Exodus 2022 (17 page)

“But you only hesitated for a second. The congregation barely noticed.”

“I’m glad. But it felt like an hour to me.”

“We should go to the doctor,” Ella said quietly.

“It’s Sunday.”

“An emergency room,” she said. “Joe, this poison, this
drug
you were exposed to, is nasty. Here it is a week after the fact—after treatment—and it’s still causing problems. You can’t mess with this. I have Detective Palmer’s cell number.”

She pulled her iPhone out of her purse. “He may actually know what the poison is by now. He told me he’d call, but—”

“You want to know what the voice said?”

Ella lowered the phone, exasperated. “Joe…come on. This is your health we’re talking about. Hearing voices is—”

“I wasn’t poisoned,” Joe said flatly.

“Joe—”

“I can’t prove it, okay? But I’d be willing to bet my house I was not poisoned.”

“You don’t have a house.”

“If I did.”

A family passed in front of the Jetta, heading into Starbucks. A boy of five or six noticed the couple in the car and he smiled and waved. The boy had an endearing gap between his front teeth. Joe and Ella waved back.

“You think the voice is real?” said Ella, staring at the family. “Not just in your head?”

“I believe it’s real,” said Joe.

“So…Dr. Heintzel’s diagnosis…The other Wendy’s customers with similar symptoms?”

“I can’t explain it. I’m just telling you what I believe, in my heart.”

Ella shook her head. She seemed to be at a loss for words. “Joe-”

“She wants to meet. Tonight.”

“
She
?”

“The voice.”

“You never said anything about the voice being female.”

“I never realized it. Until this morning.”

Ella looked at him. “Where does
she
want to meet?”

“The Manette Bridge.”

“You’re serious?”

“Dead serious.”

“The voice told you, ‘the Manette Bridge’?”

“No.” Joe sighed. “She said she wanted to meet. I asked where, and a picture of the Manette Bridge appeared in my mind. Big and bright. Just—
bam
—there it was. From a weird angle. But I recognized it. Definitely the Manette Bridge.”

Ella considered it. “What time?”

“When the moon is full,” Joe said abruptly, as if this revelation had only just dawned on him. “When the full moon shines on the bridge.”

Ella seemed on the verge of tears and Joe looked like he’d experienced a mild electric shock. “I know how this sounds,” he said quickly. “I know. But you have to trust me. I feel fine.”

Ella blew her nose. “Having a woman talk inside your head—commanding you to meet on bridges in the middle of the night is not
fine
. So what does she look like?”

Joe thought about it. “I have absolutely no idea. The voice is loud in my head. Like…when she talks, everything else is pushed aside.”

“You sure you’re not channeling my mom?” Ella asked, laughing through her tears.

“But I can’t
see
her. It’s weird.”

“Um. Yeah.”

“I know. I know. And I promise you, if we go to the bridge tonight and nothing comes of it—if there’s no one there—I’ll be first in line at the doctor’s office tomorrow morning. I’ll insist on all the tests. I’ll insist on a thorough psychological evaluation. Another one.”

“If
we
go? You want me to go with you?”

“Yes,” said Joe, as if it were obvious. “I won’t go without you. Will you come?”

“To meet a disembodied voice on a bridge in the middle of the night? Oh yeah,” replied Ella. She looked wrung out by the whole exchange. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

“FASCINATING,” SAID ORONDO RING,
as Joe and Ella’s conversation finished playing on speakers in
Marauder
’s War Room. Beck and Collins listened beside him.

“The Manette Bridge?” said Beck. “In Bremerton?”

“Yes,” said Ring, nodding, as if the revelation held some special significance. He sipped an Orange Crush.

“Stanton sounds rational. The other victims never said anything that coherent or complete when it came to the voice.”

“Yes. Fascinating.”

“
What’s
fascinating?”

“Stanton has a better receiver,” said Ring. “He’s receiving the messages more clearly.”

Beck squinted at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Dr. Phelps has been analyzing the anomaly—the brain mass we identified in all of the victims.”

“Yeah?”

“It appears likely that the anomaly is not a tumor at all. But rather an organ.”

“An organ?

“Yes.”

Collins laughed. Ring glared at him.

Beck said, “You’re saying that along with hallucinations these guys grew a new organ? A functioning organ?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

Ring turned and brought scans of Whittaker’s anomaly onto his monitor.

“Phelps sectioned Whittaker’s anomaly into transverse slices and studied the compositional topography, using gas-liquid chromotography. He found three regions of distinctive lipid composition.”

Beck stared at him. “In English, please.”

“The lipids appear to be arranged in a most interesting way.”

“What way? For Christ’s sake, spit it out.”

“In a sort of
lens
,” said Ring. He pointed to the screen, to where a computer graphic of the anomaly was turning.

“We believe so, anyway. And there are analogous structures in other mammals. Mammals that employ echolocation. Bats, for example.”

“Echo-what?” said Collins.

“
Echolocation
. Navigation by sound, Mr. Collins.
Sonar
.” He pointed at the screen. “In certain mammals this type of structure, or lens, serves as an acoustical transducer, directing and refracting sound waves for the purpose of communication and echolocation.”

“So,” said Beck, puzzling it out. “You think the anomaly—the structure in Stanton’s brain—is receiving sound waves?”

Ring shook his head. “No. I don’t.”

Beck put his head in his hands. “Jesus, Ring. Then what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Not sound waves.
Thought
waves.”

Beck lifted his head. “Thought waves?”

“Thoughts travel in waves. Just like sound. And Stanton has been receiving thoughts and messages from outside his own person, for days.”

Ring looked at his companions. “I initially believed that our divers and the gillnetter and Stanton encountered something out there”—he waved his hand at the wide ocean beyond Marauder’s walls— “something that essentially
infected
them with the hallucinations.

“I thought it was a one-time occurrence. I figured they ran into something—most likely in the water—and the encounter blew their circuits and jammed their brains full of thoughts. And then killed them.”

Beck said, “But now you think—what?”

“That it’s not a one-time thing. That the communication continues. At least, in Mr. Stanton’s case.” Ring looked at Beck. “Stanton received a new message in church this morning. The lens is the likely mechanism. It’s the receiver. The satellite dish, if you will.”

Beck considered it. “You’re talking about telepathy.”

“Yes.”

Collins chortled again but this time Beck and Ring both frowned at him. The room went quiet.

“Do you believe,” Beck said at last, “that Stanton’s actually going to meet the source of the hallucination on the bridge? The sender of the messages?”

Ring hesitated. “I believe that Stanton believes he’s going to.” He turned his gaze back to his monitors, where Joe’s thought captures were still downloading, and took another sip of his soda. “And after all, something is causing all of this. Or some
one
.”

JOE AND ELLA
made their way home to find a dozen or so neighbors standing in the street, staring at the sky.

“Cool!” said Joe, exiting the car just as three Blue Angel fighter jets rocketed overhead in tight formation. The roar of the jets hit seconds later, rattling windows and sending Joe’s cat, Figaro, scurrying up a tree.

Joe and Ella watched as the F/A-18 Hornets—five of them this time—made another low, screaming pass over the neighborhood. Adults cheered. Kids jumped around and yelled for more. “I love Seafair,” said Joe, squeezing Ella’s hand.

In earlier years Seafair had been its own holiday—in August. The state had shifted it to the fourth of July to save money. Two celebrations at once. Now it was bigger and grander than ever.

The rumble of the jets subsided. Joe and Ella went inside, ate lunch, curled up together on the couch, and—without any further discussion of the voice or the pending rendezvous on the bridge—fell asleep.

Ella awoke after a time and lay there, thinking about the first time she and Joe had really talked: in the meadow in the wilderness, under the stars.

She’d found him charming and handsome. Gentle and rugged and sexy. He was a great listener, and, as she’d discovered on her first visit to St. Anthony’s—a great speaker. She’d found his homily that morning brilliant, relevant, and deeply touching.

They dated. Their romance flourished, and within a few weeks she was madly, passionately in love.

Aside from the instant and powerful physical attraction they shared, she found it incredibly easy to talk with him. About anything.

She knew that he was intuitive. Sometimes it seemed that he could read her mind. Even before she told him, he’d been aware, somehow, of a secret she carried and divulged to almost no one. It hurt still to think about it, and most of the time she left it alone, acknowledging the awful event without really examining it. Without reliving it.

Now, though, lying there next to Joe, the memory of the thing unfurled in her mind, unbidden, and she let it flow.

Christmas shopping, at the mall. It’s morning still but Ella has already had it up to here with the crowds. She hates malls—and can’t wait to leave this one. But she’s starving now and making her way to the food court before heading for the car. She’s in a good mood. Her shopping’s done. The bags in her hands are full of presents, beautifully wrapped. Gifts for the siblings, nieces, and nephews set to descend on her parents’ house later in the week.

A quick bite, and then she’ll be on her way.

She settles on P.F. Chang’s because she likes their grilled salmon-on-rice. She places her order, checks her phone while she waits, puts the steaming dish on her tray, and heads for a table.

Any vacant table will do. She looks around.

11:30 a.m. and already the food court is mobbed—swarming and swirling with people. Young people. Old people. Teenagers and twentysomethings. Parents pushing strollers with screaming toddlers in tow.

A constant, cacophonous wall of sound envelops Ella and her fellow shoppers: conversation mixed with laughter mixed with whining mixed with Bing Crosby dreaming, for at least the fourth time that morning, of a white Christmas. And Ella wonders, absently, how mall employees maintain their sanity during the holidays.

At first it appears that there are no vacant tables and then, as if by magic, one appears just in front of her. A small table. The guy is leaving, getting up and heading out. Ella makes a beeline for it, sets down her tray, then her bags, and sits down to eat.

She digs her Kindle out of her purse and turns it on. Sets it on the table and props it up on her gloves.

Before settling in to read she glances around. There’s a big family to her right, an older couple to her left, and a lone UPS employee one table beyond them. He’s wearing the distinctive brown shirt with the UPS logo emblazoned on the front and he’s smiling at her. She smiles back. He blushes—blushes, how cute—and she decides he’s a nice guy. Not her type, but a nice guy.

She turns to her book, the new thriller-romance from Hugh Howey. The book is crazy-good. One of those stories you read as fast as you can—because you have to know what happens next—but hate to see end. Within a paragraph she’s lost in the story.

The food court and all the people disappear. The noise drops to a whisper. Bing Crosby takes a siesta, and it’s just Ella and her book and the grilled salmon, disappearing one slow bite at a time.

Then, like hard, sudden rain on corrugated metal, popping sounds. Popping sounds followed by screams followed by the noise of bodies and tables crashing, followed by
crack, crack, crack
and brilliant, searing flashes of light inches away.

She’s lifting her head now, wide-eyed, dreamy terror washing over her, one hand still holding her fork. The gunman is there, rotating methodically her way, hands working, guns blazing, mowing down the family—parents, kids, all of them. And then he’s standing over her, facing her, guns smoking, guns aimed at her head, concentrating. And she sees in his eyes that he’s thrilled by the destruction he’s causing, aroused by the mayhem, enjoying every second of his mad rampage.

The guns are inches from her face, so close that she can read the words engraved on the metal. And it’s like he doesn’t see her. Like she doesn’t exist. She will explain this to the police, after the fact. To the counselors, and the psychiatrist retained by her parents.

“It’s not like he let me live. Not like he said, ‘Oh, you’re beautiful, so you don’t have to die.’ No. It’s like he didn’t see me at all. Like I was in a blind spot—although I was right in front of him. Like he simply could not see me.”

And now he’s shooting again, shooting the old couple, and the UPS driver. The UPS driver is trying to get away, Ella sees, but too late. The bullets hit his back—hit the brown shirt and blossom red.

And then the gunman himself is crashing forward, flying forward, shot in the back by a mall security guard, and Ella looks down to find that she is covered in blood, none of it her own.

Ella lay there next to Joe, willing her heart rate to slow, letting the adrenaline dissipate. She remembered how Joe had listened to her story and how, in his way, he had helped her process what had happened better than her family and friends, better than the counselors or the psychiatrist. Joe had helped her realize that what had happened in the mall was something that would always be with her. That it was okay to acknowledge it. That by acknowledging the memory and naming it she could contain it, control it, instead of the other way around.