Unraveling (38 page)
If Elijah is the one opening the portals, it also occurs to me that he might have done more than just that. The portals are connected to the bodies and the UIED—they’re connected to my dad’s investigation. The one he was working on when he was killed. It’s possible whoever is responsible for opening the portals is also responsible for my father’s death.
I shake the thought from my head. I know I’m jumping to conclusions. Elijah might be the most likely suspect I have, but that doesn’t mean it was him. I can’t exactly see him killing someone.
Or can I?
I have seen how determined he is to get back to his world. He didn’t care that Ben’s portals had killed people.
What if my dad somehow got in the way of Elijah getting home? My heart beats in my ears, and I realize at this point, I’m probably far too traumatized by everything to trust my thoughts.
It’s not until I stand up and see Ben’s house—
correction:
where Ben’s house used to be—that it occurs to me that I have no idea where Jared is.
Light-headed and short of breath, I bend at the waist and gasp. I can’t believe I could have forgotten him. I look for Ben, who’s pushing himself up off the ground. “We have to find Jared before we do anything else,” I say, and I can’t keep the hysteria from my voice. “We have to find him.”
“Absolutely,” Ben says. “Try your house first?”
I nod. Jared could be anywhere. He could be dead in a gutter or trapped under a building. As soon as I find him, I’m never going to let him out of my sight.
Ben manages to get my Jeep started, even though the engine is sputtering and it refuses to move faster than twenty miles an hour. Not that we’d be able to go much faster than that anyway—Ben has to navigate around debris and fallen trees, then we have to turn around and go a different way when the bottom of the hill past Park Village Road is flooded. And then we’re derailed again because part of the 56 has collapsed. My eyes water as we drive.
And in the car we’re silent. It’s just the sputtering of the engine, my increasingly hysterical breathing, and Ben’s occasional calm reassurances: “We’ll find him,” “It’s okay,” and “Try not to worry.”
Because everywhere I look, civilization as I knew it is wrecked. The devastation is widespread and almost indescribable, as if San Diego got hit by every natural disaster imaginable all at once. Cars are overturned and discarded—in some places they’re piled on one another at odd angles. Houses are missing, toppled, or burned, and yards are scorched, flooded, or buried under debris.
From far away, neighborhoods look like a discarded children’s playground, like toys that someone just bulldozed over and left carelessly tossed aside. Up close, I feel like I’ve just stepped into a T. S. Eliot poem brought to life.
The debris is everywhere—pieces of wood and chunks of concrete are what I seem to notice first, but it’s the flecks of color that demand my attention. The discarded red baseball hat—where’s the person who was wearing it? The well-loved doll with bright golden-blond hair—where’s the child who loved it?
When we finally get to my neighborhood, there’s an overturned car and what’s left of a house in the way, so we get out and walk.
A couple of times, Ben reaches out to steady me or help when I have to climb over something that doesn’t belong in the middle of my street. At one point a cluster of downed palm trees is blocking our path and we have to climb over them. After I slide off one tree trunk, I curse and kick it as hard as I can, even though I know it’s hardly productive.
“Here,” Ben says before I start trying to get over it again. He puts his hand on the trunk, and the bark turns to flakes of sawdust. It starts at one center point—where Ben’s hand is—and a hole spreads outward in a circle. When it’s big enough for us to climb through, he pulls his hand back. He’s sweating and breathing hard, but we don’t say anything.
We keep walking.
Despite whatever we saw on Barclay’s TV, I didn’t expect what I’m seeing now.
Life will never go back to normal after this.
And then I see my house, and I have to stop walking. Involuntarily, like they have lives of their own, my hands clap over my mouth and I drop to my knees in the middle of my street.
Because
correction
: I see where my house should be.
It’s been leveled. It’s just gone.
My entire yard and driveway are a pile of debris. Discarded bricks and rubble surround two of the walls from what used to be my living room, like they’re part of a grotesque life-size dollhouse.
Alex’s house is sunken in next to where my house should be—it looks like his house imploded and mine blew away.
I don’t realize I’m crying until Ben pulls me back to my feet and wipes my eyes. “Jared wouldn’t have been at the house,” he’s saying. “No one was home.”
I nod, but I’m paralyzed. I don’t know where to go.
“Do you want to see if anything is salvageable?” Ben asks. But he’s more optimistic than I am if he thinks there’s anything anyone could salvage from that wreckage. “Okay, then let’s go to the school. Remember when they turned it into an evacuation shelter a couple years ago when we had those wildfires? He might be there.”
He doesn’t say what I’m worried about, though. Ben was right—no one was at my house. But Jared was at school. What if we get there and it’s gone too?
What if Jared is dead?
I’m suddenly too weak. I reach out a hand to grab on to something. I can’t stand up anymore. Not while I’ve got that thought, and Ben has to help turn me around and carry/drag me to the curb so I can sit down. Stars are clouding my vision, and I’m dangerously close to losing my mind.
I can’t be sure how long I’m on the curb, sitting with my head between my knees, but Ben leaves me to walk to the wreckage of Alex’s house to see if anyone’s there, and he picks through some of the debris where my house should be.
My street looks and feels like a ghost town. Like people just up and fled and took every sign and sound of life with them. It’s eerily quiet—no sounds of traffic, people, even birds. And it’s darker than it should be, like the sun decided it just couldn’t bear witness to this. But the worst is the smell. I didn’t notice it at first because it’s far away, but the air has a permanent edge to it—the scent of burning.
Ben comes back with a navy hooded sweatshirt that was my dad’s. It’s dirty and it smells a little mildewed, but it’s dry.
“It’s going to get cold,” he says. “You should definitely have this.”
I take a deep breath and grab it as I stand up. “Let’s go to Eastview.”
We’re climbing through the fallen trees when I see the driver’s-side door of the Jeep is wide open and someone is rustling around in there. “Hey!” I call, not stopping to think that this person could be capable of violence now that civilization has literally crumbled.
But he raises his head and goes, “Thank God, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Struz.
I jump down from the trunk of the tree and run toward him. He’s the first thing I’ve seen that looks the same as it did before. He’s still gangly and too tall and thin, wearing a suit with a bulletproof vest instead of the jacket. And I know he’ll know what I need to do.
“Where’s Jared? Is he okay?”
“Calm down,” Struz says. “Jared’s fine. What happened to your wrist?”
I want to collapse with relief, but I stay on my feet.
“It’s broken. Where is he?”
“How’d you break it?” he asks.
“I fell,” I say. “Where’s Jared?”
Struz sighs and rubs his hair. “He’s in the hospital wing at the Federal Building. He’s fine, but he broke his ankle during the earthquake. He’s a little bitter about it, but he’ll be in better spirits once he’s not so worried about you.”
“Why is he worried about me?”
Struz looks over my shoulder at Ben. “Do you believe this chick? J, you didn’t go to school. You were at home when he left. Have you seen your house?”
“Oh my God, I didn’t even think of that. I wasn’t there either.” I wonder when the fact that this is actually real will sink in.
“Yeah, I have some questions about that, but let’s save them for the car. We’ve had a lot of trouble with looters, and it’s not safe to just be standing out here in the open.” He guides me toward a TrailBlazer—it’s not the one he used to drive, and I wonder what happened to that one, as he opens the passenger door.
“Struz, this is Ben Michaels,” I say as I get inside. “He’s coming with us.”
Struz nods and shuts my door.
When we’re all inside and Struz is driving us down to the Federal Building, he asks what the hell I was doing cutting school, anyway—not that he’s mad. And he of course wants to know about the cryptic message I left him before it all happened and where I’ve been since the quake.
“You’re not going to believe me at first,” I say. “So you need to trust me, and you need to hear me out until the end.”
He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, like he thinks I’m being dramatic.
“I’ve never been more serious.”
“Okay,” Struz says. “I’m listening.”
And I—finally—tell him everything. I start at the beginning for me—getting hit by the truck and coming back to life. And I keep going, up until the point where he found us headed toward the school. It’s abbreviated, but I don’t leave anything out.
When I finish, we’re sitting in the parking lot of the Federal Building, and Struz is staring at me. I half expect him to ask what drugs I’m on.
I pull the wire necklace off and hand it to him. “I don’t entirely know what this is. But I know it’s made from a chemical compound called hydrochloradneum and it doesn’t exist here. And it apparently neutralizes radiation or something. I’m sure you have people who can test it.”
“Well, we used to,” Struz says, taking it from me. “I’m not sure what we have now, but I’ll have someone check it out.” He turns the necklace over in his hands, as if he’s expecting it to whisper the answers to him.
When it doesn’t, he looks up at me again. “You’re right, I don’t entirely believe you, because I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it. But at the same time a lot of it makes sense, and I’ve got the same feeling I get when I know I’ve just broken a case.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“I have no idea, but let’s go see Jared, and let me try to think about what questions I should have,” he says, then turns around to look at Ben. “You’re with me, by the way.”
Ben gives Struz a nod, and now that I’ve gotten it all out, I’m ready to see Jared, try to get in touch with Alex, and then go find Elijah and Reid.
Which is when I realize I forgot to even think about my mom.
“Do you know where Alex and my mom are?” I ask Struz.
“Alex is at Qualcomm. We’ve got it set up as an evacuation shelter,” he says. “And I don’t know where your mom is yet. Scripps sustained some damage, but it’s still up and running, and she should have been there.”
“But she’s not?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I’ve got her listed as missing, but J, you were my priority.”
My eyes burn, but I understand, so I nod and turn back to the Federal Building and keep walking. I have the strangest image of my mother walking into the ocean like Edna Pontellier at the end of
The Awakening
.
T
he advantage to having an in with the FBI is that the bones in Jared’s leg are set and he’s being taken care of in a hospital that isn’t overcrowded.
The Federal Building looks like any other office building in downtown San Diego—it’s nondescript. But tonight it’s more abuzz with life than anywhere else I’ve been. It’s still standing, for one thing, and it looks virtually untouched by the chaos. And a backup generator steadily hums, making the dimly lit building seem like it’s alive.
As we walk into the lobby, Struz ushers us through security—the metal detectors are down, and a security guard tries to stop us, but Struz flashes his ID and says, “They’re with me,” and that’s the end of the discussion.
“Ben, we’re going to need to sit you down and get all the information about what was in Eric Brandt’s hotel room,” Struz says. “And we’re going to have to call in Elijah and Reid.”
“You’re going to do all that?” I ask, wondering whether he’s going to tell everyone else what I told him—and if this is going to take time we don’t have.
Struz ignores me—he’s in a zone. But it doesn’t matter. Ben glances at me and says, “Whatever you need.”
He squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back even though I’m not sure when he took my hand to begin with. I turn to him and take in his face. While my own is probably wearing every emotion I’ve experienced over the last several days, Ben’s dark eyes seem to lack focus, and the lines of his face are blank. It’s an emotionless mask, similar to the one I’ve seen him wearing at school for the past however many years. But I recognize it for what it is now. He’s thinking—not about the scene in front of him, but about something more pressing. Right now, I’d wager everything I have that he’s thinking about Elijah.
The elevators are down, so we take the stairs, and as soon as we open the door to the stairwell, I’m tempted to run up them two at a time if I have to. I have to see with my own eyes that Jared is okay.
“The hospital is on the third floor,” Struz says, as if he can read my mind. “It’s pretty crowded, so stick with me and I’ll make sure you can get in to see him.”
We’re halfway to the second floor, when the second-floor door opens and a guy in his twenties comes through the door. He bounds down two steps before he sees Struz, then pauses and stands up straighter. “Sir! You’re back,” he says. “The fires in Imperial Beach have been put out, and we’ve gotten the satellite phone lines up.”
“Good, see if we can get ahold of someone in Washington or New York,” Struz says. “And send the emergency responders from Imperial Beach to Poway.”
“Already done,” the guy says.
Struz nods—a silent dismissal—then the guy is running past us and we’re still heading to the third floor.
When we open the door to the hospital level, the strong odors of antiseptic and bleach assault me. It’s crowded with people in scrubs and white coats, but also with people in civilian clothes. I spot Deirdre almost immediately, standing with a doctor, and she moves toward us.