Second Chance (41 page)

"I said don't try and talk. It's only fatal if I want it to be. Now. They're looking for me?"

A nod.

"Everywhere? All over the country? Airports?"

Another nod. And a whimper.

It was time to stop then. Time to go home. The lab had a longer reach than he had thought.

He knelt by the man and pushed him over so that he could take his wallet. He flipped through it, but found nothing that linked the man to the government. At least he wasn't FBI or CIA. More likely a soldier for one of those shabby white supremacist groups. They were the kind of trash Goncourt would use.

He shoved the wallet in his pocket, then turned and washed the few drops of blood from his fingers.

"You'd be dead anyway," he told the man while he dried his hands. "I breathed on you." When he looked back the man's eyes were even wider with fear. "Don't worry, though," said Keith, turning so that the man could see his own silenced pistol, held in Keith's paper towel-wrapped hand. "You won't suffer."

He stuck the barrel of the pistol into the hole in the man's throat, but instead of pulling the trigger, he ripped the barrel sideways, opening the man's throat, tearing the jugular. He rammed the gun into the hole, and stepped back, out of the path of the leaping blood.

Then he picked up his flight bag, patted his hair into place, and left the rest room. People were in the corridor, but no one gave him a second glance, and he kept walking, left the International Arrivals Building, and stopped at an outdoor pay phone.

He dialed Woody Robinson's number from memory, using one of a list of memorized access codes, and when a young girl picked up the phone, he said, "Hello, Louisa. Is your dad home?"

"May I ask who's calling?"

"An old college friend. I want to surprise him."

Woody came on the line a few seconds later. His "Hello" was tentative.

"Hello, old friend," Keith said.

" . . . Keith?"

"What do you think?"

There was a long pause. "You bastard." Keith could barely hear it.

"That's not very nice, Woody. I was relieved when I learned you were all right. What did you do? Hurt yourself instead?”

“Yes. Keith—"

"My God, do you know how many years it's been since someone has called me that? I never used that name, you know, in my hundreds of identities. I suppose I should have. If some clever official had made a list of my assumed names, he might have seen that 'Keith' was never among them, and then figured out it was because that was my
real
name." He laughed. "But no one ever did. And it doesn't really matter now."

"What . . . do you mean, it doesn't matter?"

"I'm finished, Woody. I made my dream come true. You probably don't remember, but it's from
Steppenwolf
: 'Make a little room on the crippled earth! Depopulate it so that the grass may grow again—'"

Woody interrupted with the rest. “’. . . and woods, meadows, heather, stream and moor return to this world of dust and concrete.' Yes, I know."

Keith was silent for a long time. "How did you know that?”

“It's what convinced me that you were still alive, that you were Pan."

"Well. Well. But who would ever believe you? And even now, what if they do? It's too late."

"Too late for what?"

"Too late to call back my dream. You should be hearing about it very soon. My judgment, Woody. I gave us all every chance, every warning, every slap on the wrist I could think of. I weeded out the cruelest lions from the pack. But no one listened. So I did what had to be done. It wasn't easy. But I did it. And I can live with it. And die with it."

"What . . . do you mean?"

"A plague. A plague with no cure. A plague on all our houses," Keith said, put the phone gently back in the cradle, and smiled as he heard the siren, saw the ambulance rush past, thought about the man he had left in the rest room.

He took a cab into the city, had it drop him off at Third and 19th, walked a few blocks to a long-term parking garage, paid the fee in cash, and picked up the keys to the 1986 light blue Ford Tempo which he had put there months before. He went over the car quickly, found nothing amiss, climbed in, and started to drive home.

Chapter 39

Curly answered his phone on the first ring. His wife was swimming, and he was sitting by the pool waiting for a client's call, but it wasn't a client. He recognized Woody's voice immediately.

"He called me, Curly. It was him."

"Holy shit. What'd he say?"

Woody told Curly Rider everything he could remember.

"What the hell's he mean? An actual
plague
?"

"That's what it sounds like."

"Have you seen anything on the news like that?"

"Not yet. But he said 'soon.’”

"Well, there's only one thing to do, Woody. Call the police. We know who it is now. We can tell the cops he called you and admitted to being Pan. With what we know about him, and the whole damn resources of the FBI and the CIA and whoever else, we can
find
him now. And you
saw
him too—you know what he looks like."

"I've thought about it. I thought about it for hours before I called you. And so did Tracy. We can't bring in the police. Not yet."

"What? Why the hell not?"

"Suppose they find him? What'll they do?"

"They'll throw him in jail."

"And suppose he
has
somehow released a plague—something with no cure that he expects to . . . to reduce the population, killing millions, even billions. Hell,
everyone
, for all we know. What good does locking him up do?"

"So you let him go?"

"No.
We
find him. You, me, Tracy—Frank and Eddie and Dale and Diane. Everybody who knows what happened, everybody who would believe."

"Okay, assuming we find him when nobody else has for twenty years,
then
what?"

"Then we take him back. Or try to."

"Take him back to where? . . ." Then he realized what Woody meant. "Oh hell—to back then?"

"We try. The same way we got him here."

“Jesus, why?"

"It's the only way to prevent it. We take him back, he dies in the ROTC bombing, and Pan never exists. No Pan, no plague. No assassinations, no bombings.
Sharla's
still alive, Alan and Judy are free."

"But those things have
happened
. They're
history
."

"And I lived alone for a lot of years too. Eddie had another lover. Those things happened too—but they changed, didn't they? You remember when Tracy died—that was history too. But she's not dead, Curly. We changed that, and we can change this."

"Maybe. But look, we don't even know if he was serious about this or not. Maybe he was just bragging, you know, to scare you or impress you. Let's at least wait a few days, see what happens, if there are reports of any disease. And if there aren't, let's turn the
sonofabitch's
ass in."

"Curly, I've researched the hell out of Pan, and we both knew Keith. He doesn't bluff."

"Yeah, but maybe what he thinks is the Black
Death'll
just be another flu strain. I think you're jumping the gun. Let's let it go just for a few days, see what happens, if anything."

"And if something does?"

When Curly spoke again, his voice was subdued. "Then we do it your way."

They said goodbye, and Curly hung up. His wife was toweling herself dry, and he patted her tight, bikini-clad bottom indifferently. "You talking about a sci-fi script or something?" she asked him.

"Something like that."

She knelt next to him and crossed her arms, shoving up her breasts to make her cleavage a deep, dark line. "Think there's a part in it for me, Mr. Producer?"

He looked at her face, utterly devoid of understanding, and felt very old and very sad. "There may be parts for all of us, babe," he said, and finished his tall, cold, strong drink.

~*~

That evening Woody and Tracy heard about it on television. The newscasters labeled it the Texas flu, since it seemed to be centered in the eastern area of that state. Victims became weak, lost their appetite. One little girl had died from whatever it was.

"Although reports are sketchy, the disease does seem to be caused by a virus, and a team from the National Institute of Health have come to the area. Isolated cases of what may be the virus have been reported in cities as far away as Seattle and Miami, but there is as yet no proof that these cases are linked by anything other than similar symptoms."

"My God," Woody said. "My dear God, it's real."

When the network news was over, he switched to CNN, and he and Tracy remained in front of the TV all evening. Eventually Woody's exhaustion overcame his apprehension, and he drifted into sleep at midnight. When he awoke at three in the morning, Tracy was still next to him, her hand on his arm. Her smile was sad, made of love, confirmation, and acceptance.

"Anything new?" he said, nodding toward the TV.

"There are cases all over the country. Europe, Japan, Asia too, you name it. Twenty some deaths so far, mostly older people and kids. It can't be a coincidence, can it?"

The taste in his mouth was worse than just sleep. He closed his eyes, feeling more afraid than he ever had before, thinking that if he could go back to sleep, maybe when he woke up everything would be different.

"No," he said. "It's no coincidence." He opened his eyes and suddenly anger replaced his fear. He stood up, fists clenched. "The
bastard
," he said. "The stupid, crazy
bastard
! He was really serious. The son of a bitch is after
everybody
." He moved toward the phone in the kitchen. "I've got to call Curly . . . and the others."

"Wait," Tracy said. "They'll be asleep. Call in the morning, first thing. God knows we're all going to need our strength. To find him." She sighed and lay down on the wide sofa. "If we do, I'll go back. I'm not afraid."

"You won't have to stay," he said, pressing his anger back. He sat next to her and took her hand.

She kept her eyes on the ceiling. "I've been thinking about it. About staying. Because if I stayed and I died again, the kids wouldn't have been born. It's not that I care so much for myself as for them. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that it doesn't have to happen that way again." She looked up at his face, inches away, and he thought she had never been more beautiful, not even when her face was young and unlined.

"I think there
can
be different ways," she said. "Not just one or two. And if I have to stay to keep Keith there, it'll be all right.”

“You won't have to stay," he said again. "I won't let you.”

“No. I think I
will
have to. Because if I don't, it could happen just the way it did before. Why wouldn't it? But this time if I stay, I'll
remember
. And I'll change things. Keith never has to go to the ROTC building at all." She turned her head and looked at the solemn face of the newsman on the TV, at the stylized world map with the lights showing where cases of the virus had been reported. There were many lights.

"And if he has to go, he'll go alone. And he'll die alone." She bit her lip, and Woody saw tears in her eyes. "This won't happen. If we can get him, and take him back, I swear to God that
this
. . ." She thrust a fist toward the TV. ". . . will never happen."

It was something that Woody hadn't even considered, and he felt a surge of panic. How could he have thought that just to take Keith back and leave him there could make everything all right? The very same thing could happen all over again, and they could return to the same world in which they now lived, in which Pan, still alive, had released some deadly plague. And now, as he thought about it, and the sweat of loss crept out of his flesh, he realized that Tracy was wrong too.

They could be sure of Pan's non-existence only if the
original
scenario was restored, if both Tracy and Keith went to the ROTC building that fatal night.

And that meant no Tracy. No Peter. No Louisa.

But was that
logical
? Was there
any
logic in what they had experienced? Did logic exist in the magic of desire, his desire to have Tracy alive again?

Maybe the dead should have stayed dead, and he had made some terrible cosmic error in doing what he did, in wanting the past so much that he had broken laws he had never known existed, a crime for which the penalty was execution of all.

But he shared none of these fears and theories with Tracy. He only put his arms around her, drew her to him, and whispered, "We'll work it out. I love you, and we'll work it out," into her soft, dark brown hair.

He would do what he could, prepare for every possibility, be ready for fate to be a friend or a monster.

~*~

By eight o'clock the next morning, the news was worse. Several dozen more deaths were attributed to the virus, thousands of cases were reported in every major city, and hundreds in smaller towns. It was a worldwide epidemic, and an NIH spokesperson said in a press conference that the speed with which it had spread was unparalleled. "We have to assume that it is airborne," the woman said, and added that a remedy was expected shortly. When she was asked if there had as yet been any recoveries from the disease, she evaded the question clumsily, and gave a final, indefinite reassurance that there was no need for panic.