Nothing Happens in Sommerville (Part Four)

(Happy Fiction Friday! Sorry it's been a minute, but Sommerville is back up & running! I hope you're enjoying the story so far!)

Bennet slowly walked around the wall surrounding Sommerville. Every now and then he would have to put down one of the shadowy shapes that lurched forward, but for the most part, his day was shaping up to be as uneventful as always. Thunder rumbled in the distance as the approaching storm slowly crept towards them, still too far away to be a real concern yet.

"Haynes," Willen's voice broke the monotonous screaming of the wind. "I think—" crackle "—want you to come look—" crackle "—urgent—"

Bennet tapped his earpiece and sighed, "The comms are going out again, Willen." He winced at the eruption of loud static before he could make out his comrade's voice again.

"—uck it, just get to the East Gate. Now!"

His frantic tone made Bennet’s heart race. In the Before times, Willen was a Major General in the Marines. Nothing ever phased that man, at least during all the times Bennet had worked with him. He knew how to stay calm in a high-stress environment, while also knowing how to keep his mouth shut. It’s why Tye had insisted Willen work on the wall protecting Sommerville. Willen never betrayed his thoughts and showed about as much emotion as a rock.

So to hear him expressing actual concern for once meant something was really wrong.

Impatience and worry filled Bennet’s senses as he carefully made his way to the opposite side of the wall. It was taking all of his self-control not to break into a run, but he knew better than that. Instead, Bennet stayed as close to the dust-covered dome as he could while taking slow, deliberate steps to avoid the more delicate pieces of the wall. They had tried to replace or mark the most hazardous areas as well as they could, but years against the harsh elements had taken a toll on the thick, metal structure.

Once, Bennet had watched a piece of the wall crumble right under a Wall Watcher. He and the two others who witnessed it could only stand there in horror as the man was there one moment, and gone the next.

When Bennet broke the news to Tye, the leader of Sommerville hadn't even flinched. Just calmly instructed the other Watchers to replace as much of the damaged wall with stone and spare metal that they could, and to section off the rest. Then he’d made Bennet come with him as they told the man’s family that their son had been transferred to a different safe haven to help with a crisis there. Tye had kept emphasizing how urgent it had been and that there hadn’t been any time for good-byes.

“Not all of the other compounds are as secure as Sommerville,” he had said with a politician’s smile.

The lie had been flimsy at best, and yet the family had believed it. Apparently, no one could imagine their leaders hiding information from them, not in these times. So, Bennet and Tye had just. . . kept lying.

It had been years since that happened, and Bennet couldn't remember the man's name now. He hadn't known him well, and none of the other Watchers nor Tye ever spoke of him. But Bennet always remembered the sound of the man’s screams whenever he looked over the edge too long.

He pushed the past away when he came upon a suited, gas-masked figure that was crouched along the wall. He sped up as much as he dared before joining Willen in a kneel before the dome.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

He was met with the cold, reflective stare of his own masked face as Willen turned his head to look at him. Despite how many years they'd donned this uniform, Bennet didn't think he would ever get used to the eerie, eyeless gaze of the gas mask.

Willen's sigh was loud enough for Bennet to hear without the comms. "Look."

He followed where Willen's finger was pointing and felt his stomach drop. There, just barely visible through the grime and smog and soot caking the glass dome, but still entirely too real, was a long, thin crack.

Bennet blinked and rubbed the goggles of his mask, knowing it was a foolish attempt to erase what was there. But the longer he stared at it, the more the sinking knowledge of what that one measly crack meant weighed on him.

"If there's a crack here," Willen started, reading his mind.

"Then there could be more," Bennet whispered.

Willen was quiet for a long moment before he turned his gaze toward Bennet. “What do we do?”

Bennet stared hopelessly at the crack and shook his head. “I don’t. . . I don’t know.”

The wind howled around them as they both fell silent, each man coming to grips with what they were looking at. Bennet dug his gloved fingers into his thigh at a vision of the dome shattering and allowing the toxic darkness of the outside world in. He could see Sommerville falling apart under the suffocating gases and oozing rains that fell from the sky. Bodies of people he knew—people he loved—ripped to bloody shreds at the hands of those creatures that roamed the earth.

Mallory and their unborn child—

The thought was too horrible to bear. He took a shaky breath and tried to refocus on what he needed to do. Only, he didn’t know what to do because there wasn’t a protocol for this. A crack in the dome wasn’t something anyone had imagined! If someone had thought there was a chance of the dome breaking, then Tye would have made a plan for it.

Tye. He needed to tell Tye, right? That’s probably what he should do. Trust his friend would handle it while he stayed here, trapped on the wall, when all he wanted was to go home to his wife and stop pretending. Bennet was so tired of pretending that everything was perfect. The truth was that everything was wrong, and he hated it. He hated this job, hated what his life had become, hated Sommerville itself!

“Sawyer’s supposed to cover this area, right?”

Willen’s question jolted Bennet from his thoughts. He jerked his gaze away from the crack and stared at him with confusion. “What?”

“The Eastern Wall?” Willen asked impatiently. He was already standing again and tapped his foot while waiting for Bennet to answer. “You had north and west, I had south. Who was supposed to be watching east?”

“Uh Sawyer, I think,” Bennet said, then repeated more confidently, “Yeah, him. Saw his name on the schedule this morning.”

Willen grumbled a swear under his breath. “Figures. This is the third time this week he’s missed his shift. I thought you were going to talk to him!”

“I did,” Bennet protested as he rose to his feet. He winced at Willen’s sharp look. Despite the obstruction of the gas mask, he could picture the man’s angry scowl. “He’s going through a hard time right now. I mean, Violet died right in front of him and—”

“And nothing!” Willen interrupted. “That happened months ago! For God’s sake, it was a mask malfunction! She had a relatively peaceful death compared to all the other options out here!”

“I know that, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s too depressed to do his job,” Bennet snapped. “Not right now, anyway.”

“Then report him.”

Blood drained from Bennet’s face as he stared at Willen in cold shock. “What?”

“Report him,” he repeated more sternly. “Tell Tye that Sawyer can’t do his job anymore.” Willen stepped forward and gestured at the crack. “Today it’s this. Tomorrow, it could be letting one of those things get in or worse. If I hadn’t decided to check this area, we would never have known about the crack. Sawyer probably would have lied and said he secured the area, then got everyone killed. Something has to be done. You have to tell Tye.” 

Bennet shook his head frantically. “No, no, no, I’m not doing that.”

“Bennet.”

“You realize what you’re asking of me, right? Right? What’ll happen? I can’t, I can’t do it. Just give me more time to talk to him, I’ll figure something else out!”

He wished he could see Willen's face as his friend quietly stared at him for a long, tense moment. Yes, Sawyer had messed up more times than he could count, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be reported. Surely some part of Willen knew that. Just when he started to hope Willen would concur, the gas mask moved in a very small shake of disagreement.

“Sawyer is no longer useful to Sommerville. Report him to Tye.” He folded his arms over his chest and stared right at Bennet. “Or else I will.”

The unspoken threat was apparent in his tone. Tye would question why he was hearing about insubordination on the wall from Willen and not Bennet. And while Willen’s fierce loyalty to keeping Sommerville safe was usually a good thing, in this instance, it would only spell trouble for Bennet.

As much as it felt like signing off on an execution, he relented with a tight nod. Bennet reasoned that it was all for the best. The crack really couldn’t be overlooked and, if he thought about it, he and Sawyer weren’t that close. In a few months, he’d go the same route as all the other Wall Watchers who died or vanished and be remembered as nothing more than a nameless face obscured by a gas mask.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll report him,” Bennet said quietly. “Can you handle things here until the shift change?”

“It’s only a few more minutes, I’ll be fine.” Willen’s posture softened and he gave Bennet’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I know it sucks, but you’re doing the right thing. You’re just keeping everyone safe. You’re keeping your family safe.” 

Bennet kept repeating Willen’s words over and over to himself the entire time it took him to leave the wall and get to Tye’s office.