The Faithful (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

I awoke in a flood of tears and sour sweat, clawing my way out of the same damned dream I had been having since my early twenties. Occupational hazard. I should have been used to the dreams by now.

They occurred in many different ways, yet they were always the same. Whether I was sheltered among the red cliffs of Bryce Canyon, or running through a corn maze, or fleeing on horseback through a crisp pine forest, or trapped a thousand feet up in the Willis Tower, or stumbling up the Oregon Dunes in a hopeless quest for higher ground, it always ended the same way.

New York had sponsored the latest version of the dream. The Big Apple. Also known as the Big Melting Pot. Ironic, indeed, since New York was definitely melting.

The smell of warm urine and unwashed bodies slithered up the stairs from the subway platform. The air was so humid, my damp T-shirt clung to me like the eager hands of a teenage boy.

In my dream state, it seemed perfectly logical to be walking barefoot through the litter that swirled in the fetid air blasting out of the subway vents.

Ahead of me a woman was walking, also barefoot, her pale arms stretching toward the sky. Her dirty red hair hung in limp ropes down the back of her grubby dress.

Perhaps that’s what caused my urgency. That red hair, so much like my own. I was desperate to catch up with her, desperate to see her face.

I labored forward through an endless swarm of angry New Yorkers. Again and again the crowds tripped me up, shoved me back, battered me with sharp elbows. I pushed and fought my way through them.

Eventually the damp bodies gave way to a blistering wind. I leaned in, my hands sheltering my eyes. The wind assaulted me, sucking the breath out of my lungs and clobbering me with Coke cans, empty candy wrappers, and cigarette butts.

Bit by bit, I closed the gap.

“It’s coming!” she screeched. “It’s coming!”

What was coming? What?

And then I saw it: A blue-white ball of fire. A raining inferno. It tore a path across the sky, unzipping the heavens.

The sonic boom ruptured my eardrums, and the world went silent. The ground rocked and trembled. The city shattered, showering glass and metal.

She turned to me. The she that was
not
me, after all. She was older. Wider in the hips and chest. Her eyes were muddy brown instead of my green. But she shared my red hair and pale skin, and the same high cheekbones and delicate curve of the mouth. It was like seeing myself in a carnival mirror: familiar, and yet different. And of course she was familiar. She was a frequent visitor to my land of dreams.

Shards of glass rained down upon her, opening up gash after bloody red gash on her face, her arms, her chest. She pointed one long, trembling finger at me. And though I couldn’t hear her, I understood.

“
See . . . what . . . you’ve . . . done!”

On the last word, the world exploded. The woman went rag doll, flying up toward the boiling sky.

Impact.

My smartphone on the bedside table read 3:12 p.m.

Perfect.

There would be no more sleep for me that afternoon, and I would be dog-tired when I reported for work at 8:00 p.m. I pulled myself out of bed with a groan, tossing the twisted sheets aside, and pulled open the blackout curtains.

The stark New Mexico daylight slapped me in the face. It was a good start, and a pot of coffee would do the rest. But first I needed a shower. A long, hot, use-up-the-entire-tank kind of shower.

I ignored the image of my naked body in the bathroom mirror as I crossed the cold tiles. As a general rule I avoided mirrors. Vanity wasn’t worth the risk of facing the other people I often found staring back at me.

If I didn’t look, I wouldn’t know there was a bloody-haired little boy reaching for me, or some creepy dude ogling my breasts, or a woman trying to untangle the noose from around her neck so she could talk to me. Definitely not a conversation I wanted to have.

The first thing I did after buying the house was remove the mirrored tiles from around the living room fireplace. I also replaced the mirrored closet doors with shuttered ones, and changed out the large bathroom mirrors for small oval ones. They were just big enough to make sure there wasn’t greenery stuck in my teeth.

The second thing I did was purchase some extra lamps. Lamps were important; they did battle against shadows and dark corners.

The shower was restorative, and I trooped into the kitchen in flannel lounge pants and an old Kiss T-shirt, my hair hanging to the small of my back in a heavy wet sheet. While the coffee brewed, I cleaned up the empty ice-cream container and box of Oreos, embarrassing evidence of my nutritionally deficient dinner-slash-breakfast some six hours before.

As part of my daily routine, I vowed to start doing better. To eat more salads, and cut back on the coffee and ice cream. I would even exercise—start jogging again or something. Just as soon as I unearthed my expensive Nikes from the shoe mountain piled on my closet floor.

In my weeklong attempt to become a runner, I had learned a few things: Blisters hurt. Chafing happens in the most embarrassing places. Jogging is incredibly mind-numbing, and really hard work. Maybe I would take up yoga instead.

Not to be dissuaded from healthy pursuits, I chose the strawberry Pop-Tarts instead of the s’mores.

“Fruit!” I cheered.

“Rowan, I think we’ve got a fast mover,” Dan said as I pushed into the trailer, balancing two takeout coffee cups and a box of doughnuts. As usual, his belongings were scattered from door to desk chair, eager to trip me up. I kicked his gym bag out of my path and dumped the coffee and doughnuts on the desk, pushing aside a pile of paperwork with my arm.

“What’s the velocity?” I asked, moving to the bank of monitors.

“It’s looking like zero-point-five degrees a day.”

“Whoa. Okay, convert it to MPC format and send it off with an NEO flag on it.”

Finding an NEO, or Near Earth Object, with that kind of speed was not a nightly occurrence. It would be processed at the Minor Planet Center as a high priority. The lower-velocity asteroids were observed for several nights before they were sent to MPC for categorization.

“You got it, boss.” Dan turned back to his computer and started pecking away at the keyboard.

Standing in front of Bertha, our largest computer monitor, I tracked the fast mover and sipped coffee. After several minutes the newest CCD images of the night sky came in, demanding my attention.

I ran through the standard detection algorithm, which included registering the images, suppressing the background, and clustering and filtering by velocity.

Once the newest detection list was ready, I went through the star catalog match and made my final observations. The nightly results would be sent to Hanscom AFB Lincoln Laboratory at the end of my shift.

I left the trailer to check on the two GEODSS, or Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep-Space Surveillance, telescopes. The night air was silky against my skin, and I paused to take a few deep breaths. The sky was completely clear, stars twinkling above my head. It was a perfect night for capturing CCD images.

The telescopes were owned by the US Air Force, and as such were located behind the security checkpoint on the White Sands Missile Range, or WSMR. It was a quiet place to work, when they weren’t testing missiles.

MIT’s LINEAR program, or Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program, was charged with doing large-coverage searches for Earth-crossing and main-belt asteroids. In other words, we searched for near- and deep-space asteroids that posed a risk to life on Earth. We were funded through NASA and the US Air Force.

Both telescopes were functioning well inside their metal domes, so I headed back to the trailer. A chocolate cupcake with a single lit candle was waiting for me on the desk.

“What’s this?”

Dan turned away from his computer and smiled. His hair was a mess of curls in which brown and silver fought for supremacy. He had docile brown eyes surrounded by smile lines, and charmingly crooked teeth flashed white inside his bushy beard.

“Don’t you think we should celebrate,
Doctor
?”

To my dismay I felt the prickle of tears, and my words clogged in my throat.

He sighed theatrically. “Don’t get all girly on me, Red. Blow out the candle!”

I giggled, wiping a fist across my wet cheeks, and then did just that.

“Dan . . . thanks. Really,” I managed.

“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting for this day
forever
. Please tell me I’ll never have to hear another word about the
Phenomenology Analysis of Experimental Prototype ISR Systems
? Talk about a buzzkill.” He rolled his eyes, and I laughed.

“Okay, I promise.” I pulled out the candle and licked the icing off the bottom. “Share it with me?”

“What? Take chocolate away from you? I’m not suicidal.” He turned back to his keyboard, and then grinned over his shoulder at me. “There are five more in the fridge. By my count you’ve only had two doughnuts tonight. Gotta keep those sugar levels up.”

I had just shoved the last bite into my mouth when my gaze fell on a small envelope with a Hallmark logo. It was half hidden within a mountain of paperwork, and I wondered how long it had been there.

“What’s this?”

Dan glanced in my direction. “A card from Lincoln Labs, I guess.”

“They sent flowers to my home.”

“Dr. Rowan J. Wilson” was typed across the front. No address, no stamp, nothing else. Had it been delivered by hand? Who had made it past the armed guards?

I slipped a fingernail under the seal and pulled the card free. It was a simple piece of white card stock. In bold black letters were two words:

RICORDARE

RITORNARE

“What in the world is that?” I hadn’t heard Dan come up behind me.

The card fell from my trembling fingers. It floated and flipped in elegant circles, a butterfly testing its wings. I watched it land at my feet.

“It’s Italian.” My voice sounded very far away. “It means ‘Remember, Return.’” My vision was going dark. I watched in astonishment as the floor thundered up to meet me.

CHAPTER THREE

The last leg of Sumner’s journey back to hell began with a Great Lakes flight from Denver to Cheyenne. The flight itself was uneventful and over way too quickly. He spent the forty-five minutes nursing the one glass of Jim Beam he had allowed himself, monitoring his alarmingly unsettled intestines, and wishing for an in-flight emergency of the crash-and-burn variety.

Sumner shook his head and swallowed the last trickle of courage, letting it sear his throat and tickle his nostrils. They called for him and he came running, like a good little soldier.

“You’re a chickenshit patsy,” he grumbled, crunching ice between his molars and steadfastly ignoring the raised eyebrow of his seatmate. He was making quite the impression on her. She was blonde and frighteningly thin, buffed smooth by expensive surgery. She smelled like oranges and had no sense of humor. Certainly not his type, but he wouldn’t have complained. Any port in an emotional storm.

Initially, she’d sized him up with a predatory hunger reserved for
Desperate Housewives
–type females approaching the wrong end of forty. But any chance he’d had at joining the mile-high club had vanished when his stomach gave a very ill-timed, threatening rumble. There was only one thing he was going to be capable of doing in the bathroom and she clearly didn’t want to join him for it. Rather than bask in her wide-eyed look of disgust, he beat a hasty retreat to the front of the cabin and christened the blue water.

Upon his return, he saw that she’d pulled a lipstick-pink e-reader out of her purse. Sumner noted the title on the top of the screen,
How to Snag a Husband in Ten Simple Steps
, and found his mouth opening against his will, a not uncommon occurrence.

“Any woman determined to make one poor bastard miserable instead of many happy has lost my good opinion.”

Her cool blue eyes focused on him, causing him to stammer.

“It’s, uh, John Wayne . . . in
North to Alaska
.”

She obviously didn’t share his obsession with late-night TV. Perhaps she had better things to do between midnight and 4:00 a.m. Like sleep.

Without reply, she turned back to her e-reader. For the rest of the flight she pointedly ignored his existence.

As the plane angled down for its final approach, he took the last few chunks of ice into his mouth and crunched hard, avoiding her sharp glance and trying to ignore the churning anxiety tightening his gut.

But his intestinal distress was becoming alarming. Like a freight train roaring toward its destination, there was no stopping it. By the time the plane touched down and began its roll toward the gate, he was in a sweaty stew of agony.

Thunderous noises erupted from his belly, causing his seatmate to wrinkle her nose in disgust. She turned to him with her best bitch-face, probably expecting him to get his rioting intestines under control. Damn, he wished he could. But her rudeness couldn’t go unpunished.

He leaned toward her and lowered his voice seductively. “So, can I call you sometime?”

Her jaw dropped unbecomingly and her cheeks flamed. That only encouraged him.

“Come on, sweetheart. You can’t deny the chemistry between us.” With excellent timing, his stomach chimed in with a threatening gurgle. That did it; she turned away, her gaze fixed on the window.

The plane eased to a stop and he watched the seat-belt sign with desperation. The moment it went out, he grabbed his satchel and plunged forward.

“Looks like you missed your chance, sweetheart!” he couldn’t help but call back to her. He pushed past a couple of old biddies, paying no heed to their angry squawking, and threw himself through the doorway and down the stairs to the tarmac.

Like Jerry Rice on his way to a touchdown, he clutched his satchel against his chest and weaved around the slower passengers. Pushing his way into the airport, he said a silent prayer that he would find the men’s room before he soiled himself.

And there it was! Twenty feet ahead, the bathroom sign beckoned him to safety. Moaning with relief, he crashed through the door and barricaded himself in the only stall.

Some time later Sumner emerged, unsteady and bathed in sweat. His belly was still rumbling threats. Placing his satchel on the counter, he splashed cold water on his face and neck, soaking the front of his T-shirt. He scooped several handfuls into his mouth, washing away the bitter taste of bile and booze.

His temples were pounding in time with his heartbeat, but the cool water flowing over his wrists calmed him. Eventually, he turned off the tap and scrubbed his face with a rough paper towel.

After a nervous glance in the smudged mirror, he let out a shaky breath. He was alone. There were no silent grinners, no bloodied soldiers, and none of his bogeys.

Good. That was good. His bowels unclenched a bit.

Sumner felt like he had aged twenty years in the six months since that letter in his mailbox had started his awakening. But the man in the mirror was still in his prime. Well, almost. His sandy hair had more silver and some weight had dropped off his already-slender frame. His clothes would soon be hanging on him. He’d always considered his eyes to be his best feature, with their intense, crystal-blue clarity. But at the moment, they were bloodshot and bruised-looking.

You’re starting to look like a corpse, he thought.
Walking Dead
, eat your heart out.

And, right on cue, his ears started ringing. A bogey was approaching. His teeth clenched convulsively.

Dammit, not now!

It was a familiar spirit, too. He could feel it. Was it
Coach
? Or
Loretta
? Or worst of all,
Soapy
?

“Not now!” Sumner growled.

It was
Soapy
, he was sure of it.
Soapy
, with his oily counsel and intrusive good cheer.
Soapy
was trouble, and Sumner already had that in spades. But the ringing grew louder, drowning out any other noise. His bogeys could not be stopped. Sumner curled over the sink, groaning and clutching at his ears. The noise was bad, but
Soapy
’s caved-in grin and beetle eyes would be way worse.

“No! Not now!”

And then a miracle happened.
Soapy
disappeared. He didn’t fade away, or ease back into the blackness from which he had come. Poof! He was simply gone. Sumner blinked, letting his hands drop as he processed the inexplicable, deafening silence.

“Dude, you okay?”

Sumner screamed like a fifties housewife who had just discovered a dead mouse in the flour canister. The teenage boy near the hand dryer screamed with him, showing off a mouth full of metal. Something about that flash of braces made Sumner realize the kid was real. He was wearing a Denver Broncos hat and his skin was pink and pimpled. Sumner couldn’t help but stare. The boy was perfect in his gawky, storklike pre-manhood. He was gloriously
alive
.

But for how long?

That thought pushed Sumner over the precipice upon which he’d been teetering, and into a decision. His shoulders squared and his stomach unclenched. The boy was frozen against the garbage bin, probably scared that any movement might set the crazy dude off into a murderous rampage. Sumner was equally scared. Not of the boy, of course, but of what he was about to do. After all, it was likely to get him killed.

“Sorry,” Sumner muttered. Grabbing his satchel, he moved around the boy, giving him the widest berth possible. He could almost hear the kid’s sigh of relief as the door closed between them.

With renewed urgency, Sumner entered the main part of the airport. He spied a UPS drop box thirty feet away and moved toward it.

Keeping his gait loose and his eyes straight ahead, he surreptitiously scanned the people around him. They would be nearby, but for the moment he couldn’t spot them. He was feverishly hoping to avoid their scrutiny for the next couple of minutes.

Along with a Bic pen, Sumner slid the envelope out of his satchel. His hands were shaking as he found the appropriate label and filled out the address and payment information. As he stuck the label to the envelope and watched it drop out of sight, the noose tightened around his neck.

He spotted her on his way to the Hertz counter. She was sipping from a takeout coffee cup at a two-person table beside the Peaks Cafe. Blonde and voluptuous, tight with youth, she had tanned legs that took an impossibly long journey from the edge of her frayed denim skirt to the rims of her high-heeled cowboy boots.

Her cowgirl-gone-whore ensemble was attracting plenty of notice, but she seemed immune to the ogling of the barista behind the counter and to the suits who hovered hopefully around her. Her gaze was fixed on Sumner, but he doubted she’d fallen victim to his animal magnetism. Unless she had daddy issues, which, come to think of it, she probably did.

There was no mistaking her. Even dressed in the uniform of American youth—it was like the entire generation was experiencing a critical fabric shortage—to Sumner she might as well have had
I Fidele
stamped on her forehead.

He took a deep breath. All right, he thought. Game on, cowgirl.

Doing his best to ignore her surveillance, Sumner moved casually toward the Hertz sign. At the same time, he took stock of his mental defenses and bricked up the imaginary wall inside his head. The last thing he needed was her picking up on his thoughts. That would be a death sentence.

There were no customers at the kiosk, and he was served immediately. He chose a Ford Edge for its four-wheel-drive capabilities, paying the extra for it without a second thought. October in the mountain passes was unpredictable.

Grabbing the keys, he managed to laugh almost naturally at a joke the attendant made, and left the counter.

A casual whistle as he walked by her. She was standing at a tourist rack, feigning interest in a brochure on trail riding. He passed so close he could smell her skin, an intoxicating mix of soap and musk.

She was green and wide open, and it was impossible to resist a small peek, despite the risk. He picked up her name—Ora—and a few other tidbits. Most interesting was her preference for female companionship. That almost stopped him in his tracks.

I Fidele
Doctrine preached against homosexuality. It was considered an abomination, a strict bit of religious philosophy Sumner figured was actually based on pragmatism; those unwilling to reproduce weren’t of much use for populating the New World.

But if she was so easy for him to read, how had she hidden her sexuality from the Fathers? It seemed impossible, since he had effortlessly snatched that little nugget from her defenseless mind. He was under no illusion about his limitations.

With some effort, he avoided her gaze and made his way to the glass exit doors and the parking lot beyond. She followed too closely behind him, and he repressed a nervous laugh. She may have been smoking hot, but she made a terrible secret agent.

She watched him from the other side of the glass doors as he drove out of the parking lot. He tightened his grip on the wheel, fighting the urge to give her a cheerful wave as he passed, or maybe flip her the bird. As he moved toward the exit, he congratulated himself on a brief moment of self-control.

The Ford Edge had less than a hundred miles on it, and it drove like a solid, boxy dream. He fiddled with the satellite radio until he found the E Street station. Springsteen’s bravado washed over him—damn, that dude could rock!—and he cracked the window so the crisp fall breeze could tickle his face. “Thunder Road” was playing, and Sumner joined in at full volume.

He caught the grin on his face in the wing mirror. It erased at least a decade. If today were the last day of his miserable life, at least he was going into battle with The Boss by his side.

“Bring it!” he shouted into the wind, feeling young and strong and alive for the first time in forever.

But his rush of confidence was short-lived. By the time he reached the town of Encampment, Sumner was filled with quiet dread. The dark fingers of
I Fidele
were scrabbling at him, trying to hook in their claws and reel him in. It would take another hour and a quarter to reach The Ranch, and dusk would be setting in.

Like a kid afraid of the dark, he was overwhelmed with fear at the notion of being stuck at The Ranch overnight. He was kicking himself for his lack of foresight. An earlier flight could have delivered him to The Ranch in the early afternoon, giving him a chance to get out of there before nightfall.

He briefly fantasized about finding a hotel in Encampment. About ensconcing himself in hotel blankets, six-pack at his side, the room dark, save the flicker of the TV. He would lose himself in a cult classic on Turner Classic Movies, or maybe he would escape into John Wayne’s swagger in
True Grit
or
McLintock!
The Duke was never afraid of anything.

But the weather was fair and dry. The forest road that led to The Ranch would be clear. It would do no good to delay. Other than living to see another sunrise, which would be nice. His best chance of survival was to follow orders. And pray that cowgirl hadn’t seen him put that letter in the drop box.

There was a Conoco on Sixth Street, and Sumner stopped to fill up the Ford. While it was filling, he went inside to use the facilities and buy a huge cup of bitter coffee, to which he added four creamers and three sugar packets. He glanced longingly at the Coors on display in the fridge, but drinking was considered a weakness at
I Fidele
. There had been plenty of weakness in the last six months. Perhaps it was best if he didn’t show up with beer on his breath.

He paid cash for the gas and coffee and climbed back into the SUV. Route 70 cut west through the grasslands of southern Wyoming before hacking an endless, rugged path through the Routt National Forest. It was the perfect place to disappear into the wilderness of another time, especially since Route 70 was closed during winter months.