Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  With a last thought she turned back. “You don’t tell anyone about this. Do you both understand me? If you start a panic there’s no telling what will happen.”

  Both the Sorenson women nodded back at her and she turned to go. “I love you.”

  Brandon showed his face in the hall right as she reached the front door. She tried to scoop him up but he was too heavy, and from the looks of it, three inches taller than the last time she had seen him. Blinking back tears, she kissed his cheek and went out the front door.

  The wood planks of the porch showed wear at the front door and down the steps. The grass had disappeared in a trail to the end of the drive, where the CDC sedan sat - with one very nonchalant Leon squeezed into the passenger side seat, looking anywhere but at her.

  Becky walked up to his side and tapped on the window, startling him from his glazed over look. He opened the door to her and she smiled, holding out the keys. “Do you want to drive?”

  “Hell, yes.” He didn’t look at her mother or her sister in the front doorway. He didn’t acknowledge her brother’s whoops that they were going to go visit Aaron. Just calmly walked around and situated himself in the driver’s side, lifting the lever and sliding the seat back as far as it would go, which to Becky still looked a little shy of comfortable. He threw the car in gear and backed out of the driveway as though he had never been there.

  Without needing directions he took them back the way they had come, leaving Becky to her thoughts in the passenger seat, until he startled her by asking what she wanted.

  Only then did she look up to realize that it wasn’t a philosophical query, but they were about three feet from the Burger King drive thru. She rattled off an order, cringing as she realized that she was way too familiar with Burger King’s menu, and listened while Leon ordered himself two large-sized value meals.

  As they pulled away Leon pointedly looked at his watch. “Gee,” even to her ears it sounded odd coming from him, “That sure did take a long time. And I’m sorry I got us lost back there.”

  Becky smiled, letting out the breath she had kept in. “Thank you.”

  Leon smiled, still looking straight at the long, bare, two lane road ahead of them. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. Now, am I headed toward Oak Ridge this time?”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Jordan paced the edge of the bubble.

  Three hours since they had left. And nothing.

  He had heard phone contact, crackles of the walkie-talkies Jillian and David had carried in, spurts of conversation between them and the suits in the tent behind him. He stuffed down the wry thought that they would have to move the tent another twenty feet further before tomorrow morning.

  The air bit at his legs through the blue scrub pants that didn’t keep out the chill. He zipped his jacket a little higher up under his chin, not wanting to take the time to go back to the room to put on heavier pants. And not wanting to lose the instant recognition the blue cotton afforded him. The others all knew exactly what to look for when they needed him. Right now that was very important.

  He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, looking up at tall pines and oaks. Hills crowded up on either side of him. The city had purposefully been laid out in a hard-to-reach area. The roads had been contoured to the Appalachians, making it hard to predict where and when to turn. One of the local scientists had said something about making the city difficult to invade, as he had pointed on the map to crossing roads, circles off of circles, and even avenues that continued but changed names, the original name taking off at a ninety degree angle on a different street.

  Jordan breathed in, the cold air chilling his lungs. In front of him the place was a ghost town. Everyone evacuated from neat homes. The landscape looked like a handful of miniature houses had been tossed across the hills and rooted wherever they landed. Behind him the city went on as normal. The library and town Civic Center had plenty of traffic. The gymnasium housed some of the displaced families. They held activities for the out-of-school kids while their parents continued to go to work, many at the nuclear labs further down the turnpike. Jordan shuddered to himself at the thought of the magnetics reaching the power plants.

  “Dr. Abellard!”

  He turned to see a young tech, complete with acne, old jeans, and Converse sneakers under the labcoat, come running up to him. “Dr. Sorenson is here. She wants to see you.”

  With a nod, he turned and followed the kid back into the tents, the grass growing strong beneath his feet and the smell of trees and green the only real distinguishing factors between here and Nevada. They wound their way through tent after tent, gathering papers as they went. Jordan was handed lab results on the people who had gone down this morning. He had read each individual report earlier, but now held compiled statistics on the group, on how many were down, who had died from the alpha group and who still clung to life and maybe even hope.

  Lucy Whitman, one of the techs, approached with another handful of papers and a broad smile, her blond curls bouncing and looking overdone for a scientific endeavor of this magnitude and tragedy. Jordan couldn’t abide the twinkle in her eyes or the makeup that was always perfect, even as the pieces of the world fell down around her. He faked a smile back at her, only earning her shoulder pressed to his as she held out the pages to him. “I know I’m not supposed to read these, but there was no cover sheet, and look!”

  He did, but saw only black type on white pages. Until her perfectly polished red nail skimmed across some of the words. “Fifteen of the Nevada patients have woken up!”

  His head slammed hard to the right to look at her.

  “What!?”

  But she was serious. The grin was genuine, and the sparkle contagious.

  He jumped at the simultaneous digital ring and buzz of his phone going off. He simply opened the phone and answered it without thinking. “Hello?”

  “Abellard!” Landerly’s voice had a smile in it. “We’ve caught a break, boy! I trust you’re holding the pages I just faxed?”

  “Yes, sir. But I haven’t read them all yet.” He shoved the pages back at Lucy and turned away from her, putting his fingers over his left ear to block any noises. But perhaps the pounding of his heartbeat in his fingertips was louder than what was around him.

  “Fifteen Nevada patients are out of the coma. There are a few stats in there, but not enough. The docs there are helping them and taking vital signs. I want you sitting near the fax machine. I’ve got a tech there assigned to record and fax everything they get to you and me simultaneously. This is the break and we have to be on it.”

  “Yessir.” His heart pounded and he spit out the thing that sprang immediately to his mind. “What about Lake James?”

  Landerly paused for just a moment, and Jordan knew what was coming. “I haven’t heard anything, but I already put in an inquiry.”

  “Of course.” His breathing had sped up there for a moment and now his shoulders and chest sank, heavy as granite. The murderers and rapists would wake up, but not the good people of a small Minnesota town.

  Landerly’s voice sliced through his self pity, bringing back the five senses of reality with it: the phone pressed against his ear, the taste of metal in his mouth where he had bit down, the throbbing in his tongue further evidence. “Remember, the Nevada site fell first. So on this time scale we should know something within two days about Lake James.”

  “Of course.” And just like that his heart rate accelerated again. His breathing went shallow and he would become hypoxic and pass out if he didn’t get a grip.

  “I hear Dr. Sorenson and one of the animal wranglers arrived. They’re going after some local wildlife. You need to read their Minnesota data and report in to me what you can make of it.”

  “Of course sir, but Jillian’s in the reversal now. We’ll get back to you when -”

  “Here’s an idea: try thinking for yourself, Abellard. Or I will name this shit after you.”

  Jordan would have laughed if not for the t
hree successive digital notes signaling that Landerly had already hung up on him. He stared at the phone for a moment before he realized that Lucy was watching his every move, and the tech in the converse sneakers was watching hers, even though he was way too young for Lucy to be anything but a farfetched fantasy. Jordan sympathized. We all need our pipe dreams.

  He took the papers out of Lucy’s outstretched and manicured hand as Becky Sorenson approached and clasped his hand in a warm grip. “Good to see you again, Jordan.” She motioned to the blond giant behind her, “This is Leon Peppersmith. He’s a CDC wrangler.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Peppersmith’s voice was modulated if not cultured. And contrary to fears, he didn’t grind Jordan’s bones to meal with his handshake, even though the man would easily make Jillian look like she belonged in Oz.

  Becky pulled the haversack she was wearing a little higher on her shoulders. “We’re heading to the edges to capture what we can.”

  Jordan took a step back. “Don’t go in. Not until we know what we’re dealing with.” He shook his head, waiting for a piece of the sky to break free and crash in flames inches from his feet. But it didn’t happen.

  “How will we know what we’re dealing with if we don’t go in?” Becky, too, shook her head, shrugging, at a loss for the words to express what was happening around them. Like Jillian, she saw no alternative. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  But Jordan plowed on ahead, giving his best effort at stopping them. “Some of them are waking up at the Nevada site.”

  “Really?!” Becky’s face lit up. “That’s great! How many?”

  “Fifteen. So far.” It was so hopeful and yet such a small number. He clung to the belief that he could get Becky and Peppersmith to change their minds before he cracked from it all. “And you have data from Minnesota, so why–“

  Becky shrugged him off again. “Just more questions. We need to find the links.”

  Jordan motioned them into a tent that was being used as one of the lab stations. There was only one tech in there, and both Jordan and Peppersmith gave him a look that did more than just request privacy. The tech shrugged as he pocketed his wrench and a small meter. Hew spoke over his shoulder as he exited, “Damned UV-vis is down. All of them are. Don’t use it.”

  Then they were alone, except for the centrifuges, whirring and stopping, settling the contents in the blood samples everyone had been collecting. Lowering himself into a chair, Jordan motioned for Becky and Leon to do the same, and set about stalling them. “What did you find?”

  “Moose.” It was Peppersmith. “Canada Moose. A whole herd - looks like they all just laid down and died. Wolves and Lynx side by side, tearing at the carcasses.”

  Laid down and died?

  Becky chimed in as Jordan felt his face pull further and further into a knot. “The white tailed dear there were only juveniles. There wasn’t an adult to be found. Nothing over three point.”

  He felt the back of the chair support him before he realized he had slid back. He had started to open his mouth again, but Becky pulled a list from her pocket. “Photocopy this.” She held it up to Lucy, who Jordan only then realized was hovering at the open tent flap. But Becky pulled it back, away from Lucy’s reaching grasp, shoving it at Jordan, “Here, look at it first.”

  Species were listed to halfway down the page. And Becky’s voice derailed his train of thought. “They’re all missing or dead.”

  “Whole species?” He handed the page up to Lucy who fled from sight, hopefully for the nearest copier.

  Becky and Peppersmith both nodded.

  “Holy shit.” Jordan blinked, wondering if the day could get any more surreal.

  Peppersmith shrugged. “We have to go in. The animals’ survival depends on it.”

  Before Jordan could argue, Lucy had returned with Becky’s weathered original and a crisp copy for him, and the biologists were out of the tent, following a new tech who was showing them the way to the west side of the reversal.

  With deep, even breaths that he had to count out, he stumbled his way to the fax machine, already piling high with printed pages. His butt smacked the chair and he began scanning the documents, quickly realizing there was an individual chart on each of the men who had woken from coma.

  Men. Every last one of them, because it was a men’s facility with male guards.

  “Paper!” He shouted it to whomever would listen, grateful when two different techs showed, one with blank white pages and the other holding out a legal pad and retractable pen. “Thank you.” He took the yellow-lined paper but didn’t look up.

  In seconds the pad was spread across his knees and his hand went automatically to the pen in his breast pocket, carefully engraved with the words Jordan Abellard, M.D. It had been a graduation gift, unaccompanied by a tag or even words, from his father. He began writing furiously.

  Men.

  All prisoners. No guards.

  White counts. Prior: normal. In coma: Low. Awake: high

  All wing 3

  Down date: 12, 14, 12, 11, 12, 12, 13, 14, 13, 12, 12, 12, 12, 14, 14.

  All 12s down in pm, all 14s down in am.

  He grabbed at his cell phone and hit Landerly on speed dial.

  “What do you have boy?”

  “There’s a 53 hour window from when the first of these men fell to the last one. The down times correlate loosely to the waking times.”

  “What else?”

  Landerly was seeing the same things he was, he knew. “There are no guards. Just prisoners. All from the same wing. These are the guys who went down before the reversal swept the CDC set-up. So it makes sense that there aren’t any guards awake. . . Yet.” He rattled off what he saw about the white counts, probably still not giving Landerly anything new.

  “Abellard!” It came from far off. And in that instant Jordan recognized the voice. David.

  “Gotta go.” He closed the phone, left the pages where they were and took off at a run, not realizing that it was the first time he had hung up on Landerly.

  He arrived at the flag line marking the edge of the reversal as David pulled into view. The figure sagging at his side was Jillian. Her left arm was slung over David’s shoulder which was far too high to be comfortable, and her right arm wrapped ominously across her stomach.

  Once he recognized what he was seeing, he moved without thinking, crossing the unseen boundary into the reversal. He ran toward the two figures, who came into sharper focus as he approached. “Jillian!”

  “I’m fine!” Her voice snapped, but lacked true conviction. David’s face appeared grim, although if he was suffering any nausea it didn’t show. Jordan didn’t care.

  With one hand he lifted Jillian’s arm from where it clung fiercely to David’s jacket, and in the same motion pulled her feet from the ground, lifting her to settle in his arms. His only thought was getting her the hell out of the reversal, even as she curled both arms around her stomach and rolled even tighter into a ball within his grip.

  It was David’s voice that cut through to him. “Don’t run with her. I tried it, it just makes her worse.”

  Jordan clenched his jaw with the effort it took to maintain a reasonable pace. The whole time he wondered if it was better to let her get more nauseated and get her out faster, or keep her feeling better, even though the yellow flag line didn’t approach as quickly as he’d like.

  He bit down on his tongue to keep from flinging out insults, to not yell at David. This is what you get for taking her into the heart of darkness.

  Her brows pulled tighter, and he could see the pain even though half her face was obscured by the neck of her jacket zipped all the way up and over her mouth. “Come on, Jilly, hang in there.”

  At last he made it, and even though he couldn’t detect it with any of his usual senses, he felt his whole body react the moment he crossed the boundary. He got her to the nearest triage tent and laid her out on a gurney. But that only lasted a second. She was sitting up before he had his stethoscope in
his ears, her palm out to him.

  “My heart rate is eighty-eight. My resps are twenty-two, and I need a GI cocktail, now.”

  It would have made him smile at any other time. But the stethoscope was folded back around his neck in one fluid movement as he pulled a plastic cup from a makeshift shelf next to him. All the ingredients were there, and he felt like a bartender, measuring out Donnatal, then peeling back the foil lid on the dose of viscous lidocaine, revealing the eerily green goo. He poured it into the cup, not watching it sink under the Donnatal, his hands already grabbing for the Mylanta bottle. He added the antacid, almost topping off the cup and ignoring a century of medical procedure as he stirred quickly with his finger. He handed her the concoction licking his finger clean as he watched her toss her head and shoot it back.

  It would numb her stomach and settle what she was feeling. At least at this stage in the game she didn’t have to play guinea pig, suffering through all of it because they didn’t know how to treat it, or if what they did would make her worse. He could at least offer a little relief.

  His hand found her hair; she’d worn it down to give warmth from the wind, and his chest eased a little feeling her solid within his grasp. He prayed out loud, “It’s just something you ate.”

  But she denied him. “I have ear pain.”

  Son of a bitch.

  15

  Jordan heard David walk into the tent behind him, a little out of breath. That fact revealing that he must have carried, or helped haul Jillian, a good long way. “We didn’t make it to the center.”

  Jordan almost exploded with who gives a flying fuck?! But he held it in check by the barest of glimmers.

  Jillian started speaking. “No one was in there. We found a few bodies, though. The smell was enough to explain the nausea.” She almost smiled. “The field is stronger as we got closer in.”