Magic Time

by Marc Scott Zicree

  “We’ve got a hundred and thirty-five people in the gym, trauma, shock—there’s a girl there who broke nearly every bone in her body when the plane hit. My neighbors and I have been trying to help, but there’s no water, no electricity. Does anybody know what’s happening? What’s being done?”

  She looked from Shango’s face to Czernas’ and back again, and behind her thick bifocals Shango saw other things: desperation, terror, husband and children and grandchildren who hadn’t been heard from since yesterday morning. Her world in pieces around her. Compassion stabbed him like an assassin through the heart, and like an assassin he thrust it aside, crushed it.

  It was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

  Bilmer was somewhere out there, maybe lying injured in some makeshift dressing station somewhere, maybe trying to hike in from Dulles by herself.

  “Please,” the woman was saying to Czernas. “Whatever you’re doing, please turn around and go back to town and find the National Guard or whoever’s in charge and tell them—ask them—to at least get us some water, a doctor. Doctor Vanderheide’s been on her feet for twenty-four hours, and she was hurt in the crash, too. . . .”

  “We can’t,” said Shango, seeing the struggle on Czernas’ face. Seeing that he could not say no.

  The woman stared at him with eyes that blazed in sudden hate.

  “If we run into the National Guard at Dulles, we’ll tell them to get out here, but we can’t turn back.”

  “What are you, deaf?” The woman’s voice cracked with sudden passion, her hard-held calm dissolving. “Or stupid? You want to come down here for a second and see what a man looks like who’s still alive after having his legs and pelvis mashed to jelly?” Her voice rose to almost a scream. “You want to tell a ten-year-old girl whose back was roasted that she’s going to have to go on hurting for a while longer? You want to . . .” She gasped, clutching at self-control, fingers digging harder into Czernas’ wrist as he tried to draw away. Tears were running down her face, tracking the grime.

  “Please,” she said. “Please.”

  There were tears also on Czernas’ face, mingling with the sweat in the hot morning sun.

  Quietly, Shango said again, “We can’t.” And to Czernas, who seemed incapable of movement or speech, “Let’s go.”

  The woman released her grip, stood for a moment looking at them both, her eyes the eyes of a damned soul who has been told that there isn’t any way out of Hell after all. Czernas unslung two of the water bottles he carried and pressed them into her hands. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The woman turned without a word and walked back down the drive toward the gym, slim and small and fearfully alone in the glaring sun. Shango swung his bike around and walked it back across the parkway, the heat from the asphalt baking his legs. After a long moment, Czernas followed.

  NEW YORK

  A melodic tinkling roused Cal from a profound sleep. Within the cocoon blackness of his still-closed eyes, he tried to remember if it was Sunday, if Mom would be cooking her banana-nut pancakes.

  Then recent memory sliced the image in two, and he jolted awake. He pressed himself up, safety and certainty vanishing. The sound was coming from Tina’s room. He noted Colleen and Doc had turned toward the sound as well, Colleen’s hands poised over her half-made bedroll, a disheveled Doc blinking himself toward consciousness.

  Cal rose. The others followed.

  Tina was sitting up in bed, the Buffy poster on the wall behind her like some protective saint. In her lap, she held the music box that had been her mother’s, clinking out tinny strains of Swan Lake. Her back again arrow straight, the sheen of her fever gone, she continued to peer downward, appearing clear-headed but lost in thought.

  Tina looked up, her eyes that startling, unearthly blue, her skin eggshell pale. A line of worry etched between her brows, she lifted the box toward Cal. “Remember how Mom used to keep her jewelry in this?”

  Cal nodded. The depository for the few modest but much-prized pieces that Cal had never seen his mother actually wear, only display proudly to the daughter they would someday adorn.

  Tina eyed Doc and Colleen timidly, not recognizing them. Cal said, “A couple of friends.”

  He stepped close, put a hand to her forehead. Mercifully cool. She turned her head aside, as if unwilling or ashamed to be touched or seen.

  Cal glanced over at Colleen and Doc. They nodded and withdrew. He turned back to his sister, saw that she was again contemplating the jewelry box.

  “I wonder how it felt.”

  Tina’s voice was so low that at first Cal thought she was talking to herself. Her eyes, however, met his and, with a small gesture of her head, directed his attention to the volume by her bed.

  It was Nijinsky’s diary; on the cover, the dancer in makeup and costume for Afternoon of a Faun, suffused with passion. Half man, half something else.

  “I mean,” she continued, “to go not just a little crazy, like my variations teacher says we all are. But to lose yourself . . . “

  Her otherworldly gaze slid to the vanity mirror. In a voice flattened and opaque, she said, “Would you cover that up for me, please?”

  Cal took a sharp breath but said nothing. He lifted a blanket and draped it over the glass. She nodded and eased back.

  Cal sat down beside her, not touching her. “It’s not just you,” he said. “It’s everything. Whatever this is, lots of people have been affected. They’ll have to find a cure.”

  At last, something connected, sparked life behind her eyes. “It won’t be like what I read about smallpox or—polio and stuff? Where they can save your life but. . . .”

  Her gaze returned to the music box. She whispered, “No one will want to look at me.”

  “You’re lovely.” And she was, in all her pale strangeness. But from her reaction, Cal could see his words had been dismissed. Worse, regarded as a lie.

  Finally, Cal said, “Look. There’s gonna be an awful lot of people working on figuring out what made this happen and making it un-happen. In the meantime, though, because . . . well, for a lot of reasons, I thought it’d be best if we left the city for a while.”

  Surprise flared, then resistance. “But what about my—!” She stopped, but he knew the unsaid rest of it. What about my lessons, my variations and barre work? The endless, obsessive attention to every nuance of the dance that might, just might secure the future she had so avidly pursued, that he himself had sacrificed so much for. To abandon that, jettison it? To leave the focus of her life like trash by a roadside?

  Then her eyes dropped, and her shoulders sagged, and Cal’s heart felt a greater pain than he had known.

  “Okay,” she said, and he saw her resignation, her hopelessness that it would ever be the same again, ever be what it was.

  “Tina . . .” Her focus remained on the blanket. “Tina.”

  Sharper than he’d intended. Still, it won her attention, cracked through her glass shell to bring him a look, a presence that, for him, made her Tina. An instant in which he saw the exuberant four-year-old making up steps to a Beethoven sonata, the ardent nine-year-old helping him prep for the bar while wincing through her stretches, her every gesture now bearing the grace of a carefully choreographed move. The tapestry of their life together glowing in the spotlight of his sister’s unyielding passion.

  “Listen.” His voice had again gentled. “Even if things don’t go back, even if they get worse—especially if they get worse—people are still gonna need more than food and shelter to get them through.” Cal reached out, touched her silken hair. “There’s such magic in you, in what you can do. You know that, don’t you? I watch you move, just across a room, and I find myself thinking, miracles are possible.”

  I don’t know how to do this, he thought. And suddenly her arms were around his neck, very tight, and she whispered, “I love you, Cal. I love you.”

  And in that moment at least, he knew that anything really was possible.

  Doc and Colleen were waiting f
or him in the front room. “We’ll be leaving first light tomorrow,” Cal said.

  Doc put a hand on Cal’s arm. “Calvin, maybe the penicillin helped, maybe not; there’s no way to know. But I’d rest a good deal more easy if I could send you off with some medicines.”

  “You know what the hospitals are like.”

  “There’s a man who owes me a favor,” Doc answered. “If he’s out of prison—” Cal started to protest, but Doc cut him off, heading for the front door. “Don’t worry, I’ll be quick.”

  Colleen fell in alongside him. “We’ll be quick.” Now Doc was the one protesting. Colleen lifted her sweater to reveal twelve inches of Green River toothpick sheathed at her belt.

  Doc raised his hands in surrender. “I never argue with a woman who has a machete.”

  As she followed Doc through the doorway, Colleen paused, shot Cal a look. “Thanks for the adventure.”

  He returned the look, with gratitude. But in the turmoil of his mind, all he saw were eyes entirely blue.

  He had stood in the shadows of Patel’s looted market for some time now, gazing through the broken glass at the brownstone across the street, watching the woman, the dark man and the other as they appeared from time to time at a fourth-floor window. Now two of them emerged from the building into the hot slant of evening sun, headed off down the street, unaware.

  That left just the one, alone in the apartment, as he had wanted it. Not that he couldn’t have taken all three quite easily; the sweet hum in his arms and legs and chest told him that. No, it was just that he wanted to give this one his full attention, and all the time in the world.

  Slowly, making sure no one saw him, Stern crossed the street and headed toward the apartment.

  Chapter Eighteen

  NEW YORK

  Cal’s eyes felt like they’d been scooped out and boiled, his muscles complained like rusty hinges, but he was determined to get everything ready before it grew dark.

  The pedicab stood in the living room, beside the recliner—the one Mr. Schenk had sat in a millennium ago yesterday morning. Cal had known of the stashed cycle three doors down, one of David Abramson’s failed summer jobs, and had traded the NYU student his law books, stereo and coffee table for the bike, some food and water, and containers to hold them. Bedrolls and provisions were stacked neatly around it. It would be a bitch to wrestle the thing down the stairs in tomorrow’s pre-dawn darkness, but only an idiot left things outdoors unwatched.

  When he straightened up from stowing the knives and arrows, he saw Tina watching from the archway into the hall, leaning against the frame for support. She held out her music box, tilting it questioningly toward him.

  “Sure,” Cal said lightly, taking it. He pressed it between the folds of one of the bedrolls, made sure it was secure. The basic frame of the pedicab was a mountain bike with a wide range of gears: it would stand up to hard traveling, but every ounce of weight would tell.

  “Funny how little you really need, when you think about it,” Tina said. “It’s like we’ve been carrying all this stuff on our backs; now it’s just shedding away.” She stepped a little shakily to the sofa and sank down with a ragged exhalation.

  She’s not well, not at all. He had been so relieved when her fever had broken, when she had come back to him, but the illness was still in her, still working, he could sense that. He sensed, too, her fear, her horror at what was happening to her. He wondered if she had, after all, seen the bands of slouched pale-eyed creatures that he’d glimpsed near the hospital.

  “You’re not gonna leave me, are you, Cal?”

  “What? No. What makes you think that?”

  “When I was little,” she began quietly, “and they told me something had happened to Mama, I tried to imagine the worst thing that could happen, and the worst I could imagine was she had a broken arm.” The light from the blinds cast shadow striping across her face, rendering her expression unreadable. “But she was dead.”

  Cal nodded, remembering the day, the helplessness he had felt. Tina reached out and grasped his sleeve, peered up at him with her cobalt gaze. “Sometimes things happen, and it doesn’t make any difference if you’re good or not.”

  Cal peered into her strange, troubled eyes. “I’m not gonna leave you.”

  A tapping sounded at the front door, and they both froze. Cal had given Doc his duplicate key, and neither he nor Colleen would have bothered to knock. Wordlessly, Cal motioned Tina toward her room. She rose and quickly moved to her door, slid out of sight behind it.

  The tapping continued, insistent, as if sharp nails were drumming on the door. Cautious, Cal unzipped one of the packs, withdrew the buck knife Colleen had given him. He unsheathed it, crossed the room in a few soundless steps.

  He was almost to the door when there was a harsh thud and the door exploded inward, fragments flying like shrapnel. With a cry, he stumbled back, shielding his face, wood shards bouncing off him. Dimly, he could perceive something squeezing through the ragged hole in the door, dark as some vast insect.

  Cal gasped. The intruder was a monstrosity, reptilian and manlike at the same time, standing on two legs that bent in more places than a man’s. It towered over him, head nearly grazing the high ceiling as it leaned forward, stalking toward him, elephantine footfalls shuddering the floor.

  It paused and tilted its head, its yellow eyes considering him. Then the creature’s long, projecting face split in a ghastly grin that revealed twin rows of steak-knife teeth.

  “This is not Woodstock,” the monster said. “I am not Mother Teresa.”

  Cal gaped, recalling the words, hearing in the thunder of that dragon voice a tone familiar from days and months and years endured. Now he could see, unmistakably, in the rough saurian planes of that face, the remnant—no—the essence of the man. “Mr. Stern . . .”

  Stern nodded, pleased. He wants me to know it’s him, Cal thought. Whatever he’s going to do, he wants it personal.

  Stern took another lumbering, gliding step toward him, relishing it. “I told you if you left, you’d be terminated.” He belched, and, incredibly, a tendril of gray vapor curled out the side of his mouth. “Mind if I smoke?”

  A nearby gasp drew both their attention. Cal saw that Tina was standing in the doorway of her room, jewel-blue eyes riveted on Stern, vertical-slit pupils staring.

  Stern regarded her with his own changed eyes, identical pupils. “Lord of exiles and miracles,” he whispered, voice trembling. “I thought I was the only butterfly in this brave new world.”

  He took a step toward her, one razored hand extended. She shrank back. “Don’t be scared, honeylamb. You’re looking at your future.”

  Cal flung himself between them, thrust Tina behind him. “Stay away from her!”

  Stern paused, firelight eyes raking Cal. “I will, if you introduce us.”

  “She’s my sister.”

  Stern weighed it, then flashed an obscene Cheshire grin. “Well, Mr. Griffin, may I have permission to take out your sister?”

  Stern lunged with crocodile speed.

  “Run, Tina!” Cal shouted, shoving her away. She darted into her room, slammed the door. Cal wheeled on Stern, the long knife blade gleaming.

  Stern batted Cal aside like wadded paper. Scrambling to his feet, Cal saw Stern rip the door apart with two quick slashes of his monstrous hands, tear through the bookcase Tina had overturned within as a barricade.

  Cal sprang after Stern into the bedroom, leapt on him from behind, bringing the knife down hard. He felt the blade jar aside on bone and gristle, saw Tina shrink back in terror, trying to wedge herself in the corner. Stern roared, more in outrage than pain, threw Cal off and spun on him, claws sweeping across Cal’s abdomen in a wide arc. Cal sprang back and felt his shirt rip, the dagger points lightly scoring the skin of his stomach, just enough to draw blood.

  Stern closed on him, and he stumbled back, knife leveled, desperately searching for some soft place under leather hide and bony plate.

  A box
y object flew through the air, struck Stern on the back before crashing to the floor. Stern yelled, spun to face Tina. The night stand. She threw the night stand. But now she had nothing close to hand as Stern rushed at her. She fell back between the bed and wall, cowering. He bent over her, reaching out nightmarishly long arms.

  Cal dove forward, but Stern twisted, gripped him and sent him flying across the room. Cal’s head hit the wall with a terrible, resounding crash.

  Tina screamed as he hit the floor, splayed limply. Oddly, his mind felt clear, but he couldn’t see the room anymore, only a flat grayness. He struggled to rise, to move his arms and legs, but it was as if the strings to them were all severed.

  He heard the crack of the big window shattering, then a strange sound as of a great bedsheet unfurling, followed by a rhythmic whooshing of air that filled the world, then diminished, punctuated by the fading keen of Tina’s screams.

  In the last moment of awareness before the gray darkened and was all, Cal recognized that sound.

  It was the sound of wings.

  OUTSIDE D.C.

  “You could have said you were sorry,” said Czernas, after about two and a half miles.

  Riding ahead, Shango was watching the cars on his left like a hawk, watching the trees that fringed the parkway, planning what he’d do if someone lunged at them from either direction. The bikes were thin-tired touring models, not mountain or hybrid. If they were forced off the pavement, they couldn’t maintain escape speed.

  Shango said nothing. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re dying, Mister. I’m sorry you’re screaming in pain, sweetheart.

  I’m sorry you’re never going to see your husband or children or grandkids again.

  Something grated within him at those facile, worthless apologies.