The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four

by Jonathan Strahan

  Ambrose blanched. "I didn't need to hear that."

  "Neither will he."

  We finally went out for lunch at two, driving out past the city limits into the country again.

  "Won't your dad worry about what we could do in a car?" I asked.

  Ambrose shook his head. "Not in a Volkswagen."

  I gave an incredulous laugh. "We could get out of the Volkswagen."

  "And then what? I don't have enough money for a motel and he thinks I'm too hung-up to do it outside." He glanced at me. "Forget it. Grown-ups are fuckin' weird, is all. Every last one of them, fuckin' weird. Especially in our family."

  Anxiety did a half-twist in my stomach or maybe it was just cramps.

  "And we're giving them a run for their money right now ourselves," he added. "Skulking around so you can play hero single-handed for an asshole who wouldn't appreciate it even if he did know what you were doing. Fuckin' weird? Fuckin' A."

  The moment hung there between us, a silence that I could have stepped into and confessed everything—the truth about my trait and what I was really trying to do. Then he went on.

  "Anyway, I didn't want to talk about this before in case my dad overheard." He glanced at me; anxiety did another twist, high up in my chest where it couldn't have been cramps. "When you come into your own, you don't just get one of the family traits. They let you in on other things. Family things."

  "Like what? Skeletons in the closet or something?"

  Ambrose gave a small, nervous laugh. "Not just that. There are skills to learn, that go along with the traits."

  "Skills?"

  "Coping skills. There are ways to compartmentalize your mind so you don't get caught up in something you know when you're supposed to be doing something else. Some traits, you have to learn how to distance yourself. Mind your own business."

  I bristled. "If this is a sneaky way of trying to talk me out of—"

  "Relax. I should but I'm not."

  "You never mentioned any of this before."

  "I didn't think you'd want to hear it."

  "I still don't."

  "I know. But shut up and let me talk, OK? I promised you I'd help you and I will. I am. But I had to talk to somebody. So after my dad went to bed last night, I called my sister Rita and talked to her."

  "You what?" My voice was so high that even I winced.

  "Relax. I didn't tell her about you. I talked to her about Loomis."

  I felt my stomach drop, as if there were thousands of miles for it to fall inside me. "Why . . . " My voice failed and I had to start again. "Why Loomis?"

  "I would have asked Dad about his aunt or the cousin but I was afraid he might start wondering why I wanted to know. Then he'd put two and two together about you and I'd have to explain why you won't tell anyone and it'd be a big mess. Asking about Loomis would've been worse—he'd have gotten the wrong idea about your trait." I winced, wondering if Ambrose would ever speak to me again when the truth did come out. "So after he went to bed, I called Rita."

  "But why Loomis?" I asked again.

  "Because your trait is similar in a lot of ways. I know, you said Phil Lattimore could die, not that he would, but there are parallels. You and Loomis know a specific thing about one particular person. So I thought anything Rita told me about him would apply to you, too."

  "Good algebra," I said, mostly to myself.

  "What?" Ambrose gave me a funny look.

  "Nothing. What did she tell you?"

  He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. "The closer it gets to that time, the more likely we are to run into Phil Lattimore."

  "Why?"

  "Because you know what's going to happen and you talked to him. It's a synchronicity thing. Your separate courses affect each other."

  "Our 'separate courses'?"

  "It's a mathematical thing, really advanced. I kind of understand it but I'd never be able to explain it to you."

  "And Rita told you this?" I gave a small, incredulous laugh. "Since when is knotty pine's biggest fan such a brainbox?"

  "My sister may be tacky but she's not stupid." Ambrose sounded so serious I was ashamed of laughing even a little. "She knows space. Every so often, she picks up on something weird, like two points that are actually far apart registering as being in the same spot."

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  "It means she has to use her tape measure."

  "Very funny," I said sourly.

  Ambrose shrugged. "You're nowhere near ready for quantum mechanics or entanglement." He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel again. "You know, something like this happened with Loomis. When he told somebody something he shouldn't have."

  All of a sudden I felt weightless, the way you do in the split second before you start to fall. "Who?" I asked, or tried to. What voice I had was too faint for Ambrose to hear.

  "Rita said as soon as he did that, it was like they couldn't keep out of each other's way," my cousin went on. "Not so strange in a small town like this. The strange part was every time Rita read the distance between them, it came up zero."

  "You believe her?" I asked before I could stop myself.

  "Of course I believe her!" Ambrose glanced at me, his face red with anger. "What kind of fuckin' question is that? I wish to God she were here now, you'd eat those words."

  "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to insult anybody."

  "My sister and I sit up half the night just for your benefit and that's the thanks we get?"

  "You did tell her!" I shouted. "You said you wouldn't—"

  "I had to tell her something," Ambrose shouted back at me. He slowed down and pulled onto the dirt shoulder of the country road we were on. "She knew I'd never call in the middle of the night just to chat about Loomis and I couldn't get away with lying to her—"

  "So you lied to me about lying to her—"

  "Shut up and let me finish!" He turned off the ignition. "I figured it wouldn't matter if she knew the truth, she's in Chicago."

  "What else did you tell her?" I asked, managing not to scream in his face.

  "Just that you'd come into your own and you didn't want to tell anyone yet. Nothing about Phil or what we're doing."

  I gave him a poisonous look. "Can I really believe you?"

  He blew out a short breath that might have been a humorless laugh. "Don't you think she'd have hung up on me and called your mom if I had told her everything?"

  "OK," I said after a bit. My heartbeat had finally slowed from machine-gun to a gallop. "Why did we stop here?"

  "I don't drive when there's yelling in the car," Ambrose said, sounding almost prim. "That's practically guaranteeing a wreck." He raised an eyebrow at me and I had a sudden vision of him at his father's age, paternal but firm: You kids behave yourselves right now or I'm turning this car around.

  "Fine," I said. "No yelling."

  He started the VW again.

  "Wake up," Ambrose said.

  "I'm not asleep," I said thickly, blinking and sitting up straight in my seat. Most of the daylight was gone and we were no longer out in the country but pulling into the parking lot at Wiggins. "What time is it?"

  "Fifteen minutes to Operation Save the Fuckhead." Ambrose cruised slowly through the crowded lot. It was a Sunday night in spring; everyone wanted to end the weekend with one last treat. "Uh-oh."

  "What 'uh-oh'?"

  "I don't see his car."

  My stomach seemed to twist, then drop; at the same time, my cramps woke up with a vengeance. I leaned forward with my arms across my middle. "Maybe he was here already and left. Or maybe he's out in the country now."

  "I'll drive down the road to Westgate Mall, turn around, and come back again," Ambrose said. "There's no place to park here anyway."

  Just as we pulled out of the exit, a car roared up from behind and swerved sharply around us, horn honking, headlights flashing from low to high. Ambrose jerked the wheel to the right and we veered off the road into the dirt. The tires crunched on something as he slowly
steered the car back onto the pavement.

  "Who do you suppose that was?" he said wearily.

  "Let's go," I said, hoping I wasn't yelling. "We've got to catch him!"

  But as we sped up, the VW began to shudder hard from side to side.

  "What the hell is that?" I yelled as Ambrose brought the car to a stop.

  "Flat tire."

  "Can't we change it?" But even as I asked, I knew. "The spare's flat," we said in unison.

  High beams swept across the road and shone through the windshield and lit up the inside of the VW. The driver had crossed from the opposite lane to stop in front of us, facing the wrong direction. "Uh-oh," Ambrose said softly as we watched Phil Lattimore get out of his land yacht and lumber toward us. We rolled up the windows and locked the doors.

  "Car trouble?" Phil asked, pressing his nose against my window.

  "Can't reach my mom or my dad," Ambrose said unhappily, snapping his cell phone shut.

  Lying across the front of the VW, Phil Lattimore waved cheerfully. "Hey, I told you we're happy to give you a ride!" He gestured at his friends waiting in the convertible; I could barely hear the Fucking A's with the windows rolled up.

  "Call a tow truck," I said.

  "I'll call the cops."

  "You can't! As soon as Phil sees a cop car, he'll take off and it'll happen. We'll have caused the accident. Just call a tow-truck. What time is it? How long have we got?"

  Ambrose tilted his watch toward the light, trying to read it. "Shit. My watch stopped." He turned the key in the ignition so the dashboard lit up. The digital clock read 88:88.

  "What about your phone?" I asked. He showed it to me. The screen said—/—Set Time?

  "What the hell does that mean?" I asked.

  "Just guessing, I'd say it means you won," Ambrose said. "Now if we can just lose the ugly hood ornament."

  Phil was squinting at his own watch in a puzzled way. He tapped the face hard with a fingernail, then held his wrist up to the light again. Ambrose leaned hard on the horn, startling Phil so much that he fell off.

  "What'd you do that for?" I yelled.

  "It worked. Now we can call your mother instead of a tow truck. I don't have enough money for a tow truck and you promised you'd tell her. She can take us to a service station and I'll pump up the spare while you tell her everything. It's killing two birds with one stone."

  Phil Lattimore was back on his feet, brushing himself off as he went back to his land yacht. I unlocked my door and started to get out.

  "Hey, don't!" Ambrose caught my arm. "Are you crazy?"

  "I've got to keep him out of his car for just a little longer." I twisted out of his grip and ran toward Phil Lattimore. His buddies gestured, hooting and cheering wildly; the surprise on his face when he turned and saw me was utterly genuine, which surprised me just as much.

  "What do you want?" he asked and for a moment he actually seemed concerned. Hey, girlie, you're doing it wrong—I scare you and you run away, that's how the game goes.

  I stopped in front of him. The smell of beer was like a cloud around him. "Just . . . wait a minute."

  He gazed down at me as if from a great height. "Sorry, girlie, no can do. Watch died. Your ugly face break it, or Fifi's?" He turned away and kept going.

  "I said, wait!" I yelled, going after him.

  He spread his arms as his buddies hooted some more. "She loves me, what can I—"

  I made a two-handed fist and walloped his right butt cheek.

  He stumbled, more from surprise than from the blow itself. I barely saw him whirl on me before he grabbed my upper arms, lifted me off my feet and threw me into the back seat of the land yacht.

  It wasn't a soft landing and his buddies were no more ready for it than I was. I was struggling in a tangle of arms and legs. There was laughing and someone yelling Jesus are you crazy toss her out she's jailbait and another voice saying she wants a beer. I kicked out, hoping to hit something tender but connected with nothing but air. Beer cans crumpled against my face, dug into my skin as the car jerked forward.

  "Stop!" I screamed. "Stop! Don't let him! Don't let him, make him stop!"

  "What the fuck?" somebody said. No more laughing. One guy in the front seat was insisting that we'd better stop, another guy agreed, and then a third guy yelled Look out!

  For a fraction of a second, I thought it was pure noise, an impact from sound waves. The car skidded at an odd angle and I managed to pull my head up just in time for the second impact. The air went out of my lungs in one hard blow. When my vision cleared I was trapped on the floor; someone seemed to be kneeling on my ribs. Fighting to breathe, I tried to drag myself up toward air.

  I don't remember hearing the third impact.

  I came to inside something moving fast.

  "Do you know your name?" said a woman's voice, all brisk concern. A hand squeezed mine. "Do you know your name?"

  The light was blinding me; high beams?

  "Do you know your name? If you can't talk, squeeze my hand."

  I tried to pull my hand away and sit up but I couldn't move at all.

  "Do you—"

  "Hannah," I croaked. My mouth tasted funny. "Tell me he's OK."

  "You don't worry, everyone's in good hands."

  "No, tell me." The light in my eyes grew more painful as I became more alert. "Tell me he's OK. Tell me I saved him."

  "Don't worry, honey, everything's gonna be OK—"

  I had a glimpse of a woman's face, dark brown, with short black dreadlocks. In thirty-five years, degeneration in her brain would finally reach its end-stage.

  Abruptly pain erupted everywhere in my body. I would have howled but all that came out was a long croaky moan. The woman turned away quickly and did something; the pain began to ebb, along with my awareness.

  "Midol," I whispered. Or maybe not.

  After that, I was in and out, almost like channel surfing. Doctors and nurses appeared and disappeared and I never knew which was which. Sometimes I saw my mother, sometimes my brothers; once in a while Donna was there as well. Although I was never sure if I were dreaming, even when it hurt.

  At one point, I was trapped in the back seat of Phil Lattimore's land yacht again, feeling it spin around, tires screeching, glass breaking, metal smashing. I think I heard the third impact that time but afterwards, there was no one asking if I knew what my name was while we traveled. But it was much easier to breathe.

  Phil Lattimore came to see me. He peered over a nurse's shoulder and made stupid faces, mouthing Who said you could have a car accident here? That was no way to treat the person who had saved his stupid thug ass and I'd tell him that as soon as I was well enough.

  My mother was sitting next to my bed, gazing at me with an anxious, searching look.

  "Yeah, it's me." It hurt to talk. My voice sounded faint and hoarse.

  "No kidding." She tried to smile. "I'd know you anywhere."

  I swallowed hard on my dry throat and winced. She poured me a glass of ice water from a sweating metal pitcher and held the straw between my lips for me. "Did Ambrose tell you?"

  It was like a shadow passed over her. "Ambrose? No."

  "He made me promise—" I sucked greedily at the straw; suddenly ice water was the most wonderful thing in the world. "Said if I didn't tell you, he would. After it was all over. Which it is. Isn't it?"

  She made a small, non-committal movement with her head. "Yes, honey. It's all over." She poured some more ice water for me. "Rita got here as soon as she could."

  "Rita?" It took me a few moments to remember. "Did she come because Ambrose told her?"

  She made that little movement with her head again.

  It was easier to talk now; I turned my face away from the straw to show I'd had enough. "I feel bad about that. Because now I have to admit I lied to Ambrose."

  My mother closed her eyes briefly as if she had had a sudden pain, then put the ice water down on the table beside the bed. "Yes, I know. We know."

  We?
Pain nibbled at the edges of my awareness, as if it had just woken up and wanted to join the conversation without drawing too much attention to itself. "How? Who told you?"

  "You did." My mother sighed, looking at me sadly. "You don't remember talking to me, do you?"

  "Not exactly," I said.

  "The doctors said you'd have a spotty memory thanks to the combination of the head injury and the medication." She put her hand over mine on the bed and I realized I had a cast on my arm up to my knuckles.

  "Everything's all dream-like." The pain was getting more assertive. "Did he make it? Is he alive?"

  Now she hesitated. "Your uncle Scott's been sitting with him. He hasn't left the hospital since—"

  "Uncle Scott?" Pain definitely wanted more attention now; I tried to ignore it. "Why is Uncle Scott sitting with Phil Lattimore?"

  "Phil who?" My mother looked as mystified as I felt. "He's with Ambrose."

  Uh-oh, said a small voice in my mind, under the pain. It sounded exactly like Ambrose. "Phil Lattimore is the guy I was trying to save," I said. "I knew Ambrose would be all right."

  "All right?" My mother looked mildly stunned now, as if she had bumped her head.

  "Ambrose isn't going to die for f—for a very long time," I said. "I knew I didn't have to worry about him."

  My mother took a deep breath and let it out. "Is that so?" She gazed at me for a long moment, her expression a mixture of hurt, frustration, pity, and something else I couldn't read. I started to say something else and she suddenly rushed out of the room.

  Caught completely by surprise, I tried to call after her but the pain stole my voice. Before it got really bad, however, a nurse came in with some medication.

  When I woke up again, there was a man sitting in the chair next to the bed. I had never seen him before but even without the strong family resemblance I'd have known who he was.

  "Hello, Loomis," I croaked.

  "Hello, yourself." He got up and gave me some ice water the way my mother had, holding the straw between my lips. I drank slowly, studying his face. He was a little taller than Ambrose, wiry and lean, as if he spent most of his waking hours running. His hair was curly but darker than Ambrose's and he had a full dark beard with a few white hairs here and there. I found it really interesting that although his eyes were same shape as Ambrose's, they weren't the same clear green color but dark muddy brown, like mine.