The Aegis Solution (33 page)

"I still don't get it. Isn't this a different time of year right now? Couldn't that first day have a been
a freak day? I remember years ago, when I was stationed at Edwards, it was windy all of the time, even
the trees grew leaning in the same direction. But every once in a while there would be a still, calm day."

Tillie let a lopsided smile curl the right side of her lips. "I wish that was all it was. When I first came
inside this tomb, I couldn't hear the wind. I picked out one of the empty apartments they had built for
us and moved in. But I got stir-crazy pretty quickly and went up to the roof. That was within a couple
of weeks of my arrival. By then it was already breezy.

"Going up to the roof became a once- or twice-a-day trip for me. Sometimes I'd spend hours up
there. Wilson says that I was regretting my choice to come into Aegis, and that my urge to go on the
roof was a symptom of my desire for freedom."

"Was he right?" Elias asked.

She shrugged. "I think Wilson can't help but analyze things. At times he gets a little carried away
with himself."

A soft snort came from the mathematician as she continued, "I noticed at the time that it was
always breezy. Day, night...didn't matter. It was steady. I know you've all heard the lesson about the frog
in the pot of water. Like the frog, I didn't notice that the wind was imperceptibly intensifying. It was so
gradual I didn't figure it out for the longest time – a year, maybe two. I happened to tune in one day and
realized that it was quite a bit stronger than it had been the first few months I was here."

"Weather patterns are changing," Stone offered.

"Wouldn't know. Remember, I haven't had access to cable TV or the Internet since I got here. The
news I did get was from newbies. They told me all about global warming, or I guess they call it ‘climate
change' now, since it isn't really warming. I don't know. But nobody had any explanation for this wind,
especially the way it's been the last year or two."

"What do you mean?"

Tillie looked thoughtfully at Stone. "As fierce as it is right now is the way it is every day. It never
lets up. Not for a minute. Not for a second. But that still isn't the real kicker. I'm surprised it took me
as long as it did to spot this. One night I was up on the roof and I was hanging out in my usual spot.
I usually spent all of my time above the entrance so I could see newbies coming. I would drop messages
to them, telling them not to come in. At first the gusts were so strong that the second I let the notes go,
they would blow about a mile away, out into the desert. So I put them in bottles for a while. That helped
at first. But pretty soon the winds got so powerful that, even if I carefully dropped the bottles close to
the perimeter wall, the wind would catch them and toss them far out from the building, shattering them.
All that did was scare the newbies. Then I tried wrapping the notes around chunks of concrete block,
but the newbies thought I was trying to hit them. I eventually gave up on the whole idea of notes. They
never did any good with the few people who read them, anyway.

"It was real late and I thought no one would be coming at that time of night, so I just started
walking across the roof, making a beeline across the center of the complex, the wind in my face. You
know that big open area in the middle of the complex?"

"Yes," Elias answered, "the center courtyard."

"After I got there, I circled halfway around it to the opposite side and kept walking. That's when
I noticed that the wind was now at my back even though I was still going in the same direction."

Stone started to say something. Tillie held up her hand to silence him. "I know that winds shift all
the time. I'm not basing all of this on my one experience. Since that night, I have made weekly checks.
I've cut across the complex, as I did that night. I've walked the perimeter. You name it, I've walked it.
The wind is blowing outward from Aegis toward every point on the compass, seven days a week,
twenty-four hours a day. There aren't any anemometers in the supply drops we get here, so I started
rigging up crude wind-measuring devices, using ropes and weights. It is getting stronger every day."

"That's impossible," Stone blurted. "The wind can't just blow out in all directions without having
come from somewhere."

"Oh, it's coming from somewhere, all right. It's coming from...." She stopped and pointed her
finger straight up.

Stone stared at her with open derision. "That's crazy!"

Tillie lifted her shoulders, conveying with the uncomplicated gesture that she did not care if he
believed her or not.

The door to the shack swung open and Zack slowly walked out, rubbing his eyes.

"Zack! You're awake," Tillie exclaimed loudly.

The young man muttered something incomprehensible and walked unsteadily to the table.

"You need a place to sit," Wilson noticed, and quickly stood, going inside and returning a moment
later with a straight-back chair.

Zack dropped heavily into it the moment Wilson placed it in the circle around the small table.

"How are you feeling?" Tillie asked.

"Would you like a sandwich?" Wilson offered at the same time.

Still vigorously rubbing his eyes and spreading his fingers to encompass his entire face, Zack's
answer was nearly muted. "Fine. Yes, please."

Wilson re-entered the shack.

The others waited, giving Zack a chance to orient himself to consciousness and his surroundings.
After a moment, his eyes fixed upon Stone. "Who're you?"

"Eric Stone. I'm…."

"He's a friend of mine," Elias finished.

The exact moment that Zack remembered the events prior to his rescue became obvious to the
three others around the table, as his face transformed from the normal fogginess of having recently
awakened, to a taut, anxious manifestation of fear and apprehension. His eyes instantly began to dart
around the perimeter, resting upon one location for only a moment before quickly moving to another.

Seeing the incipient panic, Tillie reached forward and placed her hand on his. "Zack…."

The former Zook jerked his hand back, startled by the contact.

He jumped up, the back of his knees ramming the chair backward; it slammed into the wall of the
shack with a crash.

"I gotta go!"

"Where? Why are you leaving? You're safe here," Tillie sputtered, wanting to calm him down.

Zack took several side steps toward the front of the porch, his head now swiveling wildly as he tried
to see into the dense curtain created by Wilson's plantings. "My mother. She's in W…Walden. I gotta
go find her."

Tillie and Elias both stood and moved toward him. This caused him to bolt, almost jumping down
the steps.

"Zack, you shouldn't leave yet," Elias cautioned in a steady voice. "They're out there, and we don't
know where they are. You're better off here."

With a violent shake of his head, Zack nearly shouted, "No! My mother is out there. I gotta go."

Before either Tillie or Elias could move closer to him, the young man bolted again, running down
the path with his arms flailing, batting the encroaching branches away from himself.

"Zack!" Tillie yelled, and started to follow him.

Elias grabbed her shoulder and stopped her. "We can't keep him here if he doesn't want to stay."

She whirled to face him. "But he doesn't understand. The Zippers are going to kill him, too!"

"He understands."

They both heard the clanging of the cowbell as Zack found his way to the end of the path and
exited from the atrium.

Wilson emerged from the shack, carrying a plate with two sandwiches. Seeing the knocked-over
chair, he sighed and placed the plate in the center of the table, picked up the chair, set it upright, and
sat down.

"I take it that our guest did not want my sandwiches."

As Elias and Tillie walked back slowly, Stone explained, "His mother lives in Walden. He wanted
to get to her."

"I see."

Tillie, still obviously upset, rejoined them at the table, followed by Elias. "He doesn't stand a
chance."

"And we do?" Elias asked.

"We have a better chance than he does."

"I'm glad you think so."

"Dammit, Elias…."

"Please," Wilson interrupted the two of them before they could escalate. "Don't you think we
should stop squabbling and come up with some sort of a plan of action?"

"I agree," Elias said, turning in his chair so that his back was to the angry Tillie.

Balling up her fists on the table in front of her, she forced herself to calm down. Through clenched
teeth she asked, "What kind of plan? What's the goal?"

"We need to figure a way out of here," Elias responded.

"What would that accomplish?" Tillie grabbed one of the sandwiches made for Zack and took a
bite.

Stone spoke firmly. "What do you mean? Both Elias and I have been tricked into coming inside
Aegis. Obviously, this is supposed to be our prison. Of course we need to get out of here."

They all waited while Tillie chewed the large wad of sandwich and swallowed enough to be able to
talk. "Wilson, what the heck is in this sandwich?"

"Hummus."

"Hummus! No wonder Zack left. Where am I? Suddenly in Walden? Whoever heard of a hummus
sandwich?"

She peeled back the bread and looked inside. "And cucumbers! A hummus and cucumber
sandwich! Next thing I know you'll be wearing tie-dyed T-shirts."

She leaned to the side and looked under the table at his running shoes. "Oh, thank God. At least
you haven't switched to Doc Martens."

Slapping the two slices of bread back together on the partially eaten sandwich, she tossed it into
the foliage.

"That will attract ants," Wilson protested.

"No self-respecting ants are going to eat a hummus and cucumber sandwich. If Zack hadn't run
away before, he would have after one bite of that garbage."

She looked innocently around the table and resumed, "Anyway, where were we? Oh, that's right,
a plan. Eric, you think that you and Elias should clear out of Aegis, and you probably don't care if you
take Wilson and me with you."

"I didn't say…."

She cut him off. "Save it. Whether you do or you don't is irrelevant. The point is, I don't think the
two of you were suckered into Aegis only to get rid of you. I mean, isn't a normal part of your everyday
job killing people? You know, do a little filing, make some copies, kill Joe Blow, have lunch. If Faulk
wanted either or both of you gone, he would just rub you out."

"Rub us out?" Elias barked. "I haven't heard that phrase since I watched an old James Cagney
movie."

She waved a hand in his direction dismissively. "Kill, eliminate, take you out, terminate with
extreme prejudice, bump you off, send you to sleep with the fishes, snuff, wipe you out, blow you away,
extirpate…."

"Extirpate?"

"Exterminate," she continued, ignoring Elias' interruption, "deracinate, whatever! All I'm saying is,
why wouldn't he just do that? Wouldn't that be a lot easier than this whole elaborate ruse?"

Still grinning from Tillie's rapid-fire tirade, Elias looked at Stone and said, "She has a point."

Stone looked at Tillie and back at Elias. "And a hell of a vocabulary, too."

"She's right, you know," Wilson interjected.

"Well, then what is the point?" asked Stone. "Why did Faulk want us both here?"

"That's the $64,000 question," Tillie asserted.

All three of the men turned to look at her. Elias was the first to speak. "Did you spend all of your
time watching TV Land as you were growing up?"

Grinning mischievously, Tillie answered, "Not important. What is important is why you two were
sent here."

Elias started to say something, when Wilson suddenly jumped up, grabbing the ever-present
shotgun that was leaning against the wall of the shack. "They're here!" he shouted as he whirled the
barrel around to aim it at the wall of fronds and branches.

Elias turned to look and caught a glimpse of beige through the boughs.

KA-BOOM!

He saw a wide area of leaves and branches turned into mulch as Wilson's first shot blasted into the
spot where the beige had been.

Cursing the wind for masking the sounds the Zippers would make as they dashed through the
bushes, Elias ran through the door of the shack, grabbed the AK-47, and was nearly knocked aside by
Tillie, who was also dashing inside. On his way out, he saw the shotgun they had taken from Zack, and
grabbed it. Once on the porch, he tossed the shotgun to Stone, who was attempting to spot for Wilson.
Before the springs could fully close the door, Tillie burst out with her backpack.

"Keep them in the bushes!" Wilson shouted. "Once they get into the clear, we don't have a chance.
Tillie, the net!"

Dropping her pack, Tillie ran to the corner of the porch and yanked down hard on a large wooden
lever mounted to the wall near the point where the overhang attached to the shack. Hearing a loud
THUNK, Elias saw netting tumble down all the way around the perimeter of the porch roof. The
netting completely surrounded them, leaving no openings.