by Steven Gould
Because nobody cares what happens to drug dealers.
Because there wouldn’t be a hue and cry to find out who did it if the victims were criminals themselves. And the police would be looking in the wrong direction—for other drug smugglers in the city, not for people who’d been following us since we’d lived in England.
I put the paper back, walked between two shelves, and jumped to the elementary school, between the hedge and the stairs, near the flat. I didn’t want to go directly there. I was afraid they were still watching the place. If they wanted me, they could be waiting inside for me to appear again. And they’d kill me.
Dead.
Like Mum. Like Dad.
I didn’t understand it. I hadn’t done anything to them. I was pretty sure Mum and Dad hadn’t, either. But they pretty clearly wanted me dead.
I walked toward the flat and almost immediately a woman pushing a baby pram stopped and said, “Aren’t you that British boy whose parents were—”
“No, maam.” The only American accent I could do with any sort of conviction was Deep South. “Ah just look like him. You’re the second person who’s said that today.”
“Oh.”
I smiled and walked on but when I turned the corner she was talking on her cell phone. Bugger all. I cut into an alley and when the tall fences hid me, I jumped away.
Empty Quarter again. Either I was getting better or I’d already moved so much of the loose dirt here that there wasn’t as much to sweep into the air. The bloodstains were fading but ants were now mining the dark dirt. It still reminded me of bloodstains on carpet. I kicked gravel and sand over the spot, ants and all.
It took me a moment to calm down enough to jump back to Sam’s place, by the spring. I splashed water over my face and sat down in the shade. After a bit, I wandered back to the house and pulled out the lunch that Consuelo had left me—tamales with pork. The smell made me want tortilla crisps and salsa. Crunchy, salty crisps and a medium salsa—I couldn’t handle the hotter stuff.
Why not?
I jumped back to the elementary school. There was a Safeway market a block east of the school grounds and I went there and bought tortilla crisps and salsa and several large bottles of Gatorade, then jumped back to the spring. I started to put the extra Gatorade in the fridge—there was plenty of room—but then I thought about Sam and Consuelo seeing it there so I stashed the bottles under my bed instead. The crisps and salsa tasted good—really good—and I ate them until the bag was empty and I was uncomfortably full.
The bag I buried at the bottom of the rubbish bin, but the salsa jar was half full so I put it at the back of the fridge, behind the pickles and mayonnaise.
I wanted to take another run at the flat, to try to get there without drawing attention, but I was tired and sleepy from the walking and the full stomach. I was still weak, I guess, from the blood loss. I thought about jumping directly back to my room, but I remembered the footsteps on the stair. Maybe they’d planted bugs? Maybe they were watching?
I sat down on the bed. The pillow pulled at me and I slumped over. I was asleep almost immediately after my head touched the pillowcase.
Sam brought home the San Diego News Daily and handed it to me in the living room. “They had this at the Stop-N-Go,” he said.
They’d used the same photo.
BOY FEARED DEAD AFTER PARENTS KILLED.
The story was a little different but had pretty much the same facts, including the bit about drugs and the implication that Dad and Mum were criminals. I clenched my teeth as I read it.
“It’s rubbish, you know, about the drugs. Not in our home—never. Mum had an uncle—he was an alcoholic and he died of it. We weren’t very well off—Mum wasn’t working because she was homeschooling me, and Dad couldn’t get proper work because they’re supposed to hire Americans first in his specialty. To make the rent we were stretching every penny of Dad’s salary. If they’d been selling drugs, think we’d have to live like that?”
He tilted his head to one side. “I only know what I’ve read and what you’ve told me. And you ain’t told me much. And what you did tell has some, well—what is your name again?”
My ears got hot and I looked away. “Sorry. The newspaper has it right. It’s just it was me they were asking for when they came to the door. My name. I—” I looked at the wall and squeezed my eyes shut. “They weren’t after Mum and Dad. They were after me!”
Never jump where someone can see me and never jump near home. I’d done both and Mum and Dad were dead.
“Really. They wanted to kill you?” He raised his eyebrows. “Did you see something you weren’t supposed to? Or is there money involved? Do you stand to inherit something?” He pulled a wooden chair from the wall and straddled it backward, arms resting across the back. He gestured at the paper. “This wasn’t your average sicko hunting little kids, was it? The paper said the neighbors saw multiple assailants leave, so there was more than one attacker, right?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“They came to the door asking for you? Not your dad or mom?”
“Didn’t I just say that? It’s not inheritance, though. And they weren’t coming after me because I saw something I shouldn’t.”
“Then why? This isn’t the Sudan. People don’t just kill kids for no reason. Even the sickos have a reason.”
“It’s something I did.” It just popped out of my mouth, without thought. My heart raced for a moment but I took a deep breath and said, “It’s something I can do.”
Consuelo, working on dinner in the kitchen, stepped into the living room and held up a plastic bag with a few pinto beans in the bottom. “Sam! Necesitamos habas. Okay?”
He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Okay. ¿Mañana compro?”
“¡Tempranito en la mañana!”
“Okay—first thing.” He shrugged and turned back to me. “What do you mean, something you did? You kill their dog or something? Piss in their pool? And you’re going to do it again?”
It’s against the rules. He’d never believe me without a demonstration. So why does it matter if he believes you? It just did. And they were Dad’s and Mum’s rules and they were dead. “Remember at the petrol stop, when you asked me where I’d gotten these?” I pointed at my shirt and pants.
His eyes narrowed. “Yeah. Thought maybe you’d stashed them near the station earlier.”
I shook my head and stood up. “Consuelo needs beans.”
“Yeah—I’ll get ’em in the morning.”
I jumped to the Safeway back in San Diego, where I’d gotten the crisps and salsa earlier. I got the twenty-pound burlap bag of pinto beans and paid for it in the quick-check line.
Four minutes after I’d disappeared from Sam’s living room I reappeared. The chair he’d been sitting on was on the floor, on its side. He was in the corner, pouring something from a bottle into a glass, but air swept around the room as I arrived and his hand jerked, spilling the liquid. “Dammit!”
I hefted the bag. “Beans.”
He stared for a moment then took a gulp from the glass.
I carried the beans into the kitchen and put them down on the counter.
Consuelo looked surprised, then pleased. “Bueno!” She rattled off a phrase in Spanish toward the living room and Sam’s voice, hoarser than usual, answered, “Sí. Yo sé.”
I went back in and sat down on the couch.
After a moment, Sam put the bottle away and brought his glass across the room. He picked up the chair and sat on it, forward this time, slumped a little.
“What was that?” he asked quietly, his voice still hoarse. The smell of whiskey came with his breath, reminding me of Dad’s weekly scotch.
“I went to a Safeway, in San Diego, bought the beans, and came back.”
“I got the bean part. You bought them?”
“The express line was empty.”
“Well, yeah, I guess I see that. What I don’t get is the traveling to San Diego part.”
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I nodded. “It’s the thing I can do. I jumped. Teleported. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Is that how you got those clothes?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I went back to my flat and got my allowance and my passport.” My voice broke and convulsively I said, “The tape outlines were still there—and the blood. And someone started to come up the stairs and I jumped away.”
“Deep breaths, kid. Slow it down.”
I nodded and tried that, until my heart wasn’t racing.
After a bit he asked, “How long have you been able to do this thing?”
“I did it for the first time when I was five, back in Oxford. In public. In front of witnesses. We’ve been moving ever since.”
“Moving? Why?”
“Dad and Mum said it was the people who started showing up, asking questions at their work. Then there was a close call on the street—a car. I thought it was a careless driver. Anyway, I skipped back behind a postal box and he missed me but he kept driving. No harm done, I thought. But Mum saw it from upstairs. I heard her tell Dad he’d been waiting for me to cross.”
He sucked on his teeth. “Can you go anywhere?”
“Anywhere I’ve been before that I can remember well enough.”
He swallowed the last of his whiskey. “I can see why they’d want you—could be handy. But why do they want to kill you? If I could do what you do—if I was the sort of man … I’d want to capture you, to use what you do.”
“Well, Dad talked about that, too. We read that Stephen King book about the girl who is kidnapped by the government.”
“Firestarter,” said Sam. “Didn’t read it but I saw the movie.”
“Yeah, with Drew Barrymore. We rented it after we read the book.”
“But why not something like that? Why do they want to kill you instead?”
My heart started racing and I was breathing fast again. Before Sam said anything I deliberately took deep, slow breaths. Grief may have been one of the things that the gauze was muffling but I recognized the other thing now.
Fear.
They were going to kill me. They followed us for over five years until they found us and then they tried to kill me. Made me want to hide under a bed. Made me want to curl up in a ball and pull dirt over me.
I went back to just breathing. Sam’s question still floated out there, though, like a falling glass of milk. You can’t grab it in time, you just watch it as it drops, anticipating the spreading puddle of white liquid and jagged glass.
“I don’t know why they want to kill me.”
Later, after supper, in the dusk after sunset, I told Sam I was going back to the flat.
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing, my clothes are starting to stink. I want my things.”
“And don’t you think they’ll be waiting?”
“Of course!” My voice was shrill and I clamped my mouth shut and concentrated on my breathing again. I wondered if I was getting asthma or something. After a bit I said, “I’m not going straight there. I’ll jump to the neighborhood first and check it out.”
“Clothes can be bought, kid.”
I dug out my hoard and spread it out on the coffee table. There were sixty-three dollars and some change, fifteen francs, and seven pounds, eight shillings, four p. “Not really gonna last that long, is it?
“Besides—it’s my birthday. I’m ten. I should be able to get my own stuff.”
“I really don’t think you shou—”
Didn’t hear the rest but as I walked toward the flat from my jump site behind the school hedge, I felt guilty. I hope I hadn’t messed up the living room too much. Sam had done nothing but help me and what had I done for him, besides the bag of beans?
The flat used to be just storage over the detached garage of a small house on Texas Street, but now the house itself was a separate rental property with a front driveway and the yard had been split with fencing. There was a narrow path back along the fence to the flat but there was a police car on the street, pretty much where one had been previously. The cop inside was reading by the dome light.
I backtracked and took to the alley, sticking to the shadows as I got closer to the house and avoiding the backyards with dogs. Fortunately, most of the dogs were inside and the one that wasn’t, a big Labrador named Lucky, lived in the rental house in front and knew me. There was a gap in the fence at the corner of his backyard and I crouched and snaked my hand in to scratch Lucky’s head. He panted and shifted, putting more of his body in reach. I was working on his upper neck when I felt his ears go up and his head shifted to the right, down the alley. He gave a halfhearted, “Woof!” but then shoved his head back into my hand. After a few more seconds of scratching, I heard the distant scuffing of feet on gravel.
Lucky’s fence put me in deep shadow and I was also screened from that direction by an overdeveloped hibiscus growing into the alley from the corner of our yard. Peeking around the hibiscus at knee level I saw the outline of three men walking down the alleyway, backlit by the distant streetlight. One of them carried a shoulder-slung bag and they all walked oddly—lifting each foot from the ground and then putting it down heel first before rolling the foot forward to the toes.
I pulled my head back quickly, afraid they’d seen me, and, in fact, I heard someone say, “What’s that?”
Then Lucky began barking up a storm, right by my head. I nearly recoiled out into the alley but realized it was the voice he was barking at.
Lucky’s owner, Mr. Mayhew, came to the back door. “Lucky! Get your noisy ass in here!” Lucky went bounding to the back door. “What did you hear?” he said quietly. He put the dog in but stood there on the back porch for a moment, listening. I wondered if Lucky had been barking the night they killed Mum and Dad.
After a moment I heard the door creak again and light silhouetted Mr. Mayhew as he stepped back into his kitchen.
I leaned forward a tad, looking through the branches of the hibiscus. The three men had flattened themselves against the garage door in response to Lucky’s barking, but when Mr. Mayhew went back inside they moved again, working quickly.
The stairway from the flat descended toward the street, and at ground level it was visible from the patrol car parked in front. Instead of going that way, the one with the bag set it to the side, then stepped between the other two. They both dropped to one knee and grabbed his ankles, then stood abruptly, throwing him straight up.
He grabbed the railing above and got one foot on the landing with only the slightest noise, then swung over the railing and dropped to a crouch before the door. I presumed the door was locked but he had it open almost immediately. He stood up again and leaned over the railing. The men below heaved up the hanging bag, but he almost missed it, snagging it by the strap at the last minute. One of the men below said, “Careful, you blad!”
“Shhh!” the other hissed.
“Shhh yourself. The detonators would’ve made a lot more noise than me.” I recognized the voice. It was the man with the Bristol accent.
On the landing above, the man disappeared into the flat.
The two men below stepped back into the shadow of the garage door. “What keeps it from blowing up someone else instead—the police, or the landlord?”
“The door sensor. People who come in normally, well, they’re not gonna set it off. But if ‘e pops in, the motion sensor trips when the door sensor hasnt—see? That’ll do ’im a treat.”
Like you did for my parents? I groped for a rock—a big rock I could throw or strike with. There was a line of bricks under the edge of the fence, to keep Lucky from digging out. I was able to pull one from the corner, a jagged half brick tucked in to complete the row. I wanted to heave it at them and jump away. Or maybe jump right next to them and hit them in the face with it?
My hands were shaking and I didn’t know if it was fear or rage but I didn’t trust myself to throw the brick and hit anything.
The guy from upstairs came out and dropped the em
pty shoulder bag over the railing, then swung over, lowered himself until he hung at arm’s length and dropped.
Dammit!
I jumped to the middle of the street and stepped up to the police car. “Hey,” I whispered.
The cop recoiled, surprised, his book dropping and one hand going down to his gun belt. “Aren’t you—?”
“Yes! But the men who killed my parents are right there!” I stabbed my finger back down the brick path to the stairway. “Behind the garage.”
Only they weren’t behind the garage.
Projectiles shattered the passenger windows and slashed sideways and then the cop was bent over, his head halfway out the window, clawing at the thing sticking out of his neck, a thing with a cable attached to it, and I was in the Empty Quarter in a whirlwind of dirt and brush.
Oh god, oh god, ohmigod. Had they seen me jump? When I appeared at the cop car? But I was on the other side, away from them. I’m short—the car should’ve blocked me.
I still had the brick in my hand. There was blood on my shirt. The cop’s blood.
I jumped back to the alley and peered up the path. The three were out by the car, weapons leveled, each looking in a different direction, but they all turned back toward me the instant I appeared.
They know when I jump.
They ran back toward the flat and I jumped again, but only down the alley, below my bedroom window. I heard their footsteps by the stairs and I heaved the rock up, hard as I could, through my window.
Fire, light, sound, and flying glass. I couldn’t have stayed there if I tried, but I returned to the end of the block almost as soon as I’d flinched away to the Empty Quarter.
Debris was still raining down and the roof was gone from the flat and every car alarm in the city seemed to be going off. I walked carefully up the sidewalk as dozens of people came out of their homes to look wide-eyed down the street.
I backtracked and looked down at the mouth of the alley, where the men had come from when I first saw them. After a minute, two of them appeared, dragging the third with his arms across their shoulders. As they passed under the streetlight I saw blood on their faces—flying glass, I decided—and one of them smoked, literally, puffs of smoke rising from his hair and shoulder.
