The Fading (22 page)

Standing perfectly still, he felt them.

Delicate, silent, touching his cheeks like tiny cold bugs.

Snowflakes.

It was one thing to venture out at midnight in a snowstorm, when everyone’s visibility was tainted by the darkness and wind,
but in daytime? The flakes could be
painting him in a connect-the-dots mirage even now, catching on his clothes and face and limbs. Had the cop seen this yet?
Or only the ground, the trail in the snow? Even if the falling snow had not given him away, what living thing, what creature,
did the cop imagine was making this little path across the park, cutting a line directly toward his idling cruiser? A rabbit?
A fox? Noel did not have to turn around and look back to know that his path resembled, more than anything else, a trail of
human footsteps.

The cruiser was just sitting there, idling. Which meant someone was in the car. There had been no response. Maybe the cop
hadn’t even looked this way. Was it possible he had parked for a few minutes to catch a nap before his shift began? Maybe
he was sipping coffee, reading the paper, listening to a sports call-in show, or snoring to the static of his walkie-talkie,
waiting for a squelch to rouse him and point him toward a crime being committed elsewhere. Hell, the cop might not even be
in the car right now, but taking a leak inside that little cinderblock hut of restrooms. Maybe—

The driver’s side door opened. A broad-shouldered officer in his winter blues planted a foot on the ground and rose up. He
screwed on a flat-topped cop hat, brass badge glinting, and his indistinct face locked on Noel’s position. He took a few steps
and planted his hands on his hips, projecting his authority into a situation that was so far unexplainable but definitely
disturbing his peace.

Any other time, in any other weather, Noel would have simply turned and run. Or walked away, calmly and quietly. But he couldn’t
do that now. His best move was no move at all. Stand dead still and wait. Let the cop think it was an animal after all, one
which had disappeared into a hole in the ground. Let the man grow bored, cold, give up and get back in his car to finish his
latte and Danish.

But the officer, who was armed – the shotgun bracketed to the dashboard could be seen through the open door, plus the holster
on his hip – and standing at attention, did not look bored at all. In fact his interest seemed only to be on the increase.
His right hand casually landing on the holster.

No. Don’t you do it, fucker
, Noel thought at the cop with such ferocity he almost believed he were capable of invading the man’s thoughts.
Not one step more, you hear me? Leave that pistol holstered in good and tight, and never mind the shotgun strapped to the
dash. Get back in your car and go jump-start somebody stuck in a snowbank. I don’t even exist, you got it?

For a crazy moment, it actually seemed to work. The cop relaxed his hand from the holster, cuffed his nose and turned away.
He looked back toward the baseball diamond and the clubhouse, as if wanting someone else to confirm that, yes, he was being
silly.

He walked to the cruiser’s rear end and popped the trunk. He bent over, disappearing under the metal lid, and came out fussing
with a gray or black plastic block about the size of a heavy-duty flashlight.

It wasn’t until the officer marched back to the spot he had been observing from a moment ago, raising the blocky tool like
he had stepped into a booth at the precinct firing range, that Noel figured out what he was holding. It was a gun, but not
the kind that fired bullets.

Radar. Or a laser version of the same. Used for clocking speeders.

Question was, what was it going to allow the cop to clock?

Back when Noel purchased his used 4-Runner, one of his first stops had been at Soundtrack, the local electronics outlet, to
buy a radar detector (he was an extremely careful driver, both in and out of the bubble). The man who had helped him, a short,
chatty dude with long sideburns, a skinny piano tie and a Stray Cats hairdo, had introduced himself as ‘Dom, like the champagne,
only smoother’. After trying and failing to pimp Noel into an Alpine CD player and a Cerwin Vega bass rack, Dom walked Noel
through the ‘bacon detectors’. You had your radar detector, your LIDAR detector, and the newest thang, which ran about four
hundred and detected both. What’s the difference, Noel had inquired? Why do I care?

A radar gun, the cop-despising Dom had explained, sends out a cone of microwaves that bounce back and report any disturbance
or travel within the cone, registering a doppler shift, which the machine used to calculate speed. A laser-operated gun, or
LIDAR (Dom had reeled of the acronym’s full name and meaning, but
Noel hadn’t really cared for the details, just the results) sends out a concentrated beam of infrared light, or actually hundreds
of pulses of same, that taken together report a similar discrepancy to confirm movement and calculate the speed of a given
object.

All of this information came back to Noel now in the park, but the big question remained unanswered and he wished Dom were
here now to offer an opinion.

I’m not a car and I’m not moving, so what the fuck is this cop’s neat little machine going to tell him once he points it at
me, Dom? Radar, LIDAR, neither one painted a digital picture of a car, truck, deer, man. But what if the nasty little thing
simply bounces its rays off me and confirms what the cop suspects –
it ain’t moving, but there’s something out there.

Noel had no idea if the gun could give the cop such information. He had no idea if his bubble would absorb, deflect, reflect
or allow the signal to pass through him altogether. He supposed that at this distance of some thirty or forty yards, there
was a chance the gun wouldn’t be able to find him at all, that its signal would continue across the snowfield unhindered,
revealing nothing in its path.

Such optimistic hopes died a few seconds later when Noel imagined he could make out the cop’s finger squeezing the trigger
and then heard, without having to use his imagination at all, the little machine chirping like a bird.

Tearing his gaze away from whatever screen was positioned on the backside of the gun, the cop looked up
with an expression of vague disappointment. He lowered the gun to his side and Noel thought,
that’s right, I’m not moving, so your little machine can’t help you this time, officer. Now move along
.

The cop turned and lobbed the speed gun into the bucket seat. Then without further hesitation began to march across the snow
to have himself a closer look.

Dom? Oh, Dom? What do you make of this bacon right here?

Buddy, I think that gun didn’t see shit, but unfortunately for you that only confused him more. You tweezed the copper’s nibblets
leaving those tracks back there, he’s headed your way now, and, basically, yeah buddy, you’re fucked.

Noel forced himself to keep his body still as his mind snapped and tangled for a way to avoid confrontation, preferably before
the cop got close enough to touch. The curious bastard was in no hurry and the virgin snow was making extra work of this short
stroll, and that original distance of some forty yards was shrinking with terrifying rapidity. If he continued on this course,
in less than a minute the cop would be standing on Noel’s toes and things would get very interesting.

The snow dusting down from the gray sky was sparse, but enough for Noel to watch as the occasional flake – large feathery
flakes that should have blown by or settled on the ground where he stood – caught on his sleeves, his legs, halting in midair
and sticking before they were absorbed into the bubble or simply melted on his clothing. There probably weren’t enough of
these little ‘catchers’ to give him away from such a distance, but soon the cop would be close enough to notice the obstruction.
An obstruction that, the longer you stared at it, began to resemble an invisible object just about the size and shape of an
adult human being.

His options were:

Run
. Pray he doesn’t give chase or shoot you in the back simply to confirm what he suspects – holy shit, that’s a shape-shifting
man or alien or some other fucking miracle creature fleeing across the park. Sure, maybe the cop would freeze up, too puzzled
to act. More likely, such drastic flight would provoke aggression, bring into question the cop’s sanity, and threaten his
sense of safety. This was the most appealing option based on sheer primal instinct, but it would only trigger chaos, arrest,
serious injury or death.

Thirty yards and closing.

Wait
. Do nothing, don’t move a wink, don’t make a sound. Make the cop go all the way with this, running into you or screaming
in your face and arresting your invisible ass on the spot before you give anything away. It will take nerves of steel, but
at some point, so long as he doesn’t come into contact with you, he might miss you by just enough to grow bored of the game
and go home. And if he does bump into you, he might just be too shocked or creeped out to do anything more than back away,
skin crawling, and get the hell out of here. This option held less appeal, in that it would require perfect stillness, silence,
and willpower.

Even as Noel was considering this option, he noticed a billow of his breath curling from under his nose and realized he would
have to stop breathing soon, possibly for minutes while the cop convinced himself he had been mistaken, that there was no
one here.

Twenty yards and closing. This wasn’t happening. Right? Somebody?

Scare the shit out of him
. Wait until the cop gets right up close and then lunge, screaming or growling, making deranged lunatic sounds, using the
element of pure surprise to throw the man off stride, trip him up, throw a punch if you have to and then run like a tornado.
Insanity, in other words. A level of confirmation sure to force the cop to retaliate.

Fifteen yards.

Close enough for Noel to see his pale cheeks beneath a scrubby, three-day growth of red or brown whiskers, his probing dark
brown eyes, the tense caution building beneath the casually inquisitive exterior.

Twenty feet.

Lie
. Play ghoul. Talk CIA, National Security. Tell a story, project authority, pull rank, and hope the asshole buys it. Yeah,
right.

Ten.

Too late now.

The cop had stopped less than six feet away. He was staring at the precise spot in the snow where the tracks ended and eight
or nine inches of undisturbed sugar had accumulated. Noel could smell the nylon and cigarettes and human-ness embedded in
the man’s jacket, could hear the man’s shallow breathing, and it wasn’t difficult to stop himself from breathing altogether.

Beneath the fur collar, the engraved gold bar over his breast pocket said M. Sylvester. He looked up slowly, practically sniffing
the air, and it was beyond strange and
terrifying to watch the policeman study the space where his legs, waist and upper body were hiding in plain sight, until he
was simultaneously staring right at him and through him. For a moment they were looking into each other’s eyes as surely as
if he were a 100 per cent visible person, and at that moment Noel wanted more than anything to speak, to confess, to apologize
and give himself up. It was simply unbearable to be stared at by a cop, so close but separated by a secret with the power
to change lives, or end them. He felt as though he had already been arrested and was now cuffed to the table in an interrogation
room.

A single lazy snowflake dipped and twirled from the gray sky between them, the faintest breeze pulling it toward Noel until
it settled on his right cheek, tickling before dissolving to water.

Did M. Sylvester see it? Did he see it? I think he—

The cop blinked, turning his attention back to the ground. What the hell was going through his mind? Was there a war raging
behind his watery eyes, logic versus instinct, the fact of the footprints (
Someone just made these!
) versus what his senses were telling him (
And now they’re gone!
)?

Pain flared through Noel’s lungs. He’d been holding his breath for almost a minute, and he doubted he could last another full
minute before he gasped.

Officer M. Sylvester looked to Noel’s side, scanning the ground, and then walked in a wide circle around and behind him, out
of view. He couldn’t see the cop without turning his head, but he dared not move. He
was cold and stiff from standing here, and a nervous dizziness clouded his head. He felt perched on a balance beam. Any movement
might cause him to lose his equilibrium and shuffle his feet to keep from falling over. Even the slightest shift of his weight
would disturb the snow, alert the cop with a delicate wet crunching sound.

The footsteps paused. Leather creaked. M. Sylvester’s belt or boots flexing as he … what? Knelt? Bent over to inspect the
tracks? Crept up behind Noel, gathering courage to shove his nightstick through the air, into Noel’s back?

Fire in his lungs.

His heart thudding in protest, demanding more oxygen.

Carefully, silently, Noel released spent breath in a slow and steady stream, and opened his mouth wide to draw deeply, filling
himself with fresh cold air, then clamped it shut again.

The swish of clothing. Squeaking boots coming closer, snow crunching, and then the cop was in front of him again, surveying
the park with his back to Noel. Hope rose up inside him. Yes, yes, go away now. You had your look, there’s nothing more to
see.

M. Sylvester turned around once more, facing a few degrees to Noel’s right side. He took several tentative steps toward his
quarry and stopped, squinting, angling his ear slightly. Listening. What did the cop think he’d heard? Noel’s heartbeat? Impossible,
but right now it didn’t seem impossible at all.

Noel found his own gaze drifting down to the gun. The butt was snapped under a leather cover. If he got close enough … no.
No way. If he went for the gun, he would only wind up getting himself shot.