Chapter 8

He was a moron; that was the only explanation that made any sense. How could he have been so incredibly stupid? Was he blind? Did he have no brain at all? The hammering of the criticisms in his head beat rapidly; keeping pace with the pounding of his feet on the tarmac. He was too late, he knew it already, yet he quickened his steps anyway, trying to put the negative thoughts aside, to convince himself that he might get there in time. In time for what, he didn’t know, but it wasn’t going to be good. The realisation had only just hit him, he’d been so busy since his recovery, so many jobs to do, he’d been out of the warehouse all day every day, just returning to close his eyes for a few hours each night, barely seeing anyone else, or anything they were doing, he just hadn’t had time to think; which had been their plan all along, he was sure of it now. As soon as he’d realised and started to put the pieces together, everything had slotted together so obviously; they’d been throwing jobs at him, keeping him so occupied that he couldn’t ask questions. They were intentionally keeping him away from the headquarters, making sure he didn’t see the real plans that were being put into action. He could be wrong, he hoped desperately that he was wrong, that he was being paranoid; but in his heart he knew he was right. The hard-core members, they were staying at the warehouse each day, on the pretence of doing some menial, unimportant jobs while he was out doing the important things. Why didn’t he see it sooner, all of the truly crazed members who didn’t have qualms about hurting people, even innocent people, the ones who seemed to enjoy causing destruction, had been working close to Nathan. Of course, plans were being made, they were doing something major and people like him, people who did have morals, were being shut out of the loop; that was never a good sign.

Joel’s feet slowed as he neared the warehouse. He could hear nothing over his laboured breaths. He shouldn’t have pushed himself so hard, he was no good to anyone in this shape; he would have to rest for a minute or two before investigating further.

Joel couldn’t wait longer than absolutely necessary to see what was going on in the warehouse. His breathing was still heavy as he crept closer to the building to try to sneak in on them before they had a chance to hide whatever they were up to. Slowly he inched towards the window, stretching up onto his toes to see over the ledge. The inside of the building appeared empty; maybe they were all in the back room. There was no way of seeing into the back room from outside, the windows having had blackout blinds secured to them many years before, which meant Joel had to enter the building if he wanted to know what was going on. Cautiously, Joel eased the door open and edged towards the back room. The door to the back room was closed as he expected, he leaned against it, pressing his ear to the wood in an attempt to hear what was going on inside. He could hear nothing, no voices, no movement, almost as if the room was entirely empty. Perhaps it was, he was learning nothing from outside the door and peering through the lock proved fruitless. He would just have to take his chances and go in, maybe he could claim he’d forgotten something. Mustering his courage Joel reached for the door handle and pushed open the door. The room was totally empty, not just empty of people, but empty of any signs that anyone had ever worked out of this room. There were no papers on the desk; the bin was completely empty; Joel could see nothing that could give him any indication as to where they had gone.

Anger at himself, Nathan and the world coursed through Joel, he balled his hands into fists, screaming as he rammed them again and again into the wall, his foot lashed out, kicking the bin across the room. His knuckles began to bleed, but the sight of the blood just made him angrier, grabbing a clock from the desk, he hurled it with all his strength at the window, the clock hit the reinforced window and smashed, leaving the window completely unscathed. Joel made one last aggressive move, charging the desk and overturning it, leaving the room looking like it had had a run in with a tornado. Finally, Joel slumped to the floor, his anger spent, leaving him with a feeling of complete hopelessness. There was nothing he could do to stop whatever they were doing, he didn’t even know where they had gone, so how could he do anything. As he gave in to the feeling of desperation Joel’s eyes gazed at the destruction he’d wreaked. In the midst of his despair he began worrying about what people would think when they got back and saw what he’d done. The incongruity of his thoughts amused him and he began to laugh. Then he began questioning his sanity, had he gone mad? Was he hysterical now? He laughed again at himself, reasoning that if he was able to think these things, he couldn’t have completely lost his mind, as an insane person could surely not know it. This didn’t comfort him much, he began to think it might be nice to be mad, then he wouldn’t have to worry about stopping immoral schemes, he could just live happily talking to the walls and believing he was a boiled egg. It was as his eyes tracked over the mess that had once been an office that he noticed something on the floor, he turned back to examine what he had seen, it was paper, from its positioning it must have slid down behind the desk at some point, lost to sight until he’d ripped the desk from its position. It was probably nothing, he told himself, it could have been there for years, who knows when the desk was last moved, though the lack of other rubbish in the space made him suspect that someone had been clearing it out down there fairly regularly. He reached for the paper and opened it. It was a list of addresses. It could mean anything, for all he knew it was Nathan’s Christmas card list. It was just wishful thinking to believe it could be anything more than that. Joel considered putting the paper back where he found it, but decided against it, it might not be anything, it might be rubbish, but at the moment it was the only lead he had. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do than to visit the addresses, if he didn’t check them out now he would never know, would he. However, the firs thing he should do was restore some order to the room, he didn’t want them to realise he was on to them if they came back tonight, for all he knew they’d been disappearing like this every day and getting back before him, pretending to have been in the warehouse working all day.

It took longer to make the room resemble its previous state than it had done to create the mess in the first place. One of the desk drawers required some attention, thankfully it wasn’t smashed and just needed some reassembly work. There was nothing he could do about the clock, he’d have to just hope they put it down to a thief or something. Maybe they would just assume someone had moved it.

Once the room was back to normal, Joel headed off to examine the addresses on the note, perhaps they would give him some idea about whatever nefarious scheme Nathan had been concocting.