The Elders (4 page)

I phase out and the earlier exhaustion hits me. I ignore it. I have enough strength for one final sprint across the street. Thus determined, I run toward ‘my’ vehicle.

Something catches my attention.

The lady I just Guided is looking at me with wild eyes. She’s gesturing at me and her mouth is moving as though she’s shouting, but the car windows muffle whatever it is she’s saying. I decide
she must be happy to see her ‘nephew.’ As a jest, I wave back—and at that moment, I hear the screech of tires and feel a world-ending thump.

Shit
, I think as I fly through the air.

My head hits something hard, and I black out.

Chapter 4

I
wake up nauseous.

Am I hung over?

I open my eyes.

The light hurts, so I shut them again. I examine myself and realize a lot more hurts than just my eyes. My body feels like one big bruise.

The nausea gets worse, and it’s not because I’m drunk. It actually feels like a very bad case of carsickness. Then it hits me: I
am
in a car, and I’m being driven somewhere.

I open my
eyes and force them to adjust despite the pain. Shoddy Brooklyn streets pass me by. The car I’m in is moving relatively fast, and the ride is very shaky, which is a big contributing factor to my nausea. I’m grateful I’m riding shotgun; when I get motion sickness, it’s usually worse when I ride in the back.

Bits and pieces of what happened come back to me.

I was crossing the street; then something
happened.

I decide to phase in to figure things out from the Quiet. Overloaded with adrenaline, I easily enter the Quiet. When the sound of the engine is gone, I notice that the nausea is too.

Without the sick feeling, my situation becomes clearer. For one, I recognize the woman behind the wheel. I recall Guiding her to give me her car, the very one we’re in. What the heck is she doing driving
me? She was supposed to leave her car for me. And where are we going?

Only one way to tell for sure. I reach out and touch her forehead.

* * *

We’re looking across the street. Our nephew is about to cross the road. He looks to his right, but doesn’t look to his left.

He’s never been a fan of basic safety, our nephew,
we think as we see the limo steamrolling his way.

“The car,” we scream
at him and wave. “Watch out!”

What’s the driver thinking? Is he stoned?
We feel our blood pressure rising.

Our nephew waves at us and doesn’t notice the car that’s about to hit him. The limo attempts to stop. We hear that frightening sound of tires screeching against pavement, but it’s no good. The car hits our nephew.

He flies into the windshield, shattering the glass.

We exit our car, screaming.

A thin, balding man gets out of the limousine.

“You maniac,” we scream at him. “Are you drunk?”

“He c-came out of nowhere,” the man stutters. “I swear.”

“Shut up and help me get him in my car,” we say after examining the boy. Thank goodness he seems intact, with no visible broken bones. “I’ll take him to the hospital. He might have a concussion . . .”

I, Darren, disassociate. It’s interesting
how she saw me, and how she confabulated a whole story about me in order to explain the events she was witnessing. Ironically, I agree with her fictional assessment. I
was
being an idiot. I didn’t check the road before crossing, though I usually do. If I were to blame something, I’d blame my prior trip into the Quiet. I’d crossed that road a moment earlier while in the Quiet, so when I phased
out, I just kind of repeated the same action, almost on autopilot. I was laser-focused on the Honda and on picking up my friends and family. So in a way, it’s the fault of the monks and the Super Pusher.

Speaking of them, how long has it been since I got hit? Did everyone else get out okay?

Determined to find out, I exit my ‘aunt’s’ head.

* * *

As soon as I’m back in the Quiet, I phase
out of it.

When the nauseating ride resumes, I say, “Stop the car, Aunty.”

“Oh, thank God you’re conscious,” the woman says. “I feared the worst.”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I lie. I may not have broken bones, but I feel more than a little banged-up. “Now stop the car.”

“Are you crazy? The hospital is a block away.”

“I don’t have time to argue. Stop.”

Instead of stopping, she pushes the gas pedal.
This make-believe aunt of mine is one stubborn lady.

I phase into the Quiet and Guide her to see things my way.

I then exit the car to check my surroundings. I have no clue where I am, but I spot a sign in the distance that says ‘Jamaica Hospital.’ I suppress the temptation to adjust my plans in order to swing by the hospital for a shot of morphine; I’ll just have to tough it out.

Proud of
my restraint, I phase out.

The world returns to life and my ‘aunt’ makes a U-turn so suddenly that my urge to throw up multiplies a hundredfold.

I’m amazed that we didn’t get into another accident. I should’ve used more finesse with my Guiding. I really need to get my shit together. I won’t be of help to anyone with broken bones.

“Do you have any painkillers?” I ask while we’re stopped at a
red light.

“There’s Motrin in the glove compartment.” She slams on the gas pedal, a stomach-churning maneuver she’s done at every light change.

I fish out the pills and dry-swallow a triple dose, hoping my stomach can handle it.

Then I close my eyes and slow my breathing—a ‘how not to throw up’ trick I learned from Lucy as a kid. After a few blocks, I feel more like myself, which is likely
from the breathing exercise or from some placebo effect. I doubt Motrin works
that
quickly. And then the car’s brakes screech, and any semblance of normality is over.

“This is where it happened,” the woman says when I open my eyes. “Where that monster hit you.”

“Thank you, Aunty,” I say. “I’ll take it from here.”

She looks uncomfortable. My directive to ‘do as I say’ is clearly clashing with
my equally convincing directive that we’re family. She’s rightfully hesitant to let her hurt nephew get behind the wheel. As I’m about to Guide her once more, I see the ‘do as I say’ instruction win out. She slowly unbuckles her seatbelt.

“Please take this,” I say, handing the woman all my cash—around four hundred bucks.

When she refuses to take it, I Guide her again. I know I’m totally abusing
my power, but in this case, it’s for a good cause.

I then have her program her number in my phone. “I’ll call you to tell you when to get the car from Hertz.”

“Have a blessed day,” she says.

“Later, Aunty.” I close the car door.

Okay. What’s next?

I look at the dashboard clock and scrap my earlier idea of picking up my folks and friends. It took my ‘aunt’ fifteen minutes to drive here from
the hospital, which means it’s been at least half an hour since I got hit by the limo. Everyone is probably long gone and on their way to Eugene’s lab.

That’s where I decide to head, but first, I want to take one last look at the cemetery.

I phase in and leisurely walk back toward Kyle’s grave. In the safety of the Quiet, I allow myself to register my environment, a luxury I couldn’t afford
when I was running. As far as I can tell, this is a very nice cemetery. Then again, this was my very first funeral, so all cemeteries might look like this.

I’m a hundred feet away from my destination when I notice that something’s gone terribly wrong.

I come across the body of a cop.

I break into a run and see another cop on the ground.

Then another.

Then two more.

The closer I get to the
burial site, the more cops I find lying about in every direction.

I approach one at random. This officer’s wrist is twisted at an unnatural angle. His eyes are closed. Is he dead?

I kneel next to the body and touch the cop’s good hand.

* * *

“Raise your hands,” we say to the bald man in the orange robe. “Lie down on the ground and put your hands behind your head. Slowly.”

Instead of
obeying, the man closes the distance in a series of jerky motions and grabs our wrist.

“Let go of the gun,” our attacker says calmly, almost soothingly.

“Fuck you,” we say and try to punch the man with our left hand.

Our punch doesn’t land, and our right arm is on fire. We realize the fucker broke our wrist when he did whatever it was he did; he moved too fast for us to see.

Ignoring the agony,
we reach for our handcuffs, ready to employ a desperate maneuver. Before our hand even reaches the cuffs, there’s an orange blur in the direction of our right temple and the world goes blank.

* * *

I exit the officer’s head and look around.

More cops are in similar unconscious conditions. It takes a quick Read of each one to see the same pattern play out. Though all the men I check are
alive, every officer got his ass handed to him by the monks. Most of their memories are a variation of the weapon disarm I saw in the first cop. In a few rare cases, when the cops were above average when it comes to self-defense, what I witness reminds me of a mix between the martial arts training Caleb and I experienced in the Israeli master’s mind, and a Hong Kong kung fu movie about Shaolin monks.

The cops who faced Caleb have some broken ribs and are in noticeably worse shape, leading me to believe that the monks were trying to inflict as little damage as possible while pursuing their goals. Caleb, however, almost relished the violence. It was Caleb who knocked out the priest—a dickish and unnecessary move, in my opinion.

Throughout my Reading, I curse myself for being such a shortsighted
humanitarian. I made the cops empty their guns. The monks’ lack of respect for the authority of the police force, as well as their apparent disregard for guns, created this mess of a situation. Even with bullets, these cops would still have had it rough, though lots of monks would’ve died. Still, because of my meddling, what could’ve been a tough fight became an easy slaughter of these men and
women in uniform. Thinking of
women
in uniforms gets my heart beating much faster.

I run in the direction I sent Mira and her handlers in.

It’s not long before I find the first lady cop on the ground. Then the second. They’re both lying there with various injuries.

I run in the other direction, to where Thomas was led. Twenty feet in, I see someone I recognize: the Quarterback. He’s the first
person beginning to get up. Must be his resilience as a football player at work. Reading him, I learn that he and his larger friends did marginally better against the monks, who probably had to carry a few of their brethren away, but the cops were outnumbered and the monks were swifter, so the eventual outcome was the same.

I check the direction my moms went in and see nothing at all. I wonder
whether that means they escaped. They didn’t have a police escort and maybe that saved them. I sure hope so.

I run toward the parking lot, determined to learn more, and end up following a trail of macabre breadcrumbs in the form of beat-up police officers.

I suppress my growing panic.

It’s still within the realm of possibility that Thomas and Mira somehow escaped their escorts. Maybe Thomas
came to his senses and Guided the cops to let him go?

And what about my moms? I see no evidence that they might be in trouble.

I increase my pace, sprinting toward the parking lot.

The minivans are gone, and I notice tread marks on the asphalt, which tells me they left in a hurry.

I frantically follow the driveway and leave the lot.

I Read the stylist of a nearby hair salon. She has a good
view of the cemetery from her shop. Using her brain as one would a surveillance camera, I search for what I need. Yep, she noticed the vans. The screech of their tires drew her attention. She saw them turn right onto Liberty Avenue.

I leave the hair salon and walk down Liberty, Reading people as I go. It takes a dozen more Reads before I find any sign of those damn vans. Inside the mind of a
McDonald’s cashier, I see two Hondas turn onto Conduit Boulevard.

On a hunch, I follow the signs that lead to Belt Parkway—the big highway in Brooklyn. Reading what feels like a hundred people on the way confirms my suspicions: the two Odysseys are heading toward the highway.

I push a frozen bike messenger off his bicycle so I can take advantage of his ride. Bikes are useful for long-distance
travel in the Quiet. Rolling up my suit pants, I get on and start pedaling toward the highway.

Usually, I would be marveling at my surroundings. Though I’ve ridden bikes in the Quiet before, I’ve never ridden on a congested highway like this. There’s a certain charm to doing things I’d never dare to do in the real world. But I can’t enjoy this ride, not when all I can concentrate on is the mantra
repeating in my head:
Please don’t be in the vans.

I ride on and on, feeling as though I’m in the Tour de France.

Finally, in the distance, I see two vans with the symbol of a shiny H inside a square.

I ride up to them and jump off the bike, letting it fall with that chains-on-asphalt noise.

Peeking inside van number one with trepidation, I get my first dose of disillusionment.

The monks
have Mira and Thomas.

My friends appear to be sleeping. I don’t dare touch them, as that would bring them into the Quiet with me, and I’m not sure whether the Super Pusher’s instructions are still in effect. The last thing I want is to fight them. Then again, the chances of them still being under the Super Pusher’s influence are small, if Eugene’s theory on the matter is correct. He thinks that
Reading or Guiding someone from Level 2 will expend that person’s Depth much
quicker than normal. Mimir—the strange being who resulted from my Joining with the Enlightened—suggested the same thing when we spoke in Level 2.

Reading the monks doesn’t yield any results, aside from the same useless meditative white noise I got from them at the Temple and at the airport.