by Ed Miracle
Marcy gave him her sample, which he deposited with gloved hands in a parcel box strapped to the bike. He removed his gloves and dropped them in too. Then with a nod, he mounted the bike and stroked humpty-bumpty through the yellow grass. After fifty yards, he stopped, pulled off his mask, and waved.
Marcy waved back. She gave Everett a thumbs-up. He couldn’t see her face but imagined she was as relieved as he was. They flew back to Jesse Cardoza’s ranch, landed without incident, and jostled to the barn. At the last moment, he opened the canopy, scooping hot, dry air onto their faces.
“Kiss me,” he said.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Marcy stepped out of the plane, somber and unsteady. She waved her Cambiar at Everett.
“They quarantined three counties,” she said. “Closed the roads and the airports. They’re calling it nuclear.”
He nodded, looked for Jesse or Bobby, but saw no one. He didn’t really want a kiss. He wanted distraction from the mental radioactivity clicking in his head. If Coalinga was possible, any evil was possible.
“This way,” he said.
He led her to the tin-roofed shed he shared with his father. At the door, he called Bobby’s name and got the reply he wanted—silence. He drew Marcy into the dim interior, to the counter with the two-burner cooktop and a scratched metal sink. Plastic shower curtains, strung on a wire, divided the room. He yanked spare trash bags from a bin under the sink and gave her one.
“Clothes,” he said.
She nodded, began unbuttoning. They shed their garments, stuffed them in the bags, and stood facing each other, naked. Her humidity, her body heat, glistened at her throat, beaded along her shoulders, and trickled down her chest. A thousand tensions hovered between them until their feelings magnetically aligned. She gazed at nothing, but he knew what she was seeing. If she weren’t so very close, he’d be seeing it too. Death. Destruction. Murder. For a long moment, she was Lady Paradise, staring into Perdition and not comprehending. He fought the urge to touch her.
“It wasn’t terrorists,” he said.
She stared, vacant and still.
“Those bastards wouldn’t waste a nuke on a four-seat crapper out in the boondocks. They’d go for a big fat city, full of victims. What kind of psychopath wants to terrorize us, but not too much?”
Marcy looked at him, still uncomprehending. Her scent crossed the electric gap between them. It zoomed to his loins and charged him, before rebounding with a crucial concern.
“What are we doing, Marcy?”
She came alert, whispered, “Wash up.”
“Shower’s here.” He stepped aside from a much-painted door.
She sidled past him, eyes averted, guarding her thoughts but not her modesty. When she shut herself in the bath, a milliwatt of fear blinked in his head, that he might never see her again. Naked and alone, he longed for her: to hold her, to please her. But the slightest touch, uninvited, would shatter the trust between them—if that’s what it was. If she came out of the bath flaunting the same old teases, he would throw her sweet brown rotunda into the driveway and be rid of her.
Aroused, annoyed, and agitated, he fired up the video screen where a panorama of blackened earth swept down to a vacant Interstate. Eight or ten versions of this, plus a thin, gray column rising distinctively, swelled at the top before dispersing. The voice-over mentioned Coalinga twice before he muted it. He flopped onto the bed that doubled as a sofa. A cold beer would hit the mark just now, but he needed to keep a clear mind. For what, exactly, he wasn’t sure. There was nothing he could do now but gawk and wait, like everyone else.
When the shower stopped, he remembered she needed clothes. He rousted a carton from behind the bed, dumped trousers, shirts, and socks, found some old sandals that might fit her. He thought to copy them but couldn’t muster the drive to do it. His legs had gone hollow, drained of substance, just like his head.
Bumps and rustles made him look. Marcy leaned from the door, towel at her throat. No smile, no attitude.
“Is there something to wear?”
He went to her, tugged the towel away and spread it across her shoulders, covering her. When she crossed her arms to hold it in place, he kissed her cheek.
“No freebies,” she said, but the warning carried no spunk.
He returned to the counter and the clothes.
“Take what you want.”
She padded over, touched his naked back. In silence, she chose a chambray shirt and a pair of gray chinos, his old flying school togs. When she retreated with them to the bath, he followed. She stopped and let go the towel.
“Are you going to let me dress?”
“I’m contaminated,” he said. “So is the bed where I sat.” He shuffled around her, careful not to touch, and entered the bath. “Don’t go away,” he said.
When he emerged three minutes later, the video screen was still playing death and destruction, and the bed covers lay heaped on the floor. Beneath a fresh percale sheet, Marcy lay watching him, Sphinx-like.
He approached her, his towel precarious on his hips. He found the remote and switched off the screen. He wanted to say something, but words would not condense. He wanted her; he didn’t want her. This was not a good time; there would be no better time. The world was going to hell, and they were circling the drain.
“No games,” she said.
He searched her face, seeking sincerity, but discovered a gaze so indrawn it shocked him. He stroked the pulse at her temple. She leaned into his caress and rose to him. The sheet fell away. She pressed her cheek, warm and urgent, to his neck, and he felt her swallow.
“Marcy, I want to know.” She pressed closer. “About you and me. Because you are more woman than I ever hoped to find. You have more guts, more smarts, and all those sassy-classy ways. I can’t keep up. I don’t want to keep up if I’m just going to be your errand boy.” Her touch infused him, thickened the air, aroused him.
“Hold me,” she said.
He slipped his arms under hers and tipped her face up to his.
“No,” he said.
She shut her eyes and trembled. “I need you to hold me, Everett. Please. Just hold me.”
He shook her, made her look. “I’ll take you down to the floor. I’ll take you down and use you and throw you away.”
“All right.”
“No,” he cried, “it’s not all right. Soon as I do that, we are finished, and you know it. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“So, what do you want, Marcy?”
She gripped his arms.
“I just need you to hold me. I’ll do whatever you want.”
He shook his head, nearly lost the towel. She didn’t understand. He couldn’t believe he was not going grab her and take what he wanted, just for spite. Didn’t she know what she had in him? Didn’t she see that every molecule of him wanted every molecule of her?
“Tell me one true thing,” he said. “And it better not be what a nice guy I am.”
“I’m not doing so well, Everett. I’m not coping. You can’t ask me to—”
He shoved her onto her back and dropped across her beautiful, bare chest, hauled her wrists to her startled throat.
“I’m not asking,” he said. “This is a shitty time, and you’re upset. So am I. But we can’t go on like this, Marcy. I’m not coping either. We come together, right now, or we split for good. That’s what I want from you. No more screwing around.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
He released her and pushed himself up, hoping not to embed the sight of her breasts into his memory, though infinitely aware he already had. Her lips tightened. She made a face and opened her eyes.
“God, you’re stubborn.” She pulled him down. He resisted. “See?”
He cantilevered, inches from her, his loins tingling in revolt.
“I was nineteen,” she said, biting off the teen, making it ring. “My sweetness, my baby daughter. Aborted herself. Eclampsia, they said.” She suck
ed a breath and held it. “I swore . . . I swore I would never let another man mess up my life.” She glared and exhaled, bleak and furious. “So it’s against my principles to screw a guy who might truly want me. Do you understand?” She sniffed. “And you’re looking for some kind of guarantee?” She shook her head. “You don’t even know me.”
He drew a knuckle down her cheek, past her ear to the mattress, where he made a fist and leaned on it.
“So what are you doing in my bed?”
“Waiting,” she said. She tugged away the towel.
He checked her eyes, for the Marcy he wanted to find, the truth-seeking Marcy, the one who reflected the hopes and the vast uncertainty within him. Then he laid himself down the length of her smooth, brown body. He drew her head onto his shoulder and kissed her, long and easy. Then strong and deep.
She arced in his hands, pressed her mouth hard against his. Her scent, her taste, her heat inflamed him. Caresses spawned strokes that brought graspings. They keened to merge, to melt into each other until the room itself overheated. They found each other and moved as one, breathed as one, stroked as one. Until wild, undifferentiated pleasure sealed them in a heaving, protracted rhythm. They tumbled from their Everest, still entwined, gasping and clutching. Kissing. For a long time, nothing moved but the languorous rise and fall of their sweat-slick bellies. For a long time, the tin shed and all the world’s tin sheds did not exist.
“Thirsty,” she said.
He stumbled to the sink, which triggered three unlikely events. On the floor, Marcy’s Cambiar rattled. The front door banged wide open. And the water glass slipped from his fingers.
Bobby stomped into the room, his gray mane a torment, searching until he saw them.
“Jeeezuss.” He backed out, pulled the door shut, and swore again.
Marcy ignored him, as she did the crash in the sink, and took up her phone.
“Shit,” she said, recognizing the face on its screen. “It’s whats-his-name, the FBI.”
Everett froze, as he always did when things were falling. He listened—for Bobby, for Marcy, for the damned FBI.
Marcy said hello and absorbed what the man told her. When she put it down without replying, Everett brought her a fresh glass of water.
“They seized our sample,” she said. “Agent Parker says he will keep us out of jail, but only if we help him with the girl.”
“Screw that. I’m not helping him. What girl?”
“Tiffany Lavery.”
“She’s here?”
“At this ranch, hiding like we are.”
Everett blinked. “I’m not hiding.”
Marcy accepted the water and acknowledged his nether parts. “I’ll say.”
On that note, they dressed and stuffed the bed covers into a poly bag. When they finished and washed their hands, Marcy sat on the mattress and fretted.
“I was going to get a Pulitzer. You were going to get kissed.”
Everett switched on the screen.
“Everybody’s gotta get kissed,” he said, and he made a dive for her neck.
She feinted aside and punched his leg.
“I have a brother,” she said. “I know how to defend myself.”
On the opposite wall, the screen synced to a brightly lighted room, probably at the White House, where five men, two in uniform, stood behind a familiar, grim-faced bureaucrat. The crawl at the bottom of the screen said, N. Brayley, US Attorney General. Everett un-muted it.
“. . . was caused by a faulty Powerpod, apparently being transported when it failed catastrophically. We do not know what caused it to explode, but when we speak of Powerpods, we are talking about the power of the stars, harnessed inside two microscopic entities, each dependent for its stability on a process that no one fully understands. At this time we have no reason to believe the Coalinga event was deliberate. Every indication points to a tragic, accidental release of nuclear energy from a single, faulty Powerpod. Three other Pods on the same truck did not explode. We are examining their remains for clues to the nature and causes of what happened.”
The screen switched to a grainy view of Interstate 5, shot from high over the rest stop, before the blast. At one end of the parking lot sat a truck with four white lumps on its open bed. The next view went dark and murky. The curbs disappeared, and the charred vehicles had scattered at odd angles. To the right, encircled by a white cursor, lay a crumpled mass that could be the truck, and beside it lay three lumps the size of basketballs.
“That’s wrong,” Marcy said. “Those weren’t there.” She stood and grabbed her gear bag from the table. Everett muted the broadcast and moved to help her. The data she had posted to WebNews, and to three other sites, was still in her camera, unedited. She found the fly-over and played the sequence on her preview screen.
“There,” she pointed. Everett followed her finger. “That’s the truck, but I don’t see any Pods.” Their angle was lower than the official shots, which presumably came from a satellite, so it was hard to tell, but no lumps appeared anywhere near that truck. Marcy fast-forwarded to their second pass, which was both closer and taken from a steeper angle. No lumps on the truck or near it. She squirmed and shut off the camera.
“Omigod,” she said. She hugged her camera as if to console it, then accused the wall screen. “They did it.”
THIRTY-NINE
Everett was about to say, No, they couldn’t. But . . . the reality of it pressurized the room, stuffed his ears. He wiggled his jaw to clear them.
“Dirty bomb,” he said. Monstrous big, salted with radioactivity, but not a nuke.
“They’re going to quash our videos,” Marcy said, “but they won’t dare arrest us.”
“Because that would draw attention,” he said.
“They control the images and the forensics,” she said. “They control the story. We are just crackpots, and this”—she raised her camera—“is fabricated evidence. They’re going to screw us, Everett.”
“I have another sample,” he realized out loud. “A soda can from the highway. In the plane.”
“Way to go, Everett.” Marcy jumped to her feet.
He stood and grasped her elbows. “They don’t know we have it.”
“Yeah, but the ranch is under surveillance,” she said. “That’s how they found the Lavery girl.”
“I haven’t seen her,” he said, dropping his hands. “Where should we hide the can?”
“Anywhere but here.” She stuffed the camera into her pack. “C’mon. We have evidence to preserve.”
They jogged to the plane, passing Bobby, who glowered in the shade of the barn, sucking on a cigarette. He said nothing but watched them intently. At the plane, Marcy slipped the crushed can into her remaining plastic baggie. Then she pecked his cheek.
“You’re the greatest, Everett.”
She strode for her car, pant cuffs scraping. He followed, intent on riding along, but when they reached the door, she stopped. “I need you to stay.”
“No.” Her logic escaped him. “I’m going with you.”
She pressed herself against him, a whole-body kiss.
“Please,” she said. “This isn’t over, Everett. We need to find Tiffany Lavery. We need to know what Parker wants from her.”
Everett swayed, checked his shoelaces, glanced to the barn from which Bobby had disappeared. He shook his head three different ways.
“No,” he said. “Just get in the plane, and I’ll fly us out of here.”
She tossed the backpack into her car.
“I know somebody else who can analyze it,” she said. “I need you to stay.” She gripped his shoulders, kissed him firmly, then searched his eyes for acceptance. “I’ll be back, I promise.”
She drove away, crunching gravel and raising dust. When she was gone, he festered in the yard for a while, then scanned the shed for indications. It was Bobby’s turn to make dinner, which is what he hoped his father was doing, though he also needed to avoid him. What he really needed was a pine board to
plane into shavings.
He left Glamorous Glennis exposed to the voyeurs of the sky and entered the barn. Where Jesse had once parked a backhoe, a full-sized Maker now stood. Its cones crowded the walls and threatened the rafters. He kicked one of its struts. Wake up. From the mess of aircraft parts he had been copying, he liberated a bulgy red jug labeled Jet fuel.
He opened a Maker side-cone but encountered a jig made of black pipe, a custom-made frame to hold a particular large object that was, at present, not there. He removed the jig and replaced it with a shelf, onto which he heaved his fuel jug.
Maybe he should fly to Nevada or Oregon or up to Canada. He could search Calgary for his mother and sister, with or without Bobby.
He pressed the remote control Jesse had rigged, and worried, as the Maker thumped a new fuel can into existence. What if this thing went kaboom instead of thump?
His finger rose clear of the button. Only Philip Machen really knew what happened inside these things. Who could argue that Coalinga was not caused by a defective Powerpod? That millions of Pods would operate flawlessly, forever? Suppose Machen had missed a decimal point. We only have his word and our personal experiences to vouch for them.
Everett removed the new jug and placed it beside its parent in the opposite cone. The message of Coalinga was clear: Pods and Makers were either inherently safe or randomly deadly. But there had been no Pods down there. Whatever their shortcomings, Pods and Makers had not killed anyone. And Marcy was doing the right thing. They were doing the right thing.
No longer angry, he lugged two new jugs out to the plane and released the fill cap on GG’s left wing. He inserted a funnel and tipped the first jug to its lip.
Even if Marcy’s videos proved there had been no Pods at the rest stop, would anyone believe them? Would anyone care? How could the world un-see that hideous cloud and those poor, incinerated people? It seemed fears of Hiroshima were going to destroy Pods and Makers, even if a thousand tests proved them safe, and the blast today was an evil fraud. Even if the killers confessed, the world would remember Coalinga, and it would tremble.