The Edger Collection

by David Beem

  Perfect, just what she needs.

  I clench my jaw and force the knot down. This is no time for the Tobey Maguire ugly cry. I’ve got to channel my Clint Eastwood here. Come on. Clint Eastwood, Clint Eastwood, Clint Eastwood…

  The knot abates. I wait a few seconds more before trusting my voice. No more help from the Collective Unconscious, really? No Bruce, Killmaster, Einstein, or Hanzo? How in the world am I supposed to find the rebels now? I take a deep breath and release it.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her head comes up. “Sorry for what?”

  “Sorry for thinking I could do this.”

  “You can do this.”

  “No, I can’t. Not alone.”

  She squeezes my arm. “You’re not alone.”

  A light breeze again lifts her hair into her face. Again, she tucks it back.

  “She’s right, Edge. You’ve got me.”

  I crash into Mary and the two of us fall over. Digging my elbow into the beach, twisting, sand goes down the back of my shirt as I scramble upright. A guy in an “I’m with stupid” T-shirt, swim trunks, and flip-flops is sitting with his knees pulled in on a spot near where Mary and I had just been sitting. Early fifties, curly hair, gray eyebrows. A couple days’ worth of gray scruff on his face. Mary’s sandy jeans butt moves into view as she puts herself between me and him. I scoot farther back and get to my feet.

  “You could shoot me,” says the man. “But you’d be killing an innocent person, and that wouldn’t sit well with Edge, now, would it?”

  I sidle around Mary’s left as she lowers her gun. “What do you want?”

  I scan the hotel fronts. Pools, restaurants, empty seating areas, and closed sun umbrellas. If there are more zombies out there, he’s hiding them.

  “I’m keeping ’em back, Edge,” says the man, craning his neck around Mary to make eye contact. “It’s just me. Well, Willie, technically.”

  “Willie?” asks Mary. “The person you’re mind-controlling is Willie?”

  “That’s right.” He holds his arms out like he’s presenting himself for inspection. “You can call me Willie, or you call me Nostradamus. Just don’t call me Late for Dinner.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “How ’bout Mikey?” I ask. “Can we call you that?”

  Willie shrugs. “If you like.”

  My gaze lifts to the second floor of the hotel, and my scalp prickles. Where just a second ago there’d been no one, now silhouetted zombies are peering down at us, floor after floor, their faces smooshed against glass, all the way to the top. “Yeah, that’s not super creepy,” I mutter.

  “It’s not meant to be creepy, Edge,” says the man—Willie—and I turn and face him. His eyes droop in the corners; they’re kind eyes, I’d say, under different circumstances. He pats the sand next to his butt. “Sit. You have my word no nukes this time. Let’s talk.”

  Mary raises her gun again. “What if we don’t want to talk?”

  “Oh, come on, Mary,” he replies. “You guys are clearly enjoying each other. Hopping from resort to resort. Making out by the bonfire.” He wags his finger at her gun. “Who do you think gave you that gun?”

  Mary and I exchange astonished glances.

  “Puh-lease,” he interrupts, jiggling his head like he’s ringing a bell between his ears. “You’re both better than this! You really thought you fooled me with the wormhole thing? Anyway, I thought you’d like to know my offer still stands.” His gaze targets Mary, whose head tilts as she peers down her sights back at him. “Surely he told you about my offer? Pick your paradise.” He holds his arms out again. “Say the word, and the whole island’s yours. I’ll even throw in a support crew to keep it running smoothly. You saw my Mario course, right? Fun, eh?”

  “You’re crazy,” whispers Mary.

  “Crazy like a fox, sugar lips. Edge, talk some sense into her. She’ll listen to you.”

  “You think so?” I counter. “Well, there’s one thing you’re not omniscient about.”

  Willie’s shoulders slump. “Guys. Barring my standing offer, there’s only one way this ends. You’ve got to see that.”

  “Of the three people standing on this beach,” says Mary, “only one of us is a prophet.”

  “Fair enough. Then allow me to enlighten you. Prepare yourself for the hard truth.” His kind eyes relax, his mouth slackens. And here—here I can almost see Mikey behind that expressionless stare. “You lose everything,” he says, his tone flat. “Gran and Shep. I humiliate Mary’s parents and your mom. You lose Fabio next. Then Mary is killed. Then the stoners suffocate to death. And then… You, Edge. You’re all that’s left. The last of our kind, alone in my superior world, wandering—”

  “Shut up.” Mary thrusts her gun forward, like she’s going to push a bullet out with her arms.

  “Mary.” Willie leaves his trance and turns his attention on her. “Be serious. You shoot me, I just send the next guy down. You shoot him, I send another. And so on. Don’t do that to Edge. You know how much it’ll hurt him watching you kill all these innocent people.”

  Her face pales, and her gun lowers. She thumbs the safety and drops to her butt, her free hand shielding her eyes. Hot rage shoots through me.

  “You killed my dad.”

  “Wouldn’t have been my first choice,” he replies, picking up a stick and tracing shapes in the sand. “I admired your dad. Almost made him Zarathustra. You’ve got a lot of him in you. He was tenacious. Incorruptible. But in the end, he just wasn’t naïve.”

  “You chose me because I’m naïve?”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea. Cynicism is the enemy. Cynicism ruined everything. But faith? Faith is the opposite of that. And faith doesn’t work without a certain naïveté, Edge.”

  I frown. “I’m not religious.”

  “Who said anything about religion? I’m talking about faith in anything. Lawmakers, judges. Faith your Chinese food doesn’t have MSG. Faith Disney won’t ruin Star Wars.”

  “Hey, now—”

  “People got ‘too smart’ to be fooled, Edge,” he continues. “And yet everyone breaks for the team peddling what they want to hear. Your naïveté is what I love most about you. You still have faith in people, despite them giving you every reason not to. It’s why you kept your faith in Mary, even when we all thought she was a stone-cold killer. Faith makes life worth living, and she’s the proof. The only trouble is, faith is so damn hard. But never fear. Now it’s just me who has to have faith. And, fortunately, I believe in myself.”

  “Mikey! You killed my dad!”

  “Can we please move past that? I mean, co-ome on! There’s more at stake here than your dead dad. What about Willie here and his dad? What about his kids? Cataclysmic evolution, Edge. Try putting your faith in that.”

  I glance at Mary, and she gives me a kind of an exasperated shake of her head. A wave of bone tiredness sweeps over me, and I collapse next to her and flop onto my back.

  “You okay?” he asks. “You’re not all dehydrated again, are you?”

  “If you’re going to kill us, just do it,” I reply. “I’m sick of the sound of your voice.”

  “It’s not my voice. I can send someone else down if you want.”

  “You’ve told us your offer is still open,” snaps Mary. “Is there anything else you want, or can this please be over?”

  “It’s what I said before.” He shrugs defensively. “It’s unfair I can see the future and you can’t, right? So, I thought I’d come down and tell you what I know, because living out your days in love on an island is really what’s best for everyone. I don’t think you appreciate how desperate your situation is.”

  Mary expels a bitter laugh. “You’re going to tell us the future, and you expect us to believe you?”

  “I’m not a liar.”

  “Says the guy who let me think Mike Dame was against Nostradamus!” I exclaim.

  “I can’t control what you think.”

  I direct my best you-wanna-try-
that-again look at him. He shrinks somewhat under Mary’s version of the same look.

  “Okay, okay.” He raises his palms. “Bad choice of expression. I can control what you think. But I wasn’t, honest. Guys, if you’d asked me if I was Nostradamus back when I first summoned Edger to my office in Emerald Plaza, I totally would’ve said, ‘Yes! Duh-uhh?’ And it would’ve been fun, right?”

  Mary’s eyes find mine. “You know, I think he probably would’ve said that.”

  Willie nods. “See? And that’s more than you would’ve done for me, Mary-Blythe. Look. I know all about the rebels. And I know you know I know all about the rebels. Because I left that clue for Mary to find when she was onboard my boat. It’s obvious you know that I know that you know that I know that you know about the rebels. But what you don’t know is I know where they are located. And I’m totally going to tell you so you can find them.”

  I blink. “You’re going to tell us where they are. The rebels.”

  “OF COURSE!” the zombies yell in unison from the hotels up the beach.

  “Why would you do that?” asks Mary, her eyebrows drawing down as her gaze slinks from the hotels back to Willie.

  He shrugs self-consciously. “I want you to feel like you’re doing well.”

  “You just said we don’t appreciate how bad off we actually are,” I say.

  “Well, yeah. That’s true. Once it sinks in you’ve got no chance, it’s going to be profoundly discouraging. I thought it’d soften the blow if I led you to your mom and her parents.”

  Mary scoffs. “Bullshit.”

  “No,” I say. “I think he’s legit.”

  Willie snaps his fingers. “There’s that naïveté I know and love!”

  “It’s not helping your case telling me how gullible I am.”

  “I’m not saying that. You’re just not catching the distinction. Look. Go to the rebels. Take all the time you need to just sort of take a break from all…this. Drink a beer. Chillax. And when you’re ready, talk it over with your elders. Ask them what’s better? Negotiating the terms of your surrender? Maybe an island for family and friends, run smoothly by yours truly—and don’t forget to mention the Mario courses and conga lines and whatnot—and then? Live out your days in peace. Sit back and relax knowing Congress is on the job, your president is no longer a pussy grabber, and Warner Brothers will never Shrek-face Superman again.” His eyebrows wag. “Or…you choose the other way: utter annihilation. All your loved ones ripped out of the Collective Unconscious, the rebels crushed, and you, Edge, the very, very last to go. So depressing.” Willie’s expression softens. “By now, you know you’re not going to get Bruce Lee to fight me in our final battle. He and the rest are gone. They know you’ve lost, just as they know I’m this close to finding them in the Collective Unconscious and assimilating them into the Übermenschen. And I will. I always win, Edge. I think I’ve proven that.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Look.” Willie nudges my arm to direct my attention to the ocean, where fiery reds and yellows dapple its surface like spilled paint. “Come on, Edge. I can tell you for a fact there’re only three people on this island to see this, and they’re sitting right here. Be a shame to sulk through the whole thing.”

  It’s too painful to take in, so I sneak a glance at Mary instead. Tears have welled up, her knees are tucked under her chin, and her gun is lying at her side. Shifting in the sand, I crane my neck for a peek at the hotels behind us, where thousands of hands and faces are pressed to the windows. Slack mouths. Bent noses.

  Facing the rising sun, something like a dagger twists in my chest. I force myself to concentrate on the experience anyway and catalog its parts. The breeze in my ears. The scent of seaweed and white sand. The weight of all those eyes behind us. Is there a part of them still able to see this with their own eyes, or is it all Mikey in there?

  The sky is a mass of pink and purple striations by the time the bottom of the sun crests the ocean. Willie releases a sigh. Mary rests her cheek on her arms. I close my eyes and try to cement the memory, but a rustle of fabric pulls me out of it. I open my eyes. Willie’s on his feet.

  “Through that wormhole, you’ll find the rebels.” He gestures with his hand to a spot behind my back, and my pulse goes double time. I scramble to my feet, kicking sand over Mary’s legs. My stomach knots as, behind where I’d been sitting, a hole in reality has opened. Through it, a jungle, maybe? A forest? It’s still nighttime there. I inhale a deep breath and let it out nice and slow.

  “It’d be a pretty lame way to kill us.” Mary holsters her gun and casts a sidelong glare at Willie. “Not that ‘lame’ isn’t your MO. Close the wormhole on us as we go through, or send us into a literal lion’s den?”

  “You’ll be safe,” says Willie. “They’ve got some kind of force field up keeping the animals out. Not sure how they’re doing that, to be honest. I’m kind of wondering if it’ll keep people out too or what the deal is. Anyway, I opened it about fifteen minutes from camp. Here.”

  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small and round and tosses it to me. Wonder of wonders, I don’t freak out and bop it into the ocean; I manage to catch it.

  A compass.

  “Due north.” Willie points. “Fifteen minute walk.”

  “I don’t believe you,” says Mary.

  “Then believe him.” Willie nods at me. “He knows I’m telling the truth.”

  Mary arches an eyebrow.

  Willie shrugs. “Maybe it’s the quality you love about him. You ever think of that?”

  My heart still pounding, sweat dropping down my back, I crane my neck forward for a better view. The wooded darkness is unusually still. A force field? I sniff the air. Different from beach air. Smells like…California, almost. Not ponderosa pine exactly. But familiar.

  “Go to your mother, Edge,” says Willie. “Tell her what I said. Tell her if she wants a summit, I’ll behave. But tell her if it’s war, she’ll be assimilated.”

  Mary’s top lip curls. Her gaze tracks to mine, then tracks back to his. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. He minces across the uneven sand and sets off up the beach.

  “What about Wendy?” calls Mary.

  Willie turns around. “Wendy?”

  “Our dog.”

  “I didn’t say you could have a dog.” His head tilts. “Maybe say yes to my offer, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  The wormhole is a nonevent this time as compared to Fiji. For one thing, there’s no inbound nuke. For another, since I didn’t have to make the wormhole, the experience of putting one foot in front of the next is a bit easier than drawing from the combined power of the human race. At the end of the day, this is the most efficient way to reach Mom. Plus, if he really knows where she is, it’s probably best to give her that heads-up.

  It’s a solid ten minutes’ walk before the first sign of life: a twig snaps. Mary’s gun sweeps up. A woman emerges from the dark, arms raised. My heart sticks in my chest.

  “Mom!”

  She rushes into my arms and tears stream down my face. All the memories come crashing in. Baking cookies together, sitting on the front porch having popsicles. Sitting in the grocery cart and “helping” her shop. But these cascade over each other in a nonsensical torrent of emotional memory, each inseparable from the rest. It’s triggered by her scent, the feel of her in my arms, smaller than before, of course, but stronger than I understood as a child. This is my mom. This is the wind in my sail. After what seems like forever, but still not nearly long enough, we pull apart. Her blue eyes have crow’s feet that are new. They make her seem wiser and, if anything, kinder. She runs a knuckle beneath an eye, takes a long breath, and releases it.

  “Mom, Nostradamus sent us. He knows you’re here. We’re not safe.”

  Mary narrows her eyes. “How did you find us?”

  “A scout saw you and they came and got me,” replies Mom, holding out her hand. “I’m Sarah.”

  “Mary. It’s nice to meet y
ou.”

  “Mom. It’s got to be a trap. Right?”

  She expels a quick sigh. “Probably. All the more reason to get back to camp. I don’t want to lose another second with you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Wang charges through the defense perimeter, Shmuel, Consuelo, and Spy Pig trailing behind. An explosive slap thumps in his ears. He hunches over. Scorching heat arcs overhead, and a Dude in a suit, tie, and glistening forehead wheels a dolly past stacked with dildo-stuffed crates.

  Fingers close on Wang’s arm—Consuelo’s. “Dildos won’t hold them off forever!”

  “We don’t need to hold them off forever,” Wang replies, and a squealing axle interrupts further conversation as another giant catapult is towed into place. Three Dudes pulling vinyl straps in front, and six more pushing the platform from the back. “Don’t go light on them either!” Wang yells.

  One of the Dudes wipes the sweat from his forehead and gives a thumbs-up. Another Dude pulling from the front slips and falls.

  “Hey-hey!” snaps Wang. “No time for that! On your feet, soldier! Those zombie bastardos get the Full Clinton. You hear me? The Full Clinton!”

  The Dude gets to his feet and salutes. He picks up the vinyl strap, and the group resumes its schlep. Wang nods, and his Flock of Seagulls hairstyle vibrates but holds.

  “Christine! Christine!” Consuelo scans the faces of the many bleating morons running through camp.

  “I’m not sure this is safe?” Shmuel swats a glowing ember on his sleeve. Another violent slap thumps in Wang’s ears, and a third as a catapult releases farther down the line. Four Dudes in business suits grunt as they reset the catapult nearest them.

  Wang rounds on Shmuel. “Safe?! They’re launching flaming dicks into the sky. What’d you expect?”