Blackbird (19 page)

              “Just a moment.” Chelle recognized this one. It was Robert’s brother, Paul. “I want to examine your back first. Let me make sure you’re ok.”

              “I’m just fine. It heals.”

              “Are you in pain? Does it hurt?”

              “Always. I need to go. I need a shirt.”

              All of them looked at one another not knowing what to do. Finally the nerdy one took off his sweater vest and unbuttoned the shirt underneath, peeled it off and  handed it to her before replacing the sweater vest, which now looked quite comical considering his arms and chest were naked. “Thank you…”

              “Michael.”

              “Thank you, Michael.”

              They stood staring at her for a moment. She sighed, annoyed. “Turn around,” she said.

              Suddenly all four of them were embarrassed and they turned to face the wall, each of them reddening to one degree or another. “Ok,” she said when she was all done.

              Michael grabbed his jacket to cover his naked arms. “Miss. Carrey, we’re at a loss here. Can you tell us what is going on? Did we indeed just see your wings fold themselves up and go into your back? How are you hiding them in there?”

              “You just saw it happen and you still have to ask? Robert, who are these people?”

              Robert gave a small sigh. “Chelle these are my brothers. You remember Paul from the bar.” He nodded. “And this one,” he said gesturing to the nerdy one, “is of course, Michael. “And the other one is Greg.”

              Greg nodded, his mass of curly blonde hair swinging furiously down over his large face. He smiled making his double chin even more pronounced than it already was. “What’s up?” he practically whispered.

              “Nice to meet you all. I have to go.” She jumped down off the stretcher and began to walk to the door when Paul stopped her, blocking her way. “You shouldn’t go out there. Not right now.”

              “You can’t keep me here. I know my rights.” Once again she really didn’t, but was at a loss for anything else to say.

              “You’re not in trouble. I just think it would be best to lay low here for a bit. You’ve caused quite the ruckus all over town.”

              “All over the world,” Greg interjected. “You’re like…a motherfuckin’ badass superhero or something. It’s even on CNN.”

              “CNN? Robert?”

              The troubled look on Robert’s face told her it was true. His brow drew down with worry and he took her by the shoulders, sitting her back down on the bed. “It might be best if we just stay here, like they say, for a few hours at least. Nobody knows where you went.”

              Chelle sat, stunned, on the bed. “Check it out,” Greg said, pulling a laptop from his bag. He flipped it on and positioned it in Chelle’s lap, bringing up CNN’s website. Right there, under a banner that screamed: TOP STORY, was a picture of her in flight, the man she’d saved gripping her hand for dear life. He looked terrified. Her face was, thankfully, obscured by her long dark hair.

              “Hit the button,” Greg said. She did and the story on the screen played out.

             
Interesting video from our ireporters today. Several videos have come into us all the way from Halifax, Nova Scotia where apparently a woman saved a man from jumping off the city’s Angus L. MacDonald Bridge. Although it’s not so much the fact that she saved him, it’s the way she did it that’s got everyone talking.

              A video of her swooping just above the bridge and then crashing down on her head played. The wind had been whipping her hair so wildly that her face was covered and as she crashed and was picked up by Robert, different angles from different phones were edited together. All of them were obscuring her face in some way. Either by other people or cars. Robert’s face had been shown but just for a brief half a second before a herd of people trying to catch a glimpse of her gathered in front of lenses.

             
Witnesses say that an unknown woman jumped from a car that had been parked on the entrance ramp to the bridge and she proceeded to run up the walkway, grab the man and then as he was about to fall over suddenly sprouted wings and flew off with him. She took him quite a distance from the bridge before turning around and returning him. Apparently she dropped him on the hood of a car and then crash landed on her head, leaving a rather large crack in the pavement. Then, an unknown man scooped her up and took off with her. That’s really all we have right now.

             
Chelle was stunned. She realized how ridiculous the whole thing was and she wanted to cry. Then she wanted to laugh. She wasn’t sure what she wanted. “This is bad,” she said. “This is so bad.” As that video ended the obligatory commercial played out and another one popped up.

             
We have an exclusive interview now with the man who was carried off by this woman earlier today. Have a look.

              The man filled the screen and with his eyes darting back and forth from the camera to the reporter told them what happened. He was lying in a hospital bed with his arm in a cast. The name JACOB MACAULY               appeared below him.

              “I almost went over the barrier, then all of a sudden this woman was there and she jumped up, grabbed my hand and took off with me before I fell.”

              “Do you know who she was?”
The reporter asked.

             
“I have no idea.”

              “But we’re sure glad she was there,”
a middle aged woman with long blonde hair said, putting her arm around him.
“She saved my son. I don’t know who she is but she swooped out of the sky like a miracle. With wings like a Blackbird, and saved my him. I don’t know how we can ever thank her enough.”

              “And there you have it,”
the reporter said turning back to the camera.
“Of course only time will tell if this is a hoax, but if it is it’s certainly an elaborate one. Until we can find this woman again this so called Blackbird will just have to remain a mystery.”

             
The anchor’s eyes lit up.
“If you know anything about the whereabouts of Blackbird you can get in touch with us at…”

              The woman on the laptop kept up with giving out the contact information. “That’s what they’re calling you, sweetheart.” Greg said.

              “What they’re calling me?”

              Greg gently closed the laptop and slid it from her hands. “Yeah.
You’re
Blackbird.”

Chapter Twenty-One

              Wine glass in hand, he picked up the second one he had filled and gave it to his blonde haired blue eyed companion. She took it, giving him a nod of thanks, as they both turned their attention back to the TV. He picked up his remote and hit pause. They looked at each other, smiling once again as they’d done several times since this story hit the news.

              “You have a sister,” he said to her.

              She bit her lip and stared at the screen before taking another sip of the vintage they’d cracked open in celebration. “I wonder what she’s like.”

              “Virtuous it would seem. That may be good or bad, depending how deep it goes.”

              “It must run pretty deep to grab a man back from the brink of suicide.”

              “Perhaps. We don’t know the whole story yet. For now let’s just bask in the moment. I knew there was one in that area somewhere. When she disappeared I thought maybe she’d died with the others. I never did find an obituary though so I hoped…prayed…she was alive.”

              “And she is.”

              “Very much it would seem.”

              His companion grew wistful, giving a grateful sigh. “I’ve never known anyone who’s like me. Well, except for you.”

              He could see she was worried she’d insulted him. “It’s fine, Lindsay. I knew what you meant. A sister is different. She’s probably about your age too. Physically at least.”

              She smiled again. “It seems too good to be true, Victor. What if it’s not what it looks like?”

              “I can’t see how it would be anything else. It’s not every day a woman swoops out of the sky and flies someone to safety. Not in this world anyway.”

              “And on your world?”

              “It doesn’t need to happen,” he said, rubbing his frail and elderly hands together. Looking at them always shocked him. After hundreds of years he was finally aging. It was inevitable, but seemed to come up on him fast as if it had jumped him when he wasn’t looking. “On my world…
our
world…” he corrected himself, “nobody needs rescuing.”

              “I wish I could see it.”

              “I know.” He put down his glass and took the young woman’s hand. Her youth and beauty soothing his nerves. She was pleasant to look upon. Nobody who ever saw her would have guessed she was over fifty years old herself. But with what they were, she was still just a baby. “It’s been a long time coming for you. You’ve been patient. And I want you to know how much I’ve appreciated it.” He kissed her hand.

              “Do you think she’ll come with us?”

              “Of course. With what she is why would she want to stay among the humans?”

              “Well, it’s not like she’s not human at all.”

              “Of course, you’re right. But in time she’ll abandon her humanity. It will overwhelm her. She’ll need the peaceful solitude that only this place – that only you and I – can provide.”

              “When did you make her?”

              Victor held up his arm and released the probe that came shooting from his wrist like a bullet. He’d injected many human infants with the silver grey liquid that turned them into what they were. What
he
was. “Oh… perhaps twenty-five years ago.” He breathed a long sigh, as if in relief, that she was alive. In most that were injected it only caused suffering in the form of cancer. A necessary side effect. If hundreds had to die so he could procreate just one perfect beautiful creature like the one that was staring back at him from the TV screen it was all worth it.

              “I think perhaps,” he said, “her name is, Chelle.”

***

              After Paul had given them a ride back to Robert’s house he had left them alone. Now, here she sat, in the two bedroom home of her boss, on his couch as he made his way to the living room’s liquor cabinet.

              “I don’t know about you, but I need a drink. You want one?”

              Chelle normally didn’t partake in alcohol, largely because she had been so disgusted by her father’s reaction to it that she steered clear. Today she was making an exception. “Most definitely.”

              He poured them both a glass of Scotch and sat down, handing her the much too fancy crystal tumbler. She downed it as fast as she could, as did he, and he poured them another from the bottle that now sat on the coffee table. This one she simply held, staring into the amber liquid as if it contained some kind of answer to what was happening.

              “I’ll be out of your hair by tomorrow. Robert, I’m so sorry about all of this.”

              “Where exactly do you think you’re gonna go, Chelle? Everyone is looking for you.”

              “That’s not true. They’re looking for a woman with wings coming out of her back. It’s not like I walk around with them. And none of those phones got a good shot of my face. It all happened really fast.”

              “None that we know of,” he said. “And anyway, you have no place to go. It’s not like the Gwoks are gonna welcome you back.”

              “The Gwoks. Fuck. I’m sure I scared the shit out of them.”

              He gave a playful smirk as he lifted the glass to his mouth, downing the scotch and pouring yet another. “It was probably the most excitement they’ve had in years.”

              As he drank she noticed his arm. “Robert, your arm. It was me that did that, wasn’t it?”

              He put the Scotch down and took her glass from her, placing it on the coffee table beside his own. “No, you didn’t. I cut it, but you didn’t cut it for me. You were unconscious. You need to stop being so hard on yourself. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have some dinner, go to sleep, and in the morning we’ll go see Rich and get this whole mess straightened out with the Gwoks.”

              She was taken aback by his stance. He was dead serious. Seeing the determination on his face could almost make her believe that everything was really going to be ok. “Are you always this optimistic?”

              Before he could answer the doorbell sounded. Whoever it was didn’t wait for him to even get up off the couch because they were also busy furiously working the doorknocker. Robert shot up and bolted to the door just as the person on the other side unlocked it and entered.