Thunder Rolling

by Ripley Proserpina

  I always thought my friends were my anchor, especially in this strange post-life world, but since Whitney, it was her. It would always be her, and I was losing my ever-loving mind at the thought of not being with her.

  Each breath she took was both a relief to me and a physical pain. Her shoulders lifted with each inhalation; Dr. Robinson had noted it aloud earlier. “Chest retractions.” He’d lifted her shirt to expose her soft belly and chest. “See?” Her belly had sucked in with each breath, but then she’d lifted her shoulders. “She’s having difficulty breathing.”

  “Pneumonia?” I’d asked, because I wasn’t a fucking doctor and when it came to breathing, pneumonia was the beginning and end of my lung-based medical knowledge.

  “I didn’t hear crackles, but her condition is worsening rapidly.” The doctor had left then, swearing under his breath on his way out.

  “Nick better come back with medicine,” Brandon said quietly, stopping next to me before pacing again.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Dante—” I shut up. It wasn’t fair to bad-mouth him. If Dr. Karlton had sent Nick a psychic message telling us he wanted me, I’d have been down the mountain in a flash as well. So I couldn’t blame him for leaving so fast. Even if it was a stupid move. “Though it wouldn’t have killed him to wait a day.”

  “It might kill her though,” Brandon said, almost thoughtfully. “Nick and John may find medicine, but there’s no guarantee it will work. At least this way…” He trailed off, and I glanced at him. His cheeks were rosy, and he wasn’t staring at Whitney anymore. Instead, he stared out the window toward the sun-drenched trees.

  I knew what he was going to say. “This way there’s a chance. If the medicine is expired. If she has something the medicine won’t fix.”

  He nodded and then faced me. It took him a moment to speak, but when he did, his voice was harder than I’d ever heard it. “If the medicine does fix her, she’s going to be out of that bed and after him.”

  “I’ll tell Nick to keep the cars gassed up.”

  Brandon smiled before sneaking a peek at Whitney again. “Always be prepared.” The smile left his face quickly. “I should have gone with him.”

  My stomach clenched. He was right. One of us should have gone. Suddenly, everything inside me knew that was the right choice. “Fuck.” I shut my eyes tight. What the hell good was a power that turned on at the worst possible time? “You’re going with him. Find him. Keep him safe.”

  I opened my eyes and found Brandon nodding. “I consider that my foremost job right now on par with getting Whit her medicine and…”

  The door opened and shut and a haggard-looking Dr. Robinson returned, still muttering. “Can’t even take a cat nap.” He seemed to realize we were watching him, and he cut himself off. “I’ve never been able to leave a patient.” He shrugged and continued to Whitney. He lifted her hand, pinching the skin on the back with his other hand. “Not good. She’s really not getting enough oxygen.”

  “All the more reason for me to leave now,” Brandon said to me. “I’ll find Dante, make sure Karlton doesn’t want him for his Cabinet of Curiosities, steal what we need, and come home.”

  The doctor glanced up from Whit. “We may not have the time for you to get back. Honestly, if we were in the hospital and this was days gone by, I’d be admitting her into the intensive care ward. Boys, I’m not sure what to tell you.”

  I knew what to do. For the second time in moments, I knew. Just like I had the last time when I’d known where to go get John. My body buzzed with energy that had nothing to do with our connection to Whit and everything to do with whatever this psychic mumbo jumbo sometimes playing a role in this strange world was. It was like a gong going off in my head or thunder exploding around us. I couldn’t not hear the words in my head. Something spoke within me—my own voice and yet somehow not—told me to put Whit in the car right then.

  We had to leave immediately. There wasn’t even time to discuss it.

  I scooped her up, throwing Brandon a look as I ran from the room. “Trust me.”

  He would. Out of all of them, Brandon would just need that remark to get him moving.

  The second SUV skidded to a stop. John, Isaiah, and Nick tumbled out of it, each one running into the others to get toward me. “Just trust me.”

  I was on repeat. That was fine. They had to. That was all there was to it.

  Brandon got into the driver seat while John and Isaiah stumbled over each other to get back in. Nick opened the back door of our car, helping me get Whit inside before running to the other side. I placed her head on his lap and kept her feet on mine.

  “Trust me, Whit.” I wasn’t wrong. My body buzzed. “Get us to that doctor, Brandon, and drive like the whole world depends upon it.”

  She was our world. So it really did.

  18

  Dante

  Walking through the Virginia Mountains in the summertime was like walking in a Disney movie with a bluebird whistling above my head.

  In cartoon form, of course.

  If my head had been in any other space, I could have appreciated it. But not right now. Not when my entire life hung in the balance.

  I had no doubt that my destination would result in my death. Karlton had waited a long time to get me back, and once I solved whatever problem he had, he’d kill me. The man, though brilliant, wasn’t much of a forward thinker. He might have a moment of regret in the future when he came upon another problem he couldn’t solve, but it wouldn’t save me now.

  I turned up a long, winding dirt trail in the direction of the Mill Mountain Star. We’d fought Controlled there, and there were probably some still crawling about. Linked to Dexter, they’d alert him to my presence. In no time at all, Karlton would appear.

  My walk gave me time to think about my life. Not so much a flashing before my eyes type of thing. I wasn’t that nostalgic. But I could recognize the decisions I’d made that had brought me here.

  For being a genius, I’d made some dumb fucking decisions. All those studies. The experiments. I’d been blind to their real purpose. And the worst part was I’d been intentionally blind.

  A hundred clues had hinted Karlton wasn’t what he’d seemed, that none of our experiments were really academic in nature. Still, I’d looked the other way because the science was so fascinating.

  It was funny how little things stuck with a person. When my parents signed over my guardianship and I enrolled in school, it was a stupid question that had determined the direction of my life. One of the other students had asked if a person really only used ten percent of their brain capacity.

  Even then, I knew that was bullshit, and I couldn’t help wonder how the kid had gotten into the same school I had. Full of myself, I’d answered for the teacher. “It can’t be true, because then brain activity is limited to one area. And we know brain injuries can result in changes in personality, or disabilities, based on where they occur.”

  I shook my head, my thoughts leading me on a tangent.

  The brain… What a lightning storm of electrical activity! Neurons, synapses, all of them fired across a span of seconds, keeping the body alive, keeping the person thinking.

  But that dumbass question about ten percent stuck with me. Past me, idiot me, kept thinking about clusters of activity. Neurons that controlled movement stayed clustered together, so I’d thought if that was true, then neurons controlling other things could be clustered together.

  My work had been a process of elimination. So much was known about the brain already. Vision, hearing, movement: doctors had identified where those sites were.

  The end of the world, it was an accident. I hadn’t meant to do it. I’d had a patient, one who claimed she saw the future, and I’d happened upon those psychic areas accidentally. I’d found clusters within clusters.

  I laughed out loud, causing a murder of crows to flush out of the treetops. The woman told me the world was going to end, and I assumed she was crazy. Or a holy roller.

 
Her limbic system fired: a sign she was remembering something. But then her countenance changed, and she began to describe something quite different. Something that hadn’t happened yet, and that featured me, front and center.

  Her occipital lobe, frontal cortex, basal ganglia, hippocampus, parietal lobe, and cerebellum lit up. Her visual center processed information as if it was happening before her eyes, while all of the brain systems interpreting time went nuts.

  I’d found something.

  And now, as I strode through Virginia on this beautiful day, I remembered her vision, word for word. “Dr. Shelley, you’re going to die soon. The world will change, and when you wake up, nothing will be the same. You’ll be in between for so, so long before she finds you. And after the storm, you’ll live again, and for a short time, be happy.” I could still see the woman, her dark brown eyes sightless as she watched something play out before her. “It won’t last.”

  Two cars sped toward me, screeching to a stop. Dammit! There was no reason for Brandon to come with me. I didn’t need him to get the meds back to Whitlee. I’d left him behind on purpose, wanting to keep Karlton completely separate from the people I cared about. The last thing we needed was two of us stuck with the psycho.

  He rolled down the window. “Get in.” He panted like he’d been running, and next to him Carson was pale. Behind them must have been the other three.

  What was going on? “Whitlee?”

  “Now.”

  I jumped in the front of the car into the passenger seat. It looked like we were all going together to see my old nemesis. If he couldn’t cure Whit right on the spot, I wasn’t helping him at all.

  19

  Whitney

  I dreamed I walked down a long hallway. Lights flickered on and off. I thought I preferred them off; the glare when they were on made my head hurt. I was barefoot and dressed in a long, flowing green dress. It blew like there was wind, but I was inside. Maybe someone had to turn down the air conditioning.

  Air conditioning? I hadn’t had any of that in so long I was surprised I remembered it at all. Ahead of me there was a brilliant white light. I stopped walking. Did I want to go there?

  Whitney…

  Someone called from the light.

  Who was that? I knew that voice. My mother…

  The lights flickered again, and I rubbed my arms. Behind me there were sounds: screeching car tires, hordes of Controlled, screaming babies. But other noises, too. Brandon. Carson. Dante. Isaiah. Nick. John. I loved the sounds they made when they all talked to each other. I could hear them now.

  Whitney…

  20

  Dante

  “Tell your trained dog to stand down, or I’m going to refuse to help at all.”

  I looked at John. He had my old mentor and current nemesis by the neck. If he twisted just a little bit, he’d kill him. I was pretty sure John would do it, too. “I don’t tell John to do anything. Or not do anything. I’d suggest that in this instance, he and I are on the same page entirely. We want you to help Whitlee Lake. If you do that, I’ll help you. If you refuse, well, John’s going to break your neck.”

  There was a time I’d abhorred violence. I preferred using a carefully worded scientific rebuttal to slay my enemies. But then again, those enemies hadn’t threatened my life, or the life of the one person I loved above all else.

  Karlton laughed. It hadn’t taken him long to find us. I’d jumped into the car and they’d driven over the washboard roads to the Mill Mountain Star. Controlled were there, rambling around the spot like guard dogs. They hadn’t bothered us, and I knew I’d been right. They were surveillance cameras, transmitting back to Dex everything they saw. In less than an hour, Karlton and two men toting guns drove up.

  He hadn’t stepped one foot out of the car before John had acted. Smart man. If he hadn’t, those other two guys would have made this a lot less fun.

  “Don’t you think I know what’s happening here?” Karlton asked. “You think I can’t see the girl in the car? You drained her, and now she’s dying.”

  John shook him and the two guards shifted uneasily, but their guns were held steady.

  “You’re going to get us what we need to help her,” I said.

  John tightened his chokehold, squeezed Karlton so tightly his face turned bright red. Eyes bugging out of his face, the man spluttered and slapped uselessly. This was a warning. John wasn’t messing around, but as he let go, the man gasped for air. “Aim low,” John got out to the armed guards before I could stop him.

  21

  Whitney

  My mom appeared in front of me, a future version of myself. I’d forgotten how similar we were. Our eyes, our freckles, our turned-up nose. Her hair was a paler shade of red than mine. “Redheads don’t gray, they go blonde,” she’d always said.

  There was a crack, like thunder split the sky wide open, and a strange dull pain on the side of my leg.

  “Whitney!” Brandon’s voice was frantic, and someone shook me. It hurt every inch of my body. I wanted to go back where it was cool.

  Whitney… The light darkened, throwing shadows over Mom. I could barely see her face now, so I got closer. Everything was hazy, and I squeezed my eyes shut to clear my vision. “Whitney.” Oh, I’d missed her voice. “Whitney, are you coming?” I felt her hand touch mine, and I glanced down. Her fingers entwined with mine, squeezing so tight.

  I squeezed back. There was something I had to do; I couldn’t just rush off to follow her, could I?

  “Whitney, honey. It’s time.” She used her mom voice, the one I couldn’t disobey.

  So I didn’t.

  22

  John

  “You think you can threaten me?” Karlton was insane. My leg burned where the bullet had grazed me. A few inches to the left and they could have gotten my femoral artery.

  “John!” Brandon screamed. I’d never heard that sound come out of his mouth before, and in a flash I knew what had happened. We’d shut down the circuit, but all this stress, exhaustion, and fear had undone it. And this tiny graze, the pain so minuscule I could ignore it, was going to be the death of the woman I loved.

  Stupid. So stupid. Why hadn’t I ordered them to drop their weapons?

  “I want Dante,” the man said. “Look in the car. Everything I need is in there. I can save her. But you have to go. I want one of your cars and you in the back. My men will drive you. Agree or she dies.”

  I was bleeding, and fuck, maybe I’d killed Whitney, but I wouldn’t back down. We’d come this far. There was no turning back now.

  “We stay together. All together or you don’t get Dante. If she dies, we’re all going with her. Make a choice or I’ll order you to do it. You have two seconds.”

  I thought it was the ordering him to do it that caught his attention finally. Yes, that was right. I had psychic abilities. We all did. If he wanted to study us, he had to save our girl.

  “Get out of the way.” The doctor attempted to shove me, and I let him. If I hadn’t wanted to move, bullet hole or no bullet hole, he wasn’t moving me. I’d spent too much time at the mercy of a bigger man beating me that I just wasn’t afraid anymore. I knew how to be a bully. It scared me how easily I’d slipped into my father’s shoes as I took Karlton by the neck.

  I did have that evil inside of me. I had to keep controlling it. But for now, if it helped Whitney…

  “She’s not breathing. I don’t have a heartbeat.”

  I bent over, trying to breathe. No. She couldn’t be gone. That just… couldn’t be. She was supposed to live for years and years. We had a happy life owed to us.

  “We have to—” Fuck. I couldn’t breathe to speak. “We have to close the circuit.” I was draining her, we had to shut it down.

  Brandon knelt next to me, reaching for Whitney. His hands touched hers, and he shut his eyes tight. All at once, I felt a tug and then, like a steel door slamming, I was shut off from everything.

  “Done,” he said, breathlessly. He put his hands on
his knees, and sweat dripped off his forehead. I didn’t know how he did it on his own, but he closed the circuit.

  I turned my gaze back to Whitney, staring at her, willing her to take a breath and open her eyes.

  Funny how all the things I never imagined and never experienced could hurt me as badly as if they’d happened. We’d never talked about marrying her, but I would have. If we kept healing the way we were, maybe we could have children.

  Not only was Whitney being ripped away from me, but so were our children. I was losing my chance to be a better man, it was slipping through my fingers along with the girl on the ground.

  My knees gave out, and I landed hard on the ground next to her.

  “I have a pulse,” Karlton said. He worked over her, pushing a needle into her arm and directing Brandon to hold the bag of fluids above his head. “Pick her up and hurry.”

  I reached for her, but Dante got there first. He slid his arms beneath her and cradled her against his chest. “Let’s go.” He glanced at me, and I could see he was both ravaged and resigned.

  “What’s in that bag?” I asked as I pushed myself to standing. My whole body shook, like I was as weak as Whitney.

  “A concoction I’ve been working on,” Karlton said. “Since you’ve been waking up the Controlled, I’ve had to heal a lot more bodies than normal. It took a few tries.” He smiled and it was like looking the devil in the eyes. “A few failures. But it’ll do the trick for these pseudo-infections. For a short while at least. I’ve never tried it on someone as ill as she is now. If you’re thinking you can swipe the bag and run away, you’ll be disappointed.” He faced Dante. “I won’t give you a second chance.”