When Life Turned Purple (15 page)

“Well, I guess the crash happened around an hour ago?” said the voice.

“How long after the crash was he spotted?”

“Like half an hour, maybe?”

The phone slid down Lia’s face as she blinked. Then she righted it and said, “Anything else?”

“Other than them multiplying pretty fast on the other side of the world, nothing.”

Russ’s head jerked to catch Lia’s eye when her colleague said that.
Multiplying?
he mouthed. But she shook her head and held up her finger to signal him to wait.

The phone call ended and Lia stood there staring straight ahead, her arms hanging limply at her sides, the phone dangling by her fingertips.

“What is it, baby?” Russ said. “What’s going on?”

She shook her head in wonder, then turned her face up to gaze at him. “Can you imagine?” she said. “He’s in the vacuum of space. It’s boiling and freezing at the same time. Solar radiation. No oxygen. No air pressure. And he’s alive. He’s—he’s even standing up and fully conscious.”

Lia drifted over to the window and gazed out at the massive purple outline in the sky.

“I wonder how you can hitch a ride in one of those things?” she said softly.

Russ came over to her and put his hands on her shoulders, then hugged her to him.

“They’re going over the cosmonauts’ tests,” said Lia. “Their blood work, their saliva, tooth X-rays, DNA, everything. They want to see if there’s something special about this guy that there wasn’t in the others.”

Russ nodded, but his thoughts drifted to Emma again. And the baby. He knew it was because of the sky things, but still.

“How many of those things are we going to see tonight?” Russ asked.

Lia paused. Then she said, “A lot.”

“What about the Russky?”

“You could maybe see him with a telescope.”

“How come you don’t have one?”

“Because I always prefer the good ones, like at the lab. Or in Chile.”

With sunset that night, Russ saw sparkling purple all along the horizon.

“Oh, shoot,” he muttered.

They rose as the sky darkened, beautiful and terrifying, casting a violet glow over the city. The moon and the stars looked hazy and lavender.

Russ heard wailing and weeping outside, but it wasn’t like it was the first time.

Then Lia started getting tweets about how the 911 lines were burning up with calls from concerned friends and family of medicated people were slumped on a floor, a sofa, or a bed, and crying softly and endlessly.

“So they’re feeling it, but it’s muted,” said Russ.

“That’s what it seems like,” said Lia. “And here are a few tweets about whole families or roommates lying around and crying. They’re calling 911 on themselves.”

“And what about us?”

“What
about
us?”

“With us, it’s up and down.”

“It really seems to be affecting different people differently. And maybe it matters that you and I know what’s going on. I mean, these people just seem to be drowning in—in—I’m not sure what. That also seems to be different for different people. Like, I either get bombarded with heavy emotional distress or I start remembering all the stuff with my family …. and you start thinking about Emma and your unborn baby—in other words, something you regret, something you feel guilty over. For me, it’s also regret—and shame—but over what was done
to
me, not what I’ve done.”

“Huh,” said Russ.

“Also, I—well, I know this sounds strange, but I—I was talking to God about all this—it’s something I’ve started doing—and then I got this book, and I’ve been doing all these different things when I start getting upset, a whole combination of things all together, like sedating my Triple Warmer while discussing my feelings with God—”

“Sedating your what?”

Suddenly, they heard a wounded cry of “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!” as a large, dark object dropped past their window. Russ was already on his feet, his gun out. Within three strides, he was at the window. He thought he heard a muffled thump before he even got to the window. Looking down, he saw a figure lying askew on the hard lawn below. In the glare of the streetlights, he could make out a messy spread of hair and a psychedelic tie-dyed bicycle shirt with the sketch of a geoduck scrawled across the chest and sweatpants with large white letters along the leg that Russ knew spelled
Evergreen
. Peeking behind him, Lia was already on the phone with 911.

“Well, you can’t miss him,” she said. “I mean, he’s the only one down there—no, I keep telling you that I can’t tell if he’s alive. Can’t you please just come?” She glanced at Russ. “No, we’re not going down there, not even to check.” She sighed. “Well, he’s wearing dark pants and a psychedelic shirt with a big geoduck on it.” Russ noticed that she pronounced “geoduck” correctly: goo-ee duck.

Finally, Lia hung up and turned to Russ. “Do you think we should go down there?”

“What, and risk our lives for Jack?” Russ couldn’t help remembering every zombie movie he’d ever seen. Just when some innocent sucker decided it was safe to go out, the zombie suddenly attacked from behind.

“But probably nothing will happen,” said Lia. “Probably there’s no real risk.”

Russ pursed his lips and shook his head, but he didn’t feel right about it. It was bizarre to be in the very scenario he’d read about and seen on movies, this ethical situation. The fictional characters always struggled with such decisions, but he merely felt numb and unbending. Lia looked unhappy, but she didn’t push the issue. Perhaps she just wanted to feel all right without actually doing anything
. At least I tried
, she could always say later.

“The dispatcher said they’re tied up,” said Lia. “She said that the police and medical workers are affected by these things too. And they’re getting really urgent calls. I mean, why should they come if he’s not even…?”

Russ hit the windowsill with his hands and then made a decision. He rushed to the porch, leaned over, and called out, “Jack! Hey, Jack!”

But there was no answer. The figure didn’t even move.

Lia came out and called Jack too. Still no answer.

As Russ’s eyes adjusted to the darkness around the halo of light, he could see the ridiculous geoduck smirking complacently back at him.

Then Russ had an idea. He hurried to his tool cabinet and took out a sturdy coil of rope. Grabbing a butcher knife, he hurried back out to the porch, he handed Lia the knife and made a couple of good knots around the iron bars. Then he pulled on the rope.

“I’ll just go down like this,” he said. “If anyone comes and gets on the rope before me, just cut it and I’ll go for the stairs.”

“No one’s around,” she said.

“We can’t really know that, Lia,” he said. “And things are so weird….”

He slid down the rope, pacing himself with his boots so not to get rope burn. He kept looking around as he dropped. Still looking around, he hit the ground and holding onto the rope, he hopped the few paces to get to Jack and bent over him.

He was still breathing.

Russ stood there, staring. He hadn’t expected that.

He knew that he shouldn’t move Jack; moving him could cause worse injuries to his back and neck.

He jogged back to where he’d landed and heaved himself up on the rope.

Lia had been leaning over the balcony ledge the whole time. She dropped the knife and held out her hands to Russ when he came up, but he shook his head and wrestled himself back over the ledge on his own.

“He’s alive,” Russ said.

“Oh, gosh,” said Lia. She dialed 911 again and went back inside.

They said they’d send someone.

So Lia went back out, and she and Russ leaned over the balcony ledge, Russ cradling his gun in his hand.

“There’s nothing we can do for him anyway,” said Russ. “We can’t move him.”

“Right,” said Lia.

“So we’ll just keep an eye on him from here.”

It was weird. Russ felt pretty good about having shimmied up and down the rope to check on Jack—the adrenalin rush and the whole excitement of acting the hero. But Jack had already shown that he was a potential threat. He could hurt Russ and Lia if he got desperate enough—and they’d already seen that it didn’t take much to get Jack into that state.

“I wonder how long it’ll take before it stops feeling like a lark,” said Russ.

“You mean scaling a rope to save Speedy the Geoduck?”

Russ gave a wry laugh. Then he sobered and said, “Yeah. Or anyone. Or anything. At some point, I’ll be doing it because I have to—even if I’m sick of it, even if I’m exhausted, even if I’m weak or ill or just can’t do it anymore.”

Around them, they heard scattered tearful cries and cars honking, including tires screeching and far-off sirens.

Human agony and angst surrounded them, but there was nothing they could do. And it was already too exhausting to feel bad for them, so they just didn’t feel anything. And they’d gotten to that state so fast.

An hour passed and nobody came.

Suddenly, Russ thought he saw Jack move. Then he heard a faint groan.

Russ looked around. Nothing had happened, nobody was around.

He leaned over the ledge and whisper-hissed as loud as he dared, “Hey, Jack! Don’t move! Stay still, man! Stay still! Don’t move!”

Now he wasn’t afraid for him and Lia as much as for Jack. Someone within hearing distance looking for easy pickings could come over.

“Uhhhhhh?” Jack moaned.

“Don’t move!” Russ said again. “Stay still! Help is on the way! Just hold on!”

“Do you think he jumped on purpose?” whispered Lia.

“Yeah.” Then to Jack, he whisper-hissed more warnings. But Jack either didn’t hear them or didn’t understand. Jack kept moaning more and more, his head lolling back and forth. Then he rolled onto his side. Russ winced. Slowly and painfully, Jack raised himself on his arms.

“Ouch,” he said.

Finally, an ambulance pulled up. Russ and Lia watched as they loaded him in while Jack kept asking what was going on before they drove off.

Back inside their apartment, Lia looked dismal again.

“Aw, baby,” Russ said.

“I’m no good at this,” she said. “This is gonna sound really awful, but I—I didn’t want to risk either you or me to go help him. He could’ve been dying there and I wouldn’t have done anything. I never would’ve thought of using a rope. I’m playing the bleeding-hearted damsel, but really, I was just pressuring you to do something and calling 911 to soothe my own conscious.” She sighed. “You see? We’ve only just started facing moral dilemmas and already, I’m failing.”

“I know,” said Russ.

She looked at him, her eyes wide. “You
know
?”

“I got that. I figured that you just wanted to feel good more than you wanted to actually be good.”

Her eyes widened even more and she blinked. “You
knew
that?”

“Sure.”

“And you
still
like me?”

He laughed. “Sure, baby! Everyone struggles with that issue. And anyway, it was just Jack, after all.” He put his fists on his waist, puffed out his chest, and deepened his voice. “And what if it had been me, little lady?”

Lia laughed and threw her arms around his neck. “I wouldn’t even need to think twice,” she said. “911 would’ve needed to call for help themselves if they wouldn’t get here within two minutes!”

Russ put his arms around her. “911, eh? It’s already been rendered useless. Almost, anyway. We’d better teach you how to deal with that kind of injury yourself.”

And that’s what they spent the rest of the evening doing.

The next morning, they checked the news about the cosmonaut, but nothing was mentioned except for on some alternative media sites, but even then, only as an unconfirmed rumor, which even the most conspiracy-obsessed sites seemed to consider in the same category as the more fanciful bits of UFOlogy.

But Lia’s connections told her that the bubble with the cosmonaut inside had disappeared. And that he was alive and walking around in there until they lost track of it.

“What do you mean ‘lost track of it’?” said Lia. “By the way, I’m putting you on speaker phone because I’m getting a crick in my neck.” Then she put a finger to her lips to indicate she wanted Russ to be quiet so her colleague wouldn’t know that he was listening in.

“It’s gone.”

“But the telescopes—”

“I know, Lia, I know. But all the same, it’s gone.”

Lia frowned. “If we can’t see it, then that means....”

“Yup.”

“Huh.”

Russ gave a Lia a questioning look and rocked his hand back and forth as if to twist the information out of her. But she merely shook her head and held up her palm as if to hold him back.

“And why aren’t they reporting this?”

“You tell me.”

Lia gave a small laugh. “Alien kidnapping?”