“Me, too,” May said. “But I get a lot of headaches, so I figured it was just me.”
“We have to stop this,” Walter said. “Stop it now.”
“One more minute,” Bell insisted. “We need to try and lure the killer into the basement.”
“And how the hell are we supposed to do that,” Walter snapped. “Stop it now, Nina!”
“Kenneth?” Nina said into the walkie-talkie. “Kenneth, do you copy? Are you and your team all right?”
“Can I play, too?”
The Zodiac stood at the top of the stairs, head cocked and curious. His hands were slick with half-cooked gore, but otherwise normal.
He started down the stairs, gun in hand but pointed at the floor.
“You think you can get rid of me like this?” he sneered. “That I’ll just stroll right out of this world like a good little boy. Idiots.”
He reached the bottom of the stairs. Walter backed away, while Bell put out an arm to push Nina behind him.
“I have a better idea,” the killer said. “How about you three go through that gate? See how well you can do in my world.”
He raised the gun and pointed it at Walter.
“You first,” he said.
At that moment something unexpected happened. Walter felt like he’d been hit by a psychic truck as the remote teams suddenly linked minds with him and Bell. The strength and power of that connection started to pull the killer in, revealing that ugly soulless void that was the mind of the Zodiac, struggling against their influence.
Walter could feel Bell close by, and the other minds— all intimately connected, sharing a kaleidoscopic cascade of personal memories and images.
A chubby dark-haired woman with a black eye and a sad smile.
An illicit kiss from a fellow student in the stairway of an all-boys high school.
A music box with a twirling ballerina.
An old woman in a casket, dressed in a frilly, dated frock.
A turquoise parakeet, perched on a child’s finger.
A man turning away, utterly uninterested in a drawing of two smiling stick figures, holding hands.
A backlit silhouette standing in a bedroom door.
All these memories, each one so deeply personal and fraught with significance, felt overwhelming. They distracted Walter from the task at hand. He struggled to shut out all the psychic noise, and hone in on the mind of the killer.
But at the same time as the killer’s dark consciousness was being drawn into the circle, like a snared and panicking bird, Walter could feel Bell’s mind slipping away, lured by the lone bright flame of Nina.
“Belly,” he thought he said. “Stay with us!”
But then, Bell was gone—and in his place, the dark, ferocious psyche of the killer.
Just like that night at Reiden Lake, the world dropped out from under him. Walter felt as if he was plunging through cracked ice, and into the arctic water below.
Then the hallucination changed. The room around him ceased to exist as he plummeted down through a spinning tunnel of images, dragging the linked group of minds behind him like tin cans on a string.
A paper cup full of pills.
A lab filled with children’s toys.
A strange device shaped like a window.
A blond woman with a gun.
But whose images were these? Not the killer’s this time, he didn’t think. Maybe the other members of the group?
Then, just as suddenly as they started, the whirlwind of images stopped, and Walter was in a child’s bedroom, sitting on the edge of a little boy’s bed.
The room was decorated with a space theme. Posters of rocket ships and planets, and a hanging mobile of the solar system over the high-backed wooden bed. A calendar on the wall featured fun facts about astronomy.
It was dated 1985.
Under a striped comforter and propped up on several pillows, was a small boy with a pale, drawn face and dark hair falling over shadowed eyes. He was looking up at Walter with such love and trust that it made his heart ache.
This was his boy. His son.
When they joined minds at Reiden Lake, the Zodiac had shared the most powerful emotional moment in his future. So, too, was this a profoundly significant moment—one from Walter’s future.
He looked down at his open hand, and saw that he was holding a coin. A silver dollar. He looked back up at the little boy. The boy offered a wan smile.
“Will you wake me for dinner?” the boy asked. “I don’t wanna miss it.”
Walter could feel the other minds there, poised like an audience, watching him. The killer’s consciousness was front and center, like a darkening bruise.
The boy reached up his skinny arms, asking for a hug, and Walter was suddenly hit with a terrible realization. The boy was sick. He was dying. And although he couldn’t imagine why, Walter was sure that it was his fault.
He hugged the boy—too hard, but he couldn’t help it. The sweet smell of freshly shampooed hair mingled with a powerful odor of medicine. Walter’s heart felt as if it was shattering into a million pieces.
The boy’s breath hitched and then let out, long and slow. His heavy little head sagged against Walter’s shoulder as Walter waited from him to inhale.
He never did.
The boy was dead in his arms.
Raw howling anguish flooded Walter’s mind, echoed and amplified by all the linked minds in the chain. The vision of the lifeless boy and his cheerful room disintegrated into ash, but that bottomless grief followed Walter back into the real world, resonating to the depths of his being and making him feel as if his chest had been torn wide open.
He staggered with the weight of that terrible emotion, crushed and so consumed by it that he thought he would die. Then he opened his eyes and saw the killer, standing less than a foot away, gun pointed at the floor. The Zodiac had a hand over his eyes and was swaying as if he was about to faint. An emotionless sociopath, suddenly broadsided by empathy, he had been devastated by unknown emotion.
Meanwhile, the tendrils around the edges of the gate were reaching critical mass. It was now or never. Walter didn’t have a second to think.
He threw himself at the disoriented killer, driving them both toward the undulating gate.
49
Nina had been struggling to stay alert, and focused on the gate, but the narcotic comfort of linking minds with Bell again was so tempting. He was standing about six feet to her left, facing away, but she could feel his consciousness inside her, like a twin heartbeat.
She would snap out of it for a second, gripping the walkie-talkie so tight that her knuckles ached, and ready to call a stop to the experiment. But then she would find herself drawn back in to the seductive Möbius strip of the psychic connection.
Meanwhile Walter and the killer were almost nose to nose, both frozen and locked into some psychic encounter Nina couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Their eyes were closed and twitching beneath their lids, as if they were dreaming.
Then, just as she felt herself starting to slip away again, Walter suddenly tackled the insensate killer. He ducked down, driving one shoulder into the killer’s chest and wrapping both arms around his waist.
They fell together toward the gate, Walter on top and the killer on the bottom. Nina screamed Walter’s name, but it was too late. They were both certain to fall through.
What happened next was so astonishing that she could hardly process what she was seeing. The top third of the killer’s head entered the opening, disappearing up to the bridge of the nose, as if plunged underwater. Then in the blink of an eye, the gate seemed to destabilize. It disintegrated into something that resembled jagged, whirring fan blades that sliced the killer’s head to ribbons, filling the air with a fine mist of blood and brain matter.
His death was instantaneous. It had to have been.
The rest of the killer’s body—along with Walter, whose head was tucked down and pressed against the man’s shoulder—were thrown violently
backward, as if from an explosion.
Nina could almost feel her connection with Bell tearing and bleeding as she ran to help Walter. Bell seemed to feel it, too, and he turned toward her, shaking his head and squinting as if reacting to a persistent loud noise. When he saw what had happened, he joined Nina at Walter’s side.
The killer’s heavy, headless body had fallen on top of him, and so Nina and Bell worked together to move the dead weight. He was spattered with the killer’s blood, and clearly disoriented, but seemed otherwise unharmed.
“Walt,” Bell said. “What the hell happened? Why did the gate suddenly close.”
“I...” He wiped his lips on the back of his hand and looked up at the two of them. “I have no idea.”
* * *
Two Observers stood beside the carousel, watching the FBI agents escorting handcuffed Walter, Nina, and Bell away from the Sharon House.
“They aren’t ready to know,” one said to the other.
“Not yet,” the other replied, adjusting the brim of his fedora.
Together they turned and walked toward Kezar Drive.
“What about the rest?” the first Observer asked.
“They are necessary casualties,” the other said, gesturing toward the group of FBI agents who were removing three bodies from a Volkswagen minibus. “We had no choice but to close the gate. As a result, catastrophic timeline disruption has been effectively averted.”
The two watched dispassionately for a few minutes as the bodies were bagged and loaded into a waiting vehicle.
Then they were gone.
50
Walter and Bell sat together in the same featureless interrogation room where Walter had first met the late Dick Latimer. Nina had been taken elsewhere.
They were both shaken and exhausted—Walter even more so, because he couldn’t get that dying boy out of his mind. He told Bell everything, every detail of his terrible vision, and how that powerful emotion and helped him beat the killer.
“The future isn’t set in stone, Walt,” Bell said. “Linda’s grandma and all the other passengers on that bus are alive today because of you. You saw her die, but she didn’t. You changed the future. You saved her life— you saved all of their lives.” He put his hand on Walter’s shoulder. “Don’t you see? Just because you saw your son die, doesn’t mean you can’t still save him.”
“My God,” Walter replied. “I hope you’re right.”
The door opened and, to Walter’s surprise, Iverson walked into the room.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “I had to pull more strings than the Howdy Doody Show, but you’re free to go. However, I’m afraid you’re on the map now. We’ll be keeping a close eye on both of you.” He gave them a wry smile. “Who knows, we might even offer you a job someday.”
Walter and Bell stood, and Bell reached out to shake Iverson’s hand.
“What’s going to happen to you, now that Latimer is out of the way?” Bell asked.
“Well,” Iverson replied, “it looks like I get my paranormal investigative unit after all. Although it will probably take years to develop it into a workable division. It’s not like we have a precedent to follow.”
“Good luck with it,” Bell said.
“But Agent Iverson,” Walter said, “there were several other students involved in this experiment. A young woman named May. Is she... are they okay?”
Iverson’s expression turned grim.
“They didn’t make it,” he said.
Walter staggered as if punched in the stomach. If Bell hadn’t been there beside him, he might have collapsed to his knees.
“All of them...?” he asked.
“Strangest thing,” Iverson said. “The bodies were entirely unmarked, with no sign of any injury or trauma. They were just dead, as if their lives had been switched off like light bulbs.”
“Did...” Walter was reeling, devastated. “Did we kill them?”
“No way of knowing, really,” Iverson said. “I’m sorry.”
Walter thought of smart, charming May, picturing her gap-toothed smile as she took a purple Necco wafer from the roll he had offered.
Just moments earlier he had felt so shell-shocked and numb, he was sure there was no way he could feel more grief. Yet there it was, fresh and stinging like a brand new paper cut.
He barely heard Iverson’s goodbye, barely reacted when Nina was released with them, and said nothing on the whole ride back to her house. It was as if he was under water, everything icy cold and distant.
They had survived, and they had beaten the killer. But at what cost?
51
Nina unlocked the door to her house, almost unable to believe that it still existed. That her normal day-to-day life was still there, just the way she had left it. Food in the fridge. Bills to be paid. Her half-read book on her bedside table, waiting to be finished.
The world was going on with its mundane business as if none of this had ever happened.
But it had, and Nina knew in her heart she had reached a critical crossroad. That the life she might have had if she had just met Bell that one time, and then never seen him again, was no longer an option. That whatever complex endeavor she might be engaged in with Bell was well on its way to becoming a reality.
Her two companions followed her in like a couple of refugee war orphans, devastated by everything they’d been through. When the phone rang, they both nearly jumped out of their skins.
Nina grabbed the receiver of the wall-mounted phone in the front hallway.
“Hello?” she said, tucking the receiver between her shoulder and ear as she took off her coat.
“Hi, Nina,” a familiar voice said. “It’s Abby!”
“Hey, Abby,” Nina replied, stretching the spiral phone cord as far as it could go, to hang her coat on the hook by the door. “Is everything okay?”
“Sure, fine, no problem,” she said. “I just wanted to thank you for letting me borrow your rental car. Roscoe is here, and I bet you’ll never believe what happened to him.”
“I bet I will,” Nina said.
“He got arrested. By spooks!” she said. “The FBI, who totally hassled him for no reason, and kept him for twelve whole hours. The fascists!”
“Really?” Nina said. “Imagine that!”
“He says they asked him a bunch of questions about your two friends,” Abby continued. “But he didn’t tell them a thing, did you honey? Anyway, it’s all fine now.”
“Glad to hear it,” Nina said. “Everyone else in the band okay?”
“They nailed Chick on possession,” she said. “But he’ll probably just cop a plea, like last time. Everybody else is totally fine.” Nina could hear her taking a big hit off a joint. “But hey, listen. Me and Roscoe, we’ve decided to stay down here for a little while, just to take it easy and find our spiritual centers after everything that happened. We’ll turn in the rental car and pay off the rest of what you owe, okay?”
“That’s fine, kiddo,” Nina said. “Thanks.”
“What about your two friends?” Abby asked. “Are they okay?”
Nina looked over at Bell and Walter, who were standing together as if they were using every drop of their combined willpower not to fall flat on their faces. At that moment, she had no idea how to answer Abby’s question.
“They’re fine,” she said, for lack of a better response.
“Okay, then,” Abby said. “I better go. Mom’s making coconut cake.”
She hung up before Nina could reply.
Nina looked down at the receiver, and then put it back on the cradle. Although it didn’t ameliorate the loss of all those innocent students from the Institute, it did make her feel just a little bit better to know that Abby, her baby, and all of the band members had escaped the madness unharmed.
Walter and Bell, on the other hand, looked far from unharmed.
“Come on, boys,” she said, leading them into the living room.
Cat-Mandu, Roscoe’s Himalayan cat, jumped down off the couc
h to greet Walter, demanding attention as if he were the center of his own little feline universe. Walter smiled and crouched down to pet him, but Nina could still see tension in his face.
Something was bothering him and not just the events of the day.
“Belly,” Walter finally said, standing back up again and turning to Bell. “We have to destroy the formula for the acid. We must never, ever make that blend again.”
“What?” Bell frowned. “That’s insane! It’s the single most significant breakthrough we’ve ever had! We can’t just abandon such an important line of research. We need to study it. Refine it.”
Walter shook his head vigorously.
“It’s far too dangerous,” he said. “The risks far outweigh the benefits.”
“In it’s current state, yes,” Bell argued. “And I agree that further use of adult subjects would be ill advised. But with a few minor adjustments, we might be able to use it on subjects whose minds are more flexible and open. Like children.”
“Have you lost all sense of ethics and decency?” Walter said. “We can’t experiment on unsuspecting children! No, I insist that you destroy the formula immediately, and that we make a pact never to recreate it. The world just isn’t ready for the kind of uncontrollable psychic power that it can unleash.”
“Walter,” Bell said, that deep, soothing voice of his, pitched low and gentle. “Why don’t we sleep on it for a few days. After everything we’ve been through, we’re not in any shape to be making important decisions about the future.”
“My decision-making process has never been clearer,” Walter insisted. “Destroying the formula is the only rational option.”
“Well,” Bell said, taking his little red notebook out of the pocket of his sport coat. “While I want it to be known that I strongly disagree, I supposed I have no choice.”
He opened the notebook to the formula for the special blend and tore the page out, crumpling it into a tight ball.
“William, don’t!” Nina said, hand on his arm.
Fringe The Zodiac Paradox Page 27