of her really. He was bound to be tired from the trip. But that couldn’t be it. He was almost dead behind the eyes.
Things were just as quiet on the journey back. All three of them tried to their best to start a conversation but Arthur’s replies were perfunctory at best. By the time they got home Camilla was desperate to get out of the car, they all were. Throwing the party was clearly a huge mistake, but there was nothing she could do about it now. Everyone was there and waiting, family, local friends, work friends, Arthur’s golfing buddies.
The party struggled on for a couple of hours, but it was terribly painful for everyone. After a while it was impossible to put Arthur’s behaviour down to jet lag. It was like he was only there in body, not in mind. When no one was talking to him he stared into the distance, totally absent. When anyone did try and strike up a conversation with him Arthur couldn’t hold a thought in his head from one moment to the next.
One by one the guests made their polite excuses and left. Camilla was going to try and talk to Arthur alone. Find out what the problem was. Maybe it was something to do with his health after all, he didn’t look at all well. But before the last guests had even gone Arthur had made his excuses and disappeared up to bed.
Alex and David both offered to help clear up, but after a while Camilla let them go off and she finished up alone. It was hard to be around anyone right now. Something was clearly wrong with Arthur. Hopefully he would snap out of it soon. They couldn’t go on like this.
When she was done clearing up Camilla climbed the stairs. Was Arthur asleep already? Probably, he was likely exhausted from the trip. If they couldn’t talk things through tonight then maybe in the morning. But when she got up to the bedroom she found it empty.
Where was he?
Camilla went back downstairs and looked in every room. He wasn’t there. She went back into the kitchen and looked out of the back door. The double doors of the garage were up and the light was on.
She could see Arthur inside.
He was sat on a chair.
And it looked like he was talking to himself.
That’s it for Chapter 14, I hope you enjoyed it and are looking forward to more. Chapter 15 will be out the same time next week, Friday at 4:00pm UK time.
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