That left three soldiers in the first bench seat, Meleah and me in the second seat, and Hector in the back with the Charlie buster, or what he called the Transplanar Energy Reintegration and Stabilization Device. I used the name to distract myself from the sharp ache of my rib. No happy pills today for the psychic who needed to stay sharp and focused.
“Someone has a thesaurus fetish, and it is out of control,” I drawled. “They need help. Professional mental help that can probably only be found in Germany in some experimental psychiatric study run by Freud’s cryogenically frozen brain in a jar.”
“I named it,” Thackery said stiffly from up front.
“So surprised. It would take a narcissistic egomaniac to come up with a name so boringly geeky that they wouldn’t even use it on a Star Trek episode. Hell, I’m astounded you didn’t name it after yourself. Wait.” I groaned. “You did, didn’t you? The Thackery Transplanar Energy Reintegration and Stabilization Device. God, what a dick. You should patent it as a sleep aid, too, because that’s what it’ll induce halfway through actually saying it.”
Hector was running last-minute diagnostics time and time again on the Charlie buster as the van sped along the road. Whether the machine worked or not and dissipated what was left of Charlie or failed and left Charlie still roaming to activate brutal aggression sprees, Hector wasn’t going to have a good day either way. That he was able to give an amused snort at my taunting of Thackery was my good-bye to him, like Eden having said good-bye to me with pancakes. We all had our talents, and we all used them in different ways. Who wouldn’t think the bite of sarcasm wasn’t as tasty as that of blackberry pancakes?
Although we were no longer going to the caverns, and Thackery had bitched a solid hour about that, the drive was every bit as long as Fujiwara had told us. With the van’s tinted windows, the scenery was all shadows. The radio was silent, as was everyone else. The soldiers weren’t big talkers, and Hector and Meleah were distracted by hopes and fears that were one and the same thing. I took the opportunity to nap off and on, making up for a sleepless night and getting some respite from the pain that Tylenol did nothing to dull. It was a damn shame they couldn’t make a narcotic that kept you happy, pain-free, but without the fuzziness.
I dreamed of Charlie and those pink walls of Cane Lake. The pink that had been the final straw. The color that had reminded me too much of my lost sister’s shoe. I remembered lying to Charlie about taking his calls. When I woke up with a crick in my neck, I realized that I hadn’t lied. I was going to be there to take Charlie’s call, his last one. I hoped that made up for all the other unanswered ones.
The van was bumping over what felt like a dirt road. That was standard for a Georgia farm. Hector had said one brother had beaten the other over the head with an axe handle for the privilege of gaining twice the acreage, so it had probably been a while ago, a hundred years, give or take. These days, everyone had a thirty-eight shoved in a drawer somewhere, nice and convenient when arguments became a little too hairy. Hell, if you wanted to drive on up to Tennessee, they had some places that would let you carry guns in a bar, because nothing mixed like alcohol and bullets. And nothing cured a hangover when you didn’t have a head left to host it.
A Georgia farm, I thought, as we hit another bump that had my rib groaning. They’d been lucky with that list of theirs. What if someone had razed one of those massacre houses and built a mall over it? Would there still be a recording? Would an employee suddenly go berserk at the Gap and start beating customers over the head with a mannequin arm since axe handles weren’t available?
The van stopped, and Fujiwara announced almost cheerfully, “We’re here!” Fuji cheerful while sitting next to the testicle-withering Thackery-what had happened there?
Thackery looked out of his window. “Someone killed his brother over that land? He should’ve stored that homicidal fury up for something more valuable,” he stated disparagingly. I couldn’t see jack from where I was sitting, but if a sociopath, who would gut you like a fish for cutting him off in traffic, didn’t think it was worth killing over, chances were it really wasn’t.
Thackery checked his watch. “Wait, we’re only an hour before ETE.”
Okay, this one I remembered. Estimated time of ether-disruption. I was pretty proud of myself on that one, proud enough not to notice Fuji’s reaction-or lack of one-to Thackery’s temper tantrum.
“An hour, Dr. Fujiwara. You underestimated travel time by two hours. That is completely inexcusable.”
I heard Fuji’s door open, some low words, almost whispered, then the door shut, but I didn’t make out what he said. Truthfully, I didn’t try. Unless he was telling Thackery to stick his head up his ass, something poor Fuji lacked the balls to think, much less do, I wasn’t interested. I remained uninterested for several more seconds until Thackery’s harsh inhalation exploded out into a shocked snarl. “What do you mean, ten minutes, you spineless, brain-damaged nobody? What the hell is going on here?”
Ten minutes. We only had ten minutes with a machine that had taken twenty minutes to load into the van? Ten minutes and a Fujiwara who was suddenly unafraid of his boss, when before his eyes came close to rolling back in his head with very obvious fear whenever the man entered a room? Very obvious, when at times “very” can mean “too” and “too” can mean “not at all.”
“Shit,” I said, leaning past Meleah, pushing the sliding door open, and jumping out.
I hadn’t seen it coming, not for one second.
But now I knew it all.
Thackery was right. This place wasn’t worth fighting about, much less killing over. It wasn’t a farmhouse. It was a four-room shack. Weathered wood eaten down to almost nothing by termites, it was small, cramped, and leaning drunkenly on its foundation. The windows were cracked and completely covered in red dust. The grass surrounding it was parched brown-hadn’t seen a sprinkler or a hose in its life. Year after year of thirsty lives. Inside, the kitchen had once had linoleum, green and orange, curling at the edges. The living room had had remnant carpet, brown as mud, a recliner patched with duct tape, and an orange couch with torn cushions where a boy had slept at night. A narrow hallway with a wood floor slick from use led to two bedrooms-one for the man and woman and one for the two little girls. Although that could’ve changed as the swing had. The splintered porch swing those girls had sat on, rusty chains creaking loudly with every pump of their legs, was gone. One thing wouldn’t have changed, though. If it had been at night, if the stars had been out…
They would’ve been the same stars I’d watched from this yard as a kid, eating a peanut butter sandwich and dreaming of mansions, fast cars, pretty girls, paying for my sisters to go to college and away from here-fantasies of a life to come.
But it wasn’t night. It was-I yanked desperately at my sleeve-it was one fifteen. Ten minutes, Fujiwara had told Thackery. Ten minutes. He was right. That’s when it had happened-at one twenty-five. That’s when everyone died, including a Jackson who had dreamed childish dreams. Birthed in his place had been a bloodied one who knew that not having dreams meant you couldn’t lose them.
“You son of a bitch!” Fujiwara was at the front of the van, and I ran to take him down hard. I felt the impact of the two of us hitting the ground vibrate through me. I knew he felt it that much more. Red and black flickers of rage ringing my vision, I rammed my fist into his face, feeling the crunch as I shattered his cheekbone. It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t begin to imagine what would be. I hit him, and then again. “What have you done, you bastard? What the hell have you done?”
Hector’s hands on my shoulders, trying to pull me off. His grip was firm, but his voice was shaken. He recognized the house from the files, because this file had interested him most of all. My file. The nightmare of someone you knew versus the nightmare of people from a hundred years ago-which would stick with you more?
“Christ, Jackson, stop. Let me hit him. I can hurt him in ways that will still let him talk. We need him to talk. To tell us why here.”
Hector wanted to hurt him? Fine by me. As long as someone was doing it, I didn’t care who that someone was. But talk? The time for talking had been over the second I’d left the van, from the moment I’d actually seen where we were.
He had managed to remove me from the scientist, whose face I’d left a bloody ruin.
“ Talk? ” I snapped. “There’s nothing to talk about. And why here is easy. This jackass”-I kicked the fallen man hard in the ribs-“has sabotaged me. You think I can do a reading on Charlie here? You think I can do any kind of reading at all?” I rubbed at my eyes with the glove-covered heels of my hand, growled, and kicked the fallen man again. This time, he curled up into a ball with a groan. Good. Great. I hoped I broke every fucking rib he had.
Grabbing on to what calm I could, I added, “If he’s sabotaged me, he’s probably sabotaged your machine, too. I won’t be able to do a reading to lure Charlie here, and even if I could, this goddamn spy has no doubt made sure you couldn’t do anything about it.” He’d taken down their project, and now he was making certain that they
