Exit

by Thomas Davidson

  The pharmacy was across from the sleeping teen. Tim stopped at the counter and handed the pharmacist his prescription.

  Rayne stood by him and glanced at the radiant, celebrity magazine rack—People, US Weekly, Celebrity, Allure, Star. Technicolor tabloids, glossaries of gossip. The front covers featured low-cut fissures of flesh. She assumed the immortal cover art would be largely lost on Tim, given his eye cup. But what if a diabetic customer ambled by, saw the alpine cleavage, the eye candy, went into sugar shock and collapsed onto the carpet? Fortunately, a pharmacist could intervene with diabetes medication.

  The cover of Star Chamber Magazine caught her eye. An actress was facing the camera with an unamused expression. Labeled under the heading of News/World Exclusive Photo: “Starla Staine Gives Paparazzi the Middle Finger During PDA Outing With Bill Talbot.”

  “What are you looking at?” Tim asked.

  “I have no idea. What’s PDA mean?”

  “I’m embarrassed to know. ‘Public Display of Affection.’ Get with it, Rayne.”

  “Really? Looks more like ‘Public Display of Aggression.’”

  “Starla is being hounded by the paparazzi.”

  “Tim, I think I already figured out that part.”

  “Hounded,” Tim repeated. “Total, nonstop…”

  Rayne considered the headline, then zeroed in on the word paparazzi.

  He turned to her. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Then she flashed on the long night’s events. “Yes.”

  “In a weird way, drones are the new paparazzi. As you saw, they’re everywhere. Everyone was under surveillance. There was no stopping it. Over there, Big Brother is no longer just watching you, he’s flying right over your head.”

  “We’ve got a few minutes to wait for your meds. Let’s sit down.”

  They sat next to the snoring teen.

  “If you want to ensure privacy and prevent eavesdropping,” Tim said in a low voice, “surround yourself with passed-out people. An unconscious bystander is a trustworthy bystander.”

  “Tim, please.”

  “Just saying. Now tell me again. The president of EyeSoar was on TV?”

  “I only heard a few words of the interview. Something about FAA restrictions being lifted.”

  “Lifted? Over here?”

  Rayne nodded.

  Tim fell silent a long moment, hunched forward, arms on knees. He appeared more vulnerable and forlorn with the cup taped over his eye. Finally he said, “I told you earlier about the two companies competing for the drone market. EyeSoar and DR1 are really slugging it out. It’s a fight to the death, and guys like me are the lab rats.”

  “Markets,” Rayne said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking. They were fighting over market share. That’s how James Carney described it.” He sat up straight in his chair and turned to her. “So, they’re coming.”

  “No,” Rayne said, “they’re here.”

  “You’re right. They’re expanding their markets. How crazed can it get? They’re reaching out from a parallel world, from one universe into another. They’ve tested their drones and made them better—better at tracking us down. And now they’re ready to be rolled out over here. They’re gearing up for the launch of their products. Commercial drones are set to make a huge splash. EyeSoar is about to hit the city. People are gonna hear that corporate name and think it’s cute and amusing. Then they’ll hear the president’s name, and think he has a wonderful sense of humor. Major DeZasta, President of EyeSoar Unlimited. What a fun-loving fellow.”

  “I hope you’re wrong, but I doubt it. I can see it playing out like that.”

  “Wonder what Major DeZasta calls middle management? How about Corporal Punishment.”

  A pharmacist leaned over the counter; her white coat nearly covered her blue shirt. “Your order is ready?”

  “I wonder who else knows?” Rayne said in a low voice, rising from her chair. “I wonder if it’s only us?”

  Tim stood up beside her. His wan face looked puffy from lack of sleep. “When the list of jumpers was televised, there weren’t many names. That tells me this whole thing is recent. And I was one of the unlucky few to cross over.”

  “So it’s possible, maybe likely, that we’re the only ones here who know what’s happening.”

  With his uncovered eye, he searched her face. His voice sounded uncertain when he said, “And Alex, too. Alex knows.”

  “Yes.” Now was the time to tell him, outside in the car. “Let’s get your medicine and get out of here.”

  A minute later they stepped through the electric doors and headed toward the car.

  “There’s one more thing,” Rayne began, and looped her arm through his.

  CHAPTER 17

  Rayne drove while Tim sat beside her in the front seat, squeezing his cell phone. She watched him from the corner of her eye. He kept dialing Alex Portland’s cell number. Nothing.

  “I’d have better luck calling the White House and getting through to the president. This is totally…” His voice trailed off for a moment. “You should’ve told me sooner.”

  “No.” She held up her right hand in the air, stopped him. “There was nothing we could do. You had to get in to see the doctor right away. We were already standing in the E.R., and the Gateway was across the river. Whatever happened over there—happened. If we ran back outside, flagged a cab, squeezed through traffic all the way back, then even more time goes by. What then? We knock on the door of the Gateway at that hour and they let us in?”

  “This is so messed up.”

  “I made the decision, Tim. It’s on me. You had nothing to do with it.”

  His faced the windshield, slumping down in the seat. “Don’t say that. No. If I don’t walk through that exit, this never happens.”

  “When Shay called and told me…” Just thinking about that call sent a tingle down her spine. “We barely got out of that alley alive. When I pulled you back inside the theater, I thought I was the luckiest girl alive, like I won the ultimate lottery. Then just a short while later I got that call in the ER. And I thought, You’re never that lucky, you never get it all your way. I should have known something would go bad. Real bad.”

  “Go by his house.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. We’ll do it, but don’t get your hopes up.”

  Rayne headed for Alex’s neighborhood, and soon turned onto his street lined with shingle style houses, Greek Revival, and triple deckers.

  Tim popped the door as they rolled to a stop. “I’ll be right back.”

  She sat behind the wheel with the engine running, and watched Tim hustle up to the apartment building and into the foyer. She could see him beneath a ceiling light, pressing a buzzer. He fidgeted, turned to look through the glass and steel inner door, as his finger touched the buzzer again. Rayne thought of Alex’s unanswered cell phone. She imagined Alex’s doorbell having a recorded message when pressed.

  “Hi, this is Alex. I can’t come down to the foyer right now and let you in. I’m away. I’m out of town, but still in Cambridge. It’s complicated.”

  The car bounced when Tim opened the door and dropped onto the seat. “Now what?”

  “Home.”

  He fell silent for two or three blocks, his eye cup facing the windshield. Finally he said, “Paparazzi.”

  “I know.”

  “When we were working on Up, remember the night we laughed and said, ‘This is a very strange story—a guy is floating in the astral plane and watching his wife murder him. What is wrong with us. And then we laughed even harder.’” Tim was not laughing now; he sounded half dead from exhaustion. He rubbed his temples and breathed deeply several times, trying to rally. “That night, Rayne, that was funny. Why does that night seem like it happened a year ago? A lifetime ago?”

  She reached out and set her hand on his left thigh. All she could say was, “I know.”

  “We gotta find him, wherever he is. We need a plan, a starting point. The
Gateway, we can go over there later.”

  “We need some sleep. Let’s start with that.”

  “I have a feeling I may not make it to school tomorrow.”

  “You have a flair for understatement, Mr. Crowe.”

  He slid to his left, collapsed onto the front seat, resting his head on her thigh. “Wake me when the shitstorm is over.”

  Two miles later she pulled up the driveway and parked at the rear of her building. When the engine died, the world beyond the car windows seemed unusually quiet. The calm before the storm. The shitstorm. She sensed a thunderhead coming, with gale force winds.

  “Wake up, Captain Crowe. We’ve sailed into port.”

  “Mmm.”

  She got out and circled the car, opened his door. Gripping his arm, she helped pull him out. “A bed, a pillow, my kingdom for a bed.”

  “Mmm.”

  Together they shuffled down the driveway in the dark, hearing only a light wind against their ears, then up the front steps and into the building. She unlocked the foyer door and they passed through, turning for the stairwell. Behind someone’s apartment door on the first floor, she heard a faint melody whispering from a radio. The song was familiar. The one called Eye Seek You.

  #

  Tck…tck…tck…tck.

  Rayne stirred, her eyes cracked opened. Two narrow slits. She heard Tim breathing behind her, fast asleep.

  Another noise registered. Apart from Tim’s breathing. Maybe nothing. Her eyelids sank down. Until…

  Tck…tck.

  Again she blinked open her eyes, inched her head across her pillow toward the dark cherry nightstand, looked at the digital readout on the clock. 4:32 a.m. Raining, she thought, it must be raining outside. In her half conscious state, she again imagined thunderheads and high winds heralding the shitstorm of the century.

  Tck…tck…tck.

  But the sound was slightly off. Not quite rain. More like June beetles flying angrily against the windows, hitting glass. No, not quite. She listened from her pillow. The sound seemed brittle. Like metal against glass. A metal tip tinking glass.

  Tink…tink…tink…

  This time her eyes flew open.

  Tink?

  When she rose, sitting up, the blanket and sheet fell from her shoulders. Tim lay dead asleep. She turned her head to the bedroom windows facing the street, seeing a faint glow from a nearby streetlamp. Several dark shapes mottled the two dark windows. They reminded her of bugs landing on the window screens during the summer, and she’d flick a fingertip against the wire mesh to knock them off. When she was small, her older brother, Noah, used to call bugs boogers on the window, so you have to flick them off. Noah. How she wished Noah were here right now. How she wished she could just go to sleep for a thousand years. How she wished…

  She snapped out of it, pushed the warm covers away. Those were not flying beetles in November. Her half curtains only covered the bottom of the windows because she liked seeing a star-studded night sky while drifting off the sleep, see the moon make its transit beyond the glass, and, hours later, wake to the gray light of dawn. How was this possible? Tiny drones had found her address, descending on her windowpanes like a helipad. Her eyes darted to the clock again. Roughly five hours ago, she and Tim had escaped through the theater and into Harvard Square. Now they had been located.

  A single word came to mind: surveillance.

  The tiny drones had to be sending images to….? Drones at the window. High-tech Peeping Toms. Pictures of she and Tim in bed were being transmitted to wherever. To Voyeur Central.

  She turned and looked at Tim, asleep or possibly having a near-death experience. She was reluctant to wake him, but they couldn’t stay in bed. In a very real sense, the house was on fire.

  “Tim.” She shook his shoulder, keeping her voice down. She leaned by his ear. “Get up, Tim. Get up.”

  “Hmm.” One hand waved limply in the air, a slow motion swat.

  “Tim.” She jiggled his shoulder again. “We’ve got company. You hear me?”

  “Mmm.”

  This was no time to be polite.

  Rayne cupped her hands over his ear. “Weather alert. Shitstorm is here. They’re here.”

  His uncapped eye opened halfway, dully looking at the ceiling. He said nothing.

  She put her face over his. “Drones…are on the window…across the room.”

  The eye lit up. “You…”

  “Yes.”

  The blanket and sheet fell from his shoulders now.

  Rayne grabbed her jeans and a shirt off a chair, and headed for the bathroom. First priority: pee. Second priority: escape. Third priority: cross fingers.

  She sat on the toilet seat and began piecing together a plan. She heard Tim stumble out of the bedroom, feet thudding on the wood floor, approaching.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “I know, I’m working on it.” She stood up, tugged on her jeans. “Get dressed, fast. Grab your medicine.”

  “What about—“

  “Go, go, go.”

  She returned to the bedroom and grabbed the rest of her clothes in front of the paparazzi, and got out of there. She finished dressing in the living room where the shades were drawn. She adjusted her bra straps, buttoned a shirt, and zipped up her pants in front of the fake surveillance camera on the wall.

  Tim entered the room naked with a ball of clothes, still groggy. He began with boxers, then socks, scratched head, pulled on jeans, scratched head again. “Rayne, that sign is freaking me out.”

  WARNING

  These Premises are

  Protected by

  CLOSED CIRCUIT TELEVISION

  24 Hour Video Recording

  “Forget the sign. Hurry.”

  He hopped on the floor while trying to tug on his pants and shoes.

  Think, think, think.

  They were tired. Needed sleep. Didn’t know where they’d sleep and be safe. She took two blankets from a closet, bundled them up. Grabbed her car keys.

  “Ready?”

  “Look at me. I guess.”

  “Come on, come on.”

  He stood still for a moment in the middle of the living room, and his face hardened. ”These pricks, they’re running us out of our house.”

  She watched him. He looked like he was ready to go off. “Tim.”

  “EyeSoar? I’ll give them a fucking eyesore.” He stepped over and tore the red-and-white Closed Circuit Television sign off the wall.

  She watched him. Crowe was in the Crowe Zone. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m putting it in the bedroom window, facing out. The drones can relay the message back to headquarters. This is as close as I can get to jamming it up their ass.”

  “For God’s sake.” But he was right and she knew it. She glanced at the orange-and-black sign still on the wall.

  WARNING

  All Suspicious Persons and Activities

  Are Immediately Reported to

  Our Police Department

  NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

  We Look Out for Each Other

  “Do it, Rain Angel,” he said.

  “Like the sign says, ‘We look out for each other.’” She ripped it off the wall.

  They went to the bedroom and set the signs on the two window sills facing the street. The drones floated in the air beyond the glass.

  “May as well go all out. Just a second.” Tim left the room.

  She heard him pull down the fake plastic security camera off the wall.

  He returned, moved the nightstand to the window, and set the camera on it, the lens aimed at the outside world.

  “The camera is a clock,” Rayne said.

  “They don’t know that.”

  “They can see the clock inside the lens.”

  “Not if it’s unplugged. It’s dark.”

  “Let’s get out of here, Einstein.”

  “Where?”

  She pushed him through the door, locked it, led him to another apartment door on the seco
nd floor. She knocked on the door. Quietly at first. Soon the knocking was a crescendo.

  Inside, a woman’s voice: “Whoever you are, you have a death wish.”

  “Martina?” Rayne said.

  “It ain’t even five in the morning.”

  “Martina? It’s me, Rayne.”

  Momentary silence.

  The door creaked open. The chain lock rattled.

  “Rayne? Wait.” She undid the chain, opened the door. A young woman with brown eyes, high cheek bones, and a layered pixie haircut appeared. She wore a long, wine-red robe. “Girl, what’s goin’…?”

  Rayne pulled Tim inside, and said, “Martina? You remember Tim. We’ve got an emergency and I don’t have time to explain.”

  Martina leaned back on one bare foot, stared up at the cup over Tim’s eye. “Emergency, you say. Rayne, honey, I’ve seen you in action. You the shit, the bomb, the….” Her eyes drifted down to the folded blankets. “Should I be…oh, I don’t know…”

  “We need to cut through your apartment and out your back door, and head down the back stairs. Sorry about the hour.”

  “Don’t worry.” A hint of a smile appeared. “Whatever your story, it’s gotta be good.”

  “It’s out of this world,” Tim said.

  Rayne let that remark go. She said to Martina, “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Police?”

  “No law, nothing like that.”

  “Good. I won’t be charged with accessory to boyfriend brutality, right?”

  Rayne kissed her. “See you soon. Thanks, M.”

  “You do know there’s nothing down there.”

  “Thanks, M.”

  Rayne grabbed Tim’s hand and led him through Martina’s narrow hall, into her kitchen the color of red peppers, and through the rear door. They hustled down two flights of stairs to the washer and dryer on the ground floor, then another flight of wood stairs to the musty basement with dirt on the floor. A yellow bulb at one corner kept it dimly lit.

  “Watch your head,” she told Tim. “The ceiling is low.”

  “It looks like a dungeon down here.”

  “There’s rotting corpses on the other side. This building is like the Bates Motel, within shouting distance of Harvard. I’d show you, but we’re pressed for time.”