"What’s good about it?" he demanded somewhat snappishly.
Jason hit some keys, and another screen came on beside the first. It cued up to a view of Malachi and his followers in the prison: the scene from earlier, when Tal had gone offline.
Jason pointed at Todd in the screen. "He’s not there anymore. Bet that John got him."
"That is good news, I suppose," said Adam.
"But?" said Jason, clearly hearing the unspoken conditional in the older man’s hesitation.
Adam went to Jason’s console, cueing up the first view again, the scene of Malachi in the cruiser. He stopped the action and pointed at the street sign visible over the top of the car. "See where they are?" he asked Jason.
"They’re going to the mines," the younger man replied.
Adam nodded, simultaneously flicking an intercom. "Sheila?" he said into the machine.
"Yes?" came her voice after a moment.
"Is the recovery squad ready?"
"And waiting."
"Good. We’re leaving in five minutes."
He turned off the intercom.
"You’re going yourself?" asked Jason.
Adam nodded. "Loston is starting to disintegrate. We have to stop it. If we don’t everyone there dies."
"And everyone here," said Jason.
Adam did not respond. What could he say? Jason was right. If Fran died, they all did. The future was contained in that woman’s life, theirs as well as hers.
DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
6:30 AM TUESDAY
***ALERT MODE***
A thousand feet below the ground, John flicked on the lights.
A bare room - little more than a cave, really - several hundred feet from the main shaft greeted their view in the pale light of the low-wattage bulbs that were strung on the wall like miserly Christmas lights. Several dusty cots lined the dirty cave walls, dust-laden sheets covering some of them, while others stood bereft of bedding, their filthy mattresses perched almost carelessly atop spindly aluminum springs. Other than that, the room was featureless, all bare stone and dirt. It was hardly the Holiday Inn, but it would serve for a time, and John bowed low as he turned the lights on, gesturing for Fran to enter.
"This is it?" she asked, eyeing the cobwebs and the thick layer of dust that lay across everything like a heavy winter blanket.
"Yup," John answered, beginning to strip two of the less-filthy cots. "A veritable Shangri-La."
"What about rats?"
John thought that an odd question. Malachi and his band of anonymous killers were after them, the entire town of Loston seemed to be in some kind of Red Alert mode, and oh let's not forget about the fact that dead people are having this weird habit of walking around, he thought, but she's worried about rats.
John would have traded a billion rats for a return to reality, and almost said so before he saw the look in Fran's eyes. They were darting about wildly, as though terrified that at any moment one of the rodents might erupt from the solid walls around them and chew her throat out. Clearly now was not the time to joke, so John swiftly changed the response on his lips to something less flippant and more comforting. The fact that she was in distress concerned him. He suspected it wasn't really some irrational fear of rats, but rather the question was instead evidence of the fact that her mind had gone through too much for one night. He had seen it before: men who had gone through a combat zone without breaking a sweat, and then broke down crying because when they finally got back to the relative safety of their base camp someone had moved toothbrush.
He touched her arm tenderly, reassuringly. It was not a touch meant to evince sexual response, but rather the touch of a concerned friend. Nonetheless, John was hard-pressed not to shudder at the sudden and all too pleasant warmth the contact stirred up within him. "It's okay," he said. "The only rats in here are mine rats. You’ll like them. They have cute little fluffy tails."
"Still a rat."
"Don’t worry." John turned back to the beds and finished stripping them down, shaking the bedding, trying to rid it of as much dust as possible. Fran soon grabbed a handful of sheets and began doing the same. Each shake of the sheets caused a miniature cloud of sediment to rise into the air, and John was glad he didn't work the mines often. He had no major aversion to dirt, but preferred to be clean when at all possible. "In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen one. They’re rare. Besides, the old miners say if you see one it’s good luck."
"Lunatics and lucky rats. What a day."
They worked in silence a moment, replacing the now slightly cleaner bedding and then pulling the cots together, side by side. Neither asked if such a move was necessary; neither could stand to be farther from the other than possible. Not on this night.
Fran sat down on her cot, her eyes drooping in spite of her earlier voiced doubts that she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
"Yeah, lucky rats," John said. "The story is that if you see one it’s because they’re leaving the mine, and you’ll know to get out, too, because something bad is about to happen."
"Something bad?"
"Earthquake or subterranean slide. That’s why they’re lucky: they’re God’s early warning system."
"Does that happen?" she asked.
"What?"
"Earthquakes."
John chuckled at her apparent fear at the possibility. "Not in Colorado. No seismic activity to speak of for thousands of years."
"What about the subterranean slides?"
"Only if you bump into a loosely-shored wall or set off an explosion. So no breaking wind." He couldn't believe he had just said that. It was totally unlike him to be so comfortable with a comparative stranger that he could even hint at the sticky subject of human biological reactions, let alone joking about them. It had taken months of constant contact with Gabe before John had been able to make such comments, and even then he did so only rarely. But with Fran he was under constant threat of forgetting how new they were to one another. His heart clenched into a tight fist of sudden anxiety. Would she think him crude or disgusting now?
Apparently not, for she laughed slightly and lay down. "I'll do my best. Let's just hope the mine rats keep
their
gas to themselves, too."
Now it was John's turn to laugh as he followed her example, laying down on the cot beside hers. He closed his eyes and almost immediately began floating into that kind of sleep that is reserved for those who are utterly exhausted. Then his eyes snapped open as he remembered something
"Fran," he said, shaking her. She was already asleep, but her eyes fluttered. "Fran, wake up."
"Tired," she murmured, only half awake.
"I know. I’m sorry. But when Mertyl came after –" he stopped, not wanting to remember the awful scene. "When we were running, you said, ‘This is worse than the last time.’" He paused for a moment. "What did you mean by that?"
Fran’s eyes jerked all the way open and she jumped to full alertness, sitting up on her cot. "I didn’t say –"
"Yes, you did. Don’t lie to me, Fran." His exhaustion affected him, making his voice sound gruffer than he intended, giving his statement the air of a command. He continued quickly, softening his tone. "Sorry, I don't mean to snap, but if we’re going to get through this we’re going to have to trust each other. Now what were you talking about?"
"John, I can’t –"
"You have to!" This time he let the steel show through in his voice. He felt that whatever she was keeping from him might be the key to unlocking this mystery: why all this was happening, and what had happened to his friends in Loston to drive them all mad.
Then he noticed she was two steps away from crying. Instantly his expression softened and he gathered her into his arms. "Shhh, shhh. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about it." He rocked her back and forth, comforting her.
"No, you’re right," she said, sniffling. A moment, then: "My husband died not long ago."
John’s muscles clenched as the words triggered and image: Annie, laying shrunken and shriveled in a hospital bed that looked out of place around her tiny frame, crying and pleading for him to let her die.
Annie, taking a last breath, and smiling at him.
Gradually he became aware that Fran was still talking.
"...two men who showed up. They knocked and Nathan went to answer it and...." Fran’s body shook as she wept in earnest now, shivers and sobs coursing through her. John held her tighter. "One said, ‘Where’s the woman?’ Nate didn’t answer quick enough, I guess, so they shot him. Over and over and over, and then in the head."
"Don’t, Franny," said John, kissing her head. But she was beyond hearing him. She had retreated to a place that she probably hadn’t been in years - hadn’t allowed herself to go - and John knew that the memory would have to run its course. In spite of his own self-imposed pessimism about life, he still believed that people were good, on the whole. He believed in their ability to find happiness in despair. But he knew also that sometimes to find that happiness, a person had to be allowed to wade through the sorrow, trudging through the grim muck of memory until they were clear of the swampy mires of past misfortune. Fran looked like she was having such an experience as she relived this horror in her mind.
"They blew his head off," she continued. "They killed my Nate." She shivered, and then continued in a smaller voice, "I was sitting right behind him. They didn’t see me until he fell, then they came after me." She separated from John and gazed into his eyes. He looked back, seeking to pierce the veil of pain that lay over her soul, trying to find the warmth and goodness he had fallen in love with.
And it’s true, he thought. I
am
in love with her.
A moment later, she pulled down the neckline of her shirt, revealing a wicked scar that curled around her shoulder. "They came in shooting. Screaming something about the last days and some prophecy. Insane. They hit me in the shoulder, but I made it to the kitchen and grabbed...."
She collapsed into John again. He waited.
"I grabbed a meat cleaver. Buried it in the forehead of the first guy. The other one just looked at his friend, and started crying."
"Because you killed one of them?" asked John
He felt her shake her head, simultaneously burying her face in the hollow of his neck. He could feel her breath as she spoke.
"He started hollering that it was his turn, and he was supposed to die, and it wasn’t fair that the other guy got the honor."
"What did you do?"
"I ran as fast as I could. Into the bathroom. Jumped in the tub and prayed. The other guy ran after me and started firing through the door. Didn’t hit me, though. And the cops were there a minute later. I was surprised because that was in L.A., and cops there are actually required by law to wait until at least forty-five minutes
after
you're dead before responding to your call, and I hadn't even had a chance to phone them yet. But they came in and caught the guy and dragged him away. He tried to escape later that night and they killed him."
She pulled away from John to look him in the eyes again. Her eyes were dry now. She was done with weeping. "I wish I could’ve killed him myself," she said.
John stared at her.
"Fran," he finally whispered.
She dropped her gaze, ashamed. "I know. I’m sorry," she said. "Cute little Fran is a bloodthirsty bitch at heart."
"No," he said quickly, putting his hand gently below her chin and raising her eyes to his. "You are the bravest, most wonderful woman I’ve ever met. Two guys kill your husband, then come after you, and you
apologize
for wanting them dead?" He shook his head. "Fran, I don’t know what’s going on out there, and I hope that sooner or later everyone goes back to normal. But I do know this: some people deserve to die. People like that bastard who’s been chasing us all night long. People like that, people who have given up their humanity, renounce their right to live. As soon as they take it upon themselves to kill, they say that they themselves are ready to die. It sounds more and more like these people are some kind of cult that’s targeted us - and you in particular - to die. I don’t know why, but even if you were the mother of the Antichrist, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that you deserve to live, no matter what."
"What if I
am
?" she asked in a small voice, and John could tell instantly that this was something that had bothered her: a fear that had plagued her since the night of the shooting. "What if they know something I don’t, and they have to stop it by killing me? What if it we'd be better if I
were
dead?"
"No," John answered. "That isn’t the way it is, and even if it were, I don’t know that anyone has the right to decide that for you."
He paused, a bit surprised at his speech. Hadn’t he killed in the war? And not only killed once, but numerous times, quickly and efficiently as anyone ever had. How could he condemn others for taking that same action?
He shook his head. It wasn’t the same; couldn’t be. He had fought for his country; for what he believed was a good cause, in spite of all the information that came out after the war, about the doubts or the concerns that perhaps the President had known the war was coming and let it happen in order to generate price drops and ratings climbs.
But these people that were after them, they were different. They had to be. There was nothing of honor in the way they fought, and John could see the dim smile that seemed to play around Malachi’s lips as he threatened John in Devorough’s house. There was no courage there, only madness and death. No prevention of some evil that could only be stopped by someone's death, either, for the eyes of Malachi and those of his followers were untouched by human concern. Whatever their motive, it was a selfish one, and he believed - he
knew
- that what he had done in the war and what Fran had done to protect herself was as different from their motives as Gandhi’s beliefs would be from Hitler's.