Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

“Well,” Rather proud of himself, he had looked her in the eyes and almost smiled. “Most of the mammals lived through it.”

  She wanted to scream until her throat hurt too much to ever talk again.

  But she didn’t want Jordan to come running. Or admit her to an asylum.

  Then again, there was comfort in just sitting in a corner, rocking on her heels and mumbling about human extinction and magnetic poles, while nurses soothed her and gave her medication to make her happy and calm. But the phone rang.

  “Brookwood.” She held the receiver to her ear. It was a CDC phone, and the damned thing was a secure line. What the hell was she doing with a secure line? She was supposed to be writing reports on other doctors’ evaluations of things as simple as E. coli and botulism.

  “Landerly.”

  She snapped to and didn’t say anything. Landerly would just start talking when he was ready and there was a certain charming efficiency to it.

  “You’re not going to LA.”

  Yea! Follow-through. Finally they could stay in one spot and-

  “There’s a prison at the Nevada-California line and they have a bubble, too.”

  He paused. Jillian absorbed. And waited.

  “We can’t move them. There aren’t enough facilities, and these are maximum security prisoners.” He sighed and Jillian knew what was coming, but she let him say it. “Our deadline for solving this thing just bumped way up. After the AIDS debacle the CDC can’t afford to let prisoners die. Start packing. Your tickets are waiting for you at the airport.”

  And with a sharp click in her ear he was gone.

  Jillian stood, the phone still clutched uselessly in her hand, her brain churning. The CDC had suffered from the AIDS issue. No one had cared enough, no one had done enough, because those suffering were gay men. It wasn’t all the CDC’s fault. They had actually done a lot. Private funding had failed to foot the necessary bill until grandmas started getting AIDS from blood transfusions and Ryan White became a tiny mirror with a big reflection of America’s ugly underbelly of prejudice.

  And the CDC wasn’t about to be on the short end of that stick again.

  So just in case Jillian didn’t feel enough pressure, there were now politics involved. Suddenly she understood physicians who medicated themselves. Demerol, Statol, Percocet all sounded fantastic about now. She allowed herself the dream of a good drug addiction for a brief moment before she hollered out to Jordan. “We’re not going to LA.”

  She didn’t move from her spot, couldn’t bear to see his face. Not when she knew that he looked happy, and she was about to open her mouth and dash it. “There’s a maximum security prison in Nevada that has a reversal and we can’t move the prisoners.”

  “What!?”

  She could hear his feet hitting the floor. That meant he had been leaning back in the chair, thinking. For a moment she was glad that he hadn’t fallen backwards. Although she could have used a good laugh right now. Jillian started to yell out her response, but Jordan was capable of movement and his footfalls were pounding her way from just beyond the open door.

  So she sighed. “We’re on a plane out tonight. We have to solve this thing and quick.”

  “Why us?” His feet caught up to his head and he stood upright, shoving overworked fingers into undertended hair. Pieces of it stood straight up. And his blue eyes blinked slowly, like a man told that he’d just been sentenced to the electric chair.

  Her voice was softer than she had intended. “It’s punishment.”

  “For what?”

  “Forging Landerly’s signature? I don’t know. We must have been very bad in our past lives. Do you remember torturing puppies or something?”

  Jordan shook his head. “Very funny, Jilly.”

  “Hey don’t mock me! I ran out of ‘very funny’ about two weeks ago.” She finally found the source of energy needed to move herself to the nearby desk and she plopped down into it unceremoniously while Jordan melted onto the bed. He rolled all the way through, onto his back, as though there was something to be learned from the ceiling.

  After a minute Jillian interrupted the hum of the air conditioning. “It’s because of Eddie.”

  “How is this because of Eddie?”

  “That’s why we went to Florida, forged signature and all. That’s how we found those cases and linked it all together. Eddie was the start of it. If he hadn’t been your cousin I don’t know if we would have been this far along.”

  “Fat lot of good it’s done us.”

  “I know.” She resisted the urge to go to him and offer a hug. Although that wasn’t hard given that the phone call from Landerly had drained her of all her energy. With an effort far greater than should have been necessary, she pushed herself up out of the chair and plucked the hotel phone from the cradle punching the four digit code to David’s room.

  Only David didn’t answer.

  She mumbled into the black handset, “Sorry, wrong number.” Then stared at it like it had bitten her. How was that not David? She thought back through the code –

  “You’re probably dialing his number from the last hotel we were in.” Jordan’s voice came over her shoulder, indicating that he hadn’t taken his cue from her, and hadn’t moved an inch. “I bet you remember them all. All the room numbers and the layout of each place. . .”

  Jillian was just happy that he couldn’t see her blush. The poor boy had been subjected to Jillian-24-7. She could be her own sad reality-TV series. She punched in the code for David’s current room and he answered on the third ring. “Carter.” She curled her lip at the phone. She had to get a new ‘hello’. They were all such techies.

  “David, it’s me, Jillian.” Well, that was a hell of a lot more human than ‘Brookwood’ barked out like an army order. “We’re on the move again. To the Nevada-California border.”

  “And what’s there?” She could hear him rustling in the background. He was probably already starting to pack.

  “Maximum Security Prison. With a bubble.” Stopping herself, Jillian realized she was starting to sound like Landerly. Subject-Verb, minimal clauses and don’t bother with articles or adverbs. And she seriously doubted it sounded charming on her. So, with a sigh, she started again. “They can’t move the prisoners. We’ve got a tight deadline.”

  Jordan’s whole body was leaden; the bubbles had grown black and faster moving. One was going to overtake him, but he couldn’t force any more speed from his legs. Jillian and David had been running with him, but they had both disappeared along the way. David into thin air, and Jilly, smiling and waving, had been happily engulfed by one.

  Although Jillian had gone willingly, Jordan knew there was no good in the reversals. It was certain death. In testament to that fact, there were lifeless, rotting bodies strewn around him on the street. The smell was overwhelming. And the rumbling of the bubble was freight train loud as it got closer. The ear pain and nausea overtook him, as he knew they would.

  “Jordan.”

  He looked, still running, for the source of the sound. The second time the voice said his name, he recognized it as Jillian’s, but he couldn’t find her in the black.

  With a jolt he slammed into the cushioned seat of the airplane as though he had been dropped from a high place, his eyes opening as the vicious dream faded into the back of his head. But the ear pain and nausea were real, surely byproducts of the rapid descent they were pulling.

  He felt himself sinking through the seat, giving up and giving in, when Jillian grabbed his arm again. “You have to wake up. David’s up. We’re landing in two minutes.”

  They would call Landerly when they got in the car and got the secure line set up. They would tell him all they knew, and all they had seen, and wait for his mind to churn. Not that Landerly had been a banner help lately. That he was as stumped as they were had been a small comfort.

  Jordan blocked all else from his mind and thought of the hot tub and the pool that would await them where they would stay near the state line. It was
cheaper on the Nevada side, and that would mean gambling and lights and noise. But that would be all right he supposed; it might keep his mind off what he had left behind. And how Lake James was doing.

  Kelly and Lindsey had been evacuated right away, in a bald and scary attempt to save them from the reversal that was growing in the corner between the two bedrooms, creeping a little wider each day like an infestation of mold in the walls. Lindsey had already been sick, stomach ache and ear pain that same morning they had arrived.

  And that had scared the crap out of Jordan. Lindsey was the only living proof of Eddie’s existence. Everything else would fade with time. He soothed himself with the thought that it seemed if they were able to pull a person out of the reversal in time, before they got too sick, they wouldn’t have any effects.

  On the flip side, if they didn’t get the person out in time, there was only one course - the victim always ended up dead. And no one had any idea what the cut-off point was.

  In his head he counted out the death tolls. Florida was at seven. Lake James at five, and maybe more. Twenty total in McCann, although no more since they had figured out to get people out of the area.

  Both McCann and Florida had traceable paths. A patient zero. The look of contagion. Lake James didn’t. The bubbles were cropping up all over the place and taking out random people. Or at least it seemed that way now . . . Jordan desperately wanted Jillian to have an epiphany. He wanted to interview someone, anyone, who would give him that last shred of information that would allow his mind to grasp the picture in the puzzle even though they were nowhere near complete.

  And if Lindsey had truly had it . . . Well that was another story. He had seen her labs himself. And she was a perfectly healthy kid by all known measures. It would have almost been easier to take if she had been sick and nobody had known it. But if this thing was taking out healthy people now . . . there really wasn’t an answer.

  And why wouldn’t it take out healthy people? Diseases killed without prejudice or forethought. They could wipe out entire populations without conscience. And even if this was simply an environmental hazard then what would they do when David’s predictions came true and the poles swapped? When the whole earth was a reversal field?

  He knew he was possibly looking at the end of ‘life as we know it’. If it wasn’t disease that did them in, then they would have to stand on their Darwinian principles and die the brave death of the non-fittest.

  Becky trudged through the high grass in the far back of her parents’ property, hiking boots laced tight, stomach full from the family breakfast her mother had insisted was necessary because her oldest daughter had returned home the night before. And Becky had let her do it. Since she was heading back to Atlanta and the bio lab right after she packed her things. Which was right after she assured her parents that she wasn’t going out to the frog site.

  Which was a bald-faced lie.

  She was heading crosswise through the property. Toward the back corner fence, carrying a walking stick with a mounted compass. Her backpack full to the brim of lightweight CDC equipment and empty lexans. By necessity she was out here alone. Was that a stupid thing? Probably. Who knew what this site would do to her? She might go into a coma and die right there on the spot. But something told her she wouldn’t.

  Jordan and Jillian and their infectious disease cronies hadn’t told the biodiversity team any more. They hadn’t found out if the illness was caused by one-time long-term exposure or if all the little exposures added up to get you sick. If that was the case then she had been plenty exposed and just walking into a site like this was asking for trouble.

  And the docs had no real theories. No one could tell if the older sites were stronger, or if the newer ones were. Or if size mattered. No, the one thing they had told her about that was they were counting on her to sort that thing out. No one felt the need to evacuate the animals from the sites. And it was Becky and John Overton who were supposed to be exploring those possibilities.

  The boundary tape was dirty now. Little leaves clung to it. The bright color faded away. Maybe they shouldn’t have put it so low to the ground. Maybe tent stakes hadn’t really been the best idea. What if an animal tripped and injured themselves? What if a person did?

  Closer up she saw pink tape. It wasn’t staked but wound around tree trunks and draped across low lying branches. It was brighter, newer. The CDC had tagged it but not marked it ‘keep out’ or ‘biohazard’. God only knew if the neighbor kids crept over the fence to play.

  About ten feet from the tape she saw the compass jump. Dammit. She knew this site was growing and she hadn’t been paying attention.

  Fingers of sun came through the tall trees now, and winds found their way around the trunks. Becky pulled up her turtleneck, glad now that she had dressed a little warmer. Starting back again toward the site, this time she kept a clear eye on the compass. Strands of her hair slipped across her face and into her mouth right as the needle jumped.

  This time she set down the backpack and pulled out a rubber-banded bunch of weighted flags. CDCP DO NOT TOUCH emblazoned in repeating letters across the orange streamers. She dropped one where the compass started to bounce.

  The red needle danced in every direction, unsure which way was true north, confused by the one thing that was supposed to keep it constant. She dropped another flag where it became steady again. Of course this time it was pointed south.

  Standing several feet inside the site now, Becky looked over the two dropped flags. The fuzzy edges were getting larger as the bubble grew. Her brows pulled together against the thoughts in her head, even as her shoulder blades pulled together against the wind that had picked up again and was biting at her exposed skin.

  Becky breathed deeply, concerned about just what it was that she was breathing in. Unsure if the reversal caused the problem or brought the problem or fed the problem. God, they didn’t know anything.

  She thought she should feel something different. That her body should instinctively know she was somehow being exposed to something deadly. Her heart did beat faster, but Becky had no doubt that was due to her own adrenaline surging rather than any external force altering her heart rate.

  In that instant the sun disappeared, causing her heart to speed up as her head snapped back. She saw the cloud dusting its way across the sky even as her brain reminded her there was, of course, a logical explanation.

  But chasing the cloud was a jet. Probably taken off from McGhee-Tyson and headed into Nashville.

  Her breath sucked in, and she stood, trapped, mesmerized, petrified, as the jet blazed a trail toward where she stood. In the clear sky it took almost two full minutes for the plane to reach a point directly overhead, and for the entire time she simply stood there, tense as a piano wire. Adrenaline keeping her whole body on high alert. Her brain flipping and discarding thought after thought about where to run and how to escape if the plane came tumbling down out of the sky.

  Somehow, no one had thought to check the height of the bubbles. She knew it now. A possibly fatal error - if the plane flew low, and if the bubble reached up that far. The bee columns from LA indicated that these things could and did achieve some altitude. What would the pilot do if all the dash readings went suddenly out of whack? If the compass started jumping? If they looked down and saw they were headed east when they should be headed west? Would they change altitude, to avoid a crash, only to lead them head first into another plane actually traveling east?

  But the jet passed over without any events, leaving Becky sucking lungfuls of the air inside the site. This job was going to kill her. Well, that was if it didn’t kill the whole planet first.

  She shoved her thoughts to the back of her brain - the disturbing ones anyway - and focused on the frogs. They would be harder to find this time. It was later in the season. There might still be a few straggling tadpoles. And that, she suddenly realized, was why she was here. Those stragglers would grow in the site as it was today, this week. And they would tell its story
now. Probably the same one. But they would give her and John a better idea about long term exposure to the site.

  Her stomach rolled alarmingly, and she refused to even begin to calculate how long it would take the reversal to reach the edges of her parents’ fenced yard or, god forbid, the house.

  Again she forced a tight rein on her thoughts to keep them from running away. Counting backwards would indicate that the bubble had been ‘born’ about two months before the first time Becky had encountered their own little ‘Apocolypse Now’.

  Becky faced the task at hand - spotting the tiny ranas darting among the refractions in the creek and peeking out from under crunched leaves. Within an hour she had populated fifteen lexans. And she lined them up for a good-looking over; which was about as scientific as she could get out here in the woods. Her fingers ached from plunging them in and out of the now cold water, from bumping and grating her fingertips and knuckles across the smooth looking rocks. Her brain ached, too. And she feverishly prayed it was from effort and stress and not the environment.

  But all her frogs were normal legged. Just two hind jumpers. They were pale, not whitish, but not the healthy greens and browns of the earlier batches. Six were blind.

  Dear God. They looked more like the batch she had hauled from McCann than the batch from here.

  Information was pouring in. David had been shocked that it had started so fast; Jillian had barely plugged in the fax machine when it started beeping and spitting out ink strewn papers. All three of them had forgotten to unpack and had sat, silent, in the supremely uncomfortable chairs around the nice cherrywood table in the corner of the hotel room. They had simply read and passed the pages, each of their faces knitting deeper into concern the further along they got.

  About an hour into it Jordan had stood and stretched. Throwing a handful of worn and smudged papers on the table top, he declared he needed a break, and David had almost hopped up and agreed. Until he saw that Jordan’s idea of a ‘break’ was to stop reading the fax pages and to start reviewing and hanging the hand drawn charts. Personally, he’d been thinking more along the lines of a steak and a hot tub himself. But as he watched the butcher paper go up, revealing its colorful circles with links and lines and notes, he kept his mouth shut.