As the dim room slowly came into focus he was caught up in the cozy scene - Jillian snuggled into the grasp of Abellard’s arms. Both of them sleeping like babies.
Son of a bitch.
The thought took him by surprise in its vehemence. He’d been telling himself that it didn’t matter.
But maybe it did.
He knelt on her side of the makeshift lover’s nest and reached out, taking just a moment to be sure that he only touched her. “Jillian. Baby. Time to wake up.” He nudged her shoulder a little, thinking that this was a first even for him. He’d slept with married women. He'd broken up more than one couple along the way. But he’d never, until just now, called a woman ‘baby’ while she was literally in another man’s arms.
His thoughts stopped as she stirred, rolling away from Abellard to face him. “Whhaaat?” The word was soft and low.
“We’re wanted out front.”
He could see her chest move with a long sigh as she blinked and carelessly shoved the hair from her face. She rolled back into the space she had vacated, and for a moment David was certain he’d been given the ultimate brush off. But she grabbed Jordan’s shoulder and gave a gently shake. “Jordan. Wake up. We have to go.”
David cut her off. “No. Let him sleep. They want you and me.”
“Huh?” She rolled again to look at him, but her job had already been accomplished. And Jordan was looking at him, too, through clear eyes.
“They want you two? Why?”
“We’re going to go in.”
Abellard shot upright, revealing a t-shirt, and letting David’s brain breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn’t even cozier than it had looked. “No.”
David rocked back on his heels. Why was Jordan fighting back? He slung what he had. “Not your decision.”
Abellard’s eyes turned to ice. “Then whose?”
David wanted to smile. Jordan and Jillian were Landerly’s babies, lackeys, peons, whatever. But the word had wound up in his hands. And that felt good. “Landerly’s.”
David watched while Jordan put a hand on Jillian’s shoulder, gently holding her back. “Don’t go. We’ll talk to Landerly first. I’m not sure I believe this.” He rolled up and off the floor on the other side, diving into his pants pocket for the cell phone.
Surprisingly it was Jillian who came to David’s rescue. She sat with a slight shake to remove the last of the sleep from her head. “Jordan, Landerly ordered it.”
David wanted to grin, but schooled his features the way he always did. Better to give away nothing. It hadn’t been any great importance to him. But David knew himself well enough to know that he was a Carter through and through. And if the challenge was issued it was always answered. And as his father had said, it had damned well better be won, too.
Abellard had thrown down the gauntlet. And in David’s mind that meant it was just a matter of time before Jillian was his.
He watched while Jillian did his work for him and he bottled the pleasure at it.
“What do you mean Landerly ordered it?”
She sighed, leaning out to Jordan. But bless him, Abellard wasn’t having it. “When we were in Nevada, all the wardens and officers walked right into the reversal and fell under. But not us. We had been in for longer than any of them and had no effects. We’re fairly certain that we’re immune.”
“You’re what?”
Jillian shook her head again, but continued, while David sat back and enjoyed watching the distance between them grow. “Immune.”
Abellard’s eyes narrowed and Jillian warily slid back at the menace. “You’re willing to risk your lives because you did it once before and were okay?!?”
She was on her heels by now, too, and fighting back.
That’s it Jillian, give him hell.
“No, I’m not. But we have to stop this or we’ll all die from it. Landerly ordered it. And I have to admit that I don’t know what else to do.”
Jordan raked a hand through his hair, thinking hard and fast for a few seconds. “Then I’m going, too. Whatever immunity you got, it’s likely I got it, too. It’s probably because of the way we’ve been exposed to the reversals.”
David thought that was a reasonable argument, and was cursing himself for not foreseeing it, when Jillian again solved his problems.
“No, you have to stay out here. David and I were together the whole time. We know we got the same exposure. We don’t know that for certain about you.”
Abellard’s jaw clenched. David wasn’t even sure if the good Dr. Brookwood noticed. But he sure did. She just kept talking. “We need you out here, in case . . . in case anything happens.”
“What!?” He was on his feet, furious at her and adding distance. Bless the powers that be. “I’m supposed to sit out here and wait by the sidelines in case you slip into a coma and die? While I watch?”
“Jordan-”
But he cut her off before she could begin. “Do you know what I did in Minnesota? . . .” He didn’t wait long enough, just barreled ahead, “I watched every last member of my family go under. And I’m supposed to sit here and watch you purposefully throw yourself into it? No way in hell!”
With an angry snap of his arms he whipped the pants off the floor, stepping into them and buttoning the fly as he stalked out the door.
Jillian’s mouth hung open, but that was okay. David stepped up to fill in the void. “He’ll get over it. He’ll have to. We don’t even know if he can survive going in.”
She turned slowly to him. “We don’t know if we can.”
“But who else can go?”
God, he had never been one to play the hero. But hey, there was always a first time, right? The way he figured it they were all radiated toast anyway. He might as well get the girl before he bit the big one. It wouldn’t matter. If there was a hell it likely already had a parking spot with an engraved nameplate for him.
She didn’t answer. So he smiled. “Well, then let’s get ready to go.”
Two hours later, they had swallowed a complement of horse pills. And Abellard was still nowhere to be seen. Good.
David was in full gear, compasses and magnetic field readers strapped to and stuffed in a toolbelt around his waist. He’d never felt so working-class before. Jillian had cell phones, and paper and pencils, a stethoscope hung around her neck. David wasn’t sure if that was because she thought she might need it, or if it was just as much a part of her as the scrubs. He peeled his eyes away from her and looked out at the town in front of him. It looked enough like any other. But he knew it wasn’t.
They stood at the new edge of the reversal, twenty feet closer than it had been last evening. The fuzzy edges were wide and getting wider. They shouldn’t encounter any people in here. Everyone should have been evacuated. And if they did find anyone, well, then, that would be Jillian’s problem.
Jillian took deep breaths, as though she were preparing to walk underwater. It was all he could do not to do the same. But his job here was to be a calming rock for her, let her think he was unaffected.
“Ready?” He asked it nonchalantly. Or he tried to, not that Jillian even left her mental space to notice.
“As I’ll ever be.” She sucked in a lungful of air. “But I’m warning you, I’m not that ready.”
He stepped in, waiting, as he always did, for the feeling of getting kicked in the gut. Of having all the air sucked out of him. Or maybe tingling in his fingers. But his stomach didn’t even roll.
But he was past the yellow flags, delineating the new boundaries. He was in the wide edge. Without looking back for Jillian he took another few tentative steps, then started walking. Jillian skipped to catch up, like a swimmer who knows that the water is cold and it’s better to just dive right in.
She slipped a small street map from the back of her notebook, showing him the highlighted line. He took the page from her and frowned at it. “How far is this?”
“About three miles.” He could see her throat work, but resisted the urge to
ask if she was okay. “They recalculated the center this morning. The edges keep shifting.”
“Hm.” Not really in the mood for conversation, he felt around the things at his waist. The weights hanging from his belt took him back to his digs, back to fist-sized rock chips in tough Ziploc baggies and midnight runs down the grid to see if the idiots had fucked up another orientation. That’s what had started this whole mess, too.
He picked out the old school compass, shaking off fantasies of the days when he could swear at everyone around him. When they were all associate faculty, not physicians. Or better yet, students - students whose degrees depended on his good graces. David looked at the houses they were wandering past, just a few blocks beyond the high school. Some with pretty flowers in pots and window boxes. Some with peeling paint. And some with both. It was eerie with the absence of people.
He feared seeing the faces of the dead peering at him, as transparent as the windowpanes of the empty houses. He pulled his gaze to the needle which had stopped jumping although he wasn’t sure when. With a snort at himself for forgetting, he tossed a flag back a handful of yards. Close enough.
“You know, the paperwork this morning showed another bubble.” Jillian didn’t look at him, so he simply grunted, staying focused on his compass.
“It’s up toward the north side of town. And it’s growing pretty quickly.”
He grunted again, then decided that if he was going to shut her up interrupting was really the way to go. He didn’t need chitchat. “What street are we on?”
She looked up, not pointing out that he could easily have tilted his own head and read the sign his damn self. “Pomona.”
He made her write it down, pulled out another meter and read the strength of the field off to her. But it didn’t shut her up.
“The bubble at the edge of town is really near the fence.” Her mouth moved as fast as the pencil recording everything he spouted at her. “They’re afraid it won’t respect the city’s boundaries. That it will cross the gate. We’re not sure what to do then.”
“Hm.” He tried to leave it at that.
“There were fifty people reported down this morning. New since last night. And another hundred with stomach upset.” She paused to inhale and let it out, and it still didn’t sound like natural breathing to his ears, but he decided not to mention that. The compass needle in front of him jumped a little. He checked the field strength. Stepped into a front yard and popped a meter that looked remarkably like a meat thermometer into the ground.
He didn’t even get to read it before Jillian started babbling again. “You know, our numbers have shown that of those hundred down, ninety to ninety-five percent of them will actually have it. The other five plus percent are just your standard G I trouble with a dose of panic.”
David flattened the sigh before it escaped him. His eyes narrowed on the meter, but Jillian’s voice cut through again.
“David?”
Becky didn’t even look at the greenery around her, just jumped ship off the tiny Cessna and ignored the pilot as he pointed the way to Oak Ridge. The blue sedan waited, parked casually just off to the left of the three mid-sized hangars that made up the Clinton Airport. If it could be called that. Trees scraped the bottoms of the planes at each end of the runway. Grass grew up through cracks in the barely paved ‘landing strip’. And nothing bigger than a tour plane had ever come through to the best of her knowledge.
But Becky just smiled and waved a thank-you to the pilot and waited barely long enough for Leon to close the sedan’s passenger door behind himself. From the looks of him he had been hoping to drive, but she ignored that and hit the gas before he even had the seat adjusted. With a grunt he pulled his seatbelt across him and slapped it into the buckle. Becky wasn’t sure if that was meant as an insult, but she didn’t care.
Since they were driving to her house, she didn’t see where she needed to sit in the passenger seat and give directions and be polite about missed turn-offs and that squinting and head-shaking thing people always did when driving in an unfamiliar area. She was through with being polite and worrying about other people’s feelings.
She ran two stop signs, ignoring Leon’s outstretched finger both times. There weren’t even police out this way, just the County Sheriff Office. And the deputies would just smile at her and nod if they wound up pulling her over. She knew them all.
Finally she came to a complete stop at a red light that was collecting cars waiting on the empty crosslane. Her fingers tapped impatiently on the wheel. Her foot hovered, barely holding the brake down, itching to ride the non-existent clutch. Her right hand grabbed for the gearshift hoping to slam it into second. But she consciously pulled her fingers away, knowing that throwing an automatic into low gear wouldn’t help her one bit.
Her lip took some abuse from her teeth, and just as she squealed the tires out into the crossing she heard the distinctive synthetic music of her cell phone. Grabbing for it at the clip on her belt she tossed it to Leon. “Check the ID, would you?”
With one hand making a graceful pass, he swiped the phone from the air before it arced in the careless direction it had been sent and saved it from colliding with the dash. Nimble fingers he oriented the slick silver thing and he read off the name, “Dr. Overton.”
“Don’t answer.” She took a hard left at the next light and out of the corner of her eye, Becky saw Leon’s fingers reach for purchase then tuck themselves away out of sight. She didn’t say anything and he didn’t either. He simply sat, huge and silent, and looking very uncomfortable, never mentioning that he was surely aware that they were going the opposite direction from where they were supposed to be. Or that they were going the wrong way like a bat out of hell.
She was grateful when, at last, she hit the old road that led to her parent’s house. But it was too narrow and full of cracks from winter and grass from summer. She was forced to slow down too many times. But Becky couldn’t really get mad. She knew all the people going by. They waved and she waved and drove on before they could get the windows down and tell her how nice it was to see her back from school.
The barbed wire fences gave way at last to the old sagging split rail that lined her yard. Melanie was out front with a spoon digging under the old tire swing, the first thing that had brought a smile to Becky’s face this whole day. She was probably digging up worms or such to dissect. The little geek.
“That your-” Leon started the question then cut himself off.
“What?” Becky finally looked him in the face, taking in his long blond hair, again pulled back away from his sharp jaw, somehow always bearing about two days worth of stubble. His blue eyes matched the early winter sky in understanding and bleakness.
“Nothing.” He looked the house up and down. “I’m sure this is a required stop on our way to Oak Ridge.” He finished his sentence and sealed his lips not once making eye contact.
Becky nodded. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”
Melanie was already running toward the car, having recognized her sister only after raising her hand to her red bangs to see who was driving the strange car that had pulled so boldly onto the gravel driveway. Becky caught the imp in her arms and swung her around a few times. She sucked in the air, knowing full well that it might already be in the reversal. Even though, by her own calculations it shouldn’t have come this far. Not yet anyway. But she knew she had to stop and take deep breaths. To smell her yard and the air, and really look at it, because it may very well be the last time.
In a practiced move, she swung Mel with a quick change of grasp that both sisters were familiar with. Melanie was riding piggyback by the time they passed through the front door, spoon and worms forgotten momentarily. She yelled right next to Becky’s ear. “Mom! Look who I found!”
Her mother rounded the corner from the laundry room. “Hey, Baby.” Her face lit up at seeing her oldest daughter so unexpectedly.
She slid Mel down her back until her sister’s small sneakered feet hit the har
d wood floor and Becky rushed to hug her mother.
Her mother hugged back just as fiercely before pulling away and looking Becky in the eyes. “What’s wrong?”
With a deep breath that took in the pine cleaner and open country, and a quick look at the old furniture, covered with throws and battered pillows, she turned to deliver the news. “I can’t tell you what’s happening. Just that it’s bigger than me.”
Her mother’s brows knit together. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”
Becky shook her head. “But I am with the CDC now, so you figure it out.” Another frown from her mother and another deep breath of the smell that was her home. “I can tell you this: you need to pack up the kids and Dad and go visit Aaron for at least a week. Call me before you return.”
Her mother leaned back, a hand absently reaching for the washer to steady herself. “Is Aaron in trouble?”
“No. But you need to go visit him.” Becky stared at her mother, hoping she would take the message and quit.
“Is something happening here?” Her mother’s voice shook, just a little, but she straightened up, standing firm on her own two feet.
Becky did the only thing she could do: she nodded her head while speaking. “I can’t tell you that. All I can say is that this would be a great time to go visit Aaron. Maybe get out of the house by tomorrow morning at the latest.”
Her mother leaned forward looking for one last out. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” She reached forward giving her mother a hug. “I’m not supposed to be here. I have to go.”
Turning, she spied Melanie wide-eyed behind her, having heard the whole conversation. She scooped her sister up even as the words began flowing out of that little mouth. “This is about those frogs isn’t it?”
So Becky did it again. She nodded, contradicting her voice. “I don’t know.”
“Something is wrong there.” Melanie paused, leaning back, “and it’s coming here.”
“I always knew you were a very smart girl. And Mom’s going to listen to whatever ideas you have. Because you’re probably right!” She yelled for Brandon, hoping he would make his way out to see her. She could hear the time ticking away in heartbeats.
Resonance Page 25
