“You’d be dead?!”
I’m sure I don’t have the right to be this surprised or bowled over by her words but I am – screw logic! Katie told me earlier that she had died but I thought she was just crazy. Still not entirely convinced she’s not. After what I say last night, though, this doesn’t strike me as too strange.
“Dead, buried, rotting. My parents think I am.” She shrugs like having her family thinking of her as a corpse is fine and dandy, and I push down the desire to give her another hug. “Right. Wheels.”
The street is full of cars as people get on with their own lives. Hi-jacking one of them isn’t an option. They’re all going too fast to stop safely, and anyone could call the cops on us. No,, we need something no-one is using. A car no-one will miss. There’s a tiny parking lot on the corner of the street, one bookstore away from Green’s, so I head over there and scan for a really inconspicuous car. AA rusting Ford pick up in the corner – no-one would expect two teenage girls to be driving something that size. A couple of Toyotas in neutral colors seem like good options. Just as I’m about to call Katie over to take a look, a middle-aged man emerges from the bookstore with an armful of tomes, loads them into the trunk of one Toyota and gets in. He fixes me with a funny look, probably wondering if I’m up to something shady. Which I am. I just stare right back at him, daring him to say something, and silently get in when Katie slows in front of me in a classic 70s Porsche 947. We try not to laugh as the older man drops his jaw to the floor and pulls away. I like blasting through people’s expectations of me and, it appears, Katie does too.
“Where are we going?” I ask as she pulls to the side to let the Toyota pass. My bag is at my feet in the footwell and the seat is as far back as it will go. I wanna catch a few Zs while I can. Whether I will or not kinda depends on what Katie says next, I guess.
“I know he’s close by, so we’ll just drive and see if I feel anything.” She looks at me apologetically as she turns the key in the ignition and starts the old engine rumbling like a happy kitty, as if she should have come up with a better plan.
Too tired to argue, it takes me a few dozy minutes to say “Feel? This connection thing, right?”
“Right.” She doesn’t go into any more detail and I don’t bother asking her to.
The ground is just a bit bumpy under the tires but I find the regular irregularities (is that a thing?) comforting and my eyes are soon more closed than they are open. Crackly weather reports are squeaking out of the ancient radio. And, even though it’s early afternoon, sleep is literally reaching out for me. I do my best to ignore it; somebody needs to keep watch in case anyone is following us. They shouldn’t be since, in a way, we’re chasing them now but still –better safe than sorry. As we coast down Main Street, Katie honks at some guy in a big city bus who just cut her up and glances to me. “We’re okay if you need to get some rest.”
“What about you? Don’t you need to sleep? You had just as bad a day as me yesterday, if not worse. And I know you didn’t get as much sleep.”
“I don’t sleep,” she grins over at me. “Not if-“
“Eyes on the road! You might be invincible but I’m not.”
Soundly ignored. “I can go days without sleeping if I get enough energy. When I went for my morning run I siphoned off enough to keep me going for a day or two if I don’t get shot in the head again.”
“From who?” I decide I don’t like the idea of Katie holding hands with random strangers for the energy transfer.
“Relax, Rosy Posy!” Can she never do that again? “Sorry. Rose. Generally, people don’t even know it’s happening. I can pull public energy from the air when I’m strong. Last night, I-“
“Wasn’t strong.”
“No. So, I needed physical contact. I’m…. I’m sorry if I hurt you in any way.”
With that profound apology ringing in my ears, I slouch down and am just about to give up the attempt of wakefulness when an impact ricochets through the front end of the Porsche, the tires screech and I’m thrown to the limits of my seatbelt as the car goes into a skid. It feels like we’re doing out of control donuts, complete with burning rubber smell. Finally shrieking to a sudden and terrifying halt, I realize that a good portion of that noise had been me. Katie is sitting forward at the wheel, ready to go again, hardly noticing me having a heart attack next to her. “Whoo! That was unexpected!” She unbuckles the seatbelt, puts on a pair of dark shades she finds behind the visor – how did she know they were there? – and bails out of the car.
“Did we hit- Coffee Shop Guy!”
A growing group of people has gathered around the scene of the accident and a few are on cell phones requesting ambulances. Not the kind of help we need.
“Umm… hey,” murmurs the guy who just raced into our side panel and somersaulted over the hood. The dark green Honda bike doesn’t seem too badly damaged, but the engine is dying as it lies half under the car and half on top of his right arm. “Anyone got a crane or something? This bike’s heavier than it looks.”
He’s fully conscious, or sounds it at any rate. I reach forward to lift up the cracked faceplate of his motorcycle helmet but Katie gets there first, kneeling down at his head and feeling for his pulse in his neck. “Don’t,” she warns. “We don’t need anything identifying going on.”
“Not that I mind getting touched up by some lady, I’d really like to know who you are.”
“We’ll get you out in just a minute.”
Katie looks at me with soft brown eyes, almost begging, and suddenly I understand what to do. These people need to go and go now. They need to forget they were ever here. If even one person has even a fragment of this memory, they could call the police and describe us; our faces would circulate on the system as hit and run drivers; the men and woman would find us and all of this would have been for nothing. But the EMTs had already been called. An accident report would likely get filed and then the whole situation went into a loop. Only one way to go.
“He’s coming with us. Just until we get out of the city.” Until there’s no risk of running into anyone I know. Katie looks down at the fallen biker and he groans. With the weight of the bike crushing down on his arm, I’m really surprised he’s not either screaming in agony or passed out to escape the pain. Maybe Katie is working some of her angel mojo on him. “We have to. He might report us.”
“Not if he doesn’t remember us.”
“It’s one thing to try it on healthy people – and I don’t know if I can fix all these people at once – but… on somebody who’s already hurt. That’s crazy talk. What if it goes wrong? They can recover. Him? No, he could lose his entire memory; his name, where he lives, all of it.”
“This is a risk, Rose. I just want you to know that.” She shifts to the side, curls her legs under her, hands braced on the Honda, about to shift it. Doing my best to shield her from view, I start jumping around on the spot and basically making a fool of myself until all eyes are on me.
Forget forget forget forget forget…
I repeat the word over and over until it’s bouncing around my head like a pinball made of sound. Then I push the intent out as far and as hard as possible, trying to infect as many spectators as possible with my will. I mean influence, not infect. Before I can tell if it’s worked, even a little bit, the bike behind me scrapes across the ground and the biker staggers to his feet with Katie tucked under his once-trapped right arm, supporting him for balance. He waves a little stiffly at the people still gawking and a cheer ripples through the crowd.
Forget this whole thing. You don’t even remember coming past here.
“Come on, Coffee Shop Guy. Let’s get on the road.”
“Okay,” he agrees. Agrees too easily for it to be all natural. Concussion, maybe. But I think something slightly more… spirity is playing games with his head. Slowly, too slowly (I’m concentrating so hard that sweat is rolling down m
y forehead and stinging my eyes), the onlookers get bored and begin drifting off in their respective directions. When only one or two people are left hanging around and looking slightly confused, I twist on my feel and jump over the passenger door into the seat. When they do it in the movies, it always looks so cool and badass – when your foot slides out of your shoe and you still have to open the door and pick it up, not so much. Glancing behind me, the biker is lying on the pathetic excuse for a backseat and flexing his right arm and hand like it doesn’t really belong to him. If not for Katie, it might have been a really serious injury - like, amputation serious – and he must be wondering how the hell he can move it a all. I can tell from the bloody grazes on his ungloved hands that she hasn’t healed him fully.
“Shit, that hurts,” he says and rubs his knuckles on his jacket, trying to rub some of the blood and gravel away.
“Sit tight Coffee Shop Guy.” Without bothering to fasten her seatbelt, Katie starts the car up again and glides smoothly into the traffic once more. Luckily, Main Street runs from one end of this tiny city to the other so she drives straight down it and onto a no name road with a sign saying it is seven miles to the next town: Leeship. Is Jack here? Is she following this connection thingy? “Yes, I’m following Jack. He’s getting further and further away though – the link between us, it’s stretching, getting thinner.”
“What happens when it gets really thin?”
“it snaps.”
“Oh.” A minute or two later, something else strikes me as odd. “He’s being creepy quiet.”
“Coffee Shop guy? Oh, I told him not to talk or take his helmet off or I’d leave him on the side of the road. And break his arm again.”
“That was mean.”
“It’s working, isn’t it?” Undeniably. But fear doesn’t make comfortable journeys. So, as you cangues, the next seven miles were kind of awkward. It wasn’t long before the classic Porsche was blasting into Leeship. The town is about the same size as mine, maybe a bit bigger and, as if there is GPS in her brain, Katie drives to the town’s only mall. A hundred or more stores are waiting behind plate glass window walls. Fashion, hair and beauty, technology, body art, games, maybe even a few restaurants. I sure hope there is because I’m starving. Even a rubbery burger from the food court will do me at this point.
Silently, the three of us get out of the parked car and walk towards the nearest entrance. Awesome waves of cool, conditioned air brush my clammy, over-heated skin and I stand underneath the closest air vent to bask in it. It’s only been an hour, probably a bit less, since we came out of Greens and the AC in there but being stuck in a car, even an open-topped sports model, with that level of tension makes it seem like a lifetime ago. “Rose!” My eyes snap open and I find Katie staring at me from where she’s half kneeling on a bench by the plastic trees. While the biker does what he can with his full-head helmet, Katie has her fingertips underneath it and is sliding it up and off as gently as possible without jostling his hurt arm. “Hi, Coffee Shop Guy. I was the one feeling you up on the street.”
“Ouch! I thought my face was gonna melt under that thing.”
“Suck it up soldier. You ride in that helmet all day every day.”
“I don’t usually have concussion at the same time,” he replies.
I reluctantly break from my air con cocoon and walk to the bench Katie and the biker are sitting on, bracing my hands on the back of plastic with a wooden veneer. Real wood would have been just as expensive, burn to the ground just as quickly but give off a lot less toxic fumes. Why has my brain chosen now to kick back into this coldly, logical mode? “Why are we at the mall?”
After a minute of silence which seems to last forever, Katie decides there are few enough people around to risk speaking. “We are going shopping.” She stands up and tugs Coffee Shop Guy up by his uninjured arm. Bytheway? Coffee Shop Guy. Makes sense, actually, that he might be able to identify us through having had a conversation with at least me rather than just getting a pain-hazy glimpse. “Or, more precisely, I’m going shopping. You two are going into that disabled toilet,” she jerks a thumb over her shoulder at some more artificial trees and plants without even looking, “and Rose is going to start cleaning you up. Whatever you do, do not come out of there until I tell you to.” With that,, Katie is halfway to the escalator and I’m left staring at Matthew Bytheway. There’s a cut along his left cheekbone, where he must have ricocheted off the visor, which is bleeding pretty badly, and cuts and scratches over both hands. The tight leather jacket most motorcyclists wear for protection seems to have taken most of the damage. Looking closer, there is a trickle of blood running slowly from his mouth. How in hell does Katie expect me to fix all this without even a half-decent first aid kit? I mean she sounded pretty definite that we shouldn’t go anywhere besides that bathroom. Screw it. There are more important things gnawing at me, namely my stomach.
“Hotdog?”
Matthew Bytheway stares at me like I’ve grown a second head then nods and follows me to the food court.
Once we’ve both got a hotdog topped with mustard, onion and ketchup, we fill cups with soda from the dispenser and head back the way we came. Following orders isn’t exactly my style but I think Katie knows what she’s doing. I hope so anyway. The handicapped bathroom is unlocked and, thankfully, empty. Imagine walking in on some little old lady with a walker using the facilities. No thank you! Inside, we set our food and drinks on the counter around the sink. I run some cold water in the sink, tear off a few handfuls of tissue and order my first aidee to sit on the closed toilet seat. Between bites, I soak the paper and wipe away as much dirt and street scum as possible. The cut over his cheekbone is not as deep as it looks and, although he lets me get close enough to see he has split his lip, he refuses to let me get close enough to clean it, instead taking the paper and holding it on the broken flesh. “Sorry,” he mumbles with a slight smile. “I got punched in the mouth last weekend and you might hurt it.”
“You were in a fight?”
“Yes. He started it.”
“Why? What was it about?” I‘m curious despite myself.
He takes a dark green elastic out of his hair and a mane of black falls around his face. If you’ve ever seen those old 90s Draculas, it’s basically that pre-hair gel. “This guy I went to school with hit me. I didn’t hit him back.” Yeah, that makes you such a good person. “I kissed his younger sister. We were juniors together. She was only his adopted sister so it wasn’t wrong or anything.”
“So noble. If she was his real sister, would it have stopped you?”
“You haven’t seen Seamus! If he had a real sister, she’d be fugly.”
“Fugly?” I laugh. Matthew Bytheway doesn’t strike me as the kind who even knows what fugly means let alone says it. “Do you even know what that means?”
“Something you’re not. So, tell me about these people you say are after you,” he says, trying to change the subject. It works. I jump up on the counter looking down at him with my soda in one hand and trailing my fingers through bloody water with the other. He doesn’t need to know much more than I’ve already told him and I’m not sure I could tell him more even if I wanted to. “They’re a mystery. Don’t know who they are, why they want me, why they took Jack-“
“To get you to go after him. Then they’ve got you.”
“Crap.”
“And why am I here?”
Sigh. “Because we would have been in danger if you reported Katie and I as the ones who hit you. Police would just complicate things. There’s no saying they can’t use police radios and they might find us.”
“If they’re half as smart as they sound, then they already know you’re chasing them. Believe me, they might still be driving but they’re just waiting.”
Double crap.
Before this gloomy conversation can get any worse, there’s a knock on the door and the handle rattles. Th
e lock is switched to engaged. This cannot be good.
There’s only the slightest chance to my mind that my little old lady with a walking frame actually exists but I cling to that thread as I shuffle across the counter and reach for the handle, pretending that to touch the floor would be to go paddling in hot lava the way I did at my first foster home. They’re just waiting. I glare at the handle as it stops rattling, bring my head to it in case I can hear voices, jump back as a resounding thump on the other side sets the door on vibrate. “Just a minute,” I call out, trying to make my voice a bit weaker than it already is.
“Come on, kids, it’s mall security. We saw you two go in there ages ago.”
“There’s no-one else here.”
“Stop messing.”
“Wait a minute.” What do we do now? Just as that question forms, Katie fades into view in the corner. “We’re busted.”
“Rose, they’re only plastic police. You could have fixed it. Use the tools you have available.” A nod at Matthew. “Oh, you cleaned up pretty good. I don’t think you’ll scar.”
“Umm…”
“What are going to do about them?”
Right in front of us, Katie strips of her jacket and drops it by my side, frowning at the fast food containers on the counter. “I said stay in here.”
Technically, we had. Once food had been purchased and we’d holed up in this slightly smelly bathroom, neither of us had left.
“Yes?” Katie stuck her head out of the bathroom door.
“Miss, we saw two teenagers go in here.”
“Yes.”
“If they’re not inside-“
“They are.” WTF? Telling security exactly where we’re hiding out is not the best move. I hope to God she knows what she’s doing. “They’re learning disabled. Last time I checked, that wasn’t literal.” I hear a few annoyed taps on the wooden fire door and know she’s hitting the little wheelchair symbol. Even I’m starting to buy this impression of a harassed support worker.
“I’m so sorry miss but you don’t look old enough to be their… nurse?”
“Is this a friendly chat now – or can I get back to my job?”
Heavy footsteps stamp away from the door, vanishing into the quiet chaos of hundreds of other people passing through the area. Door closed and locked again, Katie faces the tiny bathroom and just... stops breathing. No rise or fall of her chest, no slightly blown out cheeks as she holds her breath. She has just stopped. “That’s what happens when you don’t do what I say.”
“Sorry but we can’t all survive on thin air!”
“Right, we can’t stay here long. Here, put these on.” A carrier from some store I’ve never heard of – Brookland – appears in one hand. Katie thrusts it at Mathew Bytheway and, with a do it or else squint, turns her back so he can change. He’s undoing his shirt before I can join, obviously no body issues. Or maybe he’s just too freaked out to object. Sounds quite likely.
“Where did that come from?”
“When I saw him hassling you two, I stashed everything behind a bin.” Okay, but that didn’t really answer the question. “Brookland. It was the emptiest place I could find.”
“Why would it matter if it was – you stole them!”
“Stealing is such an ugly word. I just asked if people would give me things then walked out without paying. If that’s stealing then I suppose I did.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much how the state of South Carolina defines theft! Wait up. You just walked out without paying. How?”
“It’s an angel thing. Once some-one gives me something whether they mean it or not, it’s mine. That’s how I got your car.”
“Done. You can turn around.”
Matthew Bytheway is standing, and looking very uncomfortable, in cheap, poorly fitting jeans, a baggy Guns N Roses tee, black trainers and is shrugging his scuffed leather jacket back on. “Nope.” Katie opens the door and, after making sure nobody is paying us any attention, beckons for us both to follow her. We soon blend in with the crowds looking like three regular teens out for a shopping trip together. At some point, Katie has stripped the jacket off Bytheway, performed a perfect pirouette and dropped it into a trash can at the end of the food court. Nobody has even noticed her moving between them which tells me she is probably using that invisible stuff from yesterday. “Hey, that was a $200 jacket.”
“And now it’s a present for the resident tramp.”
“Shit. I can’t believe this.”
“Really, we’ll explain everything when we get back to the car.”
“Are you taking me home? I think I should maybe go to the hospital and get my head checked out. It aches.”
My ear aches listening to them whine and bicker already! Believe me, I’d give anything to go back home and get on with my rebellious little life but it’s not gonna happen. “Jeez!” I whirl on them both, my voice a bit higher and louder than the situation requires. So? “You’re both older than me and you’re the ones acting like children. In case you’d forgotten, I’m the one in danger. We’re meant to be saving my ass, not his, or Jack’s. So, can we just get moving? I didn’t ask you to run over Bytheway or leave Jack alone in the car.”
“Rose, chill.”
Okay, screaming inside now. “No. This is my life on the line, not yours. If I’m the one they want then they won’t hurt him. And that means we can take our time over this.”
As if on cue, the fire alarms start shrieking and the sprinklers come on a few seconds later. Panicked chatter erupts. The bench we all gathered on when we came in has been set alight and the acid stench of melting plastic is spreading in noxious black waves. A few people head for the exit but more are too morbidly fascinated to tear themselves away. As we shove through the crowds to get closer, flames leap from the warped seat to the edge leaves of the fake foliage. Then they are melting too and the people closest to them are starting a round of coughing.
“Are the fire department on the way?” someone asks.. Some guy dressed as a mall cop has started herding people away from the fire. Unfortunately not outside, which would have been sensible but to what he obviously considers a safe distance. Which is not what most people would consider a safe distance. Tying to move a load of idiots about half a meter away from the blaze than they were before doesn’t strike me as very helpful. “Okay, everybody just back up now.” Forceful much.
I’m starting to cough too, now, as all the poisonous fumes seep into my lungs even though I’m breathing as shallowly as possible. Bytheway is standing right beside me and turns my head into his broad chest away from the flow of the smoke. Something starts crackling in the blaze – something like real wood. If they’d managed to sneak some real nature into that green and brown fake monstrosity, the mall designers had certainly hidden it well. The chest is heaving up and down and a faint rattling is coming from beneath the ribs. Bytheway is having a harder time breathing than me but his eyes aren’t watering and he doesn’t seem to be inhaling much smoke when I sneak a peek.
“You two, get outside!”
“What? What about you?”
“This smoke is deadly, I’ll – look, here isn’t time to argue. Just go!”
“You’re coming with us, right?”
“Yes, I’ll get the stuff then I’ll follow.”
“Shouldn’t we-“ stick together? Bytheway slides his hand down from the back of my head to my hand and twists his fingers with mine. Without saying a word, he tugs me out of the growing crush and into the fresh air by the doors. The sprinklers are making everybody damp and cold: yelping, about half of them make a funny walk-run escape from the freezing water, blistering flames and lethal fumes. The doors have been left open to let some air in though the tiny breeze that’s drifting through is only blowing the smoke around and not dissipating it. Something else is on fire now. It’s getting harder to breathe. Sparks fly before I hear the snap-crackle-pop of one of the overhe
ad lights being blown out. The fire is getting really bad now; alarms are going off all along this wing, people are being herded out of all the exits. I can feel he unnatural heat battering at my skin. The sprinklers are doing nothing to kill the flames, seeming to miraculously land on everything but the blaze.
Bytheway tightens his hold on my hand – the destruction is so hypnotic I’d forgotten he was holding it – and propels me out of the door, past coughing shoppers.
“What happened?”
“I never seen a fire like it.”
“How did it start?”
“Well, I heard they were having electrical problems in-“
Then were past the speakers and I sink blindly down on the wall of the raised flowerbed in front of the parking lot. Distantly, the shriek of a fire trucks with siren blaring pounds nearer and nearer, screeching to a stop on the other end of the blacktop. It’s probably not bad enough to warrant much of the FD to come down.
“Thanks. I wouldn’t have left if you hadn’t dragged me out.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is all my fault.” He’s silent beside me. “Katie’s trying to save me and that’s kinda how we ended up here so she’s still in there ‘cos of me. I shouldn’t –we shouldn’t have left her in there.” More silence. Or… no, not quiet silence. The wheezing of labored breath from Bytheway’s chest is louder now, more pronounced, filling the air around us like a clogged vacuum cleaner. He’s trying to breathe in and out deeply and slowly, just like they teach you in health class. “Oh my God, what’s wrong? Are you having a panic attack or something?”
He shakes his head at me. When he’s managed to get enough air to speak he says “I’ve got asthma.”
“Shit. Do you need to go to the ER, or a drugstore, or…” out of ideas, I look around to see that there’s nobody close enough to hear or help us. “Haven’t you got one of those inhaler thingies?”
He can only shake his head at me. Back in health class they taught us what to do if we saw somebody was hyperventilating – breathe into a paper bag or, failing that, into their own cupped hands so as to feel their breath on their skin and kind of control it through the senses. It better be the same principle for dealing with asthma or we’re screwed. Standing in front of Bytheway, I bend down slightly so we’re at eye level and put his hands up in front of his face. It reminds me of playing Peek-A-Boo with one of the workers at my first care home. Soooo glad I had the sense to get out of there last year.
Turning sixteen on my own last summer was no fun though. A disgusting little room above a donut shop, sharing with whichever junkie or drunk found their way through the same broken window I used as a door – and roughly half a dozen rats. I treated myself to a pastry that morning though, pretending it was a birthday cake. Stolen obviously. If I had cash to waste on donuts, I wouldn’t have been living in a dirty room. That was in Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. SC isn’t really a big state compared to most in America but hitching out to North or where-ever had never really appealed to me before. With these lunatics after me, moving out of state was the best thing I never did.
“I – I’m alright now. Thanks.”
“You’re sure? I cannot deal if you keel over on me.”
“Yeah. No keeling. Scouts honor.”
“You were a boy scout?” It’s not the time and place, but the thought of this rough, tough biker as a kid in a sash and kerchief covered with all those achievement badges is beyond funny. “Man, that is… it’s plain hilarious.” Oops! Not the right reaction then.
“I wasn’t actually. But I used to take my kid brothers’ group camping. Not the leader or anything, but I chaperoned. I can sing Cum-by-ah backward, sideways and upside down.”
“If I ever need someone to make a fire by rubbing twigs together, I’ll call you first.
“Should we go get some asthma medicine?”
“How? My prescription’s at home. It hasn’t bothered me in years, so it was the smoke probably.”
Behind us, firefighters are milling around that part of the complex like little toy soldiers, too far away to see what is going on, and an ambulance has finally turned up to check people for smoke inhalation and burns and why isn’t Katie back yet? My eyes trace the wandering shoppers searching for a glimpse of shiny brown hair or the dark, blob of her constant companion – the leather jacket, but I can’t find her. Of course I can’t; for all I know she’s doing her see-me-not thing and is standing right beside us. Or, remembering the strange half flying and half falling sensation of jumping out of my window yesterday, she could be hovering somewhere way above our heads. Katie said she was an angel but I can’t imagine her with wings and a halo and sitting on a cloud. Not that there are any clouds around today. It’s just relentless pale blue sky with a golden ball of fire high above the world. And hot. Not as hot as the last week or so because the breeze is cooling it down but… hot. Angels must be resistant to the heat or something because Katie wasn’t even sweating when we were in front of the fire, and it’s not supposed to be very good weather in England so she’s not acclimated. Maybe it’s some kind of supernatural temperature control?
Chapter six
Angels of America: A Circle of the Fallen novella Page 5