by Sean Platt
“OK, I didn’t want to say it through the door, but it looks like I don’t have a choice. You’re in danger, Gina.”
“What?” she said, her voice rising like it did — and always had — when she thought Brent was being ridiculous.
“Remember what I told you about Black Island? Well, they sent someone after me today. Me, and one of their own agents, a guy named Ed Keenan. They tried to kill us, Gina.”
He could hear her sigh from the other side. “Please, just stop.” A pause, then, “I really hate this part of you.”
“I’m telling the truth, Gina. They said they’re coming to kill you and Ben next.”
“Stop,” Gina repeated, raspy. There were a few seconds of silence, then Brent heard her start softly crying. “You’re sick, Brent. You need help. Please, just go away and leave us alone. I don’t want to call the cops.”
“Daddy?” Ben said, far off.
“Go,” Gina yelled at their son.
“I want to see Daddy,” Ben whined, then started to cry.
Gina yelled, “Are you happy, Brent? Is this what you want? You’re upsetting your son! Please, just go.”
“Daddy!” Ben screamed, his voice shrill enough to shatter Brent’s heart into even smaller pieces than the shards he already carried.
“Dammit, Gina,” he yelled, louder than his intention. “Open the door!”
“Go away! I’m calling the cops, Brent!”
He heard her footsteps fading from the door, and with them Ben’s crying as she carried him away. Brent could picture her lifting their son like a sack of potatoes, removing him from the situation before he erupted in tears.
Brent’s blood boiled, frustration turning to panic. He couldn’t let Gina call the cops; he had to stop her.
Brent stepped back and kicked at the door, just below the knob.
Gina screamed, “I’m calling the cops!”
Ben screamed louder.
Brent backed up, took a run at the door, and kicked again, this time separating the door from its frame, popping it open.
Gina stood in the living room, holding her phone in one hand and Ben in the other. She was about to bring the phone to her ear when Brent surprised her.
He pulled the gun and aimed it straight at Gina. “Put the phone down.”
She stared at Brent, green eyes soaking wet beneath her dark bangs, body trembling. Ben reached out for his daddy, fingers opening and closing, wanting Brent to hold him.
Brent clarified his order, “Hang up and put down the phone.”
Gina obeyed, lowered her shaking hand, and set the phone on the couch as tears slowly fell from her eyes. “Please, don’t hurt us,” she said, her voice low as if she were afraid volume might set her intruder on a rampage.
Brent stepped toward them. “Let me hold my son.”
Gina set Ben down, slowly, and said, “Please, don’t hurt him.”
Brent scooped Ben up into one arm, hugging his crying boy as he moved the gun from Gina, hoping she wouldn’t do something stupid.
“It’s OK,” Brent said to Ben. “It’s OK, Daddy’s here.”
Ben kept crying as his small hands closed around the back of Brent’s neck. It felt wonderful to hold his son again. Ben looked so much older than the last time Brent saw him. So much time had slipped away, stolen by Gina. As he met his ex-wife’s eyes, Brent couldn’t hide his anger. A part of him — most of him — wanted to take Ben and run.
Screw her if she doesn’t believe me.
Let her and her fucking lover, Jack, deal with Black Island.
“What do you want, Brent?”
“I want you both to come with me. I want to protect you.”
“Protect us from whom?”
“Black Island Guard, they’re killing everyone who knows anything about The Event. They’re cleaning the mess.”
“Do you know how crazy this sounds?” Gina asked, her voice still low and eyes wide, like they would always get when she was trying to reason her way through one of their arguments.
“I know,” Brent said. “I don’t have time to make you believe me. They could be coming at any minute.”
“You said someone else was with you? Where is he now?”
“He had to go, to protect his own family,” Brent said.
“Of course,” Gina said, rolling her eyes.
Ben was finally starting to calm down, leaning against Brent and listening to his parents talk. Brent tried not to say anything that might scare his son, and kept his voice as calm as Gina’s.
“I’m not crazy, or making stuff up. I’m trying to save you both. This is real.”
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Gina said. “I’ve been seeing reports on the news about a bunch of people all over the place going nuts, doing horrible things. There’s gotta be something in the air, the food, the water, or something. You’re sick, Brent. You need help. No one is trying to hurt you.”
Brent shook his head, “Those people on the news, they’re infected.”
“Infected?” Gina repeated, as if he’d just told her he spent the weekend with Santa Claus and was now off to market to buy a fat pig and play poker with Jesus. “Infected with what?”
Brent laughed, knowing as he did so, it only made him look crazier. “Sorry, he said. But if I tell you, you’ll say I’m nuts.”
“Try me,” Gina said.
“Infected by aliens.”
“Aliens? Ah, of course, the aliens! The ones from the other Earth, right?” she asked sarcastically.
“Jesus, Gina, can’t you just … ”
He stopped talking when he noticed her attention shifting to something behind him.
Brent felt something in the small of his back, as a man’s voice inches behind him said, “Get on your knees and lower your weapon or we’ll shoot!”
We’ll?
Shit.
Police or Black Island?
Brent half-turned to see who he was dealing with as Ben returned to his tears.
The man shoved the gun — Brent presumed — harder into his back.
“On your knees, Sir, or we will shoot.”
And if they shoot me, they’ll hit Ben.
Shit.
Brent slowly kneeled, and set his gun on the ground, knowing he was surrendering his only defense if there were Black Island Guardsmen behind him.
Ben cried louder, and Gina came forward, ignoring the men with the guns, and pulled Ben from the monster, hugging him hard, crying, as she glared at Brent.
He felt his arms yanked behind him, hard, and seconds later, Brent’s wrists were in plastic restraints.
A man stepped from behind Brent, a tall, pale man with a face like a shovel, and a Black Island uniform.
“Where’s Keenan?” the man asked.
“I don’t know,” Brent said. “He told me I was on my own. I came here as fast as I could.”
The guard looked up and nodded to whoever was behind Brent.
Brent turned and saw a second guard start to close the door, as best he could with the broken frame.
Better to hide their actions from the neighbors.
They’re going to kill us.
Brent pleaded, “I swear, I don’t know anything about Ed. And I won’t say anything about Black Island! Please … ”
Gina’s eyes suddenly shifted from glaring at Brent to unbridled confusion, then to understanding, all in seconds.
“Who are you people?” she asked, her voice sharp, under the illusion that she had civil liberties.
Shovel Face turned to her and fired a single shot straight into her head.
Thirty-Nine
Marina Harmon
Marina was so distraught over what had happened to the girl that she had no idea what to think or do, didn’t even know how she should feel. Rose had left a few minutes earlier, leaving Marina at the house to wait for news.
There would be torture inside her until she heard something back.
It was awful, watching the girl thrash inside T
he Capacitor like she had. Marina had never seen anything like it, but worse, she had never even imagined something like that was possible.
The machine was supposed to be — and always had been — pleasant: It made you better when you left it than when you went in. Marina had never known, or heard of anything different. But that definitely wasn’t the case with the girl. The Capacitor had nearly killed her, and Marina had seen it with her own eyes.
More than that, it had also stolen years from her body, turning her from a woman into a girl. The mother, Mary, was hysterical.
Maybe that’s what she had been before.
Marina hadn’t considered the possibility that the premature aging was what was wrong — why mother and daughter had sought her help in the first place — until after the ambulance pulled out from the drive. But once she had, Marina wondered if something like that were really possible. She had heard of cases of Progeria before, from Daddy, of course. When you grew up with a man like J.L. Harmon, you — like him — tended to know a bit about this, that, and everything else.
Progeria was an extremely rare genetic disease that fascinated her father because he believed it held clues to the normal process of aging. He had even been involved in some clinical trials about 10 years back, trying to get kids suffering from Progeria — their average life expectancy was under 13 years — to elongate their life span through additional weight gain, improved hearing, and an increase in their blood vessels’ flexibility. Marina had seen plenty of pictures, but none looked like the girl — or woman — Paola. Progeria sufferers looked … not normal: usually hairless, with tiny faces and shallow jaws. Their skin was usually wrinkled, with larger heads compared to their bodies. If anything, the girl — woman — Paola was beautiful.
As horrible as it seemed and felt and looked to see her inside the machine, thrashing around as if attacked, if Paola had been a child — somehow, Progeria or not — then The Capacitor had corrected her Current and done what it was supposed to do, no matter the horrible cost.
They couldn’t be mad if they got what they wanted. Except, they hadn’t expected Paola to fall unconscious.
But that has to be a temporary thing, right?
Marina was only guessing, and until she heard from Rose, she would stay confused. She started to pace, flirting with the idea of pouring herself a stiff drink before deciding it was too early. She looked out the window, hoping there was some sort of answer hiding outside, saw nothing, then went to the sofa and collapsed onto the soft cushions, just as the door opened and Steven stepped into the room. He closed it gently behind him, and in his soft voice with his typical care said, “Are you okay?”
Marina turned to the door, feeling better like she always did when she saw Steven. She shrugged. “I’m not sure. I feel scared, mostly for those poor girls, but I’m also afraid because I don’t understand. Something tells me Dad wouldn’t even know what all of this means, even if he was here.”
Steven didn’t ask what it was that Marina didn’t understand. Instead, he sat across from her on the white sofa, propped her naked foot into his lap, kneaded Marina’s skin with the balls of his thumb and said, “Tell me what happened.”
She shrugged again. “I’m not sure. I didn’t do anything different from what I would usually do. Rose brought her friend Mary in for help; we fixed her migraines after Veronica brought her in — she introduced her because of the Maris Brothers. Mary wanted help for her daughter, but she wouldn’t say what for. The only thing she seemed sure about was that she didn’t want to do it at all, but her daughter, Paola, did, and insisted that she go inside. As soon as she did, everything went wrong. The Capacitor whirred like always, but it was the wrong kind of whirring, and it sparked like usual, but the sparks seemed … angry.”
“Angry?”
“Yes, they were too fast and too many.”
“Hmmm,” Steven stopped rubbing Marina’s foot, and leaned back into the sofa, stroking his chin, as if he’d fallen into thought. After a moment of quiet he asked, “And they didn’t tell you what the girl’s problem might be?”
“No,” she shook her head.
“And do you always know what the problem is, before you put someone into the machine … into The Capacitor?”
“Well, yes but … ”
Steven cut her off. “Well then, couldn’t that be the problem? Maybe The Capacitor understands intention, maybe it’s somehow able to read the operator, in this case that would be you. Maybe because you didn’t know, it couldn’t do its job.”
“I think maybe it did do its job. I think maybe the girl was supposed to be younger.”
Steven frowned, confused.
“I know that sounds weird, but … well, The Capacitor turned her young, by a lot of years, Steven. She came in as a woman and left as a girl.”
With a shocking absence of emotion, Steven said, “I know. I saw her from the window.”
Marina looked at Steven, then, not knowing what to say, continued.
“If it could make her young, then maybe something else made her old — before they came to us. Maybe that’s why they were here. I don’t know … ” Marina shook her head, getting upset. She needed a drink. “ … Maybe I was wrong about The Capacitor, maybe my father was wrong. Maybe the machine … isn’t good, or at least not what I thought it was.”
Steve stood from the couch and headed toward the bar to make Marina a drink. “Relax,” he smiled, “you’re all over the place. You just said you thought that The Capacitor did do its work, and now you’re saying your faith might be misplaced? In practically the same breath? Your faith is correct, Marina, and it’s one of the things that gives you your strength. It would be best not to lose it. True belief doesn’t mean the world will give you what you want, it means knowing the world will give you what’s right.”
Marina stared at her man, grateful for him being right so often.
“Don’t worry,” he said, crossing the room to hand her a tumbler of scotch. “We’ll look into The Capacitor, starting right now. I’ll talk to Dr. Phillips as soon as you finish this drink, okay?” Marina took the drink, trying to smile. “I promise, all of this will be fine.”
She thanked Steven, told him that Dr. Phillips was with The Capacitor already, then started sipping scotch as he left, hopefully on the way to deliver his promise.
As Marina sipped, she kept feeling worse, wishing that Rose had never brought the two women into her house to give her a scare and question her faith. As the alcohol started to buzz inside her, Marina decided she could wait no longer. With every second feeling like a minute, and every minute something like an hour, it would take a year to muffle discomfort.
She stood, went to the desk, picked up her phone where she’d dropped it an hour before, scrolled through the contacts, found Rose, and hit the number for her cell.
Marina let the phone ring seven times — no voicemail — then hung up and let it ring for another seven. She tried again after that, hoping that the third time would be charmed, then hung up feeling worse than ever.
Marina dropped her cell onto the desk, wishing she could hurl it through the window without having to wait for a new one, then slammed her ass back to the couch and sipped her glass to empty, hoping to dull more shitty feelings with every fresh swallow.
But she didn’t. Somehow, every sip seemed to make Marina feel worse, from the first glass from Steven to the second prepared by herself. Then, by the end of her third glass, Marina was thoroughly drunk.
Her empty glass landed on the carpet, spilling the final few drops into the fibers. Marina’s head drooped as she started losing herself to sleep.
And as she slept, she dreamt.
Marina didn’t fall into the casual dreams she was used to, threaded thick with loose ends and nuggets from her day. These were horror incarnate; things Marina didn’t understand but longed to; things her mind was trying to say; starting to whisper, rolled into screams when she failed to listen.
Something inside Marina clicked, rinsed he
r resistance and left her world in nothing but white.
As the empty settled around her, she saw something surface from the dark: the girl, Paola, even younger than she had been when falling out of the machine, maybe by a couple of years.
The girl ran from the light and into the dark, racing as if chased. Marina raced after the girl, away from the light and into the black, ignoring her hammering heart.
She crashed into darkness and infection plagued her mind; a virus seeping from Paola’s dream into hers, making Marina somehow certain that what she could through the girl’s eyes was true, that wherever she was, every molecule around her, though dreamlike, was absolutely real.
She had to escape, but couldn’t.
Escape was flight, and that meant leaving the girl, abandoning her to the blanket of darkness.
Marina couldn’t do that, so she crept forward instead, stepping timid yet bold into the black, until she saw the horrible truth: what that darkness was and what that meant.
It snarled, and Marina woke screaming, heaving and panting as she fell from the couch, rolling from the sofa and the man sitting, his arms draped across it from either side, smiling like a demon as he stared into her eyes.
“Oh, I really wish you’d not seen that,” Steven said, then leapt from the couch, circled his hands at Marina’s neck, and began to squeeze the ragged breath from her body.
Forty
Luca Harding
It was impossible, but the sun swallowed the entire sky anyway.
It was too hot. Luca felt like he might pass out, if not die from the weight of a 100 summers at once.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been walking the desert, but it felt like two forevers. His body was soaked in sweat, his skin red and peeling and sore.
His lips were cracked and dry, starting to bleed.
Luca felt like one of the astronaut chickens Mom bought from Albertson’s, their skin all wrinkly and crinkled under the plastic dome. He wasn’t sure he could last much longer, but felt so tired he thought he might die if he slept.