TWENTY-FOUR.
LIGHTNING STRUCK SO CLOSE IT FILLED THE BUS WITH DAZZLING blue light, and then the following crash of thunder made Number 712 shiver to its rusted bolts.
“Great night to be out on a drive,” said Jefferson Jericho in a hollow voice. No one answered him. Hannah was concentrating on the highway ahead through her viewpane and the others were in their own worlds or else too tensed by this building storm to have any use for talking. Jefferson shrugged; he couldn’t do a thing about his circumstances, and he figured he was better off here under Ethan’s protection than at the mall. The device at the back of his neck was not filling him up with the flames of agony, he felt he was—for the moment at least—out of Her reach, and so what was a little thunderstorm? Still…Hannah was having a tough time, creeping along I-70 at about fifteen miles an hour because of the thickness of this yellow mist they’d run into up here at the high altitude with the jagged mountains all around. Beyond the guardrails were steep dropoffs that could swallow up earthmen and spacekids alike.
“Hey, Ethan!” he called back.
“Yes?” The boy had been mentally observing the Cypher tracker, which continued to pinpoint his location even as the large battlecraft of both sides fought each other at the threshold of space.
“This storm natural? Or is it them?”
“Natural,” Ethan replied. “But their weapons have screwed up the atmosphere. So all storms will be many times amplified in violence.”
Amplified in violence, Jefferson thought. That wasn’t how a kid talked. That was the alien talking. How did it know English? Reading the boy’s mind, he figured. An alien who could come to this world without a spaceship and enter a boy’s dead body…that had to be some kind of weird. Well, no weirder than Her. Or the Ant Farm. Or Microscope Meadows. He had not allowed himself to think much about Burt Ratcoff. He remembered the guy saying I think they hollowed me out and put somethin’ else inside me. Poor dumb bastard, Jefferson thought. But Ratcoff probably didn’t know what hit him and he was out of this nightmare now, so…good for him.
Jefferson scratched his beard. His hands were free. A few hours ago, the conversation between he and Dave was: Okay, I have to pee. Want me to go ahead and do it here, or can we pull the bus over for a minute?
Good idea, Hannah had said. I’ve gotta go too. Might as well pull over while we can, everybody take a break.
So, Jefferson had asked Dave, are you going to cut these things off my wrists or do you want to hold it for me?
They had stopped at a lookout point with a view to the forest below, and one by one they all saw the wreckage of the crashed United States Air Force fighter jet amid the burned trees.
Jefferson flinched at the next strike of lightning, because it too had been close. Up here in the high mountains, the weather had gone berserk. He’d tried hard not to think too much about Regina or the people at the Ant Farm. There was nothing he could do for them. They might all be dead by now, swept away into space, or left on their unprotected own. Which would be the better fate? He wished he’d had a chance to smooth things with Regina, to make her understand that a special man like himself with special gifts could not be expected to live a normal life, constrained by a society of dumb sheep. No, he had to make his mark and take what he needed when he needed it; that was just how he’d been born, and who could change that? But…it was too late now with Regina. Maybe that day she’d nearly shot him in the back of the head would’ve been the best, he thought. Wouldn’t be here right now, in this bus in a rising storm with a damned itchy beard and an alien boy, heading for God only knew what. He hoped Regina had died quickly. She was all right, she just hadn’t recognized that the gifts he’d been given had to be used. He hoped she had died in one quick second of being cast off into airless space, because in his way he had loved her. Whether he could ever come to tears about her passing, he didn’t know nor did he care to dwell on it very much longer; after all, if she was dead she—like Burt Ratcoff—was in a hell of a better place and he was still here in this shitmess.
No rainbows here, folks, not even after the hardest rain. Move along…nothing to see.
Sitting a few rows behind Jefferson Jericho, Ethan felt himself drifting away. It was like he was becoming a spectator to his own life. He realized his speech was changing, no way he talked or thought like an earthkid anymore. Maybe he hadn’t, really, since all this had started. It was really weird now, though, because he knew the Big Change was happening. There was nothing he could do about it, it was for the best but…the Big Change was death for him, for the boy who’d called himself Ethan Gaines, and when the alien—the peacekeeper—had done what it needed to do, Ethan Gaines was finished. As the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed outside the bus, Ethan tried very hard to concentrate on that day at D’Evelyn High School—the third of April, the morning the first sonic booms had announced the coming of the Gorgons—when he had been waiting to take his Visible Man to the front of the class and make his presentation. The details of that had always been hazy; now they were becoming truly clouded, and more and more out of reach. He tried very hard to hold onto that morning and onto the memory of his dark-haired mother looking in on him in his room the night before, but it was all slipping away. His father…was there even a memory of him? The man had been gone a long time, it seemed. There were no memories of fights or shouting or anything that spelled out divorce. There was just the feeling that his father had left many years ago, and his mother had not remarried. She had soldiered on and given the boy the best life she could. Who could ask for much more than that?
As the alien’s powers strengthened and what had been the personality of a human boy continued to disappear, Ethan found himself trying to hang on, but knowing it was like being very tired and trying to stay awake after a very hard day. Sooner or later, he must give himself fully up to sleep; it would take him, no matter how hard he tried to fight it. And fighting it was not only useless, but wrong. The peacekeeper had a job to do. This body was just a vessel. The peacekeeper had raised him from the dead, had kept him alive so far, but the boy who called himself Ethan Gaines was a small grain of sand in the cosmos. He was a means to an end, and he understood this and accepted it. Not without sadness, though; he was still human enough to feel that, and he knew he would miss life no matter what it had become.
The alien presence within him gave him strange benefits. Not only could he clearly envision the Cypher tracker and sense the heat of its eye directed on him, or know how close or far away the Gorgon and Cypher armies and ships were, but he could feel the huddled humanity in a few of the small towns they’d passed, nestled up within the mountains on roads off I-70. He could see rooftops and a church steeple or two, and just in a matter of seconds he could know there were humans hiding there, always in some central location where community meant survival and isolation was death. The peacekeeper had great respect for these humans, who had held out so much longer than they should have against such overwhelming odds. The peacekeeper would have liked to have stopped and made sure these ragged and weary humans had enough food and water, but the larger picture was what needed attention. And Ethan was aware that there was a time factor involved…a need to get to the White Mansion as quickly as possible, though maybe even the peacekeeper itself did not fully understand why.
Most of the small towns they’d passed, and which could be seen from the interstate, felt to Ethan cold and lifeless. To him they gave off the rusted iron smell of violence, of human turned against human in the battle for food and shelter. Or they gave off the rotting flesh smell of Gray Men, hiding in the basements and in the dark damp places.
Beside Ethan, Nikki shifted uneasily in her seat in the aftermath of another close lightning strike. She couldn’t see anything out there, darkness had claimed the world. Her hand found Ethan’s again. She had been very afraid of him at one time, and so close to telling Olivia that she thought he should be put off the bus and left behind. Now she felt ashamed of that. She’d been so afraid
that he was a Gorgon or a Cypher in disguise, and now she understood he was a human boy but not really, that he’d been a human boy, and he was now working for another alien who was trying to stop the war, but this was all so beyond her it spun her head. It was like looking up at the stars and trying to imagine how big the universe was. She longed for the simplicity of planning her next tattoo, hitting the Bowl-A-Rama on Saturday nights, flirting with hot guys, and sneaking a beer or a joint with her friends Kelly and Rita and Charmaine who were all probably very much dead. Or worse.
She missed her family. Who’d have ever thunk she would miss her mother’s sharp-edged voice getting after her for whatever reason and her father in his recliner with a beer in his hand and his eyes glued to the football game on the fifty-two-inch flatscreen? Or her older sister’s snitty ways of getting her in trouble with the Duke and Duchess of Denial, as they called their parents. But she missed them, because they were her blood and now they were all gone and nobody—nobody—deserved to die like that.
“No, they don’t,” said Ethan quietly, and Nikki did not answer. At first she thought she must’ve spoken aloud but then she realized she had not, and how long he’d been reading her mind she didn’t know but now she—
“Not long,” he told her. “Don’t worry, I’m not in there all the time. It just happens.”
She pulled her hand away and he let her. He understood. The mind was a sacred place, it should not be spied upon but it was one of the least of the peacekeeper’s powers. That’s why you live alone, he told the entity. You scared everybody else away.
And the answer came back to him, in his own voice but different, a little more adult, sadder and darker in that way: I wish it were so simple as that.
Rain suddenly began to pelt down. It was not a shower, it was a deluge.
Hannah turned the wiper on and found that the Army meant well but this was not their specialty. The motor sounded like a man moaning with a toothache and the wiper’s action couldn’t keep the glass clear. “I can’t see a damned thing!” she growled. “We’re gonna have to stop and wait it out!”
No one tried to second guess Hannah, who put on the brakes and eased the bus to a halt. She cut the engine, noting that with the bus’s extra weight and the inclines they’d been climbing, they were getting about six miles to a gallon. “Light us up a couple of lamps, somebody,” she said. “No need to run the battery down.”
Dave got up, went to the back of the bus where some oil lamps were stored in a box, and used his Bic to light two of them. He brought them up front and set them where the glow would be a comfort, and Hannah turned off the interior safety lights. Rain was hammering down on the roof, a noise that further tested the nerves. Dave returned to his seat and stretched his legs out in the aisle. “I figure we’re about seventy or so miles from the turnoff to Highway 191.” That was the road in Utah that would take them south to the White Mansion. From I-70, the distance to their destination was about one hundred miles. “That what you figure?”
“Near it,” said Hannah. She stood up and stretched her back. “We’ll need to fuel up again real soon.”
“Right.” Dave had had no illusions that they’d be able to get to the White Mansion on a full tank of fifty gallons. “We’re about a quarter tank now?”
“Little less.”
“Okay.” Dave looked out the window nearest him and saw only rainswept darkness; they were vulnerable here to whatever might be lurking in the night, but in this downpour they couldn’t move. “You all right?” he asked Olivia.
“I’ve been better. But…yes, I’m all right.”
“JayDee? How you holding up?”
John Douglas had known Dave was going to ask him this, and the truth was that he was not holding up well at all. His bones ached. His joints seemed to be on fire. It had begun early this morning as little jabs of knife-like pain here and there and had gotten worse through the day. He’d tried to let it go as his age or being worn out or whatever…but he was afraid it was much more than that. Pain was shooting up his right leg, and it was more than the sprained ankle. He said, “I don’t think I’m doing so well. Would you bring one of those lamps a little closer?”
Dave did. JayDee caught Ethan watching him, and he thought the boy knows. Just as I know, because I’ve seen it happen. JayDee pulled up his pants leg to check his injured ankle.
There on the thin calf of his leg was a splotch of gray. It was about eight inches in length and four in width. It was upraised just a bit, like a keloid scar.
No one said anything.
JayDee stood up. “I’m going to take off my shirt,” he said in a calm and quiet voice though his heart was pounding. “Let’s check my chest and back.”
His chest was clear. But when he turned around to let Olivia and Dave check his back he knew because he heard her catch her breath.
“Is it just one or many?” he asked.
It was a moment before anyone answered. Then Dave said, “Just one.”
“How large?”
“I guess…twelve or thirteen inches across. About ten inches long. Almost right between your shoulder blades.”
JayDee made a noise—a mumble of assent, a grunt, a muffled curse. Even he didn’t know exactly what it was. The rain was a torrent and a torment. He felt light-headed but was keenly aware of all the pricklings of pain in his body. “I don’t think there’s any need to take my pants off,” he said, trying for some levity that did not lift off. He put his shirt back on, buttoned it with hands that were remarkably steady, and tucked the shirttail neatly into his pants. He said, “Thank you, Dave. You can put the lamp down now.”
“What is it?” Jefferson asked, his voice tense. “What’s that thing on his back?”
“Shut up,” Dave told him. “Nobody said you could talk.”
“Yeah, well…I think I have a right to—”
“I said SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Dave roared, and was on Jefferson Jericho before anyone could stop him. Both Olivia and Hannah tried to get in the way, but Dave had hold of the man’s dirty brown t-shirt and was shaking him like a mad dog with a bloody bone. For a moment it looked as if Dave might smash him in the face with the oil lamp he was holding. “Shut up shut up shut up!” Dave shouted, and Jefferson cringed down in his seat because he thought the guy had gone crazy, and both the women were pulling at Dave and over the noise of Dave’s shouting and the rainfall crashing down JayDee said, “It’s not his fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. Let him go, Dave. Come on, let him go.”
Dave did not, though he stopped making the brain rattle in Jefferson’s skull.
“Let him go,” JayDee repeated, and this time it was spoken with a grim finality that made Dave remove his hand from the other man’s shirt and step back.
“Why?” Dave asked. It was not a question directed to anyone on the bus, for no one could answer it. It was directed to God, or Fate, or whatever threw the dice in this insane game of Life. Ethan had seen the gray patches on JayDee’s leg and back as clearly as anyone else, and he knew what that meant. It looked as if the blood had stopped circulating on those places and the flesh had begun to die. A new Gray Man was about to be born; this was just the beginning of the changes.
“Well,” said JayDee, and he couldn’t look at anyone so he stared at the floor. He gave a quiet sigh of resignation. “My friends…I don’t think I’ll be finishing this trip with you.”
“Do something.”
Dave had fired this command at Ethan, who stared blankly at him not knowing how to respond. “Yes,” Dave said. “You. Master of the Universe or whatever the fuck you are.” Dave’s eyes were black and his mouth twisted with helpless anger. “Heal him. Fix him. Whatever. Don’t let him be one of them.”
All attention was concentrated on Ethan, who felt their nearly overwhelming pain. John Douglas was more than a friend to Dave, Olivia, Hannah and Nikki; he was as dear to them as the loved ones they had lost. He had been a journeyer with them over this landscape of despair, and he had been there wh
en they needed him. They could not bear this moment, it crushed their hearts because they did love him, and they knew…they knew…
“He can’t fix this,” said JayDee, who lifted his gaze to Dave. “Don’t put that on him.”
“He’s from outer space,” came the answer, as if it was really an answer. “If he can make earthquakes and kill monsters with his mind…he can heal you. Can’t you, Ethan?” The last three words had left the sound of begging in the bus, which might have been the supreme gesture from a man with the stony countenance of Dave McKane.
And Ethan’s answer, the answer he was given when he asked himself if he could do this, was No, you cannot. He didn’t have to speak it out loud, though, because John Douglas spoke it for him. “He can’t do that, Dave. God…I wish he could. But if he could do that…he would’ve helped those three people I had to…” He stopped for a moment, steadying himself. Rain thrashed the bus and lightning streaked amid the mountains. “I had to leave behind,” the doctor finished. “Don’t ask him about this anymore. It’s not what he’s here to do.”
Dave started to protest, to keep going like a bull the only way he knew how to go, but he looked back and forth to Ethan and JayDee and he saw that, no, the alien could do things that were miraculous, could come to this planet on a beam of light or through the door of a different dimension, could raise an earth boy from the dead or from near-death and keep him breathing and powered like a puppet on galactic strings for the task it had to carry out, could sense fresh water and cause the earth to quake and do other things that were so far beyond the human kind it made all the technological advances and scientific miracles of this planet seem pathetic and childlike in contrast, but—no—the alien could not save Dr. John Douglas from becoming a Gray Man, and don’t ask him about this anymore, said the doomed man, because it’s not what he’s here to—