Pulse: When Gravity Fails (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 1) (9 page)

“Yes, of course, what about you?”

“I’m trying to get to my sons. I have to go.”

The man nodded. “Good luck to you.”

Sean turned and ran without waiting for thanks from the family. He jumped into the jeep and hooked back around onto the road. As he looked to be sure no cars were coming, he saw the older sister waving. The mother and the store owner were walking the girls toward the store.

Sean waved back and raced away.

“You did the right thing,” Jenny said.

“I know.”

“We’ll still make it. Everything will be fine,” she said.

Sean swallowed, but did not speak.

Jenny rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as he drove and Sean started to cry.

“It will be fine,” she said again. “I’m always right.”

Sean sniffed and nodded. “Yeah, we haven’t been shot at for minutes and I haven’t been almost burned to death for seconds. We are having a great day.”

“You left my fire extinguisher back there,” she said. “You’re the one that made me get it.”

He nodded. “When that wave hits, it will just lift up in the air and fall back on our heads. We’re better off without it right now.”

He glanced back at the clear sky and kept driving.

18

Holden Grayson, Grant Grayson, and Carter Strove – Ouachita National Forest, Black Fork Mountain Wilderness, Arkansas

Holden picked up another rock and skipped it over the lake from the end of the dock. They had to hike in from where they parked the car and they didn’t have a boat.
What’s the point of a dock with no boat? I wish my dad was here. It would be better with Dad
.

Grant handed him another rock. Holden held it up and shook his head. “No, it has to be flat and smooth.”

Grant dug through the pile of stones they had carried with them to the end of the dock. Grant traded Holden a flat one for the fat, round stone. “This one?”

Holden held it up above his head like he was inspecting it in the sun against the blue sky. “It will do.”

“Can you get it all the way to the other side, Holden?”

Holden laughed. “No, that’s like a mile away.”

He flung the rock side arm and it skipped five times before plunging below the water.

“What if you use magic?” Grant asked.

“There’s no such thing.” Holden blinked against a burn behind his eyes. He did not know why he felt like crying, but he just did sometimes.

“Yeah, there is. You did it in the car with the block. Remember?”

Holden looked back and saw Carter on his hands and knees blowing at some smoky leaves in a circle of rocks. Holden shook his head. “I don’t know what happened in the car, Grant.”

“And with the cows. Like that.”

“I wasn’t doing that. It just happened.”

Grant shrugged. “Okay. Throw more rocks, Holden.”

“You do one, Grant.”

“I can’t. I’m all little still.”

“Try. No one will see, but me.”

Grant held the fat, round rock up above his head and looked at it the way he had seen Holden do. He brought it down and drew his arm back behind his back.

Holden shook his head. “You need a flat one.”

Grant threw it anyway. The stone hurled in an arc before plopping down into the water with a high splash.

“I did it, Holden.”

Holden shook his head. “You need to use one of the flat stones.”

The round rock rose up out of the water and hovered just about the surface. It was dark from being wet. A fish with a spotted back jumped out and bit at it in the air. The rock bounded off the fish’s lips. The rock tumbled in the air bouncing slowly off the surface of the water five, seven, fourteen times until Holden couldn’t see it anymore.

“All the way across the lake. See?” Grant said.

The fish whipped its tail as if trying to fling itself back in the water. It twisted in a circle just above and opened its mouth over and over. Holden thought about fish flopping in a boat as they died in the air.
This is what it would look like with no boat
, he thought.

The fish touched the water again with its side. It flapped in a wild panic splashing water up into the air around it.

Grant laughed.

The fish caught enough traction to pull itself back under. The weight of the water seemed to be enough to keep it under this time.

Carter said from behind them. “Come for a walk with me, boys.”

Holden gasped and stumbled forward with his toes just inches from the edge of the dock.
Would I go under or float above it in the air? I don’t know how things work anymore
.

Grant kicked at the rocks scattering them across the end of the dock. A half dozen tipped over the edge and dropped into the lake. Ripples spread out from the impacts driving out rings that disrupted their inverted reflections staring up at them as they stared down. The ripples crossed one another slicing patterns that were harder to follow with the eye. Out from the center they seemed to combine in a more powerful ripple which traveled out from them and was gone like Grant’s magic rock skipping slowly away leaving them forever.

“Did you see my rock go?” Grant asked.

Carter said, “No, buddy, I missed it.”

“It went forever. All the way across the lake. Tell him, Holden.”

Holden stared down into the water not saying anything.

“Wow, all the way across,” Carter said. “That’s amazing.”

“It was amazing,” Grant said.

Holden recognized the tone in Carter’s voice that adults took when they humored a kid, but did not believe what they were saying. Grant didn’t hear it and thought Carter really thought Grant’s throw was amazing instead of unbelievable.

Grant pointed out toward the center of the lake. “Did you see the fish?”

“I missed that too,” Carter said.

“It was flying in the air like the flying cows.” Grant dropped his hand.

“Amazing,” Carter said.

Holden took a deep breath. “Yeah, amazing.”

“Let’s take that walk. I need to talk to you boys about some stuff.”

The boys turned and walked beside Carter off the dock and past the campsite.

“We’re going for a walk with Uncle Carter, Mom,” Grant said.

“I know,” she said. “I’ll see you all in a minute.”

They walked up the hill into the trees. Holden thought about the story of Hansel and Gretel being led out into the woods by the witch’s house because the step mom didn’t want to feed them anymore.

“Look at those big rocks,” Grant said.

The outcropping rose above them. Deep slices ringed the sides horizontally. The stratified sections made the formation look like they were stacked on each other in layers instead of being one solid rock.

“Those are big, buddy,” Carter said.

“Where are we going?” Holden asked.

“Here is as good a place as any,” Carter said.

Holden remembered that the woodcutter was sent to finish the kids off in the woods, but disobeyed the mother by letting them live.
I forgot to drop breadcrumbs on the way up here from the car
, Holden thought.
The birds would just eat them anyway. I should have used stones
.

“Can we climb them?” Grant asked.

“Maybe in a minute,” Carter said as he sat on the lip of one of the bottom folds of the rock. “I need to talk to you two about something.”

“Are there caves?” Grant asked standing on the rock looking straight up the side next to where Carter sat.

“Maybe. We’d have to look. We have to be careful though because snakes will get into the shadows of these rocks to hide and stay warm. We need to watch where we step and where we put our hands.”

“What did you need to talk about?” Holden asked.

Carter stared at him a moment, he laughed, and looked away. “Yeah, ugh, well, you guys know your daddy and I are friends, right?”

“You fight fires together,” Grant said still staring up.

“Right. And I like your mother a lot,” Carter said. “I love her. Even though that is true, I’m not trying to replace your daddy. He will always be your daddy and I will always be his friend. Do you guys understand what I am saying?”

“Do the snakes jump out?” Grant asked.

“What?” Carter shook his head. “No, they won’t. We’ll be fine.”

Holden thought about the snake twisting the air on their way up to the campground and he shivered.

“What do they eat?” Grant asked.

Carter smiled. “Like mice and voles and stuff. They eat things that need to be eaten. The snakes get a bad rap. They’ll leave us alone, if we are careful. Listen, what I wanted to talk to you boys about is that I’m going to ask your mommy to marry me and I wanted you guys to know about it before that happened.”

“Are you going to come live with us?” Grant asked.

“We are talking about all that, but, yeah, that’s what would happen then.”

“You would stay in mommy’s room or get your own room?” Grant asked.

“Ugh, well, see. We’d be married so …”

“You shouldn’t have told Grant,” Holden said. “He can’t keep a secret.”

Carter laughed. “That’s okay. Your mother knows it’s coming. I just need to do the actual, official ask is all. I think that will be this weekend on this trip.”

“Did you get a ring?” Holden asked.

“Here in my pocket. You want to see it?”

“Mommy already has rings,” Grant said. “You should get her something else like a crown or maybe a horse.”

Carter laughed and ran his hand over the top of Grant’s head. “I’ll treat her like a princess though.”

Holden rolled his eyes.

“The crown and horse would help,” Grant said. “Does Dad know yet?”

Carter swallowed and looked away. “Not yet. We’ll get around to that.”

“Daddy used to be married to Mommy too,” Grant said, “but not anymore. Did you know about all that, Uncle Carter?”

Carter nodded. “Yeah, that came up.”

“Some of the kids at school say stuff about you being friends with Mommy,” Grant said.

“What kind of stuff?” Carter asked.

“Don’t talk about that,” Holden said.

“No, it’s okay,” Carter said.

“Mom told Grant not to talk about it,” Holden said.

“What kind of stuff are we talking about, Holden?”

Holden shrugged. “Some of the kids’ parents don’t like black people. Mom says they repeat stuff they hear their parents say. We aren’t supposed to repeat it.”

Carter nodded. “We can talk about all that later some time.”

Grant pointed up. “Holden, do you think this rock can fly like the other stuff from the magic? Do you think? It would hurt, if it fell on us.”

Holden turned away and looked back in the direction of the campsite where they had left their mom. He didn’t want to be out there anymore.

19

Michael Strove and Roman Nikitin – Russia

They were moving from tree to tree. Michael left one trunk and reached out to brace his weight on the next one. The trees were getting further apart and fewer of them were standing as cover grew thin.

Michael did not trust the darkness to protect them either. Search lights from the jeeps on the road running parallel to their path swept through the scant woods around them. That suggested that they weren’t relying on night vision, but it seemed scant comfort at best.

Michael wasn’t sure who was supporting who any longer as he and Roman wobbled forward through the darkness in the wilderness.

Roman stopped and pulled Michael back the other direction. “Wait.”

“What is it? Do you hear something?”

“Need to find the way.”

Michael bowed his head and heaved for air. “You said we were close.”

“We are. It just feels far because we are hurt and the Russian army is chasing us.”

Michael nodded his head and blinked on sweat rolling into his eyes making it even harder to see in the dark. Michael thought that Roman’s statement would be quite funny under other circumstances. He imagined himself telling it to other pilots in a mess hall as a funny piece about his harrowing adventure after crashing in Russia. He realized the image felt like an unreal fantasy. Getting out alive to tell his story felt more far-fetched than the strange changes in gravity that brought him there in the first place.

As Roman oriented himself, Michael realized he could not even picture telling the story to his brother. Arkansas felt so far away in that moment. It felt farther than Alaska or an American hospital or embassy. It felt farther than the other side of the world even. A conversation with Carter about how he had survived this moment in Russia felt like something in another dimension or an alternate reality. It seemed like something that could not possibly happen in this universe.

Michael whispered. “You can’t get there from here.”

Roman pointed with the edge of his hand like he was chopping at the few trees that were still standing ahead of them. “No, it is this way. We are almost there. Almost. Almost. Let’s go.”

Michael staggered forward along the direction of Roman’s chop with Roman still at his side.

Michael had resolved himself before he ever crashed over land that the mission was going to end in his death. He had prepared himself to ditch in the ocean to avoid this very thing. He hadn’t had much time to contemplate life, death, gravity, or the universe in that moment, but he had mentally said his goodbyes to his brother then.

Gravity had shifted again out there over the ocean and turned his plans in another direction. He still had not allowed himself to contemplate seeing his brother again. Now the thought bothered him deeply as he still couldn’t picture it, but had time to think about it.

His father had taken Carter and Grant to a conference in Atlanta back when the man was still a preacher and was giving a talk to other preachers. He couldn’t remember the name of the hotel, but they had been on the fortieth floor and it was open in the middle. The balconies along the edges that lined the doors for the rooms overlooked the emptiness in the middle all the way to the lobby floor hundreds of feet down. It had been a vast abyss that left Michael feeling sick to his stomach and dizzy. He had walked close to the wall every time they approached the elevator. Carter had made fun of Michael about it. Michael had flown experimental planes at supersonic speeds near the top edge of the atmosphere, but sometimes he still had bad dreams about that empty centered hotel.

He imagined falling through the middle. The fall would have taken a few seconds and it would have ended in darkness. Michael imagined the moments of that fall. The end would come and there would be no memories, but he would think about things as the floor rushed toward him. Those thoughts would vanish in that final darkness like they had never existed even though he would have thought them. He had trouble wrapping his mind around that.

As he and Roman moved forward step by step, Michael felt like he was in the final seconds of that fall that had haunted his thoughts since he was little. He was still thinking, but the darkness would come shortly from a Russian bullet or a tree being crushed to Earth by the force Roman kept calling the invisible tiger.

It was as good a name as any for the final seconds of being pushed down by gravity into the darkness. The world did not seem real around him.

He realized he wanted to see Carter again. The thought made him feel sad and isolated.

“There.” Roman pointed with a chop again.

Up the open slope, he saw the fence and a colorless metal building. A clothes line ran from one corner out to the tower of the transmitter. That did not strike Michael as promising for getting a message out or for this ending in anything but that final darkness.
A listening station with no one to listen
, he thought.

“I think gravity is going to win this time, Roman.”

He laughed on Michael’s shoulder. “It usually does, but you fly planes for the American heroes, right?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You beat gravity all the time even though you should know better. Let’s try one more time.”

Michael took a deep breath and nodded.