Autumn in the City of Angels (21 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me not to change in front you?!”  I covered my face with my hands, trying to cover the blush creeping up my cheeks.

“I didn’t look,” Grey said seriously.  “Please believe me when I say that over the years I’ve gotten pretty good at not invading people’s privacy.”  He leaned across the table and pulled my hands down.  “Don’t hide your face.”

His hands were warm around my own, and I felt the blush on my face deepen.  I changed the subject.  “So how old
are
you?”

Grey thought for a moment then said, “About the equivalent to three hundred Earth years.”

“And you look like that?” I said, gazing at his smooth face.  “You could have sold your vitamin in a bottle and been a gazillionaire.”

He chuckled and said, “It feels good to talk with you about this.  You have no idea how many times I imagined myself telling you.  It feels really nice.”

“So you can go anywhere, by... projecting?”

Grey grimaced.  “You could say I’m kind of the runt of the litter when it comes to astral projection.  It’s not something I excel at.”

“You?  Not excel at something?”  I raised an eyebrow.  “That’s hard to believe.  We seemed to have made it here in one piece today.”

Grey smiled.  “Carrying someone with me isn’t the hard part.  You just need to have as much physical contact with that person as possible.  When I project, I have to concentrate very hard.  Otherwise, it’s very dangerous.  I have to focus solely on where I want to be.  And I don’t like having to do it blind.  That’s the part that gives me trouble.”

“Blind?”

“It’s best if I’ve been to the location I want to go to before I try to project myself there.  It’s easier to concentrate on it if I’ve seen it.  It can be downright dangerous to transport yourself somewhere you’ve never been, because you don’t know where to place yourself in that location.  You could end up twelve feet up in the air or inside a wall.  There are ways to teach your mind to find a safe place to land, which is what I have problems with.  My projection instructor called me ‘short-sighted.’"

 “But when you left supplies for me, you had never been here—”

“I had, once before.  When I brought you home.”  I gasped, recalling the morning when I awoke on the couch.

“You recall describing this place in vivid detail to me?”

I nodded.

“It was very helpful.  Almost as if I’d been here before.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” was all I could think to say in response, as I realized that today was my second time to be “projected” with him. 

Grey finally interrupted my frazzled thoughts.  “Would you mind loaning me some dry clothes to change into?”

 “Of course,” I said and led him into my parents’ room, my room, and snapped on the light of the walk-in closet.  I fumbled inside an old chest and found a pair of my dad’s jeans and a button-up shirt.  I handed them to Grey, and his hand brushed mine.  I looked up at him, and he looked down at me, and I was amazed.  Baffled.  Intrigued.  Struck.  Overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of all he’d told me.

I took a deep breath and murmured, “Grey, I...” My voice trailed off.

He brushed my jaw with his fingers.  “Thank you for listening.  And for believing me.  I felt drawn to you from the moment I first saw you in that warehouse with Karl.  I was there looking for antibiotics, and, when I saw you, I couldn’t move.”  He smiled almost sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders slightly.  “I guess I was falling for you before
I
even knew it.”

He stepped out of the closet and said, “Change into some dry clothes.  Then we’ll talk more.  Okay?”

He closed the closet door softly, and I stood there, dazed for a moment.  Grey was falling for me? 
Had
been falling for me when he brought me home that day?  That was a fascinating bit of news.

I fumbled with the button on my wet jeans, my fingers wanting to move quicker than they were capable of.  I slipped into soft, dry pajamas and reveled for a moment in their cleanliness.

When I opened the door, Grey was standing with his back to me, looking at my shelf of pictures.  He had changed into the dry pants, but the shirt dangled from his hands, his torso bare.

I couldn’t help but stare at his perfect back as I walked over to stand with him.

“Your family is beautiful,” he said.  I found the photograph he was looking at.  It was the picture of me and my parents on the carnival ride on the pier.

I sighed, used to the hollow feeling in my chest when I thought of my parents.  I heard a rustling noise as Grey slipped on my dad’s old shirt.  I noticed a small vial on a long chain disappear under the buttons.  It looked as old as the navy sweater he wore.  I looked up at him and, as usual, he was already watching me, his face concerned.

“I don’t need to ask if you miss them,” he said, gesturing to the picture of my parents.  My thoughts crashed into the wall I carefully built in my mind to stop myself from pointless self-pity.  Of course I missed them, but I wasn’t going to go further with that thought.

I leaned into his side.  “I’d rather not talk about it,” I said quietly.

His arms went around me.  “Of course,” he said, combing his fingers through my hair.

This simple act only reminded me of my mother, and I sighed deeply and choked out, “It’s just not fair.”

He pulled me over to the bed, sat down and tugged me into his lap.  I turned my face into his shirt, but didn’t cry.  I didn’t want to.  I breathed in his scent until I was able to calm myself enough to look up at him.

When I did, he took a breath to say something, but then closed his mouth again.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.  Another time,” he said quietly and leaned in to kiss me.  My fingers inched their way up his chest to his neck and trailed into his short, soft hair.  He shuddered suddenly and pulled away from me.  “You’re too good at this,” he whispered.  “No wonder I crumbled.”

“Right.  I’m not the one that’s good at this.  It’s like being in a movie when you touch me.”  I wrapped my arms around him, locking my hands together behind his back.

Grey tilted his head.  “But I’ve never done this before.  It has to be you.”

“Well, I’ve never really done this either, and I think you’re doing marvelously... although, I don’t have much experience to judge you against, so you might really suck at this, and I’d never know,” I teased.

“Now that’s just mean.” Grey made a face and suddenly lay back on the bed, pulling me with him and trapping my hands underneath his back.  His fingers probed along my sides under my arms, but it was too late when I realized what he was doing.  I shrieked in laughter and struggled to free my hands as his strong fingers tickled me.  Gasping with laughter, I begged him to stop, and, when he finally did, I collapsed back onto his chest and tried to catch my breath.

“How is it so easy for you to suddenly experience emotions when you’ve been wired one way for three hundred years?” I asked, not moving my head off his chest.

“I don’t think I ever fully purged emotions from myself.  It may not be possible at all to fully repress.  I think I may have just locked them away somewhere.  Now that I think about it, I cheated a lot once I got to Earth and was by myself more.  Nothing that would ever really show.  Just little things here and there that I allowed myself to enjoy.  A sunset, driving on an empty road, traveling by horseback, a hot espresso when it was raining, the way a new book smelled.  My biggest weakness, though, is watching the seasons change.  Particularly when the leaves change and the weather cools.  There’s something about that time of year that gets me.  Watching people walk close underneath umbrellas or hugging to keep warm while they’re outside.  People staying inside around a fire or together under a blanket.  I like how the cooler temperature seems to bring people together physically.  I guess I always craved that kind of physicality, but refused to acknowledge it.”

I raised my head off his chest to look at him.  His brow furrowed, like he was sorting things out as he spoke.  Without a word, he stretched out his arms and grabbed the blanket on either side of us and yanked hard so it flung around us like a cocoon.

We couldn’t have slept for more than an hour, because it was still light outside and still raining when I woke up to Grey whispering my name.  I groggily rubbed my eyes and heard him say, “We should be getting back.”

I sighed.  I knew we couldn’t stay here forever.  It was too perfect.  We needed to return to reality.

“Lydia will cover for us, but we shouldn’t make the job too hard for her by being gone much longer.”

I nodded.  He unwrapped us from the blanket, and we stood up, stretching.  That was the most peaceful nap I’d taken in a long time.  Possibly ever.

When I emerged from changing into jeans and a t-shirt, I found Grey staring at the small patch of lime green aloe gel frozen in stalactites from the kitchen ceiling.

“What happened here?” He looked at me, confused.

“Don’t ask.”

“Are you ready to go back?”

I looked around at my home.  I would never be ready to leave.  “Give me a minute?” I asked.  He nodded, and I ran into Rissi’s room and quickly found the Molly doll Ben gave her for her birthday.  I stuffed it into a backpack, then ran into my room and pulled the picture of my family off the shelf.  I popped the back open, took out the picture and slid it into my back pocket, hoping it wouldn’t be ruined before I could find a safer spot to keep it.

I stood for a moment in my parent’s bedroom, trying to memorize how it looked.  The wardrobe with my mother’s dresses, the old chair under the window, the rumpled blanket on the bed.  I found a pen and paper in the bedside table and slowly wrote a short note.  I was crying by the time I signed my name.  I folded it a few times, wrote “Mister & Missus” on the front, then crossed to my mother’s wardrobe.  Her perfume trailed out like silk scarves in the wind as I opened the door.  I tucked the folded paper into one of her dresses, touched it one last time and closed the door.

I came back into the kitchen, and Grey held out his arms.  I slowly moved into them.  He was wearing his navy blue sweater again, still slightly damp against my cheek.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes.  I just needed to leave my parents a note.”  I clung to him like ivy to a tree.

His arms were tight around me, and he tucked my head under his chin.  “I’ll need to have as close to full contact to you as possible for this to work.  We’ll be there before you know it.” He paused and then said,
“Fomhair, bean mo chroi
...”
⁷

I looked up.  His blue eyes were glowing bright, and he whispered, “I love you.”

And we were gone.

⁷
Pronounced ‘Foe irr…bann muh kree’

We arrived back in his room, arms wrapped tight around each other, and it was quiet for a blissful moment among his ancient books.  Then an uneasiness crept into me that I wanted to ignore but couldn’t.  Something wasn’t right, and I hesitated to open my eyes, unwilling to break the spell of the perfect afternoon.  But things weren’t as we’d left them, and I peeked up at Grey.  His head was turned away from me, alert and listening.  Raised voices echoed down the hallways.

“What’s going on?” I whispered.  Grey gently pulled my arms from around him, and I reluctantly let go.  He went to the door and pressed his ear against it.  I didn’t have to have my ear to the door to hear the distant chaos reverberating down the empty hallway.

“Grey?” I whispered again, unable to remain silent.

He turned back to me, his wide ice blue eyes burning.  His voice was barely audible as he said, “They found us.”

It felt like a giant vacuum had suddenly sucked all the air from the room.  In my mind’s eye, I saw Karl, eyes glinting, striding down the hallway toward a door Rissi was hiding behind.  I had to find her and get her out of here.  I started for the door and had my hand on the knob before Grey stopped me.

“Where are you going?” His large hand grasped mine on top of the doorknob, and he placed himself between me and the door.

“Where do you think?  I have to find Rissi.”

To my surprise, Grey nodded.  “I’ll come with you.”

The hallway was empty except for a slight dust that drifted lazily through the air.

“They must have opened the emergency exit,” Grey whispered, waving his hand through the dust as we walked quickly and quietly down the hall toward the cafeteria.

“Emergency exit?” I asked.  I hadn’t known of any exit other than the tunnels.  “Do you mean that collapsed area in the supply room?”  I remembered Connie telling me about how Todd had the idea of purposefully creating a sinkhole to block the street level entrance and disguise their hideout as a condemned building.

“Yes, Todd and I strategically set charges for explosives in the rubble so that when blown, they’d open an exit directly to the street.”  He paused and hesitated before looking back at me.  “We also set charges in the crawlspace and hallways leading in here so if we saw The Front coming on the surveillance cameras, they could be activated in the hope of buying us time.”

Less than a year ago, I would have been horrified that someone would purposefully rig a school basement with explosives, but times had changed.  The world was a much different place than I ever imagined it could be in my own lifetime, and I found myself admiring the intelligence behind the home defense plans.

The dust grew thicker, and it was harder to see and breathe the closer we got.  Grey slowed at the corner that led to the cafeteria and supply room.  The voices were louder now, and I recognized Todd’s.  He was arguing with someone.

“Get outta here!” he yelled.

“I’m
not
leaving without her!”

I recognized Ben’s voice and darted past Grey into the supply room.  I wasn’t prepared for the sight that froze me temporarily.  Heavy rain pattered into the room through a hole near the top of the rubble pile, and tiny rivers of water coursed down through the rocks and mud, creating miniature waterfalls that were slowly flooding the room that looked like it had only been half emptied of its supply horde.  I felt the water seeping into my sneakers already, soaking my socks.  Ben stood at the top of the rubble pile, rain pouring down over him, his t-shirt sticking to him and his glasses fogging over.  Todd dug through soggy boxes in the remains of the supply pile. 

They both stopped yelling, and Todd paused his digging when I splashed into the room.

“Where the hell have you been?” they growled at the same time.  I didn’t answer.

Grey appeared behind me in the doorway and immediately went to the corner where the medical area had been.  The curtains were ripped apart by the blast, and the table was overturned.  Grey righted the table and began piling supplies on it.  I ran to help.

“Where’s Rissi?” I screamed over to Ben, who continued to stand at the top of the rubble pile, staring at me indignantly.

“Where
were
you?” he demanded.  “I looked all over for you!  You weren’t anywhere!”

“Well, I’m here now.  Where’s Rissi?” I asked again, hoping he’d drop it.

“I sent her ahead with Connie.  You could have told me if you went somewhere with him.”  It irked me the way Ben said “him,” and I opened my mouth to tell him off when Todd whooped suddenly in victory.

He held up a box of cartridges triumphantly and said, “Knew they were here somewhere!”  He pulled a gun from the waistband of his jeans and began loading it.

“Is everyone else out already?” Grey asked and tipped several bottles into a box I held for him.

“All out,” Todd answered.

I glared at Ben, “You didn’t need to wait for me!  How many times do I have to tell you I can—”

“Take care of yourself, I know,” Ben interrupted.  “Jeez, my bad for being worried about you!”

“You have
got
to have this conversation somewhere else,” Todd cut in.  “The caved-in crawlspace isn’t going to hold them back for long.  Everyone out now!”

“I need sixty seconds,” Grey said over his shoulder as he handed me bottles of vodka and bandages off a shelf.

Todd ran to help us and shouted to Ben, “Run ahead and have someone come meet us halfway to help carry this stuff!”

He looked helplessly at me, and I nodded that I was fine.  He looked concerned for a moment, then jumped and caught the ledge, pulling himself up and out onto the street.

“I don’t think we’ll need help with this.  There’s not much,” Grey said.

“He needed a reason to go.  That kid is too young to be so protective of you, Autumn,” Todd said.

I tried to pretend I hadn’t heard Todd’s comment, but I felt Grey’s eyes on me as I dug his stethoscope out of a desk drawer.

“Is this it?” Todd asked, glancing wearily at the door to the supply room.

“Yes.  Wait, no.  The penicillin.”  Grey waved Todd on. “We’re ten seconds behind you.  Go on.”

I ran toward Grey so he could sweep a shelf with a meager supply of little orange pill bottles into a half-full box I held.  Grabbing a box, Todd sprinted toward the middle of the room and turned before climbing up the muddy pile of broken cement blocks and said, “See you at the Sunset—”      He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence.  There was a knocking sound, muffled by splashing, and I saw a small object bounce into the room with us and come to rest a few feet from Todd.

As Grey flung me to the floor, the little orange pill bottles full of precious penicillin flew everywhere.  He landed roughly on me, knocking the wind out of me and sandwiching me between his body and the wall behind us.

There was a terrific bang from the grenade, and we were splattered with bits of rock and mud.

Ears ringing, I pushed at Grey, and he rolled away from me, limply.  My heart stopped for a moment, then his blue eyes opened a crack, and he whispered hoarsely, “Find... Todd’s gun.”  He fought to keep his eyes open as I pushed myself up from the floor and went around the massive pile of cement and mud.  What I saw took my breath away.  It was Todd.  He was dead, reclined back against the rubble as if he’d fallen asleep there.  A dull hum sounded in my ears, and time seemed to slow down, but before I could move again, I was confronted by a tall, dark figure, eyes glinting. Karl.

His full lips curled into a sneer over his straight, white teeth.  “Autumn.  What a surprise.  It’s nice to see you again.”

I put on my bravest face and said, “I’m sorry I can’t say the same.”

He laughed quietly, his chuckle rumbling deep in his broad chest.  “So spunky and so brave.”  He said each word slowly, as if trying to hypnotize me.  “I’ve been keeping an eye out for you since our first meeting.  Though I never thought you’d be one to fall in with these vermin.”  He stepped toward me, backing me up against the rock pile.  I felt rain splattering off the muddy rocks just inches from me.

“You killed Todd,” I said.  I didn’t want to believe he was gone.  It happened too quickly.  He had done so much for us, and now he was gone.  And Karl had killed him.

“A stroke of luck.”  He smiled unapologetically.

I put my hand out behind me and felt around until I found a rough, heavy object about the size of a baseball.  It was a piece of the cement wall.

Karl stepped toward me again and said, “I tell you what, I’ll spare you... because I feel like we have a connection.”  He ran a hand through his thick hair and smiled.  “Come with me.”  He smiled what he must have thought was a winning smile, but it really just made him look like a sleazy used car salesman.  “Be bold, Autumn.”

Damn straight, I’m bold, I thought. 
Fortiter
.  I grasped the cement rock behind my back.  Adrenaline sang through my veins.

Karl took another step toward me, and I let him close the distance between us. “With all of my people together, we can reconstruct society.”

“I’d like to see you reconstruct
this
!” I said and bashed him square on his perfect nose with the chunk of cement.  I heard a crunching noise and felt sick to my stomach as Karl clapped his hands to his face and staggered back against the opposite wall.  Red began to drip from between his hands.  I dodged around the rock pile to where Grey was lying on his back in an inch of water.  I hauled him up into a sitting position and splashed his face with the cold water.  He woke up immediately.

“Are you okay?” I whispered.  I heard voices down the hallway and knew we wouldn’t have much longer.  Grey seemed to know that, too, and he stood up, steadying himself against the table.  “I’m okay, we need to go
now
.”

I went to grab a box, but Grey caught me around the waist and began shoving me up the mound of rocks ahead of him.  Karl came into view on the other side of the room as we climbed.  He had slipped down the wall to a sitting position, and the front of his shirt was soaked in blood from his broken nose.  He saw us, and his eyes widened.

We were almost to the top.  My feet slipped and slid in the slick mud, and the rain began hitting me in the face.  I felt the cool air just above us.  Grey’s large hands gripped my waist as he propelled me up the steep incline.  We reached the top, and he leapt and caught the edge.  He pulled himself up as a large figure filled the doorway of the supply room.  Hart.

Grey reached down and grabbed my outstretched hands as Karl yelled, “Shoot them!”

I gasped as Grey hauled me up onto the street.  I heard a gunshot rip through the air, and a cement block exploded into fragments where my torso had been just a moment before.  Grey rolled on top of me, and we were suddenly in a wet, quiet, twilit alley.  He had projected us to safety, and now, we were alone.

He lay partially covering me.  I felt his warm body through our wet clothes, and raindrops splattered on my face.  He slowly raised himself off me and looked closely at me.  “Are you okay?”

I nodded, amazed at our escape.  Grey sighed suddenly and leaned back against the brick wall behind him.  He looked up at the darkening sky, then said, “It was too fast. I... I couldn’t do anything.”

I knelt in front of him.  “There wasn’t anything you could have done to save Todd.”

Grey rubbed his hand over his eyes.  I could sense that he strugged between his desire to show emotion over his friend’s death and his training to remain calm.

“But you did save my life.  That’s twice now,” I said, placing a hand on his arm.  “No, make that three times,” I corrected, remembering the explosion he’d caused outside The Water Tower.  “Jeez, it’s like you’re my new guardian angel.”

He pulled me against him suddenly, enveloping me in his strong arms.  He held me against his chest for a long time.  When the shadows began to creep closer, I said, “Maybe we should get to the rendezvous at the Sunset 5 Theater.”

He reluctantly stood and we left the alley.  As we walked, I recognized a looming black building and red outline of a giant guitar above us.

“That’s The Guitar Center.  I know where we are,” I said.

Grey nodded.  “We’re about halfway.  I didn’t want to project us all the way there, just in case.”

Soon we passed through the shadow of the glass Smart car tower.  I remembered the tower from the cart ride with Ben.  It sat in the parking lot of a large dealership.  I looked up at the colorful totem pole of automobiles and saw the glass was partially fogged on the inside from the rain, but the cars were still safe and snug.  It seemed they were faring a little better than my friends and me at the moment.

Looking up, I didn’t see what my foot caught on and stumbled forward in the tall wet grass.  Grey caught my elbow and held me upright while I got my feet under me again.

“What was that?” I asked aloud, parting the grass with my foot.  The toe of my sneaker caught on the fold of a piece of canvas.  It was soaked through and speckled with black and green mildew.  It was a sign.  Frayed ropes suggested it had once been hanging somewhere.  Curious, I parted more grass until I saw what it said: Preview the Electric Smart Car Here! March 14-20!  Pre-Order Yours Today!

Seeing the date shocked me.  I had just figured out the other night that it was January 14
^th
.  Had almost a year already elapsed since the Crimson Fever had swept across the globe?  It didn’t feel right that time had continued to tick on for us, while it had stopped for everyone else.  Not that it was that great of a life here in Los Angeles anymore with Karl and The Front taking advantage of every survivor they could persuade out of hiding. I suddenly felt powerless and insignificant.  I took Grey’s outstretched hand, and we continued on through the rain.

I was instantly relieved when I saw faces I recognized keeping watch from inside the box office at the theater entrance.  Grey smiled and nodded as they let us inside and into the largest theater.  It was dark inside, lit only by the floor lighting pathway down the aisles.  I had to squint to examine the rest of the faces around me.  Everyone wore frazzled expressions and still looked damp from their walk in the rain.