“Colm, thoughts?” Simon said.
Colm shrugged and pushed away from the granite counter. “It’s true, we don’t know him.”
Zac huffed.
“Chill a minute,” Colm said. “We don’t know him, but we can’t leave him like this either. I say we keep him here, keep an eye on him while he’s rejuvenating. In a few days he’ll be recovered, and we can see where he stands on things. He’s in no shape to talk now.”
A few days? That was wrong. David tried to sit up, and Colm crossed to the couch.
“Hey, lie still.”
No. Get up. He fell back, and his lungs strained for air. Grain formed in his vision, starting at the edges, creeping inward. The voices still came clearly.
“He’s not good.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Simon, come on, man. He needs blood now.”
He … what? Blood? He wasn’t bleeding. Perhaps the mist left him confused.
Or perhaps they weren’t like him at all. Vampires. That’s what they were. And they thought he was one. They’d turn him into a vampire and he wouldn’t be able to—
Calm down. Think. Vampires were fiction.
As were men who couldn’t die.
“What if he’s just an old man? We’ll be changing him forever, someone we don’t know. He could end up a third-world dictator a hundred years from now, with my blood in his veins. Zac could be mistaken.”
“I’m insulted,” Zac said.
“Does he look like a normal old man to you?” Colm. “Not a wrinkle, not a gray hair. It’s rejuvenation. He’s one of us, and he’s been alone. His cells probably look like raisins in the sun.”
“Well, in a few days they’ll be rejuvenated.”
“So we let him go through this when we could help. That’s wrong.”
“Not like he’s dying.” Simon gave a dry laugh.
“You’re outvoted,” Zac said.
“It’s my blood. My vote’s the only one that counts.”
In the silence, David’s chest ached. He wished they’d talk again. Distract him. The words fell through his mind like drops of water through a cupped hand, but the sound of voices was something to focus on.
“Lord,” he whispered.
The silence changed. They’d heard him. They were waiting for him to speak again.
He couldn’t. His next breath wheezed.
“Simon.” Colm’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “Something’s wrong. And if he dies, you’re going to regret this.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you know who he is.”
A sigh. “I’ll get the supplies.”
Zac’s face loomed over him again. “You can get through this faster if you’ll give us permission to help.”
Not a chance. David licked his lips, but they stayed dry. “How?”
“It’s a transfusion, basically. First we’ll remove some of yours. Are you good with that?”
He tried to shake his head, but mist fell between him and Zac. He drifted for some time—minutes, an hour—and he was John again, perched on a joist of Abel McGinnis’s barn, helping to hoist the supports for the roof. The sound of hammers ricocheted around him, including his own, nail after nail. Then he was back down the ladder, then sipping lemonade Sarah brought him. Sarah, his bride of only six weeks. So beautiful she was, pink ribbons of her bonnet dangling, a lock of dark hair loose from her bun. He tucked his hand into her bonnet, tucked the hair behind her ear.
Then he was standing on a knoll to one side of the grave, a hundred feet removed from the others. Everyone was gathered around, a knot of dark clothes and quiet tears. The casket was lowered. His children held each other, held their spouses, held his grandchildren. Talked about missing Grandmother and seeing her again. Some spoke of heaven. Some said she had become an angel and would hover always over their shoulders wearing white-feathered wings, and if only they could see her there sometime.
He watched his grandchildren, raised believing him long dead, as they stood quietly for the graveside service: Frank, Thomas, Seth, Alice, Laura, Rachel, Susanna. There would be great-grandchildren in a few more years. He waited here, apart, eyes fixing on Michael and Kathleen as the service ended. They wouldn’t speak to him, but they would meet his eyes. Once.
Their attention remained fixed on the manicured grass. They left their mother’s grave without a glance back.
When they’d all gone, John went to the grave and brushed his palm over the flowers they had left. He would come back when the stone was in place and finger its smoothness, trace the letters and dates. Sarah May Russell, it would say. December 1, 1852–August 20, 1910. He knelt and bowed his head.
“I know it’s selfish.” His voice shook worse than his folded hands. “I know there was pain for you, at the end. And I’m sorry. But it was a comfort to me, knowing you breathed in the world somewhere, knowing I wasn’t the only one who held our memories.”
He reached for the flowers, rested his hand there, but couldn’t lift his head. They hadn’t looked for him. His children.
“I’m not remembered any longer,” he said.
He covered his face to hide the tears, but no one was left to see them.
“David.”
The mist cleared. Stucco ceiling. He was flat on his back. Blue eyes studied him. Zac again.
“Name and date?”
“You can end it sooner,” David said.
“That’s right.”
A tear squeezed from his eye and trickled down his temple, fell onto the pillow with a soft sound.
“Are you giving permission?”
“Yes.”
Zac’s sigh was more of a gust. This mattered to him, though his motives were impossible to guess. David kept his eyes open, trying to ward off the memories, and watched while Zac and Simon and Colm worked around him, setting up an IV. He didn’t flinch when the needle entered the vein in the crook of his elbow.
“Don’t move,” Zac said.
“Not likely.”
He drifted again, came to with the needle gone from that arm but with a new pinching in his other hand. He looked down the length of his body to the hand resting at his side. They’d drawn blood from one arm, and now … In his other hand, another line. A transfusion indeed.
His body jerked. Stiffened.
“Might have to hold him.” That was Colm.
Zac’s hands pressed David’s shoulders. “Easy, buddy. We’re helping you.”
David’s body jerked again, involuntary, arching his back, then tilting his head so he could see behind him. Simon sat in a chair, a red line running from his arm. The glare hadn’t cooled, and he angled it now at Zac.
David’s body went limp. Heat traveled up his arm, into his chest, where it exploded. It coursed down his limbs. Filled his belly. Pooled in his head, his face. Hotter. Fire.
He was burning again.
“Hold him.”
“Trying to …”
He groaned. Not the mist, not the memory, it was happening now—burning. His flesh and his insides. The men yelled at each other, but he couldn’t understand the words as the fire consumed him from the inside out.
Not right. Burns started on the outside.
He writhed, or tried to, pinned in place by hands he couldn’t identify or even count. Time ground onward as he burned, and then, in the center of his chest, a drop of coolness rippled outward. Another drop fell in his forehead and another in the pit of his stomach. The coolness traveled his veins. He quieted. He lay still.
Somebody swore. “We killed him.”
“No.” That was Colm. A hand rested on David’s chest. “Breathing, see. And easier than he was.”
“I’ve never seen …” Zac’s voice shook. “None of us ever …”
“It makes sense,” Simon said.
“I know, but …”
When David forced his eyes open a few minutes later, the line was gone from his hand. Exhaustion laced his bones, but the mist had cleared. Th
e bog in his chest had drained away. He made a fist, and his fingers curled with ease. He tightened a muscle in his leg then one in his shoulder. Nothing ached.
“There,” Zac said. “Skin’s always last.”
David turned his head. The three of them stood in a row, watching him. Cotton was taped to the inside of Simon’s elbow.
David lifted his left hand. The age spots had cleared.
“Any questions?” Zac barely smiled.
He pushed up from the couch. It was … over? He tried to stand.
Colm stepped forward. “Whoa. Not yet. You need a few hours’ rest. And a lot of protein, as I’m sure you know.”
Right, of course. They had somehow sped up the annual process. He had to treat his body as if it had just emerged from that pit. He felt as if he’d been taken apart and put back together. Perhaps he had, somehow. He tipped his head back against the couch.
“I need an explanation for this.”
“Which part?” Zac said.
He angled a look without lifting his head. Not playing that game.
“Let’s see.” Zac’s mouth twitched. “We can’t die.”
David waited for him to get over his sense of humor.
Zac nodded toward the front of the RV, then at Colm. “Want to drive? Find us a place with steak and eggs.”
“It’s five in the morning, man.” But Colm headed up to the driver’s seat.
Five in the morning? David shook his head, trying to piece events together. Everything was fragmented. He’d arrived back at his hotel room around twelve hours ago. He rubbed the lingering ache above his eyes and hunched forward on the couch.
Zac sank onto the leather couch across from David’s. He gestured at the padded chairs around the table in the kitchenette, a few feet nearer the front. “Have a seat, Simon. You’ll want to correct me as needed.”
“Got that right, Fall Guy.” Simon tugged a chair up and sat.
Zac sighed. “Could we address that topic later?”
“Definitely.”
“Anyway.” He shifted toward David, body language blocking Simon from the discussion to which he’d just invited him. Over Zac’s shoulder, Simon watched David.
Distrust was only reasonable here. David nodded to him, and the tightness eased around Simon’s mouth.
“I’ll try the brief version, and you stop with questions if you want,” Zac said. “Once a year your body has to essentially reboot itself. Or rather, the organisms in your blood have to, which leaves the rest of you—all the human cell components—without anything to fight off aging until those organisms are back in shape. Tends to wipe us out for a few days unless we have access to Simon’s blood. He’s type O negative, and for some reason his blood jump-starts the rejuvenation process. Instead of days, we can be on our feet again in hours.”
Days. Hours. Organisms? David shook his head. “You said something before. On the phone at the hotel. Stale blood.”
“Didn’t think you were hearing me. But yeah, it’s a theory—that without Simon’s blood once a year, ours would get stale. Might prolong the process even more, naturally, over time.”
He couldn’t find harm in telling them this. “Last year, I lost twenty-three days.”
Simon’s eyebrows shot up. Zac’s face grew still as he leaned back and threaded his fingers over his waist.
“Twenty-three … days.”
“I want to know how you knew me. How you found each other, how many of us there are.”
Zac held up his hand, fingers spread. “Now that we know you’re alive.”
“Who’s the fifth?”
“That would be Moira,” Simon said. “She’s in Europe at the moment.”
David shut his eyes. How could there be five? If they’d found each other, why hadn’t they found him? He lifted one hand to rake through his hair, but he was shaking. Even his breath shook as he exhaled.
“We’ve been up all night,” Zac said. “And you’ll be a wreck until you’ve eaten a few times. Speeding up rejuvenation is like notching up your metabolism to burn, baby, burn.”
“Burn is right,” David said. The lack of filter between brain and mouth should disturb him, but he was too tired.
“Yeah, I’d have warned you, but it’s not that extreme for us.”
“Stale blood, as you said.”
“It’s the only explanation I have.” He stretched out on the couch. “If you’ll get some shut-eye while Colm drives, you’ll wake up stronger.”
His experience backed that up. Protein and sleep. He lay back against the pillow and let his body sink into the cushions. By now his body heat had bled into the couch, enough to warm it without chilling him. Besides, after that metabolic experience, he might not be cold for a while.
He closed his eyes. The sorrow of time had receded again, and his soul lightened at the mercy of that. The treasures of Sarah, of Michael and Kathleen, of all of them—they nestled against his heart, pieces of him that would be missing always. But he was no longer lost in the losses. Inside him were the two ages, not grating but fitting together, teeth in two gears that propelled each other. He was one hundred sixty-seven years old. And he would always be thirty-five.
He curled his fingers on his chest as exhaustion won. He held on to the ages that made him who he was.
SIX
David woke first. He lay still a minute, breathing in and out, then tested his legs and arms. Physical movement remained an effort. He pushed to his feet and explored the RV, stealth a challenge when his feet insisted on shuffling.
Colm had parked behind a Denny’s restaurant and was now asleep, sprawled on top of the bed at the back of the vehicle. Zac hadn’t moved from the couch across from David’s, and Simon slept in a recliner halfway between the couches and the kitchenette. Surprising that David came to on his own; he typically slept at least twelve hours the first day after … fine, rejuvenation. He might as well have a term for it.
His stomach growled, as hollow as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. He flexed his hand and tested the memories that came with the soreness there. It all came to him, easy, vivid, but he stood in Zachary Wilson’s RV with desert sun pouring through the east windows and didn’t lose himself in recent or old history. If he’d needed a final confirmation, this was it. His mind, not only his body, was sound again.
Sound but not strong, not yet. His single pass up and down the vehicle left his legs shaking. He sank onto the couch and lay there, eyes closed, until the others stirred.
“Denny’s?” Zac sighed. “Epic fail, Colm.”
Footsteps approached from the bedroom. “They have great breakfast food.”
“They’re a chain.”
“Guess you shouldn’t have let me drive.”
“Forget it. Let’s wake the new guy. Oh, he’s awake.”
It wasn’t quite nine in the morning, and most of the booths and tables stood empty. The hostess seated them at a table in one corner. David claimed the chair with its back to the wall and watched the others. Simon was the only one to glare at him. He wanted that seat.
David gave what he hoped was a look of acknowledgment, but in this condition he wasn’t putting his back to a room. Simon sat to one side and angled his chair. The glare didn’t cool.
“New guy’s privilege,” David said.
Simon made a scoffing sound.
Their waitress, a ponytailed blond whose name tag read BEKAH, brought waters and menus and perked up when they said they were ready to order—all of them but Zac, who claimed he had never been to Denny’s. By the time the rest of the table had ordered, Zac was ready with a request for an ultimate breakfast skillet and a side order of chocolate chip pancakes. Colm gave him an eye roll as Bekah bustled off with their menus and orders.
“Chocolate chip pancakes,” Colm said.
“Sweet follows savory, mate.” Zac pushed up the baseball cap he’d tugged on before leaving the RV. He’d put his back to the restaurant as quickly as David had claimed the chair opposite. “So, questions. You
seem up to asking them now.”
“Here?” David said.
Zac shrugged. “Anyone overhearing us will think we’re sci-fi TV writers or something.”
True enough. Something he’d know if he’d ever talked about these things in a group before. The realization cracked something in his chest. He sipped his water, head ducked. When he set down his glass and lifted his head, the room spun around him. He gripped the edge of the table.
“Hey,” Colm said. “Hang tough a few more minutes.”
He couldn’t nod without spinning the room faster. A faint buzz filled his head as his body caved forward.
Beside him, Simon snaked an arm across David’s chest, gripped his far shoulder, kept him upright. “He’s going to pass out.”
“Possibility,” David said as his vision turned grainy.
“Excuse me.” Zac was on his feet. “Could we get something, a bread basket, or anything? He’s crashing. Hypoglycemia.”
“Oh.” Bekah’s voice filled with concern. “Of course. I’ll be right back.”
Zac resumed his seat. Someone might have spoken, but David couldn’t track the words. Then Zac was thanking Bekah while Colm plucked a slice of white bread from the basket now occupying the center of the table.
“This is crap,” he said as he set it into David’s hand. “But it might keep you conscious for another few minutes.”
“Thank you.” David’s hand shook as he lifted it.
The silence around the table made him want to punch all of them in the face. Or that might be the hunger talking. Bleached flour shouldn’t taste this good.
The others made small talk while they waited for the real food. Not a mention of the latest box-office hit or sports news, no stories about coworkers or wives or kids. Simon recited an abstract of a scientific journal article about advances in artificial intelligence. They volleyed opinions back and forth—ethical and practical ramifications, predictions of how many years it would take for these things to become reality and common knowledge. They quoted da Vinci, Darwin, Turing, Asimov. Discussing AIs somehow turned into reminiscing about October 30, 1938, and the War of the Worlds radio drama. Among them, only Colm had caught it live.
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