by Rachel Caine
My enemy—whoever he or she was—would have to power that storm with the equivalent energy of fifteen or twenty nuclear reactors just to keep it together, and trying to bring it back down would be almost impossible, given the warm air column I'd created and was maintaining. Warm air beats cold air, given a short time frame. Elementary weather physics.
I felt the moment its creator let go of it. It was impossible for a storm that big to fall apart, but it did—blown apart, just like a puffball. Without the magic that sustained it, it was just random water and gas. I could feel the pressure easing inside my head.
Going, going… gone.
My phone rang. I flipped it open.
"Nice," Paul said.
"You, too."
"I can't change my mind, kid. Don't come back."
"I didn't think you would," I said. "Don't worry. I'm not your problem anymore."
Paul chuckled, a sound that left me warm inside. "That'll be the day."
I had just hung up the car phone when the first microburst slammed into the car with the speed of a bullet train and knocked me off the road. I fought the wheel, heard the Mustang scream as it grabbed for traction, but the road might as well have been ice and oil. I skidded. The world lurched. And oh, God, there was somebody in the way, somebody standing by the side of the road, I was going to hit him….
I spun out in a spray of dust, felt a dull thump of impact. My tires caught the grassy edge of the shoulder, and physics took over, giving the car a sickening tilt.
Not the car, I thought in utter despair. Please, not the car.
And then something caught me and steadied me, and Delilah thumped four tires back on the ground. I had the breath knocked out of me, but apart from some tread loss, neither one of us had been hurt much. Delilah was shaking all over. So was I.
I turned off the engine and put my burning forehead on the steering wheel and gulped in air that tasted now as much of fear as of all the old ghosts of fast food, but it was still delicious.
"Sorry, baby," I whispered to Delilah. "Thought we were both headed for the junkyard."
It took me a second to remember the rest of it. The dull thump of impact.
Oh, Jesus, I'd hit somebody….
I fumbled with the seat belt, frantic. Oh, God, no— let him be okay….
Somebody tapped on the window. I gave myself whiplash coming around to stare, and saw a shadow… large, dark, and threatening. I sucked in breath to scream.
I blinked, and the shadow resolved into just—a guy. A guy with brown hair that needed trimming and some silly-looking round glasses that reflected blazing sunlight. A nice face, with smile lines around the eyes that said he was older than first glance would take him for. He was wearing a patched olive-green trench coat that for some reason reminded me of World War I—a vintage clothing enthusiast, or somebody who could afford only Salvation Army couture.
I rolled down the window.
"You okay?" he asked, and adjusted a backpack on his shoulder. Oh. I got it. He was a road dude, somebody who walked for a living, hitching when possible. Homeless by choice, maybe, instead of circumstance. A guy in search of adventure.
Well, he'd sure as hell found it this time.
"Fine. I'm fine," I croaked, and dragged lank, oily hair back from my face. "You're okay? I didn't hit you? No tire tracks on you or anything?"
He shook his head. An earring glinted. I tried to remember which ear meant he was gay, and then doubted myself; the earring thing might be an urban legend. I concluded it was either bullshit or the glint was in the heterosexual ear, because he smiled at me in a warmly nonacademic way.
"So, can you believe this weather? Some crazy stuff going on," he said. I could imagine… a cloud levitating with the speed of a freight train, straight up, then blowing apart like God himself had smashed it to pieces. Plus Delilah roaring along at top speed and spinning out like NASCAR roadkill. Not something you see every day, even if you are a road dude. "Thought we were really in for it."
I hoped the we was a generic kind of thing, not a hello-I'll-be-your-stalker-this-evening warning sign. "Gee, bad weather? I didn't notice."
He hitched the backpack again, as if it were giving him some trouble, and nodded as he straightened up. "Well, be careful. Too nice a car to end up in some ditch. Not to mention too nice a lady."
Gallant, but he was a genuine guy—he'd put the car first. Somehow, that won me over. I wasn't getting any weird vibes from him, and even the company of some dude smoking grass and getting as one with nature might be better than talking to my car on a hell-drive like this. He even had a nice smile.
I looked at him in Oversight, just to be sure, but there was nothing special about him, nothing dark, nothing bright, nothing but plain old Joe Normal. I opened the passenger door and said, "Need a ride?"
He stopped walking away and looked at me. He had really dark eyes, but dark in a warm, earthy kind of way. If he were a season, he'd be fall.
"Maybe," he said. "Pack's getting kind of heavy. What's the price?"
"Nothing."
His eyebrows twitched like he thought about raising them. "Nothing's for nothing."
"Pleasure of your company."
"That can be taken a couple of ways," he said, and shrugged off the pack. It fit into the backseat like a second passenger. He didn't need as much leg room as Paul. "Not that I'm complaining or anything."
I felt strongly that that should offend me. "You really think I look like a chick who'd pick up some skanky guy on the side of the road?"
"No," he said with a sly, Zen-like calm. "And just for clarification, I take exception to the skanky. I have had a bath."
I waited until he'd strapped himself in safely before Delilah rolled again. Sunlight flickered through trees, tiger-striping the road. A gentle west-to-east breeze rustled leaves. I hadn't closed my window, and the smooth, cool scented air blew my hair back from my face. It felt good on my flushed skin.
"Not skanky," I agreed finally. "Rough?"
"You think I look rough?"
"Maybe a little grubby."
"I'll accept grubby."
When I looked over, he chuckled. I laughed, caught the edge of my hysteria, and blamed it on exhaustion and fear. I caught my breath and wiped my face.
He said, "My name's David, by the way."
"Joanne."
"How long have you been on the road?"
"Isn't that my line?" I asked him. "I think it's been about thirty-six hours, but I'm really not too sure anymore."
"Any sleep?"
"Not so much."
"I guess you know it's not safe to drive like that."
"Safer than stopping," I said, and then wondered why I had; I don't confide, especially not in normal, mundane people. David nodded and looked out the window. "So how long have you been on the road?"
"A while now. I like it. It's beautiful out there." He nodded toward the other side of the glass, where things were whipping by at Mustang speed. "Everybody should get out in the world for a while, just so they know who they are, and why."
It sounded philosophical and New Agey to me, but hey, I freely admit I'm cynical. "Thanks, I'll take indoor plumbing, cooked food, and reliable heating any time. Nature's great. I just don't think she likes us very much."
"She likes us fine," David replied. "But she doesn't stack the deck for one side or the other, and we seem to think she should. Cockroaches get the same shots as humans, in her view. And I think that's fair."
"I'm not about fair. I'm about winning."
"Nobody wins," he said. "Or don't you watch the Discovery Channel?"
"More of a Comedy Central fan, myself. And don't tell me that you've got a cabin with cable stashed in your backpack."
He out and out grinned this time. "No, but sometimes I take a room at a motel so I can cleaned up and sleep in a bed for a change. You got something against the Discovery Channel?"
"Adult pay-per-view," I advised him. "Only way to go."
Strangely
, I felt less sleepy and less fogged over with weariness since he'd gotten in the car. Maybe there really was something to misery loving company. Plus, a little casual flirting never failed to get my blood moving.
He looked over at me with a smile that was just saved from being cynical by his gentle eyes.
"Real life," he said, "is always more interesting. You just never know what will happen."
What happened was that we drove for another thirty minutes, and the skies were clear and menace free, and I finally was able to pull in for a pit stop at a place called Krazy Ed's Gas 'n Food. Krazy Ed himself ran the register. I don't know if he was Krazy, but he was meaner than a pit bull, and I'd have been willing to bet that he'd killed a few would-be burglars in his time. David stayed quiet, polite, and he got out as quickly as possible with his haul of cheese doodles and Twinkies and diet soda. Evidently his oneness with Mother Nature did not extend to eating organic—or even partially organic— food.
Delilah drank her fill at the pumps, I slid my feet in and out of the now-torturous high heels and asked Krazy Ed if there was anyplace in town he could recommend as a clothing store. Apparently there was. It was a little place called the mall.
"Mall," I echoed after David and I were back in the car, safely out of Krazy Ed's reach. "How big a mall can there be in a town this size? A Wal-Mart I could understand, wherever two or three of us are gathered together, but…"
David didn't say anything. He just pointed to the road sign directly in front of us. It read, green hills outlet mall, biggest in pa! Although, by my calculations, we were just wee miles short of being out of Pennsylvania altogether.
"Oh," I said. "Pretty big, I guess."
So we followed the signs.
Big wasn't the word; the place was frigging enormous. I'd seen major airports that covered less land mass, and the cars—you could have taken a dozen big-city car dealerships and stuck them together in one contiguous lot, and you'd still have fewer vehicles than were choked into narrow rows around the Green Hills Outlet Mall. I offered David the chance to get a ride with some of the thousands of other mall shoppers, but he politely declined and walked into the place with me, hands in his overcoat pockets and eyes full of sly amusement as if he were on some sociology field trip. I wondered how many malls he'd ever been to. The clothes he was wearing weren't really hand-me-downs after all—blue checkered flannel shirt, blue jeans, lived-in hiking boots, that vintage overcoat. It all looked good quality, with no ground-in dirt—in fact, recently washed. Like David himself. He smelled lightly of male sweat, but nothing stinkier. If he'd been living rough, it certainly hadn't been any rougher than most vacationers.
Which raised a question, because most guys on the road for a couple of years tended to wear miles on their faces. His was mileage free.
Still. I checked Oversight. He was placidly un-menacing.
"I just need a few things," I told him. "Clothes. Stuff like that. You can go to the food court if you want to and eat something with some actual nutritional content for a change. My treat."
We were, in fact, looking at the food court, which was larger and noisier than Barnum and Bailey's big top. Even the pickiest taste could find something in that maze of color and plastic—from hamburgers to Szechuan, curry to pork pies. David looked mildly impressed. I handed him a twenty-dollar bill. "Knock yourself out. See you back here in an hour. If I don't see you, I'll assume you've caught another ride, okay?"
He pocketed the twenty without protest and nodded without looking my way. "I'll be here," he said. "Don't forget me."
Not likely. I looked back over my shoulder when I got to the escalator and saw he was standing there, watching me. The round circles of his glasses caught neon fire as he turned his head, and he walked off into the crowd with his overcoat swinging gracefully around him.
He really was—something. I wasn't quite sure what. Why the hell had I picked him up? No, that wasn't the question. A girl could have the occasional weakness for a cute, mysterious stranger. The question was, why the hell was I still with him?
I made the decision that when I was done here, I'd slip out the side exit and leave him on his own. Hell, I'd given him a ride, contributed a twenty to the cause—I'd done more than my duty, right? And there was, well, me to consider. I had my own problems, dammit.
Yes. Definitely. That's what I would do.
The escalator delivered me to a whole different level of color, this one full of clothes. Trashy clothes, flashy clothes, trendy clothes, clothes even my grandmother would have found too dowdy to wear. I picked a place called Violent Velvet and decided that it deserved a once-over for the name alone.
The color of the season, I discovered, was purple— well, last season, because it was an outlet mall and they were unloading stock that hadn't sold, but that didn't matter. I liked purple. I liked purple velvet even better, and since the spring wasn't so warm, it constituted a comfort-versus-fashion challenge.
Half an hour later I emerged from the fitting room wearing purple hip-hugger pants, a stretch lace white shirt, and a flared purple jacket that harked back to Edwardian styles. Everything I was wearing, from underwear out, was new. It felt so good, it was almost sexual. I paid up, bagged two more outfits and a pair of purple satin pajamas, and reveled in the feel of flat-heeled, fashionably clunky shoes. My feet were shell-shocked but grateful. A quick fifteen-minute stop at the nearby convenience store netted me tampons, toothpaste, toothbrush, travel-size mouth-wash, makeup, and—because a good Girl Scout is always prepared—a discreet travel-size package of condoms. But, I reminded myself again, I was ditching David. So the condoms were more in the way of wishful thinking.
Anyway, it had nothing to do with him. In the outfit I was wearing, I might have a date before I even made it down the escalator.
I was basking in girl power when suddenly the hair along my scalp prickled, and I knew something was wrong. Weather? No, that was okay, a quick survey of Oversight told me all was well. Something else. I couldn't pin it down, but the feeling persisted. Something was wrong here, in the middle of all these busy people, all these stores chewing money at a Las Vegas rate. Something to do with air, I thought. But not weather—
I realized I was feeling faint, and I didn't understand why. I'd been feeling great just a few seconds ago, loving my violent velvet, ready to take on the world. Now I needed to sit down.
I found an unoccupied Victorian-style wrought-iron bench and sat down next to some squatty pine trees. They looked unconvinced by the skylight above, but a finch had somehow found its way in and was perched on one of the branches, watching me with beady finch-eyes. It made a sharp sound that sounded dull and smeared to me, as if I were hearing it underwater, and it snapped its wings and flew away.
Fainter. Sounds fading. I couldn't understand what was happening. I was breathing faster, but the part of my brain in charge of total freakout was shrieking that something was wrong, wrong, wrong.
I was still trying to figure it out when I slid sideways and fell over on the bench. Cool white-painted iron against my cheek. Felt good. So tired.
People gathered. Lips moved. No sound reached me. I was gasping now, panting fast, and because my hand was by my face, I could see that my fingernail beds were turning a pure, delicate blue.
Something about—about—experiment at school—
Oh, God, I couldn't breathe. No, that's not right, I was breathing, but there just wasn't anything there to breathe. Nothing but my own carbon dioxide.
I remembered, as suddenly and clearly as if it were happening in front of me, that I'd done this before. Not as the subject. As the experimenter.
I'd done this to a lab rat. Removed all the oxygen from the air surrounding him and made it a clear poisonous shell around him, so no matter where he ran, no matter how he tried to get away—
I hadn't killed the rat. I'd popped the bubble once I'd mastered the technique, and the rat—white, with a pink nose, funny how you remember those things— had scurried off unharmed.
But whoever was practicing on me wasn't popping the bubble.
Focus, dammit!
My brain was starting to send out hysterical flashes, distress signals. Flashes of color across my eyes. A strangely realistic memory of my mother reaching down for me, giant-size in my perspective. Delilah spinning on the road. Lewis, lying on the ground, blood dripping down his face, reaching out for the last key to his power.
I realized I had stopped breathing and couldn't seem to make myself start again.
Something wrong. What was it?
Clear as a bell, I heard my mother say, I wish this didn't have to happen. She sounded so disappointed in me.
Yorenson. Disappointed. Standing at the head of the class, listening to my wrong answer. Really, Joanne, you know this. You know how to do this.
Couldn't remember. It was dark. Very dark. Warm in there, in the night, but no stars, no moon.
No. Hallway. Something at the end. I was moving toward it without any sensation of moving, there was light, and light and—
I was sitting in a creaking wooden school chair, and the room smelled faintly of Pine-Sol and chalk, and Yorenson pulled at his tweed jacket like a fussy girl and asked me a question that I didn't understand, and I felt panic rising like storm surge along the coast. I had to get this right, had to. He looked at me in disappointment and turned back to the blackboard. He drew an air molecule, chalk squeaking.
I was the only one in the room. Staying after class. Remedial weather theory. No, that wasn't right, I had never—
Pay attention, he said, without turning around. Squeaking chalk. This takes delicacy, my dear.
On the board. The answer was on the board. All I had to do was—was—
Crystal sparkles around the edge of Yorenson's blackboard, eating. Darkness all around, eating the answer.
No.