Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller

by Alexes Razevich

  “Hey,” he said quietly.

  Ashne’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. His fists clenched and his arms came up in a fight-or-flight burst, and Jake flinched, as Ashne’s brain tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

  People flowed around them. Friends and family members hugging, business people shaking hands, solo passengers striding with determined steps toward baggage claim. Voices came through the PA, announcing final boardings and flights arriving.

  Jake waited. He looked as presentable and professional as he could manage, but it wasn’t his rough appearance that threw his friend. If he were still the small man whom Ashne had seen off at the airport months before, his friend and employer would have made some light comment about this new style Jake had adopted—small talk until they could get to their real business, and that would have been it. Instead, Ashne gaped at him, as surprised as if a friendly bear had sidled up beside him in the airport. Was he going to see that same fear and confusion in his brother’s eyes, his parents’ faces?

  Ashne lowered his arms. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.

  “I think we need a drink,” Jake said.

  A thin nod from Ashne. “More than one, I’d say.” His eyes flicked back and forth between Jake’s face and his feet.

  “Mawgis’s doing,” Jake said. He still didn’t know if that were true or not, but if it helped convince Ashne, it was a good thing. He watched understanding catch light in his friend’s eyes, the dark sheen of accepting something he didn’t much like. Jake nodded to confirm what he knew Ashne was thinking. “Everything I told you on the phone is true.”

  “Benesha is a poison,” Ashne said, his teeth barely parting for the words to escape.

  “I know how crazy it sounds, but no more crazy than my standing here in front of you, six feet tall.”

  The light in Ashne’s eyes changed. “You could have warned me about that. My God, Jake, I thought you were dead. I was devastated. We all were. Thank the heavens you’re alive. But you come back—” He lifted his arms in the air. “You’ve come back as someone else.”

  He turned and walked away fast, shaking his head.

  “Ash,” Jake said, and caught up with him. “I’m not someone else. I’m the same man you’ve known for years. I didn’t return with what you wanted, but I came back knowing the truth.” He grabbed his friend’s arm and dragged him toward a wall. “You have to believe me. At least consider it.”

  Ashne’s jaw tightened. “I’ve been considering it since you called.”

  “And?”

  A long sigh, and Ashne turned and started walking again, more slowly this time, and motioned with his head for Jake to come too. They walked the long corridor toward the baggage area, almost to the exit doors, neither of them speaking.

  A man and a boy ran past them, going the other direction, each pulling a suitcase on wheels. Ashne turned his head to watch them. Jake wondered if he was thinking of his own youngest child, a girl about the same age as the running boy. Or was Ashne thinking about the man and his rush to reach some destination that was merely a takeoff point for a new one? That must be what heading World United was like—always a crisis somewhere, always people in desperate need. No wonder Ashne clung so tightly to benesha’s promise.

  “There are rumors,” Ashne said finally, “that some of the scientists working with benesha couldn’t resist trying the miracle meat themselves. Three of the original researchers have died. One was due to complications from diabetes, and frankly, not unexpected. Two were complete surprises. Heart attacks in otherwise healthy, youngish adults, ages thirty-seven and forty-three.” He leaned against the wall.

  “Benesha,” Jake said.

  “It can’t be ignored.” Ashne’s voice was rough. “As crazy as your story is, it must be considered and explored. All distribution of benesha meat will be suspended until benesha’s absolute safety is established.”

  “Or not,” Jake said.

  “Or not.”

  Jake kept the smile off his face, hiding the relief flooding through him.

  “You have the antidote?” Ashne asked.

  “I have what Mawgis gave me. In my pocket.”

  The nod Ashne gave him was tiny. “I’ll phone the lab and tell them we’re coming.”

  They stood together, both men in shirtsleeves, though the day was cool. Ashne was shorter than he was, and Jake could see the other man still wasn’t used to it by the way Ashne would look down and then pull his head up when he turned to speak to him. They both pretended not to notice. The heat radiating from the building was more than warm. They couldn’t hear the flames inside, licking away at flesh and bone, but saw the steady plume of gray smoke rising from the vents in the roof. The air smelled heavy, tinged with the scent of gas. They stood, with few words between them, watching as truckloads of dead chickens, rabbits, ducks, and goats arrived. Fires like this one burned in the seven countries where animals had been fed benesha. In other places, chemicals turned flesh and bone to slush.

  Ashne sighed deeply. “Chances are we won’t be able to find every individual who’s eaten benesha meat. In Africa, South America—some of those people live far outside the villages where the meat was distributed. We’re doing our best and have reached most of them, but I’m afraid there’ll be some we miss. There will be more deaths.”

  Jake nodded. He’d reasoned that out, too. But some deaths were better than hundreds of thousands.

  He’d known Ashne a long time and seen his severely pragmatic side before. He supposed someone like Ashne would have to be like that, overseeing the parceling out of food and medicine to the desperate, making decisions that might mean who lived and who didn’t. It wasn’t a job Jake would have wanted.

  “But the antidote worked for those who got it,” Jake said.

  Ashne crossed his arms over his chest. “Fools, those scientists, trying out the miracle meat on themselves. But it did tell us how long the incubation period was.” He turned to Jake. “Some took it home to their families. Can you imagine?”

  “They didn’t know,” Jake said.

  “No, they didn’t. And it turned out to be almost a blessing, since we could try the antidote on people who’d eaten the meat far enough in advance to be almost at the point it would kill them. We could know that it worked.”

  They stood quietly as another truck rolled up, as men came out of the incinerator building and helped the driver unload crates of carcasses.

  “When is your flight?” Ashne asked when the men had finished and the truck had driven away.

  “Three and a half hours. My bags are in the car.”

  “Boston, is it?”

  Jake nodded. “Pilar left her research early. She’s been in the States awhile.”

  It was his fault. Not that Pilar had said so—he didn’t think she blamed him—but he knew Naheyo did. When he and the shaman had stood together at the edge of the river, Knonee waiting to take him to Catalous, he’d tried to thank Naheyo for arranging the ride. He’d known she was angry, the way she chattered at him one moment and pulled a face and showed him her back the next. The only word he’d understood was Pilar.

  Then Naheyo had done a strange thing: she’d handed him a small bundle in a red cloth, drawn closed with a thin gold cord. The same cloth he’d seen in her room—it seemed so long ago now. At the shaman’s urging, he’d opened it and found a mirror—small, round, with a smoothed beveled edge. He’d lifted it out. He’d not seen any other mirrors at the compound, and noted it, women without mirrors, and no way for him to track the visual changes in himself. Their last night together, in the forest, Jake had asked Pilar about that.

  “Mirrors,” she’d said, “only let you look backward. Without them, you have to look ahead.”

  Why did Naheyo want him to look back? At what? He still had no idea. She’d motioned for him to return it to the cloth and hand it back to her, and then practically pushed him into the canoe that would take him away from the compound. To Catalous, and t
hen, with Toshi, to Manaus. To a phone, and the States, and this moment.

  The next day, she’d sent Pilar on her way as well. In their phone conversations, Pilar had shrugged off the expulsion, saying only that Naheyo wanted peace in the compound again.

  “Boston is nice this time of year,” Ashne said, breaking into his thoughts.

  “Yes,” Jake said. “Warming up.”

  Another truck pulled into the parking area. He thought maybe, after Boston—watching the driver-side door open, a muscular man step out of the truck—maybe a beach somewhere. With Pilar, if she wanted to go. A place where no one wanted anything from him. A place to empty his mind.

  “This will go on all day,” Ashne said. “I appreciate you coming with me. It means much. It—you’d best be on your way.”

  Jake nodded, but stood awhile longer watching the muscular man pull open the back doors of the truck. A helper appeared now as well, and the two men started hauling pallets from the truck—no sacks of small chickens or rabbits, but large carcasses of cattle, the pallets hitting the ground with a hard thunk. The large metal doors of the incinerator opened. A man driving an electric pallet loader emerged and drove slowly toward the truck.

  “I’m taking some time off,” Jake said. “A few months.”

  “Good.” Ashne turned to him. “I—well, how does one say thank you for something like this?”

  Ashne embraced him then, and it startled Jake. Other than his father and brother, no man had ever hugged him as an adult—not when he was small, when a grown man would have had to bend over or kneel down. He stood awkwardly with his arms at his sides. Then he reached around and embraced Ashne in return.

  His friend turned him loose. “Best be going.”

  Jake, feeling the chill in the air now, shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “I’ll call when I’m ready to come back to work.”

  “Good. There is still much to be done.”

  It wasn’t true, what he’d told Ashne at the airport—that he was the same man he’d always been. He was someone else now. Not just a taller man. That was nothing, really, for all that he’d craved it for so long. The change was deeper, something fundamental. The way he saw the world and his place in it. A comfort level. He couldn’t give it a name, but knew it was true.

  Jake shrugged, then clapped Ashne’s shoulder. He turned away from the low gray building and the smoke billowing from its chimney.

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  Email: LxsRaz@yahoo.com

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alexes Razevich was born in New York and grew up in Orange County, California. She attended California State University San Francisco where she earned a degree in Creative Writing. After a successful career on the fringe of the electronics industry, including stints as Director of Marketing for a major trade show management company and as an editor for Electronic Engineering Times, she returned to her first love—fiction. She lives in Southern California with her husband.

  Also by Alexes Razevich

  Khe loves her simple life on a farming commune, until she discovers that her gift for pushing the crops is a death sentence. Fleeing across the treacherous wilderness, she makes her way to the city of Chimbalay, searching for the orindles who might save her. But Chimbalay has its own dangers. The Powers are there--the secret rulers who have chosen Khe to be the mother of a monstrous new race.

  Neither "man in space" Science Fiction nor classical fantasy, Khe deftly blends elements of both while satisfying those searching for something different in a dystopian novel. Readers looking for solid world-building, and fresh, fully-realized characters will especially enjoy this book.

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00987OLVU

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Meg Xuemei, Randall Jackson, Richard Casey, and Susan Marschner for their friendship and their help in bringing this story to life, and to Christina Frey, editor extraordinaire.

  Much gratitude to Tony Honkawa for his patience and his vision.

  Much love to Chris, Colin, and Larkin Razevich, who are the lights of my life.

  Cover art by Tony Honkawa,

  Tony Honkawa Designs

  Copyright © 2014 Alexes Razevich

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidently and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the author. Requests for permission should be sent to Lxsraz@yahoo.com.