by Jay Falconer
“I’m not sure about this, at all.”
“Just relax and go with the flow.”
“That’s easy for you to say. I have no clue what I’m supposed to do.”
“Didn’t you just spend the whole morning with her?”
“Yeah, but we just talked.”
“I thought you held hands?”
“She held mine. I never moved.”
“Then I’m sure Abby will take care of everything,” Lucas joked, trying to relieve his own nervousness.
“That’s what I’m afraid of. She’s going to expect me to react in a certain way, but I’ll probably misread her signals and ruin everything.”
“It’s simple, really. When she tries to stick her tongue down your throat, let her. How hard is that?”
“You’re not helping very much,” Drew said, rolling his chair forward. “When am I supposed to put my arm around her?”
“As soon as the movie starts. Did you bring a condom?” Lucas wisecracked, knowing that Drew’s penis was one of the few things still working properly below his waist. Luckily for Drew, his bio-mom’s car only crushed his legs and not his spine or pelvic area.
“No, I didn’t. Was I supposed to? See, I already screwed up.”
“I was just kidding,” Lucas said, patting his brother on the back. “Look, there’s no reason to panic. It sounds like she’s really into you. Trust me. Just be yourself and you’ll be fine.”
Lucas had his own reservations about a blind date with a former strip club worker. He had only been with one woman before, the university’s librarian.
Lucas had hooked up with her in December of his freshman year, working the graveyard shift. He stopped to comfort the pudgy, forty-year-old woman who was going through a tumultuous divorce and crying behind her desk. It began as a simple hug and ended with him shedding his virginity on the floor in the last row of book stacks. He had no clue what he was doing and just went along for the ride. During the brief encounter, Lucas learned the basics but was still not confident in his ability to bring a woman to the height of ecstasy. He recalled very little from the few minutes he spent with her, except how slippery and soft she felt on the inside. However, one thing always puzzled him. Why did she run off afterwards, sobbing the entire way?
Her first name was Robyn, but Lucas never knew her last name. In fact, that was the one and only time he ever saw her. He went back to the library the following night, but she wasn’t there. Her replacement said she’d quit her job that morning and was moving out of town.
* * *
The Student Union’s towering all-glass foyer overlooked a hundred-foot wide set of cement stairs leading up to its main entrance. To the right was Gallagher Theatre, where a sea of film enthusiasts waited to enter through its turnstiles.
“There’s Abby and Jasmine,” Drew said, pointing to them on the left side of the crowd on the middle step. Abby was bouncing up and down, wearing a pink-colored pullover jacket and waving her arms over her head. She was holding a spread of movie tickets in her hand.
Lucas looked up at the Student Union’s clock tower. The time was 11:50 PM, barely enough time to purchase popcorn and Cokes and find seats together. “Damn it. Late again,” he mumbled, hoping they weren’t relegated to the front row of the theatre.
Jasmine was several inches taller than Abby and wore a navy-blue Denver Broncos football jersey with a white 10 emblazoned on the front. If Jasmine were truly a fanatic, it would pose a problem since Lucas knew zip about football. Lucas much preferred the speed and grace of professional ice hockey; specifically the Los Angeles Kings, who had just started their season, hoping to defend their back-to-back Stanley Cup titles.
Her jet-black, shoulder-length hair was pulled back into a single, understated ponytail. Lucas was still too far away to decide if she were as attractive as Abby had promised. Nevertheless, he did detect some prominent curves hidden beneath her casual apparel, leading him to believe the blind date had real potential, including carry on an intelligent conversation since she was pre-med. But then again, he could easily converse about high-energy processes in warped space-times around black holes, but maybe she wouldn’t comprehend it. He started to have doubts about himself, his date, and the evening in general. He imagined her staring at his forehead as if he had a third arm growing out of the middle of it while he rambled on about physics. He wished he knew more about football.
He looked to his left, but Drew wasn’t there. He turned around and found Drew sitting still, about six feet behind him. “Bro, relax. It’s only a movie. Don’t worry. I’ve got your back.”
“That’s not it. Look!” Drew said, pointing at a group of three men standing two steps below Abby and Jasmine. “It’s that Mohawk rugby player and his two goons.”
“Jesus, are you kidding me? Not again,” Lucas said. He looked around and didn’t see any campus police. He would have to face these assholes alone.
The theatre line advanced forward as the patrons ahead of the girls navigated their way through the rope-style stanchions leading into the theatre. Abby and Jasmine turned to face forward, then stepped back into line to keep pace with the procession. They, and the rugby players, were almost to the top step.
“What do we do?” Drew asked.
“We ignore them. That’s what we do. Walk right past them. Don’t give them the satisfaction. Come on, the girls are almost inside. We need to double-time it,” Lucas said, moving behind his brother to grab the wheelchair handles.
Drew nodded. “I wish those guys would just go away, forever.”
Lucas glanced up at the girls, and was blinded by an intense, white-hot light shooting out from behind where the girls were standing. Before he could react, a deafening, high-decibel squeal nearly ripped his eardrums apart.
He let go of the wheelchair handles, raising his hands to cover his ears. It felt as though his head were in a giant microwave oven and someone had turned it on full blast, cooking his brain from the inside out. His equilibrium gave way, buckling his legs and sending his kneecaps crashing into the cement sidewalk.
A few seconds later, both the intense light and the deafening sound subsided. He felt a sudden breeze pull him toward the theatre, but it dissipated quickly.
He lowered his hands, opened his eyes, and looked to his left and right. Dozens of people on either side of him were lying on the ground; all but two appeared to be unconscious. Drew was directly in front of him, slumped over in his wheelchair and not moving.
Lucas moved in front of his brother with his back to the Student Union. Drew’s head was tilted down with blood dripping from his left nostril. He shook Drew gently, trying to wake him up. “Drew, are you okay?” There was no response. Lucas wiped the blood off his brother’s lip and shook him again. “Come on, little brother, wake up. Talk to me.”
Drew finally opened his eyes and looked at him. “What happened?” he asked, in a scraggily, half-awake voice.
“You passed out. Are you all right?”
Drew rubbed his forehead. “My head’s spinning and I have a wicked headache. Where’s Abby?”
Lucas turned around and looked at the Student Union. He couldn’t believe his eyes. “Fuck me!”
The entire front section of the Student Union and most of the theatre’s façade had vanished. Most of the building’s entrance stairs were missing, too.
Drew raced past him with breakneck speed, using his callused hands to grip and release in unison, quickly propelling himself forward one thrust at a time. He screamed Abby’s name repeatedly along the way.
Traumatized and a bit unsteady, Lucas followed behind his brother, though at a much slower pace.
Chapter 9
Causatum
Lucas initially thought the blinding white light-flash might have been some type of terrorist attack, possibly a suicide bomber hell-bent on payback. But that prospect seemed unlikely since he didn’t see or hear an explosion, nor had there been any type of shockwave following the event. And there wasn’t any b
uilding rubble.
Lucas stopped running to take a look at the damage. The glowing edges of the building’s unstable framework were holding together, at least for now, but he wondered when they might surrender to gravity or burst into flames. Many of the theatre’s second-floor patrons huddled together, close to the exposed edge, seemingly ignoring the trails of smoke invading their space.
“Careful. The edges are hot,” he yelled out to them, but didn’t receive a response.
A scruffy young man was standing next to a metal desk that had been sliced in half inside the projectionist’s booth on the third level. Lucas was amazed the man’s scrawny neck could hold up the weight of his head, given the bushel of hair hanging from his scalp and the medley of jewelry decorating his face. His right hand was holding the waistband of his saggy blue jeans while the piercings covering his earlobes, eyebrows, nose, and lips twinkled in the moonlight.
The projectionist walked to about a foot away from the ledge and looked around with a glazed-over look on his face. He stood there motionless for a good thirty seconds. Then, he stepped back, pulled up his shirtsleeve to peel off a white patch on his left bicep, got a cigarette from one of the few remaining drawers, and lit it, using the smoldering edge of the desk. He sat back in the rolling desk chair and inhaled a long drag, which fueled the reefer’s glow. He then puckered his lips to puff out wriggling smoke rings, one after another.
With the exception of an untouched strip of stairs on the right, most of the Student Union’s steps had vanished, along with the front of the theatre, as if someone had reached down with a giant ice cream scoop to carve out a hollow sphere. Even though the proof was right in front of him, Lucas still found it hard to accept what he was seeing.
* * *
When Drew arrived at the steps, he flung himself out of his chair, landing chest-first on the cold cement, which nearly knocked the wind out of him. He grimaced when his right elbow landed directly on the edge of a step, sending numbing pain up his arm and into his shoulder. Even though he only had partial feeling in his legs, the cement stairs still hurt his kneecaps.
Scattered along the stairway was a trail of diverse body parts, as if a tree shredder had shot them out from its chute. When he didn’t see any blood, he tried to convince himself the fragments were only manikin parts, but that ruse failed when his nasal passages caught a whiff—seared meat and scorched hair—and he almost gagged. He worried that the smell might become permanently etched into his sinus cavities.
He searched the steps on his hands and knees, inspecting each body fragment to see if it belonged to Abby. None did. He scoured the open pit in front of the theatre, but again, he found no sign of her. She was gone.
* * *
Lucas arrived at the lower edge of the crater and looked inside. “Aw, shit,” he said, seeing a black film covering the bottom of the depression. He bent down to sample it, rubbing the powdery substance between his fingers. Then he smelled it. “Oranges, again,” he said, confirming it was the same substance he’d found inside the reactor core.
He walked over to Drew and knelt down beside him. He wanted to console his brother, but he couldn’t find the proper words. They were all jumbled up and backward, flailing out of control just beyond the tip of his tongue. The same thing happened when he tried to comfort Drew after their adoptive father passed away. He sucked at this—good thing he wasn’t a priest.
He rubbed his brother’s neck, hoping that Drew would know that he was there for him—that he loved him. When his normally effervescent brother looked up at him with tearful eyes, Lucas almost broke down against a flood of emotions pushing up from his chest. He gave Drew a one-armed hug, fighting to remain strong and steadfast; it wasn’t easy. He looked away, trying to find something else to focus on.
A few yards to his left, a lifeless body wrapped in a bloodless Denver Bronco’s football jersey sat slumped over in a twisted heap. The mound of unresponsive flesh was leaning to one side, resting against the upper step, with only its right leg and arm still intact. The corpse belonged to Abby’s roommate, Jasmine. The left side of her skull and neck were missing.
Lucas left Drew on the step and moved closer to Jasmine’s body. She had been sliced in half, as if by a molten hot guillotine; there was not an ounce of blood anywhere. Her head was tilted back and pushed to one side, exposing a cross-section of brain matter clinging to the inner membrane lining her skull. Her right eye was open and dilated, looking directly at Lucas as if she somehow knew he was there.
He turned away and covered his mouth with his hand, trying to ignore the nausea swelling in his throat. But his body had its own idea. A small amount of stomach bile erupted, slinking its way up his esophagus and into his mouth, leaving a rancid taste that sickened his tongue. Even though only half of her face remained, he could see she’d been a gorgeous young Hispanic woman. He wondered if she had family somewhere. They needed to know. Someone needed to call them.
He looked for the Mohawk player and his two friends, but found no sign of them on the steps where they had been standing. He went down to the base of the stairs, stepping over a string of cell phones and designer purses. There was a red-and-blue backpack still attached to a slender arm and shoulder, which had a heart-shaped, pink tattoo that said “Billy.” On the second to last step, he found a pair of half-full water bottles, each with a severed hand wrapped tightly around it.
To his right was a pair of unattached legs sitting at an odd angle, as if they were propped up by something. Lucas moved closer and found that they were resting on top of a severed head. The head was mostly bald except for a streak of yellow hair down the middle. It belonged to the Mohawk rugby player. Lucas figured the head must have rolled down the steps after it was decapitated. Yet, he couldn’t reconcile how the legs ended up on top of it. Perhaps they tumbled down the stairs, too. But in the end, what did it matter? All he knew for sure was that Drew got his wish—the man was gone forever. Unfortunately, so were many others.
The visual evidence told him what happened: When the flash obliterated the theatre’s entrance, it encompassed nearly the entire movie line, taking with it anyone unlucky enough to be standing inside its perimeter. Those persons straddling its leading edge were cut in half, vertically, like a lamb shank being chopped by a cleaver on a butcher’s block. He wondered if any of them were aware of what was happening to them at the time.
He found an expensive-looking, high-resolution video camera on the bottom step. Its black safety strap was cut four inches from the digital camera’s padded handgrip. Two fingers and a thumb were lying on the ground next to the unit, probably the owner’s.
Lucas flipped the unit over to examine it. Everything appeared to be in one piece. Its red REC light was on with display numbers steadily increasing. The thing was still recording despite being dropped several feet onto the cement stairs.
He slid his right hand into the narrow safety grip and aimed the camera at the demolition zone. He started by slowly panning from left to right, across the exposed sections of the theatre, making sure he stood back far enough on the mall’s grass to record all the damage. He walked up to the crater, knelt down, and filmed a close-up of the black powder. He filmed his fingers scooping up a handful of the substance and letting it pour through the palm of his hand. He finished by documenting the precise location of each body fragment lying on the steps.
Lucas took off the camera’s flash drive and slid it into his pocket, rearranging its contents so the drive was below the keys to his apartment. Once he and his brother returned home, he intended to review the evidence captured on the drive. With any luck, the camera’s owner was facing the right way when the flash appeared.
He heard the faint echoes of emergency sirens off in the distance as they wailed and whooped through the heavy night air. Someone had already called 9-1-1. He bent over to put the camera on the step, when he saw a crowd of onlookers taking refuge in the middle of the grass. Most of them were clustered together, arm in arm, trying to comfort
each other.
The emergency sirens howled suddenly in his ears, no longer a faint echo. Reflections of swirling red and blue lights danced off the building façades surrounding the mall when police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances flew over concrete curbs, cut across sidewalks, and ripped up grass with their tires to reach the scene. It wouldn’t be long before the place was crawling with news media, too. He wanted to collect Drew and get him back to the apartment.
He turned back toward the theatre and saw Trevor sprinting toward him from the east end of the Student Union, wearing a red muscle shirt and weightlifting belt. His sweat-soaked physique bulged and glistened with each stride.
“You damaged?” Trevor asked, breathing heavily.
“No, I’m okay and so is Drew, but I’m pretty sure Abby Park is dead.”
Lucas quickly explained what had transpired. He told his friend about the blinding flash of light, where Abby and Jasmine had been standing, and the bloodless body parts. Even though Lucas suspected this incident was related to their lab incident, he wasn’t going to tell Trevor about it, at least not yet. He wanted to check out the video evidence in private before drawing any conclusions.
“I’m going to wait here for the police to tell them what I saw. But Drew is in no shape to deal with the cops right now. Can you do me a huge favor?” Lucas asked, pointing up the stairs. “Get him and take him home right now, before all hell breaks loose.”
Trevor agreed and turned to head up the steps. Lucas kept an eye on him as he ran up the stairs, carefully tiptoeing through the sea of body parts until he reached the top. He knelt down next to Drew, picked him up, and then carried him down the stairs to his wheelchair. Moments later, he and Drew slipped into the shadows along the west end of the Student Union.
Lucas sprinted over to the first arriving police car, waving his hands above his head. He approached the driver’s side door just as the officer shoved the gearshift into park and turned off his siren. The emergency lights were still flashing, though, making it difficult for him to see inside the driver’s window.
