Run (7 page)

Now, the class looked like it was preparing to tuck into a feast.  The first words were confrontational.  A small African-American boy named Jonas spoke up without raising his hand, his high-pitched voice lowered as he tried to speak forcefully.  "You gonna spread that line about how TV and video games are the reason kids are shooting each other in L.A.?"

"Maybe."  See what they did with that.

"That’s crap, Mr. Task.  You can’t tell me that some kid plays Metal Gear and then goes out and shoots his best buddy ‘cause the game made him do it."

"You think it’s crap?"

Jonas nodded.  Standing up to the authority figure.  That was all right with John.  They were welcome to hold their own positions.  He enjoyed it when they did, in fact, as long as they didn’t stomp on anybody in order to stomp on that person’s argument.

The class waited to see what John would reply.  He didn’t say anything, though, because at that moment the classroom door opened. 

And she walked in.

John almost lost his breath.  It caught in his throat, trapped there, and for a frightening moment John worried he’d forgotten
how
to breathe at all. 

He didn’t know why the girl affected him like that.  His love for the children in his class was completely on the level of teacher to student, of an older brother who ached to show them the way through life.  So why he should have this strong physical reaction to the girl who stepped into the class was beyond him.  It was strange; baffling. 

More than that, it was...what? 

It was recognition. 

There was something familiar in her face, something about her bone structure.  Something about her cast aside the gloom that shrouded John’s past, and for a split second he thought he could remember.  A bolt of lightning seemed to flash through him, burning out his insides and leaving behind cold ash that sent shivers up and down his skin.  Then the moment passed and the gloom once again drew itself over his memory.

At last, his mouth remembered its job.  "May I help you?" he asked.

The girl held out a yellow slip of paper.  After a moment of serious deliberation he was able to move his feet and walked toward her.  Further control returned as he approached her, and in the few feet between them, he was able to convince himself that there was nothing special about the girl in the doorway.  But only on the surface.  Beneath his conscious thought, he knew he was telling himself lies, and knew that she was important. 

The paper she held was a transfer permission slip.  She was a new student.  But usually new students came with a week or two’s warning.  John looked around, stalling while he simultaneously tried to figure out what to do with her and what to do to gather his shell-shocked wits about him.

The answer presented itself in the form of Dallas Howard’s enraptured face.  Obviously he had noticed the new student - Kaylie Devorough, the slip said - as well, and was equally struck by her, although for far more obvious and biological reasons than John.

A sly grin spread across John’s face.  "Well, class, it seems we have a new student.  And you know what we do to new students around here."

A chorus of voices rang out.  "We eat them!"

One of the kids cackled like a witch while two or three others dissolved into more genuine laughter.  Kaylie stiffened for a moment, then relaxed as she realized that this class was likely to be less than torturous.

John turned to face the newest addition to his class.  "Well, Ms. Devorough, I’m Mr. Trent and welcome to Computer Sciences.  Today we’re loading websites the students have designed."

Kaylie stuttered, "I don’t...that is...."

"You don’t know much about computers?"

She shook her head.

"That’s okay, I’m not sure I do, either.  So we’ll sit you with someone who knows what he’s doing."  John pretended to scan the classroom, though in fact his choice was already made.  "Why don’t you sit with Mr. Howard?"

John guided Kaylie to Dallas’ desk, and the boy’s face lit up.  Was this Heaven?  John didn’t think so; indeed, he no longer believed there was such a place.

But, if this isn’t Heaven, John thought, then at least it can be a good place.  I can try to make it better.

Dallas’ face was red, but glowing with excitement as Kaylie moved her slim frame near to him, sitting beside him and letting him explain what he was doing. 

John pulled himself away from them with difficulty, trying to cast off the webs of strangeness that had cast themselves about him with the entrance of the new student.  He moved into a different row, and work resumed as the class returned to their individual projects.  John began his roving again, wandering up and down rows in an apparently directionless pattern that somehow took him by each student who needed his help at just the right time. 

He helped the students where he could, laughed with them where he could not, and above all tried to shake loose the thought that had come into his head.  The thought from that night, and from so long ago.  The thought that had returned to his mind with Kaylie’s entry into the room.
Someone is coming
.

FAN HQ, AD 3999/AE 1999

Malachi sat in his cell.  Waiting.  He lay on the cot that was the only piece of furniture in the spare cell.  Monks in the Dark Ages lived more ostentatiously than did he, and Malachi, though not proud of that fact, was happy to suffer for his cause. 

He was nude.  The darkness of the room caressed his body, touching it with the gentle feel of a lover.  He savored the darkness.  His eyes were rolled back in his head, as though he were trying to look at his own brain.  To see why it made him think the way it did, as though visual perception of the gray mass would be able to further confirm what he already knew: genius resided in his mind.  Genius and more.

Malachi was one of the elect.  He had served well, and would continue to do so. 

Fire flared in the darkness.  The breath sighed gently from Malachi's lips as he watched the ghostly incandescence dance through the room.  No heat came from it, only a dry coolness.  That was what told him that the flame existed only to him. 

A vision from God, it had to be. 

The flame danced, and Malachi thought he could see the last bodies of the last men and women on earth as their lives extinguished. 

The final face he saw dying in the fire was his own.

His hand clenched into a fist, as though tightly gripping the barrel of his gun.  He remembered shooting Lucas, and replayed it in his mind: that wonderful moment when the man realized that his life would end.  Lucas’ eyes trying to look in every direction at once, as though the more he could see, the less he would lose. 

The moment of clarity was something Malachi treasured.  That moment when they all realized, yes, they were going to die.  It came to everyone, though they all experienced it differently.  Some refused to accept it until the last, others knew instantly. 

Lucas had known from the moment Malachi shot the bartender.  The urine that sprayed out of him testified to that, and he wished he could have taken a small trace of the urine back with him.  He supposed he could have, had he thought of it earlier.  He could have emptied out a whisky bottle and stored some of Lucas’ fluid in the glass vessel.  Would the glass hold it?  Or would it burst under the pressure of Lucas’ holy urine?

Malachi would never know.  But next time, perhaps he would try.  Perhaps he would make his next victim urinate into a cup.  If it was a man, perhaps he would arrange his attack at a time when the man was aroused, to gather the man’s seed, the fluid of life. 

He had no idea how he might do this, but he had no doubt that such could be accomplished, should the desire arise within him.

He would never take blood, though.  Blood was holy.  Sacred.  It was the redeeming power that had brought him here, to this place, to this very room.  It was blood that drove him to kill, to destroy, and thereby to create.

It was blood that Malachi had spilt, and would spill again.  But he would not take it with him.  The blood must soak into the earth, to become a testament to his greatness; to the Work he had done.

An intercom, small and all but hidden in the bare stone wall of his room, beeped.

Malachi ignored it for a moment.  It beeped again, and he swung his legs over the side of his bed.  A lighting-stemmed crucifix swung near his chest, its metal warm from laying against his neck.  Malachi touched the intercom.  At the other end of the line, he knew, another man would be reading a piece of paper.  The paper would hold a name, a place, and a time.

"Yes?" asked Malachi.

"We’ve found another one."

"Good."

"A woman."

Malachi’s heart raced.  The last one.  The end was near.

"Even better," he said.

Malachi stood and began dressing.  He pulled on the clothing quickly, because when he received new prey, he liked to move fast.  But he still took the time to make sure the clothing was clean, and comely. 

He put on good clothing, because killing a woman was something that demanded respect.

FAILURE LOG

DOM#22A

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

AD 1999

10:00 AM FRIDAY

Fran heard the voice, just like everyone else.  The difference was, she was actually
listening
, too.  Because the words that the voice was saying meant something to her. 

They meant her life could start again.

"This is your captain speaking.  We’ll be leaving in about two minutes, so you all just buckle up and sit tight while the flight attendants explain our safety procedures."

The voice was tinny: the same voice that Fran had heard countless times on countless TV shows and movies.  Only this time it was real.  This time she sat not on her couch with a lonely bowl of popcorn her only company, but in the seat of the airliner.  First class, no less, with reclining leather seats that were far more comfortable than her sofa had ever been. 

In the front of the section, the flight attendant began talking about emergency exits.  Fran listened even more carefully now, as the pretty airline stewardess - no,
hostess
, they were called on this line - explained how the seat could be used as a flotation device in case of a water crash.

Fran’s lips curled into a tight smile.  Tight, because if she smiled fully, she’d start giggling.  And if she started to laugh, she probably wouldn’t stop.

We’re flying over the Rockies.  Where would we land in water?

And then, fast on the heels of that thought, came another: 
I’m really doing it.

She looked around, wanting to suck it all in and savor the moment.  She was leaving home for the first time.  If she had had a camera, she would no doubt be busily annoying her fellow first class passengers by taking snapshots of everything from the elegant hostesses to the bald pate that was the only thing visible over the top of the high-backed seat in front of hers.

This was an adventure.  She wanted to enjoy it, the only adventure she’d ever really had. 

No, that wasn’t true. 

For a moment the dull roar of the plane’s jet engines became small explosions.  Gunshots.  The hostess continued in front of her, waving with a too-wide smile at the emergency exits, but Fran no longer saw her.  For a moment, for one terrible moment, she saw her husband’s face.  The shock as the strangers pushed into their house, screaming and raving.

The police had said the men must have been high on something, judging by their actions.  Probably PCP, speed. 

But Fran had seen their eyes.  There were no drugs coursing through the strangers’ veins.  Insanity, perhaps, but no drugs. 

Evil, certainly, but no drugs.

Purpose, but no drugs.

Fran did not sleep well for months after that night, terrified that they would return; that the dead would rise up and find her again.  Because they had been looking for her, of that she was certain.  The cops smiled and nodded and said they would look into it, but she knew that they would not do so.  To them, the case was an open-and-shut one that began and ended in five minutes in a small home in Los Angeles.  They cared little that those five minutes had meant the end of everything to Fran. 

That was why she was leaving now.  After all this time, she had finally found the courage to admit what she had known since that night.  Her life in Los Angeles had ended.  She was dead there, and her only chance at resurrection lay in leaving the place where her heart had stopped beating.

Fran had never left Los Angeles in her life.  Had never had any aspirations other than happiness with her husband, working hard at his side to build a good life and, later, a good family.

She had the good life.  Not for very long, but long enough.  She was grateful.  God gave, God took away.  Fran had almost a full year with Nathan, and when he died, she went a little crazy for a time.  But then she snapped back, as determined as ever to take life, wrestle it to the ground, and squeeze every last drop of happiness out of it. 

But she couldn't do it in Los Angeles.  She had to leave.  She had to escape into real life again.

"Are you all right?"

Fran snapped out of her memories.  The gunshots ringing in her brain turned back into the sound of the jet, winding to a higher pitch as the pilot began to accelerate.

A flight attendant stood over Fran, a look of concern on her face.  "Ma’am, are you all right?"

Fran looked down, and realized that the pressure of her memories had caused her to clutch the arm rests of the chair hard enough to crumple the leather. 

Fran relaxed her grip on the seat.

"I’m fine, thanks."

The hostess, whose name badge read Ray-Lynn, peered into Fran’s eyes for one last moment, then hurried to the fold out seats where she would strap herself in during the rapidly approaching takeoff.

Fran closed her eyes, once again pushing the memories back.  Enjoy now, she thought.  Tomorrow’s beyond your reach, and yesterday can’t be helped, so just enjoy now.