Crimson Son

by Russ Linton

  “Welcome, Dr. Alexander. Everything’s ready to go,” beams the overly cheerful attendant while he extends a hand and helps Emily up the steps. Martin returns the smile and motions to me unnecessarily—I’m right behind her.

  Once on the plane, there are two captain’s chairs to my right, facing a glossy wooden table between them. The aisle continues, flanked by plush armchairs, with the last five feet or so taken up by a cream-colored padded bench. To my left is the cockpit. I let out a low whistle. I’ve only seen the inside of big commercial airliners. While the massive rows of gauges, switches and jeweled lights on those always looked pretty cool, this is A-mazing. Three large LCDs take up most of the instrument panel, and a thin line of switches and buttons frames them. The yoke is closer to a go-cart steering wheel than what I’ve seen on a plane before.

  “You like?” Martin’s voice is right over my shoulder.

  “Meh.”

  Brushing past Emily, I sling my bag to the ground and sink into the leather bench. “Well, it beats a cross-country trip in Emily’s banged up beast!”

  Emily flashes a hurt look. “Don’t knock the Bronc.” The pouty lips switch to a playful smile. “I’ve known it longer than I’ve known you. And it’s a lot less trouble.” She stows the giant purse that she’d dug out of her locker at the university. A colorful striped bag with woven handles. In it are the electronics—sat phone, laptop, even my iPod—hermetically sealed in hazardous waste bags.

  Martin steps inside, waves at the attendant and pulls the cabin door closed. “Your next stop, ladies and gentlemen, California.” His relaxed tone is in sharp contrast to the disciplined professionalism of Doctor Alexander and he disappears into the cockpit. Emily follows.

  I swing my feet onto the couch, dig out the Swiss Family Robinson and prop up on the armrest. “Where’s the flight attendant button? A pillow would be nice.” The only answer to my question is the whine of the engines warming up for takeoff.

  A silky smooth rise into the air, and the landing gear are tucked away before I even know what’s happening. Clouds race by, and as we pierce the top layer, they settle to a steady crawl below us. Open, boundless sky competes briefly with Mom’s birthday message on the book’s first page.

  I peer over the book into the cockpit and see the top of Emily’s head angled on the headrest. Engines whir—not too loud, not too soft. I close my eyes to try and clear my head. Pain from the bumps and bruises fades with that pre-sleep numbness. My head dips. Eyes surrender. I twitch on the couch, only vaguely aware of the book slipping out of limp fingers.

  *

  My eyes flutter open, then closed. From that brief glimpse, I open one again, wide. This isn’t Martin’s jet. I’m in my bedroom. An apartment in Omaha, I think. The walls are covered in Giants posters for the ‘03 season. I was excited then. It was a good season, but they’ll choke in the National League Series against Florida. If this is a dream, I’ll pretend they won.

  Doing duty as a bookend on a wall shelf is my consolation trophy from an aborted Little League season. Beneath that, a desk with a computer tower. Ancient technology, a Pentium 4 Northwood core. I’m lying in bed, the worn copy of Swiss Family Robinson in hand.

  A tray clatters in the hall, and my door opens.

  “Good Morning, hon. Hope you’re feeling better,” Mom says brightly.

  Breakfast in bed the day after our two-person party for my thirteenth birthday. I had the “flu”. It was that, or going to yet another school and fighting through the new kid routine. Besides, Mom gave me all kinds of creative birthday presents. Usually the toys and stuff were “from Dad”. The books and sick days came from her.

  “Better. I bet I’ll be ready for school tomorrow.” The words slip out without any thought.

  “Yes, sir, I think you might be.” Mom sets the tray down—pancakes with a chocolate chip smile and whipped cream eyes. “Your first day as a teenager. Figured I’d sneak this in one last time. Of course, if your stomach isn’t up to it…”

  I lock the tray in a death grip. “I’ll suck smiley-face pancakes through a feeding tube when I’m one hundred and thirteen. Don’t ever stop making these!”

  She laughs, smiles. My throat cinches up and I think I might cry. Lines of worry crease her forehead and she asks, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine. I mean, I’m, um, sick, but nothing’s wrong. Nothing else.” I stare into her face, trying to memorize every detail, again. It’s even clearer than the last few dreams. A tear creeps down my cheek.

  “Honey, what is it?” She sits down and places her hand on my head, stroking my hair.

  “Nothing.”

  “Spencer…”

  “Is this real?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Uh. Real whipped cream.”

  She squints an eye, “Yes, why?”

  I always start eating the pancakes by carving an outer circle around the face. I save the eyes and mouth for last. It’s where all the sugary bits are, but mainly, I always felt a bit weird eating those first. When I was younger, I’d talk to the face and tell him about the adventure he was going to have in my stomach. Sometimes, he’d talk back to my mom for being such a horrible person, feeding a poor defenseless pancake to her child.

  It’s a bit pathetic at thirteen, let alone nineteen—I’m not sure which I am now. I want to skip the jokes and enjoy the gooey sweetness. I want to savor this bizarre, panic-free moment. Dream or memory, doesn’t matter.

  Perched on the edge of the bed, Mom smiles, looking somewhere beyond the plate, and tucks her hair behind one ear.

  “No, not my left eye! There’s no love for pirate pancakes!” I attempt the high-pitched pancake voice, but it doesn’t sound the same.

  “Oh, Spencer.” Her grin is forced, but she reaches out and pats my knee. Her hand stays.

  It was my job to cheer her up when Dad was gone. This time it isn’t working, and it didn’t work then either. I’d overheard a conversation and figured out he’d gone to New York. Gone six weeks this time. The news broke about the Anthrax Kid’s capture three weeks ago, but he still hadn’t come home.

  I can’t ignore it anymore, no matter how much I want to. Answers I have now that I didn’t then keep gnawing their way into my thoughts. I recall Dad’s explanation about the bunker refrigerator. It was only there so he could keep samples for a case. The anthrax case. Samples a biologist would make. That happened six years ago, the same time Martin said he stopped seeing as much of Emily. And the look of concern now on Mom’s face about Dad, missing—a perfect reflection of Emily’s when we found out he’d surrendered.

  Looks like she’s more than just a worried colleague.

  “You’re not worried about Dad, are you?” I try to hide the anger in my voice.

  “Always.” She doesn’t make eye contact until after she says the word. Her irises have changed again. Under her mirror gaze, the room shrinks. Her hand tightens on my knee. “Where is she?”

  The air feels wet, too thick for my lungs. I try to breathe and the dense air forms a skin over my lips. She? Images of Dad lounging around the bunker with Emily assault my mind. Enjoying his cozy little getaway while Mom and I tried not to wonder whether or not he was coming back this time. Next, I see Emily standing on the plane with her bag slung over her shoulder and that worried expression on her face. I struggle to speak. “What the hell?” I gasp.

  “Spencer! What’s gotten into you?” Her expression is flat but her eyes are their normal color now.

  I can breath again. My room, the birthday breakfast in bed, all return, but any feeling that this place was ever home has been erased.

  “We should go. You don’t have to live like this. Maybe you won’t—”

  “Live… live like what?” She turns to stare absently at the wall. “Spencer, he needs us. We need him, too. Don’t we?” Her question rides a wave of genuine confusion.

  “In a couple of years you’ll get kidnapped by a psycho that Dad managed to piss off. He doesn�
��t do shit about it.”

  She peels her eyes from the spot on the wall and reaches out to take the tray. The intensity in her face returns. “We’ll be okay. You’ll make sure that man can’t hurt us. Then we can all be together. A family, Spencer. We’ll be a family and nobody will ever take that away from us.” Her irises are empty, colorless, and the whites are living mercury.

  Uncomfortable under that hungry glare, I look down at the book in my lap and it’s changed. The manila cover carries a single line of type:

  KUBARK.

  Chapter 23

  For a moment, I can’t move, can’t scream. Agony squeezes out as a strangled whimper. Then, I’m released. A thin blanket clings to my damp secondhand shirt. No posters. No desk. Empty walls are broken only by the narrow row of windows along the fuselage. My copy of Swiss Family Robinson sits on the table. Through the open cockpit doorway, I can see Emily and Martin’s heads poking above their seats and bobbing in a conversation I can’t hear over the engines.

  I need to tell them that she’s alive. She needs my help. Time to activate the hyper-drive on this jet and get to San Fran, yesterday. But there were other revelations in that dream, too. Maybe it’s time to make my own plans.

  Swinging my feet off the leather bench, I peel off the blanket and start down the aisle. Emily’s bag peeks out from under a seat at the far end of the row. As I approach, pieces of their conversation become clear. Made strong by a harsh tone, I hear Martin first.

  “Then what, Em? You can’t keep running,” he says as he scans the skies. Emily’s reply is muffled, but she stays fixed on whatever distant cloud she’s considering. She curls up in the copilot’s chair, her feet underneath her and arms pulled tightly out of sight. I kneel next to her bag.

  Martin continues his lecture. “You’re going to get hurt, or get that kid killed.” If my hand weren’t digging around Emily’s purse, I’d launch a verbal smackdown. “You’ve got to stay out of this and tell the authorities.” Martin shifts in his chair and I can no longer see him past the door frame.

  Emily’s head snaps his direction, her full profile coming into view. I freeze. She’s too focused on Martin to notice me.

  “No, we can’t go to the authorities. We’ve been over this. Sean was in that bunker for a reason. He didn’t want to be found by anyone. Not until he’d taken care of the Black Beetle.”

  “You honestly think you can do that?” asks Martin, bewildered.

  “No… but he can. I need to find him. Set him free somehow.” Her head turns back to the window and whatever else she says gets lost in the jet wash. My hand sinks into the purse letting only the barest whisper of bio-bag slide along my fingertips while I grope for familiar edges and corners, my eyes locked on the cockpit.

  “I still think that’s a job for the cops, the FBI, the CIA, whoever. Not you.”

  Emily shakes her head. “I last spoke to him before the London incident. He said not to trust anybody, especially his government contacts.”

  At least now I know where he was. The lull in the conversation dissolves and Martin’s bedside manner voice returns. “Those experiments have been shown to cause neurological damage.”

  Half my forearm buried in the purse, I again fight off an urge to jump up and kick the doc somewhere near the proctology department. Dad may be a jerk, but that’s my dad he’s talking about.

  “Do not go there,” Emily warns.

  “I’m worried about you, Em.” After nothing but silence from Emily, Martin continues, “You remember the attack in downtown Alexandria, three years ago? Right? That idiot, Captain Dynamite took on Black Beetle. The ER was packed. I amputated a lady’s leg that had been crushed under a chunk of concrete…”

  My fingers brush the slim shape of the thumb drive, sealed behind a thick barrier bag. It slides against another object stuffed in the same container. I follow the edges until I feel the unmistakable antenna of the sat phone.

  “…same as her dog. She was still clutching the leash, screaming, when they brought her in. The paramedics had to cut it and drag her into the ambulance.”

  I pinch the bag between two fingers while maneuvering my other hand past the laptop and spreading the purse open far enough that I can lift the bag without crinkling the stiff plastic or brushing against the other contents.

  “There was this other guy with a piece of rebar through his skull. We saved him, but he’s lucky to be speaking in single syllables. That’s not even the worst of it…”

  I rise cautiously, staring into the cockpit where Martin’s matter-of-fact tone has Emily’s head turned away from him and shaking vigorously. Every ache and overtaxed muscle complains as blood tries to find its way through my legs. Before I knelt down, there’d been only a dull sensation, but now my leg muscles ache. I bite my lip and turn to the back of the plane.

  “Stop!” Midway to the leather bench, I’ve half-turned before I realize she’s talking to Martin. “Sean isn’t like that! I’m going to find him!” Wild desperation in Emily’s voice only further explains why she waited in the woods for weeks, or months as a favor for her “colleague”. She slumps forward, resting her forehead on her palm.

  Two words escape Martin’s lips, “I see.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Emily’s voice is pained and she buries her face in her hands.

  I make it back to my seat in the deafening silence without being seen. I’m zipping up my backpack when I hear Emily say, “Hey. How’d you sleep?” She places a hand on an armrest and kneels beside me.

  “Fine. Just putting my book away.”

  “You doing okay?”

  “Fine.”

  Her hand touches my shoulder and she sits on the bench next to me. She massages her temples and her face pinches. “We’ll find him, Spencer. I promise.”

  You do that.

  “I’m going to check out the cockpit, if that’s cool.”

  “Sure. Martin won’t mind.” Worry creases her face behind a mask of genuine pain. “My head’s killing me. I’m just going to rest for a bit.”

  She’s really attractive. Smart. A total geek, even. I can see why I was stumbling over myself when I crashed into her arms. I can see what Dad probably saw. But she isn’t Mom. Not even close. My eyes linger too long, letting my own mask crumble enough that I can tell she watches my entire trip up the aisle to the cockpit. Martin’s not my first choice of company, but it’s the only other place to go.

  Martin twists to face me and his lips spread into a warm smile. “So there’s the patient. How’s the ride so far?” He stands and puts a hand on my shoulder. He has to bend a little at the knees so he can stare “deep into my eyes”. Awkward, but I should be used to it by now.

  “C’mon, Doc, really?”

  “Have a seat.” He motions to the copilot’s chair. “Any pain? Headaches?”

  “Nope. I’m good.” I drop into the high-backed chair. “How long until we get there?”

  “A couple hours.” He reaches over to one of the touch screens and taps. An ETA of one hour and forty-seven minutes shows under a GPS heading. Extremely cool, but unsettling.

  “Anybody could track the GPS signals,” I say.

  Realization dawns slowly on Martin’s face. “Oh, yeah, I guess there’s a way to do that. I’m not sure how they’d know to find you here.” He must be able to tell that his vague statement is not reassuring, so he explains, “I registered a flight path, that’s it. No passenger list. It isn’t required like a commercial flight.”

  Not that I had a bunch of travel options, anyway. Like I told Emily, playing it safe won’t find Mom.

  Martin works in a precise manner, like I figure a doctor might. A roving eye on the sky, the slightest adjustments, and diligently recording flight information along the way. Most of the functions seem to be handled by the hardware, though, and it doesn’t come across near as intimidating as flying should.

  “I could do this,” I say.

  “You think so, eh?” Martin laughs. That’
s the first time I’ve heard him laugh and it’s a deep rolling sound that makes me smile.

  For the next couple of hours, Martin scratches the surface on flight school 101 and I’m completely taken off-guard by all the technical details. It’s a conversation comfort zone I gladly slip into. Back to hanging out with friends discussing tech or baseball with borderline obsessive detail, and staying clear of anything remotely personal.

  At one point, he shuts off the autopilot. “Go ahead,” he motions, “take the controls.” Aside from waking Emily with a sudden course correction, it goes pretty smooth. Okay, so that happens twice. I’d do it a third time, but I don’t want Martin to think I’m not able to do this. In fact, I must be doing pretty good. Martin lays off the “kid” bit and actually tells me he’s impressed. I’m having to dial down the doc’s douche status by the minute.

  “Are you a teacher?” I don’t generally like those either, so his answer might help get the “Martin is a spoiled, overly handsome tool” train back on track.

  “Flight instructor? Oh no, all this is only a hobby,” he replies.

  “Well, you could be one,” I muse.

  “Must be the ER.” Martin explains. “I’m the guy that gets tapped to talk the interns through procedures.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Mostly a rookie gig. I found I don’t mind so much though.”

  “Rookie? You haven’t been a doctor for long?”

  “No, a medical degree takes a while. Not to mention, I took the scenic route.”

  “I would too if I had this baby.” My hands slide back toward the controls and I loosely grip them, careful not to interrupt the reengaged autopilot.

  Martin chuckles. “No, I mean scenic, as in, I started in the College of Business with my eye on an MBA.”

  “Why’d you do that?” I ask through an involuntary scowl. “Your parents left you a fortune. Heck, why even go to school?”