Chapter 59: 59 Empty Spaces, Part Three

In the morning there were two new rules.

The first one, entirely reasonable, was that everyone had to shower at least once a week. Someone would have to make Neo follow that rule, and Tsuyoshi had the sinking feeling it might be him. Neo was a creep but even he didn't deserve to be zapped.

The second banned digging holes.

"They want to stop us burying the bodies," Zelko said. He curled his arm around Tsuyoshi's waist and leaned his body against Tsuyoshi's side. Tsuyoshi let himself be held.

"That's what it looks like."

"I don't think the doc will be happy about it."

Tsuyoshi looked back at the hospital, as if that would be enough to summon her. "If she ever gets out of bed."

Was she angry about the night before? Tsuyoshi wasn't, and he wasn't sure why. Too tired, maybe, after spending so many days looking at the dead.

He'd spent the day before trying not to see movement out of the corner of his eye, the things that most people couldn't see. All day long Milo, with his constant droning voice, made fun of Zelko for saying he saw something move. Zelko's face went flat with anger, until Tsuyoshi put a hand over his and said, "I saw it, too." Soft enough so only he and Zelko could hear it.

His own temper had dug deep, that angry curiosity burying itself into his chest as he watched Ibrahim talk gently to Dr Yeoh's son, while the doctor watched from fifty metres away, arms crossed, not even trying to get close enough to talk.

He didn't get it. He didn't even like his uncle Tim, most of the time, constantly on the edge from Tim's nagging about why couldn't he be a normal kid, why was he such a disappointment, and yet... And yet, even so, couldn't stop thinking that if Tim was here at least he'd be right up in Tsuyoshi's face, nagging, not standing an Olympic swimming pool's length away like he carried some kind of contagious disease. Nothing she'd said that night made it make any more sense. Lousy drunk.

At least Zelko had waited for him in the showers. Not that they touched, of course. Zapville ruined even that. The water never got hotter than lukewarm. But they washed as much of the day away as they could, the outer layers of anger and fear running down the drain with all the unspecified muck. All they had left was this strange, sexless comfort.

In bed, in the dark, Zelko put his hand on Tsuyoshi's face and didn't speak.

They didn't have a lot to say in the morning, either.

"Happy birthday, Zelko," Tsuyoshi said.

His words were the only gift he could offer.

*

They sorted everything into piles. The shoe pile was the largest, styles of shoes in ones or twos, every size from small to large. Some of them were in good shape but for the dust caked onto their sides, flowers and clouds of dirt and ash and who knew what else. Some were ragged or barely more than pieces – the fat tongue from a white sneaker, a low-heeled canvas office shoe separating from its soul.

The piles grew larger as the day progressed. Theoretically they were making progress. Tsuyoshi didn't feel like they'd done much of anything. Every larger vessel and small air craft still seemed filthy, tail fins blackened, insides still covered with unidentified muck.

You are reading story Sabotage Sequence at novel35.com

Tsuyoshi looked around at everyone else working.

Zelko, probably 20 metres away, smiled his big smile at Maria O'Connor and gestured with big hands. Tsuyoshi snorted. He was probably trying to show off about something. Maria blinked a lot at Zelko and pointed at one of the craft that lay there, relatively untouched. Zelko puffed himself up like a bird and then looked inside. Recoiled.

Tsuyoshi wanted to go up to him, hold him close, but who knew what things from the crash site had made their way onto their clothes, their hair. Better to be safe than sorry. Tsuyoshi looked down at his feet, immensely tired of being safe all the time.

For hours Ibrahim worked near him in silence, but at that moment he spoke up. "You seem to be greeting his attempts at flirtation with other people with a greater degree of equanimity than I expected."

Tsuyoshi looked over at Ibrahim. In spite of the dry cold air, Ibrahim's hair had begun to curl at the back of his head and even his normally clean off-white shirt was covered in grime and would have to be destroyed.

Tsuyoshi scoffed and looked back at the small plane they were clearing out, at its stained maroon carpet.

"It's his birthday. I'm letting him off easy today, not that it's any of your business," Tsuyoshi said.

"That seems eminently reasonable of you."

"What's it to you?"

Ibrahim moved even closer and breathed all over Tsuyoshi's ear, his voice a quiet rumble as he said, "Milo described you as an extremely jealous young man. I'm merely surprised."

Tsuyoshi stepped to the side. "I'm not... I'm the normal amount of..." He clenched a fist and breathed out a big, ugly breath. "We're not that close. Don't act like my relationship is something you get to talk about."

*

The bodies and parts of bodies were put in a pile, too. They didn't have body bags, so Milo covered them in extra sheets from the hospital linen closet while Mnemosyne Keating and that useless bastard Niall Turner argued about where to put them.

Niall got louder and louder and more obnoxious the more he got argued with.

Tsuyoshi wiped the hair off his face and yelled, "Just put them on ice!"

Niall turned around with his narrow-eyed glare, leaned his head back and looked down his nose at Tsuyoshi. "You're not a professional. You know nothing about how these things should be done."

Tsuyoshi rolled his eyes. "Whatever. I'm going to take a shower and you can keep wasting everyone's time."

You can find story with these keywords: Sabotage Sequence, Read Sabotage Sequence, Sabotage Sequence novel, Sabotage Sequence book, Sabotage Sequence story, Sabotage Sequence full, Sabotage Sequence Latest Chapter