The radio let out a big squelch.
Laura responded with a yelp, even though all that came through the speaker was fingernails-on-a-blackboard static.
“Thanks a lot,” mumbled Sayers to Fixer. “Now we get to listen to that wherever we’re going… .”
Suddenly, the physician laughed.
“What’s so funny, Doc?” asked Aurora.
“Wherever we’re going,” chuckled Sayers. “Does anyone have a clue where the hell that might be?”
Joad didn’t have an immediate suggestion. Neither did any of the others. Laura kept fooling with her squawking radio as the debate began anew, the results of which proved no better than the previous day’s.
“C’mon people, how hard can it be?” lamented Fixer. “We’ve only got four possible ways to go: north, south, east, west.” He looked around. “Here’s an idea—why don’t I count to three and all of us just point in a direction. One with the most votes wins.”
Aurora and Sayers said they thought that sounded good. Laura said she was too busy with the radio to get involved. When they asked Joad, he said he’d abstain to avoid a tie. Fixer counted to three and they all pointed in different directions: east, west, and north.
“Does that mean we go south?” asked Joad, cracking a smile.
“… testing … why the hell do I even bother with this thing … ?”
Joad whirled around, as did the other three adults; that wasn’t Laura’s voice they were hearing.
It sounded like a teenage boy. And it came out of the speaker on Laura’s ham radio.
Joad motioned for the stunned Laura to grab hold of the mic and respond. She picked it up and pressed the button.
“Um, who’s this?” she asked.
There was more static. Laura fiddled with the dial just in time to hear the voice come over the speaker again.
“… Daniel. Who’s this …?”
The settlement called Promise was about a half day’s ride east of Nemo. The boy’s voice led them on their journey, five on horseback, the extra jet-black pack horse alongside. His voice would weave in and out, and whenever the radio would lose the signal, Laura would fiddle with the tuning or have Fixer give the cells an extra blast. Sayers thought the two of them were like their very own cell tower.
He also considered it too good to be true.
Four dozen Remaining living together in the middle of nowhere? Most of them for almost four years, Daniel had said in response to their questions. When Aurora asked if there was room for five more people, Daniel said they pretty much welcomed all comers.
Sayers knew there was a catch.
“Pretty much?” Sayers asked, riding close enough for the radio mic to fling the question to wherever Promise was.
“We don’t want any undesirables, if you get my meaning,” was the response between blasts of static.
Up until a few days ago, I could have introduced you to four doozies, thought Sayers.
“You folks sound just fine, though,” said Daniel. “You’ll check in with Rock. You pass muster with him, you’re good to go.”
The transmissions were fewer and farther between after that. The cells Laura had removed from the cymbal-clanking chimp were definitely on the ancient side and having trouble holding Fixer’s charge. They kept their contact with Daniel brief and only about navigating them safely to Promise.
The quintet picked up their pace, sticking to the abandoned highway. They passed long-forgotten fields of wheat and groves of trees that must have gotten enough rain to keep blossoming. Sayers got worried when they didn’t see a roaming Remaining or a single sign of civilization. He wondered if this were yet another big tease, or if maybe the brothers had impossibly returned from the grave, with one last surprise up their sleeves.
Laura saw it first. “Over there!”
A sign.
It had originally read: HAPPY PROMISES. OUTLET MALL AND FOOD. 10 MILES DUE EAST.
Someone had changed it, much like the sign at the Nemo city limits.
But instead of being obliterated in a spray-paint burst of anger and disdain, this one was altered with surgical care. Letters had been covered up with opaque paper, leaving a much simpler proclamation.
PROMISE. 10 MILES EAST.
And it was indeed.
The next sign said PROMISE as well. Below it was the word WELCOME.
It hung on an old telephone pole just off the main highway. Sayers presumed it had been fashioned from a billboard that greeted shoppers arriving to the mall before The Seventh Day.
Sure enough, some five hundred yards off the road were multicolored facades, looking like a movie set plopped down in the middle of the desert. The physician figured that was probably the idea back in the day: a rest stop for the weary traveler to get some grub and pick up secondhand designer items for one third the price. Now, they looked like refurbished homes; even this far away he could see how what had once been a Coach or Cole Haan boutique had been transformed into housing for the Remaining.
A large man came up a side road on horseback.
Sayers presumed this was the one Daniel had been talking about.
Rock.
He motioned for Sayers and his four companions to dismount.
“No cause for concern,” said the man. “We do this with all Remaining who come to Promise.”
There was something familiar about his voice.
About the man as well.
As they dismounted, Rock’s eyes kept coming back to focus on Sayers. The man stopped in his tracks, lifted a finger, and pointed it at him.
“I know you.”
Sayers now realized why Rock seemed so familiar. And remembered the last time he saw him.
On The Seventh Day. When he’d left him bleeding in the dirt behind home plate at Coors Field.
Rock was the catcher.
44
Great.
Barely one day removed from the brothers, and Sayers had dragged them into another mess. Joad thought maybe he would have been better off staying in Nemo.
Rock, the man evidently assigned the task of deciding between those who gained admittance to Promise and who was sent on their way, kept advancing toward the physician.
“It is you, isn’t it?” he simultaneously asked and declared.
Sayers nodded, barely able to speak. “Yes… .”
“I’ve been looking for you for years.”
The man appeared to be in excellent shape. He reminded Joad of a normal- sized Secundo; if he had half the strength and same temperament as the blond brother, this figured not to end prettily.
Aurora stepped closer to Sayers. “Doc, you actually know this man?”
Overly protective. Concern in her voice. Oh yeah, definitely together, thought Joad. He wondered what he was going to have to do to keep them that way.
Rock stopped in his tracks. “Doc? You’re a doctor?”
“I am. Well, I mean I was. I gave it up after The Seventh Day.”
“That explains a lot,” replied Rock.
The man moved quickly towards Sayers—and threw his arms around him. Joad’s jaw dropped as Rock lifted Doc and bounced him up and down.
“This man saved my life!” Rock cried out.
“I did?” The words came out in a breathless huff. Sayers was apparently in shock, along with having his wind knocked out by Rock’s exuberant hug.
Fixer had been standing beside Joad, watching the bizarre exchange. “How is that even possible? Where was that possible?”
Rock finally let go of Sayers and faced the others. “On The Seventh Day. At Coors Field in Colorado.”
Sayers kept staring at the man, incredulously. “But I left you there, lying behind home plate in a pool of blood.”
Laura’s eyes filled with sudden understanding. “You’re the catcher.”
Catcher? Coors Field? Joad must have missed this story. Somebody was going to have to fill him in. At least the tension around the entrance to Promise seemed to be evaporating quickly.
>
Rock smiled. “That’s right. I’m the catcher.” He glanced back at Sayers. “Well, I was the catcher. Started five years for the Rockies—which is why folks ’round here have taken to calling me Rock. Even though my name’s really Frank.”
Joad could see Sayers was still confused.
“I don’t understand. I thought I’d killed you.”
“So did I,” answered Rock, the catcher formerly known as Frank.
The crazed fan had picked up the baseball, whirled around, hurled it directly at Frank’s face, and fled.
He tried to get out of the way, but the ball smacked into the back of his head. There was a horrible gushing sound and after he fell, Frank brought his hand up to feel his skull, which was drenched in blood.
He gasped for dear life and tried to scream, but it came out in a blood-filled gurgle.
He could feel his breath slipping away with the daylight.
Then, the maniacal fan was back, hovering over him. Frank tried to back away, but the man grabbed him.
What did this crazy guy want? Wasn’t it bad enough he’d already split his head open with a fastball, and that his brains were leaking all over the diamond?
The fan bent down—and checked his pulse.
Frank lay across home plate, feeling a wave of energy pass through him.
The pain in the back of his head simply vanished.
As did the fan. After muttering over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
By the time Frank leapt to his feet, the man had raced into the stands and disappeared.
“Don’t leave me! Please—don’t leave me!” Frank cried.
His plea bounced off the ruined stadium walls, and echoed up into the Rocky Mountains.
Once more, Frank felt the back of his skull. It was as smooth and unfettered as when he’d stepped out of the shower before heading to the ballpark.
Minutes later, he found a cracked mirror on the wrecked clubhouse floor. He angled it to see the back of his head.
There was not a mark to be found.
Ships from outer space.
Now this.
Maybe he was having a nervous breakdown.
Rock, a.k.a. Frank, the former starting catcher for the Colorado Rockies, finished his story.
“Obviously, I wasn’t. I didn’t know that back then, but I do now.”
Joad turned to Sayers and grinned. “And you said you’d never healed anyone before.”
Dinner that night was part welcome, part celebration—all happy. Rock invited the five of them to his place, a former Burberry outlet, for the evening meal. Joad thought it odd to be sitting in the onetime clothing store, its walls still lined with the trademark beige, red, and purple plaid fabric. The space had been converted into an eating area, sleeping corner, and a place to congregate and swap stories of the post-Seventh Day world.
Aurora said it reminded her of the cozy Funland castle; she shed a tear as she recalled her former home. Rock explained how he had spent a number of years salvaging different pieces of furniture from places he ventured; in exactly the same way Aurora had put her home together.
Laura sat beside Daniel, the teenage boy she had met on the radio. He was six months older, blond, and fresh-faced, and gabbed at a hundred miles a minute. He had come with his mother, a sweet woman named Mary, who was as quiet as he was a babbler. Daniel was thrilled to have company his own age; there were only a few other kids in Promise, but they were either older or younger. Rock said the settlement’s first baby had been born only a few months before—quite the harried experience, both for the mother and the Remaining that helped her get through it.
“Now that you’re here, maybe that won’t be such an ordeal,” Rock said to Sayers.
“I was a pediatrician. I really didn’t deliver babies.”
“I bet you know a lot more than Waters, who helped bring little Steven into the world. He used to be a florist.”
Everyone laughed and continued to enjoy the meal of fresh vegetables, grown in a garden by the old Gucci outlet, and cooked chicken. A former farmer named King had been breeding them for about three years now in a converted Ralph Lauren Polo shop, having made it a virtual henhouse.
Fixer asked Rock how he ended up in Promise, but the former ballplayer said there was no huge tale to tell. After leaving the wreckage of Coors Field, he headed east because it was downhill, as opposed to heading west, farther up into the Rocky Mountains. He had wandered across The Flats for a long time, until he stumbled across Promise, which was in shambles and had been pillaged for everything and anything worth taking. There had only been a dozen Remaining when he arrived, but they welcomed him with open arms. His athletic prowess made him a natural to help convert the former outlet mall into an inhabitable community.
“Did you go through the Fields?” asked Laura.
Rock shook his head. “I stayed clear of those. I’d heard the stories and took the long route around.”
This opened the door for Laura and Fixer to regale Rock, Mary, and Daniel with their adventures in that mystical place; Joad could tell that the Promise residents were totally enthralled. By the time they got to the destruction of Funland and the final confrontation in Nemo, Rock, and the others’ mouths were agape in seemingly permanent awe.
Finally, Rock turned to Aurora and Sayers. “So, the two of you aren’t married? I would’ve thought you were together.”
“Oh, they’re together,” said Laura.
Everyone looked at the young girl. Sayers got defensive immediately. “What are you talking about?”
“C’mon, Doc. I’m twelve years old. Not six.”
Everyone laughed, even Doc. Joad let loose the biggest smile he had in ages. The girl never ceased to amaze him.
“And how do you feel about that?” Aurora carefully asked. “Me and Doc?”
“I think it’s great,” Laura replied, grinning. “I only wish the two of you were married. You’d be like the best stepmom, ever!”
So that was how, a few days later, Aurora and Sayers came to stand in front of Joad to be joined as man and wife. With a beaming Laura by their side, and the Remaining of Promise looking on, the former reverend of Nemo conducted a brief but emotional ceremony that united the couple in holy matrimony.
Sayers had come to Joad late that first night, and asked if he would be willing to marry them.
“Nothing would please me more,” Joad had said. “The only happier person is that little girl of yours. And she is yours.”
“I know. Believe me, I’ll never forget that.”
He asked Doc if they intended to remain in Promise.
“If they’ll have us. These seem like good people. I know I’m tired of moving. I think Laura is too.”
Joad knew the feeling. He hadn’t felt settled since leaving Nemo for his goodwill tour. But standing outside the former Burberry store, only a few hours after arriving in Promise, Joad sensed that familiar restlessness creeping back in. He wasn’t happy about it, and was relieved when the physician switched subjects.
Doc explained he was still trying to come to grips with his Gift. And that he couldn’t believe he’d healed a man so long ago without having any inkling he’d done so.
“The Strangers were barely gone when it happened,” said Joad. “At that point, there wasn’t a soul left on Earth who understood what they had left behind. Given the circumstances, I think you’re excused.”
Sayers seemed unable to let it go. “But why Rock? Why him and not Quattro? Why no one else since then? Like that bean guy—if I’m this Gifted healer, how come I didn’t just mend his broken arm?”
Joad didn’t have a definitive answer. He thought about Fixer and Laura’s Gifts, and even those belonging to Primo and Secundo. There was a common denominator behind them: extreme emotion. Fixer and Laura’s had come on in moments of extreme upheaval—Fixer burying his sister at sea, and Laura trying to deal with her mother’s death. The same could be said for the brothers—Primo’s turbulent emotions literally fue
led his storms, while Aurora had spoken of Secundo’s sudden show of strength when he lifted a fire truck off his brothers who had been squashed beneath it.
Joad shared this with Sayers, and asked if he could remember how he felt when checking the catcher’s pulse all those years ago.
“Of course I remember,” said Sayers. “I felt absolutely guilty and wished to hell I hadn’t thrown that ball at his head.”
“In other words, or in your exact words about Laura, you wanted him to get better more than anything else in the whole world,” offered Joad. “In that very moment.”
Sayers thought about it, then slowly nodded. “That’s exactly how I felt.”
“And I think it’s safe to say, you didn’t feel like that when trying to fix Quattro.”
“The same willingness to give up everything to make sure he was okay?” Sayers shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
Joad could see Doc getting ready to beat himself up about it again. “You shouldn’t blame yourself, Doc. One could argue the man didn’t deserve your Gift. Not with his brother standing there threatening your life, and you unaware of what you could do.”
He looked Doc in the eye. “But now that you do know, you can try to harness it; go to that place that Fixer goes when necessary. The same place frankly, that Primo went.” Joad looked back inside the converted Burberry store. “I think these people would be happy to have you.”
As were Aurora and Laura, Joad thought, when the wedding concluded and he told Sayers he should kiss the bride.
As Doc took Aurora in his arms and their lips came together, Joad was happy that this man, a truly good man, had finally been cut a break. He was certain that Doc, now aware of his Gift, would learn how to use it the way it was intended, reaffirming Joad’s feeling there must have been more than randomness to which Remaining the Strangers left behind.
Doc and Aurora bent down as one to hug and kiss an effervescent Laura. A huge cheer erupted from the people of Promise.
And suddenly, the Strangers were the farthest thing from Joad’s mind.
He let the love and joy of this newly formed family fill his heart. And for one moment, all seemed at peace in the changed world.
Joad was standing beneath the Promise welcome sign by the highway when Fixer approached him from behind.
The Seventh Day Page 36