by Malinda Lo
She stared at the now empty archway. Who was that? He reminded her of Special Agent Forrestal.
She walked toward the archway, but when she reached the threshold of the room beyond it, there was no one there. It was a roughly square space, the walls lined with glass cases filled with urns and framed photos. Though she was surrounded by the dead, there was nothing frightening about the space. It was peaceful there. Glass doors on the right led out to a grassy courtyard, and wide corridors full of more memorial plaques branched off to the left and continued straight ahead. She looked out the doors, but the courtyard was walled in and empty. Maybe the man had gone down one of the corridors.
She took the one to the left. It was roofed in stained glass depicting blue flowers growing among waving green grasses, and the sunlight that shone through it made the corridor glow. She began to walk as quickly and silently as possible, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man again. She passed a room tiled in blue and green like a Moroccan courtyard. She passed a stone tomb carved out of the wall, as if it had been lifted whole from a medieval European crypt and transplanted here, to be surrounded by the ashes of Californians. The mausoleum seemed to go on forever: a palace of the dead, silent but for the whisper of her footsteps. She was a world away from the funeral now, focused solely on catching another glimpse of—
There.
She ducked into an alcove, pressing her back against the marble wall, pulse racing. She leaned forward to peer around a vase filled with silk flowers.
A man in a black suit with a coiled wire curving over his ear was standing about fifteen feet away, half-hidden by a statue of a woman draped in classical Greek robes. She held her breath. He was standing so still, and she couldn’t see his face—and then he lifted a hand to the wire in his ear, and the very faint sound of his voice drifted to her. He turned his head slightly.
Reese flattened herself against the wall before he saw her. She hadn’t been able to get a good look at his face, but there was something about him that freaked her out. She heard his footsteps clicking across the marble, and she froze, worried that he was going to walk right past her and ask what she was doing following him.
But as the minutes ticked by, the footsteps faded. He hadn’t found her.
She peeked out again and couldn’t see him. She took a deep breath and ran back the way she had come, her hair flying out behind her.
She wanted to talk to David, to ask him if he’d seen a man in a black suit anywhere, but by the time she returned to the courtyard, there was no sign of him. “He had to leave,” her mom told her when she asked. “He said to tell you good-bye.”
“Oh.”
Her mom gave her a concerned look. “Are you all right? You just turned white.”
Reese tried to erase the disappointment from her face. “I’m fine.” But as she and her mom made awkward small talk with the other students and teachers at the funeral, she couldn’t help but think that David must be avoiding her now. She told herself it was easier this way—no more complications—but it didn’t work. It still stung.
CHAPTER 11
Reese had known Julian her entire life. Their moms had been friends in college, and for as long as Reese could remember, they had shared summer vacations up at the Russian River, weekend trips to Disneyland, and holiday meals that mingled family related by blood or by friendship. Julian’s mom was African American and his dad was Jewish, while Reese’s mom was a lapsed Catholic, so there were a lot of traditions among them. Reese thought of Julian’s parents almost as extensions of her own mom, and Julian was more than merely a friend; he was like a brother to her. But when he opened the door to his house later that afternoon, even she was startled by the strength of the joy that crashed through her at the sight of him: brown eyes alight, full lips widening to reveal a flash of white teeth in a smile that could knock you over.
And then he reached out and punched her in the shoulder.
“Ow!” She rubbed her shoulder indignantly. “What was that for?”
“You freaked the hell out of us,” Julian said, and hugged her.
She squeaked in surprise. He was taller than she remembered; her head came only to his chin now, and he held her so tight that all her breath seemed to squeeze out of her. When he let her go, she said, “I missed you too.” They both broke into laughter.
“Come on in,” Julian said. “What’s with the all-black? Are you turning into a goth?” He assessed her appearance again. “A preppy goth?”
“I just came from a funeral,” she said.
Julian’s face sobered. “Oh, sorry.” He shut the door quietly. “I forgot. You mean for Mr. Chapman?”
“Yeah.” The front hall was dim, and the house was unusually silent. “Where are your parents?” she asked, changing the subject.
“They’re out back working on the ‘farm,’ ” he said, giving the word air quotes. Julian’s parents had bought the three-story Edwardian in the Mission District two years ago partly because it had a giant backyard, and Julian’s mom—who was a city planner in her day job—had a dream to start an urban farm collective. “I think they planted about a zillion strawberry plants while you were gone, and they’re desperately trying to keep them alive.”
Julian began to head upstairs, and Reese followed him. “When did you find out about Mr. Chapman?”
“A couple of weeks ago.” Julian’s room was on the third floor and overlooked the street through big bay windows. It was messy as usual, with his bed half-covered by a dark blue quilt and clothes piled up in random clumps on the floor. Photos of UFOs covered the wall over his desk. Julian lifted his backpack off the beanbag chair and gestured for her to sit. “The school sent an official letter to everybody’s parents.”
She lowered herself into the chair, the beans whooshing out beneath her. Julian sat in his desk chair, tipping it back on its rear legs. Behind him the star-field screen saver on his computer was running, almost hypnotic as the tiny white dots sped forward on an endless loop.
“So,” Julian said, “you wanna tell me about it?”
Her knees knocked together as she considered what she could say. “After the accident I was mostly out of it, so there’s not much to tell.”
“But what happened exactly? The letter only told us that Mr. Chapman was shot in a carjacking.”
She told him about renting the car at the Phoenix airport; the traffic and roadblocks that led them to Las Vegas; the horror of the carjacking and the surreality of the gas station explosion. “We tried to call 911, but the phones weren’t working. So David and I decided to try to get back to San Francisco. That’s when we had the car accident. I was driving. It was late at night and in the middle of nowhere, and this bird flew at the headlights and I flipped the car over.”
“A bird?”
“Yeah.” She heard the note of curiosity in his voice and said, “It was probably just a coincidence. I mean, if you’re thinking about those plane crashes.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Have you heard about the other bird stuff going on?”
“What bird stuff? I was in a coma for twenty-seven days.”
“But you know what’s been going on, right?”
“I read this issue of Time magazine that sort of summarized it, but—” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What?”
“Birds. They’ve been all over the news. Birds crashing into skyscrapers; dozens of birds dying randomly in some suburb in Virginia. Birds. So when you said a bird crashed your car—”
“It didn’t crash the car. I crashed the car; the bird just flew straight at me.”
He spread his hands, shrugging. “Same thing. It caused you to crash the car.”
“Maybe. I guess technically that’s true.”
“So what happened after?”
“I can’t really talk about that.” His questions were making the back of her neck tense.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I can’t talk about it. But I’m fine now, and I’m back. So what’s been up with yo
u?”
He gave her an incredulous look that turned slowly into excitement. “You crashed your car in the middle of nowhere in Nevada because a bird hit you, and now you can’t talk about what happened? Do you realize what that sounds like?”
She was uncomfortable. “Uh, what?”
The front legs of his chair banged down onto the wooden floor. He jumped up and searched among the photos tacked to the wall. He pulled one down and held it out to her. She took it and scanned the image; it was a satellite photo of what looked like a desert. There were some mountain ranges along the perimeter, a line that indicated a road running down the center, and a few pale boxes that looked like they might be buildings. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Area 51,” Julian said. “Is that where you were?”
A chill washed over her, but she said, “That’s kind of jumping to conclusions, isn’t it?” She handed the photo back to him. He dropped it on the desk and sat down in his chair again, elbows on his knees as he leaned forward and watched her. She noticed a shadow running along the brown skin of his jawline. Was he growing a beard?
“You suck at lying, Reese.”
She flushed. “I’m not lying,” she insisted, but his eyebrows just rose in disbelief. The star-scape screen saver on Julian’s monitor behind him abruptly stopped speeding ahead. A message window popped up—and then another and another. “Hey, you’re getting some e-mail or something,” she said, grateful for the distraction.
He spun around. “Shit.” He scooted his chair closer to the desk and began to click on the messages.
“What is it?”
“They’re videos. I’m doing some video editing for Bin 42. I wasn’t expecting to get any today—this must be—whoa.”
She scrambled to her feet and went to look over his shoulder at the monitor. “What is it?”
“Freaking birds. I told you, this shit is everywhere now.” The video was panning over a mound of dead birds, everything from sparrows to pigeons and crows, their eyes glittering as the camera moved.
“Oh my God,” Reese exclaimed.
The camera zoomed out to show what seemed to be a vast warehouse with exposed pipes overhead. A machine that looked like a giant oven was located at one end of the cavernous space; the birds were mounded up on the floor in front of the machine as if they were about to be shoveled inside. The video ended with a jerk, and Julian clicked on the second one. It showed the exterior of a nondescript building with a single door on which a biohazard sign was affixed. The warehouse was surrounded by a deserted parking lot and empty fields. In the distance were low, brown hills.
“This must be the exterior of the location with the bird pile,” Julian said. “Keith wants me to edit them into one video.”
“Who’s Keith? Why are you editing footage of dead birds?”
Julian glanced at her sideways. “You know that Bin 42 website?”
“Yeah, they interviewed the guy who runs it in the Time article I read.”
“Well, I know the guy—that’s Keith.”
“You know him?” Reese perched on the edge of his desk. “How? And I thought his name was something else, not Keith.”
“He didn’t tell them his real name. You never know whether the government is listening. Remember when I did that story for the Kennedy Leader about conspiracies?”
“Yeah, the one you wrote to get an A in journalism without having to work too hard.”
He grinned. “Yeah, that one. Well, that’s when I contacted Keith. He was kind of flattered that an award-winning high school newspaper wanted to interview him.”
“Award-winning? Did you actually say that?” She laughed.
“I put it in the e-mail. You know you have to present yourself in the best possible light. Anyway, after that we kept in touch, and since the June Disaster he’s had a lot of video footage to deal with, so I offered to help him out.”
Julian hit Play again, and the camera panned over the dead birds. She watched it out of the corner of her eye and grimaced. “I saw a couple of birds crash onto the ground when I was at the Phoenix Airport. It was bizarre. You never see dead birds fall out of the sky like that. Where do they go to die, anyway?”
“Sometimes they die in big groups and end up freaking out the locals.” Julian dragged the video files into his video-editing program. “Every year there’s some hysterical news story about a mass bird die-off, but these things happen all the time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. But these birds are not dying normally.”
“Did they really hit the planes? Like, fly directly into them?”
“The ones on June nineteenth? Yep.”
“What do you think caused that?”
He shook his head. “Nothing good. Birds crash into planes all the time, and planes can withstand sucking a couple of birds into their engines, but entire flocks? It’s weird.”
“Was it terrorists?”
“That’s one theory, but how the hell would terrorists be able to train massive numbers of birds to attack airplanes? That’s a pretty far-out theory. But I think that’s why the government has been exterminating wild flocks of birds. Mostly Canada geese, but pigeons and crows and other common birds too. The animal-rights people are going insane.”
They heard the doorbell ring, and Reese glanced at her watch. “That must be my mom. She was just running a few errands and said she’d be back to pick me up. My grandparents are coming over for dinner tonight. We have to eat early so they can get home before the curfew.” Reese scooted off the edge of the desk. “Hey, what was it like here when I was gone?”
“It got a little crazy. My sister came back from Berkeley for a week because everybody thought the East Bay was going to riot, but the National Guard was called in and it wasn’t too bad there. San Francisco was mostly normal, although they did cancel Pride.”
“Wow, really?”
“Yeah. Sucked because it was actually hot that weekend too. But other than that, it was just a bunch of paranoid people cleaning out the grocery stores. The Mission was really quiet for a while—it was weird to go out and see all the taquerias closed. And trash didn’t get picked up for days, which meant everything stank in the heat wave, but after the flight ban was lifted, the garbage trucks came back too.”
They heard Julian’s mom calling upstairs. “Julian! Reese!”
“Come on,” Julian said, slinging an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll let you off the hook tonight, but don’t think you’re gonna get away with it for long.”
“Get away with what?” she asked as they headed downstairs.
“Hiding whatever happened to you after your accident. The truth will come out.” He attempted to raise one eyebrow at her, but he still hadn’t mastered the trick, which meant he looked more ridiculous than devious.
She laughed to cover the burst of unease that shot through her. “I’m sure it will.”
CHAPTER 12
That night she dreamed of a yellow room. Red streaked down the walls like dripping paint, and she felt enclosed in a warm, pulsing cocoon. Her heartbeat sounded in a deep, reverberating bass, and it was as though she wasn’t merely inside the yellow room but was the room itself. The walls were her skin; the red was her blood.
She awoke, heart pounding, as dawn light slipped through the window blinds. She threw off her blankets, kicking them onto the floor as she sat up, gasping for breath. Her T-shirt was stuck to her sweat-dampened skin. She went to the bay windows and pushed one open, letting in the cool morning air. Outside, the street was quiet and empty. It was barely six AM and not even the dog walkers were out yet. As she leaned against the windowsill, she mulled over the dream. There was something so deeply familiar about it that it felt etched in her bones. Had she had the dream before? She couldn’t remember.
She heard an alarm go off elsewhere in the house. It was Monday morning, and her mom had to go to work. Today, Reese was supposed to call SF Radar, the website where she had begun a summer internship in early June, t
o tell them she was back and ask if she could finish out the month of July. The thought of it made Reese feel exhausted already. She left the window open but climbed back into bed, pulling her pillow over her head, and eventually managed to fall asleep again.
When she awoke the second time, her bedside clock said it was 10:06, and her mom had left a note propped up next to a new cell phone. I got this phone for you. Don’t forget to call SF Radar. I love you, Mom. Reese groaned and forced herself to get up.
Downstairs the coffeepot was still on, and as she poured herself a cup she saw the newspaper lying on the kitchen table. She sat down with her mug and pulled the Chronicle toward her. There was a photo of President Randall just below the masthead. She was walking across a concrete floor in a warehouse, wearing goggles and plastic gloves, and the headline read: President Randall Visits Bird Disposal Facility.
WASHINGTON—President Elizabeth Randall was accompanied by members of the Defense Department on Sunday during an impromptu visit to a bird disposal facility outside Washington, DC. Since the plane crashes of June 19, the Defense Department, in cooperation with the National Guard and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has spearheaded a nationwide effort to exterminate potentially dangerous birds, primarily focusing on Canada geese. However, as public reports of bird violence by other avian species—including crows and pigeons—have increased, the bird disposal teams have begun to cull other birds as well.
After the visit, President Randall spoke briefly to the press, stating: “I’m here to assure the American people that we are working very hard to make certain that no other bird strikes will occur. As you can see, we’re following stringent practices to contain any possible diseases that the birds might bear, and we will continue to test the birds for signs of what might have caused the bird strikes on June 19.”
Outside the facility, members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other animal-rights groups staged a protest, dressing in bird costumes and demanding that the Randall Administration stop the exterminations. “There is no evidence that the birds they’re killing have anything to do with the June Disaster,” said Andrea Reynolds, a spokesperson for PETA. “This is just senseless murder of innocent creatures stoked by baseless fears, and the Randall Administration should be ashamed of itself.”