There were five people in the car, assuming the two in front were human. Vizzie, in a tuxedo and stovepipe hat, looked like he’d been buried a number of years before—a mortician who didn’t yet realize he’d joined his customers in the Hereafter. His ash-gray skin was pulled tight over a skull that was all angles. A hard sneeze would split his face like an old bed sheet.
Vizzie didn’t sneeze. He was too caught up in asking questions. Porter, in the seat behind him, kept just as busy with evasive replies.
Vizzie’s partner Deck, the half-man, half-machine, said little. He mostly glared with his robot eye or ogled the girl sharing the rear-most seat of the van with Paul.
Paul guessed that Rain was about his age. She sported sleeves of tattoos on her slim arms—an iridescent koi on her shoulder, a leafless tree on one forearm, and a disquietingly realistic black widow spider in a web on the other.
She wore her raven hair long and free, and her beauty was such that Paul’s heart hurt whenever he stole a look. Her second-most striking aspect was the short-barreled shotgun in a custom holster resting on her thighs.
“Where’d you say you’re coming from again?” Vizzie said over the shrieking strings.
Porter hadn’t. And Vizzie knew it.
“North,” the Envoy said.
“Yeah? Whereabouts?”
“Montreal. Or what passes for it.”
Deck glowered at Paul as if his robot half enjoyed lie-detector functionality. That being the case, it would have had no time to rest. Porter hadn’t uttered a word of truth since climbing in.
The fly headed toward the glow of Deck’s eye but thought better of it. It buzzed Paul instead, then set a course for the rear cargo area.
“Where are you guys going?” Vizzie asked.
“West.”
“Or what passes for it?”
Porter nodded.
“You don’t sound like a Canuck.” Deck’s tone was all steel-edged suspicion.
“No.”
“That’s more talk than we get out of our cutie back there,” Vizzie said, eye-checking Rain in the rear-view. “She won’t give us a blue clue—will you, little friend?”
She shifted her gun in her lap.
“Warm, ain’t she?” Vizzie said.
Paul struggled to keep his eyes off the girl, fearing he wouldn’t be able to stop if he gave in. At the edge of his vision, a flurry of moving colors defeated his efforts. Her tattoos.
The koi was now on her lower arm. It had swum downstream from her shoulder, and the formerly skeletal tree was bursting with lustrous green.
“She swore you guys were pals,” Vizzie said. “Insisted we stop for you when Deck wanted to run you down.” He hooted. Neither Porter nor Deck reacted. “How could I refuse the most beautiful thing to ever crawl into our cart?”
Pals? In the window’s reflection, Rain met Paul’s eyes with her own, then looked back out at the passing landscape.
It was simple hitchhiker’s math: a girl on a ride with bad players added a couple of strangers to the equation. If she was lucky, it meant a layer of protection, provided the new guys weren’t worse. Even if they were, more people in the mix forced slower decisions, and a loaded gun in plain view was usually a solid persuader.
“You hear any of the action?” Vizzie said.
Porter remained silent.
“You didn’t hear? New meat in at first light. A load of them.”
“One got away,” Deck said. He kept his robot eye on Paul.
“Oh?” Porter was almost effusive in his ignorance. “A Journey’s afoot?”
“What vacuum do you live in?” Vizzie said. “Yeah, man. A rabbit on a bus. I don’t know how he skated, but a trucker told us the Ravs brought in a hell of a welcome committee. Air cavalry, shock troops. Something’s up. They don’t burn that hard for just anyone. Not right off. This was someone they wanted.”
“Isn’t that something?” Porter said.
“This rabbit died under a bad sign, right?” Vizzie grinned. His face didn’t rupture, to Paul’s disappointment. “Must have, if he drew that hot a fire. All-out heart of darkness, man. They’ll get him, too.”
Porter looked out the window. All that had nothing to do with him. Paul attempted to do the same while Deck studied him.
Rain watched The Commons go by as if she were alone on a train. The tattooed spider on her forearm now had a finely detailed something caught and bundled in its web.
Paul’s stomach fluttered. That was new.
He looked around for the fly.
9
IED
Annie finished dressing for work and checked on Zach. He was in his bedroom at the closet-door mirror again.
It bothered her that he spent most of his time looking at himself in the glass. It was also unsettling that when he wasn’t doing that, he was playing with an old cassette recorder he found in his night-table drawer soon after they moved into their apartment.
Hour after hour, day or night, he murmured into the handheld microphone in a voice so low she couldn’t hear a word. With the lunchbox-sized recorder in one hand and the mike in the other, he looked like he was taking sustenance from the machine rather than speaking to it.
It should have bothered her more. She felt like she’d long ago battled to keep her son from losing himself to whatever bewitched him, though those memories never seemed all that solid.
That’s what the pinkies were for. Why fight what you can fog?
Did the pinkies keep her old feelings at bay, or did they cause her to invent remembrance of things that never happened—places in their lives that never existed? Did the pill numb emotions or create false ones? She didn’t care.
That, too, should have disturbed her. It did not.
When she managed to sleep, she dreamt of made-up apartments that she and Zach had never inhabited, even if the details of them felt genuine, seemed real. Hardwood floors were scuffed ruination. Battered steam radiators arced jets of scalding water from faulty valves. Cockeyed bathroom doors sagged under dense layers of paint, the wood of their frames gone soft from decades of shower steam.
So real. But Annie and Zach had never so much as visited New York.
There was no rest. She closed her eyes and thought of sleep, observing the ritual out of loyalty to the routine.
It was the same for Zach. She got up in the night to find him at the mirror, staring at the glass in the dark. She no longer pretended to want him to go to bed. He could do what he pleased.
That was the pinkies’ gift. Her knee hurt less; her worries fell silent.
Days before, she’d snuck into Zach’s room to play one of the tapes he’d recorded—a rare bout of curiosity amidst her chronic apathy. The old Annie might have felt guilty about the invasion. Not Annie of the Pinkies.
She listened to the first tape, and then another and another to make sure she hadn’t grabbed an outlier.
She hadn’t.
Tape after tape held nothing but hiss.
At the office, the pinkies came up short. It started with the data, as did most everything.
During a differential backup, while Annie had a double-sized mug of loose-leaf English breakfast in hand, the visions hit again. It was one of the usual visitors: the nautilus. He showed up whenever she got to contemplating data concepts during boring maintenance tasks.
She was considering the Catalan numbers before jumping to a logarithmic spiral, which prompted the little guy to come calling. Annie thought of it as a friend, unlike the wayward school of fish who always signaled a bad sector.
Then things turned.
The nautilus came to a stop on a reef, probing with its tentacles, and began to spin. Gaining speed, it blurred into a vision of a shifting ball and drilled into the coral. The whirling creature then vanished and was replaced by some sort of portal in the water.
On the other side was Charlene Moseley.
Annie’s knee throbbed. Her numbing pal, the pink mist, was overmatched.
Char’s flawless skin, t
he color of tea. The nearly shaved head, a style few women who weren’t fashion models could pull off. The ever-present smirk, like she already knew your good news but was too generous to say anything until you’d had a chance to tell her.
Charlene.
Here was the comrade who’d been in the M-113 with Annie when it rolled over the IED in Mosul. Here was Char, the friend laid out on the adjacent table while they worked on Annie’s knee without painkillers—who died as Annie watched the light fade from her eyes, her face only a foot or two away.
The pinkies couldn’t stop Annie’s shaking when she realized Char was working in a cubicle much like hers—one nearby, perhaps. And they couldn’t stop her from dropping her pen when Charlene looked up from her monitor screen, through the window in the water—and right at her.
10
Boom
Paul lost it at the highway rest stop. He’d been losing it all along, but had thus far convinced himself that he was in an extended dream. He’d wanted to see how the situation developed before really and truly freaking.
It wasn’t much of a plan. So the state of things overwhelmed him while he and Porter were eating at an outdoor picnic table near some bathrooms.
An assortment of travelers filled the other tables, which were scattered around the concession stand where Porter picked up lunch. Paul thought it was lunch, anyway. He’d lost all sense of time. Regardless, having cheeseburgers for breakfast wasn’t anywhere near as strange as the display of creatures around them.
A life-sized astronaut action figure with a Ronald Reagan haircut enjoyed some yellow goop from a regulation NASA squeeze-tube. Across from him, a black-and-white projection of a television housewife winked in and out—invisible, then there again. Interference and vertical-hold lines traveled down her form as she dug into a TV dinner in a foil tray.
Vizzie and Deck sat a distance away. They watched Rain, who kept to herself at her own table. Her holstered shotgun was strapped diagonally across her back, stock up. Paul doubted that Vizzie and Deck would steal her lunch with the weapon so close at hand. Then again, they probably weren’t after her Philly cheesesteak.
After a long stretch of staring, Vizzie got something in his eye. He leaned back and pulled at his lid, trying to dislodge it. When that didn’t work, he dug his eye out and popped it into his mouth. Paul used to do the same gag for the younger kids at New Beginnings, the key difference being, of course, that he’d faked it. Vizzie swirled his eyeball in his mouth, giving it a thorough wash, and smacked it back into his empty socket, blinking to orient it in his skull.
Paul’s gut made a fist of itself. He fought to swallow a bite of his burger and pushed the rest of it away.
“You should finish that,” Porter said. “We don’t know when we’ll eat next.”
“I’m in Hell.”
Porter swallowed. “No.”
“I’m dead, and this is Hell.”
“Nothing’s been decided. We’re only starting.“
“Oh, my God.”
“No.” Porter grabbed Paul’s arm. “Hear that. No. That’s why you’re in The Commons. Your fate will be determined here. By you.”
The past couple of days went on playback in Paul’s head. Pop Mike. Port Authority. The rolling miles in the van.
Porter looked around them at the TV housewife, Vizzie and Deck, Rain. “I haven’t done this in a long time.”
“Where am I, Porter?”
“The Commons is its widely used designation. Others call it Sojourn, The Roundhouse, The Way Station. It’s Purgatory to the Catholics, but their model’s a bit off. It’s named in thousands of other languages, not all of them spoken aloud.”
“I died on the bus.”
“Some did, to be certain, but not necessarily you. What you do here decides where you go next—back to your life or forward to the next stop. Reward and punishment may come into play, but that’s never been proven. Your fate is yours alone, and no one can predict it. Nor does it profit us to try. The world you left squanders its time on the mystery of what’s ahead. We’ve learned not to.”
The astronaut took the TV housewife’s hand. She smiled, changing from grayscale to Technicolor.
“When do I find out?”
“At this Gaia festival, I believe. You’re a Journeyman. A Traveler, a Wayfarer, a Seeker. Again, many names. You’ll face a challenge unique to you, just as the version of The Commons you travel is unique and adapts to…” Porter thought for a moment.
Paul let the Envoy’s words gestate, trying to get a fix.
Porter watched Vizzie and Deck study Rain. “The Sioux said it was a spirit journey. A person’s ni—their spirit—enters the world beyond the pines to make a difficult trek. They called it crossing a river on a very narrow tree, and it is. Other cultures and thinkers expressed the idea of The Commons, too—the Akasha, Jung’s collective unconscious.” He pushed Paul’s food back toward him. “And you really should eat. This is all difficult enough without traveling on an empty belly.”
Paul picked at the food. At another table, a fat man covered in porcupine quills tapped away at a portable typewriter. “Then who are these … people?”
“Some come from you. The Commons remakes itself according to each Journeyman’s memories and imaginings.”
“I don’t recognize any of this.”
“There are stragglers—more, it seems, than when I was last out here. They are contributions from everyone who’s ever Journeyed. Stories of remnants abound. I never saw her myself, but someone conjured up Mothra in the sixties. She flew around at night, smashing stadiums and airports and anything else that was lit up. Then, poof—gone.”
Porter watched Vizzie and Deck, chewing his lip. “Think of The Commons as a hard drive that’s never defragmented. There are stray memories scattered around it, wandering about.” His face darkened. “It wasn’t always like that.”
“What about the Ravagers?”
“All too real, I’m afraid.”
Rain stood up from her table, stretched, and headed for the bathrooms. Vizzie and Deck watched her go.
“What about Rain?”
“Hers is a story we’ll need to hear, if circumstance keeps us together,” Porter said. “She should watch her back. But she’s aware of that.”
“Her tattoos are alive.”
“I know.”
She went into the women’s room, the door shutting behind her.
Vizzie stood and made for the bathrooms, too.
“How many times have you done this?”
“Too many to count, which doesn’t mean I don’t know the exact number. I’ve led Journeys across everything The Commons can cook up. A pitch-black trip with a blind Journeyman, a trek across Antarctica—which was a misery of frostbite. You’re American, so we get America. Or your version of it.”
“How hard will this be?”
Vizzie entered the women’s room. Deck got up, made his way to the bathroom, and joined him, pulling the self-closing door shut.
Porter stood. “If that girl isn’t out of there in five seconds, stay here while I see to this. How much TV do you watch?”
“A lot.”
“Comic books? Video games?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’re in for a violent mess.”
“I read books, too.”
Porter started for the bathrooms. “Jolly good. That’s not my point.”
“Then what—”
The boom of Rain’s shotgun echoed from within the bathroom’s cinder-block walls, blowing Vizzie through the door and onto his back on the ground outside. Then boom again.
Rain burst through the door, hopped over the unmoving Vizzie, and headed their way, Vizzie’s keys jingling in her hand. She cradled her shotgun, wisps of smoke trailing from its barrel.
“You’re American, so everyone’s packing,” Porter said. He raised his staff, gauging her intentions.
She sprinted past, straight for the Van-Tasta. Unlocking the driver’s-side door, she jump
ed in.
Porter and Paul ran for the van as its engine cranked.
Rain saw them coming. They reached the doors, and the lock buttons popped up. Porter got into the shotgun seat, aptly named given the firearm he had to move before sitting. Paul pulled the side door open and climbed into the back.
She cursed. Deck emerged from the women’s room, blackened wires flashing and sparking in a shot-out portion of his electronic half.
The motor turned over and she gunned it. The side door slid open the rest of the way, smacking hard into its stop.
Deck moved fast considering the extent of the damage done to him. His eye glared redder than ever. Then the engine revved, and he lost the race.
The Van-Tasta fishtailed out of the parking lot, gravel flying in a wave. Rain straightened it out, and they rumbled up the picnic area’s exit road.
“He told me it was time for fun,” she said, reaching for the shotgun and stowing it between her and the driver-side door. “It wasn’t. What did he think the gun was for?” She shook her head.
Once they reached the road proper, she gave the engine even more gas. “You two have any fun in mind?”
Porter kept his eyes on the speedometer as the needle passed eighty. “I’m no fun at all,” he said.
11
Its Distant Ocean
After dinner, Annie threw the leftovers away. Once again, neither she nor Zach had eaten much of their microwave meals.
She went upstairs to see what he was up to. Like so many other things that had to do with her son, this was a checklist item rather than a task in which she felt invested.
At the mirror again. And again, Annie was thankful because the closet door was a reliable sitter.
“Hey, buddy.” She called him nicknames more and more lately, though she suspected she hadn’t always. “Ready for bed?”
He ignored her. It didn’t matter what she called him. She was a non-entity.
Annie went to the closet door and stood in front of it, blocking his view. No reaction. “Time for all little guys to sleep so their mommies can, too.”
The Journeyman Page 5