Spliced

by Jon McGoran

  “No,” he said, slicing his hand through the air for emphasis.

  Pell kept right on going, so we went along with her.

  “Come on, Jerry,” she said, “don’t be a jerk. He’s hurt.”

  Jerry trembled for a second, like he was exerting a great force of will. Then he sagged and sighed and said, “Okay, whatever. Take him around the back.”

  He stepped out of the way as we hustled down a narrow alley. Pell yanked open the wooden screen door and we carried Ryan inside, through a utility room and down a short hallway. Just before the kitchen, Pell steered us into a cramped office.

  Jerry was already there, clearing off his desk. He threw a stained tablecloth over it and we laid Ryan down on it.

  “Is that Ryan?” he said, looking closer. “What happened?”

  I dropped into a chair against the wall, unable to speak. Purple and yellow splotches danced in my vision.

  Before Pell could say anything, Jerry peeled back Ryan’s jacket and looked at the bloody hole in his shirt. “For Christ’s sake, he’s been shot.” He looked over at us. “Why the hell did you bring him here?”

  “Didn’t know where else,” I said, closing my eyes, still catching my breath.

  Pell darted out of the room.

  “Was this from the Broad Street riot?” Jerry asked.

  I shook my head. “He said no. We found him at Doctor Guzman’s house.”

  “You were at Guzman’s house?”

  I nodded, glancing at Claudia, who had shrunk back into the corner of the room, looking tiny. “Do you know where he is?”

  He stared at me, squinting, like he was trying to place me. “Who are you?”

  “Jimi,” I said. “I’m friends with Pell. And Rex.”

  He looked at Claudia. “Who’s she?”

  “She needs a fixer. I met her while looking for Guzman. She helped me carry Ryan.”

  He nodded and left the room without a word. For several minutes Claudia and I sat there, watching Ryan’s chest slowly rise and fall. Each time, I felt a tiny rush of anxiety, hoping he would take another breath, feeling each second tick by, seconds we had tried so hard to save.

  In those quiet moments of inactivity, I could feel the exhaustion seeping into my bones.

  My eyes were drifting closed when the door burst open. Pell and Jerry came through and stepped to the side, out of the way. Guzman came in after them.

  “Doctor Guzman,” I said, and Claudia shot to her feet, her eyes round.

  Guzman placed an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag on a cabinet behind the desk and pulled out a stethoscope, a pair of scissors, and a bundle of other instruments wrapped in white cloth. He started cutting through Ryan’s shirt. Then he paused and said, “The bullet went clean through him. Doesn’t look like it hit anything vital, but he’s lost a lot of blood. Looks like he was wounded some time ago.” He turned to me and said, “Do you know when he was shot?”

  I shook my head. “At least a few hours ago.”

  Guzman’s eyes stayed on me, like he was seeing me for the first time since he walked into the room. “You again, huh? Trouble seems to follow you, doesn’t it?”

  “What happened to Del?”

  He squinted, like he was trying to figure out what I was talking about.

  “My friend Del?” I said. “He was in the hyperbaric bed when the police came. We haven’t seen him since.”

  “No idea. I assumed the police got him.” He looked past me, at Claudia. “Who’s she?”

  “She needs a fixer,” I said.

  “Shame,” he said. “Looks like a good splice. But these are interesting times. How long has it been?”

  “Yesterday morning,” she said. “Around eleven, I think.”

  “Cutting it close,” he said, studying her for half a second. “You got any money?”

  To my surprise, she nodded and said, “A thousand dollars, right?”

  She held out the money, and he took it. “You know the change back is as bad as the change,” he said. “Sometimes worse.”

  She nodded and he put down the scissors, motioning for her to come forward while he reached into his bag with the other hand and took out a syringe.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said as he swabbed her arm and gave her an injection. He rested a hand on her forehead, gentle and reassuring, just for a second. “Find her someplace quiet,” he said to no one in particular. “I’ll be with her when I’m done here.”

  Pell led Claudia toward the door. Before she left, Claudia wrapped an arm around my neck and said, “Thanks.”

  I thanked her back, and then she was gone.

  Guzman resumed cutting Ryan’s clothes.

  “Ryan said Del was okay,” I told him. “Before he passed out. But I need to find him.”

  “Afraid I can’t help you,” he said, not looking up at me. “But I’m glad to hear he’s okay.”

  A minute later Pell came back, and I reached out for her hand. “Pell,” I said. “Ryan told me he was at a place called Haven, a safe place. He said Ruth and Del were there too.”

  She put a hand against the wall to steady herself. “Oh, thank God. Where?”

  I shook my head. “He passed out before he could tell me. Have you ever heard of it? Either of you?”

  Pell shook her head. “No,” she said desperately, turning to look at Ryan, lying there unconscious and bleeding, the only one who knew where Ruth was. She stared at him hard, as if willing him to wake up.

  Guzman cut away Ryan’s shirt and jacket, revealing a round chest and slender abdomen, skinny but muscled and covered with a sheen of striped gray hair that was matted with blood on one side. As the garments fell to the floor, I saw a piece of paper sticking out of the inside pocket of Ryan’s ruined jacket.

  “Sounds like one of those imaginary places people make up to feel better about things,” Guzman said. “Like Chimerica.”

  I looked up. “He mentioned Chimerica too.”

  Guzman snorted and shook his head.

  Pell ignored him. “Are you serious?”

  “He said they wouldn’t be at Haven for long,” I told her. “He said they were going to Chimerica.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Chimerica!” Pell said with a squeal. “I knew it! We have to find them. We have to tell Rex!”

  “What you have to do is clear out and let me do my work,” Guzman said as he cleaned Ryan’s wound.

  “Come on,” Pell said, pulling me out of my chair. I scooped up Ryan’s clothes before we left.

  She turned to me as she closed the door. “Poor Ryan,” she said, “but I knew it.” Her eyes flashed. “I told you they’d been talking about Chimerica.”

  She looked over my shoulder and made a tutting sound at the small line waiting impatiently at the counter. “Be right back.”

  As she went behind the counter and started taking orders and bustling around, I sat at a table and pulled the paper out of Ryan’s shredded jacket. A Levline ticket stub came out with it, punched for Carston, PA, to Zone One, Center City, Philadelphia.

  All I knew about Carston was that it was a tiny city upstate.

  The larger paper was smudged with bloody fingerprints. It was the top half of a flyer or poster, torn and folded in thirds. The printed side was covered in red and blue lettering. GAME DAY! was the headline, and underneath it, “Pitman’s traditional festival of fun is back, with old-fashioned entertainment and new surprises, too! Pregame Fair brought to you by Mayor Charles Randolph and the Pitman Chamber of Commerce.”

  The other side was covered with pen marks—lines, squiggles, zigzags, circles, arrows, and a couple of X’s. In the middle of it, next to the horseshoe curve of a river or stream, was a star. One of the X’s said PITMAN, the other said CARSTON.

  Pell returned with two coffees and a peanut butter and banana sandwich. The coffee she put in front of me had a smiley face in the foam. When I looked up at her, she was doing her best to produce the same expression.

  “You look like you could u
se it,” she said, her big eyes blinking. I didn’t know if she meant the coffee and the sandwich, or the smile. Truth was, I needed them all.

  “Thanks,” I said, tearing into the sandwich.

  “What’s that?” she said, looking at the paper.

  “It was in Ryan’s pocket,” I said, washing down a bite with a sip of coffee. “I think he drew a map. It’s on the back of a flyer from a place called Pitman.” I looked up at her. “There’s also a train ticket from Carston, up north. According to the map, it’s not far from Pitman.” When I said it out loud, Pitman sounded familiar, but I couldn’t think of where I’d heard of it. “I think this star might be where Ruth and Del are.” I put the map on the table, flattening it out with my hands. “Do you have an actual map of Pennsylvania?”

  “Let me see,” she said. She disappeared for a moment and returned with an old road map. She put it on the table and got back to work.

  I unfolded the map and found the Carston station on the Levline, forty miles north of Philadelphia. Pitman was about ten miles west of it. I folded the map down to a manageable size and put it on the table next to Ryan’s hand-drawn scribbles.

  I was still studying it when a shadow passed over the table and I heard Pell say, “Rex!”

  My eyes shot up to find him already staring at me. Before I could say anything he eased himself onto the chair across from me. “Were you out there last night?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you okay? I couldn’t find you. I was worried.”

  “You were looking for me?”

  “I was.”

  “Rex, it was a lot more dangerous out there for you than it was for me.”

  He looked down. “Jimi, about Del . . . I couldn’t find Guzman, or any of the other fixers. I think they’re are all lying low after what happened to Guzman, and everything else.”

  “Guzman’s here,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “Out back. Ryan’s been shot,” Pell said, now standing over us. “Guzman’s working on him.”

  “What? Was he shot in the riot?”

  I shook my head. “We found him at Guzman’s house. He didn’t know about the riot.”

  “He said he’d been with Ruth and Del,” Pell told him. “He said they’re okay!”

  Rex looked back and forth between us, stunned. “Where are they?”

  “You tell the rest, Jimi,” said Pell. “Jerry’s giving me the evil eye.”

  As Pell got back to work, Sly showed up, and I told him and Rex what happened since we found Ryan. “He said they’re at a place called Haven.”

  “Haven,” Rex said. “Where’s that?”

  I slid the ticket and the hand-drawn map toward the middle of the table. “I found these in Ryan’s pocket. The train ticket is from Carston.”

  Sly looked up. “Carston? That’s a hike.”

  Rex pulled the paper closer. “What’s this?”

  “I think it’s a map.” I flipped it over. “On the back is some kind of flyer from a town called Pitman, west of Carston.”

  He turned it back over. “A map of what?”

  I put the printed map next to it. “This X is Pitman and this X is Carston. I think this line is the creek, here, and this line is the old highway, right?”

  “What’s the star?”

  I looked up at him. “I think that’s Haven. Where Del and Ruth are.”

  “For the moment,” Pell said, hovering nearer again. “Ryan said they’re going to Chimerica.”

  Rex snorted. “There’s no such thing as Chimerica. That’s a fantasy made up by lonely kids who think getting a splice is going to solve all their problems but find out it creates a whole bunch of others.”

  I didn’t want to agree with him in front of Sly and Pell. “Maybe, but that’s what Ryan said.”

  He nodded, thinking for a second, then put his hand on the blood-smeared map. “Okay, I’m going out there,” he said, pulling it toward him. “And I’m going alone.”

  I slapped my hand down on it as well. “Actually, I’m going out there. But you all can come with me if you want.”

  PART TWO

  FORTY-SIX

  When we first arrived at the Levline station, we were the only ones there. But after a few minutes, a trio of thirty-something men arrived, wearing rumpled khakis, scuffed shoes with thick soles, and matching bright blue polo shirts with a logo from some bigbox store. They were the kind of guys Del said he didn’t ever want to become, and sure enough, they looked miserable to be heading off to work. But as they stared at Sly and Pell and Rex, you could tell they wouldn’t trade places in a million years.

  “So, what’s our plan?” Pell asked. “Once we get on the train?”

  I couldn’t tell if she was oblivious to the stares she was getting or so used to them she didn’t care.

  “Plan?” Rex shook his head. “Well, my plan was for me to go out there on my own, sneak around, see if I could find Ruth and Del, and figure out what’s going on. Now I don’t know.”

  “Well,” said Sly, “that wasn’t much of a plan anyway.”

  Rex gave him a dirty look and continued. “Then I guess we get out there and try to figure out what’s going on. Take it from there. . . . And try not to get killed by nut-jobs on the way.”

  “Sounds good,” said Pell. “Everybody have passes?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “We have to change trains in Alder,” Rex said, “to get to Carston.”

  The thought of waiting for a connection with a bunch of chimeras in the middle of nowhere brought back a twinge of anxiety, but before it could turn into anything more than that, the train appeared in the distance, a tiny glint of sunlight rocketing toward us.

  As we got on, the three guys in the blue shirts made a point of getting on a different car.

  We took the wide bench seats by the rear door, and sat with our backpacks between our knees. Jerry had packed them for us. He hadn’t wanted any of us to go, or at least not Rex and Sly and Pell, not after the riot, not with the new law. But once he knew we weren’t going to listen to him, he gave us some money and some backpacks from the coffee shop’s lost and found. He filled three of them with bottled water and day-old muffins, and in the fourth he put binoculars, a compass, and a heavy-duty flashlight.

  I had been fully aware the trip could be dangerous—I’d seen what happened to Ryan—but until I saw Jerry filling that last pack, I’d been thinking, We just take the train to the place, get our friends, and come home.

  Jerry had noticed me watching him. “Just in case, right? Who knows what’s going on out there with these H4H whack jobs.” Then he had leaned closer and said, “Be careful, Jimi. And be careful with Rex and them, too. You’re not spliced, but they are. The world’s a dangerous place, but it’s especially dangerous for chimeras right now.” He got choked up as he told us all to be careful and that we needed to make sure we didn’t get hurt, too. Then he seemed embarrassed about it and acted cranky, following us out onto the street to remind Pell that she had a shift on Thursday.

  I smiled at the memory, then looked around me. Midmorning, headed away from the city, there were only a dozen other people in the car. The closest one was an old woman in a green hat with fake leaves on it. She got up and sat several rows farther away. The next closest passenger was a man in a suit. He got up and moved as well.

  Rex caught my eye and raised an eyebrow. See?

  I nodded and looked away from him, my face turning red. These people thought chimeras were weird or strange or gross. Not that long ago, I’d felt kind of the same way—not in an H4H-crazy-hatred, they’re-not-people way. But they made me uncomfortable. Maybe they still did in a way, but they definitely weren’t revolting, for God’s sake. And they definitely were people. They were good people. They were my friends.

  I looked out the window just in time to see my school pass by. It looked alien and unfamiliar, like a part of someone else’s life.

  Two stops after that was Perkins Park. I sank lower in
my seat, half expecting Trudy to get on—maybe my mom as well—and drag me off the train and ground me for the rest of my life. Something like that would be coming at some point, but as the train pulled away from the Perkins Park station, I relaxed, knowing it wouldn’t be now.

  Before long, I was thinking about Del, who was never not on my mind. Positive thoughts, I told myself. I imagined how relieved I’d be when I found him and he was doing just fine. Punching him in the shoulder for making me so worried. Hugging him tight, seeing with my own eyes that finally he was okay.

  Over the next several stops, more people got on, filling in the empty seats at the far end of the train.

  Outside the city the stops were farther apart and the train could pick up even more speed, the vibrant small towns and abandoned zurbs all blurring together. After a while, the air traffic increased. A lot of copters and drones were headed to or from a large tower on the horizon.

  “What’s that?” Sly said, pointing at it.

  Rex was studying the folded map. “That’s City View Tower,” he said, looking up from the paper. “A luxury super high-rise. It’s on the Levline, but it’s set up so that people mostly copter in and out.”

  Sly laughed. “City View? We’re nowhere near the city.”

  “A hundred and forty stories tall,” Rex said. “Supposedly, from the top you can see both Philadelphia and New York. But you’re right. We’re nowhere near either city. If that’s City View, then we’re almost at Alder.”

  Five minutes later we were there. No one else got off at Alder. The other passengers either watched us leave or deliberately didn’t, but I could feel their relief that we were leaving.

  As the train pulled away, the old lady in the hat stared at us through the window, slowly shaking her head.

  The station was just outside town. From the platform we could see a tall fence surrounding a community of big houses and a ritzy commercial district. City View Tower was massive but still distant. There were rolling hills to the east, and mountains beyond them. To the west, low on the horizon, there was a dark line of clouds.