Chimera

by Rob Thurman

  Sliding clumsily into the driver’s seat, I closed the door with quiet care. The huddled form in the back shifted but didn’t wake. I reclined the seat and folded arms against the raw breeze drifting through the empty windshield frame. It was in the fifties, unseasonably cold as it had been all the month of January. I let Michael keep both blankets. With exhaustion dragging me down with every heartbeat, a little cool air wasn’t going to keep me awake. It didn’t. I fell asleep between one breath and the next. It was as swift as a stumble and fall into a chasm. Slick fake leather grazed my cheek as I exhaled, and then I was gone.

  Dreams of Konstantin followed me every step of the way. With a bloody hand resting on a seven-year-old Lukas’s shoulder, he smiled at me coldly through scarlet-stained teeth. Unaware of the crimson fingerprints that marred the white of his Spider-Man T-shirt, Lukas waved solemnly.

  The chill that chased me through the night had nothing to do with the cold.

  Chapter 13

  It was raining when I woke up. I could hear it drumming steadily against the window glass. I luxuriated in it for a moment. There was nothing more satisfying in the world than to lie in a tangle of warm blankets and hide from a wet and dreary morning. I turned over on my side, moving my hand to tuck it under the pillow, when I realized something. There was no pillow, there were no blankets, and the rain wasn’t spattering on the window of my condo. It was hitting the roof of the car, and it was hitting me.

  With a groan I straightened stiffly and rubbed a hand over my wet face. Through the tops of the trees I could see a sky the cloudy white of a freshwater pearl. The sun was the same color only a shade brighter . . . milky glass held to a fire. The rain, a warm drizzle, apparently had been drifting in for some time; my shirt was nearly soaked. At least it had warmed up to a more normal temperature for southern Florida. When I turned my head to check on Michael, I saw that he’d tossed his blankets aside. He was dry as a bone, the back windows still being intact. Shuttered eyes met mine as he pillowed his head on a folded arm. “You snore,” he said in the hush.

  “And you like to point out the obvious. I guess that makes us even.” I ran a hand through snarled hair. The ponytail holder had disappeared sometime during the night. The first opportunity that came along I’d get it all cut off anyway. New car, new look; it was all part of the plan—the one I was making up as I went along. Disappearing wasn’t as easy a trick as my father had made it seem, not with this guy Jericho sniffing the trail. I was going to pull out all the stops. Drastically changing our appearance was the first step. Maybe I’d scrounge a dress and wig and change Michael to Michelle.

  “So,” I said with a grin, “how do you feel about the color pink?”

  Suspicion ripe in the narrowing of his eyes, he sat up and began to neatly fold the blankets. “In exactly the same way I think of making a bathroom of a tree.”

  He was back in his “old man” phase. The child was bound to resurface at the next fast-food joint. The thought sobered me, not because I didn’t enjoy his amazement at experiencing things that I took for granted, but because it reminded me. I couldn’t begin to imagine the life that had produced such an odd dichotomy in what had once been a normal if precocious kid.

  “Misha,” I started, ignoring the clammy sensation of the wet shirt sticking to my chest. “About this Jericho . . .”

  “No.” The flat denial sliced knife sharp through the air as Michael doggedly doubled the second blanket.

  I didn’t want to push him. I didn’t want to do anything but make things as easy as they could be for the rest of his life. Making up for the past ten years wasn’t practical or even possible, but it was an instinct difficult to fight. “Okay,” I said exhaling with wry self-deprecation, “I know I look like some kind of superhero here, but I need all the help I can get. I need to know who this Jericho is. What he’s capable of.”

  He kept his eyes on the cloth in his lap, hands smoothing the material. Just as I thought he would ignore me entirely, he said without emotion, “Anything. He’s capable of anything.”

  Progress, but it was a progress that made my stomach tighten into a fist. He didn’t look up as I reached over the seat and took the blanket. Shaking it back out, I used it to dry the passenger seat before inviting lightly, “Why don’t you hop on up here, kiddo? You’re giving me neck strain.”

  Silently he obeyed. The rain had halted except for the occasional drop, and he was mostly dry when he sat beside me. I started the car and cranked up the fan anyway. “I’m sorry to push you on this. I wish it could come out in your own time, Michael, I do. But we’re in trouble here. I need to know anything that could help us.” Tapping a finger on the wheel, I spoke more to myself than to my brother. “Such as why didn’t they wait until we’d stopped for the night. It wouldn’t have been nearly as public as the shit they pulled yesterday.”

  “They didn’t want to take a chance that someone might see what I . . . that someone might see me.” A brittle smile curved his lips. “Time is of the essence for them. Isn’t that what they say in all the movies?”

  “They let you see movies?” I asked, distracted by the thought of strangely quiet children dressed in institutional white pajamas. They were lined up in chairs before a television screen with their hands clasped in their laps as they watched images of a world beyond their reach. It was a scene from a darkly sterile future, one that I hoped not to be around to see.

  “Training.” The smile faded to a much smaller but more genuine one. “The only training I actually liked. And no one in the movies used a tree either.”

  “You just didn’t see the right movies.” I returned the smile and was surprised—and pleased—to see his deepen, but a sudden movement had the emotion melting away and my hand jerking toward the gun tucked between the seat and center console. The overhead V of geese honked and flew on. Relaxing, I pulled my hand away, but the shared moment was gone. “Tell me about Jericho, Misha,” I urged quietly. “Tell me about the training.”

  The kid didn’t have a nervous bone in his body from what I’d seen. His nerves, if not absent altogether, were knit of steel and titanium wire. But now I saw from the taut line of his spine and the tense clamp of his jaw that he wasn’t happy with the subject at hand. They were subtle clues, barely visible unless you were looking and looking hard, but they were there. “I’ve been at the Institute all my life.” The fleeting frown that came and went like heat lightning indicated that perhaps he wasn’t as sure of that statement as he would’ve been two days ago. “I’ve been with you a little more than twenty-four hours. I’m not sure what I should do.”

  It was a hard-won admission of uncertainty from a shockingly self-contained boy. I treated it with the respect it deserved. “Would you go back to the Institute if you could?” It didn’t seem conceivable, but I knew better than that. Some animals and most people get used to their cages, whether the bars were made of iron or something less tangible. Swing the door open and let them smell the freedom. A few would make a break for it, but the majority would turn their backs on it. Try to drag them free of their trap and they would kick and scream bloody murder. Freedom is hard, and dependence is so very easy. It’s simple human nature. No one knew that better than I did. For the past ten years I’d lived in a cage built of bone, blood, and guilt, and I would’ve very likely have killed anyone who tried to force me out of it.

  “Would you?” I repeated.

  “No!” The answer was carried on an explosive burst of breath and it proved one thing instantly. Michael at seventeen was a stronger man than I had ever been. “No,” he went on more calmly, “I won’t go back. Not ever.”

  “Then trust me. Tell me what I need to know.”

  “Trust you?” The blackly amused cynicism that glittered in his eyes made me abruptly feel as if he were the older one. I was one day out of the family business, a grimly dark and violent business, and this kid had me feeling wide-eyed with dewy innocence. “Trust you,” he echoed, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe I
had the audacity to even say the words. Rolling down the window, he propped his elbow on the sill and his chin in his hand. “We had classes on that as well.”

  Waiting him out, I started the car and jounced our way back to the road. He would tolerate only so much pushing; I would have to be patient. It was nearly fifteen minutes before he spoke again. Eyes still gazing out the window and hair whipping in the wind, he began to speak in a voice indifferent and detached. He may have been aloof to it all, but the more he talked, the sicker I felt.

  The Institute was precisely that from his description—twisted and horrific, but with the goal of education all the same. It wasn’t what the students were being taught that triggered my gag reflex; it was the motivation behind it. Psychology and biology were part of a normal high school curriculum, but not the way they were presented there. They were teaching psychology to children to instruct them in manipulation and biology to illustrate the body’s vulnerability. On and on it went. Every class was presented in terms of attack or defense.

  Except for the occasional field trip, the kids weren’t allowed any interaction with the outside world. Videos, prerecorded television programs, and computer programs were used to immerse them in real life. It was just another class. The field trips were to allow their instructors to observe the students, to see if they could blend in . . . be taken for normal children. All of this elaborate program, all this perverse training was for the purpose of . . . what? Michael had laughed when I’d guessed it was aimed at turning these kids into spies, even though programs like that had existed in my grandfather’s time back in Russia, not to mention in the cheap novels I’d read in junior high.

  “Why?” I demanded when he wound down. The details he had given me had been sketchy at best, and I could tell there were huge chunks of information he’d skipped over without touching on at all. “What’s the point of all this sadistic bullshit? What’s supposed to be the end result?”

  “I’m the end result,” he said without emotion.

  And that, apparently, was the end of that topic. Either he couldn’t face the rest, didn’t trust me enough to tell me, or both. And since I already knew where he stood on the trust issue, I drew my own conclusions. But I gave it one last effort.

  “Misha, the only thing I want to do is help you. As far as I’m concerned, that ranks above breathing in my book, but how can I if . . .”

  “Do you want to hear about Jericho or not?” he cut in sharply, shifting and pulling at his seat belt as if it were too tight.

  “Yeah, kid. I do,” I relented. His customary calm might not be healthy considering his immediate past, but stripping it away all at once would leave him mentally defenseless. I wasn’t sure that was the smart thing to do. I knew it wasn’t the kind thing. “You can tell me over breakfast.” I wanted to give him a chance to regain his balance. He might not trust me, but I wanted him to be comfortable with me . . . as much as he could be. “We’ll even find you a real bathroom, nature boy. How about that?”

  From the expression on his face and the set of his shoulders as he folded his arms, he let me know that was the very least I could do. He might not realize he was a teenager with all the personality traits that went with that, but at least he could pout like one. It was a start. Swallowing a smile, I kept an eye on the rearview mirror and started looking for a place to stuff the bottomless pit in the seat beside me.

  Twenty minutes later we were seated in a mom-and-pop joint I spotted before we reached the interstate. It wasn’t too much of a risk. We were off the beaten path. If Jericho had any bizarre form of APB out on us, I found it hard to believe it could reach into the grease-smoked depths of Mrs. Testimony Delgado’s kitchen. She was the mom; we didn’t see the pop. He may have been banished to washing dishes or peeling potatoes.

  “No, no. Not this table, perritos. Scoot.” She bustled out of the kitchen, her enormous breasts arriving two steps before the rest of her. Not old enough to be grand-motherly, she gave a good impression of an eccentric aunt. She would hug you, feed you with cookies and chocolate until you were as plump as she, then send you back to your parents while she put her feet up and drank a solid slug of scotch.

  Waving a faded red and white kitchen towel at us, she herded us to another table in the corner. “Hope you don’t mind, but that one’s saved for four of my regulars.” She bent over and continued in a whisper that probably didn’t carry much past the parking lot. “Older gentlemen. They need to have the spot close to the convenience. Prostate troubles, poor old farts.” She had prematurely silver-streaked black hair piled high on her head in a mass of carefully constructed sausage curls, amber skin with a handful of freckles, and amazing green eyes. They were large, snapping, and the color of sea glass washed on the beach. The best of many worlds combined into one beamingly glorious whole, she snatched the laminated menus from our hands and gave Michael’s stomach a motherly pat. “These . . . They’re not for you. Growing muchacho like you, I know exactly what your panza needs. Flaco.” Shaking her head with disapproval, she pinched his chin. “ Perrito flaco. Skinny puppy.”

  In a whirl of her green and red patterned muumuu she disappeared into the kitchen, her thick and sturdy ankles moving at a blur. Michael watched her go with something close to disbelief. I didn’t bother to hide my grin. “Somebody has a girlfriend.” A black glare was turned my way, and I jerked a thumb in the direction of the table we’d just occupied. “There’s the bathroom you’ve been pining for. You might as well take the opportunity to clean up while you’re in there. You need my comb, puppy?”

  He slid out of his chair and gave me a scornful look that would’ve meant more without the confused flush over his cheekbones. Without a word he held out a hand to accept the comb and headed toward the indicated door. I poured a glass from the pitcher of juice on the table. It was strawberry, orange, pineapple, and something else mixed with crushed ice. It wasn’t bad . . . not at all. I was on my second glass by the time Michael returned. I didn’t feel the need to tell him I’d made a quick trip outside to check for an escape route from the bathroom. The only window I’d seen was far too small for even a lanky teenager to get through, and I made it back to the table long before Michael finished washing up.

  Freshly combed hair was threaded back damply with only one strand springing free to curve and touch his eyebrow. He’d apparently run the comb under the tap before taming the fly-away strands of brown hair. I hoped he wasn’t too attached to the color. “Looking good,” I said approvingly, accepting back the comb. “You’re going to break Mrs. Delgado’s heart.” I knew her name from the face beaming from a framed picture over the cash register. Letters carefully painted on the glass read TESTIMONY DELGADO, PROPRIETOR AND EMPLOYEE OF THE CENTURY. She was a woman who knew her own worth, our hostess.

  The flush that had filled his face with color before he went to the bathroom reappeared. “I thought you wanted to hear about Jericho,” he snapped defensively.

  He wasn’t used to being teased, that was easy to see. Hopefully, that would change, along with so many other things he’d been denied. “Yeah, I do.” Pouring him a glass of the breakfast elixir of the gods. “But drink your juice first. I don’t want a swat with the Delgado dish towel.”

  Lifting the glass, he gave the contents a doubtful sniff before taking an experimental swallow. “It’s good.” He sounded surprised, no doubt thrown off by the lack of chocolate syrup.

  “ Si, perrito, and it’s good for you.” Bustling up to the table, she slid two heavy white plates overloaded with food in front of us. Scrambled eggs mixed with peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes, fried potatoes coated with cheese and onions, thick slices of ham and even thicker toast slathered with butter and jam. I felt my heart stagger in midbeat just at the sight. Serve it to a man over fifty and Mrs. Delgado would be considered an accomplice to murder. Pulling a bottle of ketchup and a jar of salsa out of her apron, she placed them on the table, smoothed a stray hair on the crown of Michael’s head, and rushed back off. The woman was
a whirlwind in a muumuu, a whirlwind with a black belt in cholesterol.

  Michael looked down at his plate, then back up at me with round eyes. “Holy shit.”

  “Hey, watch it,” I laughed. “Where’d you pick up language like that?”

  “Movies.” He picked up his fork and started on the eggs. “And you.”

  He had me there. I’d tried to keep it clean once we made it out of the compound, but how foolish was that? Michael had faced much worse in his life than a few dirty words. Besides, when I was seventeen I was playing football, smoking behind the gym, and my mouth had been anything but pristine. And I’d been a fairly good kid. Given that I had a father like mine, the little rebellions of a normal teenager had seemed innocently naïve . . . even to me. How could you be tempted to worse things when your father ordered men killed between dinner courses? Cheating, graffiti, vandalism—what the hell would be the point to those?

  They were old thoughts and I shrugged them off to dig into my own breakfast. I ran out of steam about halfway through, my stomach uncomfortably full. Michael kept going to finish every bite on his plate and then eyed mine. The kid could eat and that was no lie. I thought about giving him my leftovers, but the image of his spewing eggs and ham in a manner not even Dr. Seuss would approve of stopped me.

  “About Jericho,” I prodded as I leaned back in my chair, hoping against hope for a quick digestion.

  “Oh.” He stalled by helping himself to another glass of juice. That the subject of Jericho was harder to face than the Institute didn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. “Jericho.” He took a swallow, his throat convulsing as if the juice were much thicker than it looked. “Jericho . . . He oversees the Institute. The students, the classes, everything.”