When Life Turned Purple (16 page)

“Yep.”

“But everyone in the astronomy community knows. How long can it be kept a secret?”

“Lia,” said the colleague. “Who’s going to tell? The top guys are going to give official statements to the contrary. Okay? And we’ve all already seen what happens when everyone gets even slightly panicky—shortages, rioting, slow police and emergency response, etcetera. None of us live in underground mansions equipped to protect us in luxury for the next thirty years. None of us want to suffer. Even if some of us end up blabbing, most people won’t take it seriously. Especially since, like I said, the hotshots will be saying something totally different. And all the astronomy publications will support them. And so on and so on, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

The chatted a bit more, then hung up.

Russ stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders to release the jitters building up inside him. “Hungry aliens?” he tried to joke. “Using cosmonauts as drive-thru fast food?”

Lia shook her head, her eyes bright with amusement and something else. “No, he was
alive
, Russ. Alive—in the vacuum of space!” She shook her head again and laughed to herself. “Gosh, what that must’ve felt like!” She sighed. “I wish I could’ve been there.”

“Okay, baby, but where is he now?”

She rubbed her lips together and arched her eyebrows. “Well, I can only think of two possibilities. Either that those things can move faster than the speed of light or it took him into another dimension.”

“Oh,” said Russ. “Well. That explains it.”

Lia hugged herself. “I hope he’s okay wherever he is. Now they’re talking about sending a couple of people up there, but I don’t see how. I don’t know if you could land on those things. I—I even get the feeling that they might be sentient—at least a little.

“Could a space shuttle hover nearby?” asked Russ.

“Not really. You see, space shuttles—and satellites and even the late ISS, for that matter—aren’t really flying through space, but falling.” Her hands glided around as she spoke, illustrating her words like a ballet. “Being in orbit is really being in constant freefall. And we’ve already seen that those things end up using our best and biggest as crash-dummies.”

“Got it,” said Russ.

Lia grew pensive again. She started tapping the space in the web of skin between her pinky and ring finger. Then she pressed her fingers to her temples and drew them along an invisible path that curved over and behind her ears, down the part of her neck he liked most, straight across to her shoulders until her fingers flicked into the hair, and then back to her temples again. She did this ritual several times before leaning her head down and placing her hands over each other over the back of her neck. Her elbows hung down like that for a few moments until she pressed down on her neck and thrust her hands away, her arms flying out to the side.

Then she looked up at Russ and gave him a wide smile.

“That’s my secret,” she said. “Well, part of it, anyway. That’s the reason why I’m not freaking out so much. I just did a Triple Warmer smoothie.”

Russ stared at her and shifted his weight from leg to the other. He figured that this much be more of that geeky science stuff she was so into. Well, as long as she wasn’t getting all bonkers again, it was fine by him.

“Well, good for you, baby,” he said. “You’re—you’re real smart for figuring that out.”

She laughed.

Then she insisted on doing stuff to him too. She did stuff she called “tracing his meridians”—which was pretty nice, actually—and then she did something she called acupressure and held different parts of his body for a couple of minutes. Like his elbow and his knee. And then the web of skin between his fourth and fifth fingers and the crook of his pinky toe.

The next day, Russ took Lia to his store with him. He drove very carefully. Nothing happened, but he felt like something was about to happen. People still didn’t know about the cosmonaut or the ISS—actually, they kind of knew, but weren’t sure. Whatever was left of the Internet burned up with conspiracy theories. But the officials kept insisting that any telescopic photos of a figure inside one of the purple bubbles were merely photoshopped.

At the store, Russ kept his gun in its holster and kept Lia behind the counter. He’d tweeted some of his regulars that he would be open today—cash only and closing before dark—which they re-tweeted to their interested friends, so he did good business. Some people wanted to barter rather than pay cash, and as long as it was something Russ needed, he didn’t mind. He actually enjoyed the negotiations and trying to figure out what was worth what. He and Lia came away from it with a nice cache of stuff.

They also heard quite a lot about what everyone was thinking and learning about the whole situation. Most of these people weren’t taking drugs, but also weren’t sure how to manage the effects. A lot of them talked about how they were praying—which was kind of helping, but kind of wasn’t.

“It about
how
you do it,” he heard Lia explain to a white-haired sixty-something woman with a healthy tan wearing a pink sweatshirt and a white turtleneck. “It’s not about going to church or accepting Jesus or anyone else into your heart. It’s about connecting with God directly. No intermediary, no books, no props. Just you
—
and Him.” And Lia held up two books: a silver-colored book with the festive silhouette of a human body on the cover called
Talk to God and Fix Your Health
while the other featured a painting of a man and his son walking in a sunlit forest and was called
The Universal Garden of Emuna
.

“These books helped me so much,” said Lia.

“Is Amazon still doing orders?” the lady asked.

“I don’t know,” said Lia. “I got them before things started getting so weird. But you can always give it a try. Anyway, the author’s websites also contain a lot of the book’s information. You can start there.”

“I’d better give it a try now,” said the woman. “You never know how long the Internet can last in this situation.”

“I bet the Internet will be the last thing to go,” said a man who overheard her last comment.

“No way,” said someone else. “An EMP can take everything out in a second. The Internet is pretty vulnerable—EMP, government switch-off, cyberattacks—better milk it now for all it’s worth because you never know.”

“Can an EMP even get through those sky things?” asked someone else.

This led to a lively discussion while people waited for their turn.

“No one really knows,” Lia whispered to Russ as the customers wrestled with the question.

Russ smiled.

As sunset approached, people started clearing out.

Russ started closing up and was wrapping the gating around the store when a guy approached. He looked vaguely familiar, but Russ wasn’t sure from where.

“Hey,” the guy said. “I was just coming to pick up some stuff. Is that okay?”

Russ hesitated. The guy winced as he spoke. Something about him made Russ feel sorry for him, but he was also afraid that this was exactly the type to go nuts when those purple things were in full force. As Russ contemplated him, he noticed a bruise on his cheekbone. In fact, his whole face seemed kind of puffy.

“You got cash?” said Russ.

“No credit card?”

Russ shook his head.

“Well, I got
some
cash on me....”

“Okay,” said Russ. “Come on in and we’ll see what we can do.”

The guy took a step forward, but Russ suddenly slapped a palm against the guy’s shoulder. The guy’s head whipped back and his eyes flew wide open as his shoulders hunched. “Just so it’s clear,” said Russ. “You start having a meltdown in here—you’re
out
.”

The guy continued to stare at Russ wide-eyed.

“I know you people can’t control it,” said Russ, “but my main concern is to protect my wife and my property. Anything—or anyone—else is second place. Or even tenth place.”

The guy stared at Russ another moment, then nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I respect that.”

Russ flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED.

Once inside, Russ accompanied the guy as he looked around. He seemed sad, but not any kind of threat. He and Russ discussed what he could get for the amount of cash he had. It wasn’t enough, but Russ pretended that it was.

Pretty quickly, he told Russ he wanted to be prepped for bugging out.

“You know how to manage in the woods?” Russ asked.

“Well, no. But I figured, how hard could it be? I’ll learn as I go. I mean, humans have always done it—you know, lived off the land.”

Russ frowned and chewed his lower lip, but didn’t answer.

“I bought a really good-quality bow-and-arrow set. And you’ve got a good selection of hunting knives here. I also need some waterproof stuff.”

Lia watched the whole exchange in silence.

“You got a gun?” said Russ.

“Oh, no,” said the guy. “They’re dangerous. Also, a gun’s not practical. I mean, bullets get used up. Arrows can always be retrieved.”

Russ pressed a thumb to his lips as his frown deepened.

“And hey, there’s always water—either from the sky or the rivers—” he added with a wry smile. “And I figure that I can set up traps for squirrels and rabbits and stuff. Which reminds me—I need a way to start a fire on a rainy day.”

Russ nodded, then said, “You have any experience hunting?”

“Nah, but I figure that’s okay. I mean, there’s fish and small game, like I said.”

Russ shook his head. The guy didn’t know—had no way of knowing—that hunting was one big coin toss. Especially in the winter. Experienced hunters could hunt for a long time with nothing to show for it. And this guy wouldn’t be the only one taking to the forest. Guys with better gear, more experience, and better weapons would also be there. Game of all kinds would start to get pretty thin. Even two squirrels a day wouldn’t really be enough for a man living outdoors.

But Russ didn’t know how to tell him all this.

“I still have the tent we bought from you,” the guy continued.

Russ lifted his eyebrows.

“I was here with my boyfriend and your girl helped us.”

As the guy looked at Russ, there was something sad and desperate in his eyes.

Now Russ remembered. He was part of that guy-couple in his store a while ago that Russ didn’t want to deal with.

But Russ didn’t feel that same discomfort again now. He felt like he wanted to help the guy. He thought maybe he should just give the guy all the stuff for free. Russ felt like a heel for making the guy pay anything for stuff that he wouldn’t really be able to use.

“I remember you guys,” said Lia.

But the guy didn’t acknowledge Lia. He kept looking at Russ. “We had a fight,” he said. “A really bad fight.” He pointed to his face. “And now he’s gone. But I still have the tent.” The guy squirmed. “But maybe he’ll be back. He was really into me.”

Russ frowned again.

The guy rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist. “I just wanted my dad to hug me, you know? Just to hold me really tight in his big arms and say, ‘I’m proud of you, son.’ But he never did.” His voice broke. “Instead, he just—he just—”

Russ glanced outside.

It was dark except for a violet glow.

Russ grabbed him by the collar with both hands and said, “You’re outta here, buddy.”

The guy looked startled and Lia said, “Wait!”

Russ and the guy’s heads whipped around to look at her.

Lia was leaning over the counter with her hands stretched out.

“Wait a sec, Russ,” she said. Then looking at the guy, she said, “Go like this.” And she started tapping her hand. “Start tapping the space between your pinky and ring finger.”

The guy just stared at her.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Just do it.”

Russ rolled his eyes. “Oh, for crying out loud—”

“Just do it,” she said.

The guy looked at Russ, still wide-eyed, then back at Lia. Under Russ’s arms, the guy hesitantly put one hand over the other and started tapping uncertainly.

“Now do the other hand,” she said.

He did.

“Now go like this.” And she started showing him what she’d called the Triple Warmer smoothie. “Russ, let him go for a minute. Okay?”

Russ stared at her, then glanced at the guy, who nodded slowly to Russ. “It’s okay,” he said to Russ. “I’m—I’m cool.”

Russ held him another moment, then released his grip and straightened up.

With clumsy motions, the guy followed Lia’s directions.

“Feel better?” she asked.

He paused, then nodded.

“Here,” she said. “Take this.” She handed both books.

The guy looked at it. “What’s this?” he said, staring at the books.

“Some very special books that can teach you how to heal yourself.”

Russ stood there watching with his lips pressed tightly together.

The guy stared at the book another moment, glanced at Lia, who nodded encouragingly, then reached out his hand and slowly took the book. “Thanks,” he mumbled.