Magnificent Vibration (33 page)

“What did this spirit say?” I’m on shaky ground here, not knowing who is the loony in the rubber room—Alice or me? Or both of us?

She regards me with her big wide eyes and takes a shallow breath.
She seems to be debating whether to say what she is about to say. “You are as much a part of this as I am, you know.”

“A part of what?”

“The new beginning. A reboot. The thinning of the herd,” is her answer.

“Thinning of
what
herd?” An awful idea is forming in the back of my mind. I always was a bit of a slow learner.

“The human race,” is her not completely unexpected reply.

L
exington Vargas has finished his conversation with Merikh and now sees his part in this. He unsheathes the weapon from his coat pocket as he walks toward the house. Yin and yang. There can be no shadow without light. No male without female. And no life without death. He has been studying the Chinese concept of yin and yang ever since “Arthur” said he was the yang to Alice’s yin. When he first heard the phrase it was meaningless to him but he is and always has been a diligent student of life (although his father thought otherwise) and he has come to understand the truth in the idea that there is no good or bad, only both. At once. Everything in balance. Yin and yang together form the whole. There are always two paths and he has been chosen. Alice is one and he, Lexington, is the other. For every path there is an alternate way, for every firm, hard choice there is an alternative possibility. And he, himself, is the second choice, the other possible outcome of this event to which they have all been summoned. He understands that God makes no choices for us. Life presents us with options and we are free to choose—good/evil, positive/negative, virtue/depravity—and the resulting outcome, whether we suffer or flourish, is
always our choice. As Alice and Bobby have been given two options, so has he, Lexington, been given two options. To act and prevent this or not to act and by non-action allow it. He has chosen. Yin and yang. And these two, once his friends, cannot be allowed to do what they are contemplating. Even if it means the death of everything. If the end of the world is the natural order of things, then so be it. Yang walks toward the small house at 5 Holm Dell Park with a loaded gun in his hand.

“H
ow are we supposed to thin the herd? And why?” This has gone so far left that I don’t even know where center is anymore.

Alice has become agitated and has risen from her bed. She’s now pacing in front of the fireplace, her energy contagious. She begins her terrible litany.

“She said she is an Earth spirit, the one on the Loch, and that there are others like her. They are guardians of our world and the Earth is alive—and we are made from and nurtured by her. But our Earth is dying and life can’t grow from a dead thing. We are poisoning her. Killing her. Burying her under our apathy, our garbage, waste, and filth, and our self-righteous entitlement. Even a pregnant mother must abort her baby if it threatens her life. And that is the task she has given to me, to us. To save her. And save ourselves. But how can I do what is being asked of me? It’s murder! Mass murder!”

She finishes her mind-blowing monologue, drops into a chair, and puts her face in her hands. And Atlas is contemplating whether she should shrug or not. At least I think she is.

“How are you supposed to accomplish this? Eliminate four billion people? Nothing on Earth can do that.” This all sounds so nutty I just can’t absorb it.

“It isn’t something
on
Earth, it comes from
within
the earth,” Alice answers as I move to sit on the arm of her chair to be closer to her. “I have been given a virus that will kill half the world in six months,” she finishes, and I leap up from my almost-sitting position as though she’s just said she’s radioactive.

“What?” My go-to phrase again.

“It isn’t viable yet,” she says darkly.

“When does it become . . . viable?” I ask.

“That’s where you come in.”

“Me?” I yell a little too loud in the small house. How did I get involved in all this? I just wanted to see the Loch Ness effing Monster.

“I have the female component to the virus. You were given the male element, by whatever Earth spirit appeared to you out on that lake,” is her bizarre answer.

“The Loch Ness Monster is an Earth spirit?” And there is disappointment in my voice.

“If that’s what you saw, then yes,” answers Alice the reluctant assassin.

“How long do we have?” I’m in shock.

“As the carrier, I am immune,” she replies. “The symptoms start with a bloody nose. That’s as far as it will go with me. The rest of the infected will die within twenty-four hours of the first sighting of blood.”

“Christ almighty,” I breathe.

“And some will be immune,” she finishes.

“How does it become . . . operational?” I hardly have the words for this, and I think at this point I’m just using phrases again from old movies I’ve seen.

Alice hesitates as though she were deliberating whether to answer or not. Then she opens her mouth and says the best thing I could ever hope to hear and the worst thing I could ever hope to hear. It is the undisputed winner of the “jaw-dropping moment of the century” award.

“All life begins with the sex act. You and I must have sex to make the virus active. Then, as the carrier, it will flow from me with every breath I exhale, and it will grow exponentially through airborne contagion,” she says and starts to cry again.

“Holy shit!” is my gut reaction. “That is seriously fucked-up. So if I were to have . . . make love to you, it will kill half the world’s population?”

Alice nods and dabs at her eyes with the sleeve of the sweatshirt I loaned her for our trip on the Loch. It looks enormous on her and has a cartoon of a pig with the legend, “Swine flu. Bacon’s revenge.” I’ve got to stop buying clothes with slogans on them. They are way too prescient.

“She told me that the Earth has no alternatives left. We have passed the tipping point. Our breeding has run amuck and we’ve abused and laid waste to her. If this doesn’t happen, if we choose not to activate the virus, then
everyone
and
everything
will die.” It just keeps getting worse and worse as Alice speaks.

“All life on Earth?”

“Yes.”

“Why us?” is all I can ask.

“She believes we’ll understand what’s at stake,” replies Alice. “And
we have no family to be concerned with. That we are bonded. Maybe you’re meant to protect me.”

“With
these
arms?” I try to make a joke, but I was never good with timing.

She smiles despite our dire predicament.

“Can God really want this?” she asks, and her face looks like some kid who’s been told there really is no Easter Bunny and is looking for the sad confirmation from her parents.

“He’s kind of been leading the charge,” I answer.

“My God,” responds the unluckiest woman in the world.

“So where does Lexington fit into all of this?” I ask, like she would know.

And no sooner have the words left my mouth than the aforementioned humongous human being walks into the kitchen where Alice and I are struggling to decide the fate of the world. He is sweating and looks distraught. He has something in his right hand. He raises the gun and points it at Alice’s face.

“I’m so sorry,” he says as tears begin to form a shimmery film over his eyes. “I love you both, like a brother and sister—but this is wrong, what you plan to do.”

I am on my feet. The wimpy protector.

“Stop! Lexington, no! She isn’t going to make the virus active. It’s still our choice!”

I proclaim this to the crazy giant as I make a move to try to place myself between the black hole of the barrel and the person I now love most in this world. Who knew I would ever choose to take a bullet for someone other than Murray?

“Merikh told me you might say that,” answers our dear old friend L.V.

“Merikh just wants everyone dead. That’s what he does for a living. He’s the Angel of Death!” I’m shooting from the hip.

“No.
You
are the Angels of Death. You can’t be allowed to do this.
Que Dios me perdone
,” replies the now lethal Lexington Vargas holding his illegally obtained weapon.

“
Click
,” says the cocking gun.

“Shit,” says I.

“Stop,” yells someone.

There is a roaring explosion, and I actually see flames leap from the Lexington Vargas’s “persuader.” Someone screams in pain, but it isn’t me.

“
I
t goes the way it goes,” thinks the Omnipotent Supreme Being. The OSB has His/Her fingers in many pies and is monitoring all of them. And there are 92 to the 17-trillionth-power moments all happening simultaneously around the universe. But this path the “Earth” is trying to take, as a living planet, is unique in the OSB’s experience, which is prodigious and fairly complete. It might just be the radical direction all the other worlds need to follow to ensure
their
survival. Certainly there can be no more episodes like the Vee-Nung, damn their stubborn shortsightedness and flabby, amphibian limbs. The OSB is watching very closely because every Father/Mother wants to see their children live long and prosper. “Oh, crap,” the OSB says to His/Her self, “I may have a little too much invested in this planet. I’m quoting
Star Trek
now?”

A
ll I can see is blood on the walls of the kitchen as ugly gray smoke and the smell of cordite hang in the air like a bad guest that won’t leave. Lexington Vargas has apparently fled. I anxiously turn to Alice to help her but she looks unharmed.

“Are you shot?” I ask desperately, checking her for signs of a wound. She is, like me, in shock.

“I . . . I don’t think so,” she says. “Are you?”

I pat down my own body as though I’m looking for misplaced car keys or someone has just asked me if I have change for a dollar. No entry or exit wounds on me, either.

“I guess not,” I answer.

I peer at the kitchen and see blood-spatter. I hear a scuffling noise and move cautiously into the area as though it were land-mined.

Writhing there on the floor is Lexington Vargas, our would-be-assassin. He is moaning in pain, hands to his blood-covered face. I look for the revolver but see only pieces. A barrel here, half a handgrip there, metal fragments scattered across the counter and littering the ground around the struggling behemoth. I guess not everything “handmade with pride in Scotland” is the better buy.

“I think the gun exploded,” I yell to Alice as I drop to my knees to help our potential murderer and friend.

“Call an ambulance. Call the police.”

“How?” asks Alice. It’s a fair question.

“Isn’t it nine-one-one?” I shout as I grab a towel from the refrigerator handle and dab at L.V.’s face and hands as he blindly pushes me away, howling in pain. I tell him I’m trying to help.

Alice runs to the phone and dials.

“Nine-one-one just goes to a busy signal,” she yells back at me.

“The emergency number is nine-nine-nine,” says someone other than Alice, me, or Lexington Vargas.

Just when I thought Hansel and Gretel might be out of the woods, the Big Bad Wolf is standing inside the front door of Grandma’s house, offering up the local emergency number. Merikh now has a gun in
his
hand as well. I thought guns were really hard to
get
in the UK!!

Alice dials and gives our address, never taking her eyes off Merikh. He isn’t doing anything threatening other than holding the weapon (which looks to be an exact copy of the one L.V. just tried to dispatch us with, and I think maybe this weird apparently supernatural being creates his firearms out of our imaginations) at his side, so I continue to administer to Lexington Vargas, who has what look like some seriously deep puncture wounds to his face and right hand. I see a bloody stump where one of his fingers used to be. He moans and utters Spanish phrases I don’t understand.

“The situation had to play itself out. I am sorry,” Merikh says. “It is not possible for me to take a life.” He puts the gun inside his jacket and I assume the frigging thing just disappears again because I see no telltale bulge. He bends down near L.V. and me on the blood-speckled floor and hooks his long ebony mane behind his ears, which are
perfect
and just how I always imagined mine would look if I’d had them surgically repaired by the best plastics guy in Beverly Hills. But he does nothing to help.

“The Angel of Death can’t take a life?” I say in as perplexed a tone as I can muster.

“I am not this Angel of Death you think I am,” he answers.

L.V. has stopped struggling and is now lying still. I check to make sure he has a pulse. It’s racing and blood continues to leak, deep, dark, and crimson, from the many ruptures in his skin.

“But you killed everyone on that plane on the freeway,” I counter, still swabbing away.

“I did not. I told you that. Most of them were already dead from a chemical leak that poisoned the atmosphere inside the cabin before the aircraft went down,” he counters my counter. “I was there to help them cross through. That is what I do as an Earth spirit. That is why I was in Japan for the tsunami event. I help those who die find their way. Many are confused and don’t realize they are dead. So I guide them to the next step.”

Alice has joined us at L.V.’s side and is staring wide-eyed at Merikh.

“Are you sent from God?” She sounds breathless.

“I am from the Earth,” answers Merikh.

“Where do you guide them? The ones that die?” I ask.

“That is not for me to say,” he replies.

“Why are you here? Why did you follow us?” challenges Alice.

“To help you. Though I could not help you with this. I cannot interfere in the natural way of things.” I trust the absolute honesty in his voice. It’s like he’s incapable of lying. “If you choose the path of initiating the virus, I will have many souls to guide on their way.”

Alice stands with anger in her body. “How can I do what has been asked? My path, with God’s help, has always been to heal, not harm.”