by Meg Gardiner
Becky screamed.
Coyote snapped out of the reverie. If the mare inhaled flame and burned her airway, it would confuse the data for the experiment. She grabbed a real sports bottle, unscrewed the top, and threw water on Becky’s face. The fire died.
Becky twisted in the back of the van, her hands hovering above her face. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were burned away, her hair singed. Her eyes were swelling shut. Her skin was red and already blistered. Good. She tried to scream again but her mouth was burned, her lips slick and cherry red. The smell was intense.
Coyote pressed the Taser to her thigh. “Hold still or you’ll get another jolt. And then you’ll never get out of here. Do you want to get out?”
Wheezing, Becky stilled.
Her face was mostly red, not black. The burn had gone to the correct depth, down into the dermis, down to the hair follicles, blood vessels, and nerve endings. Second-degree. Much longer and the flame would have charred too deep, destroying the nerves in her face, preventing her from sensing pain. Second-degree burns were always painful. Horrifyingly so.
At least, they should be.
Coyote watched. Becky’s face was degenerating. A few patches of skin were white, almost transparent, and she could see coagulated blood vessels beneath the surface. There was charring on her nose. Give her a few days more to live, and the nose would have to be cut away. She flailed, little sounds coming from her throat.
“Hold still,” Coyote said.
Becky seemed to be trying to look out the window at her car. Was she actually thinking of her offspring?
“Stay still for five seconds. That’s all this will take.”
Coyote reached out with an index finger. The glove was going to blunt the sensation Becky experienced. A fingernail would have been better, but time was short. She poked at Becky’s cheek, pushing her finger into a blister. Becky shrank back.
Coyote lowered her voice to the baritone register. “Hold still, horse.”
Becky had shriveled back against the side of the van. She could retreat no further. Coyote shoved the tip of her finger into the blister. It popped. Clearish liquid ran down Becky’s cheek. Coyote pushed harder and scraped her finger down Becky’s face. Becky wheezed like a dumb frightened mare but didn’t move.
Coyote’s lips drew back. She reached out with both hands, clawed her fingers into Becky’s face, and scored downward from her cheekbones to her jaw. Blisters ripped open and wept. Becky held absolutely still.
It didn’t hurt.
Coyote pulled back. She wiped her fingers on the mare’s beige stretch pants.
“Get out of the van,” she said. “Go.”
Whimpering, Becky fumbled to the edge of the tailgate and staggered out. Horses, stupid animals. Doing what they were told. Coyote grabbed her by the hair. The other hand swept out with the KA-BAR knife and slashed it across Becky’s throat.
Arterial spray gushed across the parking lot. Becky’s body dropped to the ground. Coyote tossed the knife away. Cheap knife, USMC spec, easily replaced.
She grabbed the gym bag. Gritting her teeth against the screaming of the kid, she walked to Becky’s Volvo station wagon.
11
“Ev. Honey.” Mom’s hand was gentle on my shoulder. “It’s six thirty.”
I moaned at her and rumpled the covers up to my chin. Even without opening my eyes I could tell that it was a sunny morning. Teeth to toes, I felt as though I had been injected with glue.
Mom touched the back of her hand to my cheek. “Still feeling puny?”
“Everything aches. My hair. My tongue. Even my thoughts.”
“Want to sleep in?”
“No, I want to catch a flight.” I sat up. “Jesse’s going to pick me up at LAX.”
My laptop rested on the pillow beside me. Forty pages of printouts spread across the covers, bedtime reading downloaded from the Cincinnati Enquirer, the China Lake News, Classmates.com, a personal site called Sharlayne’s Spirit, and the Web site of Primacon Laboratories, Los Angeles.
I handed the Primacon page to Mom. “Guess who I found.”
She flicked her index finger against the page. “Well, what do you know. ‘Director of Research and Development, Maureen Swayze, PhD.’ ”
“I’m going to pay her a visit.”
“Excellent idea.”
I set my feet on the floor, and my stomach swooped. I gripped the edge of the mattress, willing the wave to pass.
No good. I dashed to the bathroom.
Afterward, red eyed, exhausted both physically and emotionally, I stood under the shower and let hot water pound the back of my neck.
Linda Garcia’s obituaries were written in code. The China Lake News said she had died after a long struggle with illness. On the Classmates.com message board, her sister had posted about the tragedy of her illness, how “this disease” wasn’t limited to supermodels or rich teenagers, and of the speed with which it devoured her sister’s life following a series of personal heartbreaks. It had to be anorexia.
A couple of classmates replied with condolences, including Abbie. Reading them punched the oomph out of me.
The Sharlayne’s Spirit Web site was even more depressing. A photo montage showed Sharlayne Jackson with her parents, with her husband, Darryl, and with the little kids in her school classroom. In every shot she smiled warmly, a comforting and reliable daughter, wife, and teacher. Beneath the photos a caption read, Resting in the arms of our savior: Sharlayne June Jackson and Darryl Jackson, Junior. Identical dates of death.
The site was set up to encourage donations to the Sharlayne Fund, which raised money for the NICU at Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis. It wasn’t just my classmate who died following childbirth. So did her baby.
I rolled my head, hoping for the hot water to do its work.
The Cincinnati Enquirer archives had several articles about the wreck that killed Marcy Yakulski and everyone else in her car. There was a blowout. The SUV ran off-road, flipped, and hit an electrical transformer. The gas tank ruptured. The fire immolated Marcy, her husband, their four-year-old daughter, and her next-door neighbor. The neighbor’s husband later filed a lawsuit against the SUV manufacturer. How sad. How American. If I’d been him, sifting carbonized hunks of my wife from the smoking hulk of the vehicle, I might have done exactly the same. I grabbed the soap and scrubbed.
Something was hideously awry. I could feel it in the air, near and dangerous and as hypnotically insubstantial as the flying propeller that sliced Ted Horowitz to death. But there was nothing to pin it to, no common denominator to my classmates’ deaths. Just the sense that this thing was spinning ever closer to me.
Mom knocked and called through the door. “Phone. It’s Valerie Skinner.”
I shut off the water. Wrangling a towel around myself, I stuck my arm out the door to grab the phone.
“Valerie.”
“Your e-mail? Not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Her voice was coarse. “Plenty of people spout dumb-ass ideas about why I got sick, and offer me half-baked cures. But your conspiracy theory, that’s a new one. And it hurts like hell that you’re dumping it on me at a time like this.”
I wiped water from my eyes. “I’m not loony, and I’m not playing emotional games with you. Call Tommy. He’ll back me up.”
Quiet on the line.
“You there?” I said.
More quiet. “You’re serious, right? You swear to God there’s something to this?”
“I swear.”
“Shit.” Her raspy voice began trembling. “Okay. I was testing you. I had to make sure you weren’t yanking my chain.”
I pulled the towel tighter around myself. “Why would I do that?”
“Don’t act like I’m paranoid. You aren’t paranoid if they’re really out to get you.”
Good point.
The tremor in her voice was worsening. “I’ve been shit-ting bricks since I got back from China Lake. Thinking about
all those pictures on the obituary board. And that day, remember how they took our clothes and made us shower? And afterward how they monitored us, like they knew something might happen?”
“I know.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“It seems to go back to a project at China Lake called South Star. Does that ring a bell?”
“No.”
“Maureen Swayze?”
“No.” Her voice faded. “You think the navy did something to us and they’re trying to cover it up?”
“Not the navy. And as far as I can tell this isn’t a coverup. I don’t know why, but a serial killer has gotten it into his head that we’re his prey.”
More ragged breathing. “I’m truly fucking scared.”
My stomach tightened. “You’re not alone, are you?”
“Right now I am.”
“Why don’t you call somebody to come over?”
“No.”
“Being alone doesn’t sound like a good idea. How about a relative? A friend? Could—”
“There’s nobody.”
The way she said it sent a pang through me. I searched for something to say, but she beat me to it. Her voice toughened.
“It’s okay. The clinic’s sending a van to bring me down for my appointment. I’ll be surrounded by med techs.”
“Val, you’re not going home by yourself after that, are you? I mean, I know chemo is awfully tough—”
“It’s not cancer.”
That shut me up. “What is it?”
“That’s the jackpot question.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Yeah. But . . .” Her voice drifted away. “I have to go. Can I call you back?”
“Sure. Soon.”
A quiet came on her again. “This thing in my head. It’s digging holes in my brain.”
My stomach slithered. I bent over and hung my head between my knees.
“Just a little more tunneling and I’ll be finished. Months, maybe,” she said. “So how come this asshole wants to put more holes in me?”
At eight a.m. Mom and I were in her car crawling along in traffic on El Camino Real across from campus, on our way to the San Francisco airport. The gold light and Mom’s lime green blouse and the silver in her hair felt too vivid against my eyes. I hid behind my sunglasses and sent a text message giving Jesse my flight number.
Mom glanced at the phone. “He’s terrific to drive down to Los Angeles and meet you.”
“Dad put the fear of God into him about sticking close to me.”
“Ha. Jesse’s one of the few people your father cannot intimidate.” Her smile was acerbic. “He’s a keeper, Ev.”
Guardedly I smiled back. She was making a joke at my dad’s expense, but she was also giving me a nudge.
“Good to know,” I said.
“I mean it.”
“Also good to know.”
Her smirk faded. “Honey, you don’t ever need to defend your relationship to me. I knew you loved him from day one.”
Unaccountably, I choked up. “Thanks.”
“Sweetheart. Aw, hell.”
The ache still hit me, even now. Day one: I stood in the hospital corridor stammering to Mom on the phone. Jesse was shattered. A surgical team had spent the night piecing him back together with metal rods and bone screws. And God wasn’t giving any sign that he heard my primal begging. Undo this nightmare.
She steered through the sluggish traffic. “You’ve always been full of surprises. But you building something strong, after such an awful trauma—that didn’t surprise me; it made me proud.”
My eyes were stinging. “Now you’re embarrassing me.”
“You found what counted. And it wasn’t him breaking his back.”
Tears were welling. Dammit, I knew I was stressed out, but this was ridiculous. I pointed up the road at the Town and Country Shopping Center.
“Pull in. I need some stuff.” Like, to change the subject. “Tissues and things.”
She flipped the turn signal. “Yeah. And vitamins, and saltines to settle your stomach.”
And a long nap, a pair of sexy Italian shoes, maybe two weeks at a spa in the Bahamas. She pulled up in front of the drugstore. I wiped my eyes and we got out.
Halfway along the sidewalk to the drugstore, my phone rang.
“Sweetie pie. Where you been?”
Mom saw my face. I held the phone out so she could hear Taylor’s voice.
“I dropped off some photo layouts for you to look at, but I’m still working on the descriptions,” she said. “Getting them right’s a trick.”
We went into the drugstore, cruising past the checkout stands. “Yeah, that can be a tough part of writing a book. The words. What do you want?”
“The twins. Mind if I borrow them?”
“Carlos and Miguel?”
“I want to do a baseball spread. You know—get to third base, go all the way, watch the fireworks ignite.”
“No.”
“Just for a day or two. Evan, they’re twins.”
“No.” Now I needed motion-sickness pills. And mouthwash. For my brain. “If you want to work with them, do it after they finish the job at my place.”
Her voice turned pouty. “Y’all can be such a stick-in-the-mud.”
I mouthed stick-in-the-mud to Mom. “It’s how my parents raised me.”
She play-punched my arm and handed me a pack of tissues.
“Leave the Martinez brothers alone, Taylor. Now excuse me, but I’m heading into the Grammar Society punctuation seminar.”
“Wait, I have a proofreading question. Am I spelling this word right?”
She gave it to me letter by letter. My eyeballs rolled back so hard that they flipped all the way around.
“No. It’s phantasmagoria—P-H. And it means a shifting medley of images, like in a dream. Not a fantastic orgy.”
Mom picked up a giant bottle of vitamins and we rounded the corner into no-man’s-land: feminine hygiene, girl-cootie central. A stockboy was shelving Tampax, staring at the floor to hide his shame. I glanced at the products on the shelf and stopped, feeling a jolt.
“Taylor, I have to go.” I hung up. “Mom, I’ll meet you at the checkout stand.”
By the time she caught up I was outside. The traffic droned out on El Camino. I shoved the drugstore sack into my backpack, feeling glazed.
“You okay?” she said.
“Sure. Let’s go. I don’t want to miss the flight.”
She dropped me off in front of the terminal at SFO. Traffic was jumbled, cars swerving to the curb, passengers hauling luggage to the sidewalk. I fumbled in my backpack for my itinerary and spilled things onto the floor of the car. I stuffed junk back in and climbed out.
Mom came around and hugged me good-bye. “Call me tonight.”
“You bet.” She turned to go and I caught her hand. “Thanks for what you said earlier. It means a lot.”
Her cherubic smile looked wry. “Give my love to Jesse.” She squeezed my hand. “Now hustle it. Security’s a pig at this terminal. You’re going to have to run for the gate.”
She blew me a kiss and drove away. After a moment I headed for check-in, full of free-floating anxiety. I ended up running for the gate.
The takeoff roll took longer than I expected. We bumped into the sky and arced over the city and across the coastline. The ocean glittered below. The 737 banked sharply to the south, thumping through the air. I grabbed an airsickness bag and held it to my chest. The woman in the aisle seat glanced at me nervously. I felt as though I were rattling free of the plane, the day, things as I’d known them.
I glanced out the window at whitecaps on the ocean. The plane continued banking. I needed to get up but the seat belt sign was lit. If we didn’t reach cruising altitude real damn soon I was going to rip the armrests off my seat.
I crumpled the airsickness bag in my hand, feeling the jet level out of the turn. I couldn’t wait any longer. I unbuckled my seat belt, grabbed my b
ackpack, and lurched to my feet. My seatmate jumped up to let me by. I banged down the aisle toward the lavatory, grabbing seat backs for balance. A flight attendant raised her hand, about to tell me to sit down again. But she must have seen my pallor, because she stopped herself. I bumbled into the bathroom and locked the door.
I dumped out the sack from the drugstore and ripped through packaging, leaning back against the wall to steady myself. The engines roared in my ears.
I looked at myself in the mirror. “Okay.”
Five minutes later by my watch, the flight attendant knocked on the door. “Ma’am, are you all right in there?”
“Fine.”
Misstatement of the month. I wasn’t fine. I was on Saturn. I stared at the home test stick in my hand. The vertical blue line on the test strip was bright and definite.
I was pregnant.
12
I hiked toward the exit at LAX. The light in the terminal felt shiny. I seemed to be walking at an oblique angle to the walls and people, as if space-time had momentarily uncoiled and spilled me sideways. A weird little melody droned in my head.
Pregnant. Holy mother of God. I had a graduate degree. Why did it take me so long to count past twenty-eight? A wild laugh skated through me, half whoop, half sob. I covered my mouth with my fist. This was inconceivable. The laugh skimmed past again, higher pitched.
I rounded the baggage carousels and saw the exit, the street outside, traffic sludging past the terminal in the Los Angeles sunshine. I saw people waiting to meet arriving passengers, watching us from behind a metal railing. I saw Jesse. He was resting an arm on the rail, tapping his thumb up and down in time to some unheard music. He was wearing his half-fingered gloves and a midnight blue shirt and a pensive expression. He scanned the crowd, searching for me.
Joy.
Pure, abundant joy, that’s what I felt. A baby. It was like having a star fall from the night sky into the palm of my hand. A blessing, a gift, God’s grace. Sacred, and scary as hell.
