“I’m allergic, what can I say?” Jimmy shrugged.
“To being intelligent?” Danny snapped.
“That’s not what this is about, Danny, is it?”
Danny sighed and looked down at his feet then back out the window again.
“They arrested Jackie Gleason last night,” he said.
“What?”
“The FBI. It’ll come as a big surprise to Gleason the comedian when they start interrogating him about alien bodies stored in the desert in some secret underground bunker that doesn’t even exist yet, and that Gleason wouldn’t even have known about himself until nineteen seventy-three. Seven years too damn early. Christ!”
Jimmy flicked his cigarette butt at the window.
Sparks flew as it bounced off the glass then hit the floor.
He turned around.
“I need to get out of here,” he said and walked away.
“Jimmy?” Danny called out after him. “Come on. I’m sorry.”
The door slammed.
Danny looked down at the glowing cigarette on the floor, stamped on it and ground it out.
“Shit!”
Danny’s footsteps echoed back at him as he ran down the fire exit stairwell.
Thrusting wide the iron door at the bottom he flew outside. The cold bit at his skin.
He looked up and down the alley searching for Jimmy.
When a drip of melting snow hit him on the face light exploded in his head.
… on the edge of a cliff of ice looking out over a land in permanent twilight through a haze of green and blue magnetic waves and a sun so pale and far away it’s light barely reaches…
“Shit!”
Jimmy dropped his hand from Danny’s shoulder.
“Looks like you need your fix,” he said. “Come on, before we get caught.”
“What happened?” Danny asked.
“You went all funny,” Jimmy said whispered into his ear.
“Funny like how?” Danny asked.
“Like you went all see through and glittery orange,” Jimmy said. “And you warn me about freaking out in public. Just as well no one else was around to see it.”
“The truth, Jimmy.”
“You were about to keel over,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy stopped walking.
He lifted the lid on a trashcan and looked inside.
“What are you doing?” Danny asked.
“Looking for something to eat,” Jimmy said.
“God, Jimmy, has it gotten that bad?”
“Not for me, idiot,” Jimmy said, “for him.”
“Who?” Danny asked looking around.
“The mutt,” Danny said crouching down.
A skinny dog approached with his tail between his legs, his eyes up, his head down.
“Here, boy,” Jimmy said with his half-eaten morsel in his outstretched hand.
The dog snatched it from Jimmy’s hand then ran away. The morsel dropped from his mouth. The dog scrambled back for it, picked it up keeping his eyes on Jimmy and Danny as he wolfed it down, then ran away again and disappeared down the alleyway.
Jimmy stood up.
“I know how he feels,” he said.
“Jimmy?”
“Don’t,” Jimmy said.
“How’d you know what I was going to say?” Danny asked.
“You were going to say you’re sorry,” Jimmy said. “You keep on saying sorry when I’m the one who should be saying sorry. God, I hope that guy doesn’t get into trouble because of me.”
“What guy?”
“Gleason,” Jimmy said. “The bodies in the desert guy. Him.”
“He’ll be okay,” Danny said. “You can’t get evidence out of a guy from a future that hasn’t happened yet.”
“I hope you’re right.”
They rounded the corner into a narrow street. It was dark.
“Let there be light,” Jimmy said.
He raised his hand. A broken streetlight blinked on and burned brighter than the sun.
Danny screwed up his eyes.
“Jimmy, what did I just say?” he said.
The light popped.
“It was obviously fucked anyway,” Jimmy said.
Danny told Jimmy about his plans to put the enemy off his scent.
“You mean you want to live inside a faraday cage?” Jimmy said. “Don’t see how that would work. How’s a lot of chicken wire’s gonna stop them getting to you. What were you planning anyway? Plaster the stuff behind the walls?”
“Do you have any better ideas?” Danny said.
“We could move,” Jimmy said.
They didn’t say anything for a while as they walked along the street.
“Where to?” Danny asked.
“Colorado,” Jimmy said.
“What?”
“Think of it. Wide open spaces and all that clear air,” Jimmy said.
“It’s fifty miles above sea level,” Danny said.”There is no air!”
“Moffat, Crestone, The Baca, White Sands,” Jimmy said.
He turned to face Jimmy and started walking backwards.
The lights of a grilled display window of a pawn shop blinked out.
“Was that me?” Jimmy asked.
“Missile Silos, Jimmy?” Danny said. “Fat Man and Big Boy? Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Real peace on earth. And Crestone? There goes every weirdo on the planet, center of the psychic universe.”
“Perfect,” Jimmy said. “We’ll blend right in. Think about it. No more running, we settle down…”
“I doubt it,” Danny said. “And anyone’s going to be able to sense us for what we are they’re sure as hell going to in that place.”
“Why do you always have to be so down on my ideas?” Jimmy said.
He turned around and stepped in line with Danny.
“I can’t help it, Jimmy. It’s an affliction of mine - seeing great gaping holes in your chicken wire ideas.”
“We could get ourselves an R.V.,” Jimmy said, “and just keep on travelling from place to place.”
“And sleep under the stars?”
“All that freedom,” Jimmy said.
He spun around, arms out, looking up at the night sky.
“Like cowboys and injuns?” Danny asked.
“Yeah, like pioneers,” Jimmy said jumping up and down like a kid
“And end up freeze-dried in a desert so high up you can’t even breathe,” Danny said.
“Like the idea?” Jimmy said grabbing Danny around the shoulders.
“Got any money?”
“Nope.”
“Thought so.”
“Anything happen the last time you went through?” Danny asked as they turned a corner.
The sidewalk stretched out glittering wet under white streetlights.
Jimmy bit his lip and lifted his hand.
“Don’t, Jimmy,” Danny said pushing Jimmy’s arm down.
“Last time it was a bit too underground for me,” Jimmy said. “Very claustrophobic, compressed, heavy feeling. There was a red stairway leading down with a black handrail. I remember that. It’s all changing, Danny. Absolutely nothing like the other place we dream about.”
He looked through trash bags dumped on the sidewalk.
“What about you?” he asked.
He dropped a trash bag and caught up with Danny again.
“I’ve noticed that too,” Danny said. “It’s changing.”
Since you blabbed about what was going on at Trinity, he wanted to say but didn’t.
“Wish we could go back to the forest place again,” Jimmy said.
“Hmm.”
“All green, carpet of bright moss, little bridges, sun shining through the leaves.”
“You’re breaking my heart,” Danny said.
“All free and not a care,” Jimmy said. “I think if I was going to end up stuck anywhere it would be there.”
“What about the railway place?” Danny said.
“Give me a break,” Jimmy
said. “It’s all under cover and nothing but rail tracks.”
“But it is a place to we could travel from to all over,” Danny said. “Or what about the shoreline place where it’s shanty huts and forever night, all those people, real characters, welcoming and not a care in the universe.”
“You make it sound like Quaalude heaven,” Jimmy said. “You really want to be in a place that’s permanent night?”
“Like that’s not how we’re living now?” Danny said.
“Tell you what though,” Jimmy said. “I had a hell of a time getting back the last time. I thought I wasn’t going to make it.”
“Maybe they’re onto us in more ways than I thought,” Danny said.
“What for?” Jimmy asked. “It’s not like we can take anyone else there. It’s not like we can bring anything back, physical anyway.”
“But information we can,” Danny said. “You you proved we can with the Trinity, Manhattan thing.”
“That again,” Jimmy said. “But I think you’re right, Danny. We could provide them with information and get ourselves rich…
“Or killed.2
… about new means of transportation, teleportation and how to travel faster than the speed of fucking light.”
Jimmy jumped up in the air and kicked his heels.
“Hey, who wouldn’t want us?” he said.
“But those other places aren’t real except to us,” Danny said.
“And what they can’t have they want all the more, as I see it.”
They walked along, side by side, heads down, hands in pockets, said their goodnights and split up.
There was always tomorrow to get through.
Danny woke up at the sound of his own name being called.
He sat up.
A fog of lilac turned on itself at the end of his bed. It changed to violet. He screwed up his eyes.
“Danny!” a voice called out.
Danny held a hand up to shield his eyes against the light.
“Jimmy? Is that you?”
“Danny, help me!”
Heart hammering, Danny sat bolt upright as the fog swirled faster.
“Jimmy!” he called out again.
“Help me, Danny. It’s after me.”
A red glow, deep as congealed blood, flooded through the fog. A face oozed out from it, grinning. Its cheekbones so high they forced the thing’s eyes into slits. It leered at Danny just as a sharp tongue flicked between its teeth.
“What the hell!”
“Danny!”
“Jimmy? Where are you?”
There was an orange and green flash.
The room plunged into darkness.
Danny threw his legs over the side of the bed.
He looked around.
His sanctuary suddenly felt like a concrete cell.
He stood up and padded across the floor, picked up his shorts and pulled them on.
Now what?
Jimmy. What had happened to Jimmy?
Had anything happened?
Was it just a dream, a nightmare?
Or something worse like a premonition, a cry for help.
Nothing felt right.
He could still hear Jimmy’s voice.
Was it fallout from a dream?
But he and Jimmy never met in dreams, only in real life. Not when one of them was awake and the other one asleep.
And that thing, what had that been about?
He would have to go over and make sure Jimmy was okay.
He looked at the clock.
It was just after one thirty.
He couldn’t use the phone.
They might be listening.
And maybe this is their way of flushing me out, snipers looking through their gun sites for a guy to walk out into the night at the right time.
They’ve got Jimmy’s soul and they’re using it as bait.
Jimmy was like a brother to Danny, closer than brothers.
After all these years was Danny about to lose him?
But there’s no sense both of us being caught.
Jimmy would understand.
And that was just it.
Danny knew that Jimmy would never tell.
Jimmy would never say anything about Danny.
He’ll understand if I never turn up.
But there was pain, emotional pain, something tugging deep inside of Danny.
He had to take the chance.
Soul vampires.
They’ve trapped Jimmy’s spirit somehow inside some kind of new machine when it was out of his body.
“But they don’t have his body.”
If I can just release his soul from wherever they have it trapped…
It was crazy thinking. Everything was crazy.
As long as I can get him to wake up he’ll be safe.
He rushed around in the dark picking up his things, pulling on his pants.
He hunched down at the little bedside table he’d picked up at a junk shop, yanked out the drawer and felt around inside.
He fingered a glass syringe, a needle that was blunt to hell, and a glass vial.
He broke out in a sweat.
He could use it on Jimmy and maybe bring him round, save him from them.
But there wasn’t much left.
What if I run out before I can get more?
He picked up the vial and looked at it.
It was the last of the last and it made his stomach churn at the thought of losing it.
Fear flooded through his veins.
He crushed his eyes closed and a thought from the back of his head slammed up against them like they were barriers.
Keep the stuff. Slam the drawer closed and forget about it.
You need it.
“No!”
He grabbed the syringe and needle and shoved them, along with the vial, into his pocket.
Yet still the thoughts ate at him, like battery acid burning through every reason, every thought.
It’s not too late. Put it back.
You need it more than he…
Danny jumped up.
He kicked the drawer closed.
The cabinet shook.
He took a deep breath.
“Don’t think,” he said. “Just don’t think.”
At the last second, sweeping the hair out of his eyes he looked out the window.
Deserted.
Nothing moved.
Just an empty street so quiet that everyone else on the planet could be dead.
He didn’t want to think about it.
He left, locked the door and rushed down to the street.
Collar up he glanced around to make sure no one was following.
He passed under the bridge.
His footsteps echoed in the dark.
His boot caught an old newspaper.
He scrapped it along until he shook the damn thing free from his foot.
Jimmy, please don’t let anything happen.
Head down he hurried along chanting a silent prayer.
Jimmy, Jimmy, please let everything be okay. Jimmy. you’re the only other one left. Don’t leave me on my own.
Goon, he thought, talking to myself.
He looked back.
No one there.
How alone can one man feel in a city of millions?
Totally.
And he thought about derelicts he’d see on the streets and in alleyways. Guys old before their time stinking of booze and piss, guys with grey beards and emaciated faces, and scared pleading eyes like they were about to pop out their skulls.
Hard to believe they were someone’s son, that they had actually been born and not just appeared out of nowhere, born innocent and dumped somewhere along the way.
“Someone’s son.”
Like us, Jimmy, you and me, no dad, no mom.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a second against the thought, the dread.
His skin prickled at the back of his neck when he remembered the sound of Jimmy’s voice call
ing out in the dark, a lost voice, a lone voice, trapped; his scream at the end.
It took Danny twenty minutes of fast walking, half running, to reach the Lower East Side.
Taking a quick right down an alleyway he scurried around garbage pales and felt swamped with the sickly odor of rotting food.
He turned to a service entrance, jibbed the lock with the tool of his trade – petty burglary - stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
He blinked in the darkness of the stairwell, whispering.
“Come on, come on. People use this place all the time during the day. There has to be some trace of residual bioluminescence.”
And there was, fluorescent green and orange streaks on the handrail, nothing much but enough to lead the way.
He trailed his fingers over the walls on either side as he climbed the stairs, felt the damp.
On the eleventh floor he hauled himself up straight, caught his breath and walked up to Jimmy’s door. A hunk of wood so full of holes it was a wonder it was still standing. Danny felt guilty knowing Jimmy even considered living behind it.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a key and pushed it into the lock. Hearing it grind its way into the housing made him clamp his jaw tight.
He stopped, held his breath, listened.
Too quiet.
Maybe a trap.
He twisted the key until he heard the housing give with a thud. He squeezed his eyes shut at the sound.
He pushed the door just wide enough for him to peek into the hallway.
A sweet musty odor of mould hit him.
A new wave of guilt rushed up inside.
He shuffled a few steps inside, stopped and took one final look back.
He listened for anyone coming up the stairs, someone who might have been following.
There was nothing.
He looked back around into the dark of the hallway.
He tried to ignore that musty smell, tried to stop thinking of the fungal spores floating around looking for a nice warm place to settle and grow, like inside his lungs.
He closed the door.
He listened for the sound of breathing, for the soft reassuring breath of Jimmy fast asleep.
He didn’t hear anything.
Maybe he isn’t here.
He walked up the hallway, turned left and along a little more.
He wanted to call out.
He didn’t.
It’s a trap.
They have him and they’re using Jimmy as bait.
Danny took out his penlight, switched it on and kept the beam low.
Dying to be Free Page 2