Interrupt (18 page)

The change in Drayer was total and abrupt. As she regained her senses, placing herself, she recoiled. But she was pinned beneath him. Marcus jerked away, hurting himself as he withdrew. His erection wilted.

Drayer screamed, “What are—!?”

She swung her fist at his face as she scrabbled away. She barely connected with his jaw, but Marcus accepted the blow. Drayer’s hands went to her groin and her breasts, seeking pain or blood, covering her nudity as she sat up. What she found was evidence of her own sexual excitement.

“Can’t, we can’t…” she stammered.

In her cheeks and in her chest, the high blush of her passion deepened into shock. Then she went white-faced with humiliation, horror, outrage.

Marcus realized he was staring. He brought his palm to his eyes, trying—stupidly—to give her privacy. They were too close together. He stayed on his knees, not wanting her to feel threatened. She scrambled to her feet.

“I don’t know what…” he said.

“I was… You… HELP!” Drayer yelled as she stepped back from him. The door was on the other side of Marcus. He saw her gauge how much room she had to run around him.

Could she drag the overturned desk away from the door by herself? Should he offer to help?

Floundering for the appropriate response, Marcus hid his privates with his hand. His testicles throbbed as if he’d been kicked. Where were his pants?

Drayer kept her arm across her breasts and her other hand over her groin, her expression tortured by bewilderment and loathing.

“HELP!” she yelled.

“I wasn’t… assaulting you.” Marcus stumbled through his words.

“HELP ME!”

No one came running. No one shouted back. The station was silent.

Drayer’s eyes blazed as she ducked to the floor, sorting through the clothes strewn among the paperwork, the phone, the lamp. She was prepared to fight him if necessary.

“It was the interrupt,” Marcus said. “We were… different.”

Drayer grabbed pants and a shirt. She bundled the clothing against her belly and stalked past him, less interested now in concealing her body than in fleeing from him.

The desk stopped her. She latched onto a corner and dragged. A leg caught on the carpet. Drayer grunted and then screamed in dismay, hindered by the ball of clothing. She wouldn’t let go of it. She tugged at the desk and gained an inch.

“Let me help you. Please. Let me help.” Marcus found his jeans and yanked them on. Then he approached her as delicately as possible.

Drayer flinched. She couldn’t look at him.

He pulled at one of the desk legs. The desk slid a foot from the door. For the slightest microsecond, Drayer’s gaze flickered toward his face, conveying anguish and panic—and relief?

She fled into the hall.

“Drayer!” he shouted, but even that felt wrong.
Rebecca.
Did her friends call her Becky?

He felt dehydrated, bruised, and ill. Were those physiological reactions to the interrupt or caused by his shame? Drayer was married. The two of them were strangers. Having sex together was akin to rape, although she’d been an eager participant.

Why was I doing that to her?

Then, more insidiously:
Why was she letting me?

Marcus wanted to close the door and hide.

He blamed Drayer for his decision to send Roell home, but now she must feel like she was carrying her own curse. He needed to help her.
He needed her to help him. Who else was alive? Why hadn’t anyone answered when she screamed?

He hurried to get dressed.

In her rush, she’d abandoned her undergarments. Marcus couldn’t imagine taking her white panties and bra with him. He nudged a paper file into a heap with his toes, burying the cotton lace. Then he averted his eyes. He put on his shirt. He couldn’t find his socks.

His head was sluggish. He had a pounding migraine. His soul felt undone by sympathy and guilt.

As always, he took comfort in the habit of analysis.

We made love before.

After the last interrupt, what he’d assumed were memories of Janet had, in reality, been physical traces of Drayer. They’d kissed or rubbed each other until she woke up and ran. Then they’d investigated the station and the cars together. Had she recalled the first time or, like him, had she retained only vague impressions until now?

Marcus surveyed the mess they’d ignored and the desk they’d used for security when the door itself was unlocked. During an interrupt, they were clearly unintelligent, screwing like animals when their families needed them.

How much do we remember? Is it possible that I feel like the station is important even if I don’t know why?

He ran his hand over his face. His beard stubble hadn’t increased since morning, and he doubted he would shave if he wasn’t interested in fixing the array. He assumed it was still the first day. Good.

Then he had another unsettling thought.

He hadn’t orgasmed, although he’d been close. He’d certainly ejaculated traces of sperm. He hadn’t worn a condom. He worried if she was on the pill or the patch or had an IUD.

Forget that for now. Find her. Make sure she’s okay.

Where is everyone?

A forbidding sense of déjà vu encompassed Marcus as he stepped into the hall. The last time he’d walked through the station’s dark interior, he’d found a dead man…

The wind rushed over the building.

Outside, a door creaked back and forth.

“Don’t come any closer,” Drayer said. Her pale face waited for him in the doorway of the next office. She was dressed again, her black hair tied in a knot. She seemed to have regained her composure. “Don’t you come near me,” she said.

Marcus’s face burned. “I’m sorry.”

She was a formidable woman, a professional through and through. Like him, she’d drawn on her training and her intellect to reassure herself. Of course she felt violated. She must feel petrified, and she resented her weakness. She said, “What’s happening to us?”

Words spilled out of him. “I think we lose our short-term memories with each interrupt. When the pulse hits, it erases or stunts our personalities. We forget who we are. Then it stops. But I think the effect lasts several minutes after the event. It probably interferes with our memories from several minutes prior as well.”

“That doesn’t explain why you…”

“I’m sorry.”

“We…” Drayer shook herself. “People may be injured,” she said. Her voice was strong. She did not ask more questions. She gave him a command. “We need to find everyone and see if they’re okay,” she said.

“Good idea.” Marcus would have agreed with anything. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to ask if he’d hurt her physically, but he was leery of setting off a new firestorm of accusations.

She touched her forehead and her dark, sweaty hair. “My head,” she said. “I’m not sure where to look. Where would they go?”

“The ranch house. The electronics room. I don’t know. But they would have heard you, heard us if they were in the station.” He tried again to apologize. “Drayer, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to…”

“It won’t happen again.”

“I know,” he said, although it was useless to promise. Whoever they’d become during the interrupts, they’d freely chosen to make love. He wanted to hurry past her to the lounge and the control room, but he hesitated, reluctant to move toward her. “It’s not too late to jury-rig the computers and a generator,” he said.

She was skeptical. “You think you can use the array to predict the next flare?”

“That’s what we agreed to do.”

“It didn’t work.”

“We must have been caught outside the electronics room,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to go searching through the hills or the ranch house. Everyone will come here if they can.”

“Not if they’re injured.”

“We may not have much time before there’s another interrupt. If we’re in the open…” Marcus left his words unspoken. The implication was cruel, but it was true.

By her silence, he knew Drayer understood.

If we’re caught in the open, we may become mates again.

Drayer gestured for him to take the lead. Marcus’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected her to defer to him. She was a federal agent—but she wasn’t James Bond. She was a desk worker, a computer analyst. Equally important, she was unarmed. He was larger. They didn’t know who or what they’d find. Marcus was also more familiar with the station.

He went first into the gloom.

Drayer followed him, keeping her distance yet getting closer as soon as he was ten feet ahead. Their circumstances were insane. She clearly didn’t want to be with him. She also didn’t want to be alone. And what options did she have? To run outside? What if there were more dead bodies or murderers or rapists?

The last doorway in the hall was a gaping mouth. Outside, the wind groaned. Marcus’s heart jackhammered in his chest.

He crept forward like a man in a nightmare.

At the door, he peeked in. It was a storage closet. One shelf had been cracked, bowing in the middle, leaving an avalanche of ink cartridges and reams of paper on the floor. Marcus didn’t know what he’d expected. Someone waiting to attack?

He stopped at the end of the hall, quivering with tension.

“What is it?” Drayer hissed. “What do you see?”

In the lounge, the damage had increased. The windows had been shattered like the vending machines. The door to the outside was still propped open by the TV, but the dead man was gone. Someone had taken him. Most of the broken glass had been swept against the wall, leaving small shards on the carpet.

“Hello!” Drayer shouted. “Hello!”

Marcus stared at her as she picked barefoot through the glass to the open windows. He tried to match her bravery. He went after her, yet angled to one side, giving her room.

They stared outside.

Squinting in the sunlight, Marcus peered at the ranch house across the field. He couldn’t tell if anyone was inside. Where were Steve and Kym and the rest? Had they wandered off into the mountains? The hot wind smelled like dust and dry grass, a good smell, which heightened his anxiety.

Drayer’s expression conveyed a sense of being overwhelmed again. He wanted to say something, but what? His head churned with strain and fear.

The low alpine environment would never be ideal for survival. In summer, it was at its worst with too little water and nothing to forage except a few edible plants, squirrels, and deer. If they were forced to subsist without their intelligence, they were doomed.

But that was in the future. At the moment, Marcus grappled with another conundrum. Why had Drayer joined with him instead of one of her agents? Because he was different from the others? As the only
black man at the array, Marcus was superficially unique. During an interrupt, his dark skin might be an attractant. Maybe the impression they’d made on each other before the solar flares—no matter if arguments were the basis of the impression—had felt like some kind of bond in their animal state.

And what if we’re territorial?
he thought. That could explain why the others were missing. Maybe he’d chased them off. Or maybe
he
had been driven from the better home in the area because he looked different.

If so, why would Drayer stay with him?

She turned to him and repeated the most important question. “What’s happening to us?” she asked.

Marcus seized on the opportunity to push his emotions aside. “Your brain is an incredibly complicated electrical organ,” he said. “It has a biochemical process that produces as much as twelve watts every second every day.”

She nodded.

“Our self-awareness depends on that energy. Our minds are the result of fifty billion neurons working as a single unit. I think we’re taking enough electromagnetic radiation to interrupt some parts of the whole.”

“Then we’re going to die,” she said. “We’ll start losing our hair and throwing up.”

“From radiation poisoning? Maybe not. Not inside.” Marcus found his resolve. He turned from the sun-washed landscape and walked toward the control room.

“Stop,” Drayer said. “I need to find my people.”

“They’ll come here if they’re…”
If they’re alive,
he thought, but he didn’t want to keep frightening her. “Help me first.”

They couldn’t afford to be enemies.

“Please,” he said. “We need to protect the array. Our friends will come here if they can. We’ll look for them as soon as we can.”

Drayer grimaced, but she walked after him.

Inside the control room, they found one of the computers on the floor. Another was missing. Marcus hurried to disconnect the last Mac and hauled it into the electronics room, where he was startled to find more work accomplished than he recalled.

The missing computer was inside with three cases of canned food and snack bags and Gatorade and Pepsi. Two flashlights. Batteries. A desk fan.

“I don’t get it,” Drayer said. “Why didn’t we hide in here instead of the office? There’s food. It’s safe.”

Marcus set the computer on a rack. He switched on one of the flashlights and swept the beam over the narrow room. “This is why,” he said. “No windows. It’s dark. There’s nothing we recognized as useful, just a lot of machines.”

“Here,” Drayer said. She passed one of the plastic quart bottles of Gatorade to him, then cracked another for herself.

The sugar smell of the drink made him dizzy with thirst. Marcus coughed as he gulped it, spilling some on his chest. He didn’t stop until the bottle was half empty. Then he capped it and walked back into the control room, realizing there was another reason why they might have left this part of the station during the interrupt. The control room was a dead end. They’d have nowhere to retreat in a fight.

“Let’s get one of the generators and as much fuel as we can carry,” he said. “We also need to punch an exhaust line through the wall. We can look for everyone while we’re outside.”

“Maybe one of us should stay in here,” she said.

“Come with me. Please. I’m scared as hell,” he said, admitting his own vulnerability.

It was the right thing to say.

“Me, too,” she said.

They studied each other. Warily, he compared her to Janet. At thirty-four, Janet was younger than Drayer, almost too young to be the
mother of a seventeen-year-old. She could be fickle, even cold, whereas Drayer was more mature, more deliberate.