They’d been driving in silence for two miles when Zac nodded at the laptop. “Reading material for you.”
David turned his face to the passenger window. “Later.”
“You’re not taking it with you.”
“You can email me.”
“Listen, man. I want us to part ways on equal footing. This”—he gestured at the desert surrounding them—“isn’t.”
“Not sure what you mean.”
But he was, and neither of them had to spell out who held the advantage. Zac’s gaze didn’t move from the road, but the knowledge held between them. It was obvious what Zac wanted him to read. If he read it, he’d be accepting something. He had to decide now if he wanted to.
He bent and picked up the laptop from the floor. Unzipped the case, pulled it out, woke it up. The folder was still open. Longevite Data. Named subfolders, five of them. Zac had closed John Russell. David scanned the names of the others: Joseph Wirth, Colm O’Carroll, Anders Eklund, Mary Whitefield.
“Well?” he said.
Zac cleared his throat. His gaze didn’t waver from the highway, not even a glance toward David. “Open Anders Eklund.”
David looked at a few of Leon’s sketches first. Zac’s face had changed no more than David’s had. But the bodily damage Dr. Leon had captured of this patient was an entirely different sort. Blood, lots of it, not pooling inside body cavities but showing here in the pictures, staining the bedcovers and the bandages wrapped around Zac’s arm and torso. David looked across the console again at the man who had survived this. Zac didn’t meet his eyes.
David clicked on the document scans—the same minute script, the same fragile yellow pages that would smell like the first-edition case in his store. Musty but preserved. Irreplaceable. He focused on the words.
19 September 1887. Patient Anders Eklund. Brought to me last evening with two bullet wounds, left arm and abdomen. Great deal of bleeding from the latter. I was able to remove the bullet from the patient’s stomach but could not stanch the bleeding.
… has lost much blood and suffered much, and his only chance now is that the serum which has healed others was given in time to heal him also. I pray God Almighty and His Son may grant Eklund mercy. None in town can tell who shot him or why. He was found in the road outside town. Sheriff Wirth has been to see him. I informed him the patient is not yet conscious and death may yet come for him.
David closed the laptop. “Same road?”
“Same.” Zac sat back a moment, spine pressed into the seat, and then his shoulders relaxed. “The town got rid of the bandits within a week. Patrolled, shot one of them. I was their only victim.”
David nodded.
“Lay there over an hour before she found me. Death takes time when you’re gutshot.”
“She?”
Zac met his eyes a long moment before refocusing on the highway. “Moira. Mary back then. It’s how we met, but I’ve got no memory of it. I don’t know how she got me into her buggy—she says I helped. She held me all the way to the doc’s. Reins in one hand, pressure on my gut with the other.”
“Your file says 1887.”
“I was the fourth. Simon was last, 1890. So yeah, by the time Moira brought me to Doc Leon, she knew he had a serum that could save … well, a life that wasn’t savable. Told Simon the victim of the crime would pull through despite the odds, which is why he came to see me before I was even conscious. Leon never was an optimist, though. His notes are like that for each of us—’patient has suffered untold agony, pray God they keep breathing through this day of agony, but probably they’ll die in great agony.’”
“Simon was sheriff.”
“Yep. And looking back on it, so stereotypical. Gruff and conscientious and carried a big stick. You didn’t mess with the man. It was needed some of the time, but generally Fisher Lake made Walnut Grove look like the O.K. Corral.”
“And now he works in a lab?”
“Worked law enforcement on and off until 1976. It got risky, the identity issue.”
David sat quietly, letting the miles bring him closer to the plane that would take him home. Take him away from these people and their stories.
“If you want to know about the others, all you’ve got to do is ask,” Zac said after a minute. “But you ask them.”
“Of course,” David said.
“Since you didn’t get a choice in our knowledge of you, I figured …” He shrugged. “Now you know me equally.”
“Thank you.”
Zac shifted in his seat, and one hand flexed then resumed its grip. “So what were you doing, driving horses in that weather? I’ve always wondered. I remember the wagon was barely salvageable.”
So long ago. No, the memories hadn’t dimmed, but they glittered from a faraway place inside he didn’t visit anymore. He knew the way back to them, though. He let himself venture there.
With the recent upheaval of his mind and body, the memories weren’t as distant as usual. He sat with them, acclimating, until Zac reached for the radio knob.
“I was going home,” David said.
Zac’s hand withdrew to his lap.
“I hadn’t seen my wife in twelve days.”
“And a flash flood wasn’t about to slow you down.”
“Certainly not.”
Zac changed to the far left lane and passed a silver tour bus, the type to be filled with band equipment and instruments, perhaps even band members. David kept his eyes on the bus as it flashed past and faded behind them, then sat forward as Zac merged to the right again.
“In Michigan, you can stay over there.” David nodded to the left lane. “They call it the fast lane.”
“So that’s where you live now?”
“The last three years.”
“What took you away from home—back then, I mean?”
“Buying seed for planting.”
He could smell the dirt, feel it between his fingers. He flexed his hand at the memory of blisters that would turn to calluses, leather reins deftly handled to keep the horse plowing a straight line—a different skill than driving a wagon. Days he thought his back would break. Days he knelt in the dusty furrows of his fields and prayed for rain. One year he bowed to the earth in the middle of a cornfield destroyed by hail and begged his Lord for help to pay bills this crop would have covered.
“You were a farmer,” Zac said.
David tilted his head back and closed his eyes, letting the past soak his heart. “That I was.”
“You cared for it. For the work.”
“For the land.”
“What are you now?”
“I sell books.”
Zac chuckled. “Of course you do.”
David opened his eyes and sat up. “What’s that?”
“Something literary about you, that’s all.”
“And what was Anders?”
“Ah.” His mouth twitched. “Started as a freighter, back in my teens. Worked for a company until I could get enough stake to go out on my own. I loved the constant movement—actually I’d wondered if you were a freighter, the way you drove on through that storm, but if so you weren’t a smart one.”
David shook his head. “Freighting would have been too rootless for me.”
“When I decided to settle, I opened a mercantile. If you bought seed in town, you bought it from me.”
So strange. He tried to go back there, all the way back, standing at the counter of Fisher Lake’s general store and counting over carefully saved bills and coins in exchange for the goods that would keep his farm going, the seed that would grow in his fields. But the man he’d paid, the man who would have smiled and bid him a good day … No, only a blur. He certainly didn’t remember the name Eklund.
“You, a merchant,” David said. “I can’t see it. Ah, wait, yes I can. You could sell anything to anybody, Wilson.”
Zac’s laugh was unrestrained. “Including my autograph, it seems.”
David darted a glare at him, and Zac laughed again.
They hit downtown Phoenix in a few hours. Zac looked across at him when they caught a red light.
“Food?”
“Good idea.”
“Find somewhere that’s not a chain,” Zac said.
David used his phone to navigate them to a family-owned Italian grill. He ordered spaghetti, requested extra meatballs, and ignored the breadsticks. Right now, extra carbs would crash his system. He’d prefer not to sleep through the flight.
Conversation remained sparse as they ate, Zac digging into chicken marsala and both of them sipping coffee. Zac ordered tiramisu for dessert, so David sipped more slowly and let the man savor his sweets.
“A good tiramisu can’t be outclassed,” Zac said.
“I’m a chocolate cake guy myself.”
“Not from a box, I hope.”
David chuckled. “How about from a chain restaurant?”
Their words dwindled again, maybe a distaste for triviality after the revelations of the last day. David drained his mug and pushed it aside and watched the stranger in front of him who could never truly be a stranger. None of them could be, not even Moira, whether he met her or not. But a small nudge inside him knew he would. Wanted to. Thanksgiving. Maybe he’d do it. “How’s the arm?”
Zac looked up from his fixated enjoyment of the tiramisu. “Arm? Oh.” He flexed the left one. “Serum took care of it.”
David nodded.
“Secondary injuries are healed too. Or was it not that way for you?”
“It was, with the wagon accident.” He paged through his memories. “You’re saying anytime I’d have died, I’ve been left unscarred.”
“Right. But anything that’s non-life-threatening doesn’t activate them, which is why we can scar from milder things.”
His nod was slower now as he fit each major physical injury in his life into one of those two categories. “I hadn’t thought of the distinction. Always puzzled me that I could heal sometimes but not others.”
A chill zipped up his spine. The car accident, 1978, walking away from the paramedics and insisting he was fine, not telling them his head had hit the steering wheel, that he’d been unconscious at least a minute or two but woke before they arrived. He told Zac about it, about the blinding headache that assailed hours later. He’d curled into a ball on the floor of his apartment and hugged a pillow to his face. Sometime after dark the pain washed away in a soft coolness that spread from the center of his skull.
“I was dying?”
“Based on what I know, yeah,” Zac said. “Sounds like a brain bleed or something.”
“Why did the … organisms …” Still felt strange to say it. “The serum, why did it take so many hours to work?”
“It was working the whole time. Stanching bleeding, healing capillaries, whatever it does. But yeah, we’ve all noticed the pain relief is sudden when the healing completes. How should I say this? For one of us, you sound normal.” He smiled.
For some reason, it was good to hear that.
EIGHT
Anyone waiting for you back in Michigan?” Zac said as they left the restaurant a few minutes later.
“No.” The turtle did not count.
“No one at all?”
The image flashed of Tiana in her cowboy boots and peacoat, stomping fallen leaves and turning back to smile at him.
“No,” he said.
Zac nodded and slid behind the wheel.
David let him merge into traffic before speaking again. “You?”
“As far as the public’s concerned, I’m happily unattached.”
Not an answer. Before David could call him on it, Stevie Nicks began warbling from Zac’s phone. “Well, I’ve been afraid of changing ‘cause I built my life around you …”
“Huh,” Zac said and brought the phone to his ear. “You’re not on a plane over the Atlantic by any chance, are you? … Phoenix, I told you. I’ll be in Denver tomorrow morning…. Um, the Hilton at the airport. Wait, what?” After a few seconds, he shook his head and hung up.
David cocked an eyebrow at him.
“As you might have guessed, that’s our wandering waif, but she must have grabbed an earlier flight … and, um, she’s here. Meeting us at the Hilton.”
“She flew into Phoenix?”
“Yep, called me on her way to the baggage claim.”
David glanced down at his rumpled clothes. Well, nothing for it.
As they entered the hotel lobby, Zac slowed for half a stride, and David followed his gaze. Moira was seated on a black leather bench that backed up to a plant-and-stone arrangement in the center of the traffic. Around her, people checked in, checked out, milled about with luggage wheeling behind them. She had been watching the doors. She smiled and came to meet them.
Zac gave a sigh that seemed to come to rest. David edged aside as Moira neared, but she swerved to collide with him, not Zac. Her embrace was easy, warm, and brought the top of her head to his chest. She couldn’t be taller than five foot two. Her brown curls smelled like pomegranates. David’s arms encased her, politeness evaporating as an ache filled his chest.
He was being hugged.
“Our long-lost longevite.” Moira stepped back like a proud grandmother, let me look at you in the laughter around her eyes. “John Russell as I live and breathe.”
The aging process had stopped in her early twenties. She was fine boned and brown eyed, and she had to be overheating in a burgundy blazer, skinny jeans, and knee-high oxblood boots. She grabbed David’s hands and held on.
“You’re tall,” she said. “I know, an obvious statement, but for some reason I didn’t expect that.”
“My apologies?” He smiled.
“Not at all, be as tall as you like.” She hugged him again, and he stood and let her, every cell of him soaking in the human touch and hoping she didn’t notice. She stepped back after a few seconds. “If the boys forgot to invite you to Thanksgiving, consider yourself invited now. Even if you have previous commitments, you should join us for part of the day. Where are we this year, Zac?”
“Colm says Chicago.”
“Of course he does. Where’s your home, David? Would Chicago be feasible for you?”
“I’m a few hours north of Detroit.”
“Oh, perfect.” As if it were settled, Moira turned to Zac. “So I’m told we’re to call you Fall Guy.”
Zac took a step back. “You talked to Simon?”
“Colm.”
He shook his head with a sigh and included David in his smirk, but if David could see through the levity, surely Moira could. As if Zac knew his mask was porous, he let it slide from his face. His Adam’s apple dipped.
Moira brushed her hand across the back of his head. “Skull intact?”
“It is now.”
She closed her eyes for half a heartbeat and then tilted her head to look up at David, an exaggerated pose. “Have you been fed recently?”
“If you mean within the last hour.”
“Colm told me about the rejuvenation.”
David dipped a nod.
“If you’d let me know you were coming, we could have eaten here,” Zac said.
“That would have been nice.”
“Well …”
“I know, my own fault.”
“We could get coffee,” David said with a nod toward the café tucked in a far corner of the lobby. “I have an hour or so.”
He checked out of his room and met them at a table a few minutes later. Two servings of caffeine would wire him, might even put a tremor in his hands, but if it kept him awake until he made it home, that was a small price. He sipped and listened to Moira’s stories of Italy and couldn’t help adding to her descriptions of Rome.
“When were you there?” she said, lighting up.
“1981, ‘82.”
“You don’t know which?”
“Well, it was Christmas of ‘81 and New Year’s Day of ‘82.”
She smiled. “Your choice of timing is interesting.”
“I’m never home for Christmas. I spent ‘79 and New Year’s 1980 in Israel.”
“That must have been a very spiritual experience.” Her eyes lit with reverence.
“It was,” he said.
Zac’s gaze moved from her to David and back, but he didn’t join in. The desire to know more about them tugged again at David, but he sipped his coffee and held his peace. Starting something like this … he had to get home and take stock of the situation. Or process it, anyway.
They chatted until forty minutes before David’s boarding time, and then he and Moira exchanged contact information.
Moira hugged David again, and this one lingered. “See you soon.”
Zac shook his hand. “Thanks for tracking me down.”
“Thanks for falling to your death.”
“I thought I had this time.”
Something about the tone of that, the openness that dared David to ignore it.
“Go climb some rocks,” David said.
“I intend to.” Zac smiled. “Bene vale.”
And he accused David of bookishness. “Godspeed.”
The shuttle got him to the airport in six minutes, and for once TSA didn’t make him step out of line. Nice of them, especially since the second dose of caffeine had socked his system and he now fought both fatigue and jitters. Couldn’t the serum even that out, leave him awake and calm? He shook his head as he fast-walked to his gate. Minuscule unidentified cell components. In his blood.
He found his gate, sank into one of the deep-seated vinyl chairs, parked his luggage at his feet. He flexed the arm into which they’d injected Simon’s blood. He couldn’t discredit their claims, not with such clear physical proof.
Boarding went smoothly, and he hunkered down in his window seat. He buckled in, though if Zac could survive that fall, chances were David could survive a plane crash.
Too many new concepts. His brain, even on caffeine, felt pummeled. He had to finish recovering before he could process all of this. He tugged his battered travel copy of Ben-Hur from his backpack, switched on the reading light overhead, and settled in. Four hours to Detroit, nearly five hours driving. Then he could collapse into his own bed.
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