The Flight of the Silvers (9 page)

His words, though well intentioned, were worth less than the money he gave her. Amanda looked at the surgical table in the center of the room and thought about her new predicament. She was an otherworldly being in a building full of scientists. It seemed all but inevitable that, dead or alive, she’d end up on that table. And while Dr. Czerny cut Amanda open, the mousy little blonde would scribble on her clipboard, taking copious notes on how the subject’s vital organs were different, but still a little the same.

—

By the time Mia returned to the game parlor, David had switched his interests from astronomy to engineering. A pair of shaky domino towers rose two feet from the surface of the pool table. They’d each been built at subtle angles, meticulously designed to lean toward each other until they ultimately connected. He took a quick moment to process Mia.

“You cleaned up nicely.”

“Thank you,” she said, blushing.

She took a seat in an overstuffed recliner, carefully holding the flaps of her robe. The last thing either of them needed right now was an unscheduled peep show.

“Mia Farisi,” said David, as he placed another tile. “I like the cadence of that. It could work as a single name, like Christo or Madonna. I’m guessing your last name’s Italian. Am I right?”

“It is.”

“Yeah. It was a toss-up between Italian and Turkish, and you don’t look Turkish. May I ask what your surname means?”

Mia found herself smiling even as her brow furrowed. This beautiful Aussie was just a little bit strange. “I don’t know.”

“Tell me to shut up if I’m being annoying. I have the social skills of a rock crab. I think that’s why they put me in here and told me to amuse myself.”

A misplaced domino caused the left tower to collapse in wreckage.

“Son of a bitch.” He gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ve heard worse.”

He resumed work on the remaining tower. “They took my wristwatch. I hope I get it back. It’s an antique heirloom. Fully mechanical. I have to wind it and everything.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. It kept on working, even when all the electronics died. Were you awake for that?”

“I’m sorry?”

“This morning at 4:41, the electricity went out everywhere, even in battery-powered devices. My father woke me up, all excited. He suspected it was some kind of electromagnetic pulse wave. It lasted nine and a half minutes.”

Mia thought about her own father, who’d taken a much bleaker view of the power outage.

“My dad’s a scientist,” David told her. “He lives for this kind of stuff. He was so thrilled by the E-M pulse, he kept me up all morning, bending my ear with wild theories. When I suggested the possibility that this was a man-made occurrence and not entirely benevolent, he dismissed it. He wasn’t scared at all. He just . . .”

He noticed Mia wasn’t listening anymore. She aimed a grim and distant stare at the floor.

“Anyway,” said David, “I think I’ve hit my limit on these diversions. Godzilla.”

He swiped the tower, sending it crumbling to the felt. In search of new entertainment, he began juggling a trio of pool balls.

Soon Mia noticed him again. She lightened up. “You’re good at that.”

“Yep. I may not have my father’s aptitude for science, but I am a prodigy in
commedia dell’arte
.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Tell me you know what that means, Italian girl.”

She smiled, despite herself. “Old-school theatrical comedy.”

“Very old.”

“So what does your name mean?”

“Dormer. French-Latin. It means ‘sleeper,’ which has never been more appropriate. Despite my awesome showmanship, I feel like I could nap for a month. Heads up.”

He gently lobbed a pool ball in her direction. She caught it with a yelp of surprise. David took another ball off the table, then resumed his juggling act.

“Maybe there’s some scientist in me after all, Miafarisi, because I find myself tempted to ask you about your experiences today, just to compare them to mine. I don’t want to cause you any more grief. It’s just that I’ve seen so much madness in the last two hours that I don’t know how to process it. I still haven’t ruled out the possibility that I’ve completely lost my mind. That would certainly explain the voices.”

Stuck for a response, all Mia could do was shake her head in empathy.

David had set her up to help him attempt a four-ball juggle, but suddenly thought better of it. He dropped the balls on the table and ran his fingers through his shaggy blond hair. Mia once again noticed how eclectically lovely he was, like an alt-rock angel.

“Just tell me one thing,” he pleaded. “Did you see the person who gave you your bracelet?”

“No. Whoever it was, they put it on me while I slept.”

He blew a loud puff of air through fluttering lips. “Lovely. Could be anyone then.”

“What about you?”

“I’m pretty sure I have an alibi.”

“No, I mean did you see who gave you your bracelet?”

“I know. I was just being . . . Yeah, I saw her. I even talked to her. We both did. Me and my dad.”

“A woman?”

“A tall one,” said David. “Very beautiful. She said her name was Esis.”

They both turned to look when Amanda stepped into the doorway. She offered Mia a shaky smile.

“Look at you. I knew there was a pretty girl under all that dirt.”

Mia studied the thick new splint on Amanda’s left wrist. She found it strange that the fingers of Amanda’s good arm were the ones that twitched uncomfortably.

“I thought you were getting a cast.”

“In a few days,” Amanda explained. “Once the swelling goes down.”

Now Amanda looked to David. She started and stopped herself three times before speaking.

“I’m sorry. Did you just say Esis?”

A loud
thud
suddenly filled the parlor. A gruff male voice rumbled through the halls.

“WE NEED HELP HERE!”

The lobby once again teemed with people. Physicists burst out of every door to surround a newly arrived trio. The two standing men wore the same green uniform as Erin Salgado. One was young and square-headed. The other was older and sported a thick walrus mustache. They tended to an unconscious patient on a stretcher—a young Asian man in a faded Stanford sweatshirt. Thin trails of blood trickled from his nostrils.

Czerny emerged from the elevator and made a waddling dash toward the action. He caught Amanda and her young companions at the edge of the hallway.

“Take the kids back to the parlor. It’ll be all right.”

“Can I help?” Amanda asked.

“Thank you, but we’ve got this. Return to the parlor, please.”

The noisy mob disappeared down the corridor, leaving the guests to themselves. Mia eyed the small splatter of blood by the front door.

“God. What do you think happened to that guy?”

“I dunno,” David said. “I was more distracted by the cot beneath him. I can’t figure out what was holding it up.”

“Do you think he’ll be all right, Amanda?”

The widow didn’t respond. She was too busy staring in wide-eyed disbelief at the listless young woman who lingered outside. Her face was obscured by tousled black hair. Her T-shirt and jeans were scuffed with dirt. Her left arm was wrapped in a sling.

The woman pushed through the glass doors and hobbled toward the reception desk in a dreamy daze. She took no notice of the three people watching her.

Mia held Amanda’s arm. “Are you okay?”

She was not. From the moment the newest guest entered her view, Amanda’s brain had fallen into hot conflict. She was convinced she was crazy and convinced that she wasn’t. Convinced that the person in front of her was a stranger, and convinced that she was anything but.

Her mouth quivered as she struggled to find a voice.

“Hannah?”

The woman turned to look, brushing the messy strands of hair from her face. There was no denying it now. One world over and thirty feet apart, the Great Sisters Given were reunited again.

SEVEN

No one ever guessed that the two women were siblings. One was a tall and skinny redhead with piercing green eyes. The other was a short and curvy brunette with the wide brown stare of a deer. They had different noses, different jaws, different voices, different walks. The only visible trait they shared was an unwavering intensity. No one ever accused the daughters of Robert and Melanie Given of being too relaxed, though Hannah came close to earning that distinction now. While Amanda froze in white-faced shock, the actress exhaled with breezy relief, as if the sisters had lost and found each other at the mall.

“Oh, hey. There you are.”

Amanda made a slow trek toward Hannah, her lips tangled on a hundred burning questions. All she could manage were a few stammering
wuh
s.

“Martin left me in the van,” said Hannah. “I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to stay there or . . .” She threw her dizzy gaze around the lobby. “What is this place? It looks like a Hilton.”

Hannah suddenly noticed David and Mia watching her with puzzled interest. “Kids in robes. Weird. I hope this isn’t a cult. Hey, has Zack arrived yet? Skinny guy? Carries a sketchbook? I left him back at the marina. He has my stuff.”

Amanda gripped Hannah’s chin and turned her face left and right. She thought about the otherwordly penny in her pocket and wondered now if this woman was a similar entity, an ersatz version of the old familiar thing.

Hannah crunched her brow. “Okay, Amanda, you’re freaking me out. Can you please say something?”

“I-I’m sorry. I just . . . I can’t believe I’m looking at you. I mean I can’t believe it’s you.”

“It’s me.”

“Do you remember seeing me last night?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Do you remember where we were? What we talked about?”

Hannah slit her eyes in suspicion. “What exactly are you testing me for?”

“Your pupils are dilated and you’re unfocused. You’re talking about people named Martin and Zack. I just need to see you’re in there. I need to know you’re the Hannah I know.”

The actress sighed with exasperation. If there was ever any doubt that this was her very own Amanda, she’d just erased it with her singular brand of well-meaning condescension.

“I saw you at the theater,” she replied. “At my premiere of
Damn Yankees
. You made it perfectly clear that you weren’t a fan of the Hindu version.”

Amanda let out a brusque cry and wrapped her in a sobbing embrace. Hannah rubbed her back.

“It’s okay. It’s really me. And it’s really you. And I’m really, really glad I found you.”

Amanda wiped her eyes, then shined a trembling grin at the orphans.

“Mia, David, this is Hannah. She’s my sister.”

David blinked in amazement. “Sister? Wow. That’s . . . I mean it was obvious you knew each other but . . . wow. That can’t be coincidence.”

“That we’re sisters?”

He stared at Hannah blankly. “That you both got bracelets.”

“Oh. Right. I wonder how many other people got these.” She studied Amanda’s broken wrist. “Hey, what happened to you?”

Amanda was distracted by Mia’s dark and cloudy expression. God only knew how many loved ones the poor girl lost today.

She turned back to Hannah. “I fell. What happened to your arm?”

“I hit a bus.”

“What?”

Hannah stopped to read the brass sign on the wall. “Pelleh-
teer
.”

“Pell-tee-
ay
,” David corrected. “It’s French-Canadian. I asked.”

Now Hannah zeroed in on David as if he just turned visible. “Holy shit. You’re gorgeous.”

“He’s sixteen,” said Amanda.

Hannah glared at her. “I was remarking. I was not angling.”

Amanda noticed a little black sticker at the base of Hannah’s neck. She peeled it off.

“What is this?” She sniffed the sticky side. It had a faint medicinal scent. “It’s a drug. They drugged you. No wonder you’re acting so . . . Let me look at your pupils.”

“I’m fine! It’s just a baby spot. A mood-lifter. It works great. It did wonders for me and Theo.”

“Who’s Theo?”

Hannah stared with fresh discomfort at the scruffy green baseball cap in her hand. Amanda quickly connected the dots.

“Wait, is he the guy they carried in here? The one who was unconscious and bleeding from every orifice? Are you kidding me, Hannah? Are those the wonders you’re talking about?”

“You don’t know it was the drug that did that.”

“Then what happened to him?”

Sighing, Hannah crunched the cap in her grip. In truth, she had no idea what happened. Even in a lucid state, she’d have a hell of a time explaining the curious case of Theo Maranan.

—

Thirty-two minutes ago, she’d discovered the ultimate recipe for joy: a baby spot and a comfortable seat in a fast-moving vehicle. The view outside the window was poetry in motion, an ever-changing canvas of color and light. Every time the van stopped at a traffic signal, she’d snap out of her euphoric daze and launch chirpy, childlike questions at her two Salgado escorts.
What makes ambulances fly? Are we getting Zack next? Do you know the white-haired man? Why isn’t everyone in the world addicted to baby spots?

With dwindling patience, Martin fielded her queries (
“Aeris,” “Maybe,” “Who?” “Because the more you use them, the less they work”
). His son raced through yellow lights just to keep her quiet.

Soon the van pulled into an alley behind a supermarket. Hannah peered through the front grate and studied Martin’s handheld computer. The screen contained a grayscale city map, peppered with four blinking red dots.

“What are the dots? Are those the people you’re looking for? And how are you finding us anyway? Our bracelets?”

The Salgados opened their doors and hurried outside.

“We’ll be back in a couple,” said Martin. “Just sit back and stay easy, okay?”

Hannah let out a cynical snort. “You sound like my last date.”

She spent the next few minutes in cushy silence, pinching her lip with growing fluster as the awful sounds of apocalypse came trickling back into memory. The booming crackle of the hardening sky. The horrible crunching noise of the frozen corpses . . .

The back doors of the van suddenly sprung open. Hannah saw Gerry Salgado struggling with a thrashing young Asian. He wore a dirty gray hoodie over khaki shorts and sandals. Sun-bleached letters on his chest advertised Stanford University. An Oakland A’s baseball cap lay askew on his head.

Martin affixed a small black sticker to the stranger’s neck, then joined his son in the tussle. The captive helplessly writhed in their grip.

“Let me go! Please! I’m not ready for this!”

The Salgados forced him into the seat opposite Hannah, then held him in place until he sat still. Hannah noticed a pair of foreign script symbols tattooed on the inside of his left wrist. The silver bracelet on his other arm was all too familiar.

“There we go,” said Martin. “You feeling better now?”

The man nodded at Martin. Hannah could see he was in dire need of a shave and a haircut. He couldn’t have become this disheveled just from one morning.

“I’m not ready,” he repeated.

“Not ready for what?” Hannah asked him, eliciting glares from both Salgados.

The stranger finally noticed her. His twitchy gaze stopped at her bracelet.

“You’re kidding, right?” He glanced at the Salgados. “Is she kidding me?”

Martin rubbed his arm impatiently. “Okay, listen, we need to get moving again. I’ll trust you two to get along back here. You’re both in the same fix and you’re both gonna be okay.”

Soon they were traveling again. Hannah wasn’t pleased that her window view was now obscured by 160 pounds of discombobulated Asian, but she didn’t want to offend him by moving away.

Screw it,
she thought.
Might as well mingle.

“Hi. I’m Hannah. What’s your name?”

He took off his cap and fluffed his messy hair.

“Theo,” he replied hoarsely. “Theo Maranan.”

“Hi, Theo. How you feeling now?”

He smeared his bleary eyes. “Fluffy and awkward. Like rabbits are screwing in my head.”

Hannah grinned. “Yeah. That’s the baby spot. It gets better.”

“What’s a baby spot?”

“The little patch on your neck. It’s a drug. A mood-lifter.”

His face crunched with confusion. “They have drugs here?”

“Yeah. Sure. Why wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know. I just assumed.”

For all his wear and tear, Hannah found Theo to be somewhat easy on the eyes. He wasn’t especially burly but he had broad shoulders and finely chiseled features. On a better day, in a better state, she might have even flirted with him.

He raised a loose finger at her arm sling. “You mind if I ask how, uh . . . ?”

“Oh, this? I had some kind of weird mental seizure. Then I hit a bus.”

“Wow. Damn. That would do it.”

She looked again at the script symbols on his arm. “Maranan. That’s Filipino, right?”

He nodded, impressed. “Yeah. Very good. Most folks guess wrong.”

“Well, I dated one of your people.”

“Fair enough. I dated one of yours.”

The two of them plunged into giddy chuckles, prompting Martin to turn around and check on them.

“Okay, I see what you mean about the baby spot,” Theo said. “I shouldn’t be laughing at all, given what’s coming.”

Hannah’s smile died away. “What’s coming?”

“Are you kidding?”

“That’s the second time you . . . No, I’m not kidding. I have no idea what’s going on.”

“You’re better off. Trust me.”

They both fell quiet for a few blocks. Theo studied her cautiously.

“Can I ask you something personal, Hannah? You don’t have to answer.”

She shrugged. “Try me.”

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

The question didn’t bother her as much as she expected. She chewed her lip in contemplation.

“I had a big emotional breakdown when I was thirteen. I cut myself pretty badly.”

“Your wrists, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“Across the vein or up and down?”

She eyed him strangely. “What does that matter?”

“Well, to me it’s the difference between a cry for help and a serious attempt at suicide.”

Her pleasant buzz began to falter. “I guess it was a cry for help then. Still a horrible thing to put my mother and sister through.”

“What about your dad?”

She looked away. “He died the year before.”

Theo nodded with clinical intrigue. “I see. Suicide?”

“Cancer. Can we please change the subject?”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to upset you.”

The van sailed through three green lights before Theo spoke again. “I hope you don’t think I was judging you. Believe me, I’m in no position to wag the finger at anyone. I’m a law school dropout, a rehab washout, and an all-around blight on the family tree. If I told you the worst thing I ever did, you’d get the strong and rightful urge to push me out of this van.”

Hannah pulled her gaze from the moving scenery and back onto him.

“I also tried suicide,” Theo added. “Five years ago. It wasn’t a cry for help. It was a full-fledged attempt to end it. The only reason it didn’t work is because apparently, among my many faults, I’m also bad with knots.”

Hannah let out a churlish giggle. She covered her mouth, mortified.

“Oh my God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh.”

Theo smirked with good humor. “It’s okay. You’re picturing me falling through a half-ass noose, right onto my full ass. That’s pretty much what happened.”

They both fell into dizzy laughter again. Theo moaned and wiped his eyes. “You know what’s even crazier? For all my attempts to kill myself, both quickly and slowly, I don’t even know what did it in the end. I have no idea how I died.”

Hannah’s humor vanished in an instant. She stared at her new companion in deep bother.

“Theo, do you . . . Jesus, I don’t even know how to approach this.”

“Just ask.”

“Do you really think you’re dead right now?”

He stared at her, expressionless, for a full city block. “Okay. This is tricky. I don’t want to upset you again.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s take this step by step. You told me you got hit by a bus . . .”

“No, I said I hit a bus. It was parked. I only dislocated my shoulder.”

Theo sat forward now, his eyes darting back and forth in busy thought. Hannah blinked at him in fresh bewilderment.

“Oh my God. You think this is the afterlife for both of us.”

He held up a hand. “Okay, wait now. Before you mock me—”

“I’m not mocking you, Theo. I just—”

“I was enveloped in a ball of hard, glowing . . . something. And then everything went white. When it stopped, I found myself in this place with glimmering walls and flying trucks. I mean, what am I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah confessed. “I still don’t know.”

“Then how do you know I’m not right?”

In a more sober state, it might have occurred to Hannah to ask the Salgados to settle the matter. Instead she found herself considering the notion that she was in fact riding the jitney to her own eternal judgment. She imagined the panel would deliberate for ten seconds before sending her to the hazy gray place where mediocre people went.

“I’m sorry, Theo. I don’t think you’re right. I’m alive. I’m screwed up right now, but I’m alive. It’s the only thing I know for sure.”

To Hannah’s surprise, the idea only seemed to unnerve him more. He furiously tapped his bracelet.

“I talked to someone,” he said. “I’m not religious at all, so please don’t mistake me for the kind of person who sees angels everywhere.”

“Go on.”

“He found me at the bus station this morning. He was fierce-looking and—I say this heterosexually—very pretty. He said his name was Azral and that he’d never seen so much wasted potential in a person. He wasn’t the first to tell me that, by the way, and he certainly wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. But then he said I was moving on to a new world. That I’d finally make myself useful there. Then he gave me this bracelet . . .”

Hannah listened and nodded. She already had her next question lined up.