Resonance

by A. J. Scudiere

  He shook his head, trying to look beyond the tent city. The mountains pushed up around him on every side. Caves were back there. Exposed surfaces, waiting for a man with a pick, a plan, and something to prove. Strip mining had ruined the beauty of the hills. But beauty was for crap, and the exposed layers and angles were far more interesting than any damn trees could be.

  His fingers itched to pick at something, to clip himself to a rope and slide down a rock face stealing little pieces of it as he went. All this compass and magnetic field stuff was interesting, but he wanted to break something. Instead people were pushing by him, talking to him.

  He didn’t answer. They looked sick, and he had had just about enough of this vomit-and-fall-down-half-dead crap. Their faces looked uncomfortable, so he turned away. Only to be confronted by men, everywhere, coming out of tents, walking the straight lines between, all rubbing at their bellies, the sides of their faces, their ears.

  Son of a bitch.

  For the briefest of moments David wondered if he was getting it too, and just wasn’t medical enough to know it was happening. But when he checked his stomach the only thing he felt was hungry. Suddenly ravenous. He hadn’t eaten since before he and Jillian had tried that hike to the center of God’s green beyond. And he’d had to haul her sick ass out of there, too.

  He grabbed the arm of a passing physician, “Hey, where can I get food down here? Or do I have to go back into the school?”

  The man’s facial expression questioned David’s intelligence even as his finger was pointing at the double doors at the bottom of the staircase. The doctor greened up another shade before turning away. But David ambled off toward the low building. Better get some before all the damn cafeteria staff fell ill.

  “David!”

  Shit.

  It was Abellard. “I need you!”

  With a sigh as heavy as granite, he turned to help out the doctor. There was a knot of people at the front of the tent. At least David was pretty sure it was the right tent - they were all identical: four poles, white canvas, the only differences being where the flaps were open and how.

  Pushing through the men clustered at the door, he found Abellard inside, tending bar, and making the Day-Glo shots he had fed to Jillian and Sorenson. Peppersmith stood by his side, looking green around the gills, but his hands were full of whatever Jordan was handing him. Leon handed them out, one by one, then turned back to the makeshift counter, “My turn.” And he sucked down the next lime green mixer.

  Men walked away from the tent flaps, slamming back the shots even as they pushed beyond the crowd.

  Jordan turned around and pinned him with a glare. “So show me this immunity that got Jillian in trouble.”

  David shook his head. “I’m fine.”

  “Good.”

  Some of the others looked at him in surprise, or awe. A few even glared, but it only took one, grabbing his arm and asking “Immunity?” to start the ripple of murmurs through the crowd. David shrugged him off.

  Jordan, too, ignored it and sent David with a list and a box, bare except for empty bottles so David would know when he found the right stuff. He hit the supply tent and pillaged it, haphazardly piling in what looked like individual lunchbox applesauce containers. He added industrial sized bottles of Mylanta, and carefully read the vial labels searching for Donnatal.

  With his box full, and his brain in pissed-off mode, he made his way back to the tent, still crowded with sick men. Hadn’t he gone to college and even grad school to avoid being a manual labor peon? With less than no ceremony he plopped the box on the counter beside Abellard who looked relieved at the quantities David had discovered.

  He looked even more haggard than most of the men outside, and Peppersmith held one of the cups out to him, but Abellard waved it away. He motioned for it to be handed to one of those who were waiting, always the hero.

  David hung back, then eventually began pulling cups off the end of the assembly line and passing them out to the crowd. He wasn’t human and he knew it. His helping was just a matter of not having all the doctors glare at him.

  The clusterfuck at the door thinned and David looked beyond the canvas walls to see that they were falling where they stood. A lot of good the medicine was doing if you asked him.

  “I have no idea, but the bastard does seem to be immune.” Jordan spoke to the wall, having finally lost his mind completely.

  Or so David thought until he saw the cell phone propped open on the countertop, the name “Landerly” in bold letters across the face.

  When the last hand had snaked in for a dose of GI cocktail, Jordan downed one himself. His color had turned gray as steel and he worked his mouth without speaking. Finally, he produced sound. But it wasn’t for David, or even Leon Peppersmith, it was to the cell phone. “Bye Landerly. Thanks for the -.”

  His eyes rolled and with his last shred of consciousness he made sure he fell forward, cradling his head even as all his limbs went perfectly slack.

  “Oh, shit!” It was the only real surprise David had ever heard from the wrangler.

  But Peppersmith acted. And from the looks of it, Jordan was just a big catch to him. He unceremoniously draped the doctor over his shoulder, turning until he spotted the empty gurney. He slapped Jordan down on it hard enough to make David think it was a good thing the doc wasn’t awake to experience the humiliation of being hauled around by another man like a sack of flour.

  “Abellard!” It was just a sound through some static.

  David looked around for the source. But since it wasn’t Leon, and it was inside the tent-

  “Dr. Landerly?” Picking up the cell phone he got a good look at the face plate. The time read 20:24. That was a long call. “It’s Dr. David Carter.”

  “I know. Abellard’s down?”

  “Yup.” He held the phone at a distance, eyeing it as though it might bite him.

  “Is Peppersmith still standing?”

  “Yup. He’s fine, too.”

  Leon Peppersmith nodded and gave David the thumbs up, just before his eyes rolled into his head and he dropped like a stone. He went over straight backward, cracking his head on the gurney railing and jostling Jillian, loosening one of her arms so it slipped over the edge of the bed and hung like dead weight.

  “Let me take that back, we just lost him.”

  Landerly’s voice growled through the line at him. “Just like that? No warning?”

  “Yup.”

  With a quick glance down at Leon he turned back to the phone to concentrate on something Landerly was saying. But even as he turned away from the downed giant his brain processed what he had seen.

  A crimson pool was spreading in the grass beneath Leon’s head.

  “Shit!”

  “What?” Landerly’s voice crackled from the ground where David had automatically tossed the phone.

  “He cracked his head!” He knelt beside the big man, thinking that he should touch the wound to know what to do. His hand pressed through the blond hair, and as he did he could feel the tiny fluctuations in pressure signaling that something important had been hit. Using his fingers to follow the flow backward, David was shocked to find the cut wide and gaping.

  Jerking his hand back and not even noting the blood, he leaned into the shove, rolling the big man over. As he did it he suffered a thought about spinal cord injuries and paralysis. Leaving bloody handprints as he went, he checked the hair, and felt the inward dent in the skull.

  With an unconscious jerk, David sprang back, landing on his butt, watching in fear as the wound fountained and fell, fountained and fell. Peppersmith lay unconscious, still as a rock, while both the timing and size of the rhythm slid off to nothing.

  With dry blinking eyes, David stood, leaving the fallen giant facedown on the ground inside the tent. Unaware of where he was stepping, he crushed the phone beneath the heel of his shoe as he left, silencing Landerly’s voice while it hissed through the bad connection.

  He needed a sink to wash his
hands. It was just beyond the cafeteria. He was still hungry. David didn’t worry about the stains on his shirt. Just washed up and headed up the long flight of stairs to change into something clean.

  He found his doorway in the eerie stillness; the lack of noise breaking through his protective denial. He looked around, and nothing moved.

  A laugh almost bubbled out of him. Of course nothing moved. He was in a hallway in an empty high school. But there was something else. A lack of any human sound that was far more powerful than any lie his brain could concoct. And for the first time, his stomach rolled over in fear.

  He unbuttoned his shirt, avoiding the bloody smears and prints, and threw it in the trash. He climbed into fresh everything. Boxers, socks, pants, t-shirt.

  But his stomach rolled again.

  And he was tired. With a hand in his hair he decided that the cot was the way to go. The food would still be there when he woke up. Then he’d pack up and get the hell out of town.

  He stretched out, not comfortable even though the cot was long enough.

  All the energy left his limbs.

  Only at the last minute did he understand what was happening.

  He tried to open his eyes, and wasn’t sure if he accomplished it.

  The black was bringing the sparkles with it at the borders of his vision. It crept in, closer and closer. Taking over his brain.

  Oh shit.

  16

  Jillian blinked. White showed above her and all around.

  Clouds.

  Heaven.

  The pounding in her head drove out thoughts of any such luck. She blinked with eyelids made of sandpaper. Her brain knew she was awake, but she didn’t know where.

  And why couldn’t she move?

  Another grainy blink revealed shadows in the endless white, lines coming to a crosspoint just up and to her right.

  The metal structure draped in the white canvas that formed the gazebo top came into focus.

  As she lifted her arm she felt a tug at the skin covering her hand, and figured it out just before she waved her arm into her line of sight.

  An IV meant someone was here.

  The memories swept quickly through her mind. Jordan putting her up on the gurney, after David hauled her out of the reversal. Becky being laid on the gurney next to hers.

  With a shove and a groan, Jillian brought herself to her elbows. Only now beginning to catalog and question the eerie silence.

  Extreme effort brought her to sitting, only to slump down quickly as she realized that she would pass right back out again. If not from lack of blood to her brain, then from the hideous pounding inside her skull. She recognized it as the cadence of her heart and for a few moments she counted, stopping only when she was confident she was at a nice stable seventy-two beats per minute.

  She yanked her arm, forgetting why she had moved the moment the IV tugged at the back of her left hand, painfully taking tape and a little bit of precious skin. But the needle stayed put. Whoever had done it had done a good job.

  While she took deep breaths and waited for her equilibrium to be restored, Jillian held the taped-up hand into her visual field.

  Jordan had done it.

  It was the first smile that cracked her face. She could feel the unused muscles as she stretched them, grinning as she recognized the careful pattern he always made securing IVs. Wide white paper tape. With three pieces neatly laid in rows holding the whole thing down. So you couldn’t rip it out. So it wouldn’t hurt so much.

  She had to find Jordan.

  Turning onto her stomach, Jillian paid careful attention to the tubing that fed her normal saline from the looks of it. But it wasn’t Becky Sorenson on the gurney that shared the corner with hers.

  It was Jordan. Flat on his back. For a few heart-stopping moments she waited, seeing if his chest would rise of its own accord. And when it did, her unfettered right hand snaked out to rest on his sternum, to buy reassurance that the one breath wasn’t a fluke. After riding several swells and troughs of his breathing, Jillian tried to jostle him awake.

  “Jordan?”

  It was nothing but a movement of her mouth; no sound escaped her vocal cords. Not even the whisper of a voice. It took three tries before she produced something akin to the hiss of a steampipe. And several more before she could recognize her own voice.

  “Jordan?”

  But he still didn’t respond. His chest kept rising and falling, but nothing else about him showed life. Her hand went to her front scrubs pocket out of habit, without her brain even being aware that it was there, until it grasped her penlight.

  Jillian turned herself to the single-minded task of lifting his lids and watching the pupils focus automatically before she allowed herself the sigh of relief that let out the tension and allowed a flood of thoughts of so many things that were not comforting.

  Like the throb in her leg.

  Like, where had Becky Sorenson gone? Was she awake?

  How long had she been out?

  Four days, like the guys in Nevada?

  Her lips pressed a thin line. She had no idea.

  But she was smart enough to put together the facts. Jordan was out cold beside her. There were no human sounds beyond the tent that she could distinguish. She had a slow dripping IV but Jordan didn’t even have a line. Surely he would have run one on himself if he could have. There were two plastic IV drip bags, lying like dead urchins on the counter. So he had enough saline, but maybe not enough time. But he was on the gurney. So he had enough time to get there, or someone had put him up there. But why hadn’t they run a line? Unless they couldn’t.

  David!

  “David!”

  It was meant to be a yell, but it sounded like steam being released from a pan. With a deep breath she tried again, her eyes still square on Jordan’s face, waiting for any flicker of movement.

  Her voice was loud enough the second time.

  But David wasn’t around.

  And apparently neither was anyone else. Someone should have answered that call. As inhuman as it might have sounded.

  She tried a third and even fourth time before deciding that she was just wasting her throat. And that she needed a drink and clearly no one was going to show up and hand her one.

  Long slow moments passed before she positioned herself to sitting, feeling her muscles stretch and react from their silent time on the gurney. She was guessing she’d been out well more than a day.

  Her sneakered feet dangled over the side, swishing in time to the rhythmic pounding of her heart. The desire to find something positive was enough incentive. With eyes staring ahead she took deep breaths, getting her blood flowing again, her heart working a little harder to feed fluid to all the corners of a body that was no longer stationary but becoming fully mobilized.

  Jillian inhaled deeply and thanked God that she had survived this . . . whatever it was. She knew already that many hadn’t, and many more wouldn’t.

  She also gathered strength for the jump to the ground. Her legs would need to hold her when she hit bottom, and it wasn’t standard operating procedure at all to try this completely alone first time out of a coma. But she had no options. No one had come when she called.

  Which meant they were all under.

  Or dead.

  Or incapacitated to the point where they couldn’t answer back.

  It was a shame that the last thought was about the most cheerful.

  Jillian gathered the IV tubing, draping it to let out enough line in case her legs failed and she slipped all the way to the ground. Without looking down she moved her butt off the edge, feeling for the ground with her toe, but she didn’t find it. When her arms got too tired, she fell, her legs taking the brunt of the impact, and not well because she hadn’t been sure when it was coming. She crumpled, her feet slipping easily through the grass to splay out in front of her. Leaving her sitting with a sore butt, growing wet from the dew on the cold ground.

  But she smelled something. Her eyes registered
it before her brain matched the smell, her hand flying to her mouth.

  Leon Peppersmith lay beside her, facedown and unmoving, with flies swarming in small patches. Her hand automatically made a brushing motion through the air, scattering them from their prey. And her fingers settled at his neck just under his jaw.

  He was cold. He didn’t move, didn’t breathe. And the flies.

  All of it told her he was dead, but her brain wouldn’t believe until she checked for herself.

  But after a full minute of not finding a pulse she resigned to defeat, if not tears.

  And her brain turned over.

  The flies weren’t hatching on him. But there were plenty there, settling on him again from the moment she had abandoned her task of shooing them. She registered the handprints on him, marked in blood, the splay of long thick fingers.

  Not Jordan’s.

  Jordan had artist’s hands. He also would never have handled a man that way. The pattern suggested Leon was rolled and checked by a complete amateur; the handprints violated even the basics of any Red Cross first aid training.

  The size, shape, and carelessness were David’s. Which meant he’d survived beyond Leon’s fall, long enough to roll him and check him. If David was truly immune, then where was he?

  Jillian realized that she couldn’t just wait here gleaning tiny fragments of data from Peppersmith, that she had sat long enough to gather her legs and push herself to the standing position she had aimed for in the first place.

  She rolled to her knees, using her hands splayed out on the grass to stabilize herself, and only as she grabbed the railing did she realize that it wasn’t just dew on the ground. The moisture had combined with Leon’s blood and congealed to a thick red mess that she was leaving all over the side of the gurney as she hauled herself up. A task made much more difficult by the fact that her hands were covered in the slimy sludge that had once fed Leon’s heart.

  She wiped long red smears on her scrub pants, knowing without looking that the wetness on her butt wasn’t clear dew, but more of the same. With steady hands she lowered the IV pole and unwound the flattened bag from its holder at the top. Briefly she noted the masking tape and markings indicating the dose of Raglan that had been added for nausea. Jordan had thought ahead to when she would wake up. Carrying it with her, she went in search of a clean pair of scrubs.