MORTAL COILS (80 page)

Freeman
was just trying to get him to talk.

“My
sister would never tell you anything,” Eliot said. “And you can’t send a
fifteen-year-old to a federal prison.”

Freeman
wrote on a little pad, Sister. Fifteen.

“You
may think this is some joke,” Freeman growled, “but you’re lucky you didn’t get
killed tonight. Besides almost getting shot while trespassing in a
high-security region, you and your sister walked through a rocket-testing zone
in the middle of a fuel dump . . . right through a cloud of toxic fumes.”

That
was a lie. Eliot knew—he wasn’t sure how, but he knew. Not the part about
almost getting shot; that was likely true. But the part about the fuel test.
That wasn’t right.

First,
Eliot had caused that fog with his music.

Second,
Freeman just sounded wrong when he said it.

But
why bother to lie at all? Because Freeman couldn’t explain the sudden
appearance of a cloud in the middle of a desert on a summer night?

What
was so important about the fog that it was worth lying about?

61

Eliot
remembered hearing men screaming in the mist and seeing all

61.
That summer afternoon a rocket-test site on Nellis Air Force Range allegedly
leaked toxic fuel fumes. It was assumed to have quickly dispersed, but a local
pressure inversion forced it to remain undiluted at ground level. As military
patrols unsuspectingly passed through the cloud that evening, hallucinations
were reported and friendly fire taken. When the cloud crossed over the Air
Force Flight Test Center, Detachment 3, dozens of military personnel had to be
hospitalized and five died. Before dawn, the cloud passed over the nearby town
of Rachel. Inhabitants reported the dead rising and walking among them, and
that aliens had escaped from Area 51. Gods of the First and Twenty-first
Century, Volume 11: The Post Family Mythology, 8th ed. (Zypheron Press Ltd.).

those
weird things: claws and skeletal figures and giant shadows. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Yes.”
Freeman’s glare intensified. “I have two men down. And they wouldn’t have been
in that area if they hadn’t been chasing you.”

It
was his fault, but not the way Freeman thought. Eliot tried to swallow but
found his throat too dry.

Two
men down. Did down mean “dead”?

It
had been an accident. How was he supposed to know what his music would do?

But
he had. He knew it would be dangerous. All he’d thought about, however, had
been the danger to Fiona and himself. He hadn’t considered what his music might
have done to the people around them.

Freeman
said to the doctor, “Transport them. I want him stabilized and we’ll continue
this interrogation.” He asked Eliot, “You want to call your parents?”

Eliot
shook his head.

“I
thought so,” Freemen muttered. “We’ll find them soon enough.”

Eliot
and Fiona had done those police ID kits at the supermarket two years ago—had
their pictures and fingerprints taken in case they were ever kidnapped. Freeman
would eventually find out who they were and contact Grandmother.

He
almost laughed. What did that matter now? He was thinking like the old Eliot
Post—worried about getting into trouble . . . when Fiona was dying.

There
was no way they were ever getting to those Golden Apples now.

His
eyes lit upon Lady Dawn.

Or
was there?

He
could make out, even wrapped in layers of plastic, the fine-grain pattern on
his violin, flashing as if she were on fire. He saw the coiled ends of the
snapped string. Could she even be played with only three strings?

He
thought he could do it . . . shift things this way and that a little, changing
and recomposing the Symphony of Existence as he went along.

Freeman
and Dr. Miller started speaking about the other wounded people, but Eliot’s
attention remained focused on his violin.

Playing
her with three strings wouldn’t be entirely impossible.

That’s
not what the problem was. The problem was him.

This
time if he played and summoned the fog, it would be his decision—not something
thrust upon him at the last moment and done

without
thinking it through. He fully understood the consequences of his actions now.

He’d
need a denser fog. There were more people on base to hide from; two here in
this room with him.

And
for that, Eliot would have to go further into the symphony to the darker places
that scared him and bring to the surface . . . awful things.

People
who were just doing their jobs would get caught in the mist, surrounded by
those things that lived inside it . . . lost in its ever-shifting passages.
Maybe people would even die.

He
would be responsible.

But
Fiona’s life was at stake. Was it worth it to endanger so many to save one
person?

That
was the choice. That was his choice.

Eliot
might as well be shooting a gun into a crowded room—not aiming, exhibiting
reckless abandon for human life.

He
couldn’t let his sister die, though.

Maybe
that’s what this test was all about. Fiona had had to kill Mr. Millhouse in the
second heroic trial. Maybe it was his turn now.

It
was still his decision to make.

Kill
or be killed. Live or die. Right or wrong.

Freeman
reached over and unlocked the handcuff on Eliot’s wrist. “Unless you have
something else to say, young man, it’s time to go.”

Eliot
considered—teeter-tottered over the morals of this precarious situation—and
then decided.

“I
know you’re lying about the fog,” Eliot whispered. “There was no fuel test. You
don’t even know what it was. But I do.”

“Oh?”
Freeman looked at him as if he were examining something he’d just scraped from
between his teeth.

“I
can show you how I did it, too.”

Freeman
and Dr. Miller exchanged a nervous glance.

“It
would help my diagnosis,” Dr. Miller whispered to Freeman, “if I knew what the
heck we’re dealing with here.”

“Okay,”
Freeman said slowly. “Tell me.”

“I
need to show you.” Eliot reached for the evidence bags on the table.

The
throbbing infection in his hand subsided as he touched Lady Dawn. It was as if
they were meant for each other, and this brief separation had caused the pain.

“I
need to play my violin.”

63

THE
GOLDEN APPLE

When
it started, Fiona was in the ambulance. She lay on a gurney. Both her arms were
cinched tight to her sides.

Fog
rushed around the vehicle like an incoming tide, and the temperature dropped to
ice-water frigid.

“This
is strange,” the driver called back to the medical technician. The driver
flicked on the lights, but this just made the pea-soup-thick mist completely
opaque.

“Any
word on the other kid we’re waiting for?” the technician asked.

“Eliot?”
Fiona asked. “He’s coming with me? Is he hurt?”

The
med tech ignored her.

What
had they done to him? Fiona struggled against the restraints, but she couldn’t
get her hands free.

Something
bumped the ambulance, and the pea soup outside the window swirled into shapes
that looked like octopus tentacles.

Fiona
had a sinking feeling that something had happened to Eliot . . . something a
lot worse than a few air force officers pushing him around.

In
the distance, men yelled. Gunshots echoed.

The
medical technician grabbed a tackle box of supplies. He opened the ambulance’s
back doors, jumped out, and left Fiona . . . and also left the doors ajar.

The
mist seemed to hesitate at the entrance, but then slowly crept inside. Long
tendrils extruded and scraped, as if now solid, along the floor.

Fiona
pulled at the padded cuffs around her wrists. They were tight, but she didn’t
care; she had to get free. She folded her thumbs against her

palms,
making her wrist as narrow as possible. She yanked—bracing her legs against the
raised sides of the gurney.

Her
skin abraded, but all she managed was to wedge her hands tighter into the
cuffs.

“Hey!”
the driver yelled back to her. “Stop that.”

She
heard his seat belt unsnap.

But
before he could get out of his seat, the windshield shattered.

The
ambulance rocked back and forth and the driver screamed as he was pulled from
the vehicle.

There
was a wet spatter, then the crunch of bone.

Fiona
couldn’t turn around and see what was happening.

All
rational thoughts retreated from her mind. She jerked and tugged until her
right hand came free.

There
was blood. Hers. That didn’t matter.

The
mist inside the ambulance scratched and clawed alongside the gurney.

Fiona
un-Velcroed the restraints on her left hand.

She
managed a single coherent thought: a thread. She had to get a cutting edge.

She
riffled over the blanket that had been thrown over her. It was polyester
fleece. No weave to pull a thread from.

She
tore at the hem of her shirt and loose threads flowered. She pulled free a
length of cotton fiber—snapped it taut in her hands.

A
vaporous skeletal arm reached up, curved bone spurs rasping along the gurney
rail as it felt about for something to grab.

The
old Fiona Post would have screamed, froze with terror, or closed her eyes and
hoped the nightmare would go away.

But
Fiona was long past little-kid fears like that. The sight of this monstrosity
reaching for her only made her feel one thing: angry.

Fiona
thrust her cutting edge—once, twice, thrice—severing the arm into chunks of
bone . . . which turned into wisps of smoke and vanished.

She
recovered a bit, could breathe again, and think a little.

That’s
when she heard the music.

It
sounded like a dozen violins, echoing through the fog . . . here . . . there .
. . surrounding the ambulance . . . and nowhere. It was Eliot’s music, but not
as she’d ever before heard it. Along with the usual sweet notes there were
shrieks that sounded like a bucket of nails dumped onto a broken blackboard.

The
fog moved, solidified, and parts evaporated to make a tunnel.

A
shadowy figure appeared along this path, walking toward her, bowing his violin,
an unwrapped bandage trailing from his hand.

Eliot
looked up. He saw her and ran to her.

Fiona
did something she hadn’t done since she was a toddler: she embraced her
brother.