by Mike Lupica
Even talking hurt, though one time Zach had said to his mom in a weak voice, “You should see the other guy.”
“I’m just grateful to see you,” she’d said. “You had a concussion, though what you’re feeling the most is two broken ribs. The doctors say those are going to hurt for a month or so, maybe more, no matter what they do for them.” His mom put a cool hand on Zach’s forehead and said, “Other than that, no permanent damage to my boy.”
Zach had closed his eyes again and let whatever medicine they were giving him take him until he was back to sleep again. He dreamed of his dad more than once, kept seeing his lips moving, knew that his dad was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t make out the words.
The dreams felt so real.
The next time Zach woke up, in the night, Dr. Vann was there.
“So how we doing?” Dr. Vann asked.
“A little less rap music inside my head.”
“Excellent.” He shined his small flashlight into Zach’s eyes, took his temperature again. “You’re a remarkably fast healer, my friend. Speaking of friends, I said your good-byes for the night to both friends and family. Miss Kate, by the way, thought she was getting ready to sleep on the floor next to your bed. I told her you’d be fine on your own.”
“And she listened to you?” Zach said. “Doc, you’re not just a healer. You’re a miracle worker.”
“Maybe I am. Now go to sleep.”
“I’m wide awake.”
Dr. Vann said, “Not for long.”
Zach closed his eyes. Maybe he would dream of his dad again.
“Zacman.”
It had to be a dream, had to be his dad talking to him. So at first he was afraid to open his eyes, afraid the dream would leave him, the way the good ones sometimes did right before you woke up in the morning.
“Zacman. I know you can hear me. Open your eyes.”
He turned toward the voice, groaning as he did, feeling the stab of his ribs.
He opened his eyes now in the half-light of the hospital room and saw that it wasn’t his dad talking.
It was Mr. Herbert.
He looked the same as he had out at Land’s End. Same jacket. Same old jeans. Same white hair.
Zach said, “How’d you get in here?”
The old man grinned. “You’ve got your ways of getting where you need to, I have mine.”
“I ran out of magic,” Zach said.
Mr. Herbert shook his head. “You’ve got all the magic you need, boy. More than you know and as much as your father. Yet let this be a lesson—you’re only fourteen. And you’re still human.”
“Had to be a better way for me to learn that.”
“No,” said Mr. Herbert, “this was exactly the kind of lesson you needed to learn to keep living. There’s a reason for everything, boy.”
“My head hurts too much to play this game,” Zach said. “What time is it, anyway?”
“’Bout four.”
“And you just walked past everybody and got in here?”
“Told you,” Mr. Herbert said. “I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve.”
“So you’ve got your own talents, too?”
“You’re the talent, boy. I’m more like your agent.”
“How lucky for me,” Zach said with a roll of his eyes, “you choosing me like this.”
“We don’t get to do the choosing, either one of us. Everything with a reason, everything with a purpose. But things are starting to speed up, which means you’re going to have to pick up the pace.”
Zach pictured himself reaching over and pushing his call button for a nurse, wondered if this strange man would simply disappear if somebody walked in on them.
But he didn’t reach. He was interested in what the man had to say.
“I kind of . . . facilitate things. I did it with your father when I found him on the street, and now I’m doing it with you.”
“What do you mean, when you found my dad on the street?” Zach said. “He never told me anything about that.”
“He was about your age,” Mr. Herbert said. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That’s another story for another time.”
Now Zach made himself sit up, not caring how much it made his ribs scream.
“Another person worried that I might get ahead of myself?” Zach said.
“Lower your voice,” the old man said.
“The reason I’m lying here like Humpty Dumpty is because I’m already ahead of myself.”
“You’re still way ahead of where I thought you’d be, and that’s a compliment.”
“Pardon me if I don’t thank you.”
“No thanks necessary, really. The big thing now is getting you better. And I’m not talking about your health, boy. I mean we’ve got to get you better at being you.”
The old man pushed his chair back, stood up.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Zach said, though they both knew he couldn’t do anything to stop him.
Mr. Herbert surprised him and sat back down. “You know,” he said, “there’s times, a look on your face, when I see the boy your father was. Or maybe it’s the man you’re going to become.”
Zach’s head was starting to throb again, more because of the conversation than the pills wearing off. But this was important.
“I get it by now,” he said to Mr. Herbert, “I get the little games you like to play with me, talking in circles, or riddles, or whatever it is you do.”
“They’re not riddles if you know the answers.”
“Stick it.”
It made the old man laugh again. “Now you really sound like your father.”
Zach closed his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he said.
“There will be a time when I’ll do that, when you’ll be on your own,” Mr. Herbert said. “But you’re not ready for that yet.”
“When was my dad ready?”
“He was older than you.”
“And when he was, you told him what he was up against?”
“I did,” Mr. Herbert said. “But when I first found him, when he was your age, I just told him about the life he was going to have, the wife and the son and all the rest of it. With him, there wasn’t quite the . . . urgency. He had a little time to grow up into what he became. What he was destined to be.”
The old man closed his eyes now, as if smiling at the memory of the young Tom Harriman. Then he snapped out of it.
“But like I keep trying to tell you: we don’t have that kind of time, Zacman. I just stopped by to make sure you were okay. It’s important you are.”
He got up, picked up his chair and placed it against the wall, walked across the room and put his hand on the doorknob. He stopped and turned around.
“You’re going to have to grow up fast, boy,” Mr. Herbert said. “Fast as you can move now.”
“And what happens if I don’t?”
“Simple,” Mr. Herbert said. “If you don’t, then they win.”
He held up a coin, what Zach knew instantly was a Morgan dollar, glowing in the dim light of the hospital room, and tossed it across the room.
Zach managed to reach up and catch it.
“Where . . . ?”
“You dropped it in the park, right after you got dropped on your head. I retrieved it for you.”
“You were there?”
“Sleep tight, Zacman,” the old man said.
Then he was gone.
24
ZACH closed his eyes again. But not to sleep. He needed to think.
The door opened. The sound of a man’s footsteps. Zach was afraid to look.
“There he is,” said a voice.
Uncle John.
“Hey,” Zach said.
“Zachary.”
“What time is it?”
“Little before four,” Uncle John said. “Sorry to wake you. But this couldn’t wait.”
“Have you been at the hospital the whole time?”
“Went home for a few hours of quic
k shut-eye. But I had to come back.”
“In the middle of the night?”
Uncle John said, “When I told your dad I’d look out for you, I understood it was going to be a full-time job.” He rubbed his face. Even in the dim light, Zach could see that Uncle John hadn’t bothered to shave in days.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Been better,” Zach said.
“I expect that you have,” Uncle John said.
Zach managed a grin. “That wasn’t the kind of knock-around day I had in mind.”
“Really? Could have fooled me. You seemed pretty eager to take on that beast.”
“No more eager than you were. No more than you seem now, sneaking in to see me at four in the morning.”
“Needed to see you, Zachary. I’ve been worried sick.”
“What about you? Last thing I remember, you had just gone up against a tree and lost. Are you okay?”
“Not my finest moment,” Uncle John said. “My back wasn’t too grateful, and I had a whopper of a headache for a while, but I wasn’t hurt too badly.”
He grabbed the same chair Mr. Herbert had used, sat down close to the bed.
“So tell me,” Uncle John said, “what did he want?”
Zach was taken off guard. “What did who want?”
“We both know who I’m talking about. I saw him come in and I saw him leave.”
This night just keeps getting stranger, Zach thought.
“Mr. Herbert, you mean?” Zach said.
John Marshall chuckled. “Is that what he’s calling himself now?”
“You know him?” Zach said. “Wait . . . that’s not his real name?”
“He goes by a lot of names. And yes, Zachary, I do know him. Unfortunately.”
“Who is he? I mean, really?”
Uncle John leaned forward and said, “Someone to be feared.”
“But he said he was a friend of Dad’s, that he knows how Dad died. Maybe even why.”
“He’s not your friend,” Uncle John said. “He wasn’t your dad’s friend, either. Believe me when I tell you: he’s nobody’s friend.”
“He calls me Zacman. Only Dad ever called me that.”
“I know.” Uncle John reached over, put his hand on Zach’s arm, gave it a squeeze. “He says a lot of things, and acts as if he knows more than he does, and that’s just a way of getting close to you, now that he knows you have powers.”
Zach’s eyes grew wide. Uncle John gave his arm another squeeze. In a voice barely above a whisper he said, “I know, Zachary. I know. About you and your dad. I know everything about your dad’s missions. He trusted me. Now I’m asking you to. Tell me what he told you.”
“Mr. Herbert.”
“We can keep calling him that, if you choose. There’s been a lot of names over the years. A lot of battles.”
“Battles?” Zach said. “Between who?”
“I don’t mean to sound cryptic, Zachary, but the answer is between us and them.”
Zach shook his head, hard. “That’s the thing,” he said. “That’s the stupid thing. Neither of you makes any sense. Mr. Herbert, or whoever he is, keeps talking about me and my powers, but he never says anything. I’m not stupid. I can see there’s some evil stuff going on. Now you talk about ‘us and them,’ which fits right in. Only, no one tells me who they are.”
“The ones your dad always called ‘the Bads,’ Zachary,” Uncle John said. “They’re real. And they’re going to keep coming because now they know you’re special in the same way your father was.”
“Yeah, I’m so special I ended up in the hospital. That giant took me down like I was a gnat. Why would they want me?”
“They know what I know, Zachary: that someday you’ll be better than them. Same as your father.”
“Same as my father?” Zach said.
“Yeah. Only he was a grown man battling other grown men. You’re still a boy, Zachary. Don’t rush this, no matter what that old man might tell you. Be the Zachary who downs cheeseburgers and runs the bases. And don’t believe a word that old man says.”
“Because you say so?”
It just came out of him. He was tired of being led around the ring like a pony, even if it was his Uncle John doing the leading now.
“Because,” Uncle John said, “even though he wants you to think he is on your side and was on your father’s side, he isn’t. And never was. He’s on the side of evil.”
Zach squeezed his eyes shut. Us versus Them. Good versus Evil. Good versus the Bads. What he really felt like in that moment was that it was him against the world, that nobody was on his side.
He yanked his arm away from Uncle John and said, “I don’t know who or what to believe anymore.”
“Believe me. And in me. The way you always have.”
Zach knew his voice was too loud, that he’d probably bring nurses with it.
But he didn’t care.
“I want my dad back!” Zach said. Shouting now. “He’d tell me what to do!”
“So can I,” Uncle John said. “After all, no one knew your dad better than me.”
At that moment, Zach wished more than ever that he’d known more about his father. That it wasn’t too late.
“Listen,” Uncle John said, “I didn’t just stop by to look in on you. I’m on my way to the airport for an early flight. Business trip. I didn’t want to disappear without saying good-bye.”
“When will you be back?”
“Hard to say,” Uncle John answered. “As soon as I can. You be careful while I’m gone, okay? Don’t go looking for any fights.”
Tell that to the fights, Zach thought. They’re the ones that keep looking for me.
25
ONE week later, Zach was back at school and feeling no pain. Yet questions never left his mind. Questions that had no answers.
Uncle John was still away, and now Zach’s mom was about to go out of town herself, on her longest campaign trip yet for Senator Kerrigan, up and down California, helping out with fund-raisers.
As usual, she was dressed and ready to go thirty minutes before the car taking her to the airport was scheduled to show up. She had told Zach this was the time when the campaign was getting fun, two weeks on the road and then back to New York to get ready for the big speech Senator Kerrigan was scheduled to make in Central Park. It was expected to be the largest political rally ever held by a presidential candidate in New York City.
When the driver called to say he was out front, she walked over and pulled Zach into an embrace.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” she said.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Mom. I’m fine now.”
“Keep it that way.”
Zach said, “This is real important to you, isn’t it?” Something crossed her face. A sad look Zach didn’t understand.
“More than you know,” she said. The elevator doors opened.
Two minutes later, Elizabeth Harriman was on the road.
It was a Saturday afternoon and Kate was at the movies with some girlfriends. Alba had gone grocery-shopping with a friend, another housekeeper in the building.
It was quiet in the apartment, and somehow the quiet made Zach restless, as if he needed to be outside. Not the kind of need that had sent him out into the night or to the reservoir to rescue Kate that day. He hadn’t felt that need—or any of his newfound powers—since he’d gotten out of the hospital.
He kept telling himself it was because he wasn’t completely healed yet, that his body wasn’t ready to go twelve rounds with the next giant who came along. And maybe that was part of it.
But Zach knew it was more. For the first time, he was afraid. Whatever the battles were that Uncle John had referred to, Zach knew one thing now: they were bigger than him.
A lot bigger.
One more time Zach wished for the power he didn’t have, that no one had—the power to go back in time, to make things the way they were. He wanted to go back and tell his dad not to get on
the plane, then sit down and ask him all the questions he couldn’t get answers to now.
He’d trade everything for that.
Zach didn’t go outside, afraid that no matter where he planned to go, he’d walk right back into Central Park and that trouble would be waiting for him again.
Instead he popped in one of his all-time favorite DVDs, The Man in the Iron Mask, getting lost in the adventures of the Musketeers. Zach sat in the den and watched the swordplay and got carried along by the story all over again, even knowing exactly how things were going to play out.
How they usually played out in the movies.
The good guys were going to win in the end.
When the movie ended, the quiet came back to the apartment, until he heard footsteps upstairs.
Had to be Alba. He’d had the sound up pretty good for the end of the movie and probably hadn’t heard her come in.
Zach called her name, his voice sounding way too loud in the quiet.
No reply.
Was he hearing things?
Or was he just feeling anxious about everything since he’d come home from the hospital?
“Alba? Kate? You guys home?”
Nothing.
He walked into the foyer, stood perfectly still and listened. More quiet. There were times when he wanted to turn down the volume in his life, especially when the three women of the place were all talking at once during dinner. But now he wanted them all back, wanted to feel less alone, wanted to hear the sound of a voice other than his own.
Feeling like an idiot, he walked through every room of the first floor. In the dining room, he looked into a mirror, at his own reflection, and said, “Boo!”
Feeling even more like an idiot, he went upstairs to his room.
His laptop was on.
Only . . . he hadn’t used it all day.
Downstairs, he heard the elevator doors opening and felt his heart pound. He froze. Then he heard Alba calling his name.
He was about to answer her when he looked back at his computer screen.
It was then that he saw the message.
Trust no one.
26
ZACH hadn’t told Kate about Mr. Herbert coming to the hospital or about Uncle John. He hadn’t told her that someone had snuck into the apartment and gotten on his computer and found yet another way to scare him.