He was still smiling at me.

You can’t touch me, that smile said. Can’t… can’t… can’t…

I couldn’t touch him.

I was lying down. My legs and arms were strapped tight.

“You followed us to that gas station,” I said, still in that strange, faraway voice. “You tracked my credit card receipts and you followed us.”

He laughed. “Credit card?” He shook his head. “Now that wouldn’t have been very efficient,” he said.

“You knew where we were? How?”

“You’re an investigative reporter. Figure it out.”

Like a dream.

“Why am I tied down?” I said.

“Oh, that,” he said. “You were resisting treatment.”

A birth defect, I thought, looking at his face. I’d imagined it was an accident-a horrible smashup where they couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It wasn’t. He had no scars. It was a malfunction in the manufacturing process. He’d come out this way.

“You were there at the gas station. I can’t figure it out,” I said.

“No?”

He put his hand by his ear and pantomimed something. We were playing charades.

Okay. Of course.

“My cell,” I said. “You used my cell phone.”

“I can’t comment. I mean, is this off the record? I wouldn’t want to be quoted or anything.”

“You triangulated my signal.”

They could do that now-satellites able to pinpoint your location to within six inches. You don’t have to be using your phone, either-it just has to be on. That’s how he was able to be right there. To follow us on the highway, then creep up to the gas station where we’d fallen asleep.

“You killed the clerk,” I said. “You cut out Dennis’s tongue.”

“Wow. When you put it like that, it sounds kind of mean.”

“Why? I was asleep. Why didn’t you just kill me?”

He giggled, said nothing.

“What do you want? What are you going to do with me?”

“I’m a plumber. Not a psych.”

“I’m not crazy.”

“Of course not.”

“I know about Kara Bolka. I know about the 499th medical battalion. I know what happened to Littleton Flats.”

“Hell of a story, ain’t it?”

“If I know, if I figured it out, someone else will. Don’t you people get that? It won’t be just me. You can’t put the water back in the bottle. It’s spilled. It’s all over the fucking floor.”

“That’s what plumbers do. We fix leaks.”

“I’m the leak,” I said. Needles and pins. There were needles and pins in my legs. “You’re fixing me.”

“Don’t worry. No bill for my services,” he said.

“What happened to your face?” I asked.

“My face? Why? What’s wrong with my face?”

“It isn’t there.”

“Oh, that. Took too many left hooks.”

“That’s not from boxing.”

“Okay, you got me. That’s what I tell women in bars.”

“Do they believe you?”

“Never.”

“What happened to your face?”

“I was in an accident.”

“There aren’t any scars.”

“It was an accident of birth.”

“Where? Where did the accident take place?”

“In a hospital.”

“Which hospital?” I asked, knowing what the answer would be even with my brain swimming in drugs, knowing the answer.

“This one. It wasn’t always a VA hospital.”

“No. It was a research hospital,” I said. “For the DOE. I know what kind of research, too. You were here. Another resident of Kara Bolka.”

“Kara Bolka,” he repeated. “Ahhh. That was just their nickname for it. The docs. A kind of a joke, really. We weren’t residents of Kara Bolka. We were its refugees. We lived like rats in its shadow. It was our bogey-place. It’s the story they told us to keep us scared.”

“Yes. But who was the bogeyman? Bogey-places have bogeymen.”

He smiled. “I think you met him.”

“Yeah. Someone else did too. Only she didn’t know it at the time. She was 3.”

“The little girl,” he whispered. “Bailey.”

Believe in fairy tales? Ever read one as an adult? Maybe you should. Even when you stop believing in goblins, they can scare the shit out of you.

Fairy tales can be read two ways.

“Bailey saw things the way a little girl would,” I said.

My voice sounded like radio static.

“Rescue workers in white hazard suits looked like something else. They looked like robots with no faces. The noise their radiation detectors made sounded like a language-clicking away at one another like dolphins. Doctors with surgical masks became aliens without mouths. Their MASH unit looked like a spaceship. She remembered a bright blue light-he had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank God for the we are not alone crowd, huh?”

“Why?”

“Why? Why what?”

“Why didn’t Bailey become another refugee? Why wasn’t she carted off like the others-like Benjy? Why wasn’t she locked away in Kara Bolka?”

“I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t born yet.”

“You were born after it happened. Here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your mother-what happened to her?”

“What do you think happened to her?” he said. “Neutrons and gamma rays happened to her. She was microwaved. I’m what came out of the oven.” He laughed again, but this time, it sounded thin and bitter.

“But you…?”

“What?”

“You’re doing their dirty work.”

“I am their dirty work. Besides, my job opportunities were kind of limited. Call me an honorary trustee who graduated to bigger and better things. And listen, you can’t beat government pensions.”

“Which part of the government? The DOE?”

“Let’s just say a part that doesn’t appear in their directory.”

“You became their hired killer. Their plumber. Even after what they did?”

“Learn your history. You know who the worst guards in the Nazi camps were? The most brutal? Not the Nazis. The kapos-the Jews given their very own rubber truncheons.”

“You weren’t being threatened with the gas chamber.”

“No, just with the top floor of this hospital. That was enough. Besides, they didn’t destroy Littleton Flats. The ghost in the machine did.”

“I’m not talking about Littleton Flats. I’m talking about what they did to Benjamin. What they did to you.”

That eerie falsetto. The Italians called it something else, of course.

Castrato.

“They mutilated you. When you were a baby. Just like they did to Benjamin. They castrated both of you.”

That smile again-you could see it for what it was now. Sneer first, and it won’t hurt as much when they sneer back.

“See this?” He pointed to his face. “Sure you do. Take a good look at it. They thought one of these was enough. They were protecting the gene pool. Hard to blame them.”

I thought his expression was saying something else. Look what they did to me. Look.

“How many survived?” I asked him. “Benjamin, your mom. How many made it out that day?”

“Sorry. I told you. I wasn’t born yet.”

“When the hospital turned VA, they gave them legends,” I said. “The children that survived. The names of MIA vets around the same age. They needed to account for them being wards of the VA-to absorb them into the system. Benjamin Washington became Benjamin Briscoe. He was lucky-he got to keep his first name. And there was one other survivor, wasn’t there? At least one. The one who wandered into Littleton three years ago and went to sleep in the town gazebo. That’s what Wren found out when he went to Washington-why he came back and began to ask questions about the flood.”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” he said. “Let me check the list and see if you’re on it. I’ll get back to you.”

“I made copies of everything I have. Everything I know. It’s with the right people.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, looking almost bored. “I don’t think the right people answer your calls.”

“A story’s a story.”

“And you’re a real storyteller. Only your stories aren’t real. They come with grain of salt included. Pound of salt, if we’re being honest. Of course, we’re not. Being honest, I mean. You didn’t make copies of anything. The right people? Even the National Enquirer won’t take your calls.”