The Footprints of God

by Greg Isle

  "What is it?"

  "There's a police cruiser coming up the road. Somebody must have reported the shot."

  Geli closed her eyes. She would have to invoke her federal authority and quarantine Tennant's house. The NSA's presence in Chapel Hill was about to become the knowledge of municipal police.

  "I'm on my way."

  "We're gone."

  Geli hit an alarm button on her desk, alerting every member of her security teams, whether inside the building, on surveillance duty, or sleeping at home. In two minutes a net would close on David Tennant's house from every direction.

  Chapter 14

  I was about to drive out of my subdivision when I realized I was making a mistake. The open highway looked like escape but wasn't. I knew Geli Bauer better than that. Yanking the wheel left, I did a 180 in the middle of Hickory Street, then turned onto Elm.

  "Why are you turning around?" Rachel asked from the floor on the passenger side.

  "Have you ever hunted rabbit?"

  She blinked in confusion. "Rabbit? I'm from New York."

  A woman on a mountain bike rode by us and waved, a toddler in a baby seat perched on the back fender. In our present circumstances, the image looked surreal.

  "When a rabbit runs for its life, it takes a zigzag course at lightning speed. But it always circles back to where it started. It's a good escape strategy. Of course, rabbit hunters know that. That's why they use dogs. The dogs chase the rabbit while the hunter stands there waiting to shoot him when he comes back around."

  Rachel's face showed disgust. "That's barbaric."

  "It puts food on the table. The point is, the people hunting expect us to run like humans. But we're going to take a lesson from the rabbit."

  "What do we gain by doing that?"

  "A car, for one thing. We wouldn't get five miles in this one. Yours, either."

  "Whose car can we get?"

  "Just sit tight."

  Elm Street circumnavigated my subdivision. When I came to the east entrance of Oak Street—which paralleled Willow—I turned left. As I drove, I watched between the houses to catch a glimpse of the roofs on my street. When I saw my own, I began scanning the lawns ahead. A hundred yards up Oak Street, I saw what I wanted. A blue-and-white for sale sign. The house it advertised had a long, curving driveway with no cars parked in it. Turning into the drive, I pulled quickly off the cement and rolled behind a thick stand of boxwood shrubs.

  "Follow me," I said, getting out.

  Rachel climbed off the floor and opened her door. Her face was pale, her hands shivering. The shooting at my house had put her into shock. It had rattled me, too. I had killed before. I'd injected my own brother with narcotics and potassium, then watched the last spark of consciousness wink out of his eyes. But blowing a man's brains out was something else. And when Geli Bauer learned that I'd killed one of her people, she would move heaven and earth to take her revenge.

  I walked over to Rachel and pulled her against me, hugging her as I once had my wife and daughter. "We're going to be all right," I said, not really believing it. Her hair smelled familiar. My wife had used the same shampoo. I put the memories out of my mind. "But we have to run. Do you understand?"

  She nodded into my chest. I stroked her hair, still not quite believing what had happened myself. Thirty minutes ago, I'd believed the nightmare was over. Ewan McCaskell would call back, and the president would take control of Trinity. Now that hope was blown to hell.

  "We're going to walk a little ways," I said, "and then we're going to borrow a car. Nobody will bother us. With me carrying Fielding's box, it'll look like we're selling something. Can you do it?"

  She nodded.

  I got Fielding's box from my car and started down Oak Street, Rachel beside me. "There's a hedge in these backyards that runs behind the lots on my street. You'll see it in a minute. We're going to cut through it to my street. I'll tell you when."

  Using the sidewalk, we quickly covered the hundred yards back to where I'd seen my roof. I walked her past two more lawns, then said, "Right here. Cut between the houses."

  A wooden privacy fence blocked the space between the two houses I'd chosen.

  "If the gate's locked, we'll climb over," I said.

  "What if someone's in the backyard?"

  "I'll deal with it."

  The gate opened easily. The backyard contained some plastic playground equipment and a parked lawn mower, but no people. With my hand in the small of Rachel's back, I guided her across the yard. There was no gate in the back fence, so I bent and interlocked my fingers, boosted her over, then slung myself up and dropped to the ground beside her.

  The space between the fence and the hedge was only a couple of feet wide. I crawled through an opening at the bottom of the bushes, then got to my feet behind the utility shed where I'd hidden Fielding's box earlier. Rachel followed, grabbed my hand, and pulled herself up. I didn't know what the shed's owner did for a living, but I assumed he had some sort of sales job, because he was hardly ever home.

  The interior was dim, and it stank of dead mice and motor oil. A row of tools hung from hooks on a peg-board. I was looking for a crowbar like the one in my attic, but I saw nothing like that. Kneeling, I scanned the area beneath the shelves. The owner stowed fishing gear there. Nothing heavy enough for my purpose.

  "I feel sick," Rachel said.

  "It's the smell. Go outside."

  As she left, I saw a twelve-pound sledgehammer leaning in the corner. I picked it up and walked outside. Rachel was bent over with her hands on her knees.

  "What's that for?" she asked.

  "Stay close."

  I trotted up to the back door of the house, drew back the sledge, and swung it in a roundhouse arc at the lock. The door caved in. Dropping the hammer, I ran into the dark house. Rachel followed. I didn't hear an alarm, but it could be silent. Wired straight to a security service.

  "We want the kitchen," I told her.

  "This way. I smell garlic and dish soap."

  "Look for wall hooks. We need car keys."

  "It would help if you turned on the lights."

  I hit a wall switch and flooded the kitchen with light. It was a showplace, filled with professional Viking appliances in stainless steel. While Rachel searched the walls for hooks, I pulled open drawers. One held dishrags. Another practically spewed coupons, which seemed odd.

  Someone who could afford Viking appliances didn't need to cut out coupons.

  "Key!" Rachel cried, grabbing something off the countertop.

  I took the key and examined it. "That's for a riding lawn mower. Keep looking."

  The next drawer contained jars of nails, screws, glue sticks, and paper clips. No keys.

  "Why did you pick this house?" she asked.

  "The guy's single and never home, but I know he has two cars."

  "Got it!' She pulled a square black key from a hook under a cabinet. "It's for an Audi."

  "That's it."

  Just as in my house, you had to go through the laundry room to reach the garage. The same contractor had probably built both homes.

  "How did you know the key was for an Audi?"

  "My ex-husband drove one."

  I opened the door to the garage and saw a silver A8 sitting there like an answered prayer. The guy's other car was a Honda Accord. He probably took the Accord to the airport to sit in the Park & Fly and saved the flagship Audi for his road trips.

  "Anybody with an eighty-thousand-dollar car has a security system in his house," Rachel said over my shoulder.

  "The cops are definitely on their way. Key?"

  She slapped it into my palm like a nurse passing a scalpel to a surgeon, and twenty seconds later we were pulling onto Willow Street, the garage door sliding down behind us. I looked up and down Willow, being careful not to turn too far right when I looked toward my house. I didn't see anybody. Not even a yardman.

  "What good is stealing this car if the police come check out that guy's alarm?" Rach
el asked.

  "The police won't know what was taken. They don't know this car was there. They'll have to track down the owner, and he's probably on a business trip to God knows where."

  I made two quick turns and swung onto Kinsdale, headed east toward Interstate 40. Traffic was fairly heavy, and I was glad of it.

  "Where are we going now?"

  I reached into the backseat and grabbed Fielding's Ziploc-sealed letter from the box, then laid it on her lap. I pointed to the line, Lu Li and I are driving to the blue place on Saturday night.

  "The blue place?"

  Steering with my knee, I searched the Audi's console and found a ballpoint pen. Then I pulled the letter out of the Ziploc and wrote Nags Head/The Outer Banks beneath Fielding's cartoon White Rabbit.

  "Why can't you tell me out loud?"

  I scribbled, They could be listening.

  She took the pen and wrote, HOW? WE JUST STOLE THIS CAR!

  "Trust me," I whispered. "It's possible."

  She shook her head, then wrote, Is there something at Nags Head? Evidence?

  An image of Fielding's pocket watch came into my mind. I took the pen back and wrote, I hope so.

  She wrote, Cell phone in my pocket. Try to call President?

  I took the pen and wrote, It's not that simple now.

  "Why not?"

  There was no way to write all I needed to say. I pulled her close and whispered into her ear. "Once they heard Ewan McCaskell's message, they knew they could eliminate me and tell the president whatever they wanted to explain my death. Yours, too."

  "What kind of lie would explain that?"

  "An easy one. By now the president has been told that my hallucinations have progressed to psychosis. Ravi Nara will write a formal diagnosis. He'll say I've become dangerously paranoid, that I believe Andrew Fielding was murdered when he clearly died of natural causes. Your own office records say I've been having hallucinations and may be schizophrenic. They'll be used to support Nara's position." I took my eyes off the road and looked at her. "Do you think that would be a hard sell?"

  She turned away.

  "Not a very optimistic picture is it?"

  "No. But you have to put it out of your mind for a few minutes. You're all over the road. If you insist on driving, you need to calm down."

  "That's not what's getting to me right now."

  "Then what is?"

  By answering this honestly, I would be asking for trouble, but I didn't want to keep it to myself any longer. "I saw it."

  "Saw what?"

  "The guy who was going to kill you."

  "Of course you did. You had to see him to shoot him."

  I swung onto the I-40 ramp and merged with the traffic headed toward the RTP and Raleigh. "That's not what I mean. I saw him walking up the street. Willow Street. Before he ever got to the house. He walked right up to the door."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I dreamed it, Rachel."

  She stared at me. She had never been with me when I'd experienced one of my hallucinations. "How did you see him? Like your Jesus hallucinations? Like a movie? What?"

  "I saw it the way you see what the criminal or the monster sees in B movies. I saw it through his eyes."

  She sat back in her seat. "Tell me exactly what you saw."

  "The houses on my street. My feet walking. A dog trotting by. I thought I was dreaming about myself. But when I got to my house and reached into my pocket for my key ... I brought out a lockpick."

  "Go on."

  "I picked the lock and went inside. I heard you in the kitchen, and then I took out a gun."

  Rachel stared through the windshield, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. "That doesn't mean anything," she said finally. "Dreams of someone invading the house or bedroom are almost universal in narcoleptic patients. Even if you weren't narcoleptic, that would be a typical dream, a distortion of reality caused by anxiety."

  "No. The timing was too perfect. I saw a threat in my dream, and when I woke up, the threat was there in the real world. Just as I saw it."

  She squeezed my shoulder. "Listen to me. You're accustomed to the sounds of your own house. You were already in an anxious state. You heard something unfamiliar, something that triggered your fear of a break-in. The front door opening. A window going up. A creaking board. In response to that stimulus, your mind generated a dream of a break-in. It frightened you enough to wake you. Your dream was a reaction to external stimuli, not the other way around."

  I did remember a creaking board. But I was already awake when I'd heard that. "I saw his gun in the dream," I said doggedly. "An automatic. It had a silencer." I tapped the gun in my waistband. "Just like this one."

  "Coincidence."

  "I've never seen a gun with a silencer before."

  "Of course you have. You've seen hundreds of them in films."

  I thought about it. "You're right, but there's something else."

  "What?"

  "That's not the first dream I've had like that. Where I was someone else, someone from the present day. I had one the day Fielding died."

  "Describe it for me."

  A Durham police cruiser passed us in the westbound lanes. My heart clenched, but the cruiser didn't slow or blink its lights.

  "Yesterday, when I was making my videotape—just before you came in—I dreamed I was Fielding just prior to and during his death. It was so real that I felt I'd actually died. I couldn't see . . . couldn't breathe. When I answered the door for you, I didn't know which way was up."

  "But Fielding had already died that morning."

  "So?"

  She held up her hands as if to emphasize an obvious point. "Don't you see? Your Fielding dream didn't predict anything. It could easily have been a grief reaction. Have you had any more dreams like that?"

  I looked back at the road. We had reached the Research Triangle Park. I-40 ran right through it. Less than a mile away, Geli Bauer was directing the hunt for me.

  "David, have you had other dreams like that?"

  "This isn't the time to discuss it."

  "Will there be a better time? Why did you skip your last three appointments with me?"

  I shook my head. "You already think I'm crazy."

  "That's not a medical term."

  "Descriptive, though."

  She sighed and looked out the window at the perfect green turf on her side of the road.

  "That's Trinity," I said. "Coming up over there."

  The lab was set so far back from the road that little was visible.

  "The sign says Argus Optical," she said.

  "That's cover."

  "Ah. Look . . . what's the point of keeping a hallucination from me? What part of yourself do you think you're protecting?"

  "We'll talk about it later." I could see that she didn't intend to drop it. "I need drugs, Rachel. I can't afford to be passing out five times a day while we're on the run."

  "What have you been taking? Modafinil?"

  Modafinil was a standard narcolepsy treatment. "Sometimes. Usually I take methamphetamine."

  "David! We talked about the side effects of amphetamines. They could be exaggerating your hallucinations."

  "They're the only thing that can keep me awake. Ravi Nara used to get me Dexedrine."

  She sighed. "I'll write you a prescription for some Adderall."

  "A scrip isn't the problem. I could write that myself. The problem is that they know I need it. They'll be watching all the pharmacies."

  "They can't possibly cover every pharmacy in the Triangle."

  "They're the NSA, Rachel, and they know I need drugs. These are the people who recorded the cockpit chatter of the Russian pilots who shot down that Korean airliner over Sakhalin Island in 1983. That was twenty years ago, and it was a random incident. They are actively searching for us. You read 1984?"

  "Twenty years ago."

  "When I say NSA, think Big Brother. The NSA is the closest thing we have to it in America."

  "But yo
u still need your drugs."

  "You must know somebody."

  "I could get it at the hospital pharmacy."

  "They'll be watching for us there."

  "Well, shit."

  I'd almost never heard her use profanity. Maybe it came with the blue jeans. Maybe she shed her demure exterior with her silk skirts and blouses.

  "I know a doc in North Durham who'll give us some samples," she said.

  We'd already left Durham behind and were well on our way to Raleigh. My knowledge of Geli Bauer made me reluctant to linger in the area longer than necessary. Also, paradoxically enough, something in me did not want the dreams to stop. My last one had saved our lives, and though I'd never confess it to Rachel, I felt somehow that my dreams—however frightening they might be—were giving me information about our plight, information I could gain in no other way.

  "We're not going back," I said.

  "What if you pass out at the wheel?"

  "You saw how it works at the house. It doesn't happen instantly."

  "You weren't driving then."

  "I usually have a couple of minutes' warning. I'll pull over the second I feel something wrong."

  Rachel was clearly unhappy. As though to drain off some anger, she put one foot up on the dash, untied her shoe, then retied it. Then she did the same to the other. This compulsive ritual seemed to calm her.

  I took the 440 loop around Raleigh, then merged onto U.S. 64, which would take us all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The highway was generic Southern: two broad strips of cement running through pine and hardwood forest. It would be another two hours before the land started to drop toward the Outer Banks. Fielding would have been traveling this road today if he hadn't died, a road he had traveled before, to a destination my wife and I had visited twelve years earlier. Thoughts like that showed me the needless ambiguity of words like space-time. The average person heard a word like that and figured he'd never understand it. But it was so simple. Every place you ever saw was linked to a specific time. The Nags Head cabin Fielding and his wife had honeymooned in appeared to be the same one my wife and I had used—but in reality it was not. In the fabric of space-time, it was altogether different. The school you visited twenty years after you graduated, the football field you played on, the track you ran—none of them was the same. If they were, you would collide with the generations that had run on them before and after you. The lover you kissed was not the same person he or she was sixty seconds before. In that minute, a million skin cells had died and been replaced by new ones. The smallest slices of space-time separated thought from action. Life from death.