Shattered Sky (6 page)

Winston glanced at his watch, and adjusted it three hours back, to noon. Then he reached over and checked his carry-on—a black leather backpack that rested in the seat beside him.

“I'm sorry, but you'll have to put that back under the seat for landing,” the flight attendant intoned in a practiced voice. It almost sounded recorded, like the White-Zone Nazi, whose voice resounded in every airport in the world.

“I know the drill,” Winston said. He shifted it gently to the ground, as if to slide it under the seat, but when she was gone, he hoisted it back up. He needed the legroom, FAA regulations be damned. The nervous traveler across the aisle threw him an anemic miffed look, as if this baggage infraction could trigger a mid-air collision.

Winston returned his gaze. “You need a shave,” Winston told him.

The man looked away, and mumbled under his breath. “I shaved this morning.”

“Still need one.”

Confused, the man absently passed his hand over his cheek and found stubble that could have been a week old.

Winston grinned. It was a guilty pleasure harassing the people within his sphere of influence. One of the few pleasures he allowed himself lately. Hair growth, nail growth—anything that could grow or regenerate did so when caught within Winston's field. Such was his unique talent; different, yet somehow connected to the various abilities and effects of the other shards. No doubt there would be several people on today's flight who would be making unexpected trips to Supercuts this afternoon.

After a bumpy descent, the plane pulled in five minutes late. “Santa Ana condition,” the pilot had said; the periodic wind that brought hot, dry air from the desert, and forced planes to land from the west.

Once in the terminal, Winston suffered the ordeal of a 17-year-old black kid under an assumed name renting a car in a lily-white airport, trying to look as old as his fake ID claimed he was. Thaddeus Stone, 21, a combination of his brother's name, and his nickname. The clerk handed him the keys, then Winston waited for his luggage to come shuttling down the baggage claim carousel.

As he waited he caught sight of a security guard trying unsuccessfully to roust a clutch of Colists that had camped out like squatters.

“Incredible,” grumbled one of the passengers. “It's the sixties all over again.” Which was true to an extent—and yet in some ways this was markedly different. Back then it had been a generation that chose to tune in, turn on, and drop out in full view of a gawking silent majority. But this time, there were no generational boundaries. Nor were there racial or socioeconomic boundaries to the phenomenon. People of all walks of life had surrendered themselves to something too large to be called a cult, yet too disorganized to be called a religion. It could only be called a
movement
. In this case it was a movement that rivaled the motion of the tides in its scope and pervasiveness.

This particular group was a melting pot of various races and ages. There were at least thirty people engaged either in prayer or in accosting travelers as they passed. More security guards were called in. Although Winston usually avoided the many gatherings of self-proclaimed Colists, this time he ventured closer, drawn by the sight of a black man in a wrinkled Armani suit and bare feet. The man had clearly been a professional before walking this strange path. He reminded Winston of his own father, who had died much too young.

“Hello, friend,” the gentleman said, as Winston approached. “Do you know Dillon Cole?”

Winston had to smile at the question. “Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”

“He died for you.”

“I thought that was Jesus.”

The man grinned, knowingly. “History is a mirror, my friend.”

Winston was sure the man had a pat response for any comment
thrown at him. Responses that were paradoxically as obtuse as they were wise. “Buzz off,” Winston told him.

The man grinned like a leprechaun. “I saw the Backwash!” he told Winston. “It was real! I stepped in the flow of the river, and my dead pancreas was reborn. You're looking at a diabetic who hasn't needed insulin for a year!” He put an avuncular hand on Winston's shoulder. “Son,” he said. “Say what you like, but I know I was touched by God.”

“It's human nature to see divinity in anything greater than oneself,” Winston said, recalling the prophetic words from his troubled past.

“In the coming days, there will be wonders.”

And horrors
, thought Winston. A world full of horrors, if Dillon's dire predictions were true. Winston wondered how much truth had filtered down the chain of rumor to these people. True, the Backwash, for as long as it had lasted, had been a quantifiable “miracle,” but most everything else was subject to distorted word of mouth. How much did any of these people really know? And what would they do if they knew that he was
the
Winston Pell? Did they even acknowledge that there had been five others beside Dillon Cole, whose souls shimmered with the powerful light of the Scorpion Star?

“What about the others?” Winston dared to ask. “The other great souls, whose powers rivaled Dillon's?”

“Servants,” said the man dismissively. “Servants only.”

It was a slap in the face, but, thought Winston, a deserved slap. It had been their unbridled hubris that had created this mess to begin with. The brief time he and the others had walked the ways of Gods had set the world teetering off its balance. This man was prime evidence of that.

And now, in spite of how hard Dillon had tried to prevent it, he had become a religious icon of the highest order, with
the speed of a satellite transmission—not like in the old days where it took generations to spread the word. There was a time when Winston had hated Dillon, until Winston finally came to realize that this destroyer/creator was neither god nor demon. Dillon was, in the end, just like Winston; a kid with no clue how to rein in his own powers, much less handle the affairs of a rapidly failing world. Dillon, who had once been a hated enemy, was now a friend. The only one he had left.

“Dillon brings life from death.”

“So I've heard.” Winston couldn't decide whether talking to this man was mental masturbation or more like picking at a sore. Either way, Winston had had enough. He reached into his pocket to hand the man a dollar, if only to shut him up. The man smiled indulgently, but he wouldn't take it.

“It's not your money we want,” the man beamed. “It's your soul.”

Winston shivered in the hot wind.

A
S
W
INSTON DROVE TOWARD
Newport Beach, he could see that the Santa Ana winds had already done their damage this year. They had ripped over the mountains, tearing up over-watered trees in the Stepford-green neighborhoods of Orange County, and sending a barrage of plastic trash barrels rolling in and out of traffic, because the Santa Anas invariably blew in on trash day.

Michael's beach house was easy to find. It was the one with the big
SOLD
sign staring across the beach to the Pacific. He heard some noise from the rear of the home and made his way to the alley behind.

He'd expected he'd be paying his respects to Michael's father, but instead he saw Drew Camden laboring with some boxes toward a U-Haul truck.

Seeing Drew brought back too many memories he'd just as soon forget, so he took his time, and waited before stepping into view. Drew had been Michael's friend—Winston didn't know him well. Drew had been their biographer, deep under Michael's nature-changing influence in some unsettling way. Although Drew was not one of the shards, he was currently the closest thing to an ally.

Winston had seen Drew only once since the collapse of the dam. It was back in July. Drew had sought out Winston that time, finding him in the remains of his overgrown Alabama neighborhood, where few people lived anymore and the wrecks of homes stood overwhelmed by vines, like a Mayan ruin. Winston's effect in action.

“I want to put some closure on all of this,” Drew had told him on the buckling boards of Winston's front porch. No longer under Michael's influence, Drew's nature seemed . . . well, much more natural. He had come all the way to Alabama to tell Winston how Michael and Tory had died, for he felt Winston deserved to know. According to Drew, they were caught in the dam the moment it gave way, most likely buried under thousands of tons of rubble. So it was a shock when Drew called weeks later to tell him that Michael had, indeed, been discovered—and in the desert, no less—a few miles from the fallen dam. How he got there was a mystery that Michael had taken to his grave. As for Tory, her remains were still unaccounted for.

The muffled sound of pounding waves resonated in the narrow Newport Beach alley. Winston stepped out into full view as Drew approached the U-Haul with a box. Drew saw him and set down the heavy box in the back of the open truck. If he was surprised to see Winston, he didn't show it.

“You missed the funeral,” Drew said.

“I've got a problem with cemeteries.”

Drew considered that. “They grow on you.”

Winston dredged up a grin. “Yeah, that's the problem.”

Winston found himself gazing off at some Bermuda grass poking through the cracks in the pavement. It was already growing fast and furious like the kudzu back home, new shoots sprouting before his eyes. Most of the time he chose not to look. He had long since dispensed with worrying about the things that were beyond his control.

Michael's father came out carrying a lamp in each hand. He was a man of forty-five, prematurely gray but in good physical condition, as Michael had been. He seemed to be bearing up well under his grief. He nodded a hello to Winston, and looked to Drew. “Friend from school?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Drew said.

Mr. Lipranski put the lamps in the back of the truck. “Take a break if you want, Drew. We've got all day.” He went back inside.

“I'm helping him move,” Drew said. “He could afford it back when Michael was selling his services, but not now.” Drew leaned against the side of the rental truck, wiped some sweat from his brow, then reached into a cooler and handed Winston a Dr. Pepper. “Any word from Dillon or Lourdes?”

“Still AWOL.”

“Both of them?”

Winston nodded.

“Do you think they're together?”

Winston popped his tab, feeling the fine spray graze his face. He shrugged. “I doubt it. I've got some hunches where Lourdes might be, but no clue about Dillon.”

While Lourdes had strode into the sunset the day the dam broke, Winston had kept in close contact with Dillon . . . until
the day Dillon just up and disappeared six months ago, leaving Winston alone to watch all of Dillon's prophetic predictions come true. Shifting alliances; breakdown of communication; a plague of apathy, the dissolution of reason.
And where are you now, Dillon? We've found Michael's body—where the hell are you?

Since the old times were not worth catching up on, Winston got to the point. “I'd like you to show me where Michael is buried.”

Drew put down his empty can. “Why? You gonna fill out his ivy?” Winston frowned, scalded by the remark. “I'm sorry,” said Drew. “I didn't mean to say that. It's just—” He reached up and flicked a droplet from his eye that could have been sweat, but was most likely a tear. “It's not far from here. Let me finish up, and I'll take you.”

C
ORONA
D
EL
M
AR
M
EMORIAL
Park was a piece of land with a gorgeous ocean view.

“It's up here,” Drew said as they trudged up the gentle slope. “There weren't many plots left for sale. It's a popular spot.”

It struck Winston as odd that such a view would be wasted on residents with no windows to appreciate it. Best to be entombed like Snow White, in a casket of glass facing west to catch the rays of the setting sun.

They stopped by a rectangular patch of earth surrounded by other occupied graves—older ones with well-trimmed hedges and low granite headstones. Michael was buried among strangers. It was a modest grave. Still unmarked, with sorry plugs of ivy that had yet to take root.

“No gravestone yet?” questioned Winston.

“Not yet. And his father isn't even sure he wants one.”

“Why not?”

“Ever been to Paris?” Drew asked. “Ever see Jim Morrison's grave?”

Winston had never seen it, but he knew enough to get Drew's point. It was a counterculture shrine, the area around it defaced by graffiti and spoiled with litter. The names of the shards were known now in just about every corner of the world, and whether or not they were considered mere servants of Dillon, fanatics were everywhere. For the same reason Winston had to travel under an assumed name, the marked grave of Michael Lipranski would never see any peace.

He noted the sad, forlorn way Drew looked at the grave. For a moment he wished he had Dillon's skill at divining a person's thoughts and feelings. “Were you and Michael lovers?” he asked.

Drew shook his head. Even without Dillon's power, Winston could read a whole canvas of emotions there. “More of an unrequited love thing,” Drew said. “At least for me. He wasn't into it.”

“I shouldn't stay too long,” Winston said. “I've got to follow a lead that might bring me to Lourdes.” Winston gave Drew his cell phone number. “If you find Dillon, let me know.”

“I won't find him,” Drew said. “I'm not looking.”

Winston lingered a few moments more.

“Did you just want to pay your respects?” asked Drew, clearly uncomfortable to be at his friend's grave so soon after he was laid to rest. “Or is there another reason why you came?”

Winston knelt down to the grave. “I don't know.” He reached his hand down to touch the earth, and for an instant the dream flashed through his mind again like a static shock.