Just before he climbs into the cab, he hears a noise. The grinding squeal of a saw. He looks toward one of the outbuildings, the pole barn that serves as Nico’s studio. The door is open and a brief spray of orange sparks lights up the dark inside. He goes there.
Music plays—something New Age, a blend of thunder, wind, synthesizers, and chanting—and the sound echoes through the cavernous space. The floor is concrete and splattered with paint and wrinkled with drop cloths and crumbled with rock. Several canvases are stacked against the wall. Others are set up on easels. Many of them seem to carry the same image: the sprawl of space, dotted with stars, with either a mouth or an eye at its center.
There are shelves stacked with paint and benches cluttered with power tools. Here is an archway built of moose and elk and deer antlers. Here is a half-chiseled creature that appears to be mostly eyeballs and tentacles. Here is a quilt sewn from furs harvested from beavers and coyotes and foxes and deer. Here is a boulder made out of many smaller stones, most of them agates. Here is a giant man with angel wings, every inch of him built out of bleached driftwood.
“Nico?”
The saw fires up again. The pole barn is a maze of installations, and John walks through one made of black fabric jeweled with rhinestones. Beneath the teepeed shawl, John feels like he is either traveling through a cave sparkling with gems or floating through deep space with the stars winking all around.
On the other side of it he spots Nico hunched over a workbench. The footing is uneven here because so many extension cords snake across the floor. One of them connects to the stereo that blasts . . . is it even music? Right now it sounds like a storm at sea. “Nico!” John says, and Nico finally turns, his blue eyes flashing in the gloom.
His brother goes to the stereo and clicks it off and the sudden silence feels like both a relief and a discomfort. “What are you doing in here?” he asks.
“Wanted to say hi. See what you were up to.”
Nico slowly raises an arm, like a magician revealing a trick. “I’m building.”
“Can you show me?”
He plucks what looks like a small metal sickle off the workbench and then walks John over to a rectangular structure maybe five feet wide and seven feet tall. It is incredibly intricate, almost biological. Unfinished, but already with a thousand parts welded or fitted together. Thickly framed with steel, tailored with copper and iron, veined throughout with wiring, studded with agates, and brightened here and there by omnimetal that appears to be laser-etched with ciphers. There are wide channels that come together from several directions and merge into a circle at the structure’s center. The same kind of circle painted onto the canvases. Everything seems somehow to point to or thread with or connect at this juncture, like a sculptural vanishing point.
John doesn’t know how to explain it, but he feels like he’s seen it somewhere before. In a dream? Maybe his ears are still suffering from the stereo’s noise, but the air seems to shiver and whine here. Like after a bell is struck.
A ladder is set next to the structure and Nico climbs it and fits the sickle into the larger arrangement. Near the top, it clicks perfectly into place and his fingers linger there a moment, trembling with exhaustion or the pleasure of creation. “It’s not finished yet.”
John says, “It already looks pretty badass, but . . . what’s it going to be?”
“I’m calling it the eye of the Herm.”
“Like Herb with an m?”
“It’s Greek. It refers to a threshold between realms.”
“You lost me. Looks like a weird door.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Where does it go, then?”
Nico climbs down the ladder and stands beside his brother; both of them stare at the sculpture. “I hope to find out.”
There is an old logging road that abuts the government facility. John drives down it, clunking through the ruts and thumping over the exposed rock, before pulling into a meadow of fireweed. He sends up the drone with a buzzing whir, and a few seconds later it is out of his line of sight.
The live feed is projected onto the controller’s screen. The drone whines over the treetops and at first there is nothing to see but their green and red and gold crowns. Then everything opens up into the grounds, and he hovers high above, taking in the six buildings and the concrete paths threading between them. From here it could pass for a college campus. He yaws the drone. Tilts the pitch. Tries to get every angle he can from this height. He adjusts the flight altitude, ten feet at time. It is then that he notices something curious. There are no windows. Every building is shelled fully with concrete.
He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for, but more than this. Some movement catches his eye—a car pulling into the lot. He rudders over the vehicle and throttles down twenty feet and observes the door open and a silver-haired woman step out. She hesitates a moment, as if wondering whether she forgot something, and then heads toward a nearby building. She appears unhurried. Slow, even hunched over, to the point of appearing sick or exhausted. She pulls out a keycard and uses it to open a door. He can’t see much from this height, but a guard waits on the other side.
He knows it’s a risk, but he drops the drone another ten feet, then another five, until he can angle it and focus the camera on her license plate. He reads the plate aloud—twice, three times, four, committing it to his brain. Just as he is about to throttle up, the image shakes. It rolls one way, then another, and he catches a glimpse of another drone trailing his. The image shakes again, this time with a burst of static. And rather than lead the other drone on a chase, he crashes his own full speed into the asphalt below. The screen goes dark.
23
* * *
Even after John turns onto the county highway, his eyes flit to the rearview and he keeps his speed just ten miles over the limit. He repeats her license plate several times over and then pulls out his cell and makes a note of it. He remembers to buckle his seat belt. He turns the radio on, then off.
Paranoia drives him. The fear of getting caught and boxed away. But more than that, it’s the sick feeling he gets from the DOD facility itself. He recognized it. Impossible as it seems, he dreamed it. He knew its gray concrete walls. He felt both inside and outside it at the same time. He was there. The boy was there. They were there.
The farther he travels, the more his heart settles. Just when he thinks he’s gotten away undetected, a siren sounds. He can’t see the source, but it’s coming from behind him, where the road curves through the woods. He could crush the accelerator now, but he’s headed for a five-mile straightaway through an open marsh. There’s no place to turn off, dive down a side road. They’d spot him. Better to play dumb than run guilty. He’s not afraid of getting caught for spying on a government facility. He’s afraid of attention, questions, any sort of scrutiny that might reveal what he is. A freak show, Talia called him.
When the squad car appears—fifty yards behind him, haloed in red and blue light—he slows and pulls onto the shoulder. But the cop blows by him, maybe going eighty, rattling the Bronco with the grit thrown up by its tires.
John continues to idle until the cruiser is out of sight, then returns to the blacktop. “Huh,” he keeps saying. He’s got that old familiar feeling—the sensation of almost getting caught—and it makes him a little giddy. When he nears town, more squad cars go roaring past, and he sees where they’re headed: onto the ramp that will lead them south on Highway 1. From here he can see the hospital. Just then a helicopter rises from its roof with a sputtering roar and flies in the same direction.
John picks up his cell to make a call, but it is already ringing. The ID reads Yesno. He hits Accept and says, “What happened?”
Talia is fine. Yesno knows that much. The same can’t be said for everyone else. He knows of four fatalities so far. Several other people appear to be in serious condition. “From what I understand, no fewer than three of our semis were totaled. And the highway is a complete mess.” Backed up for miles
in every direction. The pavement torn and buckled from the wreckage. His voice remains brisk and businesslike, as if he’s reporting quarterly earnings.
“What a shit show,” John says.
“Yes, that’s a fair way of putting it.”
“So Black Dog tried to make the hit and steal the load. How many of them were there?”
“She isn’t sure. Four vehicles, maybe twelve men. All wearing masks.”
“But it was definitely them?”
“Talia says so. She said she recognized Mickey Golden by his hair.”
“I don’t suppose he’s one of the fatalities?”
“No.”
“He at least in custody?”
“No. As I understand it, the only ones in custody are presently being zipped into body bags. The rest got away. Including Mickey. But she claims she hurt him. In her words, ‘He was so scared, he was pissing blood out of his eyeballs.’”
“Yeah,” John says, “those are definitely her words.”
“She couldn’t really talk, so I only got the short version. I don’t know anything more than what I’ve told you except . . .”
“Except it’s not over.”
“No, it’s not over,” Yesno says. “It’s far from over.”
* * *
John isn’t sure where to go. Home? Or south on Highway 1? Or maybe he should just hit the train station and bullet his way out of here once and for all. He turns one way, then another, then back the other way, circling blocks, detouring his way to nowhere. And then, without really thinking about it, he ends up in Jenna’s neighborhood.
He doesn’t plan on knocking on her door. He just wants to drive by. Maybe catch a glimpse of her in the window. But she and her boy are out front, doing yard work. As he approaches, she turns her face toward the familiar growl of the Bronco. He takes his foot off the gas but doesn’t brake. Not yet. Not until she raises a hand, a dirt-smeared garden glove, and waves hello. Then he has no choice but to pull over.
She wears a flannel shirt, jeans. Her hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, her red hair like a curl of flame. She seems to be hiding a smile when she approaches. He lowers the window and is immediately assaulted by country music blaring from across the street. “It’s a bad habit,” she says.
“What?”
“Driving by my house and not stopping to say hello.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh. Thanks for the groceries, stalker.”
He doesn’t say anything but shifts the Bronco into park. It rocks a little and she settles her arms on the door. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Something’s the matter. I can tell.”
“It’s just my sister. Kicking the hornets’ nest.”
“She does that.”
“That she does.”
“So,” she says. “You going to get out or just sit out here like a weirdo?”
He looks toward the yard, where she’s been potting mums and tearing out weeds and planting bulbs, thinking ahead to spring. Her boy balances a Wiffle Ball on a plastic stand and then tries to hit it with an oversize bat. “Not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” she says.
“I’ve already been questioned about Dan’s disappearance.”
“You have?” Her expression sickens. “I didn’t know that.”
“Can’t blame them. I’d be worried about me too.”
“Well, you didn’t do anything wrong, so you have nothing to worry about.”
He can’t meet her eyes when he says, “I wouldn’t say that. But I promise I’ve got nothing to do with your husband. Whatever happened to him.”
“I believe you.”
“That’s the weird thing about you, Jenna.” He fiddles with the radio dial, even though the power is off, as if hunting for the right tone. “You’ve always believed me.”
“It’s true.”
“Anyway. Probably doesn’t look good. Me being here.”
“But here you are.”
Someone across the street cackles and John leans forward to see past Jenna. The yard of the apartment unit there is a mess of stained pizza boxes, empty chip bags, crushed soda and beer cans. The grass grows only in patches. Several men stand around a grill, pushing hot dogs around with tongs. Others toss beanbags in a game of cornhole. “They always play their music that loud?”
“Pretty much.”
“You want me to talk to them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have to live here.”
He reaches for the gearshift. “Better get going.”
Her hand shoots inside the window and grabs his forearm. “Stay.” She keeps a tight grip. He imagines he can feel the heat of her even through the leather glove. “If you didn’t have nothing to do with Dan, there’s no point in being shy.”
“Right. I guess. Yeah.”
“It’s been a month,” she says.
“A month?” he says and checks the rearview as if the road behind him might offer some response. “That’s a month longer than I planned on staying.”
“Stay a while longer.” She leans a little farther into the window, reaching across him. She kills the engine, unslots the key. “Now you’ve got to come inside.” She starts toward the house, holding up the keys and jangling them. “I was about to make some chow anyway.”
He waits another second before he follows. He makes hard eye contact with a guy wearing a camo hat across the street. When he pushes through the chain-link gate, the boy says, “Who is that stranger?”
At this point Jenna is halfway up the steps. “An old friend.”
The boy swings the bat one-handed, hitting his foot, hitting the grass, hitting the weed pile. He doesn’t look up when John says, “Timmy, right?”
“Yep.”
“You like baseball?”
He continues to swing the bat at everything but the ball. “I’m going to play T-ball next year.”
“Yeah?”
With every swing of the bat he says, “Yep, yep, yep.”
Jenna lingers in the doorway and says, “Why don’t you teach Timmy how to hit home runs while I race around and stuff all the dirty clothes into a closet so that you can actually come inside without me being embarrassed?”
John looks toward her in a mild panic. “I don’t know —”
But she is already gone. The door claps shut and the two of them are left alone.
The boy squints at John as if he can’t quite see him. “Did you get hurt?”
“What?”
The boy touches his own face along the cheek. “You got an owie.”
“Oh,” John says. “No. Just born that way.”
“You were born with an owie?”
“Doesn’t hurt. Just a funny color. Everybody’s born a little different, right?”
“You’re different than everybody else?”
“I am,” John says. “Yeah.”
The wind scatters leaves across the lawn. The country music blares and they say nothing for a little while and then the boy fumbles the bat toward John and says, “Show me.”
John takes the bat, blue and hollow and plastic, and strangles the grip with his hands. “Let me ask you something?”
“Okay.”
He looks across the street. “Does it bother you when those men play their music that loud?”
“I hate it, but Mommy hates it worst.”
“That’s what I thought.”
24
* * *
Victoria knows what the boy is capable of. But she has misreported and ignored data. And she has intentionally slowed her lab work, claiming she must take care when testing his limits and capabilities. They don’t know what they’re dealing with, she said. They don’t want to rush and potentially destroy what could be a trillion-dollar tool of war, the next evolutionary step, a revisionary defiance of everything they knew about science, she said.
She i
sn’t sure what scares her more, the practical promise of Hawkin as a living weapon or the dreams he sometimes reports to her. The visions of worlds other than this one. The possibility that he might be an antenna or a bridge or a connection to something other. He dreamed his body turned inside out and instead of guts, tentacles came squiggling out. He dreamed he was standing among mountains, but the mountains were floating. He dreamed that a door opened and a black wave of galaxies came pouring through.
She’s been buying the boy time while knowing all along their time will run out.
She needs to do something to get him away from this place, but she doesn’t have a plan. Or rather, she has one, and it’s terrible and dangerous and impossible and could land her in prison and her husband in harm’s way.
By day she tries to pretend that nothing will ever change. She tries to believe that she will continue to spend her time testing the boy and—let’s face it—mothering him in her own quiet way. But at night she lies in bed, unable to sleep, her heart beating furiously, her guts in an acidic twist. She does not believe in God, but she prays all the same.
She prays that Dr. Gunn will lose interest. She prays that some other world event will shuttle resources and attention elsewhere. She prays that the facility will lose funding and shut down. She prays that the boy will somehow grow out of or learn to inhibit his powers.
The sword, if that’s the right word for what Dr. Gunn brought into the lab, sliced a five-inch gash in Hawkin’s chest. A blue light shone suddenly from it like a torn-open drape. It was pure energy, unleashed from the subatomic matrix of omnimetal woven through him. The air visibly shook and warped. Like a mirror melting.
Gunn was knocked back as though an invisible hand had picked him up and hurled him across the room. He skidded across the floor and came to a stop against the wall. He didn’t whimper or cry out, though he must have been hurt badly. Instead, he pushed himself up into a seated position and rasped his breath through a busted-lip smile and said, “That’s what I thought.”
The Ninth Metal Page 18
