Fire Will Fall (36 page)

Alan sighed. "Hmm. My car was just made."

I watched, intrigued, as the two stared at the license plate, took a step back almost simultaneously, and then headed into the store, looking over both shoulders just once.

"Isn't that bad?" I asked.

"Some of the chatter from the Kid implied that they were wise to us already. It doesn't mean they'll go into retreat. They'll just be extra careful. So will we. Three, go into the store ahead of them."

I guess it's normal to think of your own house as the center of the universe in a case like this, but I couldn't help thinking of how Alan's car had been parked outside the Kellerton House so often. Obviously, there were many ways to get an initial ident on his car, but I thought of him telling Rain that he was a target. I thought of dead animals turning up here, turning up six feet from our property.

I could feel my ire rise and start to smolder out my ears, though I kept telling myself I could be way off. And I watched the monitor as the agent passed these guys in the frozen-food aisle, loading something like a giant box of burritos into a pushcart. The agent picked out some frozen meatballs and passed the two again an aisle or two later while they dropped a tube of Colgate into their cart.

Alan had been speaking into the headset pretty steadily, and I realized suddenly that there were three agents in the Superfresh, and two outside. I looked at the different monitors to find the suspects on this one and then that one. It was like a poorly choreographed square dance, a do-si-do to make you dizzy if you let it. I walked in Cora's skin for a moment. There is just something over-the-top about seeing what terrorists eat and what they use to brush their teeth with. It's some shit you'd rather not see that makes them all too human.

Alan didn't seem awed by anything. He just choreographed the agents until another showed up outside, making the total at the Superfresh six.

His cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and looked confused for a moment. "The alarm to the basement is going off at the Kellerton House. Let me make sure it's just a computer glitch."

He handed his headset over to Nigel, who switched places with him and watched the screens but said very little. Concerned about Cora being down there alone, I watched tensely as Alan speed-dialed the house. He got the voice mail and redialed three times before I flinched at a rap on the side of the van. It turned out to be Mike Tiger waving a cell phone in the passenger window.

Alan hit the
UNLOCK
button, and Mike jumped into the seat.

"I got Marg. Stop calling her now," he said to us, then, into the cell phone, "What's going on?" Mike listened for a long time. "Did you relock the door?...Already? Thanks."

He hung up. "Cora Holman had some sort of episode down in the basement. Hallucination, Marg said. She screamed and froze so nobody could get to her. She's got a boyfriend or something?"

"A ... friend, Henry," I stammered. "Did she faint? Did she fall?"

"I don't know."

"So ... what?" I asked, too loudly. "She's on enough blood thinner to make an elephant hemorrhage. She can't be falling—"

"Relax. That friend of hers had come over, and he heard her. Since the door was locked, he kicked it in and ran down to help. And Hodji, who had finally gone to sleep, heard the alarm and found a USIC security-code box by a kicked-in door. And when he discovered a stranger down there, he tackled the guy and got him in a body lock. It was a mess, but Marg said she's—"

I grabbed Mike's cell out of his hand and called Marg back.

"Did she fall?" I asked.

"No. She's confused and upset," Marg said, "but both men say she was standing straight up."

I heaved a sigh and glanced at my watch. I had to get back myself, but the idea of jumping to Alan's car when the suspects who saw it were about to walk out of the store gave me pause.

"She hallucinated?" I asked, trying to clear my head.

"Yes. Her mother and some pond creature. Her mother was telling her to come in the water even though she couldn't swim. She's shaken up."

It's normal to think your hallucinations are real, but that one sounded over-the-top. Most people hallucinate a chair moving a foot by itself or changing colors from red to blue. "Should we call the medication switch off?"

I still hadn't apologized for my outburst on Saturday. I put it on the top of my list of things to do as her levelheaded answer got me breathing slightly normally again. "I'd be more worried about white-cell counts and Q3 levels rebuilding than a withdrawal effect. Obviously, it's one we wish she didn't have, but it's not compromising her health."

Not unless she hallucinates me or Marg telling her to follow us out the window and fly.

Alan handed me the keys to his car. We'd already made arrangements for me to take his car back alone if I had to leave before him.

"You want me to go jump in your car after those guys just made it?" I said.

"They haven't even gotten to the checkout line yet. Just move quickly. The parking lot is crawling with agents. You're perfectly safe."

I looked at the monitors one more time, and it was like playing God, being able to know where your threat is every second. They were buying shredded wheat. My shades had been on the top of my head, and I lowered them. I still had Marg as I stepped out. Mike walked along beside me as I talked to her.

"Who's with her until I get there?"

"Henry," she said. "He and Hodji formed an instant friendship after their run-in. They're both accomplished chess players. Cora wants to learn to keep her mind occupied the next few days."

Games of the intelligentsia.
I felt my problems deepening.

Mike had his fingers in my back, which meant to pick up speed; they were probably in the checkout line.

"Shit," I said, unable to think. "Just stay with her until I get there.
Don't
leave her alone. Not even with that guy."

"I've got a nineteen- and a twenty-year-old and both dislike me thoroughly, but that's because I was a good mother. I'll be ten feet away in the corridor, folding wash, darling."

"Hey, Marg?" I decided I shouldn't wait. "I'm really, really sorry about Saturday."

"You have nothing to apologize for. You deserve a medal. No harm done."

"If you say so." I snapped the phone shut and handed it to Mike with a grin. In spite of it all,
Marg likes me better than Henry.
Considering Henry was educated, talented, well-spoken, thoughtful, and now, as we could see, gallant, I couldn't guess why she felt that way. But it put a bounce in my step that I needed anyway.

I got to the parking lot, and between faces in cars reading newspapers, a female agent putting groceries in a trunk, a guy on a bicycle, and a guy holding the door of Alan's USIC car open and beckoning to me, I realized the place was indeed crawling. I got in and he slammed the door. I took off quickly without saying anything.

CORA HOLMAN
MONDAY, MAY 6, 2002
12:55
P.M.
HER BEDROOM

I
LAY IN BED
, staring into the noon sunrays streaming in my window, trying to put the memory of the darkened basement behind me. Rain and Owen spent a few minutes making a fuss over me, asking all sorts of questions, and I just didn't have the answers to even the simplest ones. For example, Rain asked if I "felt okay." I felt outside of myself, airy, like I'd drifted up to the ceiling and was watching all of this. I didn't know how to make that sound plausible.

I felt so many things—confusion, embarrassment, exhaustion, dizziness from god knows what—but mostly embarrassment. I kept hearing Henry's yell of shock as he himself had been attacked from behind. And after one look at Mr. Montu's black and blue face in the red lighting of the darkroom, I had thought it was chapter two of my hallucination.

I needed to be alone to collect myself. And yet, I was afraid to be alone to face what god-awful imaginary thing I might experience next. Rain and Owen finally left, and Marg watched me as I sent her from the room, her hand on the doorknob in a pensive way.

"You might try crying," she said blandly. "It's perfectly all right."

"Thanks, I've had my jag for the day."

"You're switching medications. You're entitled," she insisted. Scott hadn't mentioned crying as a symptom of withdrawal. I couldn't simply cry on demand. I was struck with the image of trying to urinate in public. "Please. I really need to be alone now."

I suppose she wasn't stupid. She reappeared five minutes later with a cup of tea, telling me I could hold the breakable cup and hot liquid only if I agreed to have some company. When I said Henry could come up, he appeared from over her shoulder. I supposed he had been standing by the door frame, listening to make sure I was all right, the entire time Marg was making tea.

I put a hand over my eyes, feeling like a dimwit. The idea that he was even here ought to get him nominated for sainthood. He had a black and blue mark under his right eyebrow from Mr. Montu tackling him.

"Henry. I'm so sorry," I managed, though it clanged through my aching head in its emptiness.

"Please don't worry," he insisted. "It was not a big deal. As the saying goes, you ought to see the other guy."

Mr. Montu was behind him, and I found the grin in his black and blue face. My laugh was too loud, a testament to my nerves.

"Let me do the apologizing," he said. "It seems I can send in all the letters of resignation to USIC that I want, and somehow ... I'm still USIC."

His smile dimmed, and my heart went out. Marg had confided his situation before he arrived, so I didn't ask the wrong questions about him going through a terrible divorce.

"We're glad you're here, Mr. Montu," I said, wishing I could think of more creative words.

"Hodji. Please. Everyone ... called me Hodji."

He had said "called" and not "calls," which made me think of the Kid and Tyler.

"I hope you can go back to sleep," I said. I noticed he had his cell phone in his hand and a look in his swollen eyes that was alert and not very sleepy. Maybe "alert" was the wrong word. He looked agitated. It was just a spark in his eyes contrasting his otherwise calm demeanor.

"I might be able to ... if I can sleep on the couch downstairs. In Pakistan, I used to sleep on a straw mattress on the floor. I snore badly right now. Do you care?"

I remembered some things about hospice care I had heard when we first came here, when we thought at least a dozen other Stage Three Q3s might be coming with us. We had been warned that people who are sick have all different needs, and it would be good therapy for all of us to cater to the needs of the others.

"Scott and Owen both snore sometimes," I informed him. "Rain calls it a lullaby. Just be comfortable."

With that, his cell phone rang, and to my amazement, he almost jumped. The phone flew an inch out of his hand, and he caught it haphazardly and flipped it to his ear.

"What, Alicia?" he demanded, mechanically turning and clomping down the stairs. "Why do you need the medicine cabinet cleaned out by tomorrow? I'm in New Jersey! I've been in a car accident, for Pete's sake ... Then throw everything out! Where's Twain?...Why not?"

I dropped my arm over my face, primarily out of frustration for his words, and secondarily to put some heat on my pounding head. Heat could sometimes cut the onslaught of a Headache from Hell.

"I guess he was hoping that was his son," I muttered. I seemed to remember hearing that his name was Twain and he was a good student.

Henry was pouring tea into a cup for himself from the tray Marg had left at the foot of the bed. I could hear it, could smell it. I raised my arm to look at him, and the rays of sunlight were bathing him. A ring of light glowed off his wavy hair, making him appear angelic. This set my teeth on edge again. In spite of all that logic would dictate, I found myself wondering if I were dreaming him.
What if he disappears? Jumps into my closet, never to reappear? What if Marg comes in and tells me he left an hour ago?

As he brought his cup closer, I reached out tenuously, touching his wrist with a sweaty hand. He wrapped his hand around mine, reassuringly.

"Please don't laugh. But for a moment, I thought you might be imaginary." I swallowed a mouthful of metallic saliva, generally a precursor to our headaches.

"It's me. The real thing. I'm right here..." He sat down on the bed. His voice was comforting, but not patronizing. "In fact, I can probably help you out with some information about hallucinations. When I was an undergrad, I was considering becoming a therapist. That was before I got so interested in physics. I actually worked in a rehab clinic and walked many a patient through the worst of withdrawal symptoms, including hallucinations."

I sipped the tea, hoping it would help my head. But it throbbed. Not in a Headache from Hell sort of way, but in a tension way.

"Did ... people see ghosts?" I asked.

"Sure. It simply depends on the types of minds they have."

I had never thought of myself as morbid, but obviously it was true. And I had more questions.

"Did they hear things?"

"Absolutely. Audible hallucinations are very common." He stood at the side of the bed and said, "Face the window."

When I did, he took the cup from me, laid it on the nightstand, and started to massage my temples. It felt amazing. I dropped my hands, feeling embarrassed still, but also forgiven—and comforted by his confidence in the things he was saying. I could hear Marg snapping sheets out in the corridor, just a few feet away, in case I "saw" anything else. I felt utterly safe—safe enough to examine what happened in the basement without losing it.
The hallucinations were so real.
I didn't know how to get over that.

"All the senses work in hallucinations," Henry said as he rubbed his thumbs at the base of my skull in a fantastic way. "What happens is, the part of the brain that you use in dreaming overreacts to stimuli that it's become unaccustomed to. Sometimes, very real things will change shape or move slightly, so the resulting hallucination involves a combination of the real and the imagined. Other times, it can be the product of five or six dreams, such that you can barely recognize the outbreak as things you've had in your head all along. You have to let go of it. It's just ... a symptom. That's all."