“I’m glad,” Jason said. “Listen, things are happening that we have no control over. Don’t ask me why, because I can’t explain it.”
“I know,” Charlee said. “It’s just that . . .” Her voice faltered.
“It’s just that what?”
Charlee sighed. “Well, I thought it would be just you and me, you know, after all that happened, I thought . . .” Charlee’s voice faltered and this time her face reddened slightly.
“Listen, kiddo—”
“Don’t call me that! I’m no kid!”
“No, of course you’re not.” Jason knew he had to handle this as delicately as possible. Teenagers—especially teenage girls were probably the most fragile things on Earth. “I think you’re an amazing person, and I’m very fond of you. You saved my life. I’ll never forget that and I’ll be forever grateful to you. But the reality is, I’m thirty and you’re fourteen.”
“Almost fifteen.”
“That doesn’t change anything.”
Charlee sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
“So?”
“So, what?”
“So, can we still be friends?”
“I guess so,” Charlee said. “But it’s not going to change how I feel.”
“Understood.”
They made camp behind the barn in the middle of the copse of trees, setting up tents, lawn chairs, retrieving cooking utensils.
They did not dare have an open fire, afraid of drawing unwanted attention. They used the Coleman camp stove to cook dinner, using some of the meat from the coolers, (the ice was critically low) canned veggies and beans.
Jason supplied Slim with a healthy portion of new shotgun shells for his old twelve gauge. After supper Slim and Jason agreed that they would take turns standing watch throughout the night. Charlee could not keep her eyes open and before long was asleep on the rear seat of the pickup truck. She and Slim bonded from nearly the first moment and Jason was happy to see it. At first Charlee acted cool toward Danielle but after a while she began to warm up.
Jason agreed to take first watch while Slim crawled into one of the tents they’d hastily set up. Soon he was snoring loudly. The moon rose full and bright. Jason sat bathed in its light with an automatic rifle across his lap, talking in low tones with Danielle. They were both exhausted but filled with a strange electric kind of excitement that neither of them could explain.
They exchanged stories, Jason explaining how he’d gotten here, from the time he’d left Fort Hood, the car accident, the confrontation with Tim Dudley, the strange swelling of Tim’s head which had subsequently exploded, sending out a zillion floating spores, some of which Jason had inhaled, his arrival in Kardell, meeting Charlee and their subsequent trip across East Texas and Louisiana into Mississippi.
When it came Danielle’s turn she seemed to be at a loss for words.
Jason waited as she gathered her thoughts. “I don’t know how to tell my story because it just seems so . . . bizarre,” she said finally.
Jason sat back in his lawn chair and smiled. “You could just start from the beginning,” he said. “It’s the way stories have been told since the dawn of man.”
Danielle smiled, so comfortable with this soft-spoken yet self-assured man. “Okay, here goes, but remember, I warned you.”
So she started from the beginning; told him about being raised by her grandfather in St. Petersburg, Florida, her career, her job, her desperate efforts to save Grampy Joe, his subsequent murder, the confession she had found in his cupboard along with the other things, and the profound effect they’d had on her.
“I dreamed of you,” she said to Jason. “That’s why I came west. I knew I would find you. I needed to find you.”
Jason was silent following Danielle’s story. He sat watching her in the moonlight marveling, because even before he asked to see the object, he knew that it would look exactly like the one he carried around his own neck.
“Pretty fantastic, huh?” she said. “You do think I’m crazy, don’t you? Well, say something.”
Jason reached inside his shirt and pulled the object out. “Does yours look like mine?”
Danielle stared at the object speechless. Never in a million years would she have believed that the man she sought so fervently would be in possession of an exact copy of the artifact she’d found in her grandfather’s cupboard. “Where on earth did you get that?”
“My grandfather gave it to me when I was twelve. He was dying and he said that it was meant for me. He told me that if I wore it always and protected it that it would in turn protect me, and that someday it would show me the way. And you know, he wasn’t lying. It has been showing me the way since I was twelve.”
Danielle reached into the pocket of her jeans and extracted a soft piece of chamois cloth. She carefully unfolded the corners until the object was revealed. Jason stared speechless, and then something extraordinary happened; the dark night air between them turned to the most beautiful electric blue they had ever seen. A small gasp came out of Danielle and she recoiled.
“No,” Jason said. “Don’t pull it away. Bring the two objects closer together and see what happens.” They did, and the blue energy (if that’s what it was) formed into a spiral of blue light, like a tornado that was the same diameter all along its length. The closer they brought the two objects together, the larger and longer the blue spiral became until it had grown to nearly half the height of the trees.
“What on earth is it?” Danielle asked. Experimentally she put a finger into the blue spiral of light but felt nothing.
“I don’t know,” Jason said, “but I’ve seen it before when I’ve touched the object. Nothing as spectacular as this, though. I don’t think we should get too bold with them until we can figure it out.”
They pulled back and the spiral diminished. They drew them closer together and the spiral grew. One more time and they decided to no longer tempt fate. When they put them away the blue spiral ceased to exist.
“Grampy Joe left some paperwork,” Danielle said. “In it there is a reference to something he called the Gift. In his letter he said for me to trust the object, that it would show me the way.”
“The same thing my grandfather told me,” Jason said. “Do you have this paperwork with you?”
“I do.”
“Someone else knows about these objects,” Jason said. “That’s why we’re being hunted. I think they’re connected in some way to the plague and to something in the future. Something very important. Maybe some sort of event. I don’t know what it is, but I’m almost certain it’s real, or will be.”
“I didn’t have time to read everything Grampy Joe left for me,” Danielle said. “But he said something about an alien visit and a warning. I was so rattled all I could think about was getting away from his house and hiding the stuff. He said he was a scientist in New Mexico and he, along with two other scientists, were given identical objects and that they had hidden their existence from the government. Your grandfather wasn’t a scientist by any chance, was he?”
Jason shook his head. “No, he was an accountant.”
“All my life I thought Grampy Joe was a machinist,” Danielle said. “Come to find out he along with the other two scientists were forced into early retirement and sworn to secrecy because of what they knew about the alien. The government never knew about the objects or they would probably have killed them.”
“Does the paperwork give the names of the other two scientists?” Jason asked.
“I don’t know,” Danielle said. “Why don’t we find out?”
“I have a small Maglite,” Jason said.
Jason escorted Danielle to her car, all the while keeping guard, wary of intruders. The moon was bright enough across the tobacco fields that it would have been relatively easy to spot anyone walking. Jason did not see anyone, but that didn’t mean they were alone. There were plenty of places to hide. Danielle retrieved the envelope and they went back to their chairs, pulling them close together.
“There’s a lot of stuff here I don’t understand,” Danielle said. “Mathematical formulas and stuff written in a language I’ve never seen.” She went through the papers while Jason held the light. “Here they are,” she said. “Joseph Peterson, who was my grandfather; someone named Franz Shutzenberger and, nope, no one named La Chance.”
“He was my mother’s father,” Jason said, leaning in for a closer look. “His name was Albert Singer,” Jason and Danielle said in unison.
“Oh . . . my . . . God,” Danielle said
They pulled their eyes away from the paper and stared at each other in amazement. Danielle thought she would melt from the sudden heat of her closeness to Jason. Jason sensed Danielle’s emotions. He wasn’t sure how to react.
“Damn, I never knew,” he said. “How could I have not known?” He thought of his mother’s horrible struggle with alcoholism and wondered if she had known about the object. He wondered if she had known about her father’s past. If she had, then of course she would have had to go through her entire life keeping secrets and being afraid. No wonder she was so screwed up. No wonder she had been simultaneously fascinated and terrified when her father had given the object to Jason. “It is meant for him and only him,” the old man had said adamantly. “You must not take it from him.” This certainly added several layers of perspective to Jason’s rocky relationship with his mother. He wished he’d known. He felt terrible regret that he hadn’t, and aching guilt that he had treated her the way he had. Most of all he missed her. In that moment, sitting next to the woman he knew instinctively would someday become his lover, he missed his mother more than ever before in his life.
“I have a confession to make,” Danielle said. Their closeness was intoxicating. “I saw you in my dreams. But it was more than that.” Danielle paused blushing.
Jason waited.
“It’s what led me here. When I touched the object I saw the two of us walking together in a place unlike anything on Earth. And there was a child.”
“Our child?” Jason asked.
Danielle shook her head, sighed. “No, I don’t think so. I think she’s alive now. I think that’s why we were brought together. To find her. To help her in some way. I have this feeling that these objects are meant for her.”
“I’ve been seeing her too,” Jason said. “And when I gave the object over to Charlee she saw her.”
“Who do you think she is?”
Jason shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “I’m just a soldier, home from Afghanistan less than forty-eight hours ago. This is all pretty strange.”
“How do we find her?” Danielle asked.
“I’m following the object,” Jason said. “I think it’s leading the way. Coincidentally it’s taking me back to Maine, where I’m from. I feel a strong urgency to go there. Are you going with me?”
Danielle nodded vigorously. “I knew the moment I touched the object. I gave up everything, my home, my patients, my practice. It’s the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever done. But I did it because I . . . knew.”
“That settles it,” Jason said. “We can’t help anyone if we’re dead. Our first order of business is to stay alive. So, since you’re a doctor, my first question to you is what do you know about this virus?”
“Nothing. I’ve never seen anything like it, and believe me I’ve seen just about everything. I would like to get my hands on some of those spores and test them in a lab.”
“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”
“It could be,” Danielle said. “Some people are immune. I breathed a bunch of them and so did you. We didn’t catch anything.”
Jason said, “From what I can tell, it seems to have stopped. Does that make sense?”
Danielle shook her head. “None at all. It’s like it was somehow interrupted just when it was getting started. I don’t know why or how because things like that just don’t happen. Twenty-four hours ago it was raging out of control, and now . . . nothing. But I wouldn’t put much stock in that. Viruses mutate. When you least expect it they reinvent themselves.”
“That’s comforting,” Jason said.
Danielle picked up the letter her grandfather had left her and read it to Jason, ending with the part that said, if mankind continued on its present course it would be besieged by a terror, a plague so heinous that few if any would survive. The gift, on the other hand, could be mankind’s salvation, but only if placed in the right hands and only if mankind mended its evil ways.
Jason was silent for a long moment before speaking. “Do you think our two objects are part of this gift?”
“I have no reason to doubt it. They’re pretty amazing.”
“So this is some sort of alien virus?” Jason said. “This is some sort of punishment for being human?”
“Not for being human,” Danielle said. “For not using our humanity constructively. Look at our history. We are a violent and destructive species. Of all people you should know that. My God, you just got back from war. We’ve been killing each other over our differences since we crawled up out of the primordial soup. Yes, we are becoming more moral as we evolve socially, technologically and economically, but is it enough? Does it change who we are deep down in our DNA? Every day someone in the world commits some horrible atrocity. Isis beheads people of differing political and religious beliefs, there’s ethnic cleansing in places like Africa and the Balkans, nut jobs rush into schools with automatic weapons and slaughter children, greedy people manipulate world markets and millions lose their life savings. Instead of being beholden to the people who elect them, politicians sell their services to the highest bidder.
“We are a morally bankrupt species. And don’t tell me it’s because the ones committing these atrocities aren’t educated and don’t know any better. The ones in power are always educated, and they use the less educated as their pawns. Hitler was educated, Osama Bin Laden was educated, and you can bet your ass the leaders of ISIS are educated. We do the things we do because we’re human, not in spite of it.”
Danielle lowered her head almost in embarrassment and said, “Sorry for the tirade. It’s just that I’ve had a lot of time to think about things over the past few days. I never used to concern myself with this stuff. I’ve always looked at the rest of the world like it was somehow separate from me, like bad things only happened to others. Then I lost Grampy Joe. And you know, from the moment I found the object in his cupboard my entire outlook changed. Somehow my awareness has been heightened.”
Jason didn’t respond immediately. He was lost in thought. “I know what you mean,” he said finally. “I’ve had this object from the time I was twelve. It’s the reason I went to war.”
Danielle raised her head and her expression was one of confusion. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“It wanted me to see the world as it really was,” Jason said. “It showed me death and suffering like I’d never before imagined. And it told me I could make a difference. I’m hoping that in some small way I did make a difference, I don’t know. Maybe it taught me just how futile everything is. This is going to sound weird but I believe in my heart that it set me up for this very moment in time.”
Hope blossomed in Danielle’s heart. “I believe that,” she said. “I really do.”
“But it didn’t tell me how we could mend our evil ways,” Jason replied. “Tell me, Danielle, how do we do that?”
Danielle shrugged her shoulders and gave a long, tired sigh. “Maybe we can’t. We’re smart when you compare us to all the other species on Earth. But maybe we’re not smart enough. Maybe it will require some sort of evolutionary leap that we cannot even fathom at this stage in our evolution. Maybe all of this is a warning to get our shit together before it’s too late.”
“Maybe it’s already too late,” Jason said.
“I don’t want to believe that.”
“Listen, Danielle, the only thing that matters right now is finding that little girl. I think she’s the answer.”
“I do
, too.”
“But we need a better way.”
“A better way?” Danielle said.
“I’m almost sure we’re being hunted,” Jason said. “I don’t know how or why. Maybe it has something to do with these objects. It’s like they’re beacons that someone knows how to home in on. What I do know is travelling cross country by automobile is too slow and too dangerous. We have to find some other way.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Let me sleep on it.” He looked at his watch. “I’m exhausted. Time for the changing of the guard.”
Jason walked Danielle to her tent. “Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t mention it,” Jason said. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence where they stood bathed in moonlight looking into each other’s eyes. Finally Danielle stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Jason’s solid frame, hugging him like she never wanted to let go. After a short moment of awkwardness Jason reciprocated. They stood, bathed in moonlight, silent for a long time. Finally Danielle pulled away and disappeared inside her tent. Jason stood for a long moment staring across the fields at the darkness of forest beyond, its treetops gilded by moonlight. By the time he turned away Danielle was snoring softly.
Charlee, who had been watching through the truck window, slid back down to her sleeping position. She lay for a long time in restless thought before falling back into a place that was rife with disturbing dreams.
CHAPTER 13
Ice Caves. Northern Maine Wilderness. July 5th.
Two days after the arrival.
Outside, animals had begun to gather; deer, moose, bear, wolves, coyotes, bobcats, as well as hundreds of smaller species like raccoons, porcupines, squirrels, fisher, mice, snakes, not to exclude dozens of species of birds, perched on the branches of trees, mostly still, all silent, as if they were waiting for something to happen.
Song of Ariel: A Blue Light Thriller (Book 2) (Blue Light Series) Page 16