Life on the Preservation, US Edition (8 page)

In the living room, he racked up the window blinds and gazed down at the Chief. If only he didn’t have to ride the damn thing to Pullman. It probably wouldn’t make it the whole distance, anyway.

So he should skip it.

Sarah would almost certainly be asleep at this hour. He composed a bullshit text message about his bike crapping out on him again, hit SEND. Totally plausible. It wasn’t even really a lie, just a truth that hadn’t happened today but could have. Okay, cowardly. Cowardly but
foolproof
.

The phone rang and he answered it before he could stop himself.

“Hello? Ian?”

Sarah.
Fuck
.

“Yeah,” he said. “Good morning.”

“Is something wrong, baby?” (echo: Babe, what’s wrong?)

“No, no. I didn’t think you’d be awake. I mean I was going to leave you a good morning message, kind of, before I left.”

“That’s
so
sweet,” Sarah said. (echo: How
sweet!
)

It was as if he’d had this conversation before and the other words were still running on a loop somewhere. “Yeah, isn’t it?” he said. Ian’s phone beeped with an incoming call. He held the phone away from his face, saw it was Zach, and frowned.

“You’re not supposed to
agree
that you’re sweet,” Sarah said. “Oh, I can’t wait till you get here.”

“Me neither.”

The incoming call quit beeping.

“Do you love me oodles and oodles?”

“With extra oodles,” Ian said. He hated when she lapsed into baby talk. “Anyhow, I better get moving.”

“You better, sweetie. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” Ian said.

Sarah hung up. “Fuck!” Ian looked at the missed call. If Zach was calling at seven in the morning it meant he’d been up all night and was still drunk or, worse, high, and wanted to talk about some mad inspiration for a new game. Ian turned his cell off and finished dressing. Ten minutes later he was on the road, wind in his face, feeling more alive than dead but not much more.

The closer he got to the I-90 ramp the more his nerves jumped and popped. Deciding it was guilt, he pulled into the curb and dug his cell phone out. The engine idled roughly then died. Ian thumbed Zach’s number and it rang through to voicemail. He tried again with the same result. Probably Zach had passed out asleep (drunk) or gone for breakfast (high).

Ian looked at his watch. It was coming up on eight. He wasn’t sure whether it was intuition or simply his mind hunting excuses to forego the Pullman trip, but he adjusted the choke, kick-started the Chief, then swung around and headed back to Capitol Hill to check on his friend.

He parked in front of the brick and ivy condo on 14th Street, called Zach’s number and got no answer. He rang Zach’s buzzer in the alcove outside the front door of the eight-unit building. Again: no answer. He buzzed again. Still nothing. Enough? Ian stood listening, as if somebody was going to tell him. And somebody did, sort of. His intuition or whatever.

Not enough.

Ian walked around to the back of the building. Zach’s new Beetle was snug as, well, a bug in the garage. So he was up there not answering his phone or intercom buzzer. Or he could have walked to he Deluxe, or Charlie’s, or the Grill for breakfast.

Ian had keys. Zach had given them to him months ago so Ian could feed his fish when he was out of town. Not that Ian wanted to use the keys now. It was perfectly possible his friend had a girl up there. Okay, not all that possible; Zach was almost morbidly self-conscious around girls. But even if he was alone he was entitled to his privacy.

Ian let himself in the front door and mounted the carpeted steps. Outside Zach’s door he hesitated, then knocked. Waited. Knocked again. So he was out. Or something.

Ian slotted the second key and opened Zach’s door. He leaned into the entry, feet still planted in the hallway.

“Zach, it’s me.”

The tropical fish tank bubbled away in the front room.

“Zach?”

Suddenly Ian didn’t want to go any further. He felt strongly compelled to withdraw, pull the door shut, and get back on the road. Instead he stepped inside, closed the door partway but not enough for the latch to engage. There was a framed Billy The Kid Wanted poster on the wall of the entry. It was real, preserved and sealed under glass. Zach had a thing for Old West outlaws. He even had a brace of Colt revolvers, Peacemakers from the 1870’s. Ian had accompanied him to the shooting range once, but didn’t get it.

“Zach?”

He followed the bubbling sound of the fish tank to the front room. Zach was sitting at the Danish desk that faced the bay window. On the desk his iBook was running a text document. But Zach, slouched in his office chair, was swiveled toward Ian, watching him through his black-framed geek glasses. Ian caught his breath, surprised. Zach took his glasses off and said, “Hi.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ian said. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Waiting for you, I guess.”

“Waiting for me.”

“Yeah. I mean I didn’t know I was but I was.”

“Why didn’t you say something when I came in?”

“I don’t know. I feel weird. Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to Pullman?”

“Yeah. Why’d you call me an hour ago?”

Zach put his glasses back on and swiveled around to face the iBook again.

“Zach?”

“I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“That I was going to do something. Then I decided to do it anyway. I was writing it all out for you. I was going to call you back, in case you skipped Pullman. You do skip it, about half the time.”

“What are you talking about? Writing what all out?”

“Stuff. Never mind, it doesn’t matter now.”

Ian crossed the room but before he could read any of the words, Zach closed the document. A black lacquered box sat on the floor next to Zach’s chair, the world COLT engraved on a brass plate affixed to the hinged lid.

“Man,” Zach said, “I’m a gutless wonder. Seriously.”

“You’re acting weirder than usual, you know.” Ian glanced at the gun box

“I know.”

“You been up all night?”

Zach chuckled.

“What?”

“Yeah. I’ve been up all night. Whatever you want to call it.”

“Come on, I’ll buy you breakfast.”

Zach tapped a pencil on the edge of his desk. It was a black pencil with gold lettering stamped on the side that said, MINDWERKS.

“The Grill,” Ian said to the back of Zach’s head. “I guess you didn’t hear me when I said I was buying?”

“That place is so gay.”

“You’d be doing me a favor. Give me an excuse to skip Pullman.”

“Oh, you aren’t going to Pullman.”

“Why do you say it like that?”

Zach swiveled around to face him again. His eyes were red behind his glasses.

“You’re buying? That’s an event. Let’s go.”

Outside, Zach kept looking at the sky. He did it so often Ian finally asked, “What are you looking for?”

“I don’t think they come every day, but I don’t really
know
.”

“You don’t think
who
comes every day?”

“Never mind.”

At the Broadway Grill Zach sat listlessly in the corner of the booth under a picture of James Dean. The Grill was crazy busy, as usual, mostly with twenty-somethings looking at least as hip and gay as the movie stars pictured on practically every wall. The waiter brought Zach’s Monte Cristo sandwich. Zach looked at it then asked for a beer. It wasn’t quite nine in the morning. “And a shot of Jameson’s,” he said.

“What’s that,” Ian said, “the breakfast of champions?”

Zach managed a weak grin. In a few minutes the waiter brought his drinks. He downed the whiskey in a gulp and followed it with a deep draught of Fat Tire.

“When you’re done with those eggs,” Zach said, “would you mind doing me a favor?”

“What favor?”

“Drive me someplace. I’ve been drinking and I don’t think I should be behind the wheel.” Zach giggled.

Ian looked at him closely. “Drive you where?”

“It doesn’t matter. North?”

As they were leaving the Grill, two young women came in. Zach stopped dead in his tracks, staring at one of them, a waifish blond with a military buzz cut and a platinum stud in her left nostril. She scowled at him, and her companion, a mannish Amazon with jet black hair and a spiderweb tattoo on her neck, said, “You got a problem?”

Zach’s face had gone white.

Ian pulled him out the door. “What’s wrong with you? Did you know that girl?”

“No, but I saw her die once.”

“What–”

“Come on, come on. Let’s get going.”

Ian drove the VW. Zach rode shotgun with a bottle of Red Hook retrieved from a case in the trunk. They came to a stop sign.

“Well?” Ian said.

“Go thataway,” Zach said, pointing with the hand holding the bottle.

“What’d you take?” Ian asked, reaching over to push the bottle down, in case there was a cop around.

“Take?”

“Peyote, mescaline, what?”

Zach shook his head, drank his ale. “North, my good man.”

By now they had migrated off Capitol Hill. Ian accelerated onto Aurora Avenue North.

“I think it’s the shock,” Zach said. “That’s why I remember better this time. It’s the shock.”

“What?”

Zach twisted around in his seat to look out the back window. “God,” he said. “Oh, God.”

“What’s wrong?” Ian stared at the rearview mirror. A Toyota and a couple of guys on motorcycles occupied the lanes behind them, the motorcycles a little further back than the car. Suddenly the Toyota swerved into the breakdown lane, skidding to a halt, leaving its rear end sticking into the highway. A man jumped out of the passenger side and pointed at the sky. The motorcycle riders, who had slowed and swerved to avoid the Toyota, looked back over their shoulders.

“Step on it,” Zach said, his voice high and cracking with fear.

In the wing mirror, which was adjusted too high for Ian, half a dozen brilliant pinwheel lights hovered over the skyline. Then the city passed out of sight behind the east slope of Queen Anne Hill. Moments later the VW sped onto the Aurora Bridge. The bridge was huge, a cantilever and truss design almost three thousand feet long and a hundred seventy feet above the water. Ian knew
all about
the Aurora Bridge. He had walked across it numerous times. Research. It was the number two suicide bridge in the United States, only beaten out by the Golden Gate. But this time he never made it to the other side. A hundred feet shy, the car began to shudder. At that moment, he remembered, and he let go of the wheel and looked at Zach. The light shifted, and they were tumbling in a yellow-green void...

THE HUNTERS

E
NERGY BEAMS CRISS-CROSSED
out of the sky, reducing buildings to smoldering slag. Fire devoured the city. Bloody and broken limbs twisted out of rubble. Sirens wailed in desperate alarm. The stink of death rose up. The Curator stepped forth as Charles Noble, concealed within a Shadow that rendered him invisible to the Hunters who sought him. Charles shook his head. Hunter methods were primitive, brutal and ineffective. Laying waste to a Preservation city (even this anomaly of a Preservation city) was no more effective than disrupting a holographic projection. The city merely resumed its steady state upon the next Advent.

The Hunters would never find him. But would they ever give up? Was he condemned to an infinite lifetime of hiding?

Hunter ships, like brilliant pinwheel lights, finally ceased their attack and darted away. Pillars of thick black smoke rolled in their wake.

A woman stood with slack arms and jaw, weeping before a minivan flattened under a tumbled brick façade. “My baby, my baby...” A haze of dust hung in the air. Charles caused his Shadow to dissolve and approached the woman. She raised her lightless eyes to him. “My baby,” she sobbed. He touched her shoulder. Compassion resonated through his body. It hurt. The compassion belonged to the old Charles. The Curator shrank from it, likening it to the irrational current of panic he’d endured when Curtis Sarmir was about to leave the gallery. But now the woman grabbed his arm, clinging with ferocious strength. She went to her knees, weeping, dragging on him. Charles instructed himself to endure it; this was his future.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SEATTLE, OCTOBER 5, 2012

M
ORNING.
I
AN POURED
hot water through the Melitta filter, his movements mechanical as a windup toy’s. He seemed to hover over his own head, attached by invisible threads, a balloon person. The rich coffee aroma began to assert itself, and he found himself inhaling fragrant steam, present in his body but slightly disoriented. Then his phone rang. He wandered out of the kitchen. The phone was on the table beside his futon. So were three uncapped prescription bottles. The bed cover still held an impression of Ian’s body.

My body,
he thought, and a ripple of pure atavistic dread surged through him. The phone stopped ringing. The little window showed a missed call from Zach. Ian really wasn’t up for it. The phone blooped a text message:
Know you’re there. Call now. Emergency.

Ian sighed, hit speed dial. “Zach?”

“Man, come over here, okay?”

“Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m supposed to meet Sarah in Pullman.”

“I know but come over anyway. It’s important.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s life and death. I’m serious. Hey, bring your keys. I can’t get the door.”

“Why not?”

“Just hurry, okay?”

“Okay, okay.”

“Ian?”

“
What?
”

“I’m sorry.”

Zach broke the connection. Ian stared at his phone a moment then closed it and got dressed. He was only six blocks from Zach’s condo. It would have taken as long to cold-start the Chief, so he walked. It was a beautiful morning, a little chilly. He started off walking but by the time he reached Zach’s building he was running flat out, alarms bonging away in his head. He didn’t bother buzzing. He got through the lobby door, took the stairs three at a time, and let himself into the unit. The fish tank bubbled, tetras and rainbows serenely finning back and forth. There was a funny smell. A
bad
smell.