Phoenix (5 page)

She
was
dressed
in
jeans
and
heels
,
or
rather
,
a
heel
.
Somewhere
along
the
way
she
had
lost
one
.
The
shoeless
leg
was
broken
and
twisted
at
an
awkward
angle
.
That
explained
the
click
-
drag
sound
she
had
made
while
following
The
Suit
.
Her
clothes
were
caked
with
old
blood
,
though
how
much
of
it
was
hers
and
how
much
belonged
to
someone
else
was
hard
to
say
.
Her
eyes
were
black
and
sunken
.

The
Suit
bent
and
jerked
his
knife
from
her
skull
.
He
wiped
it
on
her
pants
,
slipped
it
back
in
its
sheath
,
and
straightened
.
He
took
a
deep
breath
and
looked
all
around
.
The
slight
breeze
ruffled
his
graying
-
blond
hair
.
He
nodded
to
himself
and
continued
down
the
sidewalk
,
disappearing
in
the
distance
.

Brad’s eyes fluttered open. He wheezed and
made a noise like a dog’s chew toy each time he took a breath. His
hands moved to his hair and he pulled it, his eyes clamping shut
and his gasping turning into quiet sobs. He rolled over and curled
into a ball. He spent the rest of the night in the fetal
position.

* * *

"You should probably start looking for a
job." Mort sat across from Brad at the kitchen island, sipping
coffee.

Brad peered over the top of the morning
newspaper. He’d accepted Mort’s sludge without argument this time
and was working on his third cup. "Are you serious?"

"Why not?" Mort shrugged. "Can’t keep sitting
around here or at your place waiting for something that may or may
not happen. I know you’ve been living off your savings, but that
won’t last forever. And before you bring it up again, no you should
not play the lottery
or
take a trip to Vegas. So don’t
ask."

"Aw, c’mon. I think the PowerBall is up to
twenty-five million this week. You could finally build that
bubble-home you’ve always wanted. But you’re right about Vegas.
Remember what happened the last time you were there?"

"That wasn’t my fault."

"How was that not your fault? Did your
clothes just magically fly off your body?"

Mort stared back.

"Though you do look cute in a boa." Brad
wagged his eyebrows.

"Brad."

The corners of Brad’s mouth couldn’t help but
twitch at that. "Besides, I think we may have more important things
to worry about right now."

"Oh, I know. You think zombies are
coming."

"I didn’t say zombies."

"You said dead people. Same thing."

"I didn’t say dead people, either."

"Yes, I believe you did."

Brad slapped the paper down and gritted his
teeth. "It could all be metaphorical, you know. Sure, we agreed
those guys in suits are probably real, but the rest of it? C’mon,
really? There must be some kind of hidden meaning, because what I
saw isn’t possible." He flipped his wrists, straightening the
newspaper, and pretended to go back to reading.

"Your real-time premonition with that flower
shop girl was real. That was going to happen with the guy in the
alley," Mort reminded him, then sipped more coffee.

"Hmm," Brad grunted. His eyes scanned the
Sports page. He refused to get pulled into a what-if conversation
again.

"Alright," Mort said. "So we both agree the
men in your dreams are real. Don’t you think we should start trying
to figure out who they are and what they’re up to? ‘Cause it sounds
to me like they’re up to something."

Brad sighed and folded the paper. "And how
would we go about doing that? They could be anyone, anywhere. What
makes you even think, if we found them, that we could stop their
evil plan?"

"So what do you want to do, Brad? Forget
about all this? Pretend the dreams aren’t happening, ignore them?
And then what? You end up in the same situation you were in before
I found you in your apartment. It’s time to face facts and deal
with it. Ignoring them won’t make them go away."

Brad didn’t reply at first because he knew
Mort was right. He had tried drinking the dreams away, that hadn’t
worked. Before that he had tried ignoring them, which led to the
drinking. It was safe to assume his dreams were more than accurate,
considering all the waking-dreams, visions, premonitions, whatever
you wanted to call them, always happened just as he’d foreseen.
Some he’d been able to stop, like the incident with the flower shop
girl. Some he hadn’t been able to change. He let Mort stare at him
a few moments longer before finally answering.

"Well, I really doubt I’d find a job these
days. This recession is really kicking our asses. But, if it will
make you happy, I’ll start looking around."

Mort growled and threw his hands in the air.
Brad smiled and left the island, grabbing his car keys on the way
out.

* * *

Not only was the country in a deep recession,
as Brad had mentioned, but other, less reported events were taking
place. PhoenTek had just announced a deal with Medicago, a
biopharmaceutical company, to develop "highly effective" vaccines
for the world’s most dangerous strains of flu.

Several states were beginning to discreetly
mobilize their National Guard units. At first, eyewitnesses assumed
the increased movement was in reaction to natural disasters,
helping victims of flooding due to hurricanes. But then
mobilizations were being seen in multiple states, coast-to-coast,
with no reason being given.

Many cases of cannibalism had been reported
all over the country, ranging from mild—bites and superficial scalp
wounds—to quite severe. Again, no causes were being given for this
behavior, no
real
causes. They were covered up, along with
everything else. Drug use or mental disorder, those were the two
most frequently used excuses. A spokesman for PhoenTek was caught
denying an allegation that one of their new vaccinations had been
the cause. This story was almost immediately buried on the
Internet, and it
never
made the televised news.

And so it went for the rest of the year. Late
summer turned to fall, Brad remained unemployed, and Mort continued
to fret about the future. The dreams of the men in suits and dead
people continued. Mort began holding meetings in his house with
some of the people from his little brown book. Those of the Book
Club who lived too far away to come to the meetings were able to
attend via Skype. Together they would discuss breaking news,
unreported events, things each member had been able to uncover by
way of their abilities. Information was shared and conspiracy
theories were fed.

Brad never attended; he thought it was
nothing but paranoia and overreacting. He did think it was funny,
however, that Mort would invite a bunch of strangers into his
sterile abode.

His amusement died at the beginning of
December. The dreams started to happen while he was awake. During
one such vision, he ran his car into a telephone pole because he
had swerved to miss a group of dead people standing in the middle
of the road. It had been snowing and that was the cause given to
the police after they arrived on the scene. But later at home, Brad
explained it all to a very mortified Mort. By the time Christmas
rolled around, Brad was getting around on foot because Mort had
refused to let him borrow the car. Brad learned yoga, which didn’t
help, and dived back into meditation, which was also a bust. The
dreams continued and the waking visions intensified.

Outbreaks of several strains of flu, and an
odd National Guard exercise that focused on neutralizing "a walking
dead" threat tainted the holidays with an underlying current of
alarm and anxiety. It didn’t help that the CDC’s website sported an
article on how to prepare for the zombie apocalypse. Most folks
assumed the current popularity of the zombie genre in books and
film were to blame, causing the military, CDC, PhoenTek, and
everyone else to jump on the bandwagon in an effort to get
important information out there to the public.

"If you’re prepared for the Z-Poc, then
you’re prepared for any type of emergency."

The thing the Book Club spent most of their
time trying to figure out was why now, and was it really a
coincidence that all these things just happened to coincide with
what they were picking up on through their extra senses? What was
really happening to prompt so many government agencies into
preventative, and sometimes preemptive, measures?

After convincing Mort that he was no longer
suicidal, and would be just fine by himself, Brad started staying
at his apartment again. Mort came over every couple days to check
in, share information gathered from the Book Club, and to make
dinner. He almost always ended up cleaning as well; Brad would’ve
worried about his friend if he hadn’t. Brad went to Mort’s house
too, just not as often and almost never during meeting nights. He
was still looking for a job, though not in earnest. Brad lived off
his savings account; money, guilt, and hard feelings were the only
things his parents’ death had left him. Even though that had been
many years ago, he still had at least half to draw on.

When he wasn’t home or at Mort’s, Brad spent
his time walking. To anyone who didn’t know better, they would
guess he was turning into an exercise nut. But Brad had a specific
reason that had nothing to do with burning fat. He was trying to
learn a skill Mort had went on about many times over the years. Not
everyone had it, and even Mort had never been able to do it. But
he’d pushed Brad, wanting him to try what was called a danger
sense. Brad had joked, made Spiderman comments, and dismissed this
lesson as he had many others.

At least, that was how he
used
to
feel.

Things were different now. Being tortured
nightly for months, never being able to tell the difference between
what was real and what was imagined, Brad had gained a new
perspective on Mort’s teachings. So he walked every day and used
this time to practice, alone.

"It’s like radar," Mort had said. "Focus your
energy, like I taught you, and picture a radar screen in your head.
Maybe that’ll make it easier."

It was hard for Brad to do without closing
his eyes, but he could hardly walk down the sidewalk and bump into
everything around him. Instead, he spent several days just walking
and letting his eyes fuzz out. It took some getting used to, but
after a little time, he could do it and not knock people off the
sidewalk. After that trick was mastered, Brad started picturing
what he thought a radar screen looked like. He’d only ever seen
them in the movies, and figured since it was just something to
focus on, it could look like anything he wanted.

Brad took his time and was patient, waiting
until he could summon a radar image with little effort, before
taking the next step. At that point he’d been walking every
afternoon for three weeks.

The day it happened, Brad was passing the
barbershop halfway through his usual route. A radar screen glowed
in his mind and he was focused on danger. It was hard, and he had
to keep starting over because of one distraction or another, but by
the time he reached the barber, the screen was solid and he was
sending out ripples each time he blinked. To simplify the process,
Brad decided to blink every time he took a step.

He cut the corner after the barber onto
Locust Street and his radar screen erupted in a shower of dots.
Brad stopped in his tracks and blinked again. Everywhere, dots. He
blinked several times in rapid succession.

More
dots.

"What the hell is this?" He lost focus and
the screen disappeared. Brad’s head turned left and right, his eyes
trying to locate the danger that was apparently coming at him from
all directions. He couldn’t see anything.

Brad spun and rushed around the corner toward
the barbershop again, and was almost bowled over by dead people. He
cried out and threw his arms up to cover his head, ducking back
around the corner to hide. His lungs went into overdrive, sucking
in air faster than his body could process. His heart responded in
kind. The dead turned the corner and started toward him.

He woke up some time later when the barber
dumped cold water on his face. Brad lay on the sidewalk curled up
on his side. Half a dozen strangers stood around him, bent over and
asking if he was alright. Brad had to shake his head and rub his
eyes several times before understanding what he was seeing, and
remembering what had happened. The barber helped him to his feet
and Brad hurried off without saying a word. He called Mort from his
cell phone and told him what happened. Brad had to keep repeating
parts of it because he was crying, and Mort couldn’t understand
what he was saying. After a few minutes of this, his teacher ended
the call and drove to Brad’s location to pick him up and take him
home.