Will lowered Luca from the c.o.c.kpit. He was gentle, squeezing the boy"s shoulders as his feet hit the concrete. For a sliver of a second, Luca missed his dad a tiny bit less. His mom and sister, too.
They broke into Nordstrom by hurling a trashcan through the doors, but Will promised Luca it was okay emergency behavior. He took a grooming kit and a large pile of clothes into the men"s restroom, where he stayed for a while. Luca thought it seemed like a long, long time, and it was, but the time made sense when Will came out of the bathroom looking almost exactly like the man who made the lobster tacos.
His scary hair and beard were gone. He was the same tall man as before, but looked even taller in jeans and a black tee shirt. His face was freshly shaven, and his scary hair was now shorter, though choppy in places he cut wrong. If Will had any idea how ridiculous his hair looked, he didn"t care. He was all smiles.
"Alright kid, let"s go!"
After a quick swap at the airport, they were flying in a small plane that Will had arranged to be fueled and ready. Will explained that since there was no electricity in most places, they"d be tight on gas. So he outfitted the plane with some kind of fuel bibs which should give them enough gas to get where they were going. But if they ran out, Will warned, they"d need to land somewhere and find a car.
"Where are we going?" Luca asked.
"We need to get to the trees," Will said.
"Are we here?" Luca asked as they flew through Flagstaff, above a sudden, beautiful sea of green.
Will shook his head.
"You don"t seem like you"re an Army person," Luca said.
"I wasn"t in the Army," Will smiled, "I was in the Air Force. But I see what you mean. I am a much cooler cat than they usually allow, what with my giant muscles and bottomless charm."
Dog Vader whined from the back of the plane, just like he"d been doing every 15 minutes or so since leaving the coast.
"I wasn"t a normal officer," Will"s voice rose just above the husky"s wine. "The Air Force wouldn"t have been my thing, but I was recruited young. Promises were made and I was young enough to believe them. I was also naive enough to believe that if they wanted me bad enough they"d be willing to pay me what I was worth."
"What"s Nai-Eve?"
"They needed something I have in here," Will tapped the side of his head. "You know what a one-horse-town is?"
Luca shook his head no.
"Well, it"s small. My town was called Leonard. Sits so close between the Kentucky-Tennessee border, folks might argue over which was which, though the ones who said Leonard was in Tennessee would"ve been right. My cousin Jimmy called it a "hoof town" on account of it being so small it didn"t even have the one horse. The Air Force paid for everything, made me feel smart, and got me out of the hoof town."
"What did they want?"
Will pinched his nose, then stayed inside his thoughts for about a minute. "You know how I said I could see the colors of stuff, and sometimes their sounds? Well, it"s like that, sorta. At least as close as I can manage to explain for now."
Will looked at Luca.
"Don"t worry about getting it; you will. Wish it wasn"t so, but it is. And you can take me to the bank on that. I"ve seen more in this life than I ever imagined I would, and I think a lot of that might have been just so I could get it all to you. A lot of what I"ve seen isn"t fit to tell an 8-year-old boy, but I promise you"ll know everything you need to know before you need to know it."
"Will?"
"Yeah."
"What happened?"
"To the world? I don"t have a popped kernel of a clue, kid. Wish I did."
"But you said you knew it would happen?"
"I did. Even knew the day, time, and what I was supposed to do when it did."
"What did you do?"
"I went to live by the water. Slept by the border for most of a year, waiting for the post-modern Rapture, then eventually you. Night it happened, I went to the water and held my head under the ocean for a few minutes. By the time I"d surfaced, the world had gone hollow."
Luca could tell Will was wondering if he understood everything being said, but he kept quiet. Sometimes the best way to let a grown up know you got what they meant was to nod and not say anything at all.
Will smiled at Luca then went on.
"There were a bunch of us this one time, and they sent us deep into the Alaskan wilderness. There was nothing but nothing around us. A little like this," he waved his hand across the empty beneath them. "We found something we didn"t expect and weren"t supposed to see."
This feels like listening time. No interruptions.
"We were deep in a cave on a crack of land I can"t imagine anyone ever having stood on before. Yet we found technology in that cave that I"d never seen. None of us had. Venturing a guess, I"d say it was there to measure something, but what I can"t even begin to guess without slamming hard into a wall of logic. My light was directly on it, whatever it was, but I couldn"t get a good fix on the tech because the alloy was dull and the cave was so dark. I could see it, but I didn"t know if anyone else could. You see," he looked at Luca, "sometimes I see stuff that isn"t there, at least according to everyone else. That"s why the Air Force sent me to Alaska in the first place."
I think I see stuff like that, too.
"Everyone saw it, though none of us knew what we were looking at. By the time we all agreed there were some strange things afoot among the ice floes, we saw a sharp flare of light, which looked a bit like the end of the world in the mean mouth of that cave. Then BAM!, we were out. No one remembers anything after the light. We woke up and the tech was gone. Some of the guys remembered seeing it, most didn"t. But I"m convinced whatever it was in that cave gave each of us "The Sight."
"What"s The Sight?"
"It"s what let me see you about a year before I did. And lets me still see all the guys from the Alaskan adventure, except Renny since he"s been dead for six years. Some of "em see me right back. They all could if they knew how, but most of the guys never realized things had changed. Here"s the thing." Will leaned closer. "All the guys who knew about The Sight, well they"re all still alive. Right now, all four of them."
Luca gasped. There are more people! Maybe his mom and dad knew about The Sight, though even if they did, Anna probably didn"t. "There are more people?"
"Of course!" Will slammed his hand on his knee. "There must be a ton. And that"s just easy math. Even if we lost 99% of the population, and I"m not so sure the number"s that high, we"d still have three million people in America alone. People will come together. We"ll start over and everything will be fine. Maybe even better than it was."
"Where are your friends?" Luca asked.
"Didn"t say they were my friends," Will"s mouth twitched, "and I"m looking for them every chance I get."
"You mean with The Sight?" Luca didn"t wait for the answer. "I have The Sight, don"t I?"
"I"d be as shocked as a man chewing on electric chocolate if you didn"t!"
"How did I get it?"
"Born with it, most likely. End of the world just brought out the best in you."
Will hit Luca on the knee, but Luca wasn"t feeling nearly as playful. From nowhere, he started to sob and cried himself to sleep.
Luca woke screaming from a nightmare unlike any he"d ever had in his whole life.
"You dreamt about her, too, didn"t you? The girl Paola and her mom?"
Luca nodded.
"You"ve been dreaming about them too?"
"Yes," Will said, "for almost as long as I"ve been dreaming about you."
"They"re with the trees," Luca said, feeling like he might cry again. After a pause, he asked Will, "Does she have to die?"
Will shook his head. "No, that"s what I call a tomorrowbility; it may or may not happen depending on the variables in the equation." Will shook his head and started over. "Sorry about that. I mean, no. It"s a possibility, but it definitely doesn"t have to happen."
"What can we do?"
"Get to the trees as fast as we can. We"ll be there soon."
Luca said nothing. Will sank into his seat. An odd current crackled between them. Luca could tell that Will had dreamed more than he had said. Will was afraid to tell him something.
But Luca was starting to sense it.
Something bad was going to happen to the girl and her mom, real bad.
BORICIO WOLFE.
Boricio woke, lids gummed behind what felt like a thick wall of a cheesecloth blindfold. His head was buzzing and the hallucinogenic sludge was still swimming its way out of his head. A thin strip of plastic was digging its teeth into his wrists, which were crushed between the floor and his back.
His nose twitched at the smell of prey. He couldn"t tell how many people were in the room, but he definitely wasn"t alone, and it was more than just that big-nippled b.i.t.c.h who had tricked him. In fact, he didn"t smell her at all.
The room was slightly musty, and felt large. Boricio would lay a Benjamin that there weren"t any windows. He felt the fabric beneath him. Burlap.
Well, where in the f.u.c.k-all am I?
Nope, Boricio don"t like this one bit.
His ears p.r.i.c.kled and the short hairs on the back of his neck whispered that he was being watched. No way to know how many, but eyes were on him, no doubt.
He could either play it Sam Jackson and let the room know who was boss, or play smart and show the claws later.
"Where... where are we?" Boricio stuttered weakly.
"He"s awake." A man"s voice said from Boricio"s right.
"You"re okay," a second man"s voice, slightly farther and barely a whisper. "Keep your voice low, they"ll be back any moment."
"Who is they, and how many are there?" Boricio let his bottom lip quiver, just in case he was the only one with his eyes covered.
"Don"t know who they are, but they know what"s going on. Three of "em snuck up behind me while I was taking a s.h.i.t. Next thing I knew, I was laying on the floor in here." This final voice was closest to Boricio, just a few inches away.
Predator"s guess put five people in the room, including him. One to his left, another three to his right. Silent Bob was on his left, breathing like a lab with a belly full of pups.
"We"re waiting to get processed." It was the guy furthest to Boricio"s right again. "They come in here and take us out there to whatever"s waiting. No clue what it is, but I"m pretty sure I"m next. They come in every five or six hours. And there"s always five in here. One comes in, one goes out. So far, there ain"t been any girls except the one I imagine brought you here, just like she brought all of us."
A click and a whine came as a door opened and a gust of stale heat rolled inside. And on that heat, a familiar scent of perfume.
Well, ain"t that just a tall stack of pancakes worth of perfect. Big-nippled b.i.t.c.h was coming into the room. And someone with her. A guy. Smells like sweat and too much testosterone.
The mystery guest opened his mouth. "Well, lookie who"s awake!" Boricio could smell the testosterone suddenly centimeters away. "You ready to tell us what you know?"
Boricio knew nothing, which is exactly what he said.
Testosterone cackled, "Fine by me, boy. You"ll get to talking once you"re outside and in the box." He finished his sentence with a slap at the back of Boricio"s head.
Keep going, because when I"m through with you, I"ll be staining this floor with slippers made from your face, you f.u.c.k.
Boricio must not have been able to keep his curled lip to himself, because before he knew it, bad breath was curling through his nose and Testosterone himself was snarling in his face.
"You got something you wanna say, boy?" The way he said "boy" was almost like the word had two syllables. Redneck f.u.c.k. "I know your mama told you if you ain"t got nothin" nice to say than don"t say nothin", but it isn"t like that here." He laughed again. "We"re friends here. You can say anything you want."
Something thrust into the back of Boricio"s head. He let out a yelp, p.i.s.sed to have given the man any pleasure in delivering the pain.
"So, anything?"
Part of Boricio believed he could free himself from his restraints, if he wanted to. He probably couldn"t clear the room, though he"d be sure to end the f.u.c.ker in front of him before anyone could stop him. But no, too many things he didn"t know, and it was the end of the world. Besides, it"d be nice to make the f.u.c.ker see the steel in his eyes before he killed him. It was that personal touch which was the trademark of Boricio"s attention to detail.
"Nothing?"
Boricio stayed silent.
Boricio didn"t see, or even sense, the giant fist until it smashed into his face. He felt the hollow thud rock through his head, then a ringing in his ears followed by stars in his eyes. Blood gushed from his nose and swallowed his face.
"Chew on that until you find your tongue, f.u.c.ktard."
Boricio heard 15 steps, then a whine and a thud. Testosterone and the big-nippled b.i.t.c.h had left the building.
After a moment of silence, the heavy breather to Boricio"s left tried to speak, but wasn"t managing much outside a few labored rasps. The heavy breather went on breathing while Boricio continued to wrestle with his restraints.
Finally, as though pushing words from his throat with his entire body, the breather managed to make a few. "Drema b.u.t.tle noggers son..."
Well f.u.c.k if that didn"t sound like baby talk.
The three men to Boricio"s right were trading guesses, but it was still just p.i.s.ses and babble. Boricio continued to twist at the plastic.
"Anything we can help you with?" It was the guy all the way to the right. His voice was full of compa.s.sion and Boricio wondered for a second what that must be like. More sounds came from the guy on the left, but the f.u.c.king idiot still wasn"t saying anything, until he was.
Boricio froze.
"Boooorrrriiiicccciiio," the heavy breather moaned.
Like his name on the radio surfacing through a sea of static, once there, it was unmistakable. Boricio was getting this broadcast loud and clear. It took a lot to scare him, and he never ran. But Boricio found himself in such a sudden twisted grip of terror, he would"ve charged from the room right then if he"d not manage to calm himself down.