“Oh. I think I remember reading about that. That’s terrible.”
“Hell of a thing. Get on the 511 next time. Check the road conditions. They’ve got an app for that now, even. Travel is not advised. You going someplace close?”
“Yes. It’s close.”
“You need an escort? Someone to escort you?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Thank you. We’ll be fine.”
“Hope so. Because it’s not safe out here. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not safe.”
He shuffles away and she rolls up the window and through the phone John hears her sigh with relief. “Everybody good?” Jenna says, and Victoria says, in an unsteady voice, “Can you turn up the heat, dear? I can’t seem to stop shivering.”
Jenna picks up the phone and says, “You good, Johnny?”
“Yeah,” he says, “I’m good.” Except that, as the cop is climbing into his squad car, he pauses to look back at him wonderingly.
* * *
Hawkin can’t see past the uniform. The police officer who loomed in the window felt like a stand-in for the entire security force at the DOD lab. The man might as well have had cameras for eyes and guns for hands and keys for teeth and a cage for a stomach. He would hurt Hawkin if Hawkin didn’t hurt him first. And it took the strongest will for him to sit still and stare straight ahead. He knows that this is wrong but that it also feels right. He is stronger than them—all of them—and that’s why they locked him up. Because they were afraid of what he could do.
He remembered, when he was younger, reading a Superman comic and asking his mother why Clark Kent was a reporter. Why hide? Why not just become king of the world? He could still save the people who needed saving and he could still punish the people who needed punishing, but he could also enjoy his power.
His mother shrugged and said, “Because that’s what makes him a good guy.”
But why? It wasn’t a satisfactory answer. Now that Hawkin has tasted freedom—now that he has experimented with what he is capable of—he can feel another version of the same question bothering him now. He is the one with the power. So why is he hiding? Why was he so afraid for so long when everyone should be afraid of him?
In one of the comic books Victoria bought for him—an issue of Batman—there was a page he kept coming back to. In it, Robin was overcome by fear gas, paralyzed in Wayne Manor for days on end. In his bedroom, he lay curled up in a ball, shivering, scared of his own shadow. But Bruce Wayne sat at his side, and he said something that roused the Boy Wonder. “I know how you feel. I was once afraid of the dark. Then I found the darkness inside me and it was greater and more terrifying than anything I faced. So I let it out.”
As they drive, Hawkin clenches and unclenches his fists, and every beat of his heart seems to inflate his chest until the pressure threatens to crack him wide open.
When Jenna says, “We’re here,” Hawkin almost asks, Where? Because he hardly recognizes his own home. Maybe it’s the snow—which makes everything unfamiliar—or the long wall of sharpened logs bordering the property. He isn’t sure what he expected as the Buick rolls up to the gates, but it’s not this. What looks like another prison. He has been so focused on himself that he’s failed to acknowledge a difficult truth: yes, he has changed, but so has the world around him.
The boy seated beside him—Timmy? Tommy?—asks Hawkin, “Is this where you live?” and Hawkin says, “Used to be.”
“So it’s your home?”
“I don’t know,” Hawkin says.
“How can you not know?”
“Because,” Hawkin says, “a lot has changed.”
The boy returns his attention to the plastic dinosaur in his lap. “I like our house, but Mommy says I’ll like our new house more better.”
“You’re moving?” Hawkin says.
“Mommy says our life is going to be more better from now on. Is your life going to be more better from now on?”
“I don’t know that either.”
The woman named Jenna puts the car in park and says, “This is it,” to Victoria. “You two are on your own from here.”
Victoria unclicks the buckle of her seat belt but doesn’t release it, as if she thinks she might float away without it. “You mean you’re not coming in?”
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. They don’t let just anyone through those gates.” Jenna finds Hawkin’s eyes in the rearview. “Good luck. To both of you.”
“Thank you, then. For getting us this far.” The seat belt retracts and Victoria wraps her neck in her scarf. “I don’t know why it feels like there’s such a long way to go yet.” Victoria glances into the back seat at Hawkin with wet-eyed concern. “You ready?”
No. He is not. He imagined his house as it was. He imagined his mother as she was. He isn’t sure he’s prepared for whatever waits inside. But the gates are already opening and a figure is approaching them. Thin and tall and dressed in a black wrap whitened at its creases by snow. He bends his body to peer in the window at Hawkin with eyes that burn blue. Then Jenna rolls down her window and snowflakes twirl inside and she says, “Hey, Nico. You got what I need?”
Nico keeps his eyes on Hawkin as he withdraws something from a hidden pocket. A thick manila envelope. He speaks with a whispery voice: “Metal is.”
“Take care of yourself,” Jenna says. She accepts the envelope and tears it open and shuffles quickly through the papers inside. “Eat something, huh? You look like you’re about to vanish.”
His eyes finally find hers. “You don’t know how right you are.”
She doesn’t appear to hear him. “Everything seems to be in order, so we’ll let you take it from here.” She closes the window and pops the trunk and Nico goes to retrieve the bags waiting there.
“What did he give you?” Victoria says.
Jenna flops the envelope heavily onto the dash. “You didn’t think we were doing this purely out of the goodness of our own hearts.”
“Money and murder.” Victoria shakes her head. “I think I’ve had more than enough of it. And this place.”
Jenna motions to the open gate. “Then go already.”
Hawkin tries to open his door but the wind bullies it closed. He tries again, forcing himself outside. Victoria meets him there and takes his hand. But before they follow the thin man through the gates, Hawkin looks back at the Bronco parked at the edge of the lot. The cab is dark and the snow is already piling up on the windshield, but he can see the figure sitting inside. A shadow.
Hawkin raises a hand in thanks. After a moment’s hesitation, the shadow matches the gesture. As if they are the same. A reflection.
* * *
The paperwork Jenna collected—signing over Gunderson Woods to Frontier Metals—is irrelevant to John. All he cares about is the boy. And now he’s seemingly safe as the gates close. Back together with his mother. And happy? He must be happy. So John has done his part. This is supposed to be the moment when he feels better, restored. Yet no sense of relief or conclusion comes.
The sky droops mournfully. The wind dances the snow into twisting veils. Jenna loops around the parking lot, her tires leaving deep grooves in the snow, and pulls back onto the highway. After a moment John follows her, heading back to town. The three of them. This should feel right. A kind of family going in the same direction. When they get home, maybe they’ll make grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and coffee. Sit down together. Play a card game. He tries to imagine the warmth and comfort of a lamplit kitchen, but it keeps scattering away like the snowflakes billowing past his windshield, replaced by visions of him on his knees, open-armed, begging the boy to strike him down.
There were no news reports of the attack on the DOD facility because it was a black site, but John saw the smoke dirtying the air and heard enough from Victoria to know what Hawkin could do. He deserved revenge more than John deserved absolution.
His cell rings. Jenna’s ID pop
s up on the screen. He knows what she’ll say. We did it, baby. We did it. Now we can start over. He won’t be able to match her enthusiasm, so he doesn’t answer.
Why can’t he allow himself some happiness? Why does he always pivot toward self-destruction? Is it the same reason Talia wanted to mine the Boundary Waters? he wonders. The same reason the DOD wanted to harvest omnimetal and turn it into weapons? The same reason we gamble and drink too much and shatter marriages? In the end we’re all hard-wired to destroy ourselves. Omnimetal just gave us another tool to bring hazardously to our wrists.
He’s so caught up in his thoughts, he doesn’t notice the brigade of vehicles until it is already upon him. The black SUVs—one, two, three—blast past and stir up a tornadic wake of snow. Then they disappear into the white nothing of the storm, heading in the direction of Gunderson Woods.
He jams the brakes hard enough that his tires slip and he cranks the wheel and spins around and comes to a swaying stop. It must have been that cop who alerted them. Maybe he reported to them directly or maybe they were listening on the scanner. Regardless, they knew. And he had given them what they wanted.
A moment ago John felt directionless. But now he knows what he can do, what he’s best at. He can hurt.
* * *
The house is jacked up on one side, so Victoria stands at a strange tilt in the Gunderson living room. The air is rank with the sour spice of body odor and space dust. Victoria’s eyes haven’t yet adjusted and the shut curtains permit little light, and the darkness enhances the radiant blue eyes of Mother. She sits on the couch, her hairless moon of a face floating on top of a big black body.
Victoria isn’t sure what she expected from this reunion, but it was not this level of discomfort. Hawkin doesn’t rush to his mother in a flurry of hugs and kisses and tears. He instead holds back, nudging his body against Victoria’s, and leaves her only hesitantly when his mother says, “Come closer and let me see you.”
He takes a few steps forward and pauses halfway between the two women.
“Take off your sunglasses,” Mother says.
The boy does. He folds the stems and tucks them into his pocket. She regards him for a long, uncomfortable moment, and her eyes blink with an effect similar to fireflies flickering in and out of view.
“Mom?” Hawkin finally says. “Is it really you?”
Mother gives a husky laugh. “Is it me?” She readjusts her bulk. “Yes and no, I suppose. Yes and no.”
To this Hawkin has no response except to shift his feet.
“We’ve grown,” she says. “And I don’t mean that in the way you might think. We’ve both grown inside. We’re bigger—inside. Do you know what I mean by that?”
“I think so.”
“Whole galaxies spin inside us.”
Hawkin looks back at Victoria with a pleading gaze until his mother’s voice calls out to him again. “Do you remember how I used to take you to church?”
“I remember.”
“At the Trinity Lutheran. We didn’t go every Sunday, but maybe every other. Not your father, of course, but you and me.”
“We’d sit in the back pew.”
“I liked the back pew best because then I could see all of the stained glass. When the light came through, I liked to imagine heaven was waiting on the other side. I led the Bible studies too. I ushered sometimes. And baked dessert bars for the fellowship after the service. I didn’t believe in the Gospels, but I believed they were an honest attempt to make sense of everything. Do you know why we went to church, Hawkin? Why anyone goes to church?”
His shrug is almost imperceptible.
She reaches for something—what Victoria recognizes as a bowl—resting on the end table. She sparks a flame and leans her face in. “Because they want to escape.”
Smoke—brightened by blue sparks—clouds her face. She takes a deep-lunged breath and only then does she speak again. “Because this can’t be it. There has to be more. It doesn’t matter if you practice Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Satanism or worship in a laboratory like Dr. Lennon over here—that’s the truth that people are drawn to. The truth of more. But no one knew what the more was until now. When the more came to us.” She sets down the bowl and gives a contented sigh. “You and me—we are evidence of the more.”
“Why?” he says. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you have to make a choice.”
“About what?”
“Are you going to stay here? Or go with me?”
“Where would we go?”
She raises a hand and taps the air as if ringing a bell. “I bet you already know.”
“Tell me.”
“Your dreams. They’re a little bit like those stained-glass windows at the Trinity Lutheran. You can see the hint of something else shining through them. Am I right?”
Hawkin lowers his head and then raises it, what amounts to a nod.
“That’s where we’re going.”
Victoria can’t keep herself from speaking. “Hawkin.” She says his name like a warning. Because she senses, in the biblical cadences of Mother’s speech, something apocalyptic. She imagines everyone drinking the same poison in Communion. Or this compound rising in flames and collapsing in ash.
She can feel Mother’s eyes homing in on her now and has never felt more fully seen—naked to the marrow. “It’s not what you think, Dr. Lennon.”
“Isn’t it?”
“This isn’t about death. It’s about rebirth.”
“I wouldn’t have brought him here if I knew we were going to have this conversation.”
“I’m grateful to you. I truly am. But shut your mouth, Dr. Lennon. For just another minute. Because we don’t have much time. Hawkin has to make his choice now.”
“Why?” Victoria and Hawkin say at once.
“Because it’s time to go. Because they’re coming.”
Victoria says, “Do you realize how you sound?”
But Mother ignores her and focuses on Hawkin. “We hardly know each other. We’re strangers now. We’ve changed, haven’t we?”
“Yes.”
“So much has changed. And I know that makes this hard. And I believe I already know your answer. But you have to understand something before you make it.”
Victoria is about to say more, but Hawkin holds up a hand to silence her. “I’m listening.”
“If you stay, you’re going to be their monster. That’s not something you can change. The only thing you can control is what kind of monster you want to be. Do you understand?”
“I—I’ll try to understand.”
“You always were a good boy.” Mother looks again to Victoria. “You love him, don’t you?”
She does not hesitate to say it. “Yes.”
“Then you’ll do everything you can to protect him. From others, of course. But also . . . from himself.”
It’s not a question, but she answers all the same, with the solemnness of a vow. “I will.”
* * *
It was on an icy road such as this that John’s mother died. Because of him. And the world feels ripe with the possibility of death when he picks up speed and the snow churns and the wind howls. His wipers can’t keep up and the tires barely find traction. Frosted trees, like white turrets, blur past. The road winds and he catches a few fleeting glimpses of the SUVs before reaching them. He knows they won’t be paying any attention to what’s behind them and so he doesn’t hesitate. On a straightaway he stomps the gas and powers into the rear end of a black Tahoe with government plates.
Metal shrieks. The tailgate crumples and the vehicle lurches. John has momentum and surprise on his side. The road bends again and the Tahoe doesn’t make it; it dives into the ditch and sends up a spray of snow before coming to a rest on its side against a wall of pines.
The next vehicle—a Suburban—is braking, but whoever’s at the wheel still doesn’t seem wise to what’s happening. The Bronco’s grille is shattered and the hood rumpled but other
wise it drives fine. He bolts forward again but without as much force as before. He batters the Suburban’s rear but gets caught—bumper to bumper—and can’t untangle himself even when he brakes. The Suburban swerves and they both slide sideways and then buckle back into formation, continuing down the road like two train cars that nearly lost their grip on the tracks.
The Suburban’s brake lights burn red. The Bronco slams into it once more, and at first John believes this is why its rear window shatters. Then his own windshield spider-webs and several bullets whiz past his ear; one strikes him full in the face. Then in the hand. And then in the chest.
He can’t see through the crinkly glass—it’s punched through with holes—so he leans over the dash and swings a fist. The blue expulsion of energy fragments the windshield into thousands of sparkling pieces that gust away instantly with the snow.
Now he can see the men in tactical gear positioned on the other side of his hood staring down the length of their rifles. They unload a fresh assault of bullets and everything goes white with muzzle flash. When they’ve emptied their clips, the men come into focus again, and they look at John and then at each other with questioning terror.
The rearview mirror is gone, so he can’t see his face, but he can see his hands. Bright blue veins run through them, coursing with energy. The two vehicles, still tangled together, barely creep along, so it isn’t much of a challenge for John to crawl out of his seat and across the hood and then launch himself forward.
* * *
The trail of footprints is already filling with snow. Hundreds of people—all of them in black—have gathered in the meadow behind the house. Here the monoliths rise like a silver crown or some claw reaching its way out of the underworld. At the center of the circle stands a monument, what looks like a door, built from thousands of component parts. They call it Herm.
Earlier, Mother was hoisted and carried here by several men and now she sits before it. Studying it. Seemingly oblivious to the snow that dusts her bare head. Finally she reaches out to touch its center. At first nothing happens. Then a few ghostly wisps of something like electricity sparkle into view. And a blue light—a brighter version of the one that burns in all their eyes—glimmers at the borders of the monument.
The Ninth Metal Page 28
