Burning Sky

by Weston Ochse

  McQueen appeared at the door to her room, exhaustion in his eyes. He ran his right hand through his hair, then subconsciously smoothed his beard. He came over and plopped into the seat next to Starling with a groan.

  “How is she?” Starling asked. He glanced over to where Joon sat, curled up in a molded chair beside her son in his wheelchair.

  “BP and heart rate are now normal. She’s breathing unassisted. They gave her something to sleep, so she’ll be that way for a few more hours. We’ll know more when she wakes up.”

  “If she’s coherent,” added Starling.

  “Right. If she’s coherent.”

  “What was she on?”

  McQueen shook his head. “That’s the funny thing. She wasn’t on anything.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Tox screen came back clean.”

  “Then what was all that about?”

  McQueen shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Where’d you get that coffee?”

  Starling told him and McQueen shuffled off towards the nurse’s station.

  Starling remembered Lore in the last mission. They’d been attacked by an unidentified UAV, and she’d taken it down with an RPG. Another pair of UAVs had arrived, but they departed as soon as the first one was destroyed. Whomever the operators were, they’d probably been unwilling to lose another of the high-tech gadgets. He could still picture her in her Kevlar helmet, Oakley sunglasses, and body armor, leaning back and laughing at the UAV as it broke into a hundred flaming pieces. So confident. So accomplished. So unlike the Lore he’d seen in her home. And to believe McQueen, she hadn’t been on anything.

  Starling spent the next half hour trying to figure out how it happened. Then he noticed that Joon was staring at him.

  She asked how Lore was and he told her what McQueen had related.

  Then he remembered something she’d said earlier, something that had been bothering him. “What is it I do?” he asked.

  Joon gave him a questioning look.

  “Your son said I hurt you sometimes.” He shook his head at the illogic of it, but pressed on nonetheless. “Let’s just say there’s a Groundhog Day effect or something crazy. Let’s say I have come before. What is it that I do?”

  “I remember you hitting me once.” She held up her right hand and pointed to the back of it. “With this, right here,” she said, pointing at her cheek.

  His eyes widened. “Me? I hit you?”

  She nodded but watched him carefully.

  “Impossible,” he scoffed, shaking his head. Then seeing her wide, adamant eyes, he asked, “Is that all? Is that all I did? Not that hitting you wasn’t bad enough, but…” By the look in her eyes he could tell there was more. “What else?”

  “You kicked me.”

  “I couldn’t have.” He’d never kicked a woman in his entire life. He couldn’t even imagine the scenario where he’d consider such a thing unless it was in combat.

  “As you say then.” She turned away, curling into herself on the chair.

  He stared at her back. The entire conversation was insane, but he felt compelled to push through it.

  “Where?” he asked breathlessly.

  “In the stomach.” She didn’t turn around.

  He grinned at the absurdity of it, then his expression was washed away with concern and confusion. “You’re having me on. I’d never…” But as she turned, he saw the hurt and truth of it in her eyes—the fear—the memories. “How many times?”

  She considered the question, then asked, “How many times did you kick me or how many times did you come back to kick me?”

  He put his hands on the sides of his head and wished he had hair so he could pull it out. “Okay, what’s the worst I did to you?”

  She looked at him for a long time without saying something, then said, “I think you killed me… once.”

  “You think I… you’re not sure… how?” he whispered, barely audible. “How is that possible?”

  She turned and stared at a poster on the wall warning against choking hazards. Her voice was low and monotone as she said, “I remember you grabbing my hair. I remember the pain as you bashed my head against the fireplace repeatedly, screaming about a boy and a girl and a goat. You even began to bleat like the animal. You sounded like an animal. You were an animal… and then… darkness.” She licked her lips. “I remember that darkness. It was so quiet. So gentle. You know how when you’re in a dark room, there’s all sorts of worry because of sharp corners and objects you don’t want to knock onto the floor? This wasn’t that kind of darkness. This was a darkness where I felt safe. Where the idea of pain didn’t exist. Where it was just me and the universe and nothing.”

  Now it was his turn to stare at her. The women he’d killed… the woman he’d kicked… the woman he’d—“How did you know about the girl and the goat?” he asked suddenly.

  “You were screaming about them.”

  “Me? Screaming?” He shook his head. “When did this happen? The kicking.” He inhaled. “The killing.”

  She regarded him before she spoke. “Not now. Before. It’s not as clear as it should be.”

  “Let me ask you this,” he said. “How is it that you and the boy can remember me, but I can’t remember you?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe you’re in our story instead of us being in yours.”

  She ended it there. Freddie was awake and needed to use the bathroom.

  Starling watched as she stood, then pushed him down the hall into a family bathroom that was wheelchair accessible.

  He was still staring when McQueen returned with a large coffee and a burrito.

  “Looks like you’re going to be sick,” he said, sitting down and taking an immense bite of the burrito. He chewed, then swallowed, his gaze on Starling the entire time. “Want a bite?”

  “What? Uh, no thanks.” Starling leaned back in his chair and exhaled loudly. After a moment, he asked, “Ever feel like you’re a character in a story and not real?”

  McQueen stopped chewing momentarily, then chewed fast and swallowed so he could answer. “I don’t know what that means.”

  Starling shook his head. “That makes two of us, brother.”

  “Who’d you hear that from?”

  “Joon. She and her son say they’ve seen me before.”

  “Maybe you were in the same store or restaurant. LA is big, but it’s really just a small town.”

  “No, they say I did things to them.”

  “When you say things, you mean…?”

  “Hurting them. Maybe even killing them.”

  With half the burrito gone, McQueen shook his head. “I think they’re having you on.”

  Starling nodded. “That’s what I thought too, but to what end? What is it they have to gain?”

  McQueen seemed to consider this as he chewed. He finished the burrito, wadded up the wrapper, and found a trash can to place it in. Then he wiped his hands with a napkin and dumped it too. When he returned to his seat, he sipped his coffee. As his hand got next to his face, he sniffed his fingers and made a face. “I hate it when my hands smell like food.”

  He went to the nurse’s station where there was a sanitizer dispenser and spent several minutes wiping it into his hands, then smelling them. Once he was satisfied, he returned to his seat.

  Starling watched him all the while, remembering how fastidious McQueen had always been with his gear and person. It would be too easy to label it as a mark of his gayness. As Starling had learned, it was more of a control mechanism. McQueen liked order and hated surprises so he kept everything around him neat and prepared. He’d squared off with Narco on several occasions, the smaller, leaner member of the TST, their Charlie Brown equivalent of Pig-Pen.

  After a few sips of coffee and one more sniff of his fingers, McQueen said, “Who are they anyway? You don’t know them. You’ve never seen them before.”

  “Yet they seem to think they’ve seen me.”

  “Don
’t you know how impossible that is? Listen, I know you’ve been using. You have the DTs right now.” Starling began to protest, and McQueen held up a hand. “Stop it. I can see it in the color of your eyes, the way your pupils are dilated, and the way your hands are shaking. This is an air-conditioned hospital and you’re sweating. I bet you’re not even hungry right now.”

  Starling shook his head.

  “You should be.” He checked his watch. “It’s two in the morning. Last time you ate was at least seven hours ago. You should be ravenous. I sure was. The point is that you’re not thinking straight.”

  Starling knew McQueen was right, but damned if he was going to admit it. These were his DTs and he’d deal with them in his own way. “I asked her how is it that you and the boy can remember me, but I can’t remember you and she said, maybe you’re in our story instead of us being in yours. Haven’t you felt out of sorts? Haven’t you felt like you aren’t yourself?”

  “I keep a tight rein on who I am,” McQueen said with finality.

  “Well, bully for you. I don’t feel like myself at all. I feel like a character that someone else is writing. My call sign was Boy Scout, for God’s sake. I didn’t choose it, you all gave it to me.” He thumped himself in the chest. “Do I look like a fucking boy scout to you?”

  A nurse walking by carrying a clipboard gave him a stern look.

  “The point,” Starling continued, his voice lower, “is that as crazy as she sounds, I feel so out of place that it might just explain who I am and what’s going on.”

  McQueen leaned in close, speaking directly into Starling’s ear. “Or it could be them taking advantage of a good man trying to self-medicate for severe PTSD. I know what you’ve seen. I know what you’ve done. Remember, I was there when you killed that colonel. You’ve killed a ton of hajis over the years, but that killing was different. It was murder, plain and simple, and who knows what the weight of it is doing to your soul, much less your psyche.”

  Murder, plain and simple. There was nothing plain nor simple about that murder. Starling hated the word. It was the grammatical equivalent of a hand grenade. He’d rather call what he’d done revenge by proxy, but he kept his mouth shut. Now wasn’t the time for that memory to surface; then he really would need something to cloud his mind. He subconsciously licked his lips as the ghost of scotch teased him.

  “So you think they’re having me on,” he said slowly.

  “We brought them along, didn’t we? If they hadn’t said all of those things to you, would they still be with us? Seems as if they’re getting everything they want.”

  “Larrson was a real threat.”

  “I’m sure he was and you’ve saved them from him. Let me ask you this, what do you plan on doing with them now?”

  Starling had absolutely no idea.

  The door down the hall opened and Joon backed her son out.

  “I’ll tell you what.” McQueen said, preparing to stand. “You need to figure this out quickly. I think helping them out in the short term was a good idea, but they need an end game. Especially now. Lore is my focus from here on out. We need to help her. We need to figure out what’s going on. Because you’re right. If she wasn’t on any drugs, then what the hell was she doing?” Then he got up and headed down the hall.

  As he passed Joon and her son, he nodded.

  Chapter Seven

  STARLING WATCHED AS Joon and Freddie resumed their places in the waiting room. What was he going to do with them? He couldn’t just leave them. They were his responsibility. Sure, he hadn’t signed a hand receipt for them, nor was he under any order to remain responsible, but if he ever wanted to regain even a semblance of the man he’d once been, he needed to see this through. All that said, he was well aware that without money, resources, or any place for them to go, it was an iffy, if not impossible, proposition.

  After an hour—now four in the morning—Joon got up and stretched. She checked on her son, whose head was slumped forward in his chair, then looked around. When she spied the coffee maker at the nurse’s station, she ambled over and poured herself a cup. After adding milk and sugar and stirring, she blew across the surface of the hot liquid as she pushed a fist into the small of her back.

  Starling joined her. He was aware that he needed a shower, or at least to clean up. He could smell a slight sour odor, probably sweat from his exertions with the Korean gangbangers.

  “Seats aren’t that comfortable,” he murmured.

  She nodded, barely glancing at him.

  He rubbed his face with his right hand and felt the grizzle. What he wouldn’t do for a shower… and maybe a gorilla-sized martini. He gritted his teeth as a phantom taste of vodka tickled his lips. Then he laughed hoarsely. “Bet I look like something someone dragged in, huh?”

  She glanced at him again. “If you say so.”

  He felt like an idiot. Clearly, she wasn’t up for small talk, but that was fine. He’d been thinking of how to help her. He decided to play her game and see if she had the solution already.

  “I’ve been wondering how we can help you,” he said, “but I’m also wondering if you might be able to help yourself.”

  She turned to him, interest and doubt in her eyes. “I have a little less than fifty bucks and nowhere to go.”

  “Good to know. Let me ask you this. Have you and I ever had this conversation? I mean, in the hospital, about where you should go to be safe?”

  She cocked her head as she chewed the inside of her cheek. She seemed about to answer when her face began to pixelate until it was nothing but unrecognizable static like one would see on a television with no operating channel. Where her dark eyes had been, they now glowed a deep pulsating gold.

  Starling backed away as she began to speak.

  Her static-laced words sounded like they were coming from underwater.

  Starling shook his head to clear the impossible image. Was he dreaming? Was this part of his DTs? What the hell was going on? He glanced at the nurses behind the counter and all of them had the same features… or lack thereof… all with black and white static faces and golden eyes. He was suddenly aware of the blood pumping through his veins, the thud of his heartbeat booming over every other sound. He began to shake. He reached for the counter but missed it, his hand batting at the air. He opened his mouth to speak, but found no air to push words free.

  Suddenly Joon’s face was right next to his, the static buzz burning through the sound of his own heartbeat. His eyes went wide as she got closer and closer, desperate for her static not to cover his own face. Or was it already? He felt blood leave his head and he was suddenly ice cold.

  Then…

  Groggily, he opened eyelids that weighed a hundred pounds apiece. It took several tries, but he eventually managed to regain his vision. The first thing he noticed was that he was sitting down. He turned his head sluggishly to regard his right arm. An IV had been affixed to it, and the tube ran to a bag hanging from a tall, silver pole. He was sitting in a chair in the corner of an admitting room, his shoes unlaced and his pants unbuttoned.

  “Here comes Cinderella,” McQueen said. He moved in so close that Starling’s vision blurred. He felt a touch on his head. “Doesn’t look like it’s going to bleed, but you definitely got an egg there.”

  “What—what happened?” Starling managed to ask, his mouth dry as a Martian lakebed.

  “According to your friend Joon, one minute you were standing there, the next you were taking a nosedive onto the floor.”

  “Didn’t… didn’t she catch me?”

  “Brother, the way you smell and look, even a homeless man on a bender would be hesitant to touch you.”

  Starling remembered how her face had turned to static and shuddered. That had possibly been the most terrified he’d ever been.

  “Water,” he said. “Can I have some water?”

  McQueen poured him water from a plastic pitcher.

  Starling eagerly grabbed the cup and gulped it. “More,” he said, and McQueen gave h
im more. Four glasses later, he felt better.

  “What was my problem?”

  “Nurse said dehydration. I agree. They were going to do a tox panel, but I talked them out of it.” Then seeing Starling’s confusion, he added, “Not knowing what you took, I didn’t want there to be a formal record. After all, we’re eventually going to go back in the box, right?”

  Back in the box. Back in Afghanistan or Iraq. That was the last thing on his mind.

  “How’s Lore? Is she awake?”

  “She’s awake and asking for you.”

  “What’s she saying?”

  “She won’t tell me shit. She wants you and no one else.”

  “Is she still talking that language?”

  “That language was Persian,” McQueen said. Then anticipating Starling’s question added, “I Googled it.”

  “You Googled it?” Starling licked dry lips. “Of course you did.”

  McQueen held up his phone. “It’s from Rumi. According to Wikipedia, he was a thirteenth century poet and Sufi mystic.”

  “What’s Lore doing quoting a thirteenth century poet?”

  McQueen shrugged. “Better yet, why is she speaking Persian? You saw her bio. She never mentioned speaking Persian. That would have gotten her a better contract. No reason to hide it.”

  “Did you get her words?”

  “I recorded them, then sent the recording through Google. Says, The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

  “That supposed to mean something?” Starling asked.