Marks didn’t answer; he was already focused back on the emergency room doors, shouting across the room, “Hey! Where’s your patient?”
Even in the chaos of the moment, that one question, so seemingly out of place, arrested Jonathan’s attention. He looked up and followed the eyes of Dr. Marks, and then he saw it too. A man standing in the middle of the crowd of wounded patients, another medic. He had dark hair and blank, hollow eyes. He looked once around the room, his eyes never focusing on anyone.
Dr. Marks stepped forward and called again, “I said, where’s your patient?”
The medic’s attention turned to Dr. Marks, but even this simple act seemed slow; deliberate.
Then, all at once, Jonathan realized what was missing—there was no blood. Where the other medics wore blood stains and dirt smeared across their uniforms, this man was clean.
Then Jonathan saw the man raise his hand to his chest. He held something small in his fist, with two thin wires snaking out from the bottom and disappearing again inside the cuff of his sleeve.
The medic lifted his chin and screamed, “For the Red Moon!”
Jonathan closed his eyes and whispered, “Jeremy.”
Then came the explosion.
Chapter 1
“Jeremy,” a voice whispered in the darkness. Low. Familiar. Pleading. A plea for what? Not help, but…something. The voice wanted something. Jeremy felt like he knew the answer; as if it were right there in front of him. Like he could reach out and grab it and know it. Then, just as quickly, the idea was gone. Then there was only darkness and the half-forgotten memory of a voice.
“Jeremy,” the voice called again. Louder this time. Closer. He knew what they wanted, and he wanted to answer, but he couldn’t make himself say the words. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.
“Jeremy, you’re going to be late. Again,” this voice was different; it belonged to his mom. She was calling from the hallway outside his room, and all at once, Jeremy snapped awake. Then he fell.
His whole body slammed into the hardwood floor, all of him hitting at the same time with a dull, heavy thud, as if someone had picked him up and dropped him on his back. Jeremy twisted up onto his side, wincing against the pain and fighting to catch his breath.
The fall had knocked his wind out, and now it was all he could do to curse between gulps of air, “Son of a—”
Jeremy heard footsteps running down the hallway.
Suddenly his door opened, and his mom stood just inside his room, still clutching the doorknob and looking down on him with a frown that was half worried and half reproachful. “Jesus Christ, Jeremy!”
Jeremy pushed himself up on one arm. “I—I fell.”
“I see that.” And then the concern in his mom’s voice slipped away, and all that was left was her annoyance. “Are you on drugs?”
“Mom.” Jeremy looked away and answered with a half-laugh, but Emily Cross only arched her eyebrows, folded her arms across her chest, and waited.
It had been six months since the attacks in Philly, and Jeremy was tired of it—all of it. He was tired of the questions. He was over all the counseling. And he was done with the constant concern, the never-ending Are you okay? Then why aren’t you eating? Are you depressed? Are you on drugs? Then why won’t you talk to me? Are you sure you’re okay? What do you feel? What do you need?
What he really needed was for all of it to stop. He needed to feel normal again.
“Jeremy?” His mom still stood in the doorway, waiting.
Jeremy locked his jaw. “No, Mom, I’m not on drugs. You’ve asked me every day for the last six months, and the answer is still no.”
Emily sighed and uncrossed her arms. “Get up and get ready for school.”
Then she turned and closed the bedroom door behind her. Jeremy sank back, lying flat against the cold hardwood floor. His heavy green comforter was still tangled around his legs, and he kicked, twice, to free himself. Then, suddenly, Jeremy stopped. He sat up and looked around the room.
He realized what was wrong. Jeremy sat in the middle of the bedroom floor, and his bed was almost four feet away. He must have rolled out of the bed…but then what? He kept rolling another four feet across the floor? That’s not what he remembered. The only thing he felt was falling. Then the floor, and then he was awake. No, that wasn’t it either. He was awake, and then he fell straight down. There was no rolling.
Jeremy forced himself to stand up, wincing again from the morning’s peculiar wakeup call. He stepped over to his desk and grabbed the jeans hanging from the back of the chair. He pulled them on, and then he tugged at one of the black t-shirts spilling out of his dresser, prying it free without ever opening the drawer. He pulled the shirt on, then followed it with his gray Penn State hoodie. Jeremy looked around the room again and shook his head. Four feet.
“Jeremy!” His mom’s voice was louder, but also farther away. She was already downstairs. Jeremy walked out of the room.
Downstairs in the kitchen his mother stood next to the sink, leaning back against the white counter like every other morning. She held her coffee mug cradled between her hands, raising it absently to take another sip. Her attention was focused on the television on the far counter showing the morning news.
Jeremy walked to the refrigerator, opened the steel door, and found the orange juice.
“Use a glass, please,” Emily spoke as he reached for the carton.
Out of sight, behind the refrigerator door, Jeremy dropped his head, and tried his best not to snap. “Okay, Mom.”
“Senator Ross’ office called again last night. They need an answer.”
Jeremy took a glass from one of the cabinets and started to pour the juice. “I already gave you my answer. I’m not going. Go without me.”
“Susan Marks is going,” Emily said, her eyes never leaving the television. “It’s an honor to be invited.”
“No, Mom.” Jeremy opened the refrigerator again, pulling harder than he intended and rattling the bottles tucked inside the door. “It’s not an honor. It’s a photo-op.”
Emily sipped her coffee again. “I think your father would want us to go.”
Of course he would, and she would know. According to his mom, the clairvoyant, there were all kinds of things Jeremy’s dad would want them to do. Like go on vacation to the Outer Banks like they had planned. Or eat a full Thanksgiving dinner because of tradition. He’d want Jeremy to clean his room once a week. She had reduced his dad to a cheap ploy to get her way, and Jeremy wouldn’t let it work. Not this time.
He stood in front of the stainless steel door, refusing to turn. “Mom, I gotta go. I’m late.”
“Well, we can talk about it later, I guess.” Emily turned to look at Jeremy for the first time. “You want a ride? It’s freezing today.”
“No. I’m meeting Kate. We’ll take the bus.” Jeremy walked out of the kitchen. In the entryway, he pulled on his heavy red coat, flipped his bookbag over his shoulder, and then he was out the door.
Standing in the cold January air, Jeremy closed his eyes, reached behind him, and pulled the door closed. He took a deep breath and imagined starting the day again, this time without invitations from Senator Ross, or his mom’s nagging, or falling out of bed.
“Morning.”
Jeremy opened his eyes. On the sidewalk, just at the bottom of his front steps, Kate stood waiting. Like Jeremy, Kate was a senior at Central High School, but unlike Jeremy she paid much more attention to her appearance. This morning she wore dark blue jeans tucked into a pair of high black boots that reached to her knees. Her fitted white parka was buttoned to her chin, and her fur-lined hood was pulled up, although wisps of blonde hair had escaped and danced in the wind on either side of her face—a style undoubtedly perfected before she ever left the house. Beneath her hood, Jeremy could see Kate’s cheeks and the tip of her nose were already bright red, and her blue eyes, always pale, gave the distinct impression of ice in the gray morning light.
She smiled. �
��You’re late again.”
Jeremy returned a half-smile of his own as he started down the steps. “I know, but I’m not that late.”
The two fell into step, side by side, as they walked up the sidewalk.
Jeremy said, “You know you can come inside. You don’t have to stand out here in the cold.”
“It’s fine. I like the cold,” Kate said. “Besides, I think it’s warmer out here than waiting inside with your mom.”
Jeremy laughed. “She’s getting better. She called you Kate yesterday instead of ‘that girl.’”
“It’s a miracle.”
They walked farther down the sidewalk. For a moment neither spoke. Up ahead a group of boys, younger, maybe in middle school, played with the dirty piles of snow slushed up at the edge of the sidewalk. One boy would make a snowball, chase down one of his friends, throw it hard against his back or side, and then retreat. Then the target would make another snowball, chase down his attacker, and so on and so on the pattern would repeat.
Jeremy glanced sideways at Kate again. “So?”
“So what?” She grinned but refused to look over at Jeremy.
“You think I forgot, don’t you?”
Kate’s smile widened. “Forgot what?”
Jeremy reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a pink envelope. “Happy Birthday, Katie.”
Kate looked over and took the card. “I knew you didn’t forget.”
They kept walking. A car drove down the street, kicking wet slush out toward the sidewalk as it went by.
“So you think you can make it tonight?” Kate asked. “It’s just going to be pizza with some of the girls from the team. Maybe some of their boyfriends. It’s not even a party, really.”
“I don’t know,” Jeremy looked down at the sidewalk. “I’ll ask, but…you know.”
They took another couple steps in silence, but when Kate spoke again her voice was softer. “Did you have the dream again?”
“No.”
Kate stopped and turned to look at him. Jeremy took another two steps, hoping she would let it go, but there was no chance. He stopped and turned back to meet her icy stare. He hated it when she acted like this.
After his dad’s death, Jeremy got to the point where he expected the looks from people—the asinine way they would tilt their chins slightly at an angle whenever they talked to him, as if they were trying to see inside his head. He expected the quiet, soothing voices too, as if people thought shouting or even talking at a normal human volume would somehow be too much for him to handle in his fragile state. He even stopped being surprised when people gave him the “sympathy touch,” that awkward hand over his shoulder whenever they talked to him about his dad, as if to say in that one touch that everything would be okay; as if his life was reduced to some goddamn Hallmark-channel movie.
Jeremy ignored most of it. Usually he chalked it up to people being self-obsessed idiots. He knew they couldn’t care less about him and his dad; they were only trying to get through that awkward minute when they had to stand and talk to the dead doctor’s son. So they would tilt their heads and lower their voices and touch his arm, because “everything’s going to be okay.”
But Kate was different. She knew better. And when she looked at him the way she looked now, Jeremy always felt like he was broken—and he hated it.
“I didn’t dream about my dad last night. Okay?”
Kate shook her head, “So you’ve been having the same dream about your dad every night for the last six months, and you’re telling me it just stopped last night?”
“I didn’t see him,” Jeremy sounded even less convincing than before, and Kate stood unmoving.
Finally, he gave up, “Listen, I didn’t see my dad last night, that’s the truth. But I heard him. I think I heard his voice.”
Kate started walking again, and like before, Jeremy fell into step beside her; she looked over. “What did he say?”
“Just my name. Like in the other dreams. He just says my name like he wants something, but it was all black this time.”
Kate nodded. “Did you say anything back to him? In your dream?”
Jeremy shook his head.
“Did you tell your mom about it yet?”
Jeremy gave a mock laugh. “Why would I do something like that?”
Kate stopped again. “Jeremy—”
“No.” Jeremy turned around and looked at her. “I’m not going to tell my mom about some stupid recurring dream about my dad. She doesn’t need that.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Well you need to tell someone.”
“I do tell someone. I tell you.”
They started walking again down the sidewalk. The group of boys playing at their snowball fight were just in front of them, but as Jeremy and Kate approached, the boys stopped and stood in place, one of them hefting a snowball in his gloved hand. It was a momentary truce to allow the two senior intruders time to pass.
Jeremy and Kate kept walking, but as they went by, a heavy, wet snowball exploded across the back of Kate’s parka.
She wheeled around on the boys. “Hey!”
Jeremy laughed. Then he dropped his backpack to the sidewalk and ran to the slush pile to make a snowball of his own. One of the boys, probably the one who threw the snowball at Kate—a short, squat little boy with carrot-red hair, and a million freckles dotting his face—ran up the sidewalk. Jeremy scooped up two handfuls of snow and started after him.
Then everything seemed to happen at once. The boy broke to his right to run across the street. He jumped over the slush pile at the edge of the sidewalk, darted between two parked cars, took one step into the road, but then he slipped; he fell flat on his face in the middle of the street.
He probably never saw the school bus coming down the road, but as soon as he hit the ground, the bus driver saw him. She slammed on her brakes. The wheels locked, and the whole bus started to slide.
Jeremy reached the boy just before the bus. He bent down, grabbed him by the back of the coat, and in one motion he jerked the boy up and threw him back toward the sidewalk. But then Jeremy was out of time. He dropped to his knee, looked away, and covered his head with both his hands, ready for the impact. He could hear Kate start to scream, but then her voice was lost in the dull, sick crunch of crushing metal. Then silence.
Jeremy blinked open his eyes. Inches from his face he saw the front corner of the bus cutting into the blue driver’s-side door of one of the parked cars, and he thought for a second that the bus had missed him. At the last possible moment it must have veered to the right and hit the car and missed him…only it didn’t. He had felt it. The sudden impact of the bus and then the weight and the pressure, like someone was trying to push him.
He looked to his right. All he could see was the yellow radiator and black bumper of the bus, the steel bent and warped around his body in a concave shell where he knelt on the ground. He reached up and touched the metal next to his face. Then he recoiled his hand.
Jeremy staggered up to his feet and reeled back from the accident. He couldn’t catch his breath. He was hyperventilating, gasping, fighting to take in air. He felt someone grab his arm. It was Kate. She was saying something. He heard her voice, but he couldn’t follow the words. Why couldn’t he breathe?
A sudden thought; Jeremy looked down at his chest. Maybe he was cut, bleeding. He saw red, but his coat was red. Was he bleeding? He slapped his hand up to his chest. It was dry. No blood. Kate jerked on his arm again, and Jeremy turned back to look at her. He could see her panic.
“I can’t breathe,” he said between gasps. “Katie, I can’t breathe.” His vision suddenly blurred into fuzzy gray, and he could feel his legs give out as he collapsed back into the street. His ears were ringing. Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut, and then opened them, forcing himself to focus. He could see Kate kneeling next to him in the road. Her mouth was moving, and he knew she was saying something, but all he could hear was the ringing.
Jeremy swallowed hard and manag
ed a last whispered word, “Kate,” but then his eyes blurred again, and it was darkness.
Chapter 2
Major Stuart Ellison stood at ease near the back wall of the command center, his feet spaced perfectly shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped tightly behind his back. It was a posture adopted out of his own choice more than necessity. Years of service had made the forced position of parade rest like second nature to him, and now it was the only way Ellison could stand in the room and still feel some measure of comfort.
Certainly no one had ordered Ellison to stand there. He was the most senior ranking officer in the room, and the executive officer for the battalion. All 3,000 men currently serving at Fort Blaney were directly under his command, and only one, Colonel Edward McCann, had the authority to order him to “snap to,” but the colonel had yet to arrive.
Like the other men in the command center, Ellison wore gray camouflage, and like the other men, he was young and fit. His haircut was standard issue: shaved to the skin on the sides with a buzz of brown hair left on top. His dark-brown eyes were unremarkable, and his height was only average. In fact, the only thing setting Ellison apart from his men was the brown oak leaf sewn to his collar.
He scanned the room. The command center at Fort Blaney was state of the art; it had to be for their mission. At the center of the room, a long wooden conference table with high-backed leather chairs dominated the floor. There was enough seating for a dozen men, but currently only four of the chairs were occupied. Each of these four men sat in front of an open laptop, quietly tapping away at their keyboards. The side walls of the room were lined with flat-screen monitors, four mounted on either side, and on the far wall, opposite Ellison, there was another monitor dwarfing the rest; the men simply called it “The Big Screen.”
The command center served as the information lifeline for Fort Blaney. It was the only room on site with access to the internet, live television, or outside phone lines. There were no other connections between the command center and the computer network on base; the men in the command center called it an air-wall, and it was a simple solution to a complex problem: safeguarding information. The command center was the only room on base that could be hacked from the outside, and who cares if you get hacked if there’s no sensitive information to find? Even the laptops used in the room got traded out and re-formatted every five days.
ANOM: Awakening (The ANOM Series Book 1) Page 2