Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  Leave it to Jillian to be in mortal danger and worry about rattling off statistics.

  Ignoring David, he put his forehead against hers, easy enough to do since she was still sitting on the gurney, hunched over, guarded against the pain that pulled her down. “They’re waking from the comas in Nevada.”

  “What!” She sat upright, almost forgetting her own discomfort.

  He nodded. Not mentioning that they were all men. All prisoners. That there were only fifteen of them. Less than a percent.

  Lucy Whitman appeared at the doorway just then, nudging David further inside in the process. “I just got off the phone with Dr. Landerly at the CDC. He said to give you these.” She held out a sheaf of papers, still slightly warm from the fax machine.

  It was Jillian who reached out for them, taking the folder from the perfect hand, “Are these the stats on the prisoners who woke up?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I just gather the papers.”

  Jordan almost called her on her lie, but Jillian was already reading. Sitting straighter, looking like the lidocaine had numbed her from the inside out. “They’re all men. All prisoners. The white counts are high when they wake.” She thumbed through a little further. Noting how long they’d been under, when they’d fallen, asking how many had fallen in that time, and what percentage of those men did these represent. She asked all the same questions, noticed all the same things in minutes that he and Landerly had spent the morning working through.

  Her fingers shuffled quickly through the papers. “Murder, murder, . . . murder, . . . arson and murder. . .”

  “What?”

  “They’re all murderers.” She looked up finally. “Is that because they’re all from the same wing?”

  Jordan pulled out the cell and called Landerly even as she was talking.

  “No, the wing that fell first wasn’t this one. It wasn’t maximum security.” She paused and looked blankly at the canvas top of the tent, seeing something far beyond it. “But none of these are maximum security prisoners.” She read again. “Single murders. Wife’s boyfriend. Boss. Father . . .”

  “Landerly, listen to this. . .” Jordan held the phone up to catch her thinking out loud, even though she didn’t realize he was doing it.

  “All one time murders. . . . Other prisoners fell at the same time. But they aren’t awake.” She paused long enough for Jordan to hear Landerly swear in the space she left.

  “Oh, shit.”

  Holding the phone to his ear, Jordan initiated the conversation again. “Sir?”

  “We have three more awake, since two hours ago.” He heard the shuffling of paper through the line as Landerly looked to connect Jilly’s ideas. “All murderers. No first degree. No longer considered a threat to society.”

  Jillian tilted her head. “Who’s dead?”

  Another question he and Landerly hadn’t posed, so hung up on their break that they hadn’t stopped to look. He passed the question on to his boss, even as he heard his name hollered out from somewhere out in the tents.

  “Bye.” Again, he hung up on Landerly. Not even telling him that the brilliant idea of sending Jillian and David into the reversal had backfired. David had emerged unscathed with Jillian at death’s door. Landerly could call Jillian directly if he wanted. And surely she would fill him in on all the stats she had collected, along with her own vitals.

  Jordan figured she had a few more hours at the least. And maybe a day at most, before she slipped away. If he was going to help her he had to gather what information he could. So, without a word, he turned and ran from the tent, leaving her to her musings and the paperwork on the prisoners in Nevada. He followed the voice that was calling out to him.

  He didn’t recognize it, although whoever it was knew him enough to boom his name at decibels high enough to shake the tents. He paused a few times, at last emerging on the north side of the field.

  No one was there. Just the school stood silent in front of him, the long staircase off to his right was busy with scientists climbing up and down the four story flight that hugged the hillside. The classrooms had been put to use for containment and as dormitories. The chem lab was probably seeing the best action it had since its inception.

  The voice called again, this time coming from his right, as his head turned he realized the windows were open down the enclosed stairs. He recognized the figures before the voice.

  Peppersmith and Becky Sorenson traipsed down the stairs, arms linked, neither of them looking up at him. Until Leon opened his mouth to shout out Jordan’s name again.

  “Here!” He yelled back.

  His pace picked up as he realized the two were not in a friendly embrace after all, but that Becky was supported on Leon’s arm. Her right hand snaked up to rub her ear.

  Shit!

  He raced back and slammed through the doors just as Peppersmith hit the bottom of the stairs, bellowing as he came. “What’s wrong with her?”

  Jordan ignored the man, whipping off his stethoscope he unsnapped the front of Becky’s heavy jacket and placed the bell at the top right side of her sternum. Her heart raced. “Becky, what’s wrong?” But he already knew.

  “My ears hurt. It started after we found this dead cat. . . . I-” But she didn’t finish. She just rolled a little, curling into a ball while Leon fought to keep her upright.

  He didn’t ask - didn’t bother to look in her throat or her ears. The answers were in her eyes. She had it, and she knew it.

  Lacking the will to lift her himself, Jordan looked to Leon, “Just pick her up, would you? I have a spare gurney in the triage tent if you can carry her that far.”

  Becky protested, and it looked like it wasn’t for the first time. But this time Leon quoted doctor’s orders and hauled her up. She didn’t appear to have it in her to fight her way down. And Peppersmith looked like he could carry a sleeping hippo through the jungle without breaking a sweat. Becky wouldn’t be any trouble for him.

  Inside three minutes they were back at the tent where he’d left Jillian and David.

  Even before he saw her, Jordan knew she was on the phone with Landerly. He could hear her side of the conversation, the short spurts when she rattled off whatever her brain was clicking together. She sounded more alert, and as he rounded the tent flap she came into view proving him entirely right. “Feeling better?”

  Even as she answered, “Yup,” he set about making the next GI cocktail. Leon laid Becky out on the bed, and Jillian interrupted her own conversation to say nothing other than, “you’ll feel better in about five minutes,” then launched back into it with Landerly.

  Handing Becky the mix, Jordan waited while she eyed it. He didn’t blame the biologist. He wouldn’t drink it either if he hadn’t known what was in it. It was a milky, lime colored substance with a faint sharp odor, and the lidocaine lent it some sort of almost-glow, even after it was mixed in. But she tipped it back, her face contorting at the texture if not the taste, and her mouth working even after she had finished swallowing it.

  They stood there, the five of them, looking at each other, and wondering. The two women sitting on the gurneys, Becky starting to perk back up. None of them deluded themselves, and none of them talked. Except Jillian, who chattered to Landerly, making little sense to anyone around her.

  Jordan wasn’t sure how long it lasted, the wild silence in the tent, punctuated by people passing by outside, Jillian updating Landerly on what was happening.

  He heard someone’s name being shouted, and didn’t think much of it, until he heard another name, then in rapid succession a third and a fourth. He was poking his head out of the flap when Lucy appeared there in front of him.

  The last person he really wanted to see, but she was there in his face. Her own expression was less than chipper for the first time he had ever seen. And he was about to comment on it when she spoke.

  “Jordan, I feel weird.” Her hands went to the sides of her face, tracing the flush as it spread up her skin. Her mouth work
ed like she had a bad taste in it, and her shoulders hunched forward as her eyes squeezed shut.

  Oh, crap.

  He touched her hands, pulling them away from her face, just as her eyes went wide. Only because he was looking at her so intently did he realize that she had focused over his shoulder.

  With a snap he turned to see Becky, as she swayed from her sitting position, her eyes rolling back into her head, eyelids fluttering. She sank forward, a victim of gravity, and missed hitting the ground only because Leon had exhibited some lightning reflexes.

  The giant man laid her back down on the gurney, lifting her eyelids, but finding nothing. Jordan was about to help, all else aside, except that Lucy pulled at his arm, turning him away from the shocked expression on Jillian’s face. The intern looked markedly worse than she had just a few seconds ago, her color changing rapidly from the pink flush to a creeping gray tone. Her eyes lost focus and she grabbed her stomach.

  With a quick step Jordan moved closer to keep her from collapsing into the ground just feet in front of him. But as he grabbed her he realized that he had cleared the entrance of the tent and he could see in several directions down the evenly placed rows. Doctors, techs, and suits were stumbling out of the tents, reaching to others. Covering their ears. Opening mouths. Holding stomachs.

  And his brain clicked.

  They were all women.

  Still holding Lucy partially upright with one arm, he turned to face Jillian as his adrenaline kicked in and the world began to slow on its axis. But Jillian just looked at him, having figured out some portion of what he had seen from the expression on his face.

  But before he could tell her what was happening a voice cleared its way through the pandemonium. Jordan couldn’t see him, but heard his words as the man ran past. “It moved! The edge moved! We’re in it!”

  But Jordan and Jillian had both guessed that for themselves already. He turned to see that David and Leon had, too.

  The voice was joined by others, or maybe his brain just cleared to hear them all. Urging everyone who was upright to run. To get out, to clear the edge.

  Within their tent it was Leon who took action. He grabbed the limp Becky, lifting her into his arms. Jordan’s brain cranked overtime, realizing even as he watched it, that Leon had chosen Becky because she was limp and he had the most experience hauling dead weight. Peppersmith motioned to Jordan and David to grab the other two women, and even as Jordan yelled at him not to, Leon was out the door with Becky hanging from his arms.

  Jordan watched as he followed the exodus, some of the men stopping to attempt to scoop up their fallen colleagues, none of them as agile as Leon with the spare weight. As Jordan watched, some of them gave up trying and simply stepped over whomever they crossed.

  It was David who yelled out the open doorway. “Don’t run! You can’t outrun it. The whole world’s going to snap any day now!” His fatalistic cries falling on deaf or disbelieving ears.

  As Jordan watched, Lucy slipped from his grasp, her eyes going blank as she gave up her last hold on consciousness. Jordan bent to lift her, thinking to put her on the gurney that Leon had vacated when he left with Becky, when a second set of hands slid under her from the other side to help him lift.

  He looked up into the face of a local physician whom he had seen a few times, drawing blood and helping out with the people whose homes had been in the early parts of the reversals. With a slight tip of his head he gestured to David, “Is that true what he said, about the whole world ‘snapping’?”

  Jordan didn’t know what to make of it. The pace was slowing, but the adrenaline was still ringing in his ears, still bringing the false endorphin high. He shrugged. “Probably.”

  The other doctor bore Lucy’s weight and Jordan let him. In silence, the doctor wandered off with the limp woman, her feet dangling, one red leather shoe missing, her nails sparkling at the ends of loose hands.

  “Jordan?” Jillian’s voice broke through to him.

  He’d have known if she’d fallen. But he hadn’t quite catalogued that she’d stayed upright.

  But why?

  She thought it, too, and her thoughts came in fragments. “I thought I was immune. . . . then I didn’t . . . now? . . .”

  But he shook his head, unable to answer.

  It was David who said, “I guess maybe it is something you ate.” His face contorted in a weird, what-about-that kind of way. But as he finished the sentence Jillian squinted her eyes, and rocked her head from side to side, as though fighting off a bad memory.

  Jordan saw the flush creeping up her neck even as she felt it, her facial expression changing. He could see her stomach roll. “Jordan?”

  It was her last word, and as she looked at him, her eyes went heavenward, and in slow motion she slumped backward and started to slide off the gurney.

  While David watched, Abellard sprung forward barely catching Jillian’s weight. Well, he didn’t so much catch her as take the fall for her, cushioning her limp limbs from the hard ground she sped toward. He struggled to right her, and somewhere in the back of his brain David heard Jordan’s voice asking for help. But he ignored it.

  In a moment, the doctor had her spread out on the gurney, looking like she had simply had too rough of a day and decided that now was as good a time as any for a balls-to-the-wall nap.

  David knew his brain wasn’t processing correctly. That she might be dead. That she looked like a doll, reposed on the bed, because he couldn’t handle the truth. But that was okay, because Abellard was here to handle both Jillian and the truth.

  Creeping to the back corner of the tent, and molding himself to the canvas wall, didn’t allow him to escape the serious gaze Jordan pinned him with. “You stay here with her. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  David’s brain inserted a sleek “I’m Batman” as the tent flap shifted in the wake of Jordan’s path. But he didn’t laugh. He bit his cheek to keep the sound from overflowing. Because he knew if he did that the laugh would evolve into hysterics, and when Jordan returned he would haul back and deliver a stinging slap. David did not want to be on the receiving end of Jordan’s wrath. Certainly not when it was disguised as medical care.

  Sliding into a chair he waited the long minutes for Abellard to return. His eyes wandering to Jillian, one leg dangling precariously off the edge of the gurney. His thoughts turning to his father, and wondering when the old man’s place would experience the ‘snap’. It was all David had been able to think while Jillian had been explaining to him what indicated who would fall and who wouldn’t. If his father would bite it right away, as his vital signs indicated he would. Or maybe it would turn out he was just a son of a bitch, and instead of slipping neatly into a coma, he’d hang out and fuck up all of Jillian’s numbers. Put a cog in that gear head she had.

  Abellard interrupted his morbidly fun thoughts, returning with his hands overflowing. A clear jellyfish thing dangled from his fingertips, until David realized it was a fluid bag for an IV and the remaining hermetically sealed pouches were all the fixings to run it. Jordan didn’t say hello, or anything, just let his gatherings roll across the countertop, and he searched them through, peeling back layers and lining them up.

  In fluid movements he pulled off one of Jillian’s jacket sleeves, then rocked her from side to side, passing the jacket behind her before tossing it on the ground. Deft fingers raised a metal pigtail on a pole, tied Jillian’s arm in a white rubber band, and began pressing at the back of her hand. In the doctor’s actions David could see the practiced swing of a chipping pick, the glance to assess for layer and slope. Abellard was in his element, and out of a grudging respect David didn’t want to disturb him.

  Before he could have said anything, the IV bag was hanging from the pigtail, dripping faithfully into Jillian’s veins.

  Another doctor came by, and waited patiently for a moment before finding a break in the rhythm and asking Jordan what to do with the big box of IV jellyfish in front of him. “How do we triage them?”<
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  Jordan just grabbed three extra bags, speaking only when the other doctor raised his eyebrows. “She discovered this - we make sure she has enough saline. You can triage the rest of the patients as you see fit.” He turned away, essentially ending the conversation.

  David, too, turned to check out Jillian, and was startled by Peppersmith’s voice coming from behind them. “Is it true what you said? That we can’t outrun the edge?”

  The man looked weary, like Paul Bunyon about to fall, but David nodded. “All the previous data shows that the whole earth will reverse, and if this is what happens when it does, then no, there’s no outrunning it.”

  The thought passed briefly before it cleared enough for David to ask it. “Where’s Sorenson?”

  Jordan snapped around at that, but before he could put in his pissed-off two cents, Peppersmith spoke up. “All the women were dropping. I tried to help, and I just finally laid her down on a gurney in one of the tents. . . . she’s alive.”

  Abellard nodded, pulling one of the clear IV bags from the pile he had carefully hoarded for Jillian. He slapped it into Leon’s palm, surprising the giant, but following it with a sleek plastic sealed kit. “Take these back to her and find somebody to run a line.”

  “I can.” Leon looked at the items now dwarfed in his thick hands, and disappeared from the tent on little cat’s feet. Far too quiet for the size he was forced to wield.

  Abellard went back to doctoring his patient. As though he could help Jillian by taking her pulse and blood pressure. Like sticking her with a needle and sucking a vial of her blood would help her live through this shit.

  David wanted to ignore the whole problem. Walking from the tent he felt the ground beneath his feet. Below the grass and dark soil were layers of limestone and shale with stories to tell. There were oil pockets here. Not the size of the ones in Texas or Alaska, but enough to put a pump in your back yard and food on your family’s table for all your years to come. David wanted to be under his own feet, down with the rocks and the strata.

  So why was he here? Stuck with the CDC and sick people falling around him everywhere? Oh, and not just sick people, sick women. Just as a final insult, it was Abellard’s pretty mug he was stuck looking at.