The door creaked open, and Liv almost sobbed with relief. The shed wasn’t some wildly colored, strobe-lit phantasmagoria in the style of Oliver! The ten-foot-square storage space had been transformed, with surprising competence, into a functional work shed, lined with pegboards from which hung assorted tools and wedged with tables upon which sat the machines driving the Flemings to financial ruin. Atop other tables, far more ominously, sat other objects covered by dusty sheets.
Lee grimaced an apology while he finished taking a note. Not in a journal, but rather a copy of Resurrection Update, the autographed one his students had gifted him, covered with sawdust. Its presence seemed both perverse and natural. Her father found poetry everywhere; it made sense he’d find it inside his own madness.
He shut the book and looked up. It seemed that Lee Fleming, emcee of a hundred events, practiced hand shaker, had forgotten the basics of interaction. His hands tried his skinny hips, the tabletop, and other places to settle, before he crossed his arms, then uncrossed them. His grin, too toothy now inside his gaunt face, was just as faltering. Liv, though, found faith in it. Her father was looking at her and Doug, really looking, like he hadn’t at anyone since going missing. Hope filled Liv’s chest, so much of it she couldn’t speak. Doug, though—today, no one could stop Doug.
“How you doing, Lee?” Doug asked.
“I…”
“Building stuff?”
“Well…”
“Looks like you’re really into it.”
“I am. I suppose I am.”
Keep him talking, Liv prayed.
“We got a coat and shoes for you.”
“Oh?”
“Although it’s pretty warm in here.”
“Yes.”
“School’s not the same,” Doug said. “Kids miss you.”
“Oh. That’s nice. That’s nice to hear.”
“Other than that, you’re not missing much. Same old junk.”
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“Anyway, I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“No.”
“Guess I kind of missed you, too.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re supposed to say, ‘Doug, life has been meaningless without you.’”
Lee’s upper lip twitched—the start of a real smile. Liv leaned forward, desperate to see it completed.
“You’ve been…” Lee searched. “Getting along?”
Doug shrugged. “I guess. Restocking from the New Year’s blitz.”
Lee gazed at the ceiling, as if he could see the sky, as well as things up there that might need scaring off with explosions. Doug took the opportunity to glance at Liv, and the sharp cunning of his look almost made her sob in gratitude. He gave her a quick nod; he was going for it.
“So, what are you making?”
Lee looked back down, blinked, and then, in a moment Liv knew she’d never forget, a warmth lit up his eyes, and he grinned like he used to whenever he saw Liv and Doug, then lifted a hand nicked with cuts and beckoned them closer, as in years past he’d done to show off costume designs or set blueprints. They crowded close, the sharp resin of sawn wood shooting up their nostrils, the blunt tang of fresh metal giving them headaches. Liv was so close to her father that their arms were touching. She had to force herself not to latch on like a little girl.
It was as if he hadn’t realized how eager he was to share his activities. He introduced the machines like a crowd of new friends—lathe, grinder, drill, welder, table saw—and then ripped the sheets from the concealed objects and jabbered about his creations like they were model trains instead of deadly monsters of metal. He’d always been happiest, Liv recalled, when he was working.
They were traps, Lee said, to catch the skinners when they came back, which they would, though don’t be scared—even though skinners were foxy, no way they’d get past six different kinds of traps. Liv was struck speechless by the long, lubricated teeth of Amputator and the sanded fulcrum and lever of Hangman’s Noose. Back then, the other four traps were in fledgling stages, but already she could sense their menace.
She didn’t have to feign interest; she only had to tamp down her dread. Her dad had made no positive progress since Oliver! He’d spiraled further into obsession. Doug, she thought, was laying it on too thick with his wows and questions, until an uneasy realization settled over her. Doug wasn’t faking. He really thought this stuff was amazing. Later, she’d almost believe she’d seen him crumple his Monk Block Corn Maze plans right there in favor of this wilder infatuation.
Doug lowered his voice and asked the question that took the most courage to ask.
“What did they do to you up there?”
Aggie had shielded Liv from Lee’s detailed chronicle, and until that instant Liv had found it belittling. Not now. She couldn’t handle knowing, she abruptly knew it, and she mumbled some excuse before bolting from the dim, crowded space into the atomic-blast light of a winter’s day. Her father’s confessional tones chased her until she made it to the front yard, where she watched her exhalations turn into unidentified flying objects.
Doug ambled up twenty minutes later, his silence saying everything Liv needed to know about her dad’s suffering. Doug was a blurter by trade; his sudden sensitivity to her feelings riled her.
“You don’t actually believe him, do you?” she demanded.
Doug picked up his bike, leaving a shadow version of it imprinted in the snow. Liv felt like a shadow version of herself, paper-thin next to a friend newly heavied by her father’s report. Doug slung his leg over the crossbar and gave her a maddeningly gentle look.
“How come you’re so sure it’s not true?” he asked.
How naive could you be? Still, she felt reproached, and by the April thaw, all six traps were built, installed, and benefitting from Lee’s regular improvements, which he made with a paranoid exactitude that he took pains to ingrain in them—now that he’d begun to talk to Liv and Doug, he wouldn’t stop. Put the prevailing wind at the trap’s back, Liv. Use existing terrain as cover, Doug. Let’s catch some critters and taxidermy their feet, then run them over the area so it looks natural. Doug repeated each tip softly; Lee took notes in Resurrection Update; Liv wondered how any of this could possibly end well.
It couldn’t: Lee next shifted to weaponry. He explained that it was impossible to know how many skinners would be sent to reclaim him. The craft he’d been taken aboard had carried maybe a dozen, but there could be other ships, even a mothership. Doug, eager to capitalize on his knowledge of explodables, suggested grenades, maybe dynamite, but Lee nixed them. Skinners would smell the gunpowder. Like the traps, the weapons had to be built from raw elements.
Weapons, Lee lectured, historically instilled fear in enemies on sight, as seen in the illustrated Encyclopedia of Arms he’d checked out from the library. Gold leaf, inlaid silver, and intricate reliefs were far outside his artisan ability; even getting components to be symmetrical was difficult. Yet it was this crudeness that instilled his armaments with a berserker’s gap-toothed, punch-drunk intimidation. Within five weeks of bruising workdays, Lee fashioned over twenty weapons, all benighted with names to further gird them with power.