by Pete Hautman
“Your recovery is going well,” Severs said as she wheeled Kosh into his room. “The damage to your heart and lungs is nearly healed, and your strength is at one hundred seven percent of optimum. Are you still experiencing pain?”
“I feel great,” Kosh said. He hopped off the chair, ignoring the sharp twinge from his hip and the grating sensation from his chest.
Severs regarded him doubtfully. “The more time you give your body to repair itself, the less likely you are to reinjure yourself. Your journey through the portals may be arduous.”
Kosh opened and closed his fists. “I’m ready.”
“You cannot know that, because you cannot know where the portal will take you.”
“Yeah, well I’m ready to give it a whirl. Not that I haven’t enjoyed your company.”
Severs smiled. “It has been a pleasure to know you as well.”
“What about you? Do you ever think about leaving here?”
Severs shook her head. “It is a peculiar thing to be here, helping to build and maintain this society all the while knowing that it is likely to come to a bloody end. Still, day to day, the work is gratifying. Who knows? Perhaps something I do will change the dark future I remember.”
“Thinking about that kind of stuff makes my head hurt,” Kosh said. “I figure I just do what I have to do, and what has to happen happens.”
“That is as valid an approach as any,” Severs said.
The next morning, Kosh saw his own clothes for the first time since he had arrived at the hospital. They had been cleaned, but not repaired. He pushed his finger through the bullet holes in his shirtsleeve, the right front pocket of his jeans, his jacket, and his shirt, shaking his head in wonder. How had he lived through that?
He dressed himself slowly, with a sense of ritual. Pulling on his jeans made him feel stronger. He peeled off the odd blue stockings they had given him, put on his old socks, and pulled on his motorcycle boots. The boots increased his height by two inches, making the floor seem far away. His jacket gave him a sense of invulnerability. He felt good.
When Severs showed up, Kosh was gazing at himself in the mirror.
“You look quite frightening,” Severs said.
“Thank you,” said Kosh.
Severs led Kosh to a large room deep in the hospital subbasements. In the center of the space was a massive metallic armature surrounding a disko. Several men and women were milling about, making adjustments to the equipment and working on small handheld tablets.
“This is the first portal we captured,” Severs told him. “And the only one, so far. Our engineers are still trying to understand how it works. All they know for certain is that several people have emerged from the disk. Some, like you, were badly injured. Some were dead. Those who survived all claimed to be from other times, some as far back as your Hopewell, some, like me, from the future. We do not know where it will take you, but the fact that you came out of it is encouraging. They have sent a number of probes into the portal, but none have returned. If you enter it, you will be the first person to enter from our side. Our scientists have arranged for you to carry some devices in your body. We have implanted several small recording capsules. They should cause you no discomfort.”
Kosh frowned. “Thanks for asking first!”
“Consider it payment for the services you have received.”
“What are these capsule things supposed to accomplish? I mean, I’m not coming back.”
“You cannot know that for certain. And even if you don’t return, as soon as you enter the portal we will search the historical archives for information about your eventual demise. We may be able to locate your body and extract the information from the capsules. That is, assuming you die in the past.”
“Are you saying that for the rest of my life, these things inside me will record what happens to me?”
“To a limited extent, yes.”
“Not so sure I like that.”
“If we remove the devices, you will not be permitted to enter the disk.”
“Great. I guess I have to make sure I get cremated when I die.”
“That is your prerogative.”
“Why do you have to wait for me to enter the disko before you look for records of my death?”
“We have looked. We can find no such records.” Severs consulted her tablet. “You do not have to go.”
She can read my heart rate, Kosh thought. She knows how scared I am.
“Yes, I do.” He managed to keep his voice level.
Severs looked him up and down. “You are very courageous.”
Kosh did not feel courageous. Looking at the disko, it was all he could do not to collapse into a quaking, blubbering puddle of terror. He was half certain he was going to die. He would die, and no one would ever know, and based on his recent near-death experiences — falling off the barn, wrecking his bike, getting shot — it would hurt. A lot. But the alternative — leaving Emma in the hands of Gheen and his deacons without even trying to rescue her — was unthinkable. He would not want to live if he had to live with that.
“It’s not courage,” he said, “if you have no choice.”
HOPEWELL, NOVEMBER, 2012 CE
ANOTHER ROOF. THIS TIME, TO KOSH’S VAST RELIEF, HE was not on the World Trade Center, or tumbling down a steep barn roof to a forty-foot drop. This roof was flat, and the building was not on fire. He looked out over the low parapet. He was on top of the old hotel in Hopewell. The sky was low and gray, with a late-morning feel to it, and that biting autumn cold that comes just before the November snows. It had been early October when the Lambs had taken Emma.
Last time he had been up there, he’d been sixteen years old. He and Ronnie Becker had broken into the abandoned hotel and hauled a twelve-pack up to the roof. That had been a fun night — until Ronnie tossed a can of Grain Belt off the roof and hit Elwin Frahlen’s Ford LTD smack on the windshield. Elwin had called the sheriff, and Kosh had spent his first night in jail. They’d caught Ronnie, too, but he’d been in jail before — it was nothing new for him. Kosh could still remember the expression on Adrian’s face the next morning: a frozen mask of contemptuous condemnation.
Kosh pulled open the trapdoor and climbed down into the fourth-floor hallway. There were lights inside, and the smell of carpet cleaner. Somebody must have opened the hotel again, probably because of all the bird-watchers and religious nuts that had flocked into town. The tinny sound of a television came from behind one of the doors, but Kosh sensed that the hotel was sparsely occupied. He took the stairs down to the first floor. As he entered the lobby, the young woman behind the desk looked up from painting her nails. Her eyes went wide. She put her hand on the desk phone.
“Um, if you’re not a guest, you’re not supposed to be in here.” The girl was gripping the telephone handset hard. Kosh figured if he so much as narrowed his eyes at her, she’d be punching in 911.
“I’m just leaving.” He moved toward the front door, then hesitated and turned back to her. “Tell me one thing. What’s the date today?”
She frowned warily. “November first?”
Kosh nodded, taking it in. A little over two weeks since he had been shot.
“Those Lambs of September, are any of them still around?”
Her eyes widened and she drew back. “Are you one of them?”
“I’m just trying to find them.”
“You have to go.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m leaving.”
Kosh looked back as he left the hotel. The girl was talking on the phone. He left the hotel and crossed the street to the Pigeon Drop Inn. He noticed a poster taped to the inside of the window, just below the Budweiser sign:
Kosh stared at the poster, trying to make sense of it. Henry Hall? For Mayor? Henry hadn’t been sober in twenty years. It had to be a joke. Kosh pushed though the door and stepped inside. His first impression was that nothing had changed. Same dingy walls, same fake neon signs, same cracked vinyl booths. Then he noticed
that none of the five people sitting at the bar were Henry Hall. That was different.
Red spotted him. “Curtis! Back from the dead!”
“You thought I was dead?” Kosh said.
“Figure of speech,” Red said. He was the same beer barrel of a man with bushy gray hair, black eyebrows, and a bulbous, vein-shot nose. Kosh had last seen him the day he’d picked up Tucker, just after Adrian and Emily had disappeared. Was it only months ago? It felt like years. Kosh took a stool and propped his elbows on the bar. He had a lot of questions, but the first one that came out of his mouth was, “Henry Hall for mayor?”
Red chuckled. “Can you believe it?”
“No,” said Kosh.
“Believe it,” Red said. “The old sot quit drinking a few months back and now he’s making like Abe Lincoln.” He shook his head. “Took a piece out of my bottom line, I can tell you — he was my best customer. But what the heck — I’m gonna vote for him. For one thing, ain’t nobody else wants the job.”
“What happened to Ed Hammer? He die?” Ed Hammer had been mayor of Hopewell for thirty years.
“Ed got his self mixed up in that cult business. It was him that let the crazies use the park for their revival. After what happened, people got kinda upset. Anyways, he’s pushing eighty. What’re you doing back in town?”
“I have some business with the crazies.”
“You?” Red’s smile turned flat and his forehead crinkled. “You ain’t with that bunch, are you?”
“No. A friend of mine got mixed up with them. I’m trying to find her.”
“A girl, huh?”
“Yeah. You know where they are?”
“Well, folks around here are done with that whole thing. You won’t see a yellow T-shirt in the county no more. The ones running the show, they all took off, except for the old man, that Father September fellow. He’s in jail now. The cops don’t quite know what to do with him. More’n five hundred people saw them kill some kid, but the kid disappeared. But they got a blood sample and it matches up with a local boy, Tom Krause. In fact, they’re having a funeral for the kid right this minute. As for that Gheen fellow, him and his cronies took off. Nobody knows where.”
Kosh nodded slowly. He would have to talk to Adrian — he could see no other way to get the information he needed. If he could find the Lambs, he would find Emma. That is, if he didn’t get himself killed all over again.
“Hey Red, you by any chance got a car I could borrow?”
“I might could do that,” Red said after a moment. “Long as you plan to bring it back.”
As Kosh walked out of the bar with the keys to Red’s delivery van, a sheriff’s cruiser pulled abruptly over to the curb. Jeff Wahlberg climbed out.
“Kosh Feye!”
“What’s up, Jeff?”
Wahlberg hitched up his belt, not quite putting his hand on his gun.
“I could ask you the same.”
“Nothing’s up. I came back for a visit. Why?”
“We got a call you were harassing the girl in the hotel.”
Kosh laughed. “I did no such thing.”
“That’s not what she says.”
Kosh sighed. “Look, Jeff, I went in the hotel and asked her a couple of polite questions. She was kind of freaked out, so I left. End of story.”
Wahlberg relaxed slightly. “People are touchy these days, ever since that business with the Lambs,” he said. He gave Kosh a squint-eyed, calculating gaze. “So why are you here?”
“Do you remember the woman who was staying with me?”
“The runaway wife, sure.”
“Her husband and some of the other crazies came by my place and grabbed her.”
“Grabbed?”
“Kidnapped.”
Wahlberg stared at him. Kosh knew what he was thinking. To a small-town cop, a kidnapping was like hitting the lottery. He probably wished it had happened in his jurisdiction.
“You report this?” Wahlberg said.
“Oh, yeah.” Kosh improvised quickly. “But the Wisconsin cops . . . well, as far as they’re concerned, she took off with her husband. They asked around some, but they’re not doing much, so I’m looking around on my own. You haven’t seen that guy Tamm around, have you?”
“Not since he complained about you kidnapping his wife. She sure does seem to get kidnapped a lot.”
“You talked to her. She was with me of her own free will.”
Wahlberg shrugged that off. “I don’t know anything for sure. But for what it’s worth, I hope you find her.”
“What about the rest of the Lambs? Gheen and so forth.”
“Gone.”
“What about the one called Father September?”
Wahlberg laughed nervously. “Funny story, that. You know he was charged with murder, right?”
“The Krause kid.”
“Yeah, well, I just came from the memorial service, and you’ll never believe it. The kid showed up! At his own funeral! I mean, we must’ve mopped six quarts of his blood off that altar, and got a DNA match and everything, and now he shows up alive and healthy a month later. Unbelievable.”
“Yeah, unbelievable,” Kosh said, thinking about the bullet he had taken to the chest. He wondered if Tom Krause had experienced a similar resurrection.
“But here’s the weirdest part,” the cop continued. “That Father September? I just heard over the radio he’s escaped. They say the dude just evaporated. Nobody can figure out how he got out of his cell. I swear, Hopewell these days is like the Twilight Zone.”
Kosh felt defeated. Without Adrian, every last link to the Lambs was broken.
Wahlberg, sensing Kosh’s despair, said, “You know who you might talk to? Ronnie Becker.”
Kosh said, “What?” The last time he’d seen Ronnie had been during the fight at the park. Tucker had blown Ronnie’s leg off at the knee, then Gheen and Koan had thrown both Ronnie and his leg into the disko. “He’s back?”
“Living with his folks,” Wahlberg said. “We interviewed him, but he claimed to know nothing about where the rest of the Lambs went. But you guys were tight, right? Maybe he’ll talk to you.”
RED GRAUBER’S VAN WAS LOADED WITH CASES OF BEER. Kosh supposed he should have unloaded it for Red back at the bar, but he could do that later. First things first, and Ronnie Becker was at the top of his list, for more reasons than one. As he drove toward the Becker place, Kosh tried to level and organize his anger, and it kept coming back to Ronnie. If not for Ronnie, things might have gone differently at the park. Lia wouldn’t have been forced to enter the disko. Tucker wouldn’t have had to follow her. They could have dealt with the Lambs then and there, and he would not have been shot in the chest a few weeks later, and they would not have taken Emma.
Kosh was dimly aware that his logic was not flawless. He could as easily blame himself for allowing Ronnie to hit him with the stun baton, for not going after Tucker when he’d entered the disko above his parents’ house, for putting up the weathervane on his barn — leading to his own first trip through the diskos — for causing the rift with Adrian that had made him leave Hopewell all those years ago. The cycle of blame never ended. He could blame Adrian; he could blame his father for dying too young; he could blame Emily Ryan for ever having been born. But at the moment, he was consumed with blaming Ronnie Becker, because that was who was available.
As he approached the Becker farm, he mentally rehearsed what had to happen. First, he had to convince Ronnie to tell him about the Lambs. That was the important thing. Once he found out where Emma had been taken, then they could talk about other things. Like how it felt to have a shock baton stuck in your gut.
Kosh hadn’t been to the Becker place in fifteen years, and he almost missed the turnoff. He hit the brakes at the last second and skidded into the driveway. He heard glass breaking and the wet hiss of foaming beer — one of the cases in back had tipped over. He didn’t care.
The place looked different. The cedar trees flanking the drive
way had tripled in size, there was a new silo, and the house had been painted a creamy yellow. As he entered the farmyard, he spotted Ronnie twenty feet up a ladder rolling red paint on the side of the barn. He parked next to Ronnie’s pickup and walked over to the base of the ladder, resisting the temptation to kick it out from under him. Stay cool, he told himself.
Ronnie looked down. “Kosh Feye.” He grinned. “I hoped I’d see you again.” He balanced his roller on the paint can and climbed down, jumping to the ground from the third step up. Both his legs seemed to be working fine. “How are you doing, bro?” Ronnie held up his hand for a high five.
Kosh hit him as hard as he could in the face.
So much for staying cool, Kosh thought.
Ronnie was sitting with his back against the barn, holding a paint rag to his bleeding nose. He’d been unconscious for only a few seconds.
I must be losing my touch, Kosh thought.
So far, neither of them had said a word. Ronnie watched warily as Kosh clenched and unclenched his fist, trying to get some feeling back into it, studying the split skin on his knuckles. Why had he ever thought it would make him feel good to hit somebody? It never did. Well, maybe a little. He hoped he hadn’t busted his hand.
“I bid id arder,” Ronnie said, his voice distorted by the rag pressed to his nose.
Kosh just looked at him. Ronnie took the cloth away from his face.
“I said, I been hit harder.” He wiped at the runnel of blood still coming from one nostril, looked at the red paint- and blood-soaked rag, and added, “But it’s been a while.”
“Just wait,” said Kosh.
Ronnie said, “Listen, I know you got cause to be upset.”
Upset? Kosh didn’t trust himself to reply. Did Ronnie not remember the last time they’d seen each other?
“You want to hit me again? Go ahead. Have at it.” His lower face was streaked with red. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
Kosh could feel the rage draining out of him. How could he hit a guy who would just sit there and take it?
