Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  The rent-a-cop tipped his hat and spoke to all of them through David’s open window. “Sorry folks. City’s closed.”

  The City is CLOSED? How does one even close a city? But Jordan could see the answer to his question looming fifteen feet in front of him. The chain link was old and looked unused, but the razor wire gleamed in the afternoon light, obviously a fresh addition to the precautions.

  David pulled out his temporary badge, flashing it as though he were the president’s guard. “We’re with the CDCP.” He didn’t add that they needed to get inside. Or that they had clearance. He didn’t need to. His confidence, that may have already passed well into arrogance, spoke all that for him.

  The guard stepped back slowly, nodded again, and spoke into the police style walkie-talkie tacked to his shoulder. His movements all yielded to the slow drawl of the south. And Jordan could see where it was often perceived as laziness, but could also see that it clearly wasn’t. It was bred into these people who hadn’t seen a Minnesota blizzard, or had to do more to keep the cold at bay than turn up the collar on their coats.

  But they also were possessed of a certainty that speeding up wasn’t critical - a belief that clearly didn’t run in Jillian’s blood, southern cheerleader that she may be. She fidgeted in the seat, squirming this way and that, trying to look calm but not quite pulling it off. Jordan would have bet his life savings her right foot was crossed over the other, keeping to a silent rhythm.

  The guard sauntered back to them, gave a brief nod and told them it’d be just a minute.

  It was more like four, Jordan realized as Jillian fidgeted away the time and David sat calmly beside her, pulling instrument after instrument from the briefcase, recalibrating it or something, and then quietly putting it back. Jordan leaned back, trying to stay relaxed. He thought he was achieving it well. He kept the hyperventilation and the terror at bay, tucking his hands behind his head, and leaning back as though he were on the beach and not sitting in the back of a government car about to gain security clearance through the gates of hell.

  The guard stood stationary at the side of the fence, looking exactly as he had long before they were parked there, engine idling. Jordan wondered what the guard would do to get the gates open, or if he was waiting for a code or such.

  It turned out the guard would do nothing.

  A black sedan, filled with men in identical suits and haircuts, pulled up on the inside of the gate, looking like something out of an FBI movie. But then again this was The Town That Built The Bomb, Jordan thought as the four men undid a thick padlock and wheeled the gate back by hand. They threw their weight at the task, creaking it back foot by foot, before waving the car through. David pulled in and kept on driving, but Jordan turned around to see that they men in suits never acknowledged the guard outside and that they secured the gate with the large padlock set with something that looked like a magnetic key. Jordan fought off thoughts of having to climb the gate and throw himself over the razor wire with thousands of citizens when the lock failed.

  David pushed the small map at Jillian and set her to navigating. She instantaneously spouted off directions.

  “My god,” Jillian shook her head and she spoke again before Jordan could finish the thought of wondering what pattern her brain had found within two minutes of entering the city. “The streets are alphabetized.” She looked from side to side, and while David seemed to have his eyes on both the road and his compasses, Jordan followed her gaze to see that it certainly appeared that she was right.

  “Good lord, who are these people?” He heard it from his mouth before he realized he had let it slip. This was Jillian’s South and he didn’t want to offend.

  But she supplied an answer with a quirk of her mouth. “The government.”

  “That’s right . . .” The town had only become public after world war two when the government had opened the city to the families of the scientists who were working on the top-secret Hiroshima project. The place was fuckin’ nuts. As best as he could see the gates encircled the entire city. Whether that was to keep people out or secrets in, he was unsure. The streets were not only alphabetized, they stacked the road signs. So you would turn down a side street that bore four perfectly ambiguous street names.

  There were a few people on the streets. Of course all the activity was on the outside of the sawhorse barricades. The people who had lived inside the reversal’s radius had already been moved to temporary housing. But the people who were out looked fairly normal in spite of the presence of the men in big dark suits, with small sharp haircuts.

  The townspeople put gas in their cars and drove through the McDonalds. The Home Depot lot was empty, and Jordan hazarded a guess that food and gas ranked higher than repairs. Maybe this town full of scientists was smart enough to realize that barricading their doors would only trap them inside and keep nothing out.

  “Shit!” David’s voice cut through the air.

  “What?” Jillian turned to him, and from her color, just that quick motion was enough to make her green. Or maybe it was the same thought that Jordan was having. David swore all the time, but not in a surprised way, and if something here had surprised him it would have to be bad. Really bad.

  “We’re either on the fuzzy edge of a very large reversal and we’re going to hit it any second, or we’ve been riding the edge since three lights back.”

  “But the road is straight. It’s not following an arc at all.” Jordan didn’t understand any of the magnetics of it, he knew just enough to pass the physics section of the MCAT years ago when he went into med school. Beyond that he was a slave to what David chose to share with him. But he knew that what they had been finding was that the bubbles were circular. Probably how they had gotten dubbed that way in the first place.

  “Exactly, Sherlock.”

  Jordan almost popped him upside the head, which would have been really easy to from the back seat. Instead, he fought the urge while David began explaining, “Which makes me think it’s a really big bubble. . . . shiiiiiiiit.”

  Jordan didn’t put voice to it. David would tell him or not and there wasn’t much he could do about it. Jillian however seemed to believe she could hold some sort of sway over David. Jordan’s first thought was that she was lying to herself. Then he realized there was every good chance it was him lying to himself. She might very well hold sway with David. Who knew what had been going on between them while he was in Lake James watching his family slip away one by one?

  He tamped down the images, thinking that the news David had preceded with shhiiiiiiit was going to be happier thoughts than the ones he was having.

  “We’re in.”

  Jordan’s back snapped straight. “Well then, get out!”

  But David kept driving, not noticing Jillian turning green with fear or illness on the seat next to him. Neither option was acceptable to Jordan.

  “Jillian,” At the sound of his voice she turned to face him and Jordan was unable to read all the emotions running stampede across her features. “Find another path on the map. Take us far left or right . . . or . . .”

  David set down the black palm-pilot-looking-thing, that was a serious navigational compass as best as Jordan could tell, and picked up the old boy scout version, complete with red needle and N E S W markings. “David, which way is out?”

  “We’ll just drive straight through.” The blond head never really glanced up from the small hammered silver fob in front of him. He would have caused a serious pile-up if anyone had been on the road. But these people were organized.

  “Get out of the bubble.” Jordan didn’t realize that he was unbuckled and hanging over the front seat. “You and Jillian have already been exposed to these for too long.” He didn’t add that he was giving less and less of a crap if David fell into a serious coma right this instant. Except that he’d prefer the asshole put the car in ‘park’ first.

  David said nothing, just kept driving, occasionally glancing up to check the flow of traffic against the whispere
d directions Jillian was giving him. It seemed he was taking them into the heart of the reversal. The man had no concern for his own safety. Jordan couldn’t care less. David had no concern for Jordan’s safety. That was because he was a son of a bitch. But having no concern for Jillian’s was beyond Jordan’s limits. If he’d had a gun, he would have pulled it and tucked it right at the base of David’s head, right up the foramen magnum. The hole there would make certain that a bullet couldn’t glance off that thick head. Guaranteed death.

  “We’re fuzzy.” The words came after long minutes waiting for a response. Long minutes of almost leisurely driving down a small town turnpike with the sun overhead and greenery that made both the Nevada desert and Lake James look like they were constructed from brown bags.

  Jillian started to take deeper breaths and with shaky motions pointed out the cross street they were looking for, then the white tents gently breathing with the breeze. It was a high school soccer field from the looks of the sign posted just under the snarling wildcat. In running red light letters it read ‘no school until further notice’.

  David made a hard right into the lot and stopped the car at the edge. With a quick look at his compass he shoved it into his pocket and pulled the black high-tech contraption from his briefcase and started to unfold himself from the car.

  Jordan threw himself out of the backseat and hustled up to one of the suits who was approaching with a manila envelope. With the way the past three days had been going, if he was lucky, it would be full of anthrax and he could inhale deeply and die a slow and painful death. Which would, of course, be far more humane than what he was suffering now.

  What he was suffering was only compounded by David walking around the front of the car and offering Jillian his arm, “Baby, are you okay?”

  Thoughts warred in Jordan’s brain. Now he asks how she’s doing? And Baby?

  But the man was saying the envelope was from Landerly. And Jordan saw his own hands in front of him, only now aware that he was shaking far worse than he could detect through his own senses, even now that he knew he was doing it.

  The pages came out neat and crisp, far better looking than anything they had pulled off the little traveling fax machine. He scanned the notes taking in the news. The churnings of Landerly’s brain, gathered into understandable English by some tech or junior MD now that he and Jillian weren’t there to do the job.

  “David!” He yelled but didn’t look up. Didn’t want to see what was going on, didn’t care. “Landerly says the magnetics of the reversals are getting stronger in the centers. There’s a graph here, almost like regular concentric rings.”

  David approached and snapped the pages from his hands. It wasn’t even an asshole move, just the unthoughtfulness of a man who had always gotten what he wanted. But Jordan continued. “The Nevada site maps like a target. But it’s even stronger than here or McCann. Landerly thinks that’s why it took everyone out. McCann’s getting stronger, too.”

  Jillian peeked over David’s shoulder. “That doesn’t make sense. The wildlife is returning to normal. Becky Sorenson said the frogs were looking more normal as were the insects and the other animals she tagged.” Her brows knit together in frustration and there was almost a chugging sound as her brain ratcheted up a notch.

  Jordan shrugged, simply grateful that the churning of her mental gears was a good indicator that she hadn’t suffered permanently from David driving them straight through the last reversal. He felt his temper abate, even if the anger didn’t.

  Still David frowned, flipping one page and then the next. He rotated the papers and Jordan almost chuckled at the sight. As though this whole stinking pile of crap would look better upside down. But he didn’t laugh. He couldn’t fault the geologist for trying.

  It wasn’t like he had any better ideas.

  14

  Jillian sat on the edge of the cold cot. It was green army issue fabric slung and stitched to a metal frame, and it had either seen better days or had recently been the recipient of a very large occupant. It hadn’t held her heat, and she hadn’t been smart enough to line the bed with the blanket before she lay down, so she had lost temperature while she slept.

  And slept fitfully at that. There was no way to get Jordan onto that thing with her without it looking like something more and she wasn’t anywhere near brave enough to climb into a bed with David, not that either man would really fit on a cot with her. And she certainly wasn’t stupid enough to climb into any bed with David when what she wanted was sleep.

  Jordan was still out cold, his arm hanging peacefully out from under the covers he had partially kicked off. His fingers were mere inches from the ground but they didn’t seem to notice. His face was soft in sleep; clearly he wasn’t having her problems. The only thing that betrayed his state was the dark circles under his eyes and the two day growth of beard that aged him considerably, making him look more like the man he was and not just the friend she considered him.

  With a sigh, she just gave up, sinking bare toes into the rough dark carpet of the classroom they were staying in. Desks had been pushed back and stacked against the walls. The whiteboard left clean for the scientists to use. They hadn’t. She felt like all the churning in her stomach had prevented all the churning in her skull from producing a single useful thought for quite a while now.

  Her head felt like it was swaying at the top of a tall post, and so she nixed her original idea of wandering down to find the cafeteria. The CDC was supposed to have set up their own food supply there, but she was too shaky to go it alone.

  Jillian turned back to the bed; if she was already out of it then at least she was going to do this right this time. She deluded herself into thinking that maybe if she could retain her body heat she could sleep. With her mind focused on that singular thought, she rearranged the blanket and crawled back in. Pulling the free half of the blanket tightly across her, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to fight the bright gray light streaming through the fairly useless blinds.

  She relaxed her entire body, muscle by muscle. When she was a resident, she’d been able to pass out at the drop of a hat, anywhere, anytime. But now sleep eluded her in the most painful of ways.

  After a while she gave up, thankful that she was at least starting to get warm, and opened her eyes.

  Jordan was watching her. “Morning.”

  “It’s not morning.” Her voice creaked like old hinges. “Morning implies that there was a night. I don’t recall one.”

  “Still not sleeping?”

  “What do you think?” She regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth.

  But she sank into a solid portion of shame when Jordan asked her if she wanted to join him. Completely spoken with sympathy and none of the venom she had thrown at him.

  “That can’t be comfortable.”

  “What will you care? You’ll be asleep.”

  Jillian almost laughed, and almost wondered how she could in the middle of all this. “But you won’t be.”

  His mouth quirked behind the chestnut stubble that was a full shade darker than the sun-lightened length on his head. “Trust me, I’ll fall back asleep quickly enough.”

  She couldn’t very well say yes - there was no way they’d both fit unless she just climbed right on top of him, so she changed the subject. “Do you think the reversal has gotten this far since yesterday? They grow pretty fast now, and it was really close when we drove in. We could be in it right now.”

  “Don’t change the subject on me.” He lifted the blanket and made every attempt to scoot back to one side of the cot. But he was thwarted at every motion, sliding back into the center of the sling. Jillian raised one eyebrow at him, never making even the first motion to leave the confines of her finally warm cocoon.

  “Fine.”

  But he didn’t say anything more than just the one word. He simply stood to full length, stretching his tall form and revealing sun-brown skin where his t-shirt lifted from the edge of his boxers for just a moment. His e
yes scanned the room and settled in the corner on a pile of two spare blankets. He turned his cot on its side and motioned for Jillian to do the same.

  With great reluctance she stood up, her bare feet draining their heat into the cold carpet again. She pushed the cot out of the way as she saw that he was layering the blankets on the floor. He put his own blanket as the top layer then kneeled down on it. “Come on.”

  It was only slightly softer than a rock slab, but she sank onto it willingly, letting Jordan pull the blanket from her shoulders, and trusting that she’d be heated again within moments.

  Stretching out along the rough blankets, Jillian had only long enough to shove her hair back out of her face, before Jordan was there and the covers were pulled over them. Lord, the man was better than a space heater. Suddenly she understood why women married men they didn’t even love. God, the sleep!

  “Jordan?”

  “Shh.”

  Her stomach rolled and her jaw clamped to stop the sensation, but she didn’t even get that far. She was falling backward into the black abyss.

  David walked the hallway, lined with ugly green lockers, looking like the fresh paint hid layers of abuse. The worn linoleum on the floor had not yet been replaced, the black scuffs still not erasable. His own high school had been so much more pristine than this. The lockers and carpeting replaced if they had worn even slightly. Even the children had been removed if they were too frayed, not quite up to snuff. He wondered what other differences his father’s money had bought him.

  Jordan and Jillian were sleeping in a classroom further down this hall. He didn’t know which one, but relied on the handwritten pages taped beside each door, designating the CDC’s purpose for each.

  He almost walked past the one that read: Abellard, Brookwood, Carter. For a moment he smirked at the irony, that even in print Jillian was caught between the two of them, but then he turned the knob, pushing open the heavy door, the wired glass lined with a shade so he couldn’t see in.