Flying to the Light

by Elyse Salpeter

  Michael heard him pause and then a gunshot made him jump. He stiffened when he heard Danny utter a muffled cry.

  The woman spoke. “Good, at least he can’t help them now. Do me a favor and listen to me, you got that? Don’t make me tell Herrington how many times you screwed up. You follow the plan as it’s been laid out, you hear me? Now, let’s get out of here before all of Jacobs’ friends show up. The kids probably went back down Route 202 towards town, and we can intercept them there. Keep everyone tuned in to their radios and have them contact us as soon as they hear anything. They can’t go far in this town anymore without someone noticing them. We’ll just wait until the locals find them and follow their trail, or wait until we pick up the signal again.” There was a pause as a sound of an engine rumbled in the driveway. “Ah, good, they’re here.”

  Car doors slammed and the car revved and retreated down the graveled driveway. Michael refused to move until he heard nothing but silence. Only then did he crane his neck and peep out the car window, watching the back of an unmarked brown sedan fade from view. He heard sirens in the distance. Michael turned and uncovered Danny. His brother had tears streaming down his face.

  “They shot your scout master, didn’t they?” Danny signed.

  Michael had no idea how Danny could know this. “Yeah, they killed him,” he signed, devastated his brother had to hear it.

  Danny shook his head. “No, he’s not dead yet. We have to hurry. I have to help him before he really dies.”

  Confused, Michael opened the door and they both climbed out. Danny solemnly walked over to where a plump pigeon was lying on the ground, drawing its last breath. Blood slowly trickled from its beak. Danny bent down to it.

  Michael was about to stop him, but instead watched dumbstruck as his brother gently picked up the bird. As he held it, Michael could swear he saw a thin sliver of light spring up from Danny’s hand and surround the bird. It lasted for only an instant, but he was certain it had been there. He would have bet his three Derek Jeter rookie cards on it.

  He inched over to Danny, who mumbled to the critically injured animal, and watched as the pigeon took its final breath and died in his hands.

  “He’s okay,” Danny signed. He walked over and laid the bird in the tall grass by the edge of the road. “I saved him.”

  Did he just see what he thought he saw? “What did you just do?”

  “I just sent Mr. Jacobs away like Mommy showed me,” he said. “He tried to help us, but those bad men shot him and almost killed him. I had to send him away to the light before he died.”

  It was like trying to take a final exam in advanced calculus when he had never even learned addition. Michael couldn’t understand anything. He had to learn the truth. “Danny, Mr. Jacobs died in his house. I heard the bad people say they shot him.”

  Danny shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. He really almost died when the bad men shot him when he was a bird. I had to send him away before that happened. Otherwise, he never would’ve found his way home. Not for a long, long time.”

  I’m losing it, Michael thought. Suddenly, he was aware of sirens coming closer. A helicopter sounded in the distance. For a second he hesitated, wondering if they should stay, if these were the people Jacobs had told him were coming for him. But then he remembered the fear in Dobber’s voice, telling him to flee, to trust no one.

  “Danny, we have to go now,” he said. “I hear people.” He grabbed his backpack and his brother’s hand and raced into the woods behind Mr. Jacob’s house. “We’re going to have to stay out of sight for a while until I think of what to do next, okay?”

  Danny nodded.

  What had Mom and Dad done to him? This little kid who was petrified of spiders, sleeping in the dark, and anything with scaly green skin, seemed to have no problem picking up a dying bird covered in blood. He was shocked his parents had apparently conducted some experiments on Danny, not to mention that little bomb of information about his parents working for Samuel Herrington. Thoughts of bio-agents, espionage, and his parents being tortured rattled through his brain and he tried to push them aside. They were too horrible to contemplate.

  He and Danny walked for miles, stopping every once in a while to allow Danny to rest. Michael couldn’t stop looking behind him, terrified they were being followed. He thought he heard dogs barking once or twice and wondered if a canine unit was after them. That spurred him on.

  He remembered there was a small motel located near the highway. It had a seedy reputation, but he figured it would be safe enough for them to hole up in, until he worked out what his next move should be. The motel was right where he thought it would be, about five hundred yards ahead.

  A tinny bell clanged as they entered the cramped front office, which reeked of sweat and tobacco. Michael told Danny to stand behind him and keep his head down while he paid cash for the room for one night. He shouldn’t have worried about them being recognized from the news because the guy at the desk hardly even glanced up from his racing forms. He took Michael’s money and handed him the keys to Room 19.

  “The room is at the end of the walkway, second floor, make a left,” he said, coughing. A chewed up, smelly cigar dangled from his lips.

  “Thanks,” Michael mumbled. He grabbed the keys, ushered Danny upstairs, and into the room.

  Danny scrunched up his nose. “Is this where we’re going to stay?”

  “No, Birdman, we’ll be here just for a little while.” He grimaced. The place was a dump. Michael tore his gaze away from the stains on the bedspread, trying not to imagine what they really were. He moved throughout the room, taking in the scratches on the furniture and the pile of dead cockroaches lying in the corner.

  The bathroom was no better, and the lingering scent of urine reminded him of the boy’s bathroom at his school at the end of the day. At least there the janitor sprayed an orange smelling disinfectant each night, so it was reasonably clean the next day. Michael didn’t think this bathroom had seen or felt the touch of a sponge or soap in quite a while.

  The only saving grace in the room was a twenty-two inch color flat-screen in the corner. He saw the wires protruding from its back and was pleasantly surprised to see they had cable. At least he could keep Danny occupied until he could figure out what to do.

  His stomach growled. “Hey, you hungry?” He realized they hadn’t eaten since the night before.

  Danny nodded enthusiastically.

  “Okay, I’m going to run down the hall to the vending machines. You and Mr. Teddy stay here and I’ll be right back. Here, you can watch TV.” Michael turned it on. Jimmy Neutron was just starting. Great timing. He locked Danny in and ran down the walkway.

  Within minutes he had Danny were engrossed in a great episode where, once again, Jimmy was saving the world from chaos, and Michael had time to finally catch his breath. He split between the two of them whatever he could find, a package of Twinkies, Oreo cookies, a bag of potato chips, and a grape soda.

  Michael glanced at his brother guiltily. So much for being responsible. “Danny, don’t tell Mommy I fed you this, okay? She’ll kill me.”

  Danny giggled around a mouthful of chocolate cookie.

  After the show was over, Michael saw Danny was getting tired, so he lay with him on the bed. He tried to rest, but he couldn’t. He kept thinking about the machine Danny had mentioned back at Mr. Jacobs’ house.

  Just thinking about Jacobs made a lump form in his throat. The man had died for him and Danny. Never in a million years would Michael think he would be one of those people folks read about in the paper. Parents kidnapped, involved in illegal activity. People after him. People giving their lives for him. It was so hard to fathom.

  He tried to remember seeing any unfamiliar machines or equipment at his house, but he couldn’t recall any. He felt left out and alone as he lay there. What else had his parents not let him in on? What other secrets would he uncover before his parents were found? Even with all the unanswered questions running through h
is head, his body finally gave in and he drifted off to an exhausted sleep.

  Day 2 Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.

  Michael awoke abruptly to the phone ringing. Disoriented after a mid-day nap, he stared at it stupidly for two more rings before he picked up the receiver. “Hello?” His mouth felt like he had cotton stuffed in it.

  “Michael, it’s Dobber. Turn on the television.” He recognized Dobber’s voice immediately.

  Michael came fully awake. His gaze flew around the room. “Dobber, how did you find us here?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “It isn’t me you should be worrying about. I’ve had a lock on your brother ever since he was a baby. Now turn on ABC.”

  Michael quickly moved to the television and turned it on. Another day of chaos had ripped through the world. He watched an aerial broadcast of a terrible fire engulfing a home. Police cars were everywhere and firefighters battled a terrific blaze going on at an adjacent house, where the fire had spread.

  “Do you see now why you had to leave the house?” Dobber said. “Why those people who came for you weren’t to be trusted?”

  Realization and horror dawned on him when he recognized what he was looking at. “Oh, my, God. That’s my house. What happened?”

  Dobber’s voice was tight with anger. “They blew it up.”

  Michael flinched as the shed in the backyard burst into flames.

  “My guess is your parents aren’t cooperating so their captors are making a point. If you have nowhere to go, they figure it’ll be easier for them to pick you up.”

  Michael pulled his eyes away from the screen. “How do you know all this? Aren’t you just a guy who works with my parents at Hi-Core? How are you finding us?” Michael glanced around the room, patted his body, thinking maybe there was a camera or tracer attached to him someplace.

  Dobber took a deep breath. “Michael, it’s true, I work at the lab with your parents, but we’re more than just casual acquaintances. I’ve been friends with your parents since college, and the three of us ended up working at the same company when we graduated. When Herrington came to us and made us an offer, it was one none of us could refuse. The money alone was enough to give anyone pause, but the ability to have our own labs and do our own research? It’s a scientist’s dream.” He paused, and Michael’s worst fears were confirmed. His skin crawled, and he couldn’t find his voice.

  Dobber continued. “A year before Danny was born we realized the money Herrington was giving us to help him wasn’t worth the jeopardy we were putting our country in. You were already ten years old and your parents were so afraid for you. When you have children, your priorities change. Your parents were my best friends, so the three of us defected, so to speak.”

  “So, my parents are spies.”

  Dobber responded quickly. “Were spies, Michael, but not anymore. They made a conscious decision to break with the organization. Right before Danny was born your mother and father stopped sending their research results or any other secret information to Herrington’s people. In fact, they sent faulty documentation. They were terrified what they discovered would end up in his hands. Deception was the only way.”

  “So, Herrington really is a bad guy?” Michael asked.

  “As bad as it gets,” Dobber said. “The man has his hands in the back pockets of many countries, and stays there by threatening to poison their water supply or make their entire population sterile with any one of his number of bio-chemical agents in his arsenal. Herrington wanted your parents to inform him of any new discoveries or antidotes the United States was working on, but even more important than that was their experiments on the afterlife. Ever since Herrington was a young man, he was always pre-occupied with death. But now the ante is upped. His wife is dying, and he knows your parents have been working over the past few years on side experiments about death and the afterlife.

  “And then your brother was born and your parents realized he already had the very gift they were seeking. The experiment wasn’t in any lab, but in your brother, so they felt there was no other choice and began using their discoveries and techniques on Danny. It was the only way they could be sure their theories were correct and keep the information out of Herrington’s hands, who would exploit it for his own selfish purposes.”

  Michael was trying to wrap his head around everything he was hearing. Experiments on his brother, his parents aligned with the biggest bad guy in the world. “But what happened? Why were they kidnapped?”

  Dobber raised his voice and Michael could picture him, his round face red in the cheeks. “Everything went wrong. Even with the fail safes and protocols we put in place, Herrington’s people found out somehow.”

  “What did my parents do to my brother?” Michael whispered, afraid to know. “Did they make him deaf?”

  Dobber’s reply was hesitant, tense. “That was an accident. When your mother was pregnant with him, she was in the midst of a research project using ultraviolet rays as an alternative light therapy method. The machine she was working on malfunctioned, sending an intense amount of ultraviolet activity throughout the room. She collapsed, and it took your father and me nearly three hours to get her out of there because she had locked the door from the inside.”

  A memory flickered. “So, that’s what happened when I was eleven.”

  “You know about it?” Dobber asked, surprise registering in his tone.

  “Yeah, some of it. I remember my mother was home for weeks. They said she’d fallen and hit her head,” Michael said. “So, how’d they figure out the connection between Danny and the birds?”

  “Whenever your mother brought him to the lab while she worked on the ultraviolet experiments, he’d react very strangely, making nonsense sounds to the air and smiling out the window. We finally started noticing the birds and the correlation. Your parents didn’t really do anything to him he couldn’t do himself. They just heightened his awareness. It wasn’t until he was old enough to communicate that your parents discovered the true meaning of his abilities.”

  Michael glanced at his brother, sleeping innocently in the king-sized bed. He seemed so small. “What about this light everyone keeps talking about?”

  “Okay,” Dobber said. “I’m going to try to explain this in the least scientific way possible. Just try to keep an open mind. When your parents were hired by Herrington, it wasn’t to just work on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease. They were sent with two agendas. The first was to send Herrington information on what the Americans were working on, what new antidotes they were discovering, things of a bio-chemical nature. The real job, though, was to find out what happens to people when they die. Everyone talks about seeing a bright light. Your parents’ job was to find the true meaning of the light, and they were to go to any ends to explore all the techniques and experiments that were available and to report any findings back to Herrington.”

  Michael was livid. “So, the research on light therapy for seniors was always a lie, right? Everything has been a complete lie, hasn’t it?” One moment he was a regular kid, babysitting his brother, and now he was running for his life, the son of traitors who had sold themselves to a maniacal despot who wanted to rule the world and was trying to capture him and Danny. As much as he desperately wanted to find his parents, he was so angry at them. It was as if he were suddenly living with a group of strangers.

  Dobber must have sensed Michael’s anger. “Michael, you weren’t told the truth about your parents because they were trying to protect you. As for their research on light therapy for seniors, it was real and they really were receiving an award at the Plaza for their work. They had to be working on something legitimate all these years so they wouldn’t be discovered by agents in the United States and sent to jail. You should be proud of them for that. This award was an incredible accomplishment.

  “The problems began last month when Herrington learned your parents actually discovered what the true light was and were withholding it from him. Herrington sent
someone to discuss this with them, and of course they denied discovering any true reason for the light, but Herrington didn’t believe them.” Dobber paused, took another deep breath and continued. “So, Herrington ordered a raid on the lab where we worked, and when it came up empty, they went through your house. The problem was, for a long time Herrington didn’t know the research wasn’t to be found in any computer banks or files. It was in your brother. Danny is the key, and only Danny can unlock the mysteries of the light. Herrington’s people have been secretly photographing your family, and all of the birds, which have been mysteriously appearing at your home for the past month. It was only a matter of time before he put two and two together, concluding your parents either defected or were being coerced from another source. Either way, he’s desperate, so he had to move fast. Time is not something he has. He assumed you both would be at the Plaza with your folks when they were being presented with the award. Otherwise, he would have simply picked you up that night while your parents were away.”

  Michael could barely speak, but managed a strangled whisper. “What if that’s not the answer? What if someone told them what my parents were doing?”

  Dobber grunted. “I’ve racked my brains for hours on end and can’t come up with a single person who could do that.”

  Michael was still suspicious. “So how do you fit into this, Dobber? Why haven’t the police or the FBI come after you? They must think you’re in on this, too.”

  “I’m not the one who snitched on your folks,” he said vehemently. “I’m in as much danger as they are. Herrington’s people did come after me, right after they attacked the Plaza. As soon as I heard about the attack, I took all the loose data, the machine, and the tracking devices straight to a secret lab we never registered with Herrington or under any of our names. It’s where I’ve been hiding. You have to trust me. I’m in just as much danger as you.” He paused again. “Listen, Michael, you need to bring Danny to me. I can keep him safe.”

  “Really?” Michael asked sarcastically. “No offense, but I don’t trust you anymore either, Dobber. You were a spy too. You’ve been lying to me as much as my folks all these years, so what makes you think I should believe you now?” He paused. “Want me to trust you? Tell me about the tracking device. The one you say you’ve had on my brother since he was born.”