“We’re leaving now,” I said with a small smile, “or at least as soon as I wake up.”
Zach frowned at me. “But you’re not really sleeping now.”
“I’m not?”
“You’re something else,” he said, and he didn’t mean it the way it came out. “You’re…unconscious. What’s happened, Sophie?” The last question was barked out urgently.
“You knew about the sword being thrown, but you don’t know about the other?” I asked. “What kind of cut-rate dream is this anyway?”
“You don’t share everything,” he said. “You keep some things to yourself because you’re not sure if you should tell me. Still trying to keep me safe, even from thousands of miles away?”
“How was I supposed to know that a bullet would go through the side of the bubble?” I asked, but it was mostly a complaint.
Zach stared at me. There was horror in his eyes. “Someone shot you…with a gun? You’re hurt? Where did it hit you?” Of course, it wasn’t odd that he didn’t ask why a gun would suddenly work in our weird little realm.
“The bulletproof vest deflected the first one,” I replied evasively. “And the doctor didn’t seem too worried about the second one.”
“Oh my God,” he whispered. His hands roamed over me. “Someone shot you, and you’re joking about it.”
“That’s a good thing, Zach, believe me,” I said with a sigh. I could smell his purely masculine scent in my head. He always smelled so good, but then, almost everything was good about Zach. Except, of course, when he went all protective he-man macho. Like he was rapidly becoming in my dream.
“I don’t see anything,” he muttered as he looked over me. His hands gripped my shoulders, lightly squeezing. It should have hurt, but it wasn’t at the moment.
I looked down. I was wearing the black Goth dress. It wasn’t ripped or torn or mussed and the fishnet stockings were whole. Maybe I even had the makeup on, and it was unsullied. Maybe goats will fly with rainbows shooting out of their butts. (I shouldn’t make assumptions. It was possible there really were flying butt-shooting-rainbows goats around somewhere now. In fact, it might even be more than possible.)
When I looked back up, Zach was wearing a tux. It was the nicest tux I had ever seen. But Zach was like Lulu, he could wear a gunnysack and make it look good.
“What the hell are you wearing?” he demanded. “And your hair has been cut.”
“There was a party,” I said. “It got a little out of hand. I sort of, um, killed the host. That’s a surefire way of ruining a shindig. Of course, the host was already halfway there.”
Zach stared at me.
“Now we’re all fleeing D.C.,” I added, not knowing whether or not to stop talking. “We’re stealing a train, although I could argue that it doesn’t really belong to anyone now. Yes,” I nodded my head firmly, “it doesn’t legally belong to anyone. I don’t think anyone could argue about that.”
“You’ve been shot, you killed someone, and you’re stealing a train,” he summarized as if detailing the plot of a movie.
“Don’t forget that I destroyed the doomsday device by throwing a sword at it,” I said.
“No, I got that part already,” he said in an odd voice. “That shouldn’t have worked.”
“You have to have that sixth sense that tells you exactly where the end of the sword needs to go in order to kill the machine,” I said very slowly, “also the ability to throw the sword in a way that hits that exact spot.”
“Which you have and that you did,” he said just as slowly.
“Yes.”
“Was that before or after you got shot?”
“After.”
“And before or after you killed someone?”
“That was before.” I smoothed my hands over his cheeks. He had the best high cheekbones. He should have been a model, but of course, I was biased. “I think you had to be there.”
“Is there anything else I should know?”
“One of the pixies is dead. She was killed by the man I killed.” My voice was numb as I relayed the last part.
Zach’s horror was palatable. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I’m so damned sorry.” He tucked my head into his shoulder and let me rest it there.
Then Zach reared back and stabbed me in the collarbone with a scalpel.
Chapter 23
Plan? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Plan!
One moment Zach was stabbing me with something very sharp and very painful. The next, my eyes were open, and several people were holding me down while Ignatius dug around near my clavicle with a scalpel. I was not a happy camper.
“If you’re going to wear a bulletproof vest,” Ignatius gritted while he probed, “then the full vest is the way to go.”
“It didn’t go with the dress,” I said, “so I had to make some adjustments, and it did stop one bullet.”
“Hold that torch a little closer,” Ignatius directed to someone else.
Lulu leaned in with the torch. Flames flickered as a breeze swept against them. “That’s going to scar,” she said. I took it as a good sign that she didn’t sound overly alarmed.
Firefly pixies flittered around us, avoiding the torch and Ignatius while he worked around my collarbone. They didn’t seem overly agitated either.
Someone wiped perspiration from my forehead with a wet cloth. The temperature wasn’t hot, but I was sweating like a kid caught red-handed with spray paint inside the principal’s office. I allowed my eyes to look around, trying to distance myself from what the doctor was doing. It was dark except for some lanterns and torches. People and animals milled around, waiting, watching us. Some others were directing individuals around. I could hear the whistle and whine of a heavy wind outside. “Where are we?”
“At the train station,” Ignatius said. “They’re loading everyone they can. Craig is disabling the other train.” As if on cue, I heard a distant, “Yeah, baby! Fix that without a mechanical engineer!”
I started.
“Oh, don’t worry. I heard Craig say that they could fix it in a few days,” Lulu said, from behind Ignatius. “Sophie’s just worried about the people who’ve started to depend on the regular trains now,” she added to someone else. That was sort of true, but how Lulu knew, I didn’t know.
I looked up and saw Clora above me. Her carroty hair spilled over her shoulders and framed her face. My head was resting in her lap. I could feel the movement of her child against the top of my skull. “The kid’s hopping,” I said.
“My daughter,” Clora said. “Try to control your breathing, Sophie.”
I realized I was panting, and my heart was pounding in my chest.
I focused on breathing in through my mouth and out through my nose. Controlled movements that would center my frazzled brain. “I was having such a good dream until you started doing stuff with a sharp implement, Ignatius.”
“The bullet has got to come out,” Ignatius said, digging a little. I groaned, and he snapped, “Try not to move.”
“Let’s reverse the situation and see how you do, Doc,” I snarled promptly.
“I have morphine,” he suggested. “A shot would knock you out. But I don’t want to risk any complications.”
“Do you remember the bones, Ignatius,” I asked.
“Of course I do.”
“What bones?” Clora asked.
“Bones we found that were sliced in two,” I said shortly. It didn’t stop Ignatius from moving something around from the area directly under my clavicle. It didn’t stand to reason because it wasn’t like the flesh was thick there.
“I think the bullet is stuck in the anterior sternoclavicular ligament,” Ignatius said, wiping his forehead with his forearm and avoiding touching anything but me with his hands. “I wish I had my books or my iPad. I’m used to dealing with dead people who don’t meander and cause some kind of WWIII, Dungeons and Dragons style. They burned down the embassy with a giant ray gun, for Christ’s sake. A giant freaking ray gun.”
&
nbsp; “Sorry to disappoint you,” I muttered.
“What about the bones?” he snapped after a moment.
“Did you happen to notice how bullets and electricity worked back at the Naval Observatory? Also directed-energy weapons?”
“It was hard to miss,” Ignatius replied with all the gravity of a man with severe constipation. He looked over his shoulder at someone I couldn’t focus on. “Kid, give me that other tool there. The one with the little pinchers on the end. No, that one on the end.”
Prosper handed something to Ignatius, and Ignatius dropped the first tool in an effortless movement. “Don’t put that back,” the doctor said. “It’s dirty now.”
“It’s like a bubble,” I said. “A place where tech works, where the change didn’t happen. That’s why it worked there and only there.”
“But why there?” Lulu asked.
“I saw the Native American again,” I said, “the one from Sunshine, Colorado.”
“The one who thinks he’s a god,” Lulu said. Her head shot up, and she looked around as if Bansi would be standing nearby and watching them.
“Not everything is cut and dried. We have magic in this world. There used to be magic in our world, too. All the legends we have are based on mostly fact. But humans took over and lost the magic or dampened it or did something to it. Something brought it back, but technology has its own magic. It’s always had its own magic.”
“Like the Naval Observatory,” Ignatius said. “You mentioned Sunshine, Colorado before. You asked if I knew anything about it.”
“Sunshine, Colorado,” Prosper repeated. “Huh.”
“It’s another bubble,” I said. “We saw the remnants of people who had survived there and then tried to leave. Tech works there just like the Naval Observatory. It can be used for bad, like Maston used the directed-energy weapon, or it can be used for limited technology. It’s a place that we should utilize. And anyone who was left inside.”
“Like Maston,” Ignatius said. “That’s why he vanished. He was there the night of the change.”
“Like a lot of other people,” I said.
“And somehow he managed to stay inside it. Perhaps he was able to map out the perimeter.”
“Other people tried to leave and they vanished,” I said, “or, at least the part of them that left the bubble vanished.”
“You mean, if Corbin Maston hadn’t been sleeping at the Vice President’s house that night, he would have gone like all the rest?” Clora asked.
I gazed up at Clora while Ignatius used the tool he had just received. It spread the little metal ends inside the wound, and I gasped with the abrupt onslaught of pain surging through me.
The baby thumped against my cranium, making herself very well known. It was almost like the child was trying to get my attention and she had. What Zizi had said about Clora was now forefront in my mind. I had known about people who had died before they’d died. Thad and Max had been sent to replace a sign directing survivors to the Redwoods Group. The Burned Man had killed them. I had seen it but too late to make a difference. I had foreseen Zach’s death, and I had been able to change it. I had a vision of the deaths of all the people in the Redwoods Group and I had been able to make a difference. The vision of Lulu’s bloody corpse hadn’t come to pass because I had been willing to put bulletproof vests on both of us, and I had thrown her off the stage before she could have been shot. Yet I hadn’t seen anything about Flowers, and it bothered me.
I could have done something, but I hadn’t been given the chance.
The baby moved again. Insistent. Ready to emerge into the world and to make her mark. What would it be like for her to grow up without a mother?
“How long will it take us to get to Colorado?” I gritted.
“I’d have to ask Craig or Stephen,” Lulu said. “If all things go well, maybe three or four days? A week maybe?”
“Get these people and animals on the train as soon as possible,” I said, “and—” Ignatius pushed down and I felt something pop. I was honestly so relieved that I passed out again.
* * *
Gideon was there in my dream. He was still long and lanky with freckles and the same color hair as Clora. They could have been brother and sister for all I knew. She had brown eyes and he had blue.
I glanced down because I hoped I wasn’t wearing the black Goth dress or the princess dress. Thankfully, I was wearing a plain t-shirt and jeans. My feet were bare and digging into the Californian surf. Gideon was dressed much the same way, looking out over a bright coastal scene. We were standing on a beautiful beach looking over a spectacular surf breaking on the rocks.
“Sophie,” he said. He grinned, and he suddenly looked like a fifteen-year-old boy again. But he was probably sixteen by that time. Old enough to drive, I thought dryly. But only in a tech bubble.
I sat on the sand, with my toes digging holes in the cold wet sand. It might have been a spring day, but the water was always going to be chilly on this part of the coast. “Gideon,” I said, “not that I don’t mind seeing you, but I’d rather be dreaming about Zach.”
Gideon’s grin grew wider. “I understand that, but it’s good to see you again. You look different, Sophie. You look like you’ve grown up.”
“I have.” And I had. The demons that had been chasing me were gone, or at least the metaphorical ones were gone. I wasn’t sure what McCurdy was going to do or not going to do.
“I had to hijack Zach’s dreamtime with you,” Gideon said as his grin faded away.
“You had to what?”
“You know Zach’s got the dream link with you,” Gideon said.
“I do?” I was confused. I had dreamed of Zach many times. Once, I knew I had been connected to him because he had shown me what life had been like with his beloved child. I had seen the single photograph of Zach, his then-wife, Lila, and their infant son, Daniel. Like many survivors, Zach had lost everyone. Except for me. He had dreamed about me.
Gideon clicked his tongue. “The farther you got away, the harder it was for Zach to connect with you. Then there was something interfering. Zach was about to pull his hair out because he couldn’t ‘talk’ to you.”
I think if it hadn’t been a dream, I would have blushed within an inch of my life. I had envisioned Zach dressed as Prince Charming. Could I have been anymore sillier? No, I don’t think so.
“I’ve been a little dense about those dreams,” I admitted. “I got embroiled in this other situation, Gideon. I’m sorry to say it’s going to impact all of us.”
“You did what you had to do, what you thought was the right thing to do,” Gideon said firmly.
I nodded. “I wouldn’t go back and redo it, if that’s what you’re not-asking.”
“I wouldn’t expect any less of you, Sophie.”
“I’ll explain it to you when I see you, Gideon. All of it.” I squished my toes in the cold wet sand and enjoyed the gritty feel against my toes. It made me forget for the moment. I could only wish for Zach to be here. But Gideon had needed to speak to me.
“What do you need to talk about, Gideon?” I asked, trying to focus. It was a little hard to do. Something was interfering with the way the dream was working. It felt soft and muzzy around the edges. Any minute and I was going to start singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
“You have to hurry, Sophie,” he said. And the wind began to blow. In fact, it blew Gideon away, and the world began to change colors.
* * *
I opened my eyes and knew we were on a boat, and I even had a good idea where we were at the moment. Somehow we had come across Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and the bottom little corner of Michigan. Somewhere we were bobbing along in the new and improved Lake Michigan. The world was like it was in the dream. The edges were blurred, and I didn’t feel so great.
Lulu slept in the bunk above me. I identified her by her hand holding the Ka-Bar hanging off the bunk, and she was snoring lightly. Nice to know a beautiful woman could snore. Rea
lly.
Across from me in another bunk was Clora. It was almost déjà vu. On the first trip across Lake Michigan, I had napped in a cabin with Clora rubbing her belly. Only that time, her belly hadn’t been so large.
“You have to hurry,” I said.
“What?” Clora asked.
“I know we didn’t fit everyone on this boat. Is it the same one?” I looked around and saw that I was no longer wearing the Goth dress. I was in an oversized t-shirt and sweats. I had pink fuzzy socks on my feet. I could feel the tug of bandages on my shoulder and the ache of a body that had been lying down too long.
“The Lackamoolah,” Clora confirmed with a smile. “Nice to see you with your eyes open. You’ve been ill. Infection. Ignatius cleaned it twice. Shots of antibiotics. He finally gave you some morphine because you wouldn’t stay down.”
“What happened to the rest of the group?” I asked. Now I understood why I was fuzzy.
“They split off around Fort Wayne, just like you insisted on. They’re going around the bottom of Lake Michigan, well, the new part, and headed for a rendezvous in Colorado. That town you were so adamant about.”
“Sunshine,” I said. “Did I do all that while I was half looped?”
“That’s it,” Clora said and added, “Omph. Baby girl is bouncing like a basketball today. Actually, she has been for days. I think she’s ready.”
“Ignatius keeping an eye on that?”
“Sure,” Clora answered, eying me curiously. “I don’t think he really wanted me on the boat, but it’s not like I’m going to swim across.”
Lulu groaned. “Now you wake up after we carried you to and fro. The doc says you’re better. Thank God you’re not issuing commands anymore.”
“How long has it been since we left D.C.?”
“Three days,” Clora said.
“Three days since the big event?” I was dismayed that I had missed so much, but on the other hand, they hadn’t stayed put, so we were going in the right direction. We had time but not a lot.
“Three days,” Lulu agreed.
Suddenly a swarm of luminescent green firefly pixies shot inside the room and surrounded me. “Soophee is awake!” Spring sang-yelled. The other pixies cheered and landed on my head. All eight of them. They crooned to me while I soothed them. Lulu leaned over and watched with a wistful smile.
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