Divine_Scream (23 page)

She shook her head of the thought.
Focus
. She had to reach Jared. There was no telling how he’d deal with this. The dimensions would right themselves. The only way out of this was letting the Assembly do what they did best. More people would be hurt, there could be no doubt, but hopefully the casualties were low, as well as any pain and suffering.

Banch charged out into the sinking street, and hoped such a scenario would come to be.

On his best day Jared had absolutely no sense of direction, but since the Disturbance Paradigm had set in now, he had no clue even what planet he was on. Terrain stretched, morphed, rearranged. This had been the beginning, but now buildings seemed affected as well—they almost unfurled and grew like organisms. Streetlights whipped about, made of concrete licorice. Manhole lids expanded in wrought iron orbs as though some giant sewer creature with powerful lungs blew air up into them like bubble gum. Jared saw one lid rupture and scatter shrapnel through a barbershop window. The glass shards twisted in the air, suspended there, rather than falling to the ground.

Everything was nuts, and he’d caused all of it. Just because he wanted to do right by Banch. Now he might be responsible for the destruction of this world and all other variations of it. He’d always known he was better off receiving help than giving it and this brutally proved that theory for all time.

As surreal as these things looked, they were only too real and that was the hardest part to process. Jared’s mind felt like it was rebelling. His insides tickled. He glanced down to his arms. His skin flickered, losing color and regaining it like a television image on the fritz. With each change of hue he got a long chill down his spine that pooled in his calves and shot down to his feet, into his toes, then burnt his toenails. He hopped about like walking on hot coals. His tennis shoes burned and he worried they might catch fire. He had several horrible notions race through his mind: what if his frightening thoughts became true just by thinking them? Or worse, something unimagined?

What if something had happened to Banch while she slept? He’d seen so many buildings collapse, implode, reconfigure—he’d be responsible if something bad happened to her.

He stopped short in the inhaling, exhaling road. It was like being on the belly of a slumbering dragon. He shook away the unsettling thought and returned to Banch. There would be no way to find her. The universe either ended or this thing resolved, but there would be no navigation through this bizarre maze. Especially for someone as helpless as him.

He stood on a bus stop bench and tried to get a bearing on the ocean. From here he believed he could see something. The sky bubbled off into a froth with no other indication of water beyond it. The ocean could no longer be seen.

A piece of steel from the bench’s armrest slithered up and Jared caught it in his fist, the silvery dough wiggling between his fingers. He squeezed. And squeezed. So hard. He was so impossibly angry. How could he let this happen? He’d asked himself that a million times since his encounter with the Silent King and yet asking the question a million times wasn’t enough. His intentions had been pure. He’d wanted to be the hero. He wanted Banch to wake up with a clear choice before her—life or death—but the person she’d chosen to save from damnation cared more about her than any lover or friend she’d ever known. He was already high up in her mind, God knew why, but he wanted to punctuate that with something noble—maybe it would change her mind, make her want to live.

Jared splashed the metallic grease onto the sidewalk.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have changed her mind.

He inspected his hand and there was no residual. Other pieces of metal from the bench slithered up like chrome cobras. He jumped off the bench to the quaking ground and headed left—just because, no real reason; he knew he had to choose some way to go. He walked toward a building in the center of the road. Cars were parked around it in a circle with odd uniformity. The vehicles shook, experiencing an earthquake rendered just for them. The Disturbance Paradigm was doing its best to make him second guess his mind again.

He started around the single story building, which looked like one of those community center buildings circa 1985 with a wooden beam frame around its perimeter—the office of either a dentist or a realtor.

A shadow fell over him. He craned his neck and his body went stiff. A larger industrial warehouse bent toward the smaller one, looking like its concrete had turned to taffy. He tried to hurry past before the other building crashed down, but then he heard the screaming and froze.

On top of the smaller building stood a young blonde with her hair in a bun, a young boy clutched to her side. She wore a torn pants suit dyed with blood at the various tears. The boy appeared unhurt, but his eyes suggested terror beyond anything conceivably possible.

“Help us! Please!” called the woman. “We don’t know how we got up here!”

Jared was locked in place for a spell as he watched the larger building become ghostly and fade out of sight.

“It’s going to come back!” she called. “It already disappeared twice and it gets closer every time.”

“I—uh—I mean, hold on! I’ll get you down!” he shouted.

What? Exactly how will that happen, you jerk?

His eyes darted around. The roof wasn’t too high. The frame flexed in and out repeatedly, though, and was far from reliable enough to climb. There was a small palm tree however, and it grew only a couple of feet from the building in a planter of island bush poppies.

“The air conditioners want to eat us!” the little boy yelled.

“Hold on. I’m on my way.”

He clamored up into the planter and jumped onto the palm tree. The world pitched and he almost slid back to the ground. Somehow his hands wrapped around the thin trunk and he got a great hold on it. He hadn’t climbed a tree since childhood—maybe since his days spent at Bella Boyd’s when he’d been more adventurous. Now he tried to tackle this problem like an adult version of that same child.
You’re bigger. Stronger. More capable. Right?

He dug his feet in. His knees still ached and his legs had little strength left in them but the solidness of the tree was reassuring in this strange new world.

“Hurry!” the woman called.

“Trying!” Hand over hand, he kept pushing up. Every grip got sweatier, felt less likely, but he slapped his palms against the tree to make it work. He got a rhythm, even though he acknowledged it as an unnatural one, probably coming to pass because of physical laws being moot—but who cared, whatever worked—and he made it to the roof with only a couple feet between the woman and child.

“Give me your hand. You can hold onto me and we’ll slide down.”

The woman nudged the boy forward.

“Come on,” he said. Jared extended his hand. “Let’s get down. Okay?”

Visions of Denise’s kids flashed through his mind.
I could have been their father if I hadn’t been so scared.

The boy grabbed onto Jared’s hand.

“Gotcha,” he said, and pulled the boy closer to him. Hot, feverish breath blew down his neck, probably with the same cadence of a young, stressing heart. Jared tried to ignore the beating because his own heart felt very near absolute failure. His forearms shredded against the coarse trunk as they slid down. His feet met the ground and he had a simultaneous sense of trepidation and excitement at the prospect of climbing back up.

The boy caught onto Jared’s pant leg. “Don’t leave me!”

“I’m not! I gotta get your mom.”

“She’s not my mom!”

“Well shit, kid, I don’t know! I gotta get that woman. Let me go!”

“Will you come back?”

“Sure I will. I totally will.”

“Promise?”

Jared threw himself onto the palm tree. “Cross my heart,” he said in a diffuse bass tone he hadn’t intended. The bark’s texture felt different this time. His hands connected with something mushy and dense like putty—then softer like pudding—then jello—then air—it was holding, gripping, clutching to nothing and the lack of sensory input drove him into a panic.

“I CAN’T do this!” he screamed.

“What?” said the woman above.

“What?” said the boy below.

“Nothing…” He hugged the tree to rid himself of the falling sensation in his guts. Only two more pushes and he would reach the top of the building. “Hang in there,” he said, and throttled up to the very top.

The woman hesitated, eyes going left and right, then she stuck her hand out. Jared enclosed his hand in hers, hard, and pulled her forward, taking her into his arms. The palm tree went rigid, snapped, and splintered, a dusty cloud of wood exploding underneath.

“What’s that?” said the woman, panicking. “That sound?”

“It’s nothing,” Jared replied.

The tree slid apart into two pieces and dropped.

“Okay, it’s something,” muttered Jared. “Hold on.”

The woman sunk her fingers into his shoulders. The tree halted at a slant, caught in a splintery mess of its own pieces.

“Let go,” he told the woman.

“Like hell!” she yelled back.

“Look, it’s not that far of a jump.” When Jared glanced down it looked way farther than he himself would be willing to jump. “Damn it…”

The tree broke and swayed closer to the ground. Jared rocked his shoulders to free the woman’s grip. She instinctively tried to hold on but he thrashed her away. She dropped and landed on her side in the planter below.

“Asshole!” she cried out and held her hip. The young boy hurried to her side. “Come on! Get me out of here!”

Jared saw them for a blink before the tree catapulted him over the roof. He flung his hands out to grasp something and met a circular vent, which slashed through his palms. He landed on his ass and a knife-like pain went up his tailbone.

The larger building suddenly loomed over everything again, but now it appeared all around the smaller building, with Jared caught inside it. Then, in only a few seconds time, it vanished again.

However, with it having come so close, sharing the space, something about the smaller building had changed. Jared sat there in shock. He’d glance at his hands, cut and bloodied, and then he’d glance around the roof. Although part of him understood what was happening, the larger part of his awareness could not.

The single-story office building actively grew taller. It rumbled and stretched skyward, on and on. All he could do was hold on. He began to cough when the air was thinner. He wondered if this eccentric new skyscraper would penetrate the atmosphere and reach into outer space. But after fifteen minutes of dizzying movement, wood clicked and flexed beneath him as the building’s expansion halted. He spotted a 747, maybe only ten thousand feet above, flying sideways and looking oddly like a boomerang.

He was still able to breathe, thankfully, and from his earlier experience today with the Lung Spike, he could do so in a surprisingly efficient manner.

You’ve come a damn long way since the doctor’s office this morning.

Suddenly his cell phone rang and scared the hell out of him. The ring tone had a hellish timbre to it, definitely not the one he’d chosen. He fished the phone out of his pants pocket, his bleeding hand stinging terribly.

“Hi, Kaitlin,” he said when he saw who it was. His voice startled him; it sounded like a man’s voice. It didn’t belong to him; it
could
never belong to him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Are
you
okay?” he replied.

“I was in the ER, hadn’t been admitted yet.”

“Where are you now?”

“I think… I’m still there. The curtains around my bed turned solid—they’re like plastic walls. I can see people’s shadows behind them, but the curtains are like a foot thick now. What’s happening to me? I thought my hallucinations were over.”

“Just a while longer.” Jared’s eyes filled. “Just sit on your bed and wait. Things will go back to normal soon.”

“The walls are closing in, I think.”

Jared searched around helplessly for a moment, unsure what to say. Kaitlin saved him that and spoke again. “You hate me because we couldn’t be together, don’t you?”

As he stared up, the sky became a glassy blur from his tears. The plane was no longer in sight. Not even a cloud remained. “No, course not.” He sniffed and wiped his nose. “I hate
myself
for that.”

“Will I ever see you again, Jared? You and Banch—”

“Banch is gone forever,” he cut her off. “But so am I.”

“Why Jared?”

“In a few months’ time, you’ll understand. Be happy, okay? It’s tough to come by, but it has to be possible. I think so anyway.”

“What are you—oh, the walls just moved again.”

“Stay on the bed… okay? Kaitlin?” Jared waited a moment. “Kaitlin, are you there?” He checked the phone.

CALL LOST.

He called her back but it went straight to voicemail. Quickly he stuffed the phone back into his pocket and painfully got to his feet.

His heart twitter-thumped.

He walked to the edge of the building and peered down. A sloping wall of tinted windows flared out the side, running away to blue sky nothingness. In the vast empty space, a couple of birds attacked each other and then dove out of sight. He wouldn’t be climbing down
that
anytime soon.

And like an answer to this, the roof tiles started dropping through the floor, one by one. In the square voids they left behind, Jared only saw darkness. The tiles underneath him quivered. He moved out to the sloping ledge and climbed a bit farther out onto the slick surface of the windows. In no time the roof had become nonexistent, just a long dark drop into infinity.

On the ledge there was no place for his hands to grip. He would have to wait, crouched there, extremely careful not to move. Hopefully when the Disturbance Paradigm ended it would correct all the structures it changed.

It had to.

Had to
.

He had to wait it out, or climb down. That was that.