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Sundays are ‘downtime’ days at the lab – not because of religious reasons, but because my team and I all need a break from each other once a week, and it’s not like anyone ever gets any work done on Sunday anyway. Well, except me, but I’m the head of the lab, it’s my lab, so that doesn’t count. This particular Sunday even I wasn’t in the lab, but I came in to get something I wanted to work on in my personal lab at home. And it was while I was rummaging around that something caught my eye.
It was the seismograph array, and one of the needles was standing stock-still. Anywhere else that would be a good thing, but in Night Vale the needles are always quivering like we’ve given them too much caffeine – nothing ever shakes or rattles or collapses, we’ve yet to feel even the tiniest little tremor, but according to the sensors we have deployed all over town the entire place is constantly vibrating with seismic activity.
And while I watched, another needle froze too. And then another.
I pulled out my cell phone and called my team, told them all to come in right away, that it was an emergency – and I told them why. By the time the four of them showed up – not more than fifteen minutes later, if that – three more needles had stopped moving and I was starting to see a pattern. “We’re about to have the mother of all earthquakes,” I told them. “Everyone pick a quadrant, we have to figure out where the epicenter is!”
Half an hour later, the needles were going still in waves, radiating inward from the outskirts of town towards the town center. Which is backwards and impossible, yes, but this is Night Vale and that kind of thing is just par for the course. Still no epicenter, though, none of us were seeing a concentration anywhere. One of my people turned on the radio, hoping for what I wasn’t sure, and Cecil’s voice came pouring out – calm and vaguely sarcastic, as usual. He was reading news items off the papers on his desk, possibly making some of them up as he went along just for the hell of it, because nothing important appeared to be going on…
…Wait, why was he on the air at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Sunday? The news never starts that early, and on Sundays it doesn’t come on until around eight at night. Hmm, more weirdness. I put that particular weirdness aside to think about later, though, because for the moment what I needed to think about was earthquakes.
I went to the map of the desert valley the town is planted in, one I’d laid out on a table and covered with a piece of glass so we could use markers on it, and I started marking the direction of the seismic ‘waves’ we were getting with green arrows. The rest of the team started adding flags wherever we were getting a sensor non-hit, and pretty soon we started to see a bigger pattern. Right about the time we felt the first tremor, which gently rattled the equation-covered whiteboards on the lab’s walls.
The ring of sensors the lab fell into – we’re closer to the outside edge of town than we are to the town center, for obvious reasons – all showed needles frozen at a 38-degree angle, which then went back to a quivering 45-degree angle once the tremor stopped. And then the next set of needles froze and started to slide slowly to the right. Shit. I pulled out my phone again and dialed Cecil so he could warn everyone.
The call went straight to voicemail, with a very polite message that said the number I was calling was currently in an area with no signal. No signal? Okay, maybe station management had blocked it to keep Cecil from checking his messages while he was on the air, something he tends to do when there isn’t much news. So I dialed the landline that sat on his desk in the sound booth instead – it was the call-in line and also the breaking-news line, so I knew it would be answered. Except that it wasn’t; the call ‘could not be connected’.
Maybe Station Management had just blocked my number? “Call the call-in line at the station,” I ordered the room at large. “Tell Cecil we’re having a real earthquake, we’re already feeling tremors outside of town and they’re moving inward. He needs to warn people to take precautions.”
One of them dialed, and then he frowned. “Carlos, it won’t connect. The call won’t go through, it says there’s no signal.”
Damn. “For me either, Toby. Everyone else, keep trying – and someone call the hospital, and the bowling alley too, get the word out. I’m going to keep trying to get someone at the station.”
The radio station does have a receptionist, who I knew wouldn’t be in on a Sunday, but her phone should be forwarded somewhere – maybe it would be forwarded to the booth? Or to the management office, somewhere. I called. A message told me that the office was closed, and offered that I could press “0” if it was an emergency or breaking news. I pressed it, the call connected, and I immediately started telling whoever it was that we were about to have an earthquake and a warning needed to be broadcast immediately.
The response was guttural evil laughter…and then they hung up on me. “I can’t get through to the hospital switchboard,” Marta told me while I was still staring at my phone in disbelief. “Their lines must be down too, maybe it’s the whole block?”
“No, because I just got through to the receptionist’s desk at the radio station, I just couldn’t get through to the sound booth,” I said, shaking my head. I decided not to mention the laugh. “Anyone else have any luck?”
“Nothing at the radio station,” Phillip replied. “Should I call the police station?”
That got a general laugh. “I’m not getting anyone’s cell at the hospital either,” Ami said. “I’ll keep trying.”
I checked the sensors against the map again, noticing that the needles were starting to slide down and back faster now. Toby was already talking to Teddy, and when I held out my hand he passed his phone over. Which had a feathered case, which made it a little bit disturbingly like talking into a dead bird. “Teddy, Carlos,” I said. “We can’t get anyone at the station, and the hospital’s land-line is down.” Ami suddenly yelled and started talking into her phone really fast. “Okay, Ami’s got someone at the hospital on their cell. No, Teddy, we’re sure – those were tremors, and they’re only going to get worse. Warn everyone you can, this could be really bad.”
He agreed, and I gave the phone back to Toby and dialed mine again. “Scott? It’s Carlos. Mobilize the guys, buddy, we’re about to have a real, live earthquake. Yes…yes, these little tremors are just the opening act. We already warned the hospital and Teddy at the bowling alley, but we haven’t been able to get through to anyone at the radio station, their phones are all dead.” He snorted a comment about that, promised to get the word out, and I told him to be careful and hung up, going back to the sensors. I was getting a really bad feeling.
Because I was starting to think that someone else had known about the earthquake before we did, which would be ridiculous and illogical anywhere but in Night Vale – correlation usually does imply causation here, I wasn’t kidding that time I told Cecil this had to be the most scientifically interesting town on the planet. If it’s actually on the planet, some days I’m not sure. But Cecil was on the air reading day-old news at a time when the only thing the station is usually broadcasting is the sound of paint peeling on the sound booth’s walls (which sounds a lot like agonized screaming if you get a microphone boosted high enough to record it, which Cecil did once when I said I didn’t believe him). And all of the phones we could use to reach him were suddenly not working, and most of the phones to the hospital weren’t working either…and the hospital is on Third Street, not even half a block from the radio station.
So if someone had known an earthquake was coming, what were they trying to accomplish? Logic said they’d be trying to take out the hospital, depriving the rest of the community of a centralized concentration of emergency personnel and supplies, not to mention creating mass casualties…but again, this was Night Vale, and logic wasn’t always logical here. Why, though, would someone be trying to take out the radio station and its one adorably crazy announcer? It’s not like it’s a very strong signal, Desert Bluffs has twice the transmission power we do – Cecil told me that they’ve tried to overwhelm Night Vale’s signal a few times, in fact. Hmm, they are kind of violent over there, in spite of the urban hippie shtick they’ve got going in their radio broadcasts, so I could see them trying to take out the competition if they got an opportunity…but if that was it station management wouldn’t be helping them, because if station management wanted to merge the two stations they could just do it. So since station management was in on it, what could their reasoning possibly be? There would have to be something in it for them…
I didn’t have time to think that the rest of the way through, though, because that was when we felt our biggest tremor yet, and the first of the little ones reached the radio station. Which we knew without anyone even looking at the sensors, because we all heard it on the radio.
CECIL: And that of course leads us to… <rattling noise> Alright, that was odd. If I didn’t know better I’d think we just had… <rattling noise> Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t have anything to back this up, but I think we may be having an earthquake. I would say I’m surprised our amazing resident scientist Carlos didn’t warn us, but when his equipment registers seismic activity we usually don’t feel anything, so maybe when we are feeling something his…
<much louder rattling. The building groans. >
CECIL: I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that everyone follow the safety procedures for an earthquake, just in case: Get out of whatever building you’re currently in, away from buildings or power lines or other tall objects that may fall, and if you’re wearing anything green take it off immediately. Let me see if I can call…<sigh> I can’t, no signal. Which may be why I haven’t gotten a message from Carlos letting me know what’s going on. I’ll try the station phone. <receiver being picked up> No dial tone, that’s odd too…
<hard rattling. The building groans, then screams as it collapses. Sound of things falling, crashing, a yell from Cecil…then everything settles>
<silence>
I pulled up to the edge of what had been Third and Baker in a spray of gravel, not intentionally but as a result of trying not to go shooting into the sinkhole that had swallowed the hospital and the radio station and everything in between. The entire block was gone, just…gone.
CECIL: <sounding woozy> Ow…alright, I think I can now definitely say that was an earthquake. We just had an earthquake. So everyone, the next phase of…um, what was I saying? Oh, earthquake rules, right: Don’t go into collapsed buildings, shut off gas and water lines if you can, watch out for…um, more earthquakes? That doesn’t sound right. Watch out for…aftershocks, that was it, aftershocks. And downed power lines. And…people wearing yellow. Or was that green? I…can’t remember. <pause> The ceiling is…a lot lower in here, for some reason. A lot lower. I think…I think the radio station collapsed. Yes, that would explain it…
< silence>
Jesus Christ, he’s alive – and still on the fucking radio, only Cecil. He’ll be lucky if I let him out of my sight again this year. I backed up my car, almost hitting Teddy’s truck when he pulled up, wide-eyed with horror, and once I was a safer distance away from the unstable edge I jumped out and popped open my trunk. “Get everyone around to the other side!” I ordered when he got out of the truck, tossing him my keys. “The station side, there’s bedrock over there, solid granite – the hole can’t expand that way, but every little shake is going to make more of it go on this side.”
He came over to the car, frowning now, and then his eyes widened again when he saw what was in the trunk. “You’re going to rappel down into the hole?! Carlos…”
“Of course I’m not.” I dug under the ropes and my other gear, pulling out a little first-aid pack that wrapped around my waist, and my climbing gloves. “It’s a sinkhole, the sides aren’t stable – no place to put the pitons, much less to anchor any ropes or anything else. I’m free-soloing down.” He started to protest, loudly, but I cut him off. “Teddy, I am an expert free-climber, I can do this – and if you think I’m leaving him down there, knowing he’s still alive, you’re crazier than he is. I’m going in and I’ll bring him back out, and that’s it.”
Teddy huffed. “Carlos, at the very least he’s got a bad concussion, I can tell by the way he was talking just now. And Cecil’s not any kind of climber at all, he may have other injuries…so you find him, what then? How are you going to get him out if he isn’t able to walk?”
“I’ll figure that out when I find him,” I said, even though we both knew how stupid that was. There was a really good chance that I’d get in there with Cecil and neither one of us would be able to get back out; I just didn’t care, so I wasn’t going to waste time thinking about that possibility. “And if I have to carry him out…well, I can do that too.”
He started to protest again, but he must have seen the look in my eyes because he stopped and instead grasped my arm. “I’ll be waiting when you come back out with him, then – on the other side, where it’s safe. Find your way out on that side if you can.”
I found a smile for him. “I’ll do my best. Keep listening to the radio, you’ll probably be able to hear me once I get close to where he’s at.” And then I slammed the trunk closed, walked to the edge of the hole, and found a place to start climbing down. Don’t go anywhere, Cecil, I’m coming.
CECIL: Oh…the news, right. I should…do some news now. <rustling, a pained noise> I can’t reach the papers that…were on my desk, they’re scattered. Because the desk fell over. It’s…really heavy, I didn’t realize the desk…was that heavy. It hurts. Thank goodness I…kept hold of the microphone. <pause> I think…I hit my head on the ceiling, too. It’s…harder than it looks, the ceiling. I thought…I thought? Oh, yes, I thought…those white foam panels were soft, not hard. <humming> I don’t see the foam panels now, though – different ceiling. This one…is hard. And broken, a lot.
<silence>
CECIL: I’m…really having trouble…keeping my eyes open, sorry about that. And I can’t get any more news…can’t switch to the weather, either. So I guess…I guess that’s it, I’ve got…nothing more to give you right now. Good night…Night Vale. Good…
<silence>
Above the sinkhole, Teddy’s hands faltered as he was wrapping a bandage around someone’s arm. He waited for Cecil to start talking again, like he had before…but there was just silence. He forced himself to get back to work. “Drama queen,” he muttered under his breath, pretending that his ears weren’t straining to hear something, anything, but dead air from the turned-up radio in his truck and that his hands weren’t shaking just a little. He wasn’t sure what Carlos would do if he found Cecil and Cecil was…no, it wasn’t going to happen like that. It wasn’t. “They’re both drama queens,” he told his current patient, who was giving him a concerned look. “Both of them. And people with head injuries go in and out, it’s just…it’s just a thing.”
The woman patted his arm with her free hand, but didn’t say anything; she was listening to the radio too.
<banging, crashing sounds, as though from a long way off, growing louder>
MALE VOICE: <in the distance> Cecil?
<noises of someone moving debris, getting closer>
CARLOS: Cecil? Cecil!
CARLOS: <noises. Crunching, as of someone kneeling in the debris.> Thank god, you’re still alive – I saw the blood and thought…well, it doesn’t matter, you’re still alive. And still on the air, too, you’ve got a dea…a real grip on this microphone. Cecil <soft patting sound> Cecil! Come on, wake up. Come on, please, please open your eyes…
CECIL: < a groan, very soft> C…Carlos? What are you…doing in the station?
CARLOS: Cecil, there was an earthquake.
CECIL: No, there wasn’t. Nobody can feel earthquakes…
CARLOS: Everyone felt this one – it caused a sinkhole to open up, which sucked in most of the block, and the radio station collapsed.
CECIL: <a drowsy, interested hum> Are you here to do scientific testing now?
CARLOS: <sounds of debris being pushed and tossed> I’m doing scientific rescuing now, we’ll do scientific testing later
CECIL: <interested, pleased noise> We?
CARLOS: <choked, half hysterical laugh> Yes, we. Of course we. We from now on… <a horrible screeching noise, slightly distant> What the hell?!
CECIL: <sigh> Uh-oh, Station Management…isn’t happy. We must still be on the air…
CARLOS: <a growl – surprisingly, from CARLOS > Hmm. Hey, Khoshekh? <debris crunching, a horrible deep grhowling noise> You’re bigger than the last time I saw you – and thank you for saving Cecil, I can see how you and your kittens kept the ceiling from collapsing on him. Are you free now? <the grhowling noise again> I’m glad – I hadn’t been able to figure out a way to make that happen. But you know what? Whoever’s screeching behind that sideways glowing door down there? They’re the ones who told Cecil and the rest of the staff that they couldn’t keep your kittens. And they’re the ones who laughed when I called and told them we were going to have a really bad earthquake – they knew what was going to happen, but they blocked the phone lines and let Cecil stay in here and keep broadcasting instead of warning him.
<a very LOUD grhowl, and the sound of padding large feet – and some smaller ones – bounding off over the debris. Then more grhowling and the sound of a door giving way.>
CECIL: Carlos…?
CARLOS: It’s okay, Cecil, it’s okay. Can you let go of…you know, never mind, we’ll bring it with us. <cord snapping> Just let me get over here… <noise of more debris being moved, shoved, thrown. A grunt, something heavy being heaved away and crashing.> Okay, you’re clear, let me see if I can slow this bleeding down…oh no you don’t! Cecil! Wake up!
CECIL: Umm… <background noises of otherworldly screams and angry grhowling, ripping, and crashing> ...is something wrong with Station Management?
CARLOS: Yes, because they pissed off someone they shouldn’t have. And I don’t think Khoshekh likes them much either. Now let’s get you out of here before the rest of the building comes down. I’m putting your arm over my shoulder, but let me do all the work, don’t try to help…
CECIL: <a grunt from CARLOS, and a squeak from CECIL> Why are you…you’re carrying me?
CARLOS: Because you have a broken leg, Cecil. And a bleeding head injury. And at the moment you’re approximately the same color as my lab coat.
CECIL: <hum> Did you…did you come into a collapsed building? You’re not supposed to do that…after an earthquake. It’s dangerous…
CARLOS: I don’t care – I’m not waiting around for anyone else to rescue the most precious thing in the world to me.
CECIL: <a sniff, maybe a whimper as the moving-through-debris noises start again in reverse> Really?
CARLOS: <a grunt> Really, Cecil. We’ll get out of here, we’ll go home, I’ll even run some tests.
CECIL: <a sigh> I like it…when you run tests…
CARLOS: I’ll run all the tests you want. <a grunt, debris noises, alarming wreckage creaking, kitten grhowling> I’ll even run them twice.
CECIL: Home?
CARLOS: Home. And hey, <noises> I think we have a kitty now, it’s floating ahead of us, showing me the best way to get you out of here. <very perky, kittenish grhowl>
CECIL: <sigh> Home…
CARLOS: No, stay with me! Tell me about your tattoos – full sleeves, even, I can’t believe I didn’t know you had those. <a wordless hum> Come on Cecil, keep talking to me…Cecil! Dammit…Wait, are we…these are the fire escape stairs! You are the best kitty in the whole world. <happy kitten grhowl> Stay with me, Cecil, you don’t get to leave me now. Just out this door <door being kicked open> My god, this side of the building got hung up on the rocks, of all the dumb luck. But I don’t think I can get you up there without help…Teddy?! TEDDY!
TEDDY: <distant, faint outside sounds> Carlos! Over here, there’s a spot where I think you can get up…”
CARLOS: Teddy, he passed out and he won’t wake back up!
TEDDY: <puffing, debris sounds, outside sounds> Jesus, Carlos, calm down! People with head injuries pass out, it’s normal. He was awake and talking before, he knew who you were and where he was – as long as he’s still breathing okay it’s all good. Come on, this way. Let me help you… <debris sounds, people noises getting louder and more open-air> Okay, put him down here, on the hood of your car.
CARLOS: But it’s hot…
TEDDY: It’s not that hot – not hot enough to burn him, anyway, but hopefully warm enough to keep him from going into shock. We’re running low on emergency blankets, most of them were stored in the hospital. He left how much blood back in the sound booth?
CARLOS: There was a puddle under his head. <a grunt, shifting> It was big enough to scare me, and when I pried the desk off of him his leg started bleeding like crazy.
TEDDY: Well, that explains why he’s the same color as the shirt he’s wearing. Move and let me look…ouch, good thing whatever piece of the ceiling that was didn’t hit him an inch or two lower, he’d have lost that eye for sure. Here, clean that off with this bottle of water while I see what I can do about his leg, it looks like that’s the worse injury… <cloth ripping> Well, crap. Alright, I can stop the bleeding, but that’s about it. <yelling back> Someone get me an air-cast over here! <feedback noise> We’re still on the air? How are we…you know, I don’t even care. Carlos, can you get that out of his hand?
CARLOS: I can’t pry his fingers loose. Cecil <patting noise> Cecil, you have to let go of the microphone – you don’t need to be on the air now. Cecil…<not quite a sob> Cecil, please…
CECIL: What…Carlos? You’re upset…
TEDDY: Cecil, you need to let go of the microphone.
CECIL: Microphone?
TEDDY: The one you’re gripping so tightly your fingers are bleeding? That microphone?
CECIL: <pause> We aren’t in the radio station, are we? The ceiling’s too high. The station’s ceiling is very, very low these days…
TEDDY: <huff> Okay, never mind. Carlos, distract him.
CARLOS: How…<Teddy clears his throat, meaningfully>…Oh, you mean…here, right now?
TEDDY: You want me to do it?
CARLOS: <huff> No! I just… <muttering> Oh, what the hell…
CECIL: < kissing noise, muffled squeak> Mmmph?!
TEDDY: <something falls, minor feedback noise, he chuckles> Knew that would work – there’s only one thing Cecil loves more than the radio. Now to turn this bad-boy off…
It took a bit of doing, but Teddy finally got the microphone – with its snapped, trailing cord and no obvious power supply – to turn off. Then he went back to the ugly gash on Cecil’s leg; once he took Carlos’s makeshift bandage off it started bleeding profusely, and he could see splintered broken bone. “Shit. Alright, I’ll fix this as much as I can…” He put his hands on either side of the gash and pushed just enough to stop the bleeding, then pushed physically – and a lot more gently – to nudge the broken bone he could see back into alignment. He picked out a few white splinters, only some of which were bone, poured some bottled water into the gash to rinse out the smaller pieces, and then pushed again to make the gash heal closed.
It fought him, because it was Cecil, and he pushed harder. It still took almost ten minutes, but finally the gash closed – barely, but it was good enough. Not like Cecil was going to be walking on that leg for a while anyway. Teddy taped a gauze pad over the raw red line and then slid the air cast into place, inflating it until it was rigid. And then he frowned. The angle of the gash, now the line, was pointing up in the direction the edge of the desk must have fallen …shit. He ripped the pants leg on the other side and found a swollen black-bruised dent angling up right above Cecil’s knee along that same line. He pushed just a little, trying to get the swelling down, and managed to ascertain that the bone there was possibly cracked but probably not broken. Nothing much to be done about that at the moment, so he moved up to deal with the head injury, moving Carlos out of his way again. “Well damn. Ceiling tiles didn’t do that, they’re too soft. Carlos, did you see what hit his head, was it the frame?”
The scientist shook his head. “The cats kept the upper levels from falling in on him, but I didn’t see any ceiling tiles or a metal frame. I saw wood and drywall and big chunks of concrete or maybe stone – and, weirdly, what looked like pieces of glass, like mirror glass, silver on one side and black on the other. There were shards of mirror glass in the cut on his head, too.”
“That is weird, but I guess we should all be used to weird by now,” Teddy quipped. “Okay, I’m gonna try to get this one over with fast for his sake.” Because Cecil was still at least partially conscious, and he was tense and trembling – although he hadn’t made a sound while his leg injuries were being dealt with, and Teddy knew what that meant even if Carlos didn’t. He placed his hands and pushed hard. Cecil’s back arched and his jaw clenched, but he still didn’t make even the slightest noise. This time, because Teddy was rushing and it wasn’t very big to begin with, closing the gash only took a couple of minutes, and he checked to make sure it would stay closed before rinsing it off one more time with the bottled water and taping a smaller gauze pad into place over it. Cecil stayed tense, though, and Carlos was starting to look like he was edging over into panicking again. “Carlos, he’s okay,” Teddy reassured him. “He’s just confused, he thinks he’s…somewhere else.” He shook Cecil’s shoulder. “Cecil, it’s okay, you’re in Night Vale,” he insisted. “You’re in Night Vale. You can let go now, it’s okay. Cecil?”
Brown eyes cracked open, and then Cecil blinked and squinted at him. He mouthed Teddy’s name, not even the faintest whisper of sound escaping. “Yeah, it’s me,” Teddy told him. “For real, Cecil. You’re in Night Vale. See look, Carlos is right here too – and you’re scaring the hell out of him, you need to relax.”
Cecil blinked again and released a long, shuddering breath, practically melting into the hood of the car. He turned his head, wincing. “Carlos?” he whispered. Another blink. “Sorry…”
“You don’t need to be sorry, it’s okay.” Carlos stroked his hair. He couldn’t help but notice, though, that Cecil was still trembling. “I know it hurts, but it’s all fixed now.”
“No, the bleeding is stopped and the holes are closed,” Teddy corrected him. “I can’t fix a broken bone or a concussion, just soft-tissue injuries – and since it’s Cecil, I’m lucky I was able to get the skin to close all the way.” The tremor of an approaching aftershock shook the ground, and Cecil twitched like something had shocked him; the bowling alley owner frowned. “Shit. Carlos, roll down his sleeve on that side, we need to cover these damned tattoos.” Carlos looked at him blankly, and Teddy groaned, reaching for the rolled-up sleeve on his side and pulling it down, covering the tattoos that patterned Cecil’s arm from somewhere up under his rolled-up shirtsleeves almost to his wrists. “You mean he hasn’t told you? Pull it down, I’ll explain later. I’m going to kick his ass for not telling you about this already…”
Carlos did as he was told, and Cecil relaxed again with a sigh, wincing. “Thanks, Teddy. There’s someone climbing…up out of the station’s basement, I saw them…I thought it was Carlos. He came into a dangerous collapsed building…to rescue me, you know.”
“Yes, I know – and that’s why I’m going to kick your ass later. You should have told him, Cecil!”
“Yeah, right,” Cecil answered him almost-coherently, and then sing-songed, “‘Oh Carlos, you’re magnificent and I really want you to be my boyfriend – and by the way, if I roll up my sleeves I’ll be able to see…exactly what you’re doing no matter where you are.’” He snorted drowsily, which made him wince again. “I’m sure that would have gone over…really well.”
Teddy had to smile. “Well, he knows now and it looks to me like he’s fine with it.”
Carlos shook himself. He leaned back in, his fingers still tangled in the other man’s short black hair. “I’m fine with it,” he murmured huskily, and found a smile for the unfocused eyes that squinted at him – Cecil’s glasses were still somewhere in the wreckage of the radio station, or most likely under some of it since Carlos hadn’t even seen pieces of them when he’d been in there. “It’s okay, really – you can tell me about it later.”
Cecil smiled back and his eyes closed again. This time, Teddy stopped Carlos from trying to wake him back up. “No, let him rest. I wish I knew who the man was he saw climbing up from the station’s basement, though, and I’m just hoping we didn’t miss a doppelganger last year – because whoever it was must have been someplace they didn’t belong right before the ‘quake hit, namely in Cecil’s apartment.”
Fresh horror dropped Carlos’s mouth open. “Cecil lives in the radio station’s basement?”
“He did, yeah; it was in his contract, he had to.” Movement at the rim of the sinkhole caught his eye, and he squinted, then swore. “Shit, it was Steve Carlsberg?!”
Carlos frowned. “Doesn’t Cecil hate that guy?”
“With good reason,” Teddy snarled. “There is no reason in hell for that bastard to have been down there – I know for a god-damned fact that Cecil would never have let him in.” He saw the question coming before Carlos voiced it, shook his head. “No. Let’s just say that Carlsberg isn’t the type who takes ‘no’ for an answer and leave it at that.”
This time, Carlos was the one who snarled. And then he slid off the hood of the car. “I’ll be right back.” Teddy started to say something, and he shook his head. “No, this will only take a few minutes, and then I’m taking Cecil home – I can watch him and work with my team on this mess at the same time from there. Just stay here, it’s fine.”
He stalked across the space that separated his car from the edge of the sinkhole, stalked right up to the man who was standing there brushing himself off…and grabbed him by the throat. As Teddy watched, Carlos shook the other man, pushing him backwards so that his feet were right on the still-crumbling edge of the sinkhole, and held out his free hand. Carlsberg tried to argue, then handed over the backpack he had with him. Carlos took it and then demanded something else from him, waiting until the other man answered before pulling him back onto solid ground. Slinging the backpack over one shoulder, he reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled something out, then held it up. Carlsberg shut his mouth and shook his head, Carlos did something that made him gasp, and then pulled part of whatever it was off with his teeth and stuck the other end in Carlsberg’s mouth. He pulled it back out after a second, let go of the now choking man and recapped the thing, sticking it back in his pocket. He said something else, something that almost made Carlsberg step back into the sinkhole, and then he turned around and walked back to the car. He smiled grimly at the openmouthed bowling alley owner. “See? Only a few minutes. And if this is what I think it is…” He deposited the backpack on the car’s hood next to Cecil and unzipped it, looking inside and then rooting around in it. “Hmm, Cecil’s red glasses, glad to see those. Not so glad to see the handcuffs, the rope, or the underwear. Oh look, a picture.” He pulled it out, held it up for Teddy to see. “His road trip to ‘Europe’?”
Teddy looked, then nodded, swallowing. “Yup.”
Carlos nodded back, returning the picture to the bag. “I try really hard not to think about where he actually went, and what it means. Cute picture of him, though, definitely a keeper.” He rooted around some more. “Okay, there’s the red tie that goes with the glasses, Cecil will be glad to have that. A few knickknacks, more underwear…I already warned Carlsberg that if I found his DNA on any of this I was coming after him. I think he may have wet himself.” He zipped the bag back up and stuck it in the front seat of his car. “Oh, and I let him know in no uncertain terms that Cecil is mine, and I made him repeat it out loud. I thought that was probably a good idea since he said Station Management gave Cecil to him…and gave him a key to the basement apartment, too.”
“Well fuck.” Teddy cocked an eyebrow at him. “You think Khoshekh solved that problem?” Carlos looked surprised, and Teddy picked up the disconnected microphone and wiggled it. “You were on the air the whole time, remember?”
“Oh, right. I’m hoping he did. By the time he hit their office door, he was about the size of a panther. I stopped paying attention after he broke the door in” He pointed at the air cast. “Anything I need to know about that?”
“Don’t let him walk on it, this cast isn’t made for that.” Teddy shrugged. “Keep an eye on his foot, if it starts to go funny-colored you need to let some air out of the cast. And don’t let him put his weight on his other leg just yet either, because without an X-ray there’s no way to tell if the bone is actually cracked on that side or not, or if that knee was involved either. Other than that… put him to bed, keep him warm, wake him up every couple of hours until morning and then I’ll swing by to check on him. Since our favorite miniature invaders have started firing their long-range missiles at the ball retrievals in lanes 4 through 6 whenever I walk out of my office…well, I guess I’m a house-call-making bowling-alley owner now.
Carlos snorted. “I’ve had some ideas about the invaders, but until we can implement one of them I’ll loan you a lab coat for house-call making. It looks professional and the pockets really come in handy.” He hesitated. “The tattoos?”
“Keep them covered,” Teddy told him matter-of-factly. “Long sleeves, bandages, something, just keep them covered – if you don’t he won’t be able to sleep, and with that head injury I don’t know if he’ll be able to tune out of things he doesn’t want to see.”
“Got it.” Another aftershock hit, and the part of the hospital that was still visible from where they were standing dropped another foot; Cecil twitched harder than the last time, almost convulsively, and let out a moan that widened both men’s eyes. Carlos put one hand on the wrinkled sleeve covering the tattoos and frowned. “Teddy, he’s still ‘on’ – the lines are hot, I can feel them through his shirt.” Teddy raised one eyebrow, and the scientist made a face. “I didn’t know Cecil had tattoos, but I had …a friend, a really good friend, who had some like this. His got hot when he was…” he swallowed, “…using them.”
“Uh huh.” Teddy gave him a very penetrating look, then shook his head. “I think you and Cecil need to talk more – and not about science or how much he loves your hair.” He went over to the tackle box that he used as his ‘doctor’s bag’ and started rummaging around in it, pulling out some little bottles and a plastic-packaged syringe. “Hold his arm still for me,” he said, drawing a small amount of fluid from each little bottle into the syringe before putting them away again. “Usually I wouldn’t do this, not a good idea with a head injury, but…aftershocks can go on for days, right?” Carlos nodded. “Yeah. I think not medicating him might be a worse idea, since the barrier he usually relies on apparently isn’t enough right now. Probably because of the head injury, so it’s a Catch-22. Okay, stay out of my light, I have to find a spot where I won’t pierce the lines…”
Within minutes of Teddy finding the right spot for his needle, we had another aftershock and Cecil didn’t even twitch. So I got Marta and Phillip to help me get him back to my house and get our equipment set up so I could monitor things from there, freeing up Ami to leave the lab and go help at the sinkhole. Then once they left I dug out some soft, loose clothes for Cecil to change into later – some of my old workout clothes, but they were going to be loose on him anyway; he’s a few inches taller than me, but not quite as broad across the chest and shoulders. I got some other things together that we were going to need later…and then I plopped down in a chair where I could keep half an eye on the seismic array and watched him sleep. Just watched him. Teddy really had drugged the hell out of him, he was so limp it was almost scary. He’d felt like rubber in my arms when I’d carried him into the house, no tension in his muscles at all, completely dead to the world.
Which was how we wanted him right now, of course. The hospital was still settling, and there were still people in it, trapped, many of them probably not able to get out or to be gotten out, although Scott and the guys and my team were all doing their best. Not to mention, half of the rest of the town was going crazy…well, crazier. Still, though, he didn’t need to be ‘watching’ any of that right now. And just in case he somehow started to come back ‘on’, I had some of my equipment monitoring him and not the town – heart rate, brain activity, and a few temperature sensors stuck under the soft elastic bandages I’d wrapped both of his arms in. Turns out the tattoos weren’t full sleeves after all, they only went from mid-bicep to just a little over halfway down his forearms. But if they started to heat up again, I’d know.
So I sat there and watched him, and tried not to think about my friend Al and his tattoos, and tried not to think about what Al had done to me the last time I’d seen him, and really tried not to think about how I was going to explain that to Cecil. I knew I’d have to, sooner rather than later – whether he knows it or not, he’s living with me now, and the house only has one bedroom and one bed. Either I tell him or he’s going to think it’s something else, something to do with him. I don’t want that. It’s just that…well, it’s embarrassing.
To stop thinking about just how embarrassing it was going to be, I decided to run some tests. I started running Carlsberg’s DNA from the cheek swab I’d taken and setting up to compare it to – and hopefully not find it in – samples I’d take from what he’d had in the backpack he’d brought out of Cecil’s apartment. Hope failed that test, but although the sick bastard had apparently gotten a little bit happy with the underwear he hadn’t gotten all the way happy. I tossed all but one pair of them in the washer on hot, and sealed the last pair up in case I needed them for evidence. Then I decided to find out exactly what the ceiling in the sound booth had been made out of, because the couple of times I’d seen it intact it had just looked like a regular insulated foam-tile dropped ceiling. Cecil was still absolutely covered in dust and whatever from the ceiling collapsing on him, so I had plenty of samples to work with right there.
I got a few samples, and then I decided that, while I was at it, I should try to make him more comfortable. His shoes were already off, so I unbuttoned his vest, took off his belt and his tie, and I was undoing the first few buttons of his shirt when I noticed one of the sensors spiking – the one monitoring his heart rate. I checked the temperature sensors, but they hadn’t changed – his brain activity, however, was going crazy. And that’s when I realized what was going on. Somehow he’d registered strange hands touching his skin and hair, and then he’d felt those hands start tugging at his clothes. And the drugs wouldn’t let him wake all the way up to find out who, or to fight back. He was panicking because he thought someone was…not taking ‘no’ for an answer.
I felt a rush of rage; Carlsberg was a dead man. I’d take care of that later, though. I sat down on the side of the bed and started talking to Cecil again, patting his cheek the way I had in the radio station earlier when I’d been trying to bring him around. I told him it was me, Carlos, and I told him where he was and what I’d been doing. The readings dropped a little and then went back up again; he couldn’t see me, so he probably wasn’t sure it actually was me. So I took a chance and picked up his arm, folding it across his stomach and then pulling the overlapping bandages apart just enough to let one stylized tattooed eye show. And I kept talking to him, and kept patting, and within a few seconds he breathed out an involuntary sigh and the jumping readings settled back down; I could almost feel him looking around the room, curious because he’d never been there before, identifying and categorizing everything. I stayed where I was for another couple of minutes, pulling up the blankets and tucking him in so he would stay warm, and then I kissed his forehead and told him I loved him too and made a show of going back to my chair and getting comfortable with a technical journal that I told him I’d been meaning to read – I’d actually been using it as a coaster, but he didn’t know that. He fell all the way asleep again a few minutes later according to the sensors, probably because I wasn’t doing anything interesting and he’d gotten bored enough watching me that the drugs were able to pull him back under.
Once I was sure he was out again I put the journal-coaster aside and got up to go back work, but first I pulled out my phone and called Teddy. “He woke up,” I told him as soon as he picked up. “No, not all the way, the drugs wouldn’t let him, but he apparently felt me loosening his clothes and panicked. Did Mr. Doesn’t-Take-No-For-An-Answer roofie him?” The answer I got made my jaw clench. “I don’t care, Teddy – I don’t care if all he did was stand there and look, which it’s pretty evident from Cecil’s reaction just now isn’t anywhere near all he did. So if you see that wannabe-rapist bastard hanging around anywhere, tell him I’m giving him a 24-hour head start – and that running to Desert Bluffs is not going to be far enough away to save him.”
Teddy said he’d pass that message along if he saw Carlsberg, and then he went back to the licensed-physician part of being a Night Vale bowling alley owner and I went back to monitoring the seismic array and running tests. I still wanted to find out exactly what had been in that ceiling…
Someone saying my name woke me; I’d fallen asleep in the chair by the bed somewhere around four a.m. while I was deciding how best to work out the sleeping arrangements over the next few days. Cecil was sitting up and had one hand holding his head. “I hate muscle relaxants,” he said. “I really, really hate them.”
I eased myself upright slowly, stretching out the kinks sleeping in the chair had given me and checked my watch, finding that it was about half-past seven in the morning. “Part of that headache may be the concussion.”
He started to shake his head, then stopped. “No, the drugs just make me feel limp all over, like overcooked spaghetti. And like I slept too long. The headache from the concussion isn’t helping, though.” He eyed the bandages on his arms, the little gap where one stylized tattooed eye was showing. “Thanks for that, by the way. And for the scientific rescue.”
I snorted and handed him a bottle of water, knowing he was bound to be thirsty. “It wasn’t all that scientific, really. I just climbed down into the sinkhole and worked my way into the building until I found you. It was the kitten that helped us get out, it led me right to the fire stairs.”
The kitten, who had been laying about six inches above the blankets for most of the night, rolled over and stretched and then wandered over to lick Cecil’s hand; he gave me the now half-empty water bottle back so he could scratch the kitten’s ears and it rolled back over again, waving its little paws in the air until he rubbed its furry belly. “You’re a very good kitty, a very good kitty,” he told it. “We’ll have to think of a name for you later, right now my head hurts too much.” He glanced sideways at me, a faint blush of pink staining his too-pale skin. “Um, crutches? I need to…well…”
“Teddy said no crutches. You’re not in a walking cast, just a temporary air cast,” I told him, and peeled myself the rest of the way out of the chair, stretching one more time. “Me helping you hop is out too, because he’s afraid your other leg may have a crack in it under all that bruising, you’re not supposed to put any weight on it either. So, well…we’ll have to do this the way we did it yesterday until I can think of something else.”
He blushed more, but he must have had to go pretty badly because he put his arms around my neck and held on when I went to lift him, and I could feel what he meant about the drugs leaving him limp – he still had that rubbery feeling in my arms, there was just a little more tension in it now. I took him into the bathroom and turned my back while he took care of business, but before he could pull his clothes back into place I said, “While you’re up, we really should get you clean, you know. I made a chair for the shower while you were asleep. And we can get the cast wet, it’s plastic, so that’s not going to be a problem.”
He hesitated. “I don’t have any clothes.”
“I got a t-shirt and a pair of sweat shorts out for you,” I told him. “You and I are close enough to the same size, they should only be a little bit too big.” I glanced over my shoulder. “You’d feel better if you were clean.”
His head was back in his hand. He sighed. “I know.”
I turned all the way around and lifted his chin. “Cecil, I…come on, let’s get you cleaned up, okay? You’re going to start running out of steam pretty quickly, I want you back in bed by then.”
He blinked at me, and I realized with a start that his eyes – which I’d always thought were brown, because they usually looked brown – were actually a dark reddish purple. “Okay.”
I got him into the shower and pulled the curtain, and he tossed out his clothes and the elastic bandages and started getting cleaned up. He was full of praise for the makeshift shower chair but otherwise didn’t say too much and I let it be, because dammit, I’d be embarrassed too. After a few minutes he stopped washing, though, and leaned over with his elbows on his knees, face in his hands. “I think…the steam is officially gone,” he said quietly.
I knew what it must have cost him to admit that, and it just about broke my heart. You wouldn’t guess it, not with the way he uses his interns to do everything under the sun for him, but Cecil is every bit as self-reliant as I am. And I decided that enough was enough. “Cecil,” I asked, “do you trust me?”
A pause. “I do.”
“Good, because I’m going to help you finish up,” I told him, and pulled back the curtain on one side so I was behind him. He was covered with bruises, and the line of his back was tense. I grabbed my shampoo and started washing his hair, and after a minute he started to relax a little. Then I tipped his head back to get all the soap rinsed out, and I took the washcloth and finished all the parts he hadn’t been able to get. I was as careful as I could be over the bruises, some of which were already dark and ugly. And then I shut off the water and wrapped a towel around him, using a second towel to dry his hair; I let him mostly dry himself off, and then I worked a pair of his now-clean underwear and the sweat shorts over his legs, letting him pull them the rest of the way up himself while I pulled him up a little from behind so he wouldn’t have to try to lift his hips, thereby putting pressure on his legs. My t-shirt was next, dull red and worn soft, and then I lifted him out of the shower and carried him back to bed. This time his face was buried in my neck, and I felt him snuffle a little. “You know,” he murmured, “If I didn’t have a broken leg and feel absolutely like crap? This would be one hell of a turn-on.”
I almost dropped him. He snuffled again, and again, and I realized that he was laughing – helplessly, probably painfully because of the head injury, but he was laughing. And I couldn’t help it, I laughed too. I put him back down on the bed, tipped his head up and kissed him. “You are something else,” I told him. “What I’m not sure, but something else. Now let me get your arms wrapped back up, and then you can comb your hair while I check your cast.”
“I can handle…”
“Teddy says you can’t, and so do I,” I interrupted him. “You need to rest, and the wreckage is still settling. You can’t rest if you’re watching that, nobody could.” I had always excelled at wrapping in my first-aid classes, so I had the first arm done before he could protest again and then moved to the other one. I kept my eyes on the bandage. “I had a friend, his name was Alfonso – Al. He had tattoos like these, only his went from the center of his chest almost all the way down to his wrists.”
There was a pause, then, “You know Al?”
Okay, I guess I should have seen that coming – impossible coincidences pretty much fall out of trees around here, of course Cecil knows Al. I finished clipping the bandage so it wouldn’t slip and looked up at him. “I grew up with him, he was my best friend. He left to go find his roots in South America not long after I went to the university to start racking up PhDs. The last time I saw him was when he came back for my mother’s funeral. He said it was the last time I’d ever see him, because he wasn’t ever coming back.”
“I’m sorry.” He frowned, a worry-line joining the pain-lines wrinkling his forehead. “You know that I know that I wasn’t actually in Europe, right?”
“I wasn’t sure,” I admitted, because I hadn’t been. “South America?”
He shrugged. “Some of the time. What was left of it, anyway.” He made a face. “I’m not sure how far ahead that was, but I know the tribe wasn’t as far ahead as that, or at least I don’t think they were. When I knew him, Al was about…fifty, maybe sixty?”
I nodded slowly. “So about twenty years difference at that one point, give or take. I have a theory about that, remind me and I’ll tell you about it later.” I got to work on his leg, propping it up and then deflating the air cast so I could dry things off and check the swelling. Everything looked good, so I replaced the gauze bandage over what was left of the gash and re-inflated the cast, and then I started tucking in the blankets around him again. “Can you ‘see’ anything now, with the bandages on? Because you were seeing through your shirt sleeves yesterday.”
He made the little humming noise that I’d figured out meant he was thinking, or concentrating on something. “No – well, yes, sort of, but no, not like I could if they were uncovered.”
“Good.” I moved back up the bed and started putting a new bandage on the closed gash on his head. “Teddy will probably be here soon to check on you, I’ll go make us all some breakfast then.”
He frowned. “I’ll be fine…”
“You are not getting out of my sight – or someone’s sight that I trust – for a long, long time,” I told him. “You scared the living hell out of me, Cecil.”
This time he was the one who lifted my chin so he could look me in the eye; he was still frowning. “I’m not going anywhere, Carlos.”
I don’t know why my vision suddenly got blurry, I really don’t. I touched the bandage I’d just put on. “Yesterday you almost did. Just…give me a little time to calm down, okay? I don’t do a whole lot of scientific rescuing – in fact, this was my first.”
My god, he’s stunning when he smiles. And if the twinkle in his eyes was still more purple than brown…well, it’s not like I care. “I was your first? Really?”
“You…!” I kissed him to make him stop laughing. “You’re awful! Less than a day ago I very dramatically saved your life, and now you’re making fun of me. Yes, Cecil, you were my first. Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” He pulled my head down and kissed me back. “You were my first too, you know.”
“And I’d better be your last,” I mock-warned him, breaking off the kissing before both of us started wanting to go somewhere we couldn’t. “Oh, by the way, we’re living together now.”
“I guessed that, since my apartment’s at the bottom of a sinkhole and the radio station is on top of it.” He started to raised one eyebrow, winced, and raised the other one instead. “And yet I have underwear here, my own underwear.”
I sighed. I’d really hoped he wouldn’t notice that just yet. “You have your red glasses, too. And the red tie that goes with them, and a few other things.”
I’d expected him to get upset, after what had happened earlier, but instead his jaw set. “Was the man I saw climbing up out of the hole Steve Carlsberg?”
Hmm, this time the glint in his eyes was more reddish, and it definitely wasn’t amusement. Interesting. “Yes, and if you’d still been looking, you would have seen me almost toss him back into the hole right after he climbed out,” I answered. “You really want to talk about this now? Because it’s taken care of, really. He won’t get near you again, I promise.”
Because he was still so pale, the embarrassed flush that swept over his face was really dramatic. “Oh god, Teddy told you.”
“Actually, I figured it out myself,” I corrected. “You had…well, a reaction to me trying to make you comfortable last night. I made Teddy confirm my suspicions, though – and I told him to tell Carlsberg that he had a 24-hour head start before I came after him. Teddy said he’d pass that along.”
Cecil snorted, which made him wince again. “I’m sure he’ll pass it along to someone, but that someone won’t be Steve – Steve won’t get within a hundred feet of Teddy if he can help it, he’s not that much of an idiot.” I must have looked curious. “Teddy is my cousin. Sort of.”
“Oh, okay, that makes sense.” I wasn’t touching the ‘sort of’, not today anyway. I ran my fingers through his hair, rubbing his scalp, making him relax again. “Well, I doubt the guy will come around again anyway, and if he does I’ll use him for a science experiment. I’ll run some tests on him, you can watch.”
“You say the sweetest things.” We stayed like that for a few minutes, and then someone knocked on the door. Cecil tugged back one of the bandages and sighed. “It’s Teddy, he’s alone. And for some reason he’s got the microphone from the station with him.”
I turned his head so he could see the security monitor which clearly showed the front porch and the door and Teddy with the microphone. “Yes, I know.” I got up, then leaned back over and kissed his forehead before I went to let Teddy in.
Teddy wouldn’t talk about the microphone when he came in, just sat it on the dresser and said he’d explain later. So Carlos went to make everyone some breakfast while Teddy checked both of Cecil’s legs and then checked his concussion. “How’s the headache?”
Cecil gave him a look. “If I say it’s fine, will it get me out of being doped up again? Because I don’t need it, you know I don’t need it.”
“Even if you weren’t lying about the headache, for all intents and purposes you have two broken legs,” Teddy told him. “Yes, you do need it. If you were in the hospital…”
“I’d probably be missing a kidney by now.”
Teddy rolled his eyes. “Yes, but they’d also have you pumped so full of drugs you wouldn’t know up from down. I’m just giving you enough so that you won’t be in pain every time you move and you won’t scare the hell out of Carlos again by having a flashback.” He saw the younger man’s stubborn resolve wavering. “Cecil, it’s just for a few days, at most a week – mainly until the aftershocks stop and your bones start to knit, okay? I know you don’t like it, I wouldn’t like it…”
“I wouldn’t either!” came Carlos’s voice from the kitchen. “I’d hate it!”
“…But it’s necessary if you want to heal up right,” Teddy finished, managing not to roll his eyes a second time. Carlos was apparently every bit as sarcastic as Cecil was, joy. He set the needle aside, though. “We’ll wait until you’ve had breakfast. Speaking of which, when was the last time you ate?”
The fact that Cecil had to think about it said volumes. “Um, yesterday morning? I was sleeping in, Station Management woke me up screeching in the intercom and said they wanted me on the radio by one. I had coffee and…well, and more coffee.” He fended off the dawning scold with a wave of his hand. “I was planning to call Carlos once the news was done and see if he wanted to have a late lunch. It’s not my fault the station collapsed before that could happen.”
Teddy sighed. “True. Coffee’s not food, though, so I’m guessing you haven’t actually eaten since the day before yesterday. Am I right?”
Cecil huffed at him. “You make it sound like I skip meals all the time, and you know I don’t.”
“I’m trying to figure out how far down in the toilet your blood sugar probably is,” Teddy corrected him. “And you just told me it’s in the sewer instead and headed out to sea.” Carlos came back at that point, balancing three plates full of scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage. “Eat slowly,” Teddy warned. “Your stomach may need some time to remember what it’s supposed to be doing.”
“Well I doubt yours does, so eat,” Carlos ordered. “I know for a fact you were up all night.”
“You know that because you were too,” Teddy shot back, but he dug in. “Hey, you can actually cook.”
“Of course I can, it’s chemistry – that, and my mother insisted I learn, she said it was a ‘necessary life-skill’.” He shrugged, digging into his own plate. “So, are we changing the air cast out for a permanent one?”
“Nope.” Teddy ate some sausage. “That was a really bad break, it’ll be a while before it’s safe for him to put any weight on it, so we’ll stick with the air cast for now. And I still don’t think the other leg is broken, just bruised really badly, but it’s still pretty bad. We’ll put something under his knee to take the pressure off the joint, and in a day or two I’ll see what I can do to fix it. Until then, though…”
Cecil scowled. “You know, Carlos is going to get tired of carrying me everywhere like some damsel in distress.”
Teddy almost snorted eggs out his nose, but Carlos just smiled and shook his head. “I would never think of you like that. And I don’t mind, you’re just subbing in for my weight bench right now. Although I may have to compensate somehow, because you’re not as heavy as the set I usually lift.”
“Flatterer.”
“No, it’s true, you’re not – I bench around 200 pounds on a good day. Have to keep my strength built up for…scientific rescuing.”
Cecil smirked and batted his eyelashes at him and went back to eating, and Teddy smiled to himself. It was good to see his cousin happy, it really was, even if it had taken a near-death experience followed by a fucking earthquake to get a certain stubborn scientist to give in to his feelings. He decided that he’d wait until after he’d drugged Cecil back into pain-free sleep again to tell Carlos what was going on with the radio station in Desert Bluffs. They were going to have to do something about it, yes – or at least, Cecil was – but that could wait until tomorrow.
CECIL: Good Morning, Night Vale! It’s two days after the sinkhole took a big chunk out of the center of town, and we’re back on the air!
CARLOS: And Cecil isn’t responsible for anything he says right now, because he’s drugged all the way up to his eyebrows.
CECIL: That was my wonderful partner Carlos, everyone, who rescued me from the wreckage of the radio station. He’s helping me do the news today.
CARLOS: He’s also going to take that microphone away from you in exactly fifteen minutes, so the news is going to be brief today. Night Vale, Cecil was pretty badly hurt when the station collapsed and he’s completely doped up with painkillers, so whoever keeps dropping breaking-news dispatches off in front of the house needs to stop or I’m booby-trapping the front porch so it will electrocute you. I’m a scientist, I can do things like that.
CECIL: I want to thank Old Lady Josie who lives out by the car-lot for stopping by the house yesterday with cookies. They were very good and it was a really nice thing for her to do. One of the angels who lives with her even came along for the visit, which was nice too. Everybody is just really, really nice lately. Except for the people at the radio station in Desert Bluffs, who tried to boost their signal to make it overpower ours while we were off the air. They were trying to take over our little slice of the airwaves, yes they were.
CARLOS: Which is why Cecil is on the radio today, even though he’s still in bed and drugged all the way up his eyebrows.
CECIL: Hey, we can’t let Desert Bluffs get one over on us like that, can we? So anyway, we’re on the air, and as soon as the news is done we’ll have a few hours of debris-clearing and construction sounds from the sinkhole area – which might not be entirely safe for work, folks, but I’m sure under the circumstances everyone’s employers will be understanding. In other news…<papers rustling> the Night Vale Public Library appears to be abandoned – all the doors and windows are open, and nothing is moving inside. This is, of course, a trick by the librarians to try to get people to come in, and everyone should avoid going into the library or even getting too close to the building at all until they’ve given up. <more rustling> The tiny and extremely warlike and EVIL civilization which has been existing under the Lane 5 pin retrieval in the bowling alley has been beaten back for another ten or twenty years by means of a fire hose. The truly reprehensible miniature people had developed surface-to-air missiles and were suspected of having nuclear weapons as well, and the suggestion that we should pour concrete down the hole after them to suffocate them out of their miserable existence is being taken under serious consideration…
CARLOS: Only by Cecil. We do have plans to build a concrete-block wall behind the pin retrieval, though, sealing the cave mouth off so they can’t get back up to us that way. Teddy Williams, who runs the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, says that the threat of being blown up by miniature nukes is scaring some customers away and attracting others he’d rather not have. And no, suggestions that he should turn Lane 5 into a live-action shooting gallery did not come from the local chapter of the NRA – I’m a member, I should know.
CECIL: You’re a member of the NRA?
CARLOS: They invited me – Scott Thomas and the other guys, they’re all members. I’m working on making people bulletproof for them. Some of them were a little bit worried about truth-in-advertising on the bumper stickers – litigation-happy society and all that.
CECIL: Oh…good idea! We’ll do a follow-up on that later. <papers rustling> The Sheriff’s Secret Police tried to issue a statement saying that the sinkhole didn’t exist and everyone needed to stop pretending it did, but the officers they sent out to prove it fell into the sinkhole and the statement was quietly retracted. Similarly, the City Council’s office tried to declare sinkholes illegal, and the courthouse was promptly hit by a particularly bad earth-tremor which dropped it exactly halfway into the ground. <aside> Would that also be a sinkhole? Since it didn’t go all the way down?
CARLOS: I’ll look it up later, but I’m not sure there’s a limit to how deep something has to be in order to be declared a sinkhole.
CECIL: Oh good, more to follow up on – that makes the news more interesting, you know, like a continuing story. Now let’s see…<rustling> oh, here we go. The City Council has taken a random mass vacation, effective immediately, and they will be back “when Mother Nature doesn’t hate them anymore.” I don’t have a statement from Mother Nature at the moment, but judging by the mini-sinkhole from earlier the Council might be out of town for a while. And on the heels of that announcement, <rustling> an unofficial election for a new mayor and city council has been announced. Hiram McDaniels, the Five-Headed Dragon, is out of jail and already campaigning vigorously in the streets, and the Old Woman Without A Face has been leaving flyers on people’s refrigerators listing her campaign points – they’re really nice flyers too, very well done.
FEMALE VOICE (distant): Thank you!
CECIL: Is she in our kitchen? <raises his voice, away from mic> Please don’t eat all the cookies!
OWWAF (closer, but still distant): Are you calling me fat?
CECIL: <huffs> No, they’re just really good cookies – if I could get out of bed by myself, I’d have eaten most of them already.
OWWAF: No crutches?
Carlos (calling back): Air cast! He’s not supposed to walk on it. Or put weight on his other leg.
OWWAF: That really sucks. I’m sorry, Cecil. I left you four cookies, two for you and two for Carlos. They are really good, I’ll have to go visit Old Woman Josie’s house and see if I can get her recipe. Maybe I should include baking in my campaign, I know Hiram can’t cook.
CECIL: Did she…yes, it sounds like she’s gone again. See what I mean about everyone being really nice lately, though? And, in the interest of fairness, I’ll see if we can get a statement from Hiram McDaniels later about the cooking thing. <papers rustling> Let’s see, we’ve covered that, and that…hmm, the Sheriff’s Secret Police issued a warning against looking up and seeing black helicopters. I had a thought about that earlier, listeners: If you’re trying to hide mysterious and vaguely threatening government agency helicopters, why would you paint them black? Shouldn’t they be blue, like the sky? Maybe with some white puffy clouds painted on the sides?
CARLOS: That was definitely the drugs talking.
CECIL: But it only makes sense! Black helicopters for night, blue and white for day. Or if that would be too expensive, maybe…maybe they could paint half of a helicopter black and the other half blue with clouds, then they could just fly one way during the day and the other way at night to stay hidden. Right? I’m right, I know I am.
CARLOS: But then what would they do when it’s raining?
CECIL: Oh, you’re right…but this is the desert, it doesn’t rain that often. So on a rare rainy day they’d just…stay home!
CARLOS: Sure, why not. Probably shouldn’t be flying helicopters in the rain anyway, that could be dangerous. I think that would make a good segue into the weather, don’t you, Cecil?
CECIL: You’re right, it would. All right, everyone – and now, the weather.
<the weather plays>
CARLOS: <quietly> I think that’s it for the weather. And for Cecil too – he’s asleep again, so that’s also it for the news. He’ll be back on the air tomorrow at this same time, and in the meantime you can listen to the sinkhole. Or not, if profanity bothers you – it’s really hot today and the construction people aren’t having a whole lot of fun out there right now. And later tonight we’ll switch over to a program about the noises crickets make in the dark. So, even though it’s only fifteen minutes past noon…Good night, Night Vale. Good night.