Chapter 19: Cavalry

OPEN CANALS, DOWNTOWN (EVENING)

Valerie emerges through a door, gulping heavenly fresh air beneath an ochre sky obscured by city light.

Beside her the sewer mouth vomits viscous black sludge out into the main canal.

Otherworldly pollution seeping in.

She jogs because she can’t afford to stop moving. She touches the stitch in her side, focuses on breathing, going, pushing forward.

The canal water succumbs to ink.

She dares to check her phone. It throbs in her hand, a heart beating of its own volition and streaming music to her brain. Its battery reads single digits.

Valerie runs against time: the curtain of falling night, draining power, exhaustion.

She runs from an incomprehensible future coming to pincer her between alien dimensions and actors from bad stages.

Perhaps it’s best she can’t hear the chopper overhead.

She still has miles to go.

RIVERSIDE PATH (EVENING)

Valerie leaves the city behind for twilight. A finger finds her earbud and she pauses the music.

She hears it. Undoubtedly. A buzzing metal fly in the sky. But more pronounced than that is the river, her companion, rushing swift and invisible and black at her side.

Every step carries the shake of the pills in her pocket.

Tempting.

Valerie’s lungs burn with every inhalation of cold air gone colder. She slaps a palm to her splitting forehead and collapses onto a bench, panting.

She eyes the length of the bench. What a formidable bed it would make. She imagines herself lying down, her sweat cooling, turning to ice on her clothes; curled in on herself, she finds a final peace.

A single snowflake lights upon the back of her hand. She looks up and thinks they’re stars: a hundred, a thousand, a million snow-white flakes falling like so many cast autumn leaves.

The buzz in the sky nears, invisible behind the clouds.

At the same time a bass drum starts up in her ears--music she did not request but is given. Driven.

Valerie withdraws the pill bottle and shakes out two small unmarked beans.

I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

Valerie finds her feet, stretching stiffened calves, and swallows the pills dry.

At once the world sharpens, as if with the twist of constrictor pupillae. She can see the remaining miles to the shadow of the water treatment plant, where all the hellwater flows.

She starts up, leaving the pill bottle upon the bench, and breaks into the final stretch. Driven.

Driven like the snow.

LOCKER ROOM, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EVENING)

Bruce scans the lockers and finds his name having been scratched out. He opens it and finds his coveralls and nothing else.

Bruce (looking around) changes into his coveralls and approaches the mirror. A man steps out of the shadows and fills the mirror over his shoulder. Bruce’s muscles tense, winding up to spring.

SCARRED BRUCE: Easy. You retired. Took the family out of the city and lived happily ever after.

BRUCE: Me?

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

SCARRED BRUCE: Sensed there was somethin in the water and got outta Dodge.

BRUCE: I ain’t a religious man.

SCARRED BRUCE: Preaching to the choir.

BRUCE: But I got a message from God one day. Told me to be ready for the day the world falls in my lap. That there’s still a chance to build them heaven.

FLASHBACK: STERILE HALL, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (MORNING)

A younger Bruce stands outside his boss’s office with RESIGNATION PAPER in hand, unrecognizable by posture alone: dejected, defeated, slumped. He’s lost everything.

His pocket buzzes. He answers but doesn’t speak. Half a minute passes. He clamshells his phone closed and walks away from the door, tearing the paper to pieces. He’s already a few inches taller.

LOCKER ROOM, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EVENING)

SCARRED BRUCE: Hard work.

BRUCE: I understand that now. How’d you know I’d take it to heart?

SCARRED BRUCE: (gesturing to his BRUTALIZED face) You can count every failure I’ve made.

BRUCE: I’ve gotta go. Who’s on tonight?

SCARRED BRUCE: (pointing) You. (looking up) And all the cavalry.

FLASHFORWARD: BASEMENT STUDIO, RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT (INDETERMINATE)

Scarred Bruce appears in a flash of pink.

BRUCE: We’re almost there.

VALERIE: Why does it have to be them and not us?

BRUCE: Wrong question.

VALERIE: What?

BRUCE: Why does it have to be her and not you? That’s the one.

VALERIE: OK.

BRUCE: You’re the architect here. Shouldn’t you be schooling me on this?

VALERIE: I’m waiting for an answer.

BRUCE: All I’ve got is a theory. When all these doors slam shut, the only line still open is going to be hers.

VALERIE: What’s so special about her?

BRUCE: She’s the only one from a virgin line. Meaning...

VALERIE: You can have your cake. And eat it.

BRUCE: Not me. (pause) Everyone. Everyone lives.

VALERIE: Except you. Except me.

BRUCE: It’s the closest thing we’ve got to a fairytale ending.

Bruce paces over to the coffee maker. He looks up, holding the carafe. The ceiling shakes, as if someone heavy just stomped his foot.

BRUCE: The alternative is this.

OFFICE, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EVENING)

Bruce steps in to the blaring of the klaxon. Several cameras on the wall of CRTs are offline. Snow falls through the others. A screen reads:

CRITICAL PUMP FAILURE

Bruce rolls up his sleeves and opens several drawers. He finds what he’s looking for: a cable which he plugs into the back of the main computer tower.

BRUCE: (under his breath) Come on now.

A shadow strides through the main gate on one of the live feeds.

He overrides the alarms. The sound of choppers immediately fills the resulting silence.

BRUCE: (swears)

He crosses to the window and peers outside at the lot. Choppers are landing.

He looks around the office and spots a rifle leaning up against the wall. Penned on the wall are the words:

FORGETTING SOMETHING?

GATES, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (EVENING)

The gate is bent and broken open, a result of the tire tracks quickly filling up with snow.

Valerie dashes through it into:

LOT, WATER TREATMENT PLANT (CONTINUOUS)

Rotating chopper blades cut falling snow and cast mesmerizing shadows beneath the lot floodlights.

Valerie aims for the valley between them, surging for the main office building, but she’s too late. Soldiers swarm out of the choppers and start to fan out.

It’s all she can do to take cover behind a pump shed.

So close and yet so far.

Leaning against the shed, she struggles for breath. Her lungs are fire. She grabs at her parched throat, scoops a palm of snow and eats it.

It tastes wrong, like oil, but it’s necessary.

Valerie edges around the shed for eyes on the aeration basin, the catwalks. Necessary cover.

She emerges from around the shed, sprinting for the perimeter railings.

A soldier shouts an incomprehensible command through his helmet as he trains his gun on Valerie. A shot rings out. The soldier falls on his face shield.

More gunshots break through Valerie’s background music. Muzzles flash. Soldiers fall.

Valerie sees a window, charges, SCRAMBLES over the fence and onto the catwalk.

Several steps up the catwalk PAIN bursts through the palm of her left hand, drawing a crimson ellipsis on the snow as she stumbles into agony.