Puzzle Pieces II

Tremors: the Subtext #17

by Setcheti

 

Rating: FRT:MV,MP,SLC

Disclaimer:  I don’t own Tremors, because if I did the series would STILL BE ON THE AIR.

 

Nancy was just letting herself into the fence that surrounded Burt’s Graboid-proof area when she saw Tyler slowly mounting the steps that led up out of the underground bunker both men lived in.  She scowled.  “And just what do you think you’re doing?” she yelled over to him.  “You’re supposed to be using your…”  Then he cleared the stairs and she saw that he had a cane, just not the one he was supposed to have.  He grinned and waved hello at her, but Nancy didn’t stop scowling.  “That,” she said, pointing at the plain metal cane he was holding, “doesn’t have enough feet.  Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

 

Tyler’s grin didn’t so much as flicker.  “This cane has feet,” he informed her.  He pushed a button on the padded handle, and three metal legs unfolded spider-like from the main body of the cane and settled themselves firmly on the ground in a tripod formation, digging into the dirt just slightly with tiny, cleat-like points.  Tyler’s grin got even wider at her look of surprise.  “Ain’t this cool?  Malcolm made it for me so I could get in and out on my own.”

 

“I’m…impressed.”  She really was – and not just with the cane.  Tyler’s English cousin would have been novelty enough even if he’d been ordinary, but Malcolm Reed definitely wasn’t that.  He fixed things.  He built things.  He mimicked Tyler’s accent and took tourists out looking for El Blanco, talked guns and ammo and defenses with Burt like it was his favorite subject in the whole world, and patiently taught Larry how to shoot straight and fight dirty.  Not to mention that he was unfailingly polite to everyone.

 

Polite was as far as he ever went with any of them, though.  He didn’t volunteer information about himself, nor did he provide anything more than the vaguest of answers when asked a personal question.  But Malcolm’s wall of silence wasn’t perfect.  He’d slipped once and called  Jodi ‘Hoshi’.  Nancy, Jodi and Rosalita had speculated that ‘Hoshi’ might have been a girlfriend or even a wife, but further crumbs of information had revealed that Hoshi was someone Malcolm had worked with in whatever service it was he’d been in.  He spoke of her in the past tense.

 

Sometimes Nancy wondered just how much of Malcolm Reed’s life had been relegated to ‘past tense’ status.  Too many shadows in his eyes, too many secrets he had to keep bottled up inside himself, too many lies he had to keep telling.  Too much like Tyler and Burt, not to mention Larry, and that bothered her.  Perfection Valley’s stalwart protectors were, to be cliché, men set apart from the rest of the world.  They risked their lives every day, and in her opinion lived for doing it because they had nothing else to live for.

 

Except each other, of course.  When the flying thing, the Cyobactyl as Casey now called it, had almost killed Tyler, Burt had been decimated in a way Nancy had never seen him before; it had been as though all the life had just drained out of him.  Which was the same way Larry usually came back after leaving the valley to visit his parents and his brother Owen.  Or at least, from visiting what was left of Owen.

 

It was also the same way Malcolm looked sometimes when he was alone and thought nobody was watching him, especially if he was looking at Tyler and Burt together.  It wasn’t often, he was careful…but Nancy had lived around Burt Gummer for years, and she was good at seeing things she wasn’t supposed to in men who thought they had to keep it all to themselves.  And so she wondered a little more, privately, just who it was that Malcolm Reed had lost.

 

It wasn’t a question she could ask Tyler, though, so she admired the mechanical cane some more and then herded him to her car for a trip into town.  He could show off the cane to Jodi and Larry, and maybe even walk over to his garage to see his cousin and putter around for a little while.  Burt could pick Tyler up and take him home when the survivalist got back from his day’s patrol; Nancy planned to use Jodi’s radio to tell Burt that as soon as they got to the store.

 

She also planned to have Larry ask Malcolm to have dinner at her house tonight.  She might not be able to fix whatever had happened in his past, but she could certainly do something about the loneliness in his present.