Adaptation (11 page)

And then he reached out and punched her in the shoulder.

“Ow!” She rubbed her shoulder indignantly. “What was that for?”

“You freaked the
hell
out of us,” Julian said, and hugged her.

She squeaked in surprise. He was taller than she remembered; her head came only to his chin now, and he held her so tight that all her breath seemed to squeeze out of her. When he let her go, she said, “I missed you too.” They both broke into laughter.

“Come on in,” Julian said. “What’s with the all-black? Are you turning into a goth?” He assessed her appearance again. “A preppy goth?”

“I just came from a funeral,” she said.

Julian’s face sobered. “Oh, sorry.” He shut the door quietly. “I forgot. You mean for Mr. Chapman?”

“Yeah.” The front hall was dim, and the house was unusually silent. “Where are your parents?” she asked, changing the subject.

“They’re out back working on the ‘farm,’ ” he said, giving the word air quotes. Julian’s parents had bought the three-story Edwardian in the Mission District two years ago partly because it had a giant backyard, and Julian’s mom—who was a city planner in her day job—had a dream to start an urban farm collective. “I think they planted about a zillion strawberry plants while you were gone, and they’re desperately trying to keep them alive.”

Julian began to head upstairs, and Reese followed him. “When did you find out about Mr. Chapman?”

“A couple of weeks ago.” Julian’s room was on the third floor
and overlooked the street through big bay windows. It was messy as usual, with his bed half-covered by a dark blue quilt and clothes piled up in random clumps on the floor. Photos of UFOs covered the wall over his desk. Julian lifted his backpack off the beanbag chair and gestured for her to sit. “The school sent an official letter to everybody’s parents.”

She lowered herself into the chair, the beans whooshing out beneath her. Julian sat in his desk chair, tipping it back on its rear legs. Behind him the star-field screen saver on his computer was running, almost hypnotic as the tiny white dots sped forward on an endless loop.

“So,” Julian said, “you wanna tell me about it?”

Her knees knocked together as she considered what she could say. “After the accident I was mostly out of it, so there’s not much to tell.”

“But what happened exactly? The letter only told us that Mr. Chapman was shot in a carjacking.”

She told him about renting the car at the Phoenix airport; the traffic and roadblocks that led them to Las Vegas; the horror of the carjacking and the surreality of the gas station explosion. “We tried to call 911, but the phones weren’t working. So David and I decided to try to get back to San Francisco. That’s when we had the car accident. I was driving. It was late at night and in the middle of nowhere, and this bird flew at the headlights and I flipped the car over.”

“A bird?”

“Yeah.” She heard the note of curiosity in his voice and said, “It was probably just a coincidence. I mean, if you’re thinking about those plane crashes.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Have you heard about the other bird stuff going on?”

“What bird stuff? I was in a coma for twenty-seven days.”

“But you know what’s been going on, right?”

“I read this issue of
Time
magazine that sort of summarized it, but—” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What?”

“Birds. They’ve been all over the news. Birds crashing into skyscrapers; dozens of birds dying randomly in some suburb in Virginia. Birds. So when you said a bird crashed your car—”

“It didn’t crash the car.
I
crashed the car; the bird just flew straight at me.”

He spread his hands, shrugging. “Same thing. It caused you to crash the car.”

“Maybe. I guess technically that’s true.”

“So what happened after?”

“I can’t really talk about that.” His questions were making the back of her neck tense.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I can’t talk about it. But I’m fine now, and I’m back. So what’s been up with you?”

He gave her an incredulous look that turned slowly into excitement. “You crashed your car in the middle of nowhere in Nevada because a bird hit you, and now you can’t talk about what happened? Do you realize what that sounds like?”

She was uncomfortable. “Uh, what?”

The front legs of his chair banged down onto the wooden floor. He jumped up and searched among the photos tacked to the wall. He pulled one down and held it out to her. She took it and scanned the image; it was a satellite photo of what looked
like a desert. There were some mountain ranges along the perimeter, a line that indicated a road running down the center, and a few pale boxes that looked like they might be buildings. “What’s this?” she asked.

“Area 51,” Julian said. “Is that where you were?”

A chill washed over her, but she said, “That’s kind of jumping to conclusions, isn’t it?” She handed the photo back to him. He dropped it on the desk and sat down in his chair again, elbows on his knees as he leaned forward and watched her. She noticed a shadow running along the brown skin of his jawline. Was he growing a
beard
?

“You suck at lying, Reese.”

She flushed. “I’m not lying,” she insisted, but his eyebrows just rose in disbelief. The star-scape screen saver on Julian’s monitor behind him abruptly stopped speeding ahead. A message window popped up—and then another and another. “Hey, you’re getting some e-mail or something,” she said, grateful for the distraction.

He spun around. “Shit.” He scooted his chair closer to the desk and began to click on the messages.

“What is it?”

“They’re videos. I’m doing some video editing for Bin 42. I wasn’t expecting to get any today—this must be—whoa.”

She scrambled to her feet and went to look over his shoulder at the monitor. “What is it?”

“Freaking birds. I told you, this shit is everywhere now.” The video was panning over a mound of dead birds, everything from sparrows to pigeons and crows, their eyes glittering as the camera moved.

“Oh my God,” Reese exclaimed.

The camera zoomed out to show what seemed to be a vast warehouse with exposed pipes overhead. A machine that looked like a giant oven was located at one end of the cavernous space; the birds were mounded up on the floor in front of the machine as if they were about to be shoveled inside. The video ended with a jerk, and Julian clicked on the second one. It showed the exterior of a nondescript building with a single door on which a biohazard sign was affixed. The warehouse was surrounded by a deserted parking lot and empty fields. In the distance were low, brown hills.

“This must be the exterior of the location with the bird pile,” Julian said. “Keith wants me to edit them into one video.”

“Who’s Keith? Why are you editing footage of dead birds?”

Julian glanced at her sideways. “You know that Bin 42 website?”

“Yeah, they interviewed the guy who runs it in the
Time
article I read.”

“Well, I know the guy—that’s Keith.”

“You
know
him?” Reese perched on the edge of his desk. “How? And I thought his name was something else, not Keith.”

“He didn’t tell them his real name. You never know whether the government is listening. Remember when I did that story for the
Kennedy Leader
about conspiracies?”

“Yeah, the one you wrote to get an A in journalism without having to work too hard.”

He grinned. “Yeah, that one. Well, that’s when I contacted Keith. He was kind of flattered that an award-winning high school newspaper wanted to interview him.”

“Award-winning? Did you actually say that?” She laughed.

“I put it in the e-mail. You know you have to present yourself in the best possible light. Anyway, after that we kept in touch, and since the June Disaster he’s had a lot of video footage to deal with, so I offered to help him out.”

Julian hit Play again, and the camera panned over the dead birds. She watched it out of the corner of her eye and grimaced. “I saw a couple of birds crash onto the ground when I was at the Phoenix Airport. It was bizarre. You never see dead birds fall out of the sky like that. Where do they go to die, anyway?”

“Sometimes they die in big groups and end up freaking out the locals.” Julian dragged the video files into his video-editing program. “Every year there’s some hysterical news story about a mass bird die-off, but these things happen all the time.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But these birds are not dying normally.”

“Did they really hit the planes? Like, fly directly into them?”

“The ones on June nineteenth? Yep.”

“What do you think caused that?”

He shook his head. “Nothing good. Birds crash into planes all the time, and planes can withstand sucking a couple of birds into their engines, but entire flocks? It’s weird.”

“Was it terrorists?”

“That’s one theory, but how the hell would terrorists be able to train massive numbers of birds to attack airplanes? That’s a pretty far-out theory. But I think that’s why the government has been exterminating wild flocks of birds. Mostly Canada geese, but pigeons and crows and other common birds too. The animal-rights people are going insane.”

They heard the doorbell ring, and Reese glanced at her watch. “That must be my mom. She was just running a few errands and said she’d be back to pick me up. My grandparents are coming over for dinner tonight. We have to eat early so they can get home before the curfew.” Reese scooted off the edge of the desk. “Hey, what was it like here when I was gone?”

“It got a little crazy. My sister came back from Berkeley for a week because everybody thought the East Bay was going to riot, but the National Guard was called in and it wasn’t too bad there. San Francisco was mostly normal, although they did cancel Pride.”

“Wow, really?”

“Yeah. Sucked because it was actually hot that weekend too. But other than that, it was just a bunch of paranoid people cleaning out the grocery stores. The Mission was really quiet for a while—it was weird to go out and see all the taquerias closed. And trash didn’t get picked up for days, which meant everything stank in the heat wave, but after the flight ban was lifted, the garbage trucks came back too.”

They heard Julian’s mom calling upstairs. “Julian! Reese!”

“Come on,” Julian said, slinging an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll let you off the hook tonight, but don’t think you’re gonna get away with it for long.”

“Get away with what?” she asked as they headed downstairs.

“Hiding whatever happened to you after your accident. The truth
will
come out.” He attempted to raise one eyebrow at her, but he still hadn’t mastered the trick, which meant he looked more ridiculous than devious.

She laughed to cover the burst of unease that shot through her. “I’m sure it will.”

That night she dreamed of a yellow room. Red streaked
down the walls like dripping paint, and she felt enclosed in a warm, pulsing cocoon. Her heartbeat sounded in a deep, reverberating bass, and it was as though she wasn’t merely inside the yellow room but
was
the room itself. The walls were her skin; the red was her blood.

She awoke, heart pounding, as dawn light slipped through the window blinds. She threw off her blankets, kicking them onto the floor as she sat up, gasping for breath. Her T-shirt was stuck to her sweat-dampened skin. She went to the bay windows and pushed one open, letting in the cool morning air. Outside, the street was quiet and empty. It was barely six
AM
and not even the dog walkers were out yet. As she leaned against the windowsill, she mulled over the dream. There was something so deeply
familiar about it that it felt etched in her bones. Had she had the dream before? She couldn’t remember.

She heard an alarm go off elsewhere in the house. It was Monday morning, and her mom had to go to work. Today, Reese was supposed to call SF Radar, the website where she had begun a summer internship in early June, to tell them she was back and ask if she could finish out the month of July. The thought of it made Reese feel exhausted already. She left the window open but climbed back into bed, pulling her pillow over her head, and eventually managed to fall asleep again.

When she awoke the second time, her bedside clock said it was 10:06, and her mom had left a note propped up next to a new cell phone.
I got this phone for you. Don’t forget to call SF Radar. I love you, Mom.
Reese groaned and forced herself to get up.

Downstairs the coffeepot was still on, and as she poured herself a cup she saw the newspaper lying on the kitchen table. She sat down with her mug and pulled the
Chronicle
toward her. There was a photo of President Randall just below the masthead. She was walking across a concrete floor in a warehouse, wearing goggles and plastic gloves, and the headline read:
President Randall Visits Bird Disposal Facility.

WASHINGTON—President Elizabeth Randall was accompanied by members of the Defense Department on Sunday during an impromptu visit to a bird disposal facility outside Washington, DC. Since the plane crashes of June 19, the Defense Department, in cooperation with the National Guard and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has
spearheaded a nationwide effort to exterminate potentially dangerous birds, primarily focusing on Canada geese. However, as public reports of bird violence by other avian species—including crows and pigeons—have increased, the bird disposal teams have begun to cull other birds as well.

After the visit, President Randall spoke briefly to the press, stating: “I’m here to assure the American people that we are working very hard to make certain that no other bird strikes will occur. As you can see, we’re following stringent practices to contain any possible diseases that the birds might bear, and we will continue to test the birds for signs of what might have caused the bird strikes on June 19.”

Outside the facility, members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other animal-rights groups staged a protest, dressing in bird costumes and demanding that the Randall Administration stop the exterminations. “There is no evidence that the birds they’re killing have anything to do with the June Disaster,” said Andrea Reynolds, a spokesperson for PETA. “This is just senseless murder of innocent creatures stoked by baseless fears, and the Randall Administration should be ashamed of itself.”

Joseph Morales, a zoologist at the National Zoo, does not believe that the birds involved in the plane crashes were diseased and thinks that the exterminations may not be necessary. “I think that the likeliest cause of the bird
strikes was an electromagnetic storm that disrupted the birds’ magnetoreception capabilities,” Morales said. “Testing them for some kind of disease or genetic abnormality wouldn’t prove much.”

Nonetheless the Randall Administration will continue with the targeted exterminations for the time being. “Our number one goal is to make sure that Americans are safe in the skies,” said Homeland Security Chief Sandra Rinaldi. “Right now, culling flocks of Canada geese is one step to that safety.”