“Helen, it’s real.” Henry stomps his foot.
Helen throws an exasperated look at her brother. The two of them have had so many conversations that go in circles. It is what brothers and sisters do. Helen knows her brother can see things, he has a vision that nobody understands, but he’s a little kid so a lot of what he says makes no sense. That was okay, up until now. What is Henry keeping from her?
Helen next resorts to the time-honored tactic of turning to their mom with a pleading look on her face and saying, “Mom?”
Kate’s mind is racing a million miles an hour. Up until about sixty seconds ago, she felt like she was doing a reasonable job of staying ahead of the game. She had ice cream with her son after school. Like normal people. She knew these two young people were ready to understand more about who they are, what she does, where their father is, and a host of other topics. She needs to explain things to them—soon. She knows that. And she has promised herself to deal with it, one piece at a time. What do they say in the child-rearing books? “Age-appropriate information.” That’s right. She had planned to break things down into bite-size chunks that her kids could handle. That’s her job as the parent. Except, on this day it has become clear that the process is getting away from her.
So, Kate Silverwood does what any mom who moonlights as a bounty hunter might do: She goes for it.
“Helen,” Kate says, crossing to her and gently taking the drawing from her hand (a detailed rendering, beautifully done, by the way). “The reason that Henry can draw a Tromindox is because he has seen them. They are real.”
Helen lets this sink in, then turns away from her mom and walks over to one of the lawn chairs. She plunks down into it and leans her head on her hand. Her black hair swings forward to hide her face. She stays like this for a few moments, and no one speaks.
“Real?” Helen says from within her hair.
Kate nods, even though Helen can’t see her do it.
“So, not dreams?” Helen asks.
“No,” Kate replies.
The young man has come back up the stairs and stands uncomfortably, and very quietly, in the doorway.
“You saved my life, miss Helen,” the young man says softly.
Helen’s head snaps up. She had forgotten about the second thing that happened. This guy appeared from nowhere, a person who looks eerily familiar but Helen can’t place him.
“Saved your life?” Helen repeats. Repeating what everyone says buys Helen a few more seconds to try and form a reaction.
Suddenly everything clicks into place in her brain. The way people always seem so grateful after she turns them back into humans. The way they rush off. The way it’s always a different person. That’s who this guy is. He was here. He was a Tromindox, and then she healed him. He was in one of her dreams.
She scoots to the edge of her chair and looks straight at her mom. “So, since my dreams are apparently public knowledge, what am I doing, exactly, with these people, like this guy, when they show up and I turn them into humans?” She points at the visitor without looking at him.
“You are reversing the effects of Tromindox venom,” Kate says. As if that is going to make any sense to her daughter. But that’s the most accurate way to put it.
“Maybe I can explain,” the young man says. “When people come to you, Miss Silverwood, they’ve got the venom in them. They’ve been terribly shape-shifted. The Tromindox is trying to consume them. But they haven’t given in, they have fight left. They have battled and gotten control of the Tromindox. They are partway immune. They’re strong, but not quite strong enough to fully regain human form. They are stuck in Tromindox shape. But when they come in contact with you, Helen, you have the power to dissolve the Tromindox, and they can be human again. Without your help, the Tromindox will eventually win and those people are lost forever. That’s what almost happened to me. But you brought me back, and now I am here today. I’m alive thanks to you.”
“Contact with me? What does that mean? Do I have super healing hands or something?” Helen asks, her voice rising. This is all sounding awfully weird.
“Well not precisely,” the young man explains. “To defeat the Tromindox people require a drop of your blood. Your blood is the anti-venom, see. So they take a tiny bit of blood, and heal up the spot where they took it. Then they put you back to sleep so you won’t remember that it happened.”
Helen sits there for a minute to consider this. “That’s… really gross.”
“Yeah, that is gross,” Henry says. And then he asks, “So, do you guys make my sister think it’s a dream so she won’t freak out?”
Kate interrupts before the man can answer. “It’s an arrangement that your father and I made when Helen was very small. We knew that Helen had the anti-venom, but it wasn’t fair to ask a little child to take responsibility for such a thing. So the solution was, let it be like a dream. Let her stay asleep.” Kate looks back and forth at her two children. “It seemed like the best idea. We were doing the best we could. That’s what your dad says—
do the best you can with what you’ve got.”
“So, when were you planning to explain all this?” Helen asks. “Cause I’m not a little kid any more. How long were you going to wait?”
“I was going to tell you, Helen,” Kate says, “at the right time. I just wasn’t sure when that time would be. You’re still so young. I didn’t want to dump it on you. It’s like, it’s like… ”
“Puberty,” Henry declares. That gets everyone’s attention.
“It’s like puberty,” Henry continues. “The grown-ups are always worried about how to explain puberty, and when to have the big talk about how it all works, where babies come from, and then by the time you finally get around to it, we already know all the facts.”
Kate stares at her son. “Well, right, yes, that is kind of like… ”
The man in the doorway looks down at the floor to hide the smile spreading across his face.
“So, who are you, exactly?” Kate asks, turning to the visitor.
He looks up. “Me? I’m an agent. I was in the process of intercepting some communications, when I fell under attack by the Tromindox and found myself fighting for my existence. I used the agent network to locate Helen a few nights ago, and was healed. Then I intercepted some communications pertaining to your husband, ma’am, and I thought you might still be here. I’m a clan member. I was hoping I could catch you before you disappear again, let you know what I had learned about Gabriel.” He raises his hands in front of him. “I know, I know, it’s probably a terrible idea to come back here like this. But I really thought you should know. I felt I owed it to you and I had to take the chance. And I did not want to risk someone listening in on a pirated channel.”
“Gabriel?” Henry says. “That’s our dad!”
“Shush Henry,” Kate says. She is suspicious of anyone who comes around claiming they have information for her about her husband. They might be trying to trick her. “What do you supposedly know about Gabriel? He’s in prison.”
Prison? Helen thinks. Mom certainly hasn’t ever mentioned that.
“No, no he’s not in prison, ma’am,” the man says. “He’s out. The clan broke him out.”
So, he’s not in prison. But, he was.
Kate has no idea whether to believe a single thing this man is saying, but figures he’s an ex-Tromindox and an agent and he’s here, so she might as well hear him out. She knows the Council would love to get her to make a mistake, give away her location. Give away Helen’s location. Oh, what they would give to get control of Helen.
“You don’t have to believe me, ma’am, really. I would not blame you in the least if you don’t. But I will tell you what I have heard, and then you can do what you like. Gabriel Silverwood is out, and he’s cut a deal of some sort, where he’s potentially coming to this time frame. He’s tracking a Tromindox. It’s called T-441.”
“And what is your information on where this Tromindox is headed?” Kate asks.
<
br /> “Someplace called Brokeneck, California,” the man says. “I don’t know anything about the place, I just intercepted this like I said. It sounds like your man is on the thing’s tail, and the thing is headed to Brokeneck. That’s about it. And really, at this point, I’ve been here way too long. I’m very sorry to have troubled you. I’ll send out misinformation on your whereabouts to throw people off your trail.”
“I’m sure you’ve been followed here, so that might not help very much,” Kate says. She’s calculating in her head how quickly they can get out of this apartment before it’s too late. “If your information is correct, though, I do thank you sir. We will do our best to take advantage of it.” Kate doesn’t want to sound ungrateful, this agent really took a risk coming here to talk to them. But between the discovery of the drawing, the discussion of Helen’s dreams and the unwelcome directions this conversation has taken, Kate’s head is spinning and she needs to think.
The man goes to the doorway, turns, looks at each of them, and leaves without another word. They can hear him bounding down the stairs outside. His steps fade away with the distant slam of a door.
Kate slumps down in the other lawn chair. She looks defeated. What is she supposed to do with this potentially false information? Has she destroyed Helen’s trust? Are they safe right now? Where do they go next?
And, what the heck does her son know about where babies come from?
“We have to get out of here, tonight,” Kate says. “Our location has been compromised.” Kate knows that those words sting, especially after her conversation with her son this afternoon. It feels like punching someone in a spot where they are already badly bruised.
“So that’s why we move?” Helen asks. “To keep our location secret?”
“That’s part of it, Helen,” Kate answers. No, she is not going to go into a lengthy explanation right now about her work as a bounty hunter. That discussion is beyond the scope of what Kate can deal with.
“We’re going to Brokeneck,” Henry says, having a seat on one of the boxes.
Helen and Kate turn to look at him.
“Now, Henry, we don’t even know if that agent gave us real information,” Kate warns. “He could have been sent here to deceive us. Or someone could have deceived him. Besides, we don’t know if such a place as Brokeneck, California even exists. And I have a job, remember. That’s how we pay the rent and buy food.”
“The agent is not lying,” Henry says. “And we do know about Brokeneck.” He picks up his sketchbook from on top of his backpack. He flips a few pages, and then hands it to his mom. “This is what it looks like.”
It’s a pencil drawing of a Western ghost town, with a main street running down the middle of it. At one end there’s an arched sign over the street with letters on it spelling, “BROKENECK.”
“We are going there,” Henry announces, pointing firmly at the drawing.
Okay, fine. Kate is done. Her notions about being in charge as the parent, which lately had been shaky at best, have been stomped into a pile of charred ash. In the back of her mind, Kate senses a bit of relief. Maybe now her kids will begin to understand her better. And understand themselves better. Maybe Kate can stop living a double life—one for work, one for her kids. Or, maybe it’s all just a really big mess and they will grow up to hate her and move away and never call on holidays. Kate doesn’t know. What she does know is, they are on the move again. And apparently their destination is Brokeneck, California. Her husband’s face appears in her mind as she stands up and looks around the apartment—time to pack up their things.
Kate lifts a yellow spatula from a kitchen drawer. The lucky spatula has been with her through agent training, her first years with Gabriel, and to each apartment she and her children have lived in since she hit the road as a bounty hunter. Her husband used it to cook her scrambled eggs on the morning they brought Helen home as a baby. That is, after they managed to escape into the future, figure out where (and when) they were, and—with the help of clan members and agents—find a safe hospital to deliver her.
The spatula handle has a melted spot where someone left it leaning on a hot pan. The end of it is beat up and misshapen. Kate can see her husband making scrambled eggs, and remember the smell and the sizzling sounds from the pan. She drops the spatula into a box and moves on to the next drawer. One more thing to take along.
At the precise moment that the spatula lands in the box atop a stack of kitchen towels, a hail of bullets obliterates the living room window and glass rains into the apartment. Kate, Helen and Henry drop to the floor. Tiny shards of glass bounce off the floor, walls and furniture, flying in all directions. Kate crawls on her stomach over to her children, crouched behind a stack of boxes. They can hear the rounds being emptied, somewhere across the street in a high window. Kate grabs Helen and Henry by their shirts, and runs with them in a crouch to the bedroom. They lie down on the floor, their hair filled with bits of glass.
Kate pops the latches on the black box by the bed and lifts the lid. She rifles through an assortment of devices piled inside. She selects one, pushes its single button and lights up its screen with a map. She grabs a portal from her pocket and jams it into the slot on the side, then uses her thumb to scroll across the screen. The device lets out a whining sound that goes up in pitch as if it is charging—rising, rising until the sound escapes their hearing. Kate crawls back to the living room.
There is a pause in the gunfire, but as soon as Kate peeks over a lawn chair, more rounds fly through the window and bounce off the floor. The plaster on the walls crumbles loose and comes off in chunks with each bullet impact. Kate squints down at her screen. A circular target shape moves over the map, as if searching for a pinpoint location. Closer, closer—the target contracts until it freezes and begins blinking on and off. Kate uses her thumb again on the screen to slide the target over, just a little, to one side.
Kate rises into a crouch, and then jumps up and runs toward the window. She brings her arm around like she’s throwing a fastball, using her whole body to hurl the device out. Her boots skid in the broken glass, and she slides to a stop just before she flies out the window herself. The device arcs halfway across the street, and then begins to drop—but then it corrects itself and buzzes upward, careening like a frightened bird toward a window on the twentieth floor. Kate drops down again, and a concussive explosion rocks the room. The device has blown a twenty-foot crater high up in the opposite wall. Pieces of the building drop to the sidewalk below and black smoke begins to rise from the hole. No more gunfire. The sudden quiet feels eerie.
Helen and Henry look at each other. So, that’s what the thingy does. Good thing they didn’t have “authorization.”
Clarence, who has been barking in the closet, emerges and shakes plaster and glass out of his fur. Kate comes into the bedroom, her boots crunching shards as she walks. The smoke from the building across the street sends an acrid smell into the living room. The children sit on the floor huddled next to each other. Helen’s hand is bleeding, but otherwise they seem fine, relatively speaking. Sirens begin to wail in the distance.
Nice job blue-eyed agent, Kate is thinking. Yes, you stayed too long.
Helen looks down at her hand. “Mom?” she says.
“Yeah.”
“This is why we have to run, isn’t it?” She holds up her palm. A beautiful, red drop of blood hangs just at the base of her thumb. “Why we move all the time?”
“That’s part of it, Helen,” Kate says. “There are several reasons. And your lovely blood is one of them. My job also carries with it—some risks.”
Helen nods, then wipes the blood onto her pants.
“Oh Helen, jeez. Use a towel or something. Not your clothes.”
“Sorry, mom.”
Kate crunches her way back to the kitchen. The street noise is louder now that they don’t have a window, and the sirens are closer.
The spatula still sits in its box with the towels. Kate closes the box, picks it up and lug
s it over to the stack by the door. She lets it slide down between her hands and drop with a heavy thud. One of the lawn chairs in the living room, blown full of holes, collapses to the floor in a heap.
Henry brushes a couple of glass bits from his bangs and gets up. He walks in amongst the boxes and picks up the drawing of Brokeneck, flattening it out with a soft crinkling sound in his sketchbook. Things will be different when we get there, he thinks.
The tires of the rusty, wood-paneled 1954 Ford Country Squire station wagon squeak loudly on the floor of the apartment building’s underground garage, as Kate maneuvers out of their parking space. It didn’t take long to pack, since most of their stuff is still in boxes from last time. They left behind anything with bullet holes. Including the disintegrated heap of lawn chair parts.
Helen sits in the passenger seat of the massive vehicle, her elbow against the door and her chin resting on her hand. She can see the teardrop-shaped silver trailer in the rearview mirror, which holds everything they own in the world. Henry and Clarence sit together in the backseat.
As they reach the top of the steep ramp leaving the parking garage, raindrops come down first on the car’s hood, then on the windshield. Kate tries the wipers, and to her relief they still work. She never knows with this relic. The good news is that the station wagon is massive, and pretty much indestructible.
Henry looks out his window to see the little girl with dark, wavy hair from school standing in the middle of the sidewalk. She seems so small, alone in the rain amongst the high-rise buildings. The street is quiet in the wee hours of the morning. The girl has on a yellow raincoat, which she hugs to her body.
“Stop!” Henry says to his mom, “for just a second.”
“Henry, we have to go. Now.” Kate says.
“Just a second, I promise.”
Kate stops the car and they sit in the garage exit, the wipers flopping back and forth and the engine humming. Henry pushes open his door and climbs out. He walks up to his friend. They stand quiet, unsure what to say.
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