Voyages: A Science Fiction Collection

by Carol Davis

  Then he heard things smashing.

  Glassware first. The row of slightly dusty wine glasses above the bar, he realized, being shattered one by one. Then the decanters, which either didn’t break at all or merely cracked, because he could hear thumps but no shattering.

  He heard her bare feet thundering through the apartment.

  Finally, he heard an odd, crunchy smash and knew almost immediately what it was: she’d wrecked the TV.

  After they’d lugged that son of a bitch up eleven flights of stairs.

  Long after things had settled down, he crept out of the sunroom, more wary of cutting his feet on broken glass than of running into Vanessa. In a distracted way he was impressed by the amount of stuff she’d managed to ruin; apparently she’d even taken a knife to the big sectional, because there were long, crooked gouges in the cushions. She’d sliced up his painting of the mountains, too. He felt bad about that for a moment, but really, what did it matter? It was all just stuff. Just a collection of high-priced stuff.

  He heard a painful-sounding hiccup coming from the other bedroom and decided she was sprawled on the bed in there, that she was probably curled up into a ball, hugging one of Bill Carter Schmidt’s fancy down pillows for comfort. That was all right, he thought. Eventually she’d drift off to sleep.

  Eventually, you always drifted off to sleep.

  ~~~

  Bright sunlight was spilling into the apartment when he woke the next time. This time he felt no confusion, no disorientation as he shifted onto his back, stretched his arms and legs and pulled in a deep, calm breath. The power had come on again, and the little clock beside the bed was flashing, informing him that it needed to be re-set, adjusted to the correct time.

  Late morning, he thought; the sun seemed high.

  He would have considered taking a walk, if this had been some months ago. After he was released from Chino, he’d taken advantage of every opportunity to walk wherever and whenever he could, for the pure, sweet freedom of it. But now… even with the gun, it felt wrong. Restricted, like being turned loose to wander around the prison yard. Freedom, but only to a certain point, like he was a dog on a leash.

  Or chained in a yard.

  It was that thing that had him chained this time. That giant ball of rock.

  He showered, dried off at a leisurely pace, chose a fresh outfit from the pile of clothes he’d stolen over in the Village. Remembering all that broken glass, he pulled on socks and shoes and wondered if he could convince Vanessa to help him sweep it up. He didn’t much care that things were broken, but having to deal with badly cut up feet was another thing entirely.

  If the power was on, he realized, he could make coffee.

  He was humming softly as he made his way into the living room, and stopped when he saw blood on the floor.

  Footprints. Bloody footprints.

  They weren’t his; he knew he hadn’t been cut during the night, and at any rate, they weren’t large enough to be his.

  “Vanessa?” he called out.

  He hoped the cuts weren’t bad, because he had no idea how to stitch up a wound. He supposed he could figure it out—assuming he could find a needle and thread somewhere—but whether she’d sit still and let him experiment on her was another question.

  No one had answered him.

  “Ness? Hey. Vanessa.”

  He moved from room to room, the way he had during the night, this time skirting around the debris on the floor. The bed in the guest room was rumpled but unoccupied, and she wasn’t in the bathroom, or the kitchen, the den, the gym, or the sunroom. Nor was she in Bill Carter Schmidt’s fully tricked-out office.

  Frowning, he turned to look at the front door, the one that led out to the hallway, thinking she’d gone for a walk. Or that she’d run. Gone looking for someone who was more understanding, more compassionate than he was. If that was what had happened, he couldn’t argue with it. No—he couldn’t pretend she owed it to him to be something other than what she was, and he hoped she felt the same about him.

  He couldn’t help who he was. What he’d done.

  All right, then.

  He spent a couple of minutes choosing from Bill Schmidt’s impressive collection of coffee varieties, popped the K-cup into the coffeemaker, and slid a mug underneath the spout. He was smiling as the coffee began to stream into the mug, filling the kitchen with a fragrance that made his mouth water.

  He could cook some oatmeal for breakfast, he decided, although there was no milk to add to it, and he could nuke some soup for lunch if the power stayed on that long.

  Niiiiiice.

  He was halfway through his coffee when he thought again about Vanessa’s injured feet. The amount of blood on the floor seemed to say she’d cut them pretty badly, and if that was so, how could she have decided to take a walk, or run away? Every step would be painful. Maybe she’d found supplies in the other bathroom so she could bandage herself up, but still, walking wouldn’t be easy.

  “Vanessa?” he called out again.

  Even though he’d searched the entire apartment before, he went through it all again. He set down the mug and went from room to room, this time even checking the closets, but found no sign of her other than those red-brown footprints. They were all over the bathroom floor, and on the carpet in the bedroom. All through the living room in an odd, disjointed trail that said she’d had no purpose in mind other than to keep moving.

  Some of them led over to the doors to the terrace.

  He could see the whole terrace from where he was standing. She wasn’t out there. No one was out there.

  No one.

  He had a sudden flash of memory of grappling with Bill Schmidt, who had put up almost no fight. Who had surrendered to Cando even though he seemed physically able to hold his own. Afterwards, Cando had supposed that Schmidt wasn’t mentally capable of defending himself properly, that he couldn’t bring himself to do anything ugly: kicking, gouging, biting. Slamming the other guy’s head against the ground.

  Now, it seemed to Cando that what Schmidt had done was give up. Surrender to the inevitable, even though he had a fair chance of winning.

  Against Cando, at least.

  Not against the comet.

  Realization swept through him with a speed that almost brought him to his knees. He took in a gulp of air that was like inhaling fire and seized the doorframe to hold himself up. From there, he could see the trail of footprints crossing the terrace to the waist-high wall that separated it from open air and stopping there.

  Out here, he could see, she hadn’t been confused. Hadn’t been directionless.

  Here, she’d had a purpose in mind, something other than the mindless destruction of somebody else’s stuff.

  Because he couldn’t not do it, he moved carefully across the terrace, stepping on top of her footprints, taking the path she had taken.

  Why do we have to be up this high? she’d asked him the other day.

  Because, he thought.

  Because it’s a long way down.

  Even from this high up, he could see her. Someone had taken Bill Schmidt’s body away almost immediately (he had no idea who, or what they’d done with it) so she was all alone down there on the ground. Because he’d watched a lot of television, and had once had a friend who liked to fly model planes, he knew something about trajectory, and the influence of the wind, and other such things. She hadn’t dropped straight down; she was out at the edge of the sidewalk, almost in the street. Near something he thought might be a mailbox, or a drop box for FedEx. Maybe it was neither.

  “Nessa,” he said softly.

  Nessa…

  He looked around, up and down the street, wondering if someone would help her, even though he knew she was far beyond any kind of help, glad that all he could see was the general shape of her, and the bright splash of yellow of her blouse. He wondered for a moment if it had been as quick as she’d needed it to be; whether she’d been scared, or so hopeless that it didn’t allow for fear.
<
br />   There were people down there, three of them, but they were some distance away from her and didn’t seem to have noticed her. He thought about trying to call to them, then wondered what it would accomplish. After all, she was just another suicide. Before the TV stations had stopped broadcasting, he’d seen reports that said the suicide rate had skyrocketed: thousands, every day. People wanted—needed—to take things into their own hands. To put an end to it on their own terms.

  Vanessa was just one more.

  He supposed whoever had taken Bill Schmidt’s body away had assumed the same thing about Schmidt.

  Just one more.

  You shit.

  That was the last thing she’d said to him. More than likely, it was the last thing she’d said to anybody.

  His fingers wrapped around the black iron railing and clutched it until his hands began to throb. There were more footprints, he saw now: on one of the chairs, and on the top of the wall. His hand drifted over to touch one of them, lightly, tentatively.

  He’d laughed at her in the middle of the night, and instead of persisting, instead of holding on, the way she’d done for almost two weeks, she’d turned away from him. Away from everything.

  You shit.

  It was nothing different. People had been saying some form of that to him all his life.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  Then he forced himself to go back inside and closed the door.

  ~~~

  He slept the sleep of the blessed that night. Undisturbed. Dreamless. The room seemed a little cooler, so without really knowing that he was doing it he pulled the gray cashmere blanket up over himself and tucked it around his shoulders and neck like a cloak.

  Or a shroud.

  ~~~

  Days went by.

  Days without number, without anything to distinguish them. Days upon days upon days. Darkness, then light.

  Then darkness again.

  All of it was quiet, although sometimes he could hear Vanessa’s voice in his head, asking him about that damn TV.

  ~~~

  He knew he’d done it all wrong when the church bells started to ring.

  Up until then, he’d been listening to the sound of his own breathing. The apartment was so utterly silent it made him imagine things—a rushing noise that might be a waterfall, that he was sure was the approaching tsunami off in the distance until half an hour had gone by and nothing happened—and he thought if he had to endure it for very long, he would completely lose his mind. He tried his best to calm himself, to breathe slowly and steadily until his heart stopped thundering in his chest.

  Then he strained to listen, trying to hear something. Anything other than himself.

  The apartment was soundproofed. He’d discovered that early on, when the patio doors were closed and he couldn’t hear the rain pouring down onto the terrace’s dark slate tiles. Of course the floors and walls and ceiling were heavily insulated; Bill Carter Schmidt wouldn’t have wanted to hear his neighbors any more than they wanted to hear him. He wouldn’t have wanted to hear traffic, or planes, or the cheering at football games over at UCLA.

  The windows didn’t open, of course; the place was climate controlled. The only thing that opened was the patio doors.

  Cando sat slumped on the beige leather sectional and stared at them.

  They were still closed.

  Him on one side, the world on the other. Anything could be happening out there, and he wouldn’t be able to hear it. And in here there was nothing. No hum of a running refrigerator, no whisper of air coming out of the ventilation ducts. No music, no voices, no patter of the claws of a dog as it ran toward him.

  He should have found a dog, he decided. Maybe two or three of them.

  He shouldn’t have come here. Up here, all alone. It’d seemed like such a good idea at the time—the chance to enjoy a luxury he’d only seen before in pictures, on TV and in the movies. But he shouldn’t have done it.

  He should have found people.

  Lots of them. All kinds of them. People who’d laugh at dumb jokes. Sing. Smile at him. Smile at each other. Because this? This was worse than solitary. It was prettier than solitary, yeah, and the bedding was better, but…

  Oh, God. The silence.

  Slowly, an inch at a time, he crawled down off the sofa and made his way across the floor to the patio doors. He got there feeling as if his strength was entirely tapped out—and it pretty much was, because he hadn’t eaten anything after Vanessa was gone—and sat in a huddle arm’s reach from the glass. He thought he could hear something on the other side, a clamor of something that took him a long time to identify.

  Bells…?

  Church bells.

  He thought it might be his imagination, but no, the more he listened to it, the more it sounded right.

  It was coming, then.

  There were people here, people who’d stuck around, and they were using those bells to cry out for mercy. To say We’re still here in the last minutes of their lives. It made sense that they’d decided to gather in the churches at the end, to look for some comfort there—comfort together, maybe holding hands, embracing, crying on each other’s shoulders. Maybe they were still hoping for a reprieve, for a last-minute phone call.

  Maybe they just didn’t want to be alone.

  Shaking, Cando moved halfway up onto his knees, just enough to grasp the door handle and undo the latch. He had so little energy left that his body was shaking from ears to toes and he thought he might puke. His stomach rolled and clenched and his bowels knotted so severely that he cried out.

  He’d done it all wrong.

  This place. Vanessa.

  Bill Schmidt. Red Joe Petty. That guy in Compton, and the two in Simi Valley. That girl he’d picked up from the club.

  All those fucking times he’d said Can do.

  There were tears streaming down his face as he crawled out onto the terrace—the one that’d helped him decide to choose this particular apartment, because it had such a spectacular view of the Pacific. The one that had seemed so right that he’d been willing to murder Bill Carter Schmidt to keep it. Once he was outside he could hear the bells in all their glory, both nearby and distant, what seemed like dozens of them, maybe hundreds; maybe he was hearing bells from all across the L.A. basin, from all the way to Long Beach and Santa Barbara.

  Saying goodbye.

  Saying Help us.

  He closed his eyes against the world, leaving only a slit of vision that would help him find his way across the terrace. It was the sound he wanted, that clamor of sound. He had a sense that the comet was there, that it was watching him, heading for him, a heat-seeking missile on an unerring course—that yes, it would strike right here, if not in Westwood then right out there in the bay. It would hit and there would be… what? An explosion? Some mammoth wall of sound that would blow out his eardrums and leave him deaf?

  A shock wave.

  Water.

  Underneath and above and throughout the sound of the bells he could hear Vanessa’s anguished voice saying, I can’t, Cando, I can’t. Please help me, I can’t.

  And he’d turned her away.

  One of the patio chairs stood in his way, and for a while he crouched with a shoulder jammed against it. He didn’t have the strength to move it; instead he reacted to it as a little kid might, willing it hopelessly to move on its own, to simply not be there because it wasn’t fair that it was there, it wasn’t goddamn fair.

  Finally, because something seemed to pull him on a slightly different trajectory, he crept around it.

  Inches at a time, he crossed the rest of the terrace.

  Somehow found the strength to drag himself to his feet.

  He thought he might see it out there—might see the comet making its final approach toward Santa Monica Bay like some enormous aircraft, some fiery, determined ship of the gods headed toward splashdown in the middle of all that water. He was mildly surprised and somehow disappointed that it wasn’t there, and graduall
y came to understand that it was behind him somewhere. He thought he could feel the heat of it on the back of his head and his shoulders, thought he could feel the infernal thing watching him.

  No! he thought.

  It was supposed to be the other way around.

  He was supposed to see it strike.

  He felt cheated yet again, the way he’d felt throughout his life, like he was being screwed over one more time.

  He clung to the railing at the top of the balcony wall and turned, but the top four floors of the building blocked his view. That was so astonishing to him that it flooded his mind with white noise. He’d chosen this place because he’d be able to see everything—and now it was keeping him from seeing anything at all. It was so utterly wrong that he was unable to think at all, could only feel a rising burn, a fury so pure that it soared beyond anything he’d ever felt before, and underlying it was the continuing, enduring sound of those goddamn BELLS.

  Then he heard another sound: his own voice, screaming “NOOOOOOOO!”

  And the last of his energy, his will, his ambition… it was all gone. Tears poured down his face, dripped onto his chest.

  Did it WRONG, he thought.

  All wrong.

  For a second he felt Vanessa beside him. Felt the others there too. He twisted and lurched, looking for them, looking to get away from them, tightened his grip on the railing and knew to the core of him that yes, there was only one door open here, only one direction worth looking in, and it wasn’t for nothing that that miserable ball of space rock was watching him.

  As a kid, he’d dreamed of flying.

  All kids do.

  He’d never been up in a plane; an elevator was as close as he’d ever come to flight until now, until something lifted him over the railing, held him still for just a moment, then released him so he could fly.

  Oh, he thought.

  It was the last thought he was able to put together before velocity made him black out.

  ~~~