The Meridians

by Michaelbrent Collings

"Kevin, buddy, I found something," he whispered.

  BANG!

  Lynette looked at him with horror. "That sounded like next door to us," she whispered.

  Scott nodded. He didn't want to talk for fear of letting her detect how terrified he was at this moment. Instead, he focused on Kevin again. "I found something," he said, more urgently.

  Kevin didn't react, just laying there like a slug wrapped in thin cotton bedding.

  They could hear slamming around as someone - Mr. Gray - rummaged around through the office next to theirs.

  Scott, desperate, leaned down and whispered in Kevin's ear, "Kevin, Witten was wrong."

  That did it. Kevin's eyes flew open, and he positively glared at Scott. Not for long - there was no way that the autistic child was going to spend more than a moment or two looking in another human being's eyes - but it was long enough. Scott thrust the laptop monitor into Kevin's line of sight.

  Again the boy's eyes widened, but this time Scott could swear he detected just the slightest bit of rage in the kid's usually peaceful and openly good-hearted face. The boy immediately sat up and began typing without further preamble.

  The noises next door grew louder; more insistent.

  "What did you write?" asked Lynette.

  "I told him that everything he wrote proves that Witten was wrong. Apparently he really disagrees with that statement."

  Lynette smiled at him, but the smile was thin and drawn tightly over a face that had been steeped in fear too many times in the past twenty four hours.

  Scott turned to Kevin and said, "Explain to me why Witten was right." Then he handed him the keyboard and waited. Kevin immediately began typing, his nimble fingers a blur across the keypad of his notebook computer.

  "Now what?"

  "Now we leave."

  But instead of moving to the front of the office, Scott began moving toward the back.

  "What's back there? A bazooka, I hope?" asked Lynette.

  Next door, the thumping suddenly stopped. Silence.

  " Lynette, come here," whispered Scott from where he was standing. "Bring Kevin."

  He watched as Lynette carefully maneuvered Kevin into moving toward Scott by picking up his laptop and, as he continued typing, leading him to where Scott was standing.

  There was a sudden slam at the door. Lynette looked back toward the doorway, fear clouding her features. "He's here," she said.

  "We've got a little time," said Scott. "The door is steel reinforced, so he's going to have to hit it pretty damn hard for it to get knocked down. And until then...." He gestured behind him, where there was a ladder attached to the wall. It led up to a trapdoor in the roof. "We go up," he said.

  Scott led the way, going to the trapdoor and -

  (Slam! went the door)

  - unlocking it with one of the keys on his keyring.

  Getting Kevin to move through the trapdoor was harder than it sounded, for it involved moving his computer slowly along, so that Kevin could continue typing while moving with it, like the computer was a carrot on a string in front of the proverbial donkey cart. Luckily, he was willing to climb the ladder once it became clear that his laptop was going up the ladder, with or without him.

  Slam! The door was hit again, this time with more ferocity, as though Mr. Gray knew that his quarry lay behind the door and, sensing its proximity, was going into some kind of a frenzy, like a shark that had scented blood in the water.

  Soon the three of them were on the roof of the office building, moving as quietly as possible over the crushed rock that covered the roof, listening to the doorway from the outside now as it slowly began to splinter beneath the not-so-tender ministrations of Mr. Gray. Scott would have commented on the old man's strength if they had not been in such dire straits.

  "What about that?" whispered Lynette, pointing at the open door.

  Scott slowly removed the padlock from the interior of the trapdoor, then swung it silently closed. The hinges screeched as he did so, and he could feel Lynette and even Kevin freeze at the noise. Had Mr. Gray heard it? Would he abandon his attack on the office door and come looking for some way to get up onto the roof?

  For a long moment, no one moved a muscle. Then....

  Slam! Mr. Gray pounded at the door again, apparently having either missed the hinges' noise completely or decided to disregard them. Scott tried to time his movements to the next hit by Mr. Gray, and when the door was hit again - sounding like it was going to tear off its hinges at any moment - he slid the padlock through a hasp on the outside of the trapdoor, effectively locking it from their side.

  "What now?" asked Lynette in a whisper.

  Before Scott could answer, the doorway below finally gave with a noisy splintering sound, crashing inward with more ruckus that Scott would have thought possible. The sound rent the otherwise silent night air like a pair of shears across thick fabric, heavy and final.

  "We get off the roof," he whispered back to her.

  "Are you crazy?" she asked.

  They could hear the sounds of Mr. Gray, slamming through the cluttered office below them. Scott calculated the assassin would need about thirty seconds to make sure that the office was empty. He was sure to see the trapdoor, though whether he would make anything of it or would try to come through it was anyone's guess.

  "Would you rather wait here for him to find us?"

  As though in reply to his query, there was a thud on the nearby trapdoor.

  Then another. Scott groaned internally. It looked like Mr. Gray, a trained killer, had been able to verify the absence of anyone in the office.

  So why would he have focused on the trapdoor so quickly?

  Then Scott cursed. The bed, of course. When they had come into the office, it had been made up and covered in a thin layer of dust. Even though they had taken care to shake off the bedding before allowing Kevin to crawl in, there would surely be tell-tale signs that the bed had not been used for a long period of time...until tonight, which use would be revealed by the fact that the bedding had been tousled and unmade by the small body of a boy. Surely Mr. Gray would have noticed the fact that the bed was unmade, that there was dust nearby the bed, but none on the bed itself, and have drawn the obvious conclusion, like the three bears in the story of Goldilocks: "Someone's been sleeping in my bed."

  "Come on," whispered Scott through clenched teeth, and this time Lynette moved, quickly bringing Kevin with the lure of his computer before him.

  Scott led them to the far edge of the roof. It ended in a lip that overhung the office behind his: the office of Mr. Randall, the other P.E. teacher at Meridian High. He quickly pantomimed to Lynette what he wanted to do, then grabbed her hands and lowered her down over the lip of the roof.

  The trapdoor behind them, like the door to the office below, started to splinter. Time was running out, to be measured in seconds now, if that.

  Quickly, Scott removed the computer from Kevin's grasp. This was perhaps the most dangerous moment of the entire operation. If Kevin chose to throw a tantrum over the loss of his treasured computer, then Mr. Gray was sure to hear that and would come after them that much faster, perhaps even leaving the office and running around to the other side of the building where Lynette was waiting, helpless and alone.

  Thankfully, Kevin did not throw a tantrum when Scott took his computer. He just stood there, limp and unmoving as though a part of his soul had been stripped from him, rendering him insensate and immovable. Scott dropped the keyboard to Lynette below, then took Kevin by both hands and lowered the boy over the roof to his mother. He could feel the boy's form held by his mother as she grabbed him from below, then he was on terra firma again and only Scott was left on the roof.

  The trapdoor started to give. One more hit by Mr. Gray would do it.

  Only milliseconds ahead of Mr. Gray, having no time to move quietly or carefully, Scott threw himself over the edge of the roof. He hit the ground below with a sickening thud and a sudden pain in his right ankle, but forced himself to
jump immediately to his feet.

  Above them, he could hear the trapdoor splinter.

  Before Lynette or Kevin could make a noise, he hustled them under the lip of the building. They could not be seen by anyone from on the roof, but all Mr. Gray had to do was look over the edge of the roof....

  It was a gamble, a desperate play against house odds, but it was all there was time for.

  The moment stretched out into eternity as they listened to Mr. Gray traversing the roof, the gravel and tar paper roof crunching beneath the man's leather shoes. Lynette's fingers suddenly dug into Scott's shoulder, hard enough that they almost drew a noise from him, which under the circumstances would have been fatal, but he was able to bite back a surprised shout before it left him.

  She pointed, and Scott felt his own muscles tense, as well. Though it was still the very early morning, there was a bright moon and starry sky out, providing more than enough ambient light to cast shadows. And he could see the shadow of Mr. Gray on the roof, standing right above them.

  They could hear the crackle of his shoes on the edge of the roof, as though he was pacing back and forth, deciding whether or not to jump down.

  Scott felt himself tense for an oncoming fight, though he was not at all confident of his ability to overcome the hitman. Granted, Mr. Gray had aged impossibly in the time since he had killed Scott's family, but even so, Scott had not kept himself current in close quarters battle techniques in the years following his departure from the LAPD, so had very little faith in his own ability to overcome the insane strength and determined ability of the skilled killer on their trail.

  But in spite of his misgivings, he dropped into a lunge position, ready to spring at Mr. Gray, hopefully taking the man by surprise and quickly gaining the advantage, if the killer dropped over the side of the office building.

  His heart felt like it was pounding at a thousand beats per minute. He felt like the blood was no longer merely a fluid pushing through the vast system of veins, arteries, and capillaries that made up his cardiovascular system, but rather was the driving force behind all the universe, his pulse the heartbeat of the galaxy. He wondered how it was possible that Mr. Gray could not hear the pounding of his heart from where he stood, a few feet above.

  But apparently he was deaf to the prodigious tympani of Scott's heart beats, for after a prolonged wait on the edge of the roof, they heard him return to the trapdoor.

  "Go, go, go," said Scott in a low voice, and pushed Kevin and Lynette toward the door to Mr. Randall's office. As he had anticipated, the door had been broken down, leaving them easy ingress to the office, which was nearly a carbon copy to Scott's own - in layout at least, for it was quickly clear to any who looked that Mr. Randall was a much neater person than was Scott, running his office with an almost military zeal for fastidious cleanliness.

  This in itself was a serious problem. They were inside at least, no longer simply waiting under the eaves for a killer to drop down and attack them. But they weren't in a much stronger position than they had been before. The office was so clean that if Mr. Gray did more than just glance in for a fraction of a second, he would be sure to see them.

  And unlike the outside, where if Mr. Gray found them Scott would have had time to at least stage a small ambush, if the killer found them in the office, the advantage would be his, for they would have nowhere else to run to, and the ease with which he would be able to spot them would negate any ability of Scott's to attack from the shadows, as it were.

  They could only push themselves into a corner that was as far away from the door as possible, and hope that Mr. Gray did not deign to re-check the offices he had already gone through.

  Because if he did check, if he so much as looked into the room, he would spot them, and Scott knew what that meant: a quick, though by no means easy, death.

  The ball was in Mr. Gray's court. The power was in his hands.

  Death was coming for them, and whether it found them or not was a matter of blind luck on a night when luck had already shown itself not partial to their cause.

  All they could do was wait. Watch. Hope. And perhaps die.

  ***

  38.

  ***

  Lynette heard the voice, and was positive that it signaled the end; that it was the last voice she would ever hear, and trembled.

  "I feel you, Kevin," said Mr. Gray.

  The voice was somewhat muffled, but still clear enough to make out fairly easily. "Coming for you, Kevin," said the man - the monster - who was after her and her family.

  She almost panicked and ran, even though that would have been certain disaster, when she heard the voice. A part of her whispered that the gray man was there, was right in the room with her, and that part of her was so powerful, so insidious and persuasive, that she believed it almost to the point of despair.

  We're going to die, whispered that horrible, horrified part of her. Kevin and I are going to die here, together, cowering in the dark like frightened mice while a gray cat prowls the night for us.

  Then she felt Scott's hand on her shoulder. The touch had an immediately calming effect. Not that she had any mistaken beliefs about Scott's ability to keep them safe. Though kind and special in many ways, he was still just a man, he could still bleed and be killed like any man. But his touch still kept her from running, from bolting like a rabbit from its warren when a fox prowled the darkness.

  "He's not here," whispered Scott, guessing her thoughts and fears. "The voice is coming through the shared vents," he added, pointing to a nearby ceiling vent. Sure enough, as soon as he pointed it out, she could orient herself aurally and could instantly tell that the sounds of the gray man were, in fact, issuing from the vent.

  "I can feel you, Kevin. I can feel the nexus...." The old man in the office next to theirs giggled suddenly, and the madness that sought them was audible in that crackling laughter. "I'm so close to home," whispered Mr. Gray. "So close to home."

  Then there was the sound of things being thrown violently about the next room, as though the man in the office nearby was having a breakdown of some kind, his grip on reality so tenuous that he had to seek destruction in order to assure himself that the world existed. She shuddered, and tensed again in spite of herself.

  "No," whispered Scott, again seeming to sense her thoughts. "We've got to wait him out. If we leave, we're in the middle of the sports fields, and there's nowhere to hide for a hundred yards. If he came out right then, we'd be spotted for sure."

  "So we just have to wait here and hope that nut doesn't come around and search us out again?" she whispered back, keeping her voice so low that she wasn't even sure that Scott could hear it: she didn't want to take any chances tipping off the gray man by talking so loudly that he heard her just as she could hear him.

  "I don't have any better ideas," Scott whispered back to her, shrugging in a helpless gesture. "It's not like we can outrun the guy," he said, and nodded toward Kevin.

  Lynette knew that he was right. Kevin was many things, many good and wonderful things, but he was not a strong runner. With the exception of the single race through Albertson's, the race that had resulted in the salvation of Ruth and her baby, he had never managed more than a shambling run that was typical of many autistic people: head down, shuffling forward at a quick but hardly unbeatable pace. Certainly that kind of running would doom them. Nor could she or Scott carry Kevin for any kind of extended distance and hope to maintain a speed that would keep them ahead of the relentless gray man. No, Scott was right: their only hope lay in remaining silent and still, hoping that Mr. Gray passed them by like a hurricane - surely leaving devastation behind, but leaving them their lives at the same time.

  The violent racket next door stopped abruptly. "I can feel you," said the voice again.

  Lynette was holding Kevin's hand, and could feel it trembling in her grasp. For the first time in her life she was grateful that he primarily spoke through his laptop: should he give voice to the fear she knew he was feeling, he wou
ld doom them all. The merest whimper could bring Mr. Gray down on their heads like a grim reaper in a threadbare suit.

  Then, suddenly, the feeling of Kevin's hand in hers changed. It had been trembling, but now it began jerking violently back and forth, as though he were trying to escape her grasp. She looked down at her son, and there was just enough light in the dim office for her to make out that he was, as he had several times now, shifting between two similar appearances. The two Kevins that she had seen before various times were now both holding hands with her.

  The sensation was strange, like being plugged into a low voltage wire. It was an electrical sensation that thrummed through her, powerful but not entirely unpleasant. The feeling ran up her arm and to her chest, spreading throughout her in a bloom of heat that reached forth tendrils and vines until it had run its course throughout her entire body. The feeling crept up her neck, to her face, and then she felt it encircle her brain, her eyes.

  Her vision split suddenly. Not as though she were seeing double, but more like she imagined a chameleon, with its independently rotating eyes, could see: not in anything approximating stereoscopic vision, but rather two different views of the same world. Only in her case, she was seeing two different views of a pair of worlds that were almost the same, but not quite. In one world, she was holding her Kevin's hand, she was holding the hand of a boy who was leaning to one side, his head cocked intently as though he were listening to a symphony that no one else could hear. It was a normal stance for him when he was feeling overwhelmed, as he must be now.

  In the other world, the other vision that she was having simultaneously, she was holding the hand of the other Kevin, the boy who had told her and Scott to run, who had spoken of "the nexus" and "preserving symmetry." In that second world, the other Kevin was also holding hands with Scott.

  Only no, it wasn't Scott. It was someone who looked like Scott, who appeared almost exactly like him, only this Scott had a bullet wound in his stomach. He was gasping, bleeding, dying.

  The other Kevin looked at her. "History is seeking to repeat itself," he said cryptically. "The lines of history want to assert themselves in certain patterns. In this pattern, Scott will die. Unless you can save Kevin in your pattern."