Rising (4 page)

He hangs up. What follows is a long,
terrible silence where I expect him to explain what the hell is happening and
then realize that he won’t. Tarren puts on his blinker and shifts into the
right lane of the highway.

“You told someone your real name?” I ask
numbly. It’s almost beyond belief that Tarren would so blatantly disregard one
of Diana’s supreme rules.

“I’m going to be gone for a while,”
Tarren responds. His voice is even, but his eyes are far away. “Take the jeep
back to Farewell.”

“Was she the one who answered the phone
when I called about Gabe? Is that where you were?”

My questions slide off him. Ice. My
brother is made of ice.

Tarren takes the first exit, and his
eyes make a sweep of the area. He finds what he’s looking for and swings the
jeep into a mall parking lot. He pulls into an empty spot in front of a Sears
and turns off the engine. We sit in silence.

“I’ll check in each day,” he tells me.
His aura hiccups, trying to jump out of his grasp. It scares me that he’s this
unwound, that whatever has been filling his aura with brown dread is actually
happening, and I have no idea what it is.

“Don’t go,” I say suddenly.

A woman walks behind the jeep clutching
a black umbrella in one hand and pushing a stroller with the other. The wheels
rattle against the uneven concrete, and she hums softly to herself. I can feel
the even tides of her energy on the edge of my consciousness and the energy of
her baby in the stroller.

Tarren looks over at me, and his face is
set in that flint mask that means he’s beyond all reason.

“I’m sorry Maya,” he says.

“Sometimes you can drown in secrets,” I
whisper back at him.

Tarren looks away.

“Take care of Gabe,” he says, and then
he gets out of the jeep. I watch in the rearview mirror while he pulls his
duffle bag from the back. He takes his tranq gun too and the first aid kit. Not
the sniper rifle or any of the blades, ropes, disguises, fake IDs, or other
necessities we hide under the floor mat back there.

He closes the hatch and waits.

I just sit in the passenger seat, numb
and so very angry. Finally, Tarren knocks on my window.

“Go,” he says.

I want to get out of the car and punch
him in his stupid stubborn face. Instead, I unbuckle my seatbelt, shimmy over
to the driver’s seat, and adjust it for my shorter legs. Tarren is still
waiting, watching. He won’t make a move until after I’m gone. It briefly
crosses my mind that I should follow him, but if it’s occurred to me, then it’s
definitely already occurred to Tarren. He’ll be looking for a tail even if I
switch cars.

It’s useless.

“Fine!” I snap at him, loud enough so
he’ll hear through the window. “Be a dick!”

I turn the key too hard, and the engine
whinnies before catching. I punch the accelerator and peel out of the parking
lot. Tarren stands still as a statue, receding in the rearview mirror.

A traffic jam on the 76 through Denver
only sours my mood. Eleven hours of straight driving brings me bouncing down
the rutted road in Farewell, Colorado. This is waaaaaay back country, where you
go not to be found.

Tall pines hold their vigil on each side
of the road, capped with snow, and the only indication of human settlements are
rusted mailboxes at the end of small dirt runoffs every few miles. I slow in
front of Dr. Lee’s cabin. Three months ago we brought a nearly lifeless Gabe to
Dr. Lee’s doorstep. My brothers don’t just count on Dr. Lee as an ally; he’s
practically the father they never had despite his perpetually grouchy demeanor.
He pulled off a miracle that night and in the days afterward as Gabe slowly
recovered.

I long to pull into the driveway, knock
on the door, and ask about how Dr. Lee’s arthritis is doing. His housekeeper, Francesca,
and I could lounge in the kitchen and chat softly for a while. I’d thanked her
for the millionth time for all the care she lavished on Gabe when he was in a
coma, and she’d lower her large doe eyes and murmur something sweetly humble
like, “It wasn’t anything. Dr. Lee saved him.”

But it was something. She could have refused
to help when she saw all the weapons strapped to Gabe’s body. She could have
demanded we bring him to a hospital. She could have called the cops.

I tap the gas pedal, and the jeep
bounces forward on the road. I don’t really want to know whether Dr. Lee’s
arthritis is acting up. I want to slow down time and hold off the giant heap o’
pain that awaits at the end of this road. Doesn’t that just make me the number
one sister in the world?

Two miles down from Dr. Lee’s cabin, the
unpaved road doesn’t really end as much as it just gives up, petering out at my
destination. When I was first changed, this sallow green house with its sagging
bannister and rusted gutters was a prison. Somewhere over the last six months
it has turned into a sort of home. Though at this moment, it feels more like a
punishment.

Because of Gabe.

Apprehension fills my stomach with a
horde of black beetles as I pull into the driveway. I gather my duffle bag and
the empty rat cage from the back of the jeep and note with pride that there are
no blood stains mar the upholstery. You lay out tarp enough, and you’re bound
to get pretty good at it eventually.

As soon as I enter the house, I know
Gabe’s not here. Weak as it is, I’m highly attuned to the unique signature of
his aura. For a long, terrible moment, my mind reels with all the ways he could
have come to harm while Tarren and I were out in the world ignoring him –
another seizure, a fall down the stairs, the angels could have finally tracked
us down and found Gabe weak and defenseless as a —

The sudden, concussive reports of
gunshots shatter the wheel of my thoughts.

***

“You think you can take me?” Gabe says
in a cool voice as he holds his Beretta PX4 semi-automatic aloft. He aims his
weapon into the woods behind the house. His target appears to be an empty can
of Progressive clam chowder perched precariously on a branch 20 yards away.
Snow drifts lazily from the sky, landing on the brim of Gabe’s lucky hat,
turned backwards as usual.

I step through the back door and
automatically assess his aura. The thin cloak of color around him wavers. I
search for the rich blues –
Blue as Blue, True as True
– that once made
his aura so beautiful and alluring. All I find are diluted shades of
discomfort.

I wonder again if a part of him didn’t
come back from the coma. Won’t ever come back.

“That the best insult you got?” Gabe
says to the clam chowder can. He takes a pull from the blunt in his left hand.
“Insult this.”

Six shots puncture the air, each recoil
slamming reds into his pale aura. The last bullet nicks the can. It spins and
topples off the branch.

“Fuck me,” Gabe mutters and takes
another long drag.

Before he got injured, Gabe could have
hit that can 30 yards back shooting with his left hand. My brother turns and
notices me leaning against the kitchen door.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” I force myself to look at him.
The skin is tight and pale around his face, dipping into slight concave
depressions under each cheekbone. His brown elf eyes seem huge. He swims in an
old hoodie with a flaking image of Cartman on the front below the words,
Respect
my Authority!
Beneath the layers of fabric, Gabe’s body is nothing but
bones, ligaments, and parchment skin. He looks like a teenager on the losing
end of a cancer diagnosis, and I almost have to remind myself that he is three
years older than me.

I resist the urge to take his
temperature, demand to know if he’s been drinking his protein shakes every
three hours like Dr. Lee ordered, or put him on the scale to see if he finally
broke 100 pounds.

“You’re doing it again,” Gabe says as he
flips the safety on his gun

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me like that.”

“No I’m not. Like what?” I settle my
gaze on the tall pines in front of us, still so starkly green even in the
middle of winter. The sun shines down, turning the surface of the snow into
glinting gold.

“I don’t know, like you want to put me
in a bubble and feed me chicken soup all day long.”

“How have you been eating?” I can’t help
myself.

Gabe grimaces and walks past me into the
house. I notice how he shivers, even with the hoodie. He’s always cold now, no
matter how high we crank the heater.

“So, how were the strip clubs?” he asks,
easing himself down on the couch. Faint hues of pink stride through his aura.
His ribs are still giving him trouble, even after three months of healing.

“Dirty. Depressing.” Kind of like the
living room. Gabe’s epic pile of DVDs spill across the carpet like they’re mid-prison
break. His game controllers twist and coil around each other, and empty beer
bottles and half-eaten sandwiches litter the coffee table. Seems like the
plates and silverware went on strike while I was gone, along with the vacuum,
duster, and Febreze.

“Damn.” Gabe leans back on the couch.
“God hates me. You have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for a mission that
involves strip clubs?”

I stand next to the couch, but not
exactly close to it.

“It was gross,” I tell him. “Most of
them were total sinkholes.”

“Now you’re just rubbing it in.”

I look behind him in the corner of the
room where the small Christmas tree I put up last month is brown and littering
the floor with needles. A lot of good my forced holiday cheer did. Both
brothers refused to demonstrate even an ounce of holiday spirit, and Tarren and
I were on the road during Christmas. I still have both their presents hidden
under my bed. It seems too late to give them out now.

Gabe takes a final pull on his blunt,
leans forward, and snuffs it out on the coffee table between an empty bottle of
beer and a glass half-filled with the turgid remains of a protein shake. I open
my mouth to say something, but don’t.

There’s a long, awkward quiet that I
hate, because Gabe and I were never awkward before.

“So I see Tarren’s found another excuse
not to be here,” he finally says.

This at least gives me something to
focus on. I tell Gabe about the mysterious call. My hands flap for emphasis as
I explain about the strange girl on the phone and how Tarren took his stuff and
left.

Gabe is unimpressed.

“But she said his name,” I insist. “It
was something big, I could tell. Wherever he was going, it was dangerous.”

“If it was dangerous, he would have
taken more weapons,” Gabe points out.

I ignore him. “So, we need to find him.
Well, I need to find him. I was thinking that you could probably track his
cellphone?”

Gabe’s face and aura tell me that he is
nowhere near the level of agitation that I am so valiantly trying to impress
upon him.

“What?” I demand.

Gabe shrugs again. “Tarren leaves.
That’s what he does. Get used to it.”

Wisps of orange light up in his aura. I
should have never told him about Tarren’s turn and run routine just after we
got Gabe into Dr. Lee’s care.

“He’s just…” I begin uselessly.

“What?” Gabe’s voice is suddenly sharp.
“He’s what, Maya? Just Tarren? Yeah, I know.”

Pained reds seep into his fledging aura
as he pulls himself up from the couch. I watch him take careful, bracing steps
to the stairs and then pause, gathering his strength.

That pause is a sledgehammer crashing
into my sternum. Gabe used to bound up stairs, skipping steps.

His voice is soft and weary when he
speaks. “When Mom’s cancer got real bad, when she couldn’t get out of bed, I
was the one who took care of her. Did you know that?”

I try not to cringe. “Yeah, you told
me.”

“Tarren and Tammy said the mission was
more important, but they just didn’t want to watch her die. They left. Just
fucking left.” Gabe’s hands are tight fists, his knuckles nothing but bone
wrapped in skin. “When it was getting close, I called them. Begged them to come
home. But they didn’t make it in time. I was the only one with her when she
died.”

“I know,” I say softly.

Gabe walks up the stairs, and I force
myself to watch. The weak tendrils of his energy hold so close to his withered
frame, and he refuses to use the bannister for support. When he gets to the
top, I assume our delightful conversation is over. I drop down onto the couch,
close my eyes, and exhale.

“He’d run into a burning building for
any one of us.” Gabe’s voice floats down from the upstairs hallway. “Hell, he’d
do it for a complete stranger, but that doesn’t make him brave.”

He slams his bedroom door.

Early in the morning, I leap out of my
bedroom window and land softly onto the snowy ground below. The air is crisp,
and the night seems to throb with the promise of dawn. As soon as I begin
running, the cold leaves my limbs. My eyes cut right through the darkness, and
my body knows these woods so well, I think I could run them blind.

The muscles of my legs are tight from
too many days of sitting in a car, but they loosen with the miles. It’s odd not
having Tarren out here with me. We always run together, and I’ve grown use to
the rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulder at the center of my vision, to watching
his streaky aura calm as the miles of effort soothe him. He’s also the pace
setter, and without him I run faster, testing my legs, that angel part of me.

This is flying. The balls of my feet
lightly grace the ground, and my body hums like the well-tuned machine that it
is. My human self would have been stumbling and huffing like a freight engine
after the first mile. This new me -- not so new anymore, I suppose – smiles and
kicks up the pace. 

When my muscles start to burn, I keep
going. There’s a little bit of madness in this, reaching for that pain,
embracing it, letting it wash away all the thoughts and guilt. I push myself
harder; my feet practically fly. The pain carries away my thoughts. As Tarren
has taught me, pain can be a form of peace.

***

When I return to the house, I’m
surprised to see Gabe already up and at his bank of computer monitors in the
dining room. Then again, he did pass out around 8:30 last night, not even
halfway through the original
RoboCop.

Gabe is bundled in the same Cartman
hoodie as yesterday and still shivering in spite of it. Sir Hopsalot lounges in
his lap chewing on the blue “no kill” bandanna knotted around his neck. The
silver rabbit was originally intended as a snack to slake my hunger, but Gabe
and his big heart foiled those plans. Now Sir Hopsalot is family.

“I washed all your clothes yesterday,” I
tell Gabe. “When’s the last time you changed?”

Gabe leans back in his chair and frowns.
“What’s today?”

“Did you eat breakfast?” I assess his
aura, noting the cloud of pained red. Another migraine.

“Thanks for cleaning everything,” Gabe
says beckoning toward the living room where the coffee table is now free of
discarded bottles and moldy food, and the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree has made
a quiet exit. “Must have taken you all night.”

Yep, when you can’t heal one brother or
protect the other, the next best option is to clean the hell out of the house,
meth-addict style.

I have a strong urge to bitch out Gabe about
the science experiments growing in the fridge and the half-eaten sandwich I
found beneath rank t-shirts on his bedroom floor.

Instead, I just say, “I don’t need much
sleep.”

I glance up at the action figures on the
shelf above Gabe’s monitors. When Gabe was in his coma – actually, right after
he flat lined the second time – I came back here and, because I didn’t have the
capacity to do anything else, I rearranged all of his warring action figures. I
took away their weapons, neutralized the fighting stances, and lined them all
up together so that they were one unified, peaceful force.

Not anymore. The war has resumed. The
Care Bears gang up on Batman. Hulk smashes little green army men. A Jonas
brother lies on his face with Conan proudly standing over him.

“What happened here?” I ask, nodding
toward the battle.

“The Care Bears got drunk one night and
killed Cyclops, and that pretty much blew the whole peace treaty,” Gabe says
following my gaze. “Peace never lasts.”

“A shame,” I say. “Have you eaten?”

“Yeah. So, I think I’ve found some angel
activity.” Gabe’s fingers dash over his keyboard.

He’s lying. I can see it in his aura. He
hasn’t eaten. I make my way into the kitchen.

“I think you’re going to be really
impressed,” Gabe calls after me. “This was some good detective work on my
part.”

“Noted,” I call back. I went to the
grocery store last night, and now the fridge brims with fresh milk, eggs,
fruits, and vegetables.

“So what’s the number one difficulty
angels face?” Gabe asks.

I pull out a Monster Milk protein shake,
break off a banana. The answer to Gabe’s query is instantaneous.

“Controlling the hunger.” I say this
lightly, like it’s no big deal that losing control and hurting someone is just
my greatest fear ever.

I throw together a quick PB&J
sandwich.

“Okay, there’s that,” Gabe admits, “but
since all angels pretty much fail ‘Not Killing People 101’, what I…”

“Oh really.” I keep my voice steady as I
return from the kitchen and lay the food next to him.

Gabe glances at it and frowns. “I mean in
general. As a hybrid, you’re the exception, of course.”

“Of course.” I don’t know where to
stand. Usually, when it comes time for mission download, I lounge on the couch
while Tarren gazes over Gabe’s shoulder and their auras sync up in this way
that totally doesn’t make me jealous at all. But Tarren’s isn’t here, so now
there’s finally room for me to stand at Gabe’s right hand and work through the
data with him. I’ve been promoted to the big leagues, but I linger back. It’s
hard being this close to Gabe, feeling the pull of his aura. Remembering the
taste of it.

“Getting caught was the answer I was
looking for,” he says. “Angels have to energy suck so many victims to stay
alive that they always have to worry about getting caught.”

“Which is why so many of them move
around,” I say. A familiar question occurs to me. “Why don’t they just go to
third world countries or something?”

“Some probably do.” Gabe scratches Sir
Hopsalot behind his floppy ear, “but we can’t track those. We’ve picked up a
few suspected cases in Mexico and Canada, but angels don’t travel well on
planes, so we think the majority of them are still in the states.”

I stare at the different Google maps
spread across his monitors and marvel again at the complexity of Gabe’s system.
The maps are filled with different-colored pins, white for icicles (confirmed
angel victims), red for possible angel victims, black for angels taken out, and
lots of thick black lines connecting the bodies into patterns.

“I noticed a cluster of deaths in the
Midwest,” Gabe says. “Missouri and Illinois this past week.”

“What does this have to do with getting
caught?”

Gabe flashes a proud grin. “Weather.”

“Weather?”

“The Midwest is getting bent over and
spanked by the mother of all ice storms. We’re talking power outages, cancelled
schools, airport pandemonium.”

“People are stuck in their homes,” I
say.

“Exactly.” Gabe snaps his fingers.
“Confusion. Chaos. It’s the perfect killing ground. I went back over my list
and found a few other cases, down in Florida during a hurricane, up in New York
during the blackout. These guys have been at it for a while.”

“You think we’re looking at multiple
wings?” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth.
Crapola.

“Lots of bodies.”

“Are you even sure we’re dealing with
angels?”

“Nope. No way to be sure until we go and
check it out.”

“We?”

“I already have a bag packed. Let me
know when you’re ready.” Gabe is a study in cool confidence. If I didn’t know
him so well, I might actually be fooled.

I decide that now is an apropos time to
shift his focus. “So, did you ever find anything out about The Totem, or
whatever? You know, the group that posted that YouTube video?” I keep my voice
as casual as possible, like the thought just randomly popped into my head.

“Oh yeah.” Gabe swivels around in his
chair. “The angel-hunter extraordinaires,” he says sarcastically. “I’m sure
those dime-store masks had angels everywhere wetting themselves.”

“Did they, I mean, did you ever find
anything on them?”

“Nah. I pulled their shitty cell phone video
down three months ago and traced the IP, but it was public access up in
Washington.” Gabe crosses his arms and looks at me. “Didn’t you already ask me
that, like, twice?”

“I was worried they’d post another
video,” I say quickly. “They know about angels. They were trying to blow the
lid off this whole thing.”

My brothers have assured me that exposure
of our little underground war would be a catastrophe. They paint an apocalyptic
picture that features humans lining up by the thousands begging for the change,
human feeding farms like the one we found in Poughkeepsie popping up all over
the planet, and governments sending armies to fight their own citizens. It
would be like a living
Gears of War
nightmare.

“No one believes anything on the internet,”
Gabe scoffs. “Plus, they’re total pretenders. Even if they manage to stumble
across an angel, they’ll get dead real fast. Problem solved.”

“Serves them right,” I say with forced
nonchalance.

Rain Bailey –
his name rings like a big church bell in
my mind.
I remember his sleepy brown eyes, the cuts and sores covering
his body when we rescued him last year from the grip of some particularly
sadistic angels. When he’d gained consciousness, those eyes had looked at me so
accusingly. I’m not sure why I haven’t told my brothers that Rain was part of
The Totem, his face hidden behind the penguin’s mask, or that I recognized one
of the other group members in the video as well.

Maybe it’s because I don’t want to admit
how much I think of Rain, or how I’m pretty sure he’s out hunting for me,
seeking vengeance for the sister he thinks I killed.
Dysfunctional much?
I
think to myself.

“So we should start getting ready,” Gabe
says, interrupting my thoughts.

“There’s no ‘we’,” I tell him and pull
my phone out of my pocket.

Gabe’s aura swells with thick bands of
angry orange. He lets the silver rabbit off his lap and then eases himself on
the couch in the living room.

“Ten bucks he doesn’t say ‘hi’ or
‘hello’. No, make that a hundred bucks. A thousand.”

I ignore him and dial Tarren’s number.

“He never says ‘hello’,” Gabe says.
“Have you ever noticed that? It’s always ‘Yes?’ or ‘What is it?’”

Tarren picks up on the second ring.
“What is it?”

Gabe arches an eyebrow.

“You in a good place to talk?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Gabe might have found some wings. I
think it’s worth checking out.”

I lay out Gabe’s weather hypothesis and
the possibility of multiple angels lurking somewhere around the Midwest. While
Tarren takes a moment to ponder the details, I strain to catch any noise in the
background for clues to where he is or what he’s up to. I hear a bird chirp far
away.

“This is going to be challenging,”
Tarren says, always the student of extreme understatements. “It’s a big area to
cover, and if they’re following the storm, they’ll constantly be on the move.”

“Yeah, but I figure it’s worth a shot.
If you’re busy though, I can go up and check things out on my own.”

There’s a slight pause on the other end
of the line. With Tarren, small things have big meanings. I wonder about that
pause, even as he quickly fills it.

“I’ll meet you there,” he says. “Choose
a motel and send me the address. I’ll let you know when I’m an hour out. We’ll
put together a strategy from there.”

“Alright, but I could handle it alone if
you needed me to.”

“Or hell, I don’t know, maybe I could
back you up,” Gabe says from the couch. “Anybody think of that?”

“No, I’ll be there,” Tarren says. “It’ll
take me about a day.”

This is a clue. I calculate distances in
my mind and come up with the realization that Tarren is….not in the Midwest. Or
he is in the Midwest and just wants to misdirect me.

“How is he?” Tarren lowers his voice. I
wonder if he’s worried about someone overhearing.

I look over at Gabe. “How are you?” I
ask him.

“Tell Tarren that I died. See what he
does.” Gabe gives me a grin made of malice. “You think he’d let you take the
time to bury me before you left, or would he just tell you to stuff my body in
the freezer until after the mission?”

“He’s being a complete asshole,” I
report to Tarren.

Gabe laughs, pulls a blunt out of his
pocket, and lights up.

“How is he really?” Tarren asks. If only
Gabe could hear the notes of worry that edge his brother’s voice. If only
Tarren would ever come home to show him.

“Fine,” I tell him. “He wants to come on
the mission.”

“He can’t.”

“I know.”

Gabe laughs again. “Tell him I promise
to wear my jacket and mittens.” He takes a long drag.

“Alright,” I say lamely to Tarren. “It’s
going to be cold. You want me to bring anything for you? Thicker coat?”