“You can park anywhere,” Jon said, leaning forward to make sure Carla Kincaid could hear him. During the short trip to downtown Knoxville, she had relied on Jon for navigation, and had repeatedly complained that she couldn’t hear him. Yet, she was unwilling to even look at the map.
“Just tell me where to go and let’s get this done, I’ve got a lot of shit to do,” she had said. Megan’s sister apparently did owe her a favor or two, but she was obviously none-to-happy about having to pay it back today.
“All right, thanks, master,” Carla returned snidely. “I don’t know how I’d figure out where to park without you.”
Megan squeezed Jon’s hand, and looked at him sheepishly. She shrugged. Big sisters, the shrug said. What can you do? Jon understood the big sister problem all-too-well, and continued to be careful not to antagonize Carla.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I just don’t know where the best place is to get to the lockers, so I thought . . . sorry.”
Carla grunted. She pushed a chunk of greasy brown hair back out of her eyes. She looked a lot more like her and Megan’s mother than Megan did, which was not a good thing for Carla. Her nose was bigger and her chin was flat. The color of her hair was a dull brown—not so many shades away from the brilliant auburn of Megan’s hair, but a few shades made all the difference. She was taller than Megan, probably right at six feet, and was both skinnier and had bigger boobs, which she liked to show off with shirts cut to show too much cleavage, and she wore Madonna-inspired midriff-baring outfits that advertised the waxy, translucent skin stretched over her ribs. But Madonna she was not. In some ways, she reminded Jon a little bit of his mom.
“This better not take long,” Carla cautioned. “Or I’m leaving and you find your own way home.”
Megan leaned over to whisper in Jon’s ear. “This won’t take long, will it?”
Jon whispered back: “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. I’ve never been here before.”
Megan gave him a quizzical look but said nothing else. He looked at Carla, and then back to Megan. The difference was amazing. Carla’s skin, especially her face, was perpetually broken out—it looked she had a rash on her face—and coated with base makeup. She wore eye-makeup that made her look like her mascara was always running. Her hair was greasy. She almost never smiled—she usually looked queasy or angry or both.
Megan, on the other hand—she scrubbed-up well. Her red-brown hair was washed and braided and was so clean it sparkled in the sun. It looked like it would squeak if he rubbed it between his fingers. Her skin was smooth and clear, almost always. She had shown him and Johnny Two the zits on her back once, just to prove that, yes, she was a normal teenager and got pimples like everybody else. Her face, though, had never broken out that Jon could remember. She looked like she had a little lipstick and maybe some blush on, whereas her sister looked like an escapee from Mary Kay Girls Gone Wrong. And her skin. Where Carla’s skin was waxy and translucent, as if stretched too taut over her towering frame, Megan’s skin was a crème-colored silk. She was radiant. It wasn’t just her skin, either; it was all of her. She seemed, to Jon, to glow, as if illuminated from deep inside. And Carla smelled stale. Not just like cigarettes—she smoked like a chimney—but stale. Like stale bread and stale air. After having gone home and showered, Megan again smelled like flowers and rain. Even with Carla up front, chain smoking Virginia Slims.
Megan was holding his hand—nothing had been said, and he wasn’t quite sure what had changed, but there had been a lot more touching and hand holding between him and Megan since last night—more, perhaps, than in the entire two years previous he had known her. Now, it was a new day, the sun was at high noon, and Megan was stone, cold sober, and she was still holding his hand. When she had leaned against him to ask him if this would take long, she had whispered in his ear. Then her lips had touched his ear—one beat, two beats. Then she had leaned back. Not a kiss, but—well, she had whispered things to him plenty of times before, and he never remembered the feeling of her lips against his ear. And he was pretty sure he would have remembered such a thing very well.
Earlier, on the drive down, Carla had gone on a five minute rant to the world in general about being a bus driver for kindergartners and she had things to do, goddammit. At first, Megan had grabbed Jon’s hand and put it on her thigh, patting his hand reassuringly. She’ll be all right, Megan had mouthed at him. She’s just a little cranky. Then, when Carla, apparently cut off by somebody in traffic, escalated the rant to a full throttle stream of barely coherent profanity, Megan had dropped her head down and leaned into Jon’s chest, hiding her face as if embarrassed. One hand on his shoulder, the other on his knee. Giggling, saying “oh no, oh no” and “I can’t believe she said that” and apologizing. She was dressed in a fairly thick white knit top, plus a dark brown suede vest, and was—he had noted with some embarrassment—wearing a pretty sturdy bra under it all. Still, he felt her bosom pressing against him as she feigned embarrassment. Feigned? Yes, he was almost sure of it—feigned embarrassment at her sister. Then again, rubbing across his arm and elbow as she disengaged in what had to be the least natural, most awkward way possible.
Could this be leading to the impossible? Like, maybe him—a geek, not all that bad looking, maybe, as geeks went but still a geek—and Megan, who was an authentic descended-from-Olympus goddess in white knit and blue jeans, going steady? Being, like, boyfriend and girlfriend? Just yesterday, the idea would had seemed so absurdly out-of-reach that he might as well have been speculating about dating Cheryl Tiegs or Christie Brinkley. Yesterday, she had apparently been drunk. But, in the bright light of the morning, she was being nothing if not more friendly than before. More intimate. She was not only engaging him, out of nowhere, in the sort of casual intimacy she usually seemed to show Johnny Two—not so much a geek, and definitely more athletic than Jon—but actually more. Somewhere, somehow, something had turned a corner.
You have a late curfew, Jon’s more rational mind told him. You have a mom who almost never bugs you. She’s gone a lot. You’ve got the house to yourself. Your mom never even opens the door to your room. Megan hates her parents and she hates being at home. You offer the one thing nobody else can right now: escape.
He guessed that was it. She hadn’t really put two-and-two together before, he guessed: that Jon’s sort of perpetual crush on her, plus the free reign he enjoyed over his household, could mean a regular refuge from her home life. So, in a year or two when she managed to get a car, or when most of the boys in school had cars, his appeal would vanish. She would meet other guys who probably had more autonomy than Jon, and might play on the football team, to boot, and she would move on. Hell, it might happen this summer. Maybe tomorrow. He was fourteen years old. Megan was fifteen—hell, sixteen in a month. This would not be a love to last for all time, even if Megan liked something more about him than the escape from her parents he afforded her.
But right now, it seemed like it had been enough for Megan to reassess her relationship with Jon. As he settled against the seat, Megan put her head on his shoulder. It was just unheard of. And doing it with Carla in the car, so she didn’t even care who knew. Amazing.
Carla pulled into an empty space in a row of empty spaces about as far from the entrance as she could possibly park. She put the dirty brown Datsun into park, with a grinding of geers.
“Stupid shittin’ car,” Carla swore. “Go and you better be back in ten minutes or I’m leaving and you’re walking home.”
“We’ll be back,” Jon said, opening the rear door with tortured squeak of bone dry hinges. “I hope.”
“Don’t worry about her,” Megan assured him as they started across the parking lot to the Abraham Bus Station. “She talks a lot but she’d be scared to death I’d tell Mom and Larry about some of the stuff she’s done. She won’t go until we get back.”
“Hope not,” Jon said. Spending the afternoon trapped at the bus station with Megan wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, though. “I don’t think it should take too long, I’ve just never been here before.”
“Yuh-huhn, you said,” Megan murmured thoughtfully. “Just what are these perishable items, anyway, that you need to pick up from the bus stop you’ve never been to?”
Jon sighed. “To tell you the truth, I just don’t know. It’s a long story. I’m not even sure there will be anything here, I just think this is the place. It’s—well, it’s sort of like a scavenger hunt. Or a treasure hunt. I’ve got to find a package, I’m pretty sure in a locker somewhere, with only what I can remember about—I don’t know, this is too tough to explain.”
“No you don’t,” Megan said, smiling, and poked him—hard, in the ribs. That she had done before, plenty of times. “It sounds all weird and mysterious and stupid. You’re going on a scavenger hunt to a bus stop?”
“I—okay, maybe that’s not the way to put it.” But how should he put it? Without explaining the message from Dr. Bernhard, and how the video cassette had stamped a key out of two quarters. How, as he had thought about it, Jon had remembered a lengthy story about Dr. Bernhard’s frustrations trying to rent a locker at the Abraham Bus Station in downtown Knoxville. That was how he had referred to it, too, almost every time he had mentioned the bus station in his probably fictional anecdote–about a large black lady who wasted a half hour in front of Dr. Bernhard, under the mistaken impression that she could actually take the entire rented locker with her to the hotel she would be staying at. That the story about the black lady and trying to rent a locker had been another coded message, like apparently everything else with Dr. Bernhard. Double meanings had been everywhere. “It’s a long story,” he finished lamely. “Tough to explain. I don’t know what’s going to be in the locker. I’ve got—I think I’m in a situation, and I don’t know what to do. I’ll—maybe it’s nothing.”
“Not perishable, huh?” Megan asked, looping her elbow around his, giving him sly smile. “What’s the big secret?”
“I—I wish I knew. I don’t know. I think I’ve got something dangerous, and I don’t know what to do with it, and I didn’t want it—”
“Want what?” Megan asked, still smiling.
“I’ve gotta tell you, I’m not sure. But—do you know Dr. Bernhard? Have I talked about him?” Jon asked as they stepped onto the portico leading up to the main terminal. “I think I at least told you about the time we set his kitchen on fire—”
Megan looked thoughtful. “Yah,” she consented, as they reached the entrance and the big, dirty glass doors slowly trundled open. “I think so. Vaguely. Something about acid, right?”
“Yeah,” Jon said. “Acid and gasoline, actually.”
They stopped, eyes adjusting to the darkness inside the terminal. Megan put her right hand over her eyes, as if trying to block out the glare of the sun. “So, great white hunter, where’s the big mysterious surprise thing?”
“I—” Jon was started, then stopped. He was tired of saying he didn’t know every three seconds. “Look for something that says lockers, or storage. Or storage boxes. Something like that.”
“Like that over there?” Megan asked, pointing a faded metal sign that quite possibly dated from the mid-50s, over towards the opposite end of the terminal, away from the ticket counter. The sign said: EZ Locker Rental. There was a service counter under the sign, but it was empty and dark and didn’t look like it saw a lot of use. Jon couldn’t imagine the story Dr. Bernhard had fed him as being true. He couldn’t imagine two people in line for lockers here. There was only one ticket window open out of four at the other end of the terminal, and only three people were in that line. And it was noon on a Saturday.
He pulled the key out his pocket. It was unmarked, except by the faint impression of George Washington’s profile on one side and a man in a three cornered hat on the other—at least one of the coins had been a bicentennial quarter. He had given it some thought and believed he had a fairly common sense answer as to the real locker number. He thought it would be locker number 50—the sum of two quarters. He would try 25, if that didn’t work. Failing that, he would look up and down for some other sign—some piece of apocrypha that would take on greater meaning to Jon, if only he could recall the appropriate piece of bullshit he had been fed by Dr. Bernhard. Something from one of his bizarre tangents—like the time he had sung “I’ll Never Grow Up”, hanging off the stair case banister, and then had engaged Jon in a fairly passionate discussion about the stage version of Peter Pan—nothing like the Disney version, nothing!—and the beguiling charms of Mary Martin. There was something attractive, he had said, about middle-aged women playing young boys. Which had been enough to mark that incident indelibly in his mind, which Jon now assumed was probably the point. Or something from the time they had indeed set the kitchen on fire. Or his story about finding a full grown kangaroo in his backyard when he lived in California. Or the story about almost falling off the London Bridge. Or the tangent about all the panels on the Arch de Triumph in Paris. Or-
“These look like lockers, all right,” Megan said, motioning toward the rows of lockers past the empty service counter. Most were small and square. Some of the bottom one’s were larger and rectangular. Many had padlocks on them, in addition to the keyed lock the lockers came with. Still, it didn’t look like a place that saw a whole lot of action. “What number are we looking for?”
“I’m not sure. I think it’s 50.”
“You think? Doesn’t the key have the number on it or something?”
“No,” Jon said. “It’s a copy.” He handed it to Megan. “I guess 50 would be down the second row—”
“This key looks weird.” Megan flipped it between thumb and forefinger. “Where’d you get it?”
Jon started down the second row of battered orange lockers. “It was sent to me.”
“Okay, Mr. Mystery,” she continued, following him. “Who sent it to you?”
“Dr. Bernhard.”
“The guy who’s kitchen you set on fire.”
“Well, actually, he did it. But yeah, that Dr. Bernhard.”
Jon wasn’t sure what he was or wasn’t going to say. She was already involved, by getting him a ride to the bus station. She was here now; whatever was in the locker, she was going to see it. He could just answer her questions, maybe. That might be too much but he didn’t know what else to do. He felt uncomfortable lying to or misleading her, and he was going to need help. Hell, he was going to need a second brain on this, a second opinion, because he was at a loss as to just how to handle this whole mess. There was also the sudden more-than-just-friends relationship he found himself in—at least, he was pretty sure he did—with Megan. The holding of hands, her leaning her head on his shoulder, the suspicious manner in which she had, on more than one occasion, pressed her breasts against him. The casually intimate way she talked with him—she had always been open and friendly with him and Johnny Miller both, especially for a girl at school, but now even that seemed to have gone to the next level. Could he just walk away from that?
Just turning the book, and everything else, over to the government or the police or somebody was seeming like a better and better idea all the time.
“Here,” he said, stopping at locker 50.
Megan looked at it suspiciously. “Doesn’t look very big.”
No, it didn’t. It was one of the small, square lockers that dominated the row, and it looked just about big enough to hold a handbag or a wallet and keys but not much else. Jon put out his hand to Megan, who looked at it blankly. “Oh, the key,” she murmured after a moment, and handed it to him.
The locker did not open. All right, Jon thought, so much for the common sense answer. Jon noticed that he wasn’t particularly surprised, and not even disappointed. Maybe it was none of them. Maybe this wasn’t even the right place and, despite all of Dr. Bernhard’s careful manipulations, Jon had misremembered the wrong anecdote and was looking at the Bus Station when he ought to be looking at a Post Office Box over in Cookeville or the Nashville International Airport. That idea was almost comforting; as a practical matter, he thought, it would make up his mind for him.
“So what now?” she asked from behind him, moving closer. Their shoulders touched. “One down, four hundred to go?”
“Let’s try 25,” Jon said, and they went around to the other side. Jon doubted this would be it; this was the one row that faced out directly to the rest of the terminal, in full view of the one ticket clerk and the sleepy security guard and the odd assortment of people sitting on benches or wandering around aimlessly. And anyone who might have been at the EZ Locker Rental counter, had there been anybody there.
His suspicion was correct, it was not 25.
“Maybe 75?” Megan offered.
“Look for something distinguishing—something written on one, something missing, maybe one of the padlocks is weird, maybe there is a scratch or a sticker.”
“Jeeze, your Dr. Burnsides didn’t make this easy, did he?”
“No, no, he didn’t,” Jon replied distractedly, scanning the first wall of lockers. One locker had a black blotch on it. Another a dent. He was hesitant to try them, and have the key not work, in full view of the rest of the terminal. He decided he get to those last, and went to the second row, scanning one side of the row while Megan scanned the other. One, with a fat yellow padlock, had a car bumper sticker on it that said, Life’s a Bitch and Then You Die. The key didn’t work on the locker or the padlock. Another locker had lines scratched in it, as if it had once been in the possession of a prisoner marking the days in solitary confinement. It also didn’t open.
“How about this?” Megan asked. A large bottom locker had a Grateful Dead sticker on it. Worth a shot, he thought, but no luck. One locker was streaked with blue paint, as if somebody had stored and then spilled a can of paint in the locker above. Jon tried both, without success.
“Next row,” he said. One locker appeared to have been hit several times with a hammer. Another looked to be smeared with something dried, crusty, and brown. One locker had had a neatly placed RIF: Reading is Fundamental sticker, featuring a illustration of a big green book right in the middle. Jon had felt sure that this was the one; he even thought perhaps Dr. Bernhard had mentioned RIF before. The key even seemed to turn, but stopped. He took it out, put it back in, tried again. It turned perhaps a quarter of the way, and then stopped.
“The next row,” Jon said. “You’re sure Carla isn’t going to bug out on us?”
“Not unless she wants to lose her car and get grounded for life,” Megan said. “What about the one with the smiley face?”
It was not the one with the large black magic marker smiley face dominating the small door. Not the one with the Nazi swastika scratched in it, not the one that looked like somebody had painted on it with silver metallic nail polish. Three more rows and a dozen dents, scratches, blotches and bumper stickers later, and they still hadn’t found a lock the key would open. Perhaps he had read the clues wrong. Perhaps his memory was misinformed. Perhaps it had been one of those lockers—the Reading Is Fundamental locker seemed the most likely one, as it had been suspicious and the key had done a quarter turn in the lock—but the key had been wrong or malformed in some way. It had been formed out of two quarters by something that looked like a BetaMax video cassette, after all.
He turned the key in the last candidate—locker 300, which he picked simply because it was the last locker. It didn’t budge. Well, that was that. Hopefully Megan was right about her sister, and she wasn’t halfway back to Oak Ridge.
Megan put her hand on Jon’s back. “Wild goose chase, huh?”
“I guess,” Jon said, almost relieved. Nothing more for him to do. Now, he could just get rid of the damn thing. The idea of turning everything over to the police or maybe calling the Oak Ridge National Laboratory didn’t exactly sit well, because he could still see himself getting in trouble. He might get in trouble for not having told somebody right away. He might get in trouble because he—and maybe Megan, and maybe his mom—knew too much.
Maybe he could bundle it all up and leave an anonymous tip somehow. Maybe—
“What about one of those?” Megan asked, pointing into the dark behind the EZ Locker Rental service counter. Jon followed her finger, and blinked. He could barely see anything in the inky blackness.
“I’m not sure—are those lockers? I think those are just boxes.”
“Are you blind? Come on,” she said, and pushed through the counter door.
“Uh—“ Jon started, looking around. “I’m not sure—”
Megan jabbed her finger at a faded placard taped—repeatedly and yet still pealing up—to the top of the counter with the operating hours of EZ Locker Rental. Most of the times had been rewritten with a black marker. They also had apparently stopped accepting Visa and Master Charge, as the credit card logos had been crossed out repeatedly, with the stern warning “No Personal Checks!” scrawled underneath.
“Cash, Money Order, Or Traveler’s Check,” Jon read from where Megan’s finger was pointing.
Megan laughed. “No, goofball—Saturday hours: 1:oo PM to 5:00 PM. We don’t exactly have a whole lot of time. If anybody ever actually shows up here.”
“Then maybe we should just go—”
“Come on,” Megan said, grabbing Jon’s hand and pulling him through the counter door. “Do you want to find this big bad mystery package of yours are not? Might be perishable, remember.”
She grinned slyly at him. At least she was having fun.
She paused, looking at the wall, and then reached out to it. The lights behind the service desk came on, and then Jon did indeed see the lockers. About seven of them, loose, on the floor, three stacked on top of each other, like boxes.
One of those, he thought, with that same unambiguous certainty he had felt when he had realized the object Dr. Bernhard had left him with had been one of the books the good doctor had loaned him. Dammit, dammit, dammit.
He thought about Dr. Bernhard’s anecdote, about the large black lady who had insisted she should be able to rent a locker and take it home. They had some loose lockers—broken or samples, I don’t know, but just lockers sitting on the floor. I was so exasperated with waiting, I was ready to go behind the counter and just grab one of them and give it to her myself, just so I could be done and leave.
Jon followed Megan toward the lockers, looking back over his shoulder. There seemed to be a few more people mulling about the station now, and waiting in line at the ticket window, but he and Megan didn’t seem to be attracting any attention. He shook his head, looking back at the cash register, then across to the wall, where a large, shallow metal cabinet was mounted, secured by a single, tiny lock. He guessed that was probably the cabinet where all the keys to the unrented lockers were. Maybe even to the rented lockers. Again, he looked back nervously, but no elite secret force of bus station security officers were descending on them.
Look at me, I’m scared of security guards at a bus station, Jon thought, with more pleasure of recognition than shame. I’m supposed be on the run from the government and the FBI and the CIA and the police and—hell, I don’t know. Maybe he was just going senile. Or maybe working at that place cooked his brain. I’m not the guy for this job.
So, the trip up to Knoxville and the locker rental slalom course had served a good purpose; it had helped clear his mind. As a practical matter, he could not do what Dr. Bernhard wanted. As an ethical matter, he was not at all sure that he should, even if he could. The issue was settled.
He inserted the key in the keyhole of the first locker—one of the larger, luggage-sized locker. He had figured the larger lockers would be a better candidate than the smaller ones, and he was right. The key turned this time, a full 180 degree circuit, and the locker door popped open an inch.
“Bingo,” Megan said. “That’s the one. Did I call it or what?”
“You did,” Jon conceded. “How the hell he managed to get one of these lockers—”
“Go on, open it all the way, I’m kind of into this now. I want to see.”
Jon swung the door open. Even with his earlier decision—that no matter what it was, he was off the hook—he still felt a great wave of relief. The locker was empty. Not a bag, not a wallet, not a piece of paper or a stick of gum. Just an empty locker.
“Well, that was a great big waste of time,” Jon said convivially. “All that for a big bunch of nothing. Come on, let’s get out of here before we get in trouble—”
“I don’t get it,” Megan murmured, leaning forward, inspecting the locker closely. “It opened. Why would Dr. Burnsides make you go through all this trouble for a stupid empty locker—”
Megan’s eyes brightened. “Maybe there’s a fake bottom, or something taped to the top—”
She reached inside the locker. Just has her fingers disappeared, the empty inside of the locker rippling like the air over hot coals, several things came together in Jon’s head, and reached out to stop her.
Too late.
“Holy shit,” she said as her hand vanished into the emptiness of the locker. It looked as though her hand had been erased, up past her wrist. “Holy shit what is—“
Megan’s body arched, her head thrown back, eyes wide and white, mouth suddenly, violently agape in a noiseless scream. For one small but seemingly endless moment, Jon saw her skin light up with blue flame, literally glowing beneath her clothes, highlighting her hair as the blue-white light seemed to radiate from her scalp. Her eyes were solid white and in her open mouth he could see blue-white fire. It was as if she was illuminated from the inside by a lightning bolt. For that brief, interminable moment, she blazed.
Then it was gone, barely longer than the flash from a camera but with a hell of an after image. Jon grabbed her arm to jerk her hand away from the locker, just as she collapsed back against the floor, eyes and mouth wide open, in a mask not of fear or pain but surprise. The light was gone. Smoke—no, not smoke, but white steam rose from her clothes, from her hair, from her mouth. Jon’s hand closed around her wrist, but instead of feeling hot she felt cold—dead cold.
“Megan—“ he started, his voice strangled. He opened his mouth again and just made a choking noise.
Oh my god she’s dead oh my god I just killed Megan, Jon thought. His heart was racing; he felt dizzy. He felt numb. The edge of his vision seemed to grow dark and his breathing became labored, shallow. I’m going to pass out.
He leaned over her. Can’t pass out. Can’t. Got to do something. She wasn’t breathing. Her brown eyes stared up at him, blank and unaware. He still held one cold forearm in his hand, but wasn’t sure how to feel for a pulse. He looked at her arm, the fine netting of scratches she had gotten trying to make it through his hedges last night less prominent, but still clearly there. It seemed like something that had happened a million years ago. To somebody else.
“Megan, wake up oh dear God Megan please get up please be okay oh God please—”
Not breathing. Not breathing. CPR—God, how he wished he could do CPR. He had seen it done, but he didn’t really know how to do it himself. He hadn’t practiced. He hadn’t taken a class. He remembered something about lifting the neck up, trying to clear the airways—or was that with someone who had drowned? Oh God oh God oh God help me!
He put his hand under her neck, lifting it up as her head fell backwards. That was supposed to keep the airway cleared, right? Oh God oh God Oh God I don’t know how to do this! He had to get help. But wouldn’t help be too late? Didn’t you have only five or six minutes—eight at the most—before it became almost impossible to revive a person, or until they got brain damage or something?
As he leaned over her head, he saw her eye twitch. Her eyeball moved left, then right. Then ahead, straight at Jon. His vision was still spotty, but he thought he saw her brown eyes dilate and focus on him. “Megan—“ Jon started.
The arm he was holding up near her wrist twitched. In a single, violent spasm, in something almost like a karate maneuver, she broke his grip and grabbed Jon’s forearm with a bone-grinding strength. Her nails dug into his skin—deep into his skin—drawing blood immediately. Bright pain bloomed in his arm, and he let out a little yelp, but he didn’t care. Megan was alive. One leg twitched and then the other kicked. The hand on Jon’s forearm squeezed tighter. There was still something wrong.
Her other arm started to beat on the floor. She lifted her head up, and then let it down with a crack against the floor. Then she did it again. Her eyes were now wet and glistening, tears streaming down the side of her face. Her lips seemed the be trying to mouth words, but no sound was coming out—
She still wasn’t breathing. That was what was wrong.
“Shit!” he spat. “Breathe! Take a breath! Come on—” He put his free arm around her shoulders—God, she was cold—and started pulling her up. “Come on, Megan, you’ve got to breathe—”
Her color was changing. Her face was deepening into a blotchy purple. Her eyes, darting back and forth, were bright with fear. As she looked pleadingly at Jon, and then up at the ceiling, and then to the side, she let out a strangled little gurgle.
“That’s it, do it, breathe,” Jon said. “Breathe in. Deep breath. Deep—”
Jon’s heart thudded in his chest—it was like it was trying to beat its way out of his ribcage. He felt the blood pounding in his neck, pulsing in his temples, like someone had hooked a garden hose up to a fire hydrant. He could hear the rush of it over the ringing buzz in his ears. I’m going to have a heart attack, he thought lucidly. I’m going to have a heart attack and we’re both going to die.
“Breathe,” Jon pleaded. He tried to pull her closer to him, not knowing what else to do. He needed to get help, he thought. Get an adult. Get a doctor. I’ll pass out, if I stand up, he thought. I think I’m going to pass out anyway. “Megan, come on, for God’s sake—”
She drew in a loud, ragged inhalation of air. It was the sound of someone, trapped deep underwater, breaking the surface at the last possible moment. She gasped, still pounding the floor with the flat palm of one outstretched hand. “Hhhhshhhk,” she hissed. “Haaaaak.”
“Okay, okay, good, breathe out,” Jon said, realizing he was giving her useless instruction but unable to stop himself. “Big breath out, big breath in. Oh God thank God you‘re alive. Thank you thank you.”
Megan exhaled dramatically at Jon. The brushed-and-flossed minty freshness was gone. Her breath smelled like chemicals and ozone. She inhaled again, and exhaled. She stopped banging her hand on the floor, and released Jon’s arm completely. A little rivulet of blood ran from the middle of his forearm down to his hand, but he didn’t notice. Megan was alive. Alive! Jon hadn’t killed her. Oh, thank God.
Another deep breath, as Jon lowered her back down to the floor. She tensed, back arching as the back of her head touched the floor, and drew in another ragged, choking breath. She looked at Jon, and then at the counter, then at the ceiling. She didn’t look toward the locker.
“It’s all right, you’re gonna be all right,” he said. It was more of a plea than an assurance. “You’re breathing, you’re all right.”
She worked her jaw, trying to speak. “Yyurk,” she said.
“Ssshhh. Don’t try and talk yet,” Jon said. He stroked her hair gently, fingers running along the woven bumps of her braids. Her hair was cold—not just cold, he realized. Frozen. He stopped stroking, instead running a finger in between the tiny valleys of her braided hair. There wasn’t much, but there was no mistaking what he felt.
Frost. He stroked her cheek, which was damp and warm. Her eyes turned to him as he touched her, then she looked away again, apparently dazed. Or going into shock? God, I hope not, he thought. I will pass out.
He touched the sleeve of her shirt. It was cold and stiff, and lightly covered with a fine frost. The same with her jeans and her ragged Nike tennis shoes. The vapor he had seen rising from her right after the flash—it had been steam. Not from boiling heat but extreme cold, like the frozen vapor from the freezer on a hot day. What the hell had happened?
I am afraid you are in tremendous danger, Bernhard had said. And I’m afraid I’ve put you in it. Only the old, senile, stupid, stupid man had not just but Jon in danger. He had put Megan in danger. Probably everybody Jon knew.
Megan’s breathing was steadying, her chest falling and rising slowly in a deep rhythm, as if she were asleep. Her eyes were open and looking up and to the side absently, unfocused. Still not looking toward the locker, though.
The locker.
Jon looked back at the locker, door swung wide open, key still in the lock, still completely empty.
Except it wasn’t completely empty, was it? There was something in there—something that had almost killed Megan. Had Bernhard booby-trapped it? Be very careful who you involve, Dr. Bernhard had said. For their sake as well as your own. He must have booby-trapped it—perhaps for anybody other than Jon. Perhaps for anybody other than Jon with Jon, in case he was a hostage, or if they used that specific key but then turned out not to be Jon, or—
Megan tried to sit up, and then flopped back down. Her teeth were chattering. She tried to sit up again, trembling, pulling on Jon’s arm. “Hang on, I think we’re okay,” Jon said. “I know you’re freezing, I’m so, so sorry—we’ll get out of here in a second.”
From where he was crouched at Megan’s side, he couldn’t see anything but the ceiling of the terminal immediately beyond the EZ Locker Rental counter. So, he didn’t think anybody had seen them, or could see them now. But that flash—it had been intense. Jon could still see ragged white-pink blotches hovering in front of him wherever he looked. It had been silent, except for a few clanks as the locker door swung back, and the sound of Megan hitting the floor. When she had first started breathing again—that had been loud. Not much he guessed in the overall background noise of the bus terminal, but he had no way to judge. His own heartbeat sounded like a jackhammer hooked up to a bass drum, to him.
The flash, though silent in itself, had been painfully bright. Certainly, that would have been hard to miss, even if some had only seen it peripherally. But nobody had appeared, and there were no sounds of anybody running in to check on them now. Just the dull background noise of the bus terminal—low conversation, footsteps, doors opening and closing, the occasional fuzzy announcement over the PA system.
Jon stood up enough to get a look over the counter. There seemed to be more people milling around the station, and another ticket window had been opened. There also appeared to be another security guard, and Jon saw that there was somebody else down towards the end of the last row of lockers, retrieving what looked to be a portable typewriter. Not exactly a coast was clear, but as clear as it was going to get.
Jon was not entirely sure why he did what he did next. He had already made up his mind to turn the book and the video cassette and anything else Dr. Bernhard had stuck him with over to “the authorities”, whoever those turned out to be. He was not going to be a fugitive from the government, jeopardizing his family and friends because some senile old man had gone paranoid and demented. No matter what he had been working on—and, obviously, the book and video cassette represented something incredible, something spectacular, and something terribly dangerous—sticking it with a fourteen-year old kid and telling him to go run away from the full force of United States Government was not a sign of moral dissent but of irrational dementia.
What had happened to Megan—something perhaps engineered by Dr. Bernhard himself—was a clear indicator to Jon that he was more likely to do damage to himself and others than he was to save the world. The government was obviously not perfect. Why did Reagan want more nuclear missiles, when America could already destroy the entire world ten times over? What good would the eleventh and twelfth time do anybody? What was all the evil empire stuff? And hadn’t he just heard something about the Pentagon spending $500 per unit for hammers and toilet seats and toothpaste? No, the government wasn’t perfect, and turning over the book and video cassette and whatever else might lead to bad things. But it was in a much better position to deal with sort of shit than he was. Considering what happened to Megan, the sooner the better.
So why, when he was intending to just pull Megan’s arm around his shoulder and beat a hasty retreat, he instead turned and put his hand inside the locker, he did not know. Considering that he had, he thought, completely lost interest in what was in the locker, and had decided he would just tell “the authorities” about that, too, and then they could deal with it, it didn’t make much sense. But, as casually as a man turning around to grab his coat before getting up to catch his flight, Jon reached in the locker and felt his hand touch something cold and flat.
As Jon’s hand seemed to disappear into the empty space, the interior of the locker shimmered and sparkled. Jon recognized the effect; he had last seen it come from Dr. Berhnard’s disembodied head as it had disappeared from above video cassette. With a mild flash and pop, the locker was not empty anymore. There was a briefcase—a big, fat black one that looked to be thirty years old—sitting inside. Jon’s fingertips, now clearly visible, touched the top corner. Then Jon pulled the briefcase out, set it to the side, and pushed the locker shut with his sneaker. The door made a loud clank as it shut, and Megan jerked, startled. She turned as if looking for the source of sound, but looked away from the locker.
“Jjjzzhhaan,” Megan sputtered. “Hhherkkk.”
Jon crouched beside Megan. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.” He took one arm and put it around his neck. He stood up, Megan struggling clumsily to her feet. As she got her legs under her, her feet slipped several times. Jon looked down, and noticed the floor was damp. The frost was melting. Her clothes were cold and damp, too. With his right arm around Megan’s back supporting her, Jon crouched slightly and picked up the briefcase. Jon, his heart still hammering in his ears, felt a sudden stab of anger as he did so. Almost like rage. Package, a fucking package, he thought. What fucking difference did that make, why not just say it’s a fucking briefcase? You old, stupid, stupid motherfucker. Why not say it’s a briefcase and oh by the way it’s booby-trapped to flash freeze anybody else too, buckaroo? And why in a locker behind the goddamned service counter? What if somebody had been there—what the hell was I supposed to have done then? Some super-shitting-genius you turned out to be.
Jon felt the flat palm of Megan’s hand whack him firmly on the back. “Gggaaaak,” she said. At first Jon was confused, and then she batted at him again. It was then he realized he was pulling her against him, squeezing with all his strength, teeth clenched, the hand gripping the briefcase handle white-knuckled and trembling with rage.
“Sorry,” Jon mumbled. “I’m sorry.” He relaxed his grip, and Megan put her arm stiffly around his neck. Her teeth were chattering and she was shivering and twitching against him, stuck in the middle of her own, self-contained earthquake. Still, she was managing to hold on and put one foot in front of the other. Jon pushed the counter door back and pulled Megan through. He could see the clocks mounted over the doors to both departure/arrival and the parking lot—it was four minutes after one o’clock. The EZ Locker Rental people apparently got a late start.
Past the counter, Jon started towards the door. Another person, an older woman with very tall red hair, was at a locker in the first row, but didn’t even given them a passing glass. Wouldn’t she at least have been on her way over here a minute ago? Wouldn’t she have seen or heard something? Jon wondered. Apparently not.
More people occupied the benches and milled around the station. A few people—maybe attendants—were pushing large blocks of luggage and squeaking roller carts. The lines behind the two open ticket counters were getting longer. What appeared to be a church group was entering through the arrival/departure doors. No one gave Jon and Megan even a passing glance as they walked, her leaning against him, shuffling, limping, and shivering, him lugging a large black briefcase. She almost fell twice, the second time punctuated with a distinct yelp, and Jon saw an old man look up for a moment from his paper, and then look back down. And then they were back outside, in the bright warmth of the sun.
It was easily fifteen degrees warmer outside than in. Megan looked up towards the near-noon sun, eyes closed, and smiled. The teeth-chattering stopped. “Mmmmm,” she murmured. “Worms. Scood.”
“Come on, let’s get you in the car,” Jon replied, and started moving across the parking lot. Megan began walking more under her own power, but stopped every few seconds to stand and look up, eyes closed, toward the sun. The shivering and jittering was dissipating. “Swarm,” she said. “Choogle.”
Jon thought maybe “Swarm” was just “it’s warm”, but wasn’t sure what “choogle” was supposed to mean. Her voice was becoming clearer and less cracked, though, even if her words were still slurred. For the first time since Megan had reached into the locker, Jon felt his heartbeat slowing. She wasn’t going to die, they had gotten out of the bus station, they were about to head home—he wasn’t exactly about to relax, but the sensation of being on the verge of a heart attack was subsiding. For one brief moment he thought Carla had made good on her threat and left—it had, after all, taken a lot more than ten minutes—but quickly saw the beat-up mud-colored Datsun parked across three spaces on the other side of the parking lot. “Now she’s trying to give me a heart attack,” Jon muttered.
“Ig,” Megan agreed.
At the car, Megan let go of Jon and leaned back against the hot metal of the Datsun. “Oh yeah,” she said clearly. Then: “Yas mumbleful.” Jon opened the car door, and she rolled over, pressing her face against the trunk lid. “Mmmmmmmmm,” she hummed, then switched cheeks. “Ahhhhmmmmm.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Carla was yelling. “You’re lucky I didn’t leave both your asses here and tell everybody I didn’t know where the hell you were. I’ve got a lot better shit to do than wait all day in a stupid parking lot—”
Jon helped Megan into the car, and then got in himself, putting the briefcase between himself and the door. He noticed Megan pointedly looking in the other direction as he pulled the briefcase in, as if she didn’t want to see it. After a moment, she slumped down against the car door, looking away. Now she hates me, he thought. Well, shouldn’t she? he thought back at himself. You almost got her killed, you stupid bastard. You can blame Dr. Bernhard all you want, but you’re the dumbass who brought Megan into this.
After three false starts, Carla got the Datsun started. “You were taking so long, I went across the street to get a burger. I figured you’d be out by the time I got back, and still another ten goddamned minutes. You are so lucky I didn’t just leave. And no, I didn’t get you anything to eat and no, we’re not stopping to get you anything to eat. You can waste your own time for the rest of the day.”
Carla peeled out of the parking lot with a screech of rubber. She swerved, and hit the horn. “Goddammit, can’t you people drive?” she spat at the windshield.
Megan, slumped against the car door and facing the other direction, murmured, “Hush, Carya. Sheepy.”
Carla snorted, then turned on the radio. It was in the middle of Quiet Riot’s “Cum on Feel the Noize”, and Carla turned it up, to make sure they did. Megan drunkenly slapped her hands over her ears. Jon frowned, looking at Megan and up to Carla. He really didn’t like Carla. If being on the run was going to mean having Carla drive them anywhere else—well, that was just another reason to wash his hands of the whole mess.
Jon tapped the briefcase, frowning. The trip back could not end soon enough.
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