Life on the Preservation, US Edition (36 page)

He fought off the emotion that was closing his throat and said, “You look beautiful. Your hair is really nice.”

“My hair is nice?”

“Yeah. The thing about your hair is when I knew you in a couple of years it was like the haircut from hell. You were always complaining about it.”

She laughed again. “Are you for real?”

“I don’t
know
.” Ian looked across the street to his motorcycle. He imagined himself riding back down the 101, tunneling the dark with his dim yellow headlamp and the wind cold in his face. He wanted to be doing that. On the other hand, it was the loneliest thing he could imagine.

“So in the future you’re like some kind of barber?”

“What?”

“It’s a joke.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s funny.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“I know.”

They both laughed, Ian wondering if he was laughing because she was laughing or if he really felt it. He leaned toward real. Kylie always did that for him.

H
E WASN’T DANGEROUS,
she felt positive about that. Of course, that’s probably what all victims thought right before the serial killer lured them into their vans and cut their heads off. One thing Kylie noticed, she hadn’t thought about the flying lesson since she first saw Ian sitting on his bike across the street. He was such a weird combination of goofy innocence and intensity. She liked him, instinctively. There was
chemistry
.

“What kind of motorcycle is that?”

“It’s an Indian, a Chief.”

“Seriously? I never heard of that.”

They’re pretty old. Kind of the classic American bike. This one was built in 1947.”

“Wow. I mean, sincerely. But I thought Harleys were the classic American bike.”

“Indians came before Harleys. My dad refurbed this one. It’s not all the original bike, exactly. Most of it is, but he bought it as a basket case.”

They wandered over to the Indian. The chrome was dull, pitted with rust. Oil streaked around the engine seals. The leather seat was dried out and cracked. But the bike was still beautiful.

“What’s that mean, ‘basket case’?”

“It means my dad bought the Indian basically as a frame and a box of parts then built it from the ground up. He had to improvise a lot.”

“At least it’s not a mini-van.”

“Uh, yeah. It’s not a mini-van.”

“Did you help your dad?”

“I watched and fetched the beer.”

“One of those father and son things, huh?”

“No, not a chance. My dad, it didn’t matter if I was there or not. He was checked out, after my mom died.”

“My dad checked out for real, when I was six.”

“Yeah, I know. You told me about it next year.”

He said it so matter-of-factly she almost believed him. “Ian, where do you come from, I mean do you live anywhere around here? I know you aren’t from Oakdale. Do you have, like, a relative or somebody in town?

“No, I came to see you, just like I said. I live in Seattle.”

“But
why
me?”

He tapped his lower lip with two fingers and looked shyly past her. “I wanted to know if you were real. I
had
to know.”

“Okay, that’s a little scary.” Her phone blooped and she glanced at it. A text from her mother, followed by another bloop and a text from Tiffany. Reluctantly, she said, “I think I have to go.”

“Look, will you have lunch with me tomorrow?”

“I don’t know–”

“Come on. You want to know how we meet in the future, don’t you?”

He stared right into her eyes with sudden, focused intensity. She felt the same way she had the first time Father Jim took her up; a sense of magic possibility and fear. “The Lucky Diner is two blocks that way,” she said. “Lunch tomorrow.”

“What time?”

“Like one o’clock? There’s a guy, he’s giving me free flying lessons. So I got that going on first.”

“Right, that ex-marine pilot.”

Her mouth opened. She shut it then opened it again and said, “How did–”

“I’m future man, remember?”

It took him three attempts to start the bike, and when the engine finally kicked in it sounded like the mother of all broken lawn mowers. He put his silver half-helmet on, not bothering with the chin strap, and roared off down Main Street, rattling windows. his long hair blowing around. At the end of the street he raised his left hand in a backward wave, then leaned into the turn and was gone to the highway.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I
AN LAY ON
the Motel Six bed, fully clothed except for his shoes, watching the ancient tube television. A ghost scent of cigarette smoke clung to the room.

On TV Bruce Willis was
kicking ass
, because he was such a tough bastard. It wasn’t so bad, with the sound turned off. Besides, the guy renting the room behind Ian’s head was watching the same movie with the sound turned way up. All the explosions came through the wall but the dialogue was muffled and wooden. Pretty much the perfect way to watch a Bruce Willis movie.

Lunch tomorrow with Kylie. He had decided to lay it all out for her – the whole truth, as he remembered it, and no matter how whacked it sounded. Other options included somehow convincing her or tricking her into moving to Seattle before the Hunter event. But like most lame ideas this one sank like a brick. He couldn’t trick Kylie, or anyone else, into moving to Seattle.

He was stuck with the truth.

One thing he would leave out, was the idea that after the Preservation started neither he nor Kylie would be real human beings anymore. There was no point in freaking her out any more than he had to at this stage. But eventually he would tell her, after he had already made her real.

Fingers laced behind his head, Ian looked past the television, past the cheap motel room – past everything, to the future. In this vision, Kylie
did
move to Seattle. In fact, she moved in with Ian. They would be the only ones who knew the truth after the Hunter attack. And knowing the truth would set them free. In time, Ian would
own
the Preservation, just as the Curator had said. He would make new people out of the android fakes. He would set them free by telling them what they were and what they could be. And he would fortify the Dome against the Hunters, just as he had fortified his apartment with the Goya walls – that part was sketchy, but he would figure it out. He and everyone on the Preservation would be a new race of immortals, and eventually they would emerge from the Dome and reclaim the planet.

Ian chuckled. What total bullshit, like one of Zach’s game scenarios. But Ian liked to think about it, play with the idea. Maybe because it kept his mind off lunch tomorrow and the foregone failure of convincing Kylie of anything.

He was starting to drift off when something startled him wide awake.

Flying lessons.

His life on the Preservation dimmed in and out like an electric dream. Sometimes fear provided extra power. And just as he was sliding toward a more usual dreamland, a piece of the Preservation life lit up bright and hot.

Kylie flew in with this priest who used to be a Marine Corps pilot. And the priest was crazy. He had wanted to
cut
her.

K
YLIE PEDALED HER
bike to the grass airstrip a half-mile northeast of Oakdale on the old Fairview Road. Many times she had come this way, her heart bursting with anticipation.

This time it was like pedaling toward a bad dream, like driving her wheels through mud or wet cement.

All week she had been carried toward this morning on a river of helpless inevitability. Jim’s hand between her legs was only the first gesture toward something she had been prepared to accept since she was a little kid. Something
Father Jim
had prepared her to accept. Only now, she didn’t think she
would
accept it. Before last night, talking to Ian, she had been willfully blind. Why talking to future-guy should make any difference, she had no idea. Except he wasn’t from her tight-ass little world of Oakdale and he wasn’t the usual bad boy. And when she was near him, no matter what the bullshit factor or how sketchy her friends thought him, she felt
good
– like, here was someone she could be alive with, and no work required.

A white arrow sign with the word AIRPORT pointed down a dirt road. Kylie seriously considered skipping it, making a wide turn and pedaling back to town. Instinct compelled her to do just that. But years of obeying a counter-instinct to make Father Jim happy, to be a good girl for him, to court his approval no matter what, directed her to turn onto the road.

In summertime the airport road was pleasant with sun and shade and sweet, growing smells – like traveling down a secret tunnel, her rubber wheels bouncing in the deep ruts left by cars and pickups. This October morning the tunnel was cold and oppressive with damp shadows, and again her instinct to retreat rose up, and again she did not obey it.

She jolted into the clear. The airport consisted of a three-thousand-foot grass strip, a battered hangar that looked like a rusty overturned galvanized tub with a pair of faded red wings painted on its face, and an above-ground fuel tank. A dozen or so small planes, most of them Cessnas like Father Jim’s, were tied down at one end of the strip. The windsock, old and tattered and paled from its original bright orange to a light shade of pink, stirred in the breeze.

Father Jim’s burgundy Crown Vic was parked next to the hangar. It was the only car present. Jim was sitting behind the wheel, barely visible through the smoked glass windshield. The church music he liked so much, the Gregorian chants, were cranked loud – Jim working himself up to something.

She coasted to a stop and stood in front of the car, straddling the bike frame. The chanting cut off. The driver’s door opened and Father Jim unfolded out of the Crown Vic, floppy-brimmed black hat first.

“How’s my little co-pilot,” he said.

And just like that, she knew it was over. She would never again tuck herself into the jaunty red and white Cessna with Father Jim. In fact, after today she doubted she would ever be alone with him anywhere.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Only I think I’m going to skip the lesson today.”

His expression, his usual stony neutrality, didn’t change. His expression almost
never
changed, whether he was delivering a sermon or feeling up a teenage girl – as though his face were a mask that concealed his true thoughts and feelings.

He stepped forward, though, and gripped the handlebar of her bike in his big, knuckly fist.

“Why, what’s wrong, Kylie?”

“I don’t know. I guess I don’t feel good.”

“Felt good enough to ride all the way out here, but not good enough to fly?”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

Jim nodded, his expression stone-neutral. He held the bike rigidly immobile, as if his hand were welded to it. “You can tell me what’s wrong, child.”

“There’s nothing wrong. I just don’t feel like it today.”

He nodded again.

“Anyway, I guess I better go back home.”

“I think we’re getting a little off track,” Jim said.

“Off track?”

Jim tilted his head back, evaluating the sky. There was a moist little razor nick on the underside of his jaw. “That’s a low deck. It’s going to rain, anyway. So you’re right, it’s a bad day to fly.”

“It’s not the–”

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk, does it?”

“Talk about what?”

“About what we’re doing here.”

“We’re not doing anything.”

He lowered his head and stared straight into her eyes, which she could only tolerate a few seconds before looking away. That stare made her feel like she was six years old again.

The rain started, a few cold drops landing on Kylie’s neck.

“Come with me,” Jim said. “We’ll get out of the weather.”

“I think I can beat it home.”

“You’re being foolish. Come with me, now.”

She climbed off the bike, which she could not have moved anyway. He let it go and took her hand in one movement. The bike fell over. He started walking with her, pulling her along. She thought they were going to the car, but instead he veered toward the hangar. That’s when the alarm bells starting going off in her head. She walked with him but pulled back on her hand at the same time. Jim merely bore down harder, and she stopped resisting. It wasn’t exactly a struggle – not yet; but she didn’t want to go in that hangar.

Dr. Lee’s Beechcraft Bonanza with its distinctive V-shaped tail that served both as vertical and horizontal stabilizers was the only aircraft under cover. Jim referred to the Beech as “the Cadillac of private aviation,” like there was an ad from Flying Magazine in his mouth. After the first couple of flying lessons, Jim had shown her the Beech, helping her up on the wing so she could get a good look in the cockpit. Jim’s Cessna 150 was like an old beater Volkswagen by comparison. The instrument panel looked like something on the flight deck of a 747 and the seats were milk chocolate leather. This was a good memory, Jim pointing and explaining things to her, his other hand steady on her shoulder, protective. Kylie had loved looking at that airplane, but now the good memory was getting spoiled.

The rain started in earnest, bursting down on them as if someone had fired buckshot into a vinyl cloud and released a torrent.

Jim yanked her into the hangar, before they got soaked. Rain rattled on the metal roof. It was dim inside the hangar. Besides Dr. Lee’s Beechcraft, the floor was clear, just an air hose on a basket wheel, a couple of padlocked storage cabinets and a Sears Craftsman tool chest, a big one with ten drawers and a flat work surface. The Craftsman was chained and padlocked to an iron support rib, part of the hangar’s back wall. There was also a square glass-enclosed office.

Jim removed his hat and shook the rain from the floppy brim. His gray comb-over was messed up, his white scalp showing through the long, thinning strands.

“Well, we got ourselves out of that just in time, didn’t we?” He smiled, but there was something mechanical about it – as if Father Jim were thinking,
Okay, it’s time to smile now, show some friendly teeth.