The Fourteenth Post

I imagine it won't take much time for The Mist to want to track me down now that I've used their name. I know they've been reading this blog, and I know they've been waiting for me to utter their name so they can move in. Nothing yet, but we'll see. I don't know if they've found my hotel yet or not, but I'm in another McDonald's, and if nothing else, they'll never find me in here.

I'm making sure I move around a lot between places. I'm all the way down at the one in the Wal-Mart at 121st and Elm. We call this one the "South" Wal-Mart since we have two in Broken Arrow. The other one is fairly North.

When she told me their name, I didn't know what to think. After all, I had only become involved after meeting her, as long as you don't count that I've somehow always been involved but never knew it. As complicated as it seemed, it had a very simple explanation. Someone paid to have a local intelligence service keep the town safe. What they do behind the scenes is complicated, but the concept is simple. It explained the relative secrecy.

"But no one nows about it," she said. "It's not publicized. There's no web site. It's kept from city officials. The police aren't informed about anything. We have people working other jobs that act as informants, and only a few who are fully employed by the service. The informants deliver what they know that maybe should be kept quiet or off the books. The full time agents handle it."

"What does this have to do with me," I asked. I had to know. I was getting impatient all of a sudden. For some reason, I'd been dragged into this, and I wanted to know why.

"Because of your birth parents," she said. "They had you while in the service. They kept you in this town, and continually assigned someone to keep an eye on you your entire life. You've seen them; you just don't know it."

I had to think on this. Everyone sees hundreds of people every day, but we don't acknowledge most of them. People passing by in stores and on the street. We see them in cars, out windows, on sidewalks, getting the mail, and any number of other places and activities. With so many people in the world, we can't help but see and be seen by these same hundreds.

As I've been sitting in this McDonald's in this Wal-Mart, in fact, easily two or three hundred people have passed by the glass walls separating the McDonald's from the Wal-Mart entrance. I've even glanced up once or twice to see them. I won't remember any of their faces, though. None of them even begin to stand out to me.

Someone could check on me weekly and unless I notice them looking at me, I won't even remember them. It's the kind of idea that brings one's paranoia to a frenzy. How many people are watching me even now? Looking around, I'd never know.

But then, it hit me. Call me slow.

"So Chanda was an agent from another city? Colorado Springs," I asked.

"Yes," she said. "She and I broke the same rule. Never get involved. She knew why she was watching you, but she got involved with you anyway. I guess they figured I would be more responsible." She stopped and chuckled, fighting back a tear. She looked down, sighed and shook her head. "But I wasn't. In fact, I concealed the fact that I was dating you. I concealed the fact that we moved in together. I lied about most of your movements and mine too. Chanda spilled the beans about us to them, and when I learned you told her my name, I had to go in and tell them. That's when they told me..."

She shook her head again and then her body shook as she cried. I put my arms around her to comfort her. She leaned into my chest and we sat there for a long while. But this still didn't make sense to me. So they know. So what? So she gets reassigned or something. I didn't understand the problem. I asked her. She shook her head.

"I can't tell you," she said. "I don't want you to go through what I'm going through. I love you in the worst way possible, and I just can't do that to you."

She pulled away from me and walked back inside the apartment. I heard the bedroom door close and lock behind her. I was on the couch again. I still didn't understand. What was the big secret? What had affected her so dramatically that our relationship was so destroyed?


I was determined at this point to let this play out. If she wasn't going to tell that day, I hoped she might come around later. It had been three weeks before I got this far, but I continued hoping. She stopped eating altogether. I don't know if she slept or not. I couldn't get her out of her room.

After that last week, there was no more hoping that she'd tell me.