She brushed water off a wooden bench, the rain having stopped, and sat facing the houses. The heavy clouds had trapped the morning in dusk, and more than a dozen houses had their lights on. Streetlights shone. The city was dense here, every path as hazardous as the next. It would be as good a place as any to go in. She flexed her fingers against the ache in her hands, already picking up the overlapping fields of the houses.
A woman emerged from the house at the corner of the two roads with a small poodle on a leash, her head bent to a cell phone. She was around the same age as Storm, maybe a bit older, and Storm envied her energetic stride and the swing of her ponytail with each step. The dog sniffed lawns and cable boxes, pulled away by the woman’s quick pace. She longed to lay her hand on Blue’s solid back. The woman turned at the first side street, away from the park.
If she had asked for help would the woman have given it? She might have recoiled at her obvious status as one of the afflicted, or would she have recognized her, her notoriety hanging around her like a shining cape so that people no longer saw who she was—only the brilliance of the Gatherer, or the shame of its creation.
Daniel had hated the fame and the people who had wanted to know him when they had passed over him before. Professors who suddenly had projects they wanted to collaborate on, posting photos of them together on social media. He had withdrawn into his brand-new lab where he ran test after test, failing to see that their work was done.
“Why don’t we go for a walk?”
He’d had the greasy, gaunt look he got when he had been in the lab too long, and Storm had hoped a walk would help with her fatigue that no amount of sleep seemed to touch.
“So we can see some of your adoring fans?”
“They’re your fans too.”
Daniel had carried a rabbit in a cage into the test area. Soft white fur, a fluffy ball for a tail, and fierce black eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Running a test.”
His cheekbones, once the base structure of a beautifully sculpted face, had looked too large and his natural restlessness had ballooned into an agitation so that he’d stood to start the test on his computer, paced while it ran.
She’d moved closer to where she could see the rabbit through the glass window of the test area. It had sat in the same spot in its cage, twitched its ears, and looked no different than it had when it sat on Daniel’s bench.
“What are you looking for?”
She’d known it wasn’t impossible that the Gatherer’s process would cause minute changes in cell function, but figured they would adapt. It was like taking a drop of water off the top of a bucket. Daniel had stood beside her.
“Changes. Decreased function. Anything that would indicate damage.”
He was taller than her, all angles and hard edges and she’d missed that intensity, the joy at seeing it soften.
“You’ll have to cut it open to know for sure.”
The rabbit hopped twice, revealing a gray patch of fur on its opposite side.
“I have a control rabbit but I want to check over an extended period of time.”
“How long?”
“Months. A year maybe.”
A new wave of fatigue had rolled through her. She’d pulled a stool from beneath the bench and sat down, the desire to sleep overwhelming.
“You okay?”
She’d closed her eyes, the burn easing.
“It’s been busy.”
She’d considered moving to the couch but it would have taken too much energy to get there.
“Still want to do that walk?”
Daniel had laid his hands on her shoulders, and her need for him had rushed through her so intensely she felt dizzy, off balance. She’d leaned back into the hardness of his chest, absorbing the heat from him.
“Is anyone here?”
His answer had been to run his hand up the back of her neck, pulling gently on the roots of her hair. His lips had touched the base of her neck as every cell turned on, the energy from that simple touch flowing through her. If only she could have created a Gatherer to gather that kind of energy. She’d spun her chair to face him and ran her hands up the taut muscles on the sides of his spine. She had thought briefly that he was thinner but as his mouth had found hers the thought was pulled away.
It had been like it was in the beginning, the rest of the world busy beyond the walls. A space only for the two of them.
She’d kept her mouth on his, held him close longer than she normally would, the need for him beyond anything the fans could offer. When he’d come up for air his hair had fallen over his eyes, and she’d felt again the thrill of being at the centre of that intense focus, as if he meant to consume her.
He’d rolled the stool towards the couch, his hands tucked beneath her hips. She’d touched her lips to the salty skin of his neck. It had surprised her when he’d lifted her to the couch, the weight of him on top of her exquisite, holding her firm to the ground. She’d lifted her hips to his.
“What about the rabbit?”
“The rabbit is fine.”
A breeze blew dead white leaves around her feet and Storm stood, the back of her legs damp from the bench. She walked several steps down the slope to gain distance from the memory, those moments only reminding her of everything she had lost.
Wires hung on the hydro poles that ran the length of the street the woman had taken. She would only know if they were live once she got close.
She felt the final memory of Daniel’s touch as a signal crossed her cheek. A man came out of a house further down from where the woman had turned. He tossed his bag into a bright green car and got in without looking up. Storm could have brought a whole army and no one would have noticed.
What sounded like a footstep echoed behind her and she looked up the hill. It was only the rustle of the trees, whispering for her to turn back, that no good would come from this.
In the end she simply started walking, her steps leading her downhill. The depleted grass gave way beneath each step. She thought she was resigned to this, but as she drew closer to the sidewalk her chest shook with the crash of her heartbeat, her breath shallow and fast. Would it be the passing of a car that would get her? Or a Gatherer she didn’t see? She might not get more than a hundred metres.
She followed the same route as the woman, for no other reason than the possibility that the dog would choose to stay clear of any particularly lethal areas. She could hear Daniel’s derision in her head.
“You’re reaching if you think the dog has the answer.”
“Too bad.”
She spoke out loud, anything to release the fear that built with every step.
She walked on the opposite side from the wires, grateful for the inertness of the concrete beneath her feet. There was the sudden whir of a garage door rising and she hurried in the opposite direction, her footsteps echoing in the still morning. The hum of a car came behind her and she veered off the road, coming within steps of a house by the time she had fled far enough away.
She cut back to the sidewalk, walking faster. It was fourteen blocks to the Gatherer’s office and she had covered half of one.
Storm adjusted her pack and rubbed her hand clockwise over her solar plexus as if that small gesture would protect her against what waited for her—her own version of making the sign of the cross in the hope that God would help her get through whatever she had taken on. Yet it wasn’t God she was asking for help. It was her tired body, asking it to fortify itself for the suffering to come.
She checked the top poles for cell phone transmitters, their pulsing signal more a potential threat than the isolated bullets of the cars. Her skin tingled, tuned for the first burn from the rake of cell phone data over its surface, like trying to navigate blind through an ocean of stinging jellyfish.
She crossed the road to avoid a squar
e green transformer case on the front of a lawn. Many communities had used the Gatherers to form small microgrids, the transformer boxes no longer necessary, but she wasn’t going to take the chance. She crossed back at the next set of lights, walking mostly on lawns, a balancing act between the passing vehicles and the WiFi networks that reached out from the houses.
The houses were closer to the street in the next block, the easement narrower so that she had to constantly jump away from the road when a car passed. Twice the tingle of a WiFi network warmed her shoulder and arm. Her path was getting narrower. A map wouldn’t have done any good. It might have a grid of carefully named streets, a few cultural landmarks, but nothing that would indicate that here she would have a seizure, or only a jitteriness in her nerves if she went here. It was something she would have liked to do before this started—map out the electromagnetic fields of the city. At the time it would have been to show people the wonder of electricity. Now it would be to show them the city where they really lived.
She felt the transmitter before she saw it. It came as sudden bursts of pain on her skull, a few pain-free moments before the next burst. She walked back the way she had come, turning onto an alley behind houses where she could see across well-tended back yards, through to people sitting at breakfast tables and standing at kitchen counters. A movement caught her eye at the end of the lane, whatever it was gone by the time she turned her head.
She moved past scraps of garbage and rusted non-electric cars. Wires mounted on a pole at the end of the lane seared her left shoulders before she hurried past, nearly stumbling in front of a car in her haste to get away. The car honked and she straightened, turning her back so that the flowing flux from the car tore across her back and legs, like being whipped with a thousand tiny lashes. There was a stop light up ahead with a line of cars waiting for it to change. The painful pulse of a cell transmitter broadcasted from the corner of an apartment building. She dashed across the street into the next alley, only to be forced out by a car coasting towards her. Back on the sidewalk she made for the stop light, pressed to the front of the not yet open shops, an illuminated sign prickling her scalp. The line of traffic started towards her. She sprinted past a butcher shop, carcasses hanging in a refrigerated display, the spasm in her chest so strong she thought her heart would stop. The cars passed before she reached the corner, each vehicle like a physical blow, leaving her reeling. Around the corner, she faced more stores and larger, bigger buildings with frenetic screens flashing in the emerging morning light. She looked for a sewer grate, anywhere she could crawl into. A service cover sat in the middle of the road, under the tracks of endless cars. A man passed her, ear buds in, stepping around her like she was a piece of trash. In the middle of the block was a small gate with green foliage. She stumbled towards it and unlatched the gate, feeling the earthy smell of grass, a sudden moisture to the air. She staggered up a set of stone steps, pushing through the heavy wooden door, taking in the cold stale smell of stone, the mustiness of age. Pale light shone through stained glass windows, illuminating the close nurturing of the stone walls. She moved further in, past the wooden pews to the centre of the church.
She collapsed onto a pew, her body feeling scraped and bruised, swallowing to keep from vomiting. It felt like the edges of her body were disintegrating, the vein walls starting to fragment as bits of her muscles tore free, no longer able to withstand the onslaught of the fields. She had the thought that this misjudged route could be her final failure, like an aged electricity network where a fallen tree branch causes a cascading collapse of the entire system.
TWENTY-NINE
The door opened and thudded shut. Storm was on her feet, scrambling along the pews, the walls of the vestibule blocking her view. She pushed through the only door available to find a small office, empty, a window above her head.
Unhurried footsteps echoed on the stones and stepped behind the door. The steps drew closer, no effort made to quiet them. The door opened towards her, pushed close to her nose.
“Storm?”
There was the same lilt in his voice as when he used to return to the apartment and check if she were home. Daniel stepped around the door and closed it behind him. His wide brown eyes were sunk in dark shadows, his white face floating above the black rubber suit that encased his body like a scuba diver’s. He was beyond thin, his limbs like sticks.
The joy of seeing him overwhelmed her. She had imagined this so many times that this could have been another dream. She wanted to touch him, hug him, feel that he was alive, yet she barely had the strength to stand. The wall held her up as much as her legs.
“You’re alive.”
It was like a sigh, the dread she’d had of finding him dead streaming out of her.
He ducked his head in acknowledgement, the light from the single window shining behind him.
“So are you.”
The relief at hearing his voice was unwarranted. Nothing in this situation justified her sudden sense that everything would be okay. Sweat gleamed on his forehead and he stooped at the shoulders as if he didn’t have the strength to stand straight. A hood of rubber covered his head beneath a ball cap, the sleeves of the wetsuit poking out beneath a worn leather jacket.
He scanned her arms and legs, examining the suit, frowning as he reached out to rub the material between his fingers.
“I tried silver—”
His voice trailed off as his hand dropped.
“I didn’t think rubber would work.”
He shrugged, turned away, and leaned against the desk. His hand gripped the edge.
“Are you alright?”
He blinked slowly, half smiling.
“Are you?”
They couldn’t ignore the depletion between them, their physical limitations tampering their emotional reactions. She had imagined anger, tenderness, even refusal, but not this struggle to function.
“Is everyone dead?”
He pressed his lips together as he dug in the fanny pack he wore around his waist. He drew out an electromagnetic field meter, watching the screen intently as it powered on. The sides of it had been encased in metal, the meter suspended inside it. He wore his emotions front and centre, and he had used his long hair and bangs to hide behind. Without them, he had left himself exposed, for all the world to see his shame. She wondered if he had done it on purpose. A penance for what he would have seen as his sins.
He wiped at the screen and adjusted a dial on its side. When he seemed satisfied he clicked it off and returned it to his pack. He handled it like an inert piece of wood.
He pulled off the hood of his suit. His head was shaved, the absence of hair making him gaunter, with harder edges. Her own body was equally tired, the fibres in her legs not coordinated enough to support her weight.
The walls of the office were of faded plaster, the surface rough, its imperfect ridges exposed in the angled light from the window. She passed close beside him as she moved out from behind the door, her undercoat of silver brilliant in comparison to his matted black. The aged chair squeaked as she lowered herself into it and the ache in her legs eased. It would only be a matter of time before the structure failed.
“How did you find me?”
He laid his palm flat against the desk, the wide, broad bones devoid of flesh.
“News spread fast that you had been seen.”
A pause as he breathed.
“I didn’t believe it at first.”
Fatigue was spreading out from her chest, dropping her shoulders, collapsing her spine. She hated its persistent presence, an anchor lodged in the depths of the ocean floor that never let go.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Is anyone following you?”
There had been the presence in the park, and whoever Romero had sent likely hadn’t given up. Plus the Corporation and the guy with the gun.
“You could say t
hat.”
She laid her head on the desk to rest for a moment. She imagined she could see through the wood, down through the stone floor to the dark pit that drew her downward.
“Come on.”
Daniel’s hand was under her arm, lifting her, but he didn’t have the strength and it resulted in only half lifting her shoulders. She sat up, trying to shake off the fatigue.
“I’m fine. I just needed a moment.”
“Stand up.”
Her nerves were deadened, unable to sustain another attack. The effort to stand was unachievable.
“Come on Storm! Stand up.”
His frustration pushed past her deadened nerves, sending a strike of pain into her heart. It was a voice from a different time, when his only impatience was at her not arriving fast enough when he wanted to show her what he had found.
Using the desk for support, she let him guide her away from it. She was as stooped as he was, the two of them like an old couple hunched with age.
“You need to lie down.”
The floor was stone, cold, and the effort to lower herself down to it seemed hardly worth it.
“I thought—”
“You won’t get there in this state. I can help you feel better.”
He was digging in his pack, the idea that she might say no not occurring to him.
“Why should I trust you?”
He stopped. A tired lift of his head.
“Because I wouldn’t hurt you.”
His certainty almost made her laugh. It was so Daniel. He saw black and white while she saw gray.
“You need to lie down.”
Across from the desk, Jesus hung on a cross. The only adornment on the empty wall, whoever owned this place preferring the world stripped bare.
Daniel struggled to remove his jacket and was breathing hard as he laid it on the floor. He kneeled beside it. He had always been the boy scout of the group, prepared for anything. That preparedness had been what had saved the prototype from the fire, Daniel having taken it home in the metal lunch box he carried with him.
The Gatherer Series, Book 1 Page 23