Sammie looked east. “The helicopter. It’s coming.”
Jamie swung about. The chopper was beating a hurried path no more than a hundred yards above the water. Yet Jamie realized it wasn’t changing course to pursue them. In fact, the chopper was continuing due north, from where the three of them came.
Michael chimed in. “That’s a police bird. I can see the markings. Wait. I don’t get this. It’s supposed to be night. Where the heck are we?”
Sammie pulled back on the throttle until the boat idled. The chopper’s roar dimmed as it shrank into the murky dawn. Only the putter of the boat’s motor broke a stunned silence.
“It’s real,” Jamie whispered. “It’s happening.” He flung himself out of the seat, threw his arms around Michael and embraced in a hug like none before. Jamie ignored the blood, the wet back. All he knew was that somehow, defying all ludicrous odds, Michael was alive. “You’re OK,” he said. “You’re OK. Dude! You’re OK.”
Michael didn’t react at once. Gradually, however, he lifted his arms and wrapped them around Jamie. Tears blended into the mud stains.
Michael whispered, “I don’t understand.”
“You’re alive, Coop, and nothing else matters. When we found you, I was so sure …”
“Found?” Michael turned to Sammie. “Help me out. He’s babbling.”
Sammie tapped Jamie on the shoulder, and that was enough to snap him out of his ecstasy. “Jamie, I think we better sit down and sort this out.”
He felt too good to do anything other than follow Sammie’s suggestion. Michael started the conversation.
“This is too much. How did I get from wherever to out here?”
Michael remembered being in the car with the English teacher from hell and his ex-track coach.
“They were gonna kill me sooner or later, I reckon. After …”
“Do you remember anything else?” Sammie asked.
“I was falling. Couldn’t stop. Then there was this light.” He smiled with recognition. “Yeah. A light. You know, like folks who say they died but didn’t make it all the way?” He frowned. “Next thing I see is my No. 1 here near about ready to blow your head off, Sammie. Would somebody tell me what’s up with that? And if they shot me, how come I ain’t dead?”
Jamie felt Sammie’s undeniable glare. She looked him over as if he weren’t human.
“C’mon, Jamie. You have to see it.”
“See what?”
“The re-sequencing program. Nothing else makes sense.”
Every corner of Jamie’s logic centers insisted he knew what Sammie was talking about, but he couldn’t acknowledge the truth.
“Jamie,” she said, her voice softening. “Michael was shot two times in the back. We saw the bullet holes. He shouldn’t be alive.”
Jamie couldn’t take his eyes off her. He flashed to her bedroom, when she first appeared as an angel of mercy. She wasn’t able to find the bullet holes he knew were once there. He then recalled the overwhelming exhaustion that gripped him as he carried Michael; the sense of his own life draining away. Jamie thought about his ten-minute nap that seemed to go on for ages and yet was so refreshing, as if all the energy was restored. He looked down to his own, upturned palms, stained in Michael’s blood.
“Hello? I’m starting to freak over here,” Michael said. “And I didn’t think anything was crazier than the crap I went through last night.”
“It’s me,” Jamie whispered. “What’s happened to me?”
Michael threw up his hands. “Well, dude, that’s my question. Look here. I didn’t imagine creepy old Queen Bee storming my house in the middle of the night and wacko Christian putting a gun in my mouth and them trying to hunt you down. And you’re not one to put a gun to people’s heads. And I’m soaking in blood like a pig in a slaughterhouse. How about a few answers?”
Jamie stared at his upturned hands and thanked whatever might be responsible – God, the Chancellors, the program that was killing him.
Sammie reached out and grabbed his hands, saying softly:
“I don’t think anyone imagined this. Not even your designers.”
He snatched his hands away and turned to Michael.
“You’re going to be OK, Coop. Really, truly OK. I’m sorry I got you into this. I didn’t know … none of it.”
“None of what, dude? Your designers? What’s up with that? You got some answers?”
“Yeah. But you’re not gonna believe them any more than I did.”
Sammie opened the throttle and resumed a course for Ginny’s Creek, but this time Jamie didn’t stop her. He needed to sort through his swirl of emotions, to recount the madness that invaded his life, and to appreciate the good news that came of these horrors.
Michael was alive. For the time being, nothing else mattered.
29
B EN HAD EVERY reason to put a bullet through Walt’s skull, yet he felt naked in the face of Walt’s accusation. He couldn’t escape the memories that drove him into dark places for two years.
“How?” Ben mumbled. “Did Ignatius tell you?”
“No,” Walt said. “Although I was certain he played a role. In truth, your father consulted with me the day before he died. He was prepared to take any necessary action to silence you and your maniacal theories before you took them to the other observers. For all Tom’s dissatisfaction with this Earth, he believed in the mission. I’m sure you had more than an inkling of what he might do to you. I was not surprised when the call came.”
“I’m sure you weren’t. But since you didn’t lift a finger to stop it, I also don’t think you much cared.”
Ben knew he couldn’t put this one on Walt. After all, it was Ben who confronted his parents with the research he’d been putting together since moving out several months earlier. It was Ben who should
