Flightsuit (19 page)

The helicopter is too close
, Leo thought. 
The suit has decided it is too close and a threat.  Not sure if I felt something moving or what, but it's getting ready to do something
. 

A small dimple appeared in the glass-metal surface of the flightsuit's left shoulder.  Because Leo was expecting the suit to do something, the slight movement caught the corner of his eye.  He watched a BB-sized hole appear in the top of the dimple.  The hole expanded and the dimple left a quarter-sized hole in the flightsuit's shoulder.  Leo turned away from the hole as an eye-searing blue light floated out of the opening.  For a second, it just floated, a shining blue pinpoint of light.  Then it shot toward the helicopter.

The soldier in the helicopter put his hand to his helmet trying to hear instructions.  He had seen the light coming but had no time to react. 

The helicopter vanished.  The wind blowing at Leo from the blades was swallowed by a whoosh of air toward the helicopter and a crack like thunder.  Then silence.  It happened so fast, Leo's mind was still filling in what he'd seen from after-images.  The helicopter hadn't just vanished, it had been sucked into itself.  He'd seen the beginning of a scream on the soldier's face in the instant before the bones crushed together into a pinpoint.

After a moment's silence, there was a sound as if the entire hillside had just crashed into the valley below.  Dust blew back up over the edge.  Taylor was peering over the edge.

That was the helicopter falling
, Leo thought.

He glanced back to see Taylor grinning with delight.  He lifted the helmet and arched his eyebrows.  "Ready for company?"

Leo saw Ethan standing on a large rock looking at him, his jaw still hanging open from the helicopter's disappearance.

Ethan saw the man raising the helmet, but his focus was on Leo's eyes.  He read the fear in them. 

He heard Ray, yell "STOP HIM!"

In the years since Ray's death, Ethan had stacked regret.  A stick of regret for every time he'd told Ray he was too busy to play.  Chunk, into the stack.  A stick for every time he was too exhausted from work in the mine to play, int
o the stack.  It didn't matter, now, that he'd been falling asleep on his feet trying to work nights and be at the hospital during the day.  By Ethan's punishing self-assessment, he'd let Ray down many times, right down to the last time as he sat in the hospital feeling his son's small hand grow cold.

Ray had gone, leaving regrets to remember him.  On the few occasions when Ethan felt a moment of simple pleasure, standing in the sun feeling the cooling fall wind, he'd catch himself and feel guilt
y enjoying something that Ray was missing.  He'd wished thousands of times for a chance to go back and replace each of those memories and half-efforts with a better effort now that he knew there would be so few allotted.  The weight of those stacked regrets had crushed Ethan for years. 

Without a second's hesitation, Ethan dipped his shoulder, allowing the pack he'd carried on his back to slide down his arm.  As it slipped off his shoulder, he jammed his right hand into the bag, grabbing inside.  The bag fell to the ground and
revealed the long silver pistol in Ethan's hand.

Ray yelled again, "STOP HIM, Ethan!"
  This time Ethan saw Leo's mouth framing the words.  He leveled his right arm, closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. 

Then he opened his eyes and pulled the trigger. 

Taylor hadn't seen Ethan.  He was lowering the helmet toward Leo when his face erupted in a spray of red, gray and white.  As Leo twisted his head away, he heard Taylor projecting thoughts through the time-frozen, near-instantaneous mind-to-mind communication. 
What are you looking at?
At first, the booming voice still sounded like an angry god in Leo's head, but then in a smaller voice, like a scared little boy,
what's happening?
 

The connection broke
, and Leo continued turning his head as bits of brain and sharp pieces of Taylor's shattered skull ripped past. 

Taylor's body froze in place with one remaining eye locked onto him.  The other eye and the top of Taylor's head was on its way over the edge.  Leo watched the helmet drop from Taylor's loosened fingers.  It fell too close to his feet to see if it bounced over the edge.  

He heard, or perhaps felt, he wasn't sure which, a tremendous wind through his mind.  He felt relief of a pressure in his head that he hadn't quite been fully aware of before. 

He flinched away from the remains of Taylor's slack and surprised face as it leaned toward him.  The body slid against the flightsuit before tumbling past toward the valley below, leaving a red smear, which instantly beaded and slid off.  

When the helicopter vanished, Hack held his team back.  "No one fire until I do," he spoke into his mouthpiece.   He needed to stop Taylor from putting the helmet on the suit, there was no way to guess what would happen if he did, and he didn't want a kid injured by stray fire or ricochet.  "Sowyer, target Taylor's leg or something non-vital, I want to get him away from the suit without killing him."

"Yes, sir" Sowyer replied, sighting Taylor's head. 
Put you away this time.  For good.

Someone else just popped into view across the clearing.  Hack was almost looking right at the spot when Ethan bounded into view and almost fell right over a boulder. 
Who's this guy?
Before he could make any guesses, the guy threw off his backpack and was standing there holding a gun.  In Hack's long experience dealing justice to men with guns, he'd never seen one pull a gun out and immediately fire.  Everyone always waited to see how a gun changed the dynamics of a situation.  Even the worst killers would hesitate for seconds, if only to savor the power they'd gained.  The guy across the clearing fired in one fluid motion, pulling the gun smoothly out of the backpack, raising it and punctuating the move with a BANG. 

"Oh shit." 
What the hell is going on here?

Taylor's body fell over the edge.  "Target shooter!"

Across the clearing, Ethan saw the soldiers sighting down on him.  He lowered his right hand and the gun to his side and held his left hand up motioning the soldiers to stop.

Ethan said "Wait!" and again louder, not sure if they'd heard him.  His ears were sharply ringing.  He'd forgotten how loud the gun was without earplugs.

The soldiers weren't lowering their guns.  Ethan began to realize they might shoot him.  His time sense was completely blown.  Everything was happening so fast that it was all reaction. 
Rifle barrels sighting down.  Too far away to communicate.  Fingers pulling back?  Are they about to shoot me? 

Ethan's mind raced until suddenly, it stopped racing.  Like a man running through a maze who notices a door he's not yet tried.  He lost focus on the soldiers and considered the distraction with his full attention, and he thought,
oh, there it is
. 

He'd had a metal puzzle as a boy.  It was four triangular twisted shapes locked together.  He'd worked with it for days trying to figure out how the pieces came apart.  He carried them with him everywhere for that week and would be in the middle of doing something else whenever he thought of another move to try.  He'd try it only to find the attempt only locked the puzzle in another way, then put it back in his pocket frustrated.  He'd excitedly pull it out again hours later for another try.  His conscious mind gave up many times only to be called out again to test out attempts unconsciously developed.  Finally, he'd pulled it out, made a couple twists that he was sure he must have tried before
, and the puzzle came apart in his hands.

Ethan realized he'd been subconsciously trying to solve a vexing puzzle for decades, ever since Ray's death and maybe before.  He'd failed so many times that he no longer consciously tried to solve it, but hadn't realized until now that his mind hadn't given up.  The feeling of surprise and satisfaction was much greater than the metal puzzle.  He'd been pleased with himself then.  Now, the answer to a lifetime of pain, isolation and loss came forward
, and Ethan felt elation so great it was like a crashing wave of warm, long-hoped-for peace.

And the soldiers fired.

The sound the rifles made was literally deafening.  It exploded in Ethan's ears.  He stared at the soldiers through red smoke, but his focus was entirely inside his own mind and it didn't quite register on him that they'd fired.

He was inside his own mind.  Exploring controls he'd looked for so long.  He held them, concentrated on holding them so tightly.  He was afraid that if he lost them, he might never find them again.  He held them and didn't move.

Hack called for his team to hold fire.  He looked at the boy still standing locked in the suit, and tried to understand how it had stopped their rounds in midair.  There was no outward sign that the suit had done anything.  The guy was standing there staring past them, still with his hand up, and there wasn't a scratch on him.  There'd been no impacts in the dust and rocks behind or around him either, just a quickly dissipating red dust about twenty feet in front of the guy. 

Hack noticed the grass in fro
nt of the guy had changed color.  The grass directly in front of the man wasn't green now.  It was bleached white and dry, but just in that one area.  The rest of the grass in the clearing was still green, but in front of the target it was brown and dead.

Suit's not the only anomaly here
, thought Hack.  He told the team to keep weapons trained on the guy but to hold fire, and he weighed options.

Sweat itched Ethan's scalp, threatening his concentration. 
I can't believe it
, he thought. 
How long?
  Then,
I have to see if I can turn it loose and unlock it again
.  He was terrified that if he turned it loose and couldn't remember the exact way it felt in his mind, he might lose it again forever. 

He looked for something to experiment on, temporarily ignoring the soldiers. 

Hack saw the guy lower his left hand, still holding the big pistol at his side in his right hand.  He spoke into the microphone to his team, "The guy's pretty accurate with that gun, if he raises it again, drop him – otherwise, we need to give this some time."

The guy was looking into the trees, Hack looked but saw nothing.  As Ethan's left hand rose again in the direction he'd looked, the agents tensed, preparing to fire. 

"Hold your fire, remember," Hack reminded them.
What's he doing?

Then he noticed one of the trees in the direction the guy was looking was changing color.   The leaves turned bright yellow, then orange, red and brown in the span of three seconds.  The colors were so bright it seemed the tree caught fire. The leaves quickly faded to brown and all dropped from the tree at once in a brown curtain.  Then a branch cracked and fell from high up in the tree.  Seconds later, another fell.  The tree's bark turned gray. 

Hack kept looking from the tree to the guy and back.  The guy still held the pistol down at his side.  His other hand was half-raised toward the tree with the fingers only slightly moving. 

Hack heard a loud creaking sound and a "WHOOSH!" as the giant tree with its now bare and bonelike limbs fell.  It fell dangerously close to the guy - between him and the armor, hitting the hard rock clearing ground with a WHUMP!  The top third of the old giant cracked in two at the cliff's edge, falling end-over-end out of sight.

Hack looked at the man, his mind racing. 
He aged it.  He aged the tree in seconds.  He did the same thing with the bullets.  The red dust was rust.  How do we stop someone that can do that?  What would happen if he did that to a person?

Hack ducked a little lower behind his concealment.  He noticed the others in the team shuffling down a bit as well, except Sowyer who was actually standing up and breaking his cover.  He ordered Sowyer to get down, but Sowyer seemed oblivious.  Hack shot a quick look at the guy and saw he was just standing there, his face vacant.  Sowyer wrenched his helmet off, the strap pulling on his left ear.  Dropping the helmet, Sowyer clenched his eyes shut and pressed his palms against both temples.  Hack saw tendons strain with the force and feared Sowyer would actually injure himself.  He yelled, "Stop!" almost reflexively.  "Sowyer stop before you hurt yourself.  What is it?"  He looked across the clearing, but the guy was still just standing there, no
longer grinning, just looking down at his hand.  Sowyer's problem didn't seem related to anything the guy was doing.  Hack had seen men freeze with fear before.  Something else was going on with Sowyer.  He was clearly in agony, and Hack had no idea why.

Ethan's emotions spun out of control.  He was excited, afraid and frustrated.  He'd reached a peak in a lifetime of frustration and loss, and now he was ready to let it all go.

He'd felt the power flowing past him toward the tree.  Actually felt it.  It was like sand blown by the wind, brushing against him as it flew toward the tree, tingling as it touched th
e skin of his arms and hand.  He couldn't see it.  Not quite anyway.  The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stretched with the charge it left behind.  It felt good.  It felt…so…good to open the valve, and let it go. 
Here take it.  Take it
. 

A huge smile broke across his face as he turned loose more and more on the tree.  There was so much.  It felt like he stood in the ocean with his back to the sea
, with wave after wave flowing around and past him toward the beach.  He had no idea where it came from, not from inside him, no person could contain this much,
what, energy?
  He wasn't even sure what it was.  Whatever it was, he unloaded it on the tree, directing, willing it, and encouraging the little tingly particles to fly.  Fly.

He'd been holding back his whole life, clamped down, pulling back, t
rying to maintain control.  Now, he let go.  He'd held back every conscious moment since he could remember, and letting go felt as good as dropping a heavy load and feeling the blood rush back to your shoulders.  He'd never realized how good it could feel to let it go.  Maybe the tension and fear of turning loose was the problem all along. 

It was a surprise when the tree fell.  He'd been so focused on flying energy into the tree that he didn't consider the likely outcome.  There was a moment when the tree started to lean toward him that he thought it would fall right on him.  When the top of the tree started to move, there was an instant realization of its mass.  It was a gigantic, old (now) thing and it was leaning
toward him.  He'd let up and stopped encouraging the flow, but the tree was already coming down. 

Ethan felt an overwhelming rush of excitement and exhilaration as the giant fell within feet of him with a loud and, for Ethan, satisfying sound of crushed air.  He breathed, "Wow" and shook his head, smiling. 

Wow
, Ray agreed. 
That was great, Dad!  You did it!  Did you see that?  Wham!

Ethan beamed.
Yes!  It was amazing.  I found it Ray.  I finally figured out how to let it go where I want without it slipping out bit-by-bit, aging everything around me.

All those years alone…

Ethan was young when Ray was born.  Back then, in East Tennessee, it wasn't uncommon for a couple's first child to be born before they'd reached twenty.  They'd rushed into life together, passing through daily life, passing milestones without ceremony as they passed by for a once-and-only moment of experience.  Gone in youth's rush and beyond reach after it. 

Ethan began piecing an understanding of his mysterious condition together in the weeks following the Ray's diagnosis.  Ray was underweight at birth, but seemed fine otherwise.  As the weeks went by, his failure to thrive became more evident.  The
Progeria diagnosis which had, at first, seemed an impossibly random catastrophe was a piece of Ethan's puzzling life. 

As a child, Ethan was not discernibly different.  His divergence began in his teens.  He wore out new clothes in less time than other kids.  By Christmas, the new notebooks he'd received at the start of the school year were frayed with only a few crinkled pages still attached and all the loose pages stuffed between the covers.  His mother complained that he was just too rough on his things.  When she talked to his classmate's mothers they said their sons were too rough and careless with their things too.  The difference, lost in superficial discussion, was that
Ethan's clothes and his common possessions were destroyed substantially faster.  He'd promise to be more careful with his clothes, and within weeks there'd be holes and tears in the knees or seat. 

He'd worn through his original wedding band the week before Ray was born.  It just fell off one day in the shower with a "
tink, tink" as the seam wore thin.  He'd decided he was just rough on things in the way other people decided they were clumsy or forgetful.  He was just rough on things. 

Ray's diagnosis, so rare and freakishly out-of-the-blue as it was, didn't seem to tie to anything, Maggie's family had no history of it
, and his parents were healthy and vibrant new grandparents.  For Ethan, in those weeks of soul-searching after the diagnosis, there was no connection to anything except himself and the strange faster-than-normal entropy.  He began, for the first time, to consider that perhaps there was something truly abnormal about him.  With this new perspective, he examined his life.  Objects he used more, like his rusty tools, aged more quickly.  The chair he sat in each night, looked five years older than Maggie's.  Nothing he saw disproved his suspicion that he was different from everyone else. 

When he finally mentioned his concern to Maggie, she laughed.  "It's ridiculous," she said, taking him to the mirror.  "Look.  All these things you're talking about are just normal wear and tear.  If anything, you look younger than you should, you dog.  If everything around you is, somehow", she shook her head, "aging super-fast, what about you?  You're not aging fast and you're around yourself all the time."

She was right.  He'd let it drop.  Looking through the wedding pictures later, he looked virtually the same as today.  But, he was not totally convinced, and as the months went by and little Ray's future grew increasingly close, the feelings of guilt bore down on him.  He became certain there was a connection.  He'd brought it up, as casually as possible, to Ray's doctor during a checkup.  Even though he'd become almost certain himself, he was afraid the doctor would think he was a kook.  The doctor had dismissed the idea out of hand, giving Ethan a mini-lecture on Progeria as if he hadn't read all about it and lived it firsthand already through the first year of baby Ray's life.  He just went along and pretended he agreed with the doctor, as convinced as ever there was a connection.

The next years were a blur, with Ethan working extra hours at the mine and struggling to eke the last iota of energy out for time with Ray.  There was never enough, looking back, he knew that although he'd been with Ray as much, or more, than any other father in the little mining community, he'd rarely been rested enough to really give Ray the focus he had in the mornings when he woke early for work.  He'd think about Ray and Maggie during the day and be eager to get home, but after a couple hours together
, he wasn't able to keep going.  He'd lay beside Ray in bed telling him a made-up bedtime story, only to have Ray stop him.  "That's not what happens," he'd say and Ethan realized he'd mingled discussion from work into the story as he fell asleep talking.  Weekends were better.  Waking up with Ray and Maggie, he gave them his full attention. 

Those early years with them were the best part of Ethan's life
, and he remembered them often.  As Ray's condition worsened, the stress on Ethan mounted.  All of his life, he'd been an early-riser, usually waking before the alarm went off.  He began to oversleep and where he'd been a light sleeper before, now he had to be shaken awake.  Back then, he'd just assumed his sleep quality was low.  Anyone would have trouble relaxing in a similar situation, he thought.  In any event, he didn't feel groggy, or sleep-deprived so it wasn't a problem, other than requiring Maggie to wake him up.

After Ray was gone, Maggie was not the same.  Ray had grown between the two of them in a way that felt tight and complete at the time, but left cold empty sadness between them.  With no family history of illness with anything like Ray's rare
Progeria, she'd blamed herself and Ethan equally.  Both of their genes had combined in a way that doomed Ray, and she would wake up each day and roll the stone of her grief up the mountain over and over. 

She left the house one Saturday a month after Ray's death without waking Ethan.  She intended to spend the day driving the Blue Ridge Parkway and just remember Ray alone.  She drove all day and felt it had helped, at least a small bit.   The house was quiet and Ethan didn't answer when she called, although his car was in the driveway.  She walked to the shed and around the house without finding him. 

Cell phones were decades away, so she made dinner and waited.  She was worried and angry with him in equal parts.  The brief relief she'd gained during the day was lost in frustration at Ethan for not leaving a note about his plans.  At ten o'clock, she decided she'd go to bed. 

She saw Ethan in bed and let out a gasp
, with her hand holding her heart in place.  As she approached him she saw that he was breathing normally.  He seemed to just be sleeping.  She switched off the light and slid in beside him.

In the morning, he still slept.  Maggie considered waking him but decided to let him sleep.  She skipped church, she wasn't ready to face anyone there yet anyway.  When she came home Ethan still slept.  Throughout the day, she'd come to the door and watch him.  Her amazement and compassion drained away as night returned.  Ethan's coma was creepy and unnatural.  She slept fitfully on the couch with the bedroom door closed.  She woke with sunrise and found Ethan sleeping peacefully on. 

She shook him, and he came awake with a mumbled "thanks" and went into the shower.

Maggie was still sitting on the bed when he came out, towel around his waist. 

Ethan asked "anything special you'd like to do today?"

"Ethan," she said, "it's Monday."

She told him then about how she'd spent the weekend watching him sleep.

"I didn't know a person could sleep that long," she said, almost as a question.  Ethan didn't reply.  He had no answer, but she could tell he was working through something.  He dressed and went in to work.

Maggie pulled out the wedding album and looked at Ethan.  He really hadn't aged since the wedding.  Staring at the mirror, she could see lines at the corner of her eyes and the hint of a crease around her smile that would eventually set in place.  She
was
aging.  Normally?  Or faster than normal?  She had no way to gauge and of course, after what she'd been through what would be normal anyway?

But Ethan's concern that somehow he might be the cause of Ray's
Progeria came back to her.  She'd laughed it away then, but that was before she'd seen him sleep in a coma for 58 hours.  There was no doubt that Ethan was different now, and it wasn't so hard to accept other differences might be possible.  She spent the day looking at the house, his things, his clothes, his chair and the tools in his shed, and she started to believe.  By the time Ethan came home, they both knew he'd been right. 

The next days were worse even than Ray's last days. 

The crushing guilt they'd shared had tenuously held them together.  With no family history of illness in either side of their genes, the disease was a fluke, just incredibly bad fortune.  The combination of genes that gave them Ray's unique personality and indomitable spirit gave him only a short time.  With the guilt burden removed, there was nothing left between them.  Maggie's eyes had looked at him with love and loyalty once.  He'd seen the fear and sadness in them as they brought Ray into the world and saw him out.  He'd seen her eyes vacant with guilt and sadness.  The last time he saw her, they were filled only with fear.  She'd increasingly avoided him over the weeks after the long sleep, minimizing contact and staying as far away as she could manage in the little house.  She thought he was causing her to age faster and although it horrified him to think of it, he thought so too. 

Their life together ended with a last tight and sorrowful embrace.  He watched her drive away with tears pooling in his eyes.  He could see her shoulders hunch down in the car as she cried.  He watched the road long after she drove away. 

In the years since, Ethan's strange condition increasingly isolated him.  Alone in the little house, time came apart.  Without anyone to physically wake him, he slept for days or weeks at a time.  When he woke, he felt like he'd slept normally.  He listened to the radio to learn how long he'd been asleep, always feeling like a single night passed. 

He'd wondered why he'd slept normally before Ray's death.  Ethan tried often to exert conscious control of his strange time condition.  He'd stare at a clock trying to slow or speed it up, but nothing ever happened.  Since he couldn't control it consciously, he decided his unconscious mind somehow could.  Clearly, it was his unconscious that took over as he slept and created some kind of time-deflecti
ng cocoon around him, allowing him to go without food or bathroom for weeks. 

But he couldn't control it consciously.  He tried day after day without success of any kind until, like the little steel puzzle rings he had as a boy, he put it out of mind and let his unconscious mind work on it or ignore it as it chose. 

He imagined his unconscious mind as a separate person from himself, with different objectives and mysterious and frustrating ways.  It controlled his strange, useless ability throughout his life allowing it to leak out in only the most subtle ways, with his clothes and the objects around him aging faster than normal.  The oddities of his genes swept into Ray too, minus the unconscious control mechanisms.  Ethan read everything he could find about Progeria victims.  Almost nothing was ever written about their parents, so he had no way to know if they had conditions like his own.  He'd never told anyone who actually documented his own fears.  If any other parents had come forward with similar concerns, those had likewise never been documented.  He thought it possible that the kids that died of Progeria had the same physical condition he had without the control system.  Whatever that was.