Authors: Thomas Davidson
James Carney could feel the oily sweat beneath his mask as he ran up the embankment.
A Hoover Dam cracked and broke inside his chest, and a river of adrenaline surged into his blood. His pounding heart indicated he was racing right into coronary country. The airborne object surely hovered somewhere nearby, moving in the dark. What if this one had infrared human sensors detecting his body heat? Maybe he'd get a flying missile between the shoulders? He could easily imagine these crazy bastards calling in a missile strike on the Phantom of the Opera.
After he climbed to the road, he crossed over a four-lane highway with a dividing island. At that time of night, light traffic meant no dodging between cars, no getting hit and splattered and becoming roadkill. He truly hoped Tim Crowe was barreling through Cambridge unimpeded toward the theater. No followers, no interceptions. No more hellacious luck.
Most of all, he hoped that the thing inside the tunnel hadn't been present during their conversation.
Eyes darting, James ran toward the Boathouse. He looked over his shoulder and saw a few sets of headlights moving along the street. Traffic hummed and a distant siren wailed. He saw no blinking red lights in the lower region of the dark sky.
Still, he weighed the risks. If he were spotted on his way to the theater, he could be easily tracked. As a result, he and Crowe would be trapped in the narrow alley with no escape. Boxed in on both sides. He had to be certain he was alone. The siren's wail grew louder, an electric scream rattling his nerves. He spotted construction material by the side of the boathouse: wood, metal, wheelbarrows, large clay pipes. Again he glanced over his shoulder, then hurried to one of the pipes on the grass, and dropped his crowbar. He whipped off his mask and cape to be unimpeded, wrapped them together, and wedged the thin, black bundle between the pipe and grass. He crawled inside, hidden from the air above, and waited. Listening.
The siren abruptly stopped, replaced by the sound of water gently lapping the riverbank. He snaked through the pipe so that his feet weren't exposed, and then inched further inside, his arms extended in front of his head as if he were swimming. His posture triggered a repulsive thought:
swimming in sewage
.
The relative silence outside ceased when the siren erupted again nearby. The wailing quickened his heart. Surely Tim could hear it, too.
Now what?
The siren drew closer.
Straight through the pipe, he could see the shiny black surface of the moonlit river, and city lights of Boston beyond. The pipe's round hole framed the visible world, as if he were inside a large telescope. What kind of far-reaching telescope, he wondered, could glimpse his former life? A radio telescope? X-ray telescope? Gamma-ray telescope?
The siren stopped.
He exhaled with relief and hoped he wouldn't be delayed too long. If he sprinted all the way, he'd be able to meet Tim almost on schedule. His thoughts were interrupted by a distant red dot, a pinprick puncturing the night. The red light, the size of a pea, danced in the air, racing two or three feet above the water's surface from the Boston side, toward the Boathouse. Speeding in his direction.
His heartbeat accelerated. Numbness swept over his body.
Two red lights appeared in a row, one trailing behind the frontrunner.
Three red lights were flying over a shiny surface the color of ink, heading his way.
James had a vision fueled by adrenaline—seeing objects advancing relentlessly across the water brought to mind footage of the Normandy Invasion. This was a micro version, a nano-Normandy Invasion. He shook in his tight confines, could hear himself hyperventilating. Pain stabbed his chest.
Time was a blur. Five seconds passed? Ten seconds? A cruel eternity? It cleared the water and
hit the beach
, came into focus, a small winged creature with a blinking red light at its core. Swooping into his air space, it hit the hole like a reverse cannonball, entering the far end of the pipe. James saw it coming straight at him. He jerked, banged his head against the curved surface, unable to raise his extended arms inside. The long cylindrical tube was a virtual strait jacket.
His bladder popped. A warm burst between his legs.
Another insectan drone entered the pipe.
A third.
The first one made contact. It struck a lesion on his face, then swung back and remained still in mid-air. The red light was now a blinking red eye in the dark, staring at James Carney, whose breath fogged the tube. Sweat ran down his forehead, into his eyes. He wondered if he had gone mad, or if he was seeing a tiny face staring at him.
The other end of the pipe was breached. Something hit the soles of his feet. Something small tunneled right against his leg, pushing up his pants cuff, and James Carney imagined a rat and thought he'd explode from claustrophobia.
A car door slammed outside. On the street or up on the grass.
Hands appeared at the top end of the pipe, nearest the river, stuffing construction boards into the hole. Each inserted board erased moonlight. Pieces of wood plugged the pipe with the efficiency of a giant cork, keeping the drones inside with James Carney.
Footsteps sounded alongside the pipe toward the other end. James opened his mouth in a silent scream. Soon that end was corked. A small drone tunneled up from behind. He pictured an angry wasp. The last thing James Carney heard was a man's voice.
The stranger spoke in a flat tone: "Hey there, Jumper Number Four. It's me, C.C. Seymour, making a score for EyeSoar. My drones got some sweet AV. I see and hear all things under the stars. I saw you break into the tool shed today. Tsk, tsk, you peckerhead. You can't escape C.C. Don't ever jump to conclusions, jumper."
The stranger began singing his own rap song:
"As you can see, I'm CC
I got AV in my D's
Looking for deportees and refugees
I can see thee if you try to flee me
I squash escapees to the nth degree
It's easy as ABC 1-2-3
Now enjoy your stay in the home of the drone
And the land of the UAV
Over and out, I'm CC."
The stranger kept droning on, but James couldn't hear it. His cry echoed inside the dark pipe. A tiny drone floated an inch from his face, a single red eye coolly observing the jumper. Eye to eye. James's own eyes felt like rockets in his eye sockets, thunder and smoke roaring out of his head, his eyes lifting off and spiraling into the blackness of outer space. Then the world snapped and he fell silent. He wouldn't be meeting Tim Crowe again after all.
The construction crew had a surprise waiting for them in the morning.
The photo was gone—again.
The heavy exit door clicked shut behind Rayne, the sound of a casket's lid closing, as she stepped into the alley and looked down onto the dirty pavement. No sign of the picture she had dropped a while ago. No sign of she and Tim standing on the sunny pier, the blue harbor spread out behind them. A missing snapshot of another world. A world she could locate with maps and charts and satellites. A planet she could locate within the universe.
Maybe a gust of wind had stolen the photo. She kept her head down and searched with a pocket penlight in an expanding radius. Nothing. Only one word came to mind.
Tim.
And then she saw it. A slightly curled piece of rectangular paper with tape around its edge. She stepped toward it but a breeze pushed it a couple of feet along the dirty concrete. She reached for it, turned it over. A mirror.
The mirror.
A punch to the heart. Tim had been here. Within what? The last hour or so? But she knew immediately that he wasn't nearby, or he would have waited. He had found her picture tonight, just beyond the door, but something had happened. Something. She pocketed the picture and stood up.
Her journey began with two choices. Left or right. Off to the right she saw a distant streetlamp illuminating a cross street, and a park or vacant lot beyond. Rayne was left-handed. The dominant hand won out. She turned left, veering like a car with its steering slightly out of alignment. She walked through the dark corridor, on high alert, taking in all sights and sounds. A pale moon shone dimly on the long narrow alley. She held her penlight, but kept it off, in case she was not alone. She heard nothing unusual: traffic noise nearby, a light breeze that barely brushed back her hair by her ears as she walked. Finally she reached the end of the alley and turned left. She went up a narrow street lined with parked cars, and arrived inside the heart of Harvard Square.
She stopped in her tracks when she saw a large airborne object high over the street, sailing over the treetops and telephone poles. It put her in mind of a winged dinosaur, a prehistoric creature that had flown into the wrong geological era.
She thought of the movie
Gone
. And the coming attractions, the veiled warnings she had heard on the voiceover. She thought of her exchange with Shay earlier tonight. She thought:
this
is the coming attractions.
This
.
She resumed her pace on the sidewalk, moving further into this dreamlike world. She had a floating sensation of walking through a dark, futuristic movie. The aerial vehicle continued in her general direction. She tingled with sensory overload. She wanted to process this piece by piece, not all at once. She imagined herself standing at the foot of a mountain, hearing a thundering noise from above, looking up and seeing an avalanche heading her way.
She continued, eyes flicking side to side, searching her immediate vicinity. Stores and cafes lined each side of the street, some with unfamiliar names. She stopped beside a toy store called FAO Warz, closed for the night. Toys filled the display window, including
Felony Freddy
, a teddy bear wearing an orange jumpsuit and leg iron shackles. Next to Freddy was a toy called
School's Out!
The box displayed a picture of a small drone crashing through a classroom window. Inside the box, a drone the size of a fat cucumber was labeled:
Recess Maker
. Rayne stood and stared for a few seconds. What an angry world, she thought, and remembered a 1959 sci-fi movie classic about a flight to Mars:
The Angry Red Planet
. This world here seemed as distant as Mars. It occurred to her that she had much in common with the Mars Rover—both explored the surface of faraway worlds, searching for or detecting alien life. Her feet propelled her past the toy store. She continued her exploration far from home.
Right across the street was a BankAmerica branch. The ATM's foyer would be open all night. Inside, beyond the plate glass windows, she saw a flickering image on a wall-mounted, flat-panel TV. It appeared to be tuned to the news.
Rayne crossed the street. She waited until a customer opened the door and exited. She grabbed the door's handle before it shut and went inside. The bank's foyer was unnecessarily spacious, its bare white walls as elegant as the interior of a cardboard box. She wondered if the same architect designed all bank foyers, no matter what universe. A man stood with his back to her, facing an ATM machine and pressing buttons. Nearby, a locked glass door led into a dark bank.
Rayne stopped by the screen built into the wall, the TV volume on low. The newscaster chattered about the stock market, the indices, and stocks of note for the day. At the moment, Rayne couldn't comprehend this parade of numbers. She could hear the man behind her pushing buttons, depositing a check. Her eyes sank down to the news ticker at the bottom of the screen. A ribbon of late-breaking story summaries crawled along from left to right.
Tornadoes touch down in Los Angeles.
Rayne kept wondering about the airborne object above the streets of Cambridge. Except this wasn't Cambridge. This was…
Senator McLane visits U.S. troops in Madagascar.
She had to find Tim. They had to return home, tonight. Where would she start? What teacher or classroom in her youth ever prepared her for this? What possible instruction manual…
New reality show. Do you have the balls to go over the falls?
SHIT'S CREEK (Cash, Canoes, Cojones, and Niagara Falls)
debuted last night to record ratings.
Ten minutes into this world and she was already feeling a sick swirl in her stomach. She couldn't waste time, but didn't know where to go. She kept watching the newscast to get an idea of how this world ticked. Maybe that would provide some insight, a sense of direction, a beginning of a plan. What else did she have?
The dull voice of the newscaster refocused her attention. She looked up.
He said,
"We have an update. Jumper Cable TV is now reporting…"
Rayne wondered if she had heard him correctly. Such an odd phrase. Then she jerked slightly. Behind her, a voice rose above the low tone of the TV.
"Jumper TV?" the customer said.
She heard a sound: the customer's leather shoes squeaked, slid slightly on the floor. He was probably turning away from the ATM machine, facing the TV. She kept her eyes on the screen.
"…a new jumper sighting has been reported tonight from an undisclosed source. Any intel at this time has just been sent to DR1 and EyeSoar."
"Eyesore," Rayne echoed, and blinked. She wondered what the newscaster meant.
"This could be number seven. Well, unofficially this will be number seven until further notice."
"Those terrorist bastards," the man said behind her. "I'd like to personally kick the living shit out of 'em, then shoot 'em. Set 'em on fire."
Rayne couldn't tell if he was speaking to her, to himself, or to the TV newscaster. Apart from that, his intention was unclouded, free of ambiguity.
"Jumper Seven is also part of the anti-medical team, 'Mad Doctors Without Borders.' Jumper Seven is at large and is considered extremely dangerous. Anyone with information regarding this Mad Doctor can contact our drone lords or this station."
The newscaster turned to someone in the studio and asked,
"Do we have it? We do? Okay. This just in, here's…"
Jumper #7 appeared on the screen.
Rayne Moore saw herself on TV, and rocked on her feet. Blond wig, sunglasses, horrific makeup, pink coat. She had penciled in Groucho Marx eyebrows. Two caterpillars. She was the Bride of Frankenstein. How could she, a new arrival, possibly be on TV? Her mind whirled at this bizarre revelation. It was enough to make the hair on the back of her wig stand up. If the asshole at the ATM would leave, she'd tear the hair out of her wig and scream.
The sound of a footstep. The customer said, "What I'd give to strangle that bitch with her own purse strap. I'd use her fucking bra and wrap it around her neck like a tourniquet."
A few minutes ago outside, she had imagined herself standing at the foot of a mountain, hearing a thundering noise from above, looking up and seeing an avalanche heading her way. Now she knew. The thundering noise was Captain America behind her. The avalanche was ten tons of shit raining down on her and Tim. Things were worse than she had ever imagined. This was a complete and total clusterfuck. Only one thing mattered.
Get Tim, get out.
The blond with the psychotic makeup kept facing the screen. She slipped her right hand into her purse, put her ring of keys between her fingers. Her left hand dug out a tube of bright red lipstick, the color of blood spatter at a crime scene. With both hands full, she turned.
And saw Captain America, mid-thirties, two inches taller, with close-cropped hair. He wore a navy jacket, powder blue v-neck sweater over a white t-shirt. Artfully unshaven. He gripped his cell phone. Perhaps the FBI or the National Guard was on speed dial.
Captain America's eyes migrated from Rayne to the headshot on the screen, and back to Rayne. His gray eyes widened. The only thing missing was an audible click issuing from inside his skull. His mouth opened. He began with, "You fucken—"
"Here," Rayne said casually as she flipped the gold tube of lipstick up in the air, to his right. In that instant, beneath the fluorescent light, the cartridge resembled a gold-plated bullet shooting in slo-mo. His eyes flicked, followed the tube. His body turned slightly, off balance.
Rayne's left foot shot up, a blazing bottle rocket, and kicked his balls to kingdom come. Captain America gasped, saw fireworks. The Fourth of July exploded in his eyes. As he folded in half from the waist, she swung upward with her right hand, punching a key-studded fist into his face. Brass knuckles, just the way her daddy taught her. She was fairly certain his nose broke, now a faucet of blood between his wide forehead and pointed chin. Her blue-collar daddy had taught her how to fight.
"Listen up, raindrop,"
he told her years ago, after a school bully had pounded her.
"Rule number one: don't fight fair, fight to win. Punch first. The point is
not
to get hit. Let me show you."
Then he added with a smile,
"We're gonna turn Rainfall…into Driving Rain."
Tonight, Rayne did not get hit.
Then the obvious occurred to Rayne Angela Moore, fugitive, as she stood in the bank's foyer. There were more security cameras inside here than in the Fort Knox parking lot. She had to exit. Soon.
With her foot, Rayne knocked Captain America onto the floor, his hands cupping his crotch. He'd be singing falsetto for a few minutes, which would buy her time. No need for him to call the police within sixty seconds.
She stepped behind him so he couldn't see her face, turned her back to the ATM cameras, and removed the wig and sunglasses by a blank wall, then used tissue from her purse to erase some ghastly makeup. The Groucho Marx eyebrows had to go. She balled up the wig to the size of a hairy yellow coconut, and went through the door. A customer on the sidewalk, an aging biker chick with granite eyes, was coming inside. Harley Davidson's sister, Haley Davidson.
Not good.
Rayne told her, "There's a junkie puking on the floor. He's going through wicked withdrawals."
"So?" Biker boxed her shoulders under her leather vest, shrugging off the warning. The only thing missing was a tattoo on her forehead that read:
A shit—something I do not give
.
Fine
, Rayne thought. She added, "He shit himself, so it really stinks."
"In that case..." Biker turned and headed down the sidewalk. She forgot to say
thank you.
Rayne hustled up the sidewalk and dropped her wig, sunglasses and pink coat into a metal trash container by the curb. She made her way to the only logical destination. Her heart sank when she turned a corner and looked up the street. The marquee was empty, a virtual blank sheet of white paper. Soon she stood in front of the Gateway, sensing an invisible weight bearing down on her. She stepped over to the entrance and peered through the glass. The interior was dark. An empty cavern.
Taped to the box office glass, a cardboard sign announced:
"Closed until further notice."
She couldn't stay here, but didn’t know where to go. She moved to the curb and scanned the street and sky. In the distance, she saw a flying dinosaur, a drone sailing over the rooftops from right to left, a dark shadow blotting out stars as it moved. She stood in a chill wind and watched. Dead leaves pinwheeled in the air.
Tim, where are you?
She stood still and tracked the drone. She imagined it as a dog, an airborne bloodhound relentlessly tracking the hunted. Flying low, sniffing the streets for jumpers.
Jumper #7 decided to head in the opposite direction. Jumper #7 stayed to the right and started moving, away from BankAmerica and Captain America sprawled on the floor. It occurred to Jumper #7 that the big bank industry had a shortage of super heroes. So she amended his name. She wondered if he'd approve.