Chapter 4

  Michael Whyte

  “In the name of Jesus Christ,” grumbled Dwayne Hartman, his huge hands on Jimothy’s thin chest, “wake up, boy.” Then he turned aside and coughed.

  Michael watched, fists clenched, not sure what to expect. Did he believe in miracles? Yes, he did. And however much he did, Dwayne Hartman believed in them far more. Still, Michael didn’t know. Would Jim open his eyes and rise up, skipping and dancing, cured not only of his coma but of cerebral palsy as well? Michael hoped so. But he didn’t think so.

  And nothing happened. Jimothy breathed peacefully, his chest rising and falling, his thin and pale face relaxed as if napping. Every time Michael saw Jim, he thought to himself: he’s just asleep, of course. That’s all. But he’d been sleeping for more than a day now, and nothing woke him up. He was dreaming; Michael at least knew that much. Did comatose people dream?

  “Well,” said Dwayne Hartman as he struggled to his feet, clutching the roof of the car for support. “Asking the Lord for healing is always worth the try.” His voice sounded more full of gravel than usual. Was he emotional? It was hard to tell. That lined, bearded, wrinkled face was hard to read.

  “Has it…ever worked?” The question just came out. Michael shrugged his jacket against the cold, the damp, the fog. He replaced the blanket around Jimothy to keep him warm and dry.

  Dwayne surprised him by answering, “Twice.” The tone of his voice discouraged further questioning on the subject.

  Dwayne took his matching wooden canes, gripped them tight, crutched over to his own pickup. He eased into the driver’s seat with a grunt and lit up a cigarette that he found in one of the pockets of his faded military jacket.

  Michael looked down at Jimothy, peaceful and sleeping. Although Michael knew next to nothing about what was happening, he did know that it had to do with Jimothy. They had come for Jimothy, and his ‘angel.’ “Sometimes,” he said, partly to Dwayne and partly to himself, “I don’t think I’ve been a very good brother.”

  Dwayne coughed around his cigarette. “Don’t know ‘bout all that,” he said. “All I can see is you’re being a good brother now. I could of used someone like you. Way back then.”

  Michael reluctantly closed the door on Jimothy. The sound of a racquetball bouncing on gravel drew his attention away. That ball was alive again, bouncing all by itself, in the middle of the little triangle made by Michael’s car, Dwayne Hartman’s wreck of a pickup truck, and the freshly shoveled mound of gravel covering the body of someone named Jacob Hollow.

  Dwayne had explained it all, albeit in a terse series of muttered statements. Isaac dead, murdered by a villain named Abraham Black. The stranger, Jacob Hollow, with whom Michael had briefly spoken, also dead at Black’s hands. This latter had happened only minutes before Michael’s arrival. The murderer vanished away, possibly still somewhere nearby, out in the strange mist.

  “So what now?” asked Michael. He had already taken stock of their fuel and supplies. They had little of either. More theoretically existed out there in the fog, but a world beyond that strange silvery barrier seemed increasingly theoretical by the hour. Dwayne was the first human being that Michael had encountered since entering the fog. The first real human, that is. Unreal ones took shape at the corners of his vision. More and more, they were beginning to move. To have color. Maybe soon they would begin to speak.

  Dwayne flicked the cigarette butt to the damp gravel and ground it out with the end of a cane. “Don’t know,” he said. “That man had an idea.” He nodded his cowboy hat at Jacob. “Some way to help your brother.” He shrugged.

  “So…” Michael fought back the little tingle of despair that kept trying to nag at him. Was it hopeless? Not yet. Was everything over? Not yet.

  “So we sing, Mr. Whyte,” said Dwayne Hartman. He leaned back, popped open his glove box, rummaged around. He revealed a stained, dog-eared book that had once been hardcover, though the covers were missing. “You sing, don’t you? ‘Course you do. Everyone sings. No need to be embarrassed. Nobody here to hear you but me, and I don’t count.”

  It was a hymnal. Dwayne Hartman flipped it open to a random page, and without further preamble, began bellowing into the fog. No, singing. He was singing. Probably. “All the way, my savior leads me…”

  The voice mesmerized Michael. He had never heard anyone sing(?) like that before. But he knew the hymn, and on the second verse he set aside his shyness and reservations about singing here, and he joined in.

  Dwayne Hartman had his eyes closed, the battered hymnal apparently a formality, or possibly just a means of selecting a hymn, but Michael kept watch as they sang. He noticed that the ball came close and bounced in time to the tune. The mist around them pulsed, swirled, half-coalesced into suggestive shapes: a winding path, a rock flowing with water.

  Time passed vaguely, as it seemed to do in the fog. How many hymns did they sing? Neither could remember. Between three and thirty. Enough to become thirsty, so that Michael retrieved a couple of bottles from his stash in the trunk of his car.

  On his way to hand a bottle to Dwayne, something new emerged from the mist. It startled Michael not only because of the size, the light, and the noise, but because these appeared all at once, with no buildup, dropping down out of the gray blankness above.

  Michael stared stupidly up at the new thing emerging from the fog. He wondered how to react. Should he run? Run where? Was this thing real? And what was he even looking at?

  It had appeared directly overhead, but it slid off to the side and dropped to the earth, where it landed with a heavy crunch of gravel and a thud that Michael felt in the soles of his feet. White and blue lights glared in the fog, making flashing cones of illumination. A low, rapid thumping throbbed in Michael’s chest.

  It was an alien spaceship. It had to be. Michael’s imagination ran wild. That would explain some things, maybe. This fog, the cracks in the sky, and maybe even Jimothy’s condition…

  Michael looked to Dwayne as the thing settled down at the edge of their little clearing in the fog. Dwayne appeared watchful and curious, but not more so than if he had seen an interesting bird. Michael stepped away from Dwayne, back to his car. If this was dangerous, he had to somehow get Jim away. He opened the back door and replaced the water bottles in his hands with his camera.

  The spaceship calmed down once it had landed. Some of the lights blinked off; the throbbing pulse ceased. For a minute, all was quiet. Then a hatch opened, accompanied by a hiss of pressure and a bright light. Several figures stepped down a ramp onto the wet gravel. Michael squinted against the light. He had his camera ready, though he wasn’t sure what he could do with it.

  “Dear me!” said a man’s voice, thin and excited. “Is that him? I say, he is rather older than I’d thought.”

  “No, Elmer,” answered another voice—female, weary. “That’s Dwayne Hartman. Michael’s over there. Turn the damn lights off, Clara.” The glaring white backlighting vanished, leaving a smeared afterimage floating in Michael’s vision.

  Okay. Maybe not aliens. Calm down, Michael.

  The woman who had spoken approached him. Her boots crunched on the gravel. Her broad leather hat seemed unnecessary in the sunless mist. Her iron-gray hair was bound in a long, tight braid, and three long, thin, parallel scars decorated her lined face. She wore khakis, a belt holstering a gun and a knife, and a leather vest over a tan shirt. Michael would have known who this was even if he did not recognize her. Rebecca Carter.

  She held out a hand. “Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Whyte. I’m Rebecca Carter. I’m here with…well, here they come.”

  A number of surprising people piled out of the strange aircraft. Elmer Sky, the first who had spoken, short and fat and enthusiastic. Amelia Shape, tall and thin, who looked ready to lay down and die from sheer ennui. Alan Sheppard, who greeted Michael warmly. Michael at once forgot any animosity that he may have held against Alan for his involvement in what had happened with October Industries. Seeing him now, tired and concerned, and hearing his first words be an enquiry into Jim’s condition, resolved any nagging doubts about Alan in Michael’s mind.

  Alan looked ready to fight, every bit as grizzled as Michael had imagined him. In fact, he seemed to have some blood on his jacket. But in his shadow came a child, one hand clutching at his pant leg, nervous about meeting someone new out in the fog. Leah Walker, younger sister to one of Jim’s best friends.

  Dwayne Hartman lumbered over from his wreck of a pickup truck and greeted everyone as though he had known them all his whole life and had been anticipating their arrival. He made more of an impression than Michael. Elmer and Amelia stared at him in a kind of befuddled shock. Alan Sheppard shook his hand firmly with a short, wary greeting, and Rebecca nodded at him with respect.

  AJ emerged from the aircraft only after Michael had met the others. He hesitated for a moment before moving to intercept her. When he saw her face, he stopped. Like Rebecca Carter, AJ showed signs of exhaustion. Her eyes were red and downcast, and she wiped them when she noticed Michael in front of her.

  “Oh,” she said. “Michael!”

  “Call me Mike,” he said. His voice weakened into a thin, embarrassing croak.

  “Mike,” she said. “Verily.”

  She wore loose tan pants and a yellow shirt (her favorite color) under a black and blue rain jacket. Her beautiful golden hair had been hastily trapped back in a ponytail, though stray strands lingered on her shoulders, stuck in place with the dampness of the fog. Her hands fidgeted at the hem of her jacket. She was staring at him.

  “So…” she said after a long moment. “Still have the camera?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, still, uh, still got it.” He closed his eyes. Stupid.

  He opened his eyes, stepped forward, and embraced AJ just as she began to speak again. Her words trailed off in surprise. Michael hugged firmly for a strange, exciting second, and was about to pull away when she returned the gesture. She pinned him tightly and let out a long, shaky breath, which he could feel against his chest.

  She rested her forehead lightly on his shoulder. “Glad you’re safe,” she said quietly.

  “You too,” he replied.

  Then she let go, and so did he. The special moment ended, but the uncomfortable atmosphere went with it. They were back to where they had been weeks ago at her house. New friends with a lot to talk about.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “How are you?” Michael asked. “Everything…” He almost asked ‘everything okay?’ But of course that was a stupid question. Everything was not okay. AJ looked tired but unharmed. But what about her sister? “How’s Elizabeth?”

  “Sleeping,” said AJ.

  Michael nodded. “And she can’t be woken up. But she’s dreaming.”

  “Verily. Slumbering sister somniloquist. But she’s okay. Tell me about Isaac.” These words came during a lull in the background conversation between the others and Dwayne Hartman. Silence fell. Everyone looked at Dwayne.

  “I’ll just step over and take a seat,” said Dwayne. He turned back to his truck. Instead of sitting once more in the driver’s seat, he reached into the bed of the truck and extracted a plastic folding chair. He popped it open with one hand, set it on the damp gravel, and eased himself into it. It creaked dangerously under his weight.

  He swallowed. He visibly braced himself. But when he spoke, his voice was firm, though scarred and rough from age and long years of abuse. “Man came to town by the name of Abraham Black,” he said. “Weren’t really a man, though. He shot down Isaac…in the middle of the day, on Main Street. Just before all this…” He waved a huge hand dismissively at the fog all around them. “Killed a lot of other people, too.”

  Amelia Shape and Elmer Sky clutched at each other at the mention of Abraham Black. They both looked fearfully in different directions, out into the fog. Alan shook his head in vexation.

  “What about October Industries?” asked Michael. “Did you see them, Mr. Hartman? Any men in gray and orange coats?”

  Dwayne shook his head, but the others turned sharply to face Michael. “Did you?” asked Rebecca Carter and Alan Sheppard almost together.

  Michael told them, in brief, of his two narrow escapes from OI—first with the bouncing ball at his home, and then with resurrected white eyeless Hazel, who disappeared when Jim fell asleep.

  “That would be an angel,” whispered Elmer to Amelia, loudly.

  “What’s this about a bouncing ball?” asked Alan.

  The answer rolled out of the fog, directly through their group: a scuffed blue rubber ball. It hopped across the wet gravel in a series of low bumps. “It guided me here, actually,” said Michael. Every eye was on the ball as it rolled past them and toward the flying machine.

  “Wait,” said Alan as it bounced up the ramp. He leaped after it, leaving Leah Walker startled and the rest of them confused.

  They followed Alan and found him holding the ball in the main cabin of the flying machine, which from inside looked like a luxury private jet encamped by armed hobos. A dirty T-shirt partly obscured a knife atop the polished glass surface of the minibar. The white faux-leather couch was smeared with stains of mud and possibly blood.

  A voice spoke as Michael observed the interior. It was smooth, cool, female, and it came from an overhead speaker system. “All subjects identified,” she said. “Reunion protocol confirmed.”

  “Cut the bullshit,” said Rebecca. “Sorry, dear,” she added, for the benefit of Leah. “What subjects?”

  “Rebecca Carter. Alan Sheppard. Leah Walker. Amber Jane Eddison. Michael Whyte. Dwayne Hartman. Identity confirmed by facial recognition, voice recognition, and iris scan. I am submitting a report of successful operation and setting new coordinates.”

  “Coordinates to where?” asked Alan. Rebecca, at the same time, said, “submitting them to whom?”

  “Coordinate location currently blocked. Reports are submitted to Dr. Riley McFinn and Codename: Christmas.”

  Rebecca snorted with derisive laughter. “He’s not a doctor.”

  “Christmas?” Alan said in surprise.

  “That’s Clara,” AJ whispered to Michael. “She’s McFinn’s AI. She controls this ship. She is improbable.” Michael nodded in understanding.

  “Who’s Christmas?” he asked.

  “Codename: Christmas will meet you en route,” said Clara. “Dr. Riley McFinn is unfortunately no longer in existence in this world.”

  Silence. “He’s…dead?” asked Rebecca, genuinely shaken.

  “Negative, Ms. Carter. As I have said, I am in communication with him. He is presently located on another plane of existence.”

  Silence again, this time with muttered swearing from Rebecca.

  “What does that mean?” Leah asked. Then she added, as if to clear things up, “we are on a plane, too.”

  “He is safe, Leah Walker,” said the voice, Clara. “He is attempting to make contact with your brother. He is preparing a way for you.”

  Leah nodded as if this met exactly with her expectations. “Cool,” she said.

  Alan became animated. “What about Heidi?”

  “I have limited data on this subject,” Clara explained. “But the most recent report suggests that all of the six are alive.” Then, preempting their many questions as though anticipating them, she continued. “Please hold further questions for a real human. My programming prohibits me from making unfounded assumptions or extrapolating from insufficient data—things at which humans excel.” She paused for a moment as though to allow them to appreciate her joke. “As I said, Codename: Christmas intends to join you. He may know more. He will certainly have more to say.” Slight pause. “Coordinates uploaded.”

  It seemed that Clara had finished. Rebecca kept muttering to herself; Michael caught the word ‘bitch’ in the mix.

  “Well there you are, then!” exclaimed Elmer Sky, greatly pleased. “It seems your loved ones are all safe!”

  “She didn’t say ‘safe,’ Elmer,” said Amelia Shape. “She said ‘alive.’”

  “How can she be safe,” said Rebecca in a tight voice, “if she’s dead?”

  Michael nearly asked about this, but AJ whispered to him. “Kaitlyn Carter died in Chicago. Christmas claims she’s not really dead.”

  “That’s like what Jacob Hollow said about Isaac,” he replied.

  “Who?”

  “The person buried under the gravel out there.”

  AJ put a hand to her mouth in shock. Michael changed the subject. “Where’s Elizabeth?”

  AJ took him through a door that led to a series of three small bunkrooms, like sleeper compartments in a train. Elizabeth Eddison slept soundly in one of them.

  “We should bring Jim onboard,” said AJ. “I don’t trust that fog.”

  He nodded. “I know what you mean.” He already felt nervous for Jim, even though he was just sleeping in the car right outside.

  Alan had taken charge when they returned to the main cabin, which AJ called the lounge. “Why can’t we fly there?” he asked the ceiling, which by general agreement seemed to be where Clara was located.

  “Most of North American airspace is no longer safely navigable. Also, this jet is largely powered by satellite-transmitted solar energy, and such transmission is no longer possible.”

  Alan sighed. “Does your truck work, Mr. Hartman?”

  Dwayne Hartman thought about it. “Could get it running again with the tools. And time.”

  “We can’t all fit in Michael’s car,” said Rebecca with a skeptical glance at Dwayne.

  “There is another alternative,” said Clara. “This vehicle is designed to shed its flight equipment and become an Autonomous Large Land Rover. However, it will not meet street-legal standards in most U.S. states.”

  Thus, it was settled that they would sleep the night on the jet, and in the morning set out by ALL-Rover. They brought Jimothy onboard and laid in the bunk above Elizabeth. Michael and AJ watched them for a moment before returning to the lounge, where Dwayne and Alan were deep in conversation. In the corner, Amelia sat by a snoring Elmer and created little flowers of light to the delight of Leah. Jim had done something like that before falling asleep.

  “What do you think she’s dreaming of?” asked AJ.

  “Elizabeth?” Michael thought about the scant notes he had made from Jim’s mutterings. Not much to go on. And did it matter? “Flowers, maybe?”

  AJ smiled at the thought. “I hope so. She’s always loved flowers.”