Climatic Climacteric Omnibus

by L. B. Carter

  Ace blinked sleepy eyes at the floral curtains. The fan was blowing, and they danced in the air current, permitting a slit of bright light to sear straight into Ace’s retinas. He groaned and rolled over.

  “And quit moving.” The pillow that had been between their backs vanished, only to come flopping down on his head. “That should muffle you.” The bed bounced a little as Henley reoriented herself and heaved out a vexed sigh. He doubted she was going to sleep even if he made no noise. She sounded very stressed.

  He pulled off the pillow and stared at the darkened ceiling. “What’s wrong?” Ace’s low voice didn’t carry far.

  Still, she replied with, “Shh.”

  He sighed and closed his eyes again, drifting quickly. He felt more tired than before their nap.

  “Argh.”

  Ace jerked back awake.

  The bed groaned and creaked as Henley slid out of the covers and tiptoed over to the bathroom. The door gently clicked shut before the light shot on, beaming from the gap at the bottom. Even enraged, she was considerate of others.

  Ace had the whole bed to himself. He closed his eyes again.

  There was a clank in the bathroom, followed by some angry grumbling.

  He sighed again and got up quickly, having slept modestly, fully clothed, on top of the covers for decency’s sake. He padded over to the bathroom door. Shadows of feet blocked two areas of the light underneath. He stared at it, tipping his ear toward the door.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. Maybe the food wasn’t sitting well with Henley either. She was also used to cafeteria food rather than fast food. His was gurgling like an angry rodent.

  “Fine.”

  Ace waited a moment more then turned to give her some peace when he heard a sniffle. He didn’t believe coincidence could afford them the probability that fifty percent of their group had dust allergies. “Do you want to talk?” Never had he expected to say the words he used to be asked as a child.

  There was a burst of manic laughter that petered out into a sob. “Now you’re the one with questions? Annoying being on the reverse side, isn’t it?”

  “Those were questions,” Ace pointed out. There was a thump on the door, suggesting she did not appreciate his pedantic amendment. His mentor had disliked that quality as well, discouraging it to the point where Ace would utter as few sentences as possible during their meetings. Henley had been the only positive to those meetings; he could note how she was doing by watching in the waiting room. He had seen many internal emotions decoded on her face over the years. Never sorrow. “Why are you sad?”

  “I’m not sad.” Her tone bit through the soft sobbing. “I’m frustrated.”

  Now she was being pedantic. It was a bad emotion one way or the other. Although, Ace wasn’t sure he’d seen that expression either. She always seemed very confident. Sometimes she’d been disheartened by a set-back or new concern, but the resolve to fight some challenge in her work had set her dark eyebrows into a determined ‘V’.

  “Why are you frustrated?” he amended.

  “You. You frustrate me. This situation frustrates me. I frustrate me,” she listed off.

  “Do you regret assisting me? Would you have preferred to stay?” He had given her the note. He knew she hadn’t wanted to stay after he’d revealed the linguistic pedantry.

  “No,” she sulked. “That situation was less than desired, but that doesn’t mean I’m content in the current one either. And you are aware of that. Yet, you do nothing to fix that. It would be simple.”

  “It’s not simple,” Ace retorted vehemently.

  Someone in the other bed moaned and rolled around.

  “Can I come in?” He doubted Henley would be conversing with him while doing… other things.

  “I don’t want you to.”

  Ace took that as reluctant consent and opened the door.

  Henley sat in the bathtub, knees to her chest, eyes red and a wad of damp toilet paper in her good hand. Pitiful. She managed a forceful glower, dissipating any empathy from him. Frustration and ire were similar expressions. He already knew the latter from their earlier argument at the post office. She was making things difficult. He should be catching up on sleep before the next leg of their journey. Did he regret including her?

  He closed the door softly behind him and sat on the toilet. The room was small, and he seemed to take up more space than usual with Henley folded in such a small ball.

  She swiped the hem of her borrowed sweatshirt across her eyes. He averted his eyes from her exposed stomach. “What do you want from me?” It should have come out like a rhetorical dismissal, but she lacked the force she had used when facing him down earlier in the day.

  “I don’t want anything.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What do you need from me?”

  “Nothing.” Right now.

  Her brows pulled down, shadowing her eyes from view in the low-watt orange bulb’s overhead glow. “You said earlier that you need me. I’m not buying into Jen’s whimsical tales either.”

  “I do.” She opened her mouth, and he cut her off. “I need you. I need nothing from you.”

  “After only a few hours in your company, I have determined why you have no friends.” She shook her head, her face changing. It was still morose but now something else. “Jen’s fictional romance will always remain as such.” Pity. It was pity and incomprehension—not ignorance. As much as he had studied her over the years, her earlier remarks about his skill for tuning out background inanity proved that she had been aware of him. The discord was more of an inability to empathize with Ace. He was a problem she couldn’t solve.

  That brought Ace up short. Henley was excellent at psychology as far as he knew.

  “I cannot simply reveal everything. It is dangerous. Secrets are meant to protect. You might agree with that.”

  She shot him a sharp look, then relaxed and nodded. “From certain people—from all people, in some cases. However, I am of the mind in this situation that having your accomplices privy to the particulars might decrease the danger. Otherwise, we are liabilities.”

  Ace let out a breath. He had considered this, calculated the pros and cons, and decided on the latter. “I can give you one thing,” he offered to placate her. Henley was right that she was a liability in her current, combative condition. However, achieving a task did not require one to read the full text of a manual. She simply had to be willing to follow basic directions.

  She sniffed again, wiped her nose and tossed the toilet paper in the trash between them. “One per day?” she negotiated.

  She hadn’t specified what he exposed. He nodded his agreement and held out a hand to shake. She scrunched up her nose. “Have you washed those since the T?”

  Ace smiled and retracted his hand. “I can tell you that our final destination will enable you to accomplish your goal.”

  She sat up tall. “My fam—”

  “Shh,” he sliced a hand in the air chopping her sentence short.

  A grin spread over her face, nonetheless, lifting her eyebrows up her narrow forehead. He had seen exultation on her face previously when reporting to her mentor about surmounting one of the challenges that she had set her every intention on overcoming. In those instances, her smile had been wide and contagious. Ace had had to look away to avoid announcing he had been fixated on her with a corresponding smile. This one showed two rows of even teeth, and it seemed more impactful, being directed full-wattage, brighter than the lone bulb, at him. “I’ll accept that silencing because—”

  A scream from the other room froze them both where they were for only an instant, then they were launching out the door, Henley crashing into Ace’s back as he pulled up, taking in the two girls standing on their bed, the door flung wide open, a broad silhouette situated in the center of the rectangular influx of daylight, intruding into their hideaway.

  Chapter Five

  “Run.”

  With the unknown guy blocking the doorway and the window leading s
traight out to the pavement next to him, Henley turned without hesitation at Buster’s command and zipped back into the bathroom, climbing on the toilet seat and wedging open the small window. It only pushed opened halfway, refusing to budge beyond a crack angled toward the ground that she certainly couldn’t fit through—maybe Sirena… if she hadn’t consumed all those fries. There was a hinged bracket connecting the pane to the building, which was preventing the window from moving further.

  The commotion in the other room—screams and smashing furniture and grunts—propelled her to act faster. She daren’t look behind her to know if Sirena and Jen had followed. It was each BSTU escapee for him- or herself.

  Henley didn’t have her usual workbench tools to unscrew it, and regardless, that would have taken too long, so she sent an apology to all her hard work, curled her fingers, and slammed her fist into the metal. It bent. She tried again, wincing at the crunch, not knowing how much damage it was doing under the glove. “Go, go, go,” she chanted to herself.

  “No!” Sirena screamed. There were thuds and smacks of flesh on flesh behind her.

  “Go!” she heard Buster shout, finally his calm rupturing like a fissure, which was exactly what had appeared in the pane with her latest effort.

  Henley gave up on the bracket. She decided it was either the same material as hers, or else the angle of her strikes while balancing on her unusual step-stool was just awkward enough to dilute the force.

  Henley yanked the window shut again, jerking it a few times when the damaged hinge didn’t slide smoothly, turned her head to the side, and smashed her fist through it. A clatter of shards showered down on the porcelain and tile. She shook off her arm, and a few more slivers tinkled to the floor. Consigning her glove to shreds, she tapped out the few remaining pieces jutting from the frame and hoisted herself up.

  She tried not to slide on her abdomen, given that the sharp pain to her stomach meant a few sharp glass fragments remained. However, she had little to no upper body strength. Her jaunts to the gym at BSTU had been limited to the first year or two before her research consumed her schedule and a few mornings a month at best. She had been years away from doing a pull-up at her rate.

  Hair in front of her face, she wasn’t sure what was below, having trusted Buster’s perimeter walk of the building before bed.

  She did not have time to wrestle her hands free to remove the obstruction to her vision or to try another muscle-straining heave because, without warning, the clamor behind her faded, and a sudden shove to her behind sent her tumbling with a yelp she tried to stifle. She slammed with a winding thud onto her back upon something that cushioned far, far less than a water bed would have.

  Henley didn’t move, trying to encourage her lungs to re-inflate. A second thud announced someone landing beside her. Now was the time to breathe and get away. All she managed was a pitiful roll onto her side, fingers scrabbling at grass. A wheezing grunt escaped unexpectedly. It had felt as though her body was void of air.

  “Don’t move yet.” Buster. It was Buster. He wasn’t yelling but his tone had not returned to calm. It was even deeper and wound overly tight like a stripped screw.

  She needed to get up. Run. Henley forced a tiny inhale, as though through a straw rather than the full width of her esophagus, and seemed to seep out the word, “Safe?”

  “No.”

  Without ado, she was hefted and tossed over his shoulder fire-man style. He took off. If it wasn’t safe, she would have anticipated a run. In the case of the Bus, the loping stride made more sense. It also allowed her to, breath by breath, huff more oxygen into her system rather than being jostled around with pressure on her diaphragm. On the other hand, his shoulder was digging into the fresh glass wounds on her stomach.

  “Down,” she demanded, once she no longer felt lightheaded or like her chest was in a clamping vice.

  He dropped her unceremoniously and kept walking. She jogged to catch up as they neared the end of the building, closest to the main office.

  “Wait.” He held up a hand.

  She halted behind him while he peered around the building. “Can’t you use the cameras like you did in Faneuil?” Henley whispered, worrying her bottom lip and tugging at the flaps of fabric that had been ripped loose from her glove.

  “No,” he answered distractedly.

  Henley didn’t waste time asking why not. He wouldn’t answer even if they weren’t cowering in a dire situation. “Can you see them?” She pulled the mangled glove off her bad hand, leaving her modified one somewhat covered, and shifted pointer and middle finger to her throat, feeling her pulse crash through her jugular. Far too fast than should even be considered for cardio. Panic continued to throttle her body.

  “No.”

  “Then let’s make a run for it!”

  “No.”

  “The car. I can jump it again.” She started around Buster, only to have his arm slam her in her recently impaired chest, knocking an oomf from her.

  “We can’t use it.”

  She rolled her eyes. There was so much adrenaline whipping around her veins she felt like jumping up and down, while he methodically analyzed the parking lot. “I think they’ve already found us if you’re worried they’ll recognize it.”

  “It’s unavailable,” he bothered to explain, hurriedly.

  “Unavailable?”

  “This way.”

  He took off toward the foliage behind the motel.

  “Are they coming?” Buster didn’t answer, so Henley fell into step behind him.

  Every now and again, her head would crank over her shoulder involuntarily at every phantom noise and feeling of being watched that snagged her invigorated imagination. She quickly overpassed, the adrenaline powering a brisk walk, her arms swinging like a professional fast-walker, though she had to alter her rhythm once they began to detour over roots, around trees and under branches.

  The Bus, of course, bulldozed right through, carelessly kicking up dead leaves with a rustle and snapping twigs.

  “Do you do anything quietly?”

  “No.”

  She restrained the eye roll as she needed to keep her focus on the uneven ground. “They’re going to hear us.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t no me. Yes, they will.”

  “They’re gone.”

  Henley stopped. “What? They’re gone? Then why are you having us traipse around in the woods, might I ask?”

  “You may not. Keep moving.”

  She didn’t. He shouldered past her. “Why are we hiding if they’re not there? Wait. Where are Sirena and Jen?” Her voice rose at the end.

  He chuffed. “Now you notice? I thought you were perceptive.”

  She harrumphed. “I was a little distracted being shoved out a tiny window and falling on my ass and then being carried cave-man style and then—” Henley’s voice was becoming shrill. “—worrying about who was around the corner and running again into an unknown forest! Thank you very much.”

  “You are very welcome.”

  “For what?” she screeched.

  “Now who’s being loud? For rescuing you.”

  She seethed.

  A moment passed.

  “I didn’t know you were capable of swearing. I had categorized that as a Jen characteristic.”

  “If the situation calls for it,” Henley sniffed. It seemed like something he condemned as truly dirty or inappropriate, and she felt a little chagrin for disappointing him. She shook off the unwanted feeling.

  Henley surrendered and chased after him, not bothering to silence her steps. In fact, she stomped noisily, intentionally walking through twigs and piles of leaves. She swiped up a branch from the floor and vociferously snapped it. Bit. By. Bit.

  “Your point is acknowledged,” Buster intoned and said no more.

  “We should talk since silence is not enforced. In fact, now is an excellent time to answer my questions.”

  “No.”

  This was a good idea. Since the Bus wa
s so monosyllabic, Henley just needed to phrase her questions as yes-or-no requiring. “What about questions regarding our current issues, like: Did they take Sirena and Jen?”

  “Yes and no.”

  So much for that being useful. “Which to which question? Yes, you’ll answer questions about our current issues, and no, they didn’t take them? Did they head this way, and we’re just catching up?”

  “No.”

  “To whi—?”

  “To both questions.”

  “Oh.” Henley dropped the remainder of stick, ruminating on their loss. “Are we still running?”

  “Yes and no.”

  She gave a scream of frustration. That certainly followed the rule of not-being-quiet. “That wasn’t even two questions! Two separate answers is non-sequential. Do you even know where we’re going?” Henley walked backward to study Buster’s face. It gave away nothing. He could be stationed in Faneuil hall and have people stare at him all day, and they’d be none the wiser that he wasn’t a statue …or an android for that matter. The street performers there had used about the same number of words to speak to her that Buster favored.

  “We are attempting to catch up if you stop diverting us.”

  “Diverting! I’m simply asking you to keep me apprised of our current goal. You are being diverting.” She jabbed a finger at him like a lance, and his eyes dropped to it for a moment. Hers followed.

  The tattered glove was showing glimpses of the material beneath.

  She crossed her arms, sliding it almost into her armpit with the force of her thrust, and swiveled back to the ostensibly random direction in which Buster was aiming.

  Suddenly, Buster detoured sharply to the left, nearly running her over. Henley quickly adjusted her path and paralleled his movement again. His head was tilted, squinting as though he could see something in the distance.

  “What?” She mimicked his pose. All she could see was earthy colors.

  “Shh.”

  “Oh, now I have to be quiet. You are the most infuriating, inconsistent hypo—”

  Stopping his march, Buster’s hand slapped over her mouth. She glared over his palm, but he wasn’t looking at her, his gaze on the trees ahead.