The Eighth Day

by Joseph John

  The compact spiraled up the ramp, the purr of its engine echoing through the concrete passageway. On the third level, he found an empty parking space, and he spun the wheel and squeezed into it. He grabbed the pistol from the center console compartment and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans before he got out of the car. The cool, shaded air of the garage caused his arms to break out in gooseflesh. He jammed his hands into his pockets and followed signs to the exit—a staircase that led to ground level and a door that opened on a flood of bodies outside.

  The scent of pizzerias and fine dining wafted out of open doors and mixed with the dissonance of the crowd and traffic. Skyscrapers thrust heavenward toward their vanishing point, giving the street a cavernous quality. Their shadows were like bruises across the city. Hues of gold and orange lit the firmament and reflected in the buildings’ glass windows as if the world burned around him.

  He was a single man among millions, yet all it took was one person to recognize him from the video. He stared at shoes and moving legs as the tide of pedestrians carried him along the sidewalk, across intersections, past shops. Several blocks ahead, a holo-sign for a Nanosoft retail boutique stretched above a storefront. Shawn quickened his pace and shouldered his way inside.

  Light-gray walls and a luminous floor and ceiling framed the room in an empyreal glow. Three rows of tables stretched the length of the store, and a cornucopia of computing power of all shapes and sizes lay upon them—laptops and tablets, contact lenses and watches, desktop behemoths with multi-touch interfaces and holographic screens. Bodies herded around these tables like congregational zealots besieging the Pope or a crush of groupies hoping to get a handful of the latest celebrity superstar.

  Shawn lingered at the store’s entrance, and one of the clerks veered in his direction. He had skin the color of raw umber and wore slacks and a black shirt made of a sackcloth-like material. His silvery-white hair hung to his shoulders and framed his face like a cowl.

  “Welcome to Nanosoft,” he said. When he smiled, crinkles formed at the corners of his brown eyes. They were ageless and kind. “My name is Damian Artiran. How may I help you?” His accent was foreign but faint, like an afterimage left behind by a previous life.

  “I’m in town visiting a friend,” Shawn said, “and I lost my phone.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “I’m from out of state. Can I use one of your computers to look up his address? Please.”

  Artiran gave a sage nod. “I also am from out of state—out of country, in fact. Madagascar. I understand what it is like to be a long way from home. Come.” He beckoned Shawn to follow him as he glided toward a table. The crowd parted before him and dispersed to browse other displays. He slid a laptop toward Shawn and gestured. “There you are.”

  Shawn tapped at the screen, checked the connection, and opened Nanosoft’s search page. He grinned. “Good to go.”

  “Excellent,” Artiran said. “Be well, son.”

  Shawn turned to thank him, but Artiran had disappeared into the throng of customers. He returned his attention to the laptop, opened the universal address book, and typed Sam Harrington into the search. Narrowing the results to New York City left him with a single entry—a Harrington, Samuel, in Queens. It listed an address but no phone number.

  If the detective was still on duty, no way in hell Shawn was going to stroll into the precinct looking for him. Not with that video on the loose. The grains of sand in the hourglass of his life were running out, but if Harrington wasn’t home when he got there, Shawn would have no recourse but to wait until he returned. Furthermore, the detective had a family, a wife and son. If they’d seen the video, who knew how they’d react to his appearance. But what choice did he have?

  He left the store and rejoined the multitudes that swept through the city, bumping and jostling along with all the mindfulness of sheep. Ahead, a self-driving cab pulled to the side of the road, and a middle-aged man in a rumpled suit and loosened tie climbed out, briefcase swinging at his side as he strode away. Shawn cut through the crowd and slipped into the backseat in his stead.

  He tapped the detective’s address on the Plexiglas’s digital map and fed the last of his bills into the payment slot, like a man at the craps table, betting it all on one roll of the dice.

  The cab pulled from the curb and carried him away—a motorized version of the ferryman Charon crossing the river Styx—toward whatever fate may come.

  “He’s right below us.”

  The helicopter banked right, and Emma Tyler peered out the window. They skimmed across the skyline, skyscrapers towering over the city like mountain summits. Below them, streams of vehicles trawled the streets while tiny pedestrians marched in lines like ants. Echo-7 was down there, masquerading as one of them.

  To her left, Chad Dodd bent over his tablet, tracking Echo-7’s movement. He used the pads of his fingertips to zoom and scroll and brushed at a bead of sweat perched on his brow. They sat facing the front of the helicopter. The Alpha perched next to Jensen opposite them. His hands lay folded in his lap, fingers twined like embracing arachnids. He stared at her without expression.

  “I can smell you,” he said.

  The whir of the helicopter’s electric engine mixed with the battle cry of the rotor blades, which were locked in a mortal struggle to beat gravity into submission. The clamor of the power train vibrating in its mounts sent tremors through the cabin like portentous foreshocks. Regrettably, the soundproofing that lined the cabin’s interior dulled these noises enough to make conversation possible.

  “Your hair. It smells like citrus. Oranges and lime.”

  It reminded her of the flight she took when she began her training as a special agent, packed into the back of a chopper with seven other trainees like wide-eyed sardines. The others were all men. They rode in silence, posturing and sizing each other up as they vied for dominance. And in their eyes, she wasn’t competition but the prize, and the winner would perform some bird-of-paradise courtship ritual or just club her over the head and drag her back to his cave to have his way with her.

  “And something else. Blood, maybe. Tell me, are you menstruating?”

  The chopper had taken her and the other trainees to a compound in the Mojave Desert in Nevada, a series of concrete structures that rose out of the sand like colossal blocks of cinder. Three weeks of training followed by a headliner that pitted the trainees against one another with nothing but a survival pack and paintball rifle for company. During the day, she slept buried in the sand beneath a thermal blanket and navigated by the stars of Orion and Cassiopeia at night. She stayed hydrated by sucking on cacti meat and used makeshift snares to catch lizards and rodents, which she skinned and roasted over a low campfire.

  Everyone expected this big Swede, Aleksander Kjerlan, to come out on top. Six and a half feet and over 250 pounds of solid muscle. But in the end, Emma was the last man standing. She poked the barrel of her rifle out from beneath her blanket, aimed, and plugged him in the neck from over five hundred meters away. An arterial spray of red paint, and Kjerlan screamed and dropped like a rock. The welt on his neck during the graduation ceremony served as a vivid reminder that Emma was no one’s prize.

  The wop-wop of the helicopter’s blades and a change in engine noise jarred her back to the present. Skyscrapers rose around them and pierced the sky as they descended toward one christened with Roman Biogenics’ corporate logo, which hung over the edge like a jumper with nothing left to lose. Jensen sat with lidded eyes. The man hadn’t uttered a word since they rejoined him with the Alpha in tow.

  The aircraft settled onto the rooftop, and its engine began to spool down. Dodd flung the door open and glared at the Alpha.

  “Get out.”

  The Alpha climbed out of the cabin, and they piled onto the roof after him. The wind blustered around them like a cantankerous old man while Dodd studied his tablet. Jensen crossed his arms and stood motionless, and the Alpha fingered the graphene choker around his neck and studied the ho
rizon.

  The rotors slowed to a stop, and the pilot clambered out of the cockpit and used tie-down ropes to secure them to the airframe.

  Dodd checked the moving map display on his tablet. “He’s taking the Queens-Midtown Tunnel to Long Island,” he said. “My guess is he’s planning to link up with Harrington.”

  “Who’s Harrington?” Emma asked.

  The apartment was a single-bedroom, single-bath gerbil cage. Cream-colored linoleum and carpet, cream-colored counters, cream-colored pre-formed shower, cream-colored latex paint on the walls, and dark-brown hollow-core doors. A barred window offered a view of Woodhaven Boulevard and Queens. Water stains served as the only adornments on the walls.

  Empty fast food containers, beer cans, and mounds of rumpled clothes littered the floor. Against one wall sat a futon covered by a discolored comforter. Tangled in the comforter, Sam Harrington groaned and opened his eyes. He rolled onto his back and squinted at the cracked and peeling plaster of the ceiling as he waited for the throbbing in his head to subside. Outside, a car alarm let out a contemptuous wail.

  He gritted his teeth, groped for the bottle of aspirin on the nightstand, and knocked over an empty bottle of Jim Beam in the process, which clattered onto its side and thumped to the carpet. A muted light shined through the window. Either early morning or early evening. Sam figured the latter.

  He tossed back five pills and swallowed them dry. With a grunt, he threw back the comforter, heaved himself upright, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Once the room stopped spinning, he scratched at his ragged salt-and-pepper beard and shuffled toward the bathroom in his boxers. The overhead light flickered like a dying candle, and half of the ceiling remained dark.

  He took a leak and splashed water on his face. His reflection studied him with bloodshot, apathetic eyes from the mirror above the sink. Sam turned off the light.

  He slogged into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There wasn’t much: a package of bologna, a bottle of mustard, a carton of milk, Styrofoam containers filled with Christ only knew what, and a smell like dirty feet.

  The doorbell rang, the buzz of a wrong answer on a game show.

  Sam glanced over his shoulder and back into the fridge. The doorbell rang again. He closed his eyes and let out a deflated sigh.

  When it rang a third time, Sam slammed the refrigerator door. “For Chrissake,” he said. “Hold on, I’m coming.”

  He tugged on a pair of jeans, scooped a T-shirt off the floor, and gave it a wary sniff before slipping it on, too.

  His visitor pounded on the door. “Sam?” a muffled voice said.

  “I said hold on.” Sam twisted the dead bolt and yanked the door open.

  Shawn Jaffe stared in at him.

  Sam slammed the door shut and staggered back, eyes wide and mouth agape. He tried to inhale, but it was as if someone had ripped his breath away and was squeezing his heart in a clenched fist.

  “It’s not possible,” he said.

  The door loomed before him. The world swam in and out of focus. At long last, he’d lost his mind. The knob began to turn, and the door groaned like the undead as it swung open.

  Framed by the darkness of the hallway, Shawn Jaffe took a cautious step into the apartment. The floorboards creaked beneath him.

  “My God,” Jaffe said, the words a hoarse whisper. “What happened to you?”

  Sam blinked at him.

  “You look like hell.”

  On a folding table, next to stacks of dirty dishes smeared with leftovers and a layer of green and gray fuzz, his pistol lay in its holster. Sam shifted his weight and shuffled toward it.

  “What is this place? Where’s your wife, your son?”

  Sam took another step sideways. The pistol loomed closer.

  “How long have I been gone?” Jaffe asked.

  Sam lunged for the pistol, ripped it out of its holster, and leveled it at the man in the doorway of his apartment. “You’re not Shawn Jaffe. Who the hell are you?”

  Jaffe didn’t flinch. “How long has it been?”

  “Shawn Jaffe is dead.”

  “No. That didn’t happen.”

  “He stuck a pistol in his mouth and blew his brains out. I watched him.”

  Jaffe shook his head. “That memory isn’t real. It can’t be.”

  “You wanna know how long it’s been?” Sam asked. “Three years. It’s been three years since Shawn Jaffe died.”

  “No.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Shawn Jaffe!”

  “Impossible,” Sam said.

  “They gave me false memories, tried to make me think my name was Ryan Marshall, but I swear to God, I remember you and everything that happened. Most of it, anyway.” Jaffe glanced over his shoulder. “I’m sorry to drag you into this again, but I don’t trust anyone else. I need your help. I’ll explain everything, but not here. They’re tracking me. Followed me from Texas.”

  “Texas? What were you doing in Texas?”

  “They could be here any minute.”

  “Who followed you?”

  Jaffe turned up his palms and shrugged.

  Sam studied his face and searched his eyes. Then he lowered the pistol to his side, its barrel pointed at the floor. “Same shit, different day, huh?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Why not go to the police?”

  “I thought you were the police.”

  Sam shook his head. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I can’t,” Jaffe said. “You haven’t seen the video?”

  “What video?”

  “Never mind. I’ll explain later if you help me.”

  Yes, it was impossible, but he sure as hell looked like the same Shawn Jaffe who’d jumped in front of a van and saved his life, and Sam still owed that man a debt. And after everything he’d gone through, he’d be a fool to fold his hand now.

  “Fuck it. Why not?” Sam tucked the pistol into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back and pulled his T-shirt over it. “You got a plan?”

  Shawn shrugged. “Until now, it’s been to stay on the move.”

  “Not much of a plan.”

  “I switched cars, changed my clothes, tossed my phone, but it’s pointless. They find me wherever I go. Whatever they’re using to track me, it’s under my skin or inside me or something.”

  Sam rummaged through the debris on the table and uncovered a key fob and a smartphone. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  Sam shrugged. “Stay on the move.”

  “Not much of a plan,” Jaffe said.

  Sam opened the door to the apartment. “That’s not the plan.”

  “What’s the plan?” Jaffe asked.

  “To come up with a better plan.”

  Jaffe followed him out of the apartment into a dim hallway. They wound their way down a flight of stairs that creaked like arthritic joints. A musty odor of decadence filled the air. At the bottom of the steps, a rotted white door hung askew on its hinges. Black trash bags and duct tape covered its busted windowpanes, and its springs screeched like a quartet of banshees as Sam pushed it open and stepped outside into a neighborhood dominated by derelict buildings with flamboyant tags spray-painted across their brick exteriors and worn foundations. Mismatched boards slanted across gaping windows, and crumpled plastic, empty cans and bottles, and other castoff debris served as landscaping.

  Sam’s rusted brown Cadillac waited at the curb. He unlocked the doors and slid behind the wheel, and Jaffe dropped into the passenger seat. The engine chugged three times, coughed, and came to life. The Cadillac lurched forward and limped down the street, trailing a cloud of exhaust.

  Jaffe shot him a glance out of the corner of his eye.

  “Shut up,” Sam said. “She’s a classic.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I saw you giving me the stink eye.”

  Jaffe laughed. “Can you even get gas for this thing?”

 
; “Whatever. I buy it online,” Sam said. “Now spill it. I need to figure out what the hell we’re gonna do. In the meantime, tell me everything.”

  Jaffe did. When he got to the part about the two men he’d killed at the charging station in Oklahoma, he said, “There was a security camera. It’s all over the news.”

  Sam shrugged. “Current events ain’t particularly high on my to-do list these days.”

  Then Jaffe told him the rest, ending with Moore City and how they’d been waiting for him there, too. “After that,” he said, “I knew they’d find me no matter where I went. I didn’t know what to do, who to trust, so I came here.”

  Sam strummed the wheel. “This tracking device. Have you tried to find it?”

  “I’ve looked for a scar, felt for it under my skin, but I can’t find anything.”

  Sam rubbed at his eyes and chewed on his lip. An alternating contrast of shadow and light slid across them as they sped through the city.

  “Three years.” Jaffe shook his head. “You’ve changed. Your job, your wife and kid—what happened?”

  Sam remained silent for a long time. When at last he spoke, his voice was soft and faraway. “I came to a sort of crossroads in my life. I used to tell myself I had no choice, I was forced off the road. But when all was said and done, I drove it into the ditch myself.”

  He didn’t expound, and Jaffe didn’t press him. But as Sam drove, he couldn’t help but think about everything that had happened in the years between then and now. He used to tell himself he was lucky he hadn’t lost his life or his mind, but truth be told, he’d lost a little of both.

  The assassination of Senator Allen Goldberg had dominated national headlines. Shawn Jaffe’s body had vanished en route to the morgue, any record of him wiped from existence, like a trick of the devil to convince the world he didn’t exist. It did wonders for Thomas Hoyt’s campaign. He’d been on the ropes with Goldberg, but afterward he acted as if he’d been in the senator’s corner all along instead of on the opposite side of the ring. He won the presidency in a landslide election.