Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  “Blond hair, good build, smart, little bit older, stable.”

  “He a doctor like you?”

  Jordan sucked in a snort. “Try: world renowned geologist. . . . And he’s rich.”

  “Hm.” He sounded like the same old Dad. “Well, what do you have on him?”

  Again Jordan snorted. “Obviously not enough.”

  But his father waited. Eating his pancakes, and occasionally looking up, until it was clear that his father would think less of him if he didn’t at least give it a shot. So he did. “I’m taller . . . and I still have all my hair.”

  His father laughed. A serious belly full of laughter, and it was worth the flirt in Jillian’s eyes when she looked at David just to hear his father laugh like that.

  He waited, eating more than he should have, until he hit his threshold of pain. Thinking that if he ate enough his father would spill the secrets of the universe. Or at least how to undo the innuendo and whispers that he had heard from their heads tucked together when he woke up on the plane.

  They had flown in first-class this trip. Time was less of the essence. Jillian having seen the connection at the same time Landerly had Mike plowing through back cases to discover Eddie and one other death in Lake James from five years ago. The fact that Eddie’s last name was Abellard and the date of death hadn’t escaped Landerly in the slightest. The phone had rung just moments after Jilly had spoken his cousin’s name. Those two scared him more and more. Another good reason to skip out and come visit his Dad.

  David had insinuated himself next to Jillian, and should have passed right out given his night in the dirt. But no, he swore it must have been the coffee Jordan had given him. Perked him right up like he’d slept all night. Damned coffee. And the next thing you know Jordan found himself dozing across the aisle while Jillian and David talked about all the things they could. Anything but the purpose of the trip. Anything but the fact that three scientists were on the next flight to Minnesota for the CDC.

  Despite the pancakes and the ugly turn of his thoughts, his father shared no more wisdom with him. Just a bear of a hug and hardly a word as Jordan said thank you for the breakfast and headed back to his hotel room. The one between Jillian’s and David’s.

  When he finally slid the key through the lock to his room and flipped on the lights he found Jillian curled up on his bed still asleep, but starting to blink at the light, so he slapped it off. The flutter in his chest betrayed him, happy at seeing her in his room again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect you in here.” He almost kicked himself for saying it.

  Her voice came out of the depths of sleep, “I just thought we’d set up the same. I can move if-”

  “No, stay put. It’s fine.”

  She sighed, and he recognized the sound as that of her falling back deeper asleep. The last thing he heard from her was a mumble about a ‘wake-up call’ and ‘another hour’.

  Becky had hugged her whole family and thanked them, and said she didn’t know when she’d be back, and folded herself into John Overton’s car.

  “So your sister freaked me out with her Oak-Ridge-radioactive-waste theories.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Becky didn’t know what to say to that.

  “That bit about the other spots with the frogs and were people sick? And was that why you couldn’t talk? . . .” He trailed off only to come back full force, this time looking at her instead of the road. Both of which she wished he wouldn’t do. “Did you tell her?”

  “No. She’s just that good.” Becky sighed and spoke to her hands twined together in her lap. “She’s really gifted, and she makes the rest of us look like idiots a lot of the time.”

  He nodded, and with a quick bite to her lip, she purposefully changed the subject. “So when your guy comes to get the frogs tomorrow, he needs to get other specimens from the UT lab. The American Birdwatcher’s Association has a North Georgia branch that contacted us. They have warblers migrating out of season and away from their usual nesting sites.”

  He didn’t ask, but she knew he didn’t see the connection yet, so she fed it to him. “I tested them with magnets. They rotate to them just like the frogs do.”

  She grabbed the door and the edge of her seat with white knuckles as he yanked the steering wheel to one side and peeled into a car dealership before slapping the gearshift into park. His stare was leaden. “You have other species from sites in Georgia?”

  She nodded.

  He might as well have had the word incredulous typed across his face. “And you’re only just now telling me?”

  She felt the starch sneak up her spine. She was giving him gifts and he was mad? But she didn’t fight back, just held some quiet dignity. “I’ve only known that I was your employee for about four hours. And my parents were around for most of it, so I didn’t think I should say anything in front of them.”

  His hands covered his face for a moment. “First, you aren’t my employee. We both work for the CDC and we both push our papers for Briddle.” He dragged in a breath as though it would help, but clearly it didn’t. “Second, . . . people were dying and you kept this kind of information to yourself?”

  She felt like she’d been slapped. “I . . . I . . .” Calm yourself Becky. And she took a slow, sobering breath. “You guys have had me doing tech work - out catching amphibs. No one asked me about any of it. No one wanted my theories and no one came to tell me when it was confirmed that the magnetics were causing the illness. I’ve been so stressed out that it didn’t even occur to me. And no one lives on these sites. It’s like the one in my backyard! . . .”

  She stopped because she simply ran out of things to say, and so she said the only thing she could think of next. Nothing. But she reached for the door handle, figuring the CDCP had already released her from her UT contract and they were about to release her from this one too.

  Overton’s hand on her arm stopped her, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  She remained suspicious of him for a minute.

  He opened his mouth once and closed it before opening it again and actually having sound come out of it, “We still haven’t confirmed the magnetics theory, no one thinks it makes any sense. Just correlation, not causation.”

  When he saw that she wasn’t planning on fleeing the vehicle anymore, he started back up and pushed the gas pedal, waving at the car salesman who was just now walking up to the car and grinning at them, smelling a sale. “So some of these warblers are at UT?”

  “Yup, all of them. And they really should be part of this study. Warden doesn’t know about the magnetics.” Her chest constricted as she was telling him about her subterfuge. “I just found out before I left and was trying to gather more evidence. I figured he would have laughed me out of the building if I told him.”

  “Thank God you didn’t tell him.”

  Well, that wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. Since she couldn’t think of anything else to say, she changed tacks. “There are also some bees in LA. UCLA has a cluster there, too. And a definitive reversal spot. Where State Road 134 crosses I-5.”

  “L.A.?” He slapped the wheel. “Holy shit.”

  Becky didn’t think shit had ever been holy, but if there was ever a time for that expression it was probably now. “It’s the Biodiversity lab, I travel a lot to study unusual animal behavior. UT got a call from UCLA about three weeks ago. They have bees swarming in columns. Weirdest thing I ever saw. Their bee dance is messed up too. No turn and circle moves.” She paused waiting for him to ask her questions, but he didn’t.

  John watched the road and Becky watched John, then continued. “So we wound up going out to the site to collect. And we took some amphibs, too. Blind ones like in McCann. And the bees have some sort of magnetic issues too. But UCLA is doing that testing.”

  “Crap.” He slapped the steering wheel again, and she wondered if it was a tic, if he might start yelling out swear words randomly at any minute in a rush of spontaneous Tourette’s.

  John pulled into the airport,
taking the route labeled “rental returns” and shifting back to Becky. “You! You keep talking! You are a fountain of knowledge.”

  “But I just ran dry.” She turned to the window. Disappointed that she didn’t have anything else to give. “I’ve been on this case for almost two months now and I don’t have any other information. All I’ve gleaned can be summed up in the half hour trip to the airport.”

  David stood awkwardly in the front entrance of the yellow ranch house. This house was warm. And even in the front entryway he could see that a little girl lived here. His mind swept briefly back to the house where he grew up, where it wasn’t apparent that any humans lived there. But here a toy barn and a handful of odd plastic horses gave testament to this child and her life.

  He shoved it down in a way only the truly practiced could.

  The wife of the dead cousin was emerging from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a small towel and calling back over her shoulder to a child “Wash your hands honey, we have company.” Then she saw the three of them, people that she had hollered out to, to come into her house even though she didn’t know who they were, and had never seen two of them before. “Jordan!”

  She walked right up and, ignoring her flour stained apron, threw her arms around him in the kind of hug David had read about in books. “What are you doing-” But she cut herself off, noticing the flour she had left on her cousin’s front and immediately began apologizing and dusting him off in a way that almost made David uncomfortable to be standing there watching.

  “Kelly.” It was Jordan, grabbing her arm, ignoring the last traces of flour on the front of him. “I don’t know how to say this . . .” His hand came up and went through his hair.

  And while he wasn’t paying attention, Jillian stepped into the gap, filling in the story. “I’m Jillian Brookwood. I work with Jordan.” She shook hands with the blond woman who was growing warier by the moment, but she kept talking right through the woman’s expression, not missing a beat. “We’ve found other cases like Eddie’s. We think there may be an environmental link.”

  Kelly stepped back, her hand clutching at her heart, although she seemed unaware of the action herself. Her eyes darted from one to the other of them, her other hand waved behind her until she stumbled back far enough for the couch to materialize behind her and she sank onto the arm, dark circles appearing under her eyes as she started to frown.

  But Jillian kept talking, leaving no time for the widow to form a sentence let alone a full thought. “We have a good idea what it’s linked to, but we need to run some tests.” Turning slightly she motioned to him, bringing him into the fold of the conversation for the first time, “This is Dr. David Carter. We want him to look around the house, to see if what affected Eddie was here.”

  With a wave of her hand she dismissed him, to start wandering around and see what he could find. So he did just that, not wanting to stand there like a moron any longer and see the blonde’s eyes cloud over, or her hand clutching for things that weren’t there.

  Pulling a tiny meter out of his back pocket he began pacing his way around the perimeters. They had started this crap with compasses and such, but had refined their choice of equipment as they better knew what they were looking for. The meter read normal. The field lay in the right direction, with the appropriate strength. And he felt like an idiot walking around this tiny middle-American house, with the little black box in his palm, getting nothing.

  He had done this as a kid. Took one of his mother’s jewelry boxes and cut a rectangle out of the top with a paring knife from the kitchen, and taped in a white piece of paper with red block letters and numbers written on it. He had walked his whole house reading the ‘meter’ that was so much like the ones his father used. Much bigger and less useful than the one he held today, but he had been so excited to do what his father did. Back then he had been a fool, but in his childhood hadn’t felt like one. Today he sure as hell did.

  He called back, “Mrs. Abellard?”

  The house wasn’t big, and she was all of fifteen feet away. Jordan’s arm was around her and the hug was almost too familiar, as though those jokes about small town families being too close were true. The blonde looked up at him expectantly, a sheen of tears covering her eyes.

  It was all he could do to keep from telling her that those tears wouldn’t work on him, and this problem wouldn’t be solved unless she could get it together. “There are two closed doors at the end of the hall. Can I go in?”

  She nodded, and he realized how much he hated getting permission. What if she had said ‘no’ then died? Well, at least it would be her own fault. The first room he went into was the little girl’s. More of the creepy, plastic horses covered the available surfaces of the bedspread and the white, standard issue, matching dresser and canopy bed, complete with pink ruffles. For a moment all he could do was stare at the girl-ness all around him, too frozen to do his job. Sure this house was warm, but tasteless. He’d be damned if he didn’t vomit from all the ruffles around him before he left. Or was it the magnetic field? Either way he was bound to puke.

  As he ran the meter next to the wall he began picking up a level change as he approached the corner.

  “Sonofabitch.”

  It wasn’t much. Not even a reversal. But at this point he’d seen enough to know it was coming. This was either the top edge of a coming bubble or the side edge of an already existing bubble. The normal field gave way, over a distance of about five inches. First weakening, then, if you could locate the exact spot and hold steady, you could find it – where the field went to zero. A phenomenon that should not occur on this earth.

  He had zero.

  Far in the back corner, right at the floor.

  And he had a wall in his way.

  The mother’s room was at least more tasteful. Though it looked like the Dad was still here, too. David didn’t analyze that any further, just headed for the corner that abutted the other room, where he had to move furniture and get down on his hands and knees.

  It was here, too - the edge of an already existing bubble - and the thing was decent in size. A good part of the bedroom was affected.

  “Sonofabitch.”

  “What is it?” The voice belonged to Jordan.

  “Got one.”

  Even in the space of the two words, Jordan was at his side, kneeling, reading the meter over his shoulder. “Bet this is what got Eddie.” His voice had trailed off at the end of the sentence.

  David knew he should be sympathetic. But he wasn’t. He was having the time of his life. His old man had never seen shit like this. And there were going to be papers until pigs flew out his ass. And Greer was going to ride that dino theory all the way to the bank. “Yeah, it’s great.”

  “Thank you.”

  The sarcasm wasn’t unnoticed, but David left it to sit, un-responded to. It’s why he wasn’t a preschool teacher. He heard the widow in the doorway, but didn’t look up, didn’t care to see that he had offended her. Let Jordan soothe the woman and explain to her that she needed to pack for herself and her daughter and that the CDC would be putting them into a hotel and starting them on medications.

  “Lindsay was sick yesterday morning.” There was a sound to the voice such that David wouldn’t have been surprised if he turned around to find the woman actually wringing her hands.

  “Vomiting?” Jillian’s voice broke in, and he closed his mind to all of them. They voluntarily cleared themselves from the room, leaving him with his bubble anomaly.

  He smiled. The swap was coming. Like nothing any of them had ever seen before. And he was sitting right on top of it.

  For a brief moment he pictured his father’s face when he heard.

  10

  Jillian stared at the wall, suffering the strange sense of Déjà vu she had. She had stared at a wall just like this. In three cites that looked just like this. Well, from the inside of a hotel room they all did. The only difference was the handful of medications she swallowed. The carpet was the same, a
bizarre floral pattern that was created just for this hotel. They were all in reds and browns and creams, though, and all just as ugly.

  Designed by the humans that she was trying to save. Looking around herself, she shook her head. Maybe she should be trying to save Becky’s amphibs. It might be a more noble cause.

  Landerly had called again.

  The four bubbles here were to be abandoned. Again there was another team coming up behind them, and Jillian had to wonder where and why they were being moved. It seemed all they could do was show up and say “there it is.” And steep in it a little more.

  Becky had found another spot on the side of a freeway in LA. Jordan should have been happy about that. But Jillian knew that he was worried about his family. He was sworn not to say anything. They couldn’t start a panic.

  Well, no, they could start a panic. A damned good one too, if she put her mind to it. David had already popped up with an excited grin and told them he was trying to calculate when the shift would occur. He was looking at the number and growth rate of the reversal spots. He was calculating in the historical data from the KT boundary, the evidence that he and his paleontologist friend had been on the phone for hours discussing. And had left Jillian for the first time realizing what it felt like to be her family listening to her talk. God, it was boring.

  And he had told her Greer’s reversal/dinosaur die-out theory.

  Jillian still got cold inside when she thought about that conversation. “David, all the dinosaurs died. There was mass extinction. There were volcanoes, which you are now telling me might have been triggered by magnetic reversal? The kind that we are looking at seeing here in the next what? Year? Month? Are we talking of going the way of the dinosaurs?”