Threader God, page 15
“That would be great! We’ve been traveling for quite a while, though. Is there any place for us to unload our gear and maybe wash up a bit?”
Mellisa turned serious in the blink of eye. “Of course, how silly of me. I’m too used to holing from one place to another.” Her voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying. “I’m sorry, Darwin, I didn’t mean to . . .”
“I lost the ability to Thread a long time ago,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay. I think there’s a couple of rooms free beside the playground. Come on, let’s check.”
They picked up their bikes as they walked past them. Darwin hesitated at the spot on the road where they’d imprisoned Baila so long ago. She’d somehow managed to fight her transformation into a full Skend, and Carlos was hoping to find out how she’d done it. If she could fight it, then there might be a way for them to change people back. She’d escaped before the Hoover Dam battle. The blood she’d left on the ground had long since disappeared, but the scratches on the road’s surface remained. He moved on, following Mellisa to the two-story apartment complex kitty-corner to the District Office. The building was laid out like a motel, with access to each room via an outside staircase and a full balcony on each floor. Mellisa knocked on the first door and a woman Darwin didn’t know opened it.
“We have some unexpected visitors, Sara. Is there any chance there’s some room at the inn?”
Sara glanced at Teresa and Darwin, eying their dirty clothes. Her gaze stopped on Darwin’s face for a fraction of a second before going back to Mellisa. If she had recognized him, it didn’t show on her face. From inside her apartment, he could hear singing, several male voices without instruments except maybe something for percussion, though it sounded more like another voice than an instrument.
“The one right above me is empty, if they don’t mind a bit of singing.” She looked at Teresa, avoiding Darwin’s face. “My husband is in a band. They’re putting on a show tonight, if you two are interested.”
“They sound great,” Teresa said. “We’ll definitely be there.”
“They’ll like that. The bigger the crowd, the more they enjoy performing. I’ll get the key.” She disappeared for a minute before coming back with a single key on a chain. “I only have one, so don’t lose it.” She held it out to Teresa.
“I’ll leave you two alone, then,” Mellisa said. “Teresa knows where the water and buckets are. There should be cloths and towels in the room. When you figure you’re clean enough, you know where to find me.”
They both carried water to their room, walking slowly with a bucket in each hand. By the time they reached their room, it felt like his fingers had stretched three inches and his shoulders had popped from their sockets.
He washed up while Teresa carried the empty buckets back. Lying on the soft bed was a mistake, and she woke him up a half an hour later.
“Come on, sleepyhead. I think it’s time we went to see Carlos.”
Darwin rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stood, losing his balance and using the side table to stay upright. “Let’s go.”
They found Carlos in a small office, his window open and a soft breeze moving the curtains. He stood as they entered and walked around his desk to pull both of them into a hug.
“Long time no see. How are you two doing?” He beckoned to the chairs in front of his desk and moved back to his own. “We’ve heard some stories of sightings of you two, but the only real confirmation we had of you was from Darby. That was quite some time ago. We kind of expected you to show up long before now.”
“We had some complications,” Teresa said. “The first time we had any real issues on the whole trip.”
Carlos raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
“We ran into a group of Darwin cultists. They recognized us before we recognized what they were. They figured an imprisoned Darwin was better than no Darwin at all.”
“You made it out, I see.”
“Yeah,” Darwin said. “It wasn’t pretty.”
“You think they followed you and will show up here?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. We ran into Estra. You remember her, she was the healer kept in Hoover Dam with the rest of us.”
“She was a believer as well, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. I don’t know if she still is or not, but she’s part of the group in San Francisco. She told us she would tell them that I was dead. For real this time.”
“Awful nice of her.”
Darwin shrugged. “Whatever. It worked for us. She may change her tune when she finds out some of her own are dead.”
Carlos raised an eyebrow again, but didn’t ask any questions. Darwin was happy he didn’t.
“So, why are you back? I thought you’d planned on staying on the road for a long time.”
Darwin touched his chest. “It’s waking up.” The words were simple, but saying them to Carlos seemed to make it more real. More immediate.
“That might explain some of the fluctuations at Hoover. There were a couple of times it felt as if the Threads it created all turned and headed off in the same direction. You know how odd that is. Normally they just go randomly. To See them all suddenly coordinated was wrong.” He wrote a note and gave it to someone in the hallway. “I’ll let Sandra know. She’s got the next four months there. It’s good though, right? You’re starting to get some of your capabilities back?”
Darwin shook his head and Teresa grabbed his hand.
“It’s anything but. I don’t have any control. When things start up, it feels like it did just before Baila jumped on me. I’m bombarded with images and Threads and it feels like my brain is going to explode.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“I think we may have some of that inhibitor on hand that the Qabal used on you a couple of years ago. Maybe it’s just been so long that you need to acclimatize again.”
“Maybe. I’d prefer to stay away from any kind of drugs, but if it’s a choice between that and going crazy . . .”
“I’ll get you some, and instructions on how to use it.” Carlos pulled a bottle of homemade whiskey from the drawer of his desk along with three glasses. “It’s just about closing time, how about you two fill me in on your travels?”
Teresa shook her head and stood. “I’ll let you two do that. Do you mind if I wander through the hospital?”
“Knock yourself out. Rebecca’s still in there, if you’re interested.”
“Thanks. Darwin, don’t forget we promised Sara we’d go see her husband’s band.”
“I’ll get him there,” Carlos said. “Mellisa and I will be going as well.” He poured two glasses as Teresa left. “Now, tell me everything!”
Mellisa joined them halfway through and poured herself a glass. The whiskey wasn’t anything like he’d had back home, but it went down easy enough. If with a bit of a sting.
By the time the concert was ready to start, they were all a bit tipsy.
* * *
• • •
The cooler evening air helped clear Darwin’s head as the group headed for the green space behind the complex he and Teresa were staying in. A deck had been built off the back of the building and a handful of people had claimed their space of the grass. Teresa waved from a blanket that looked suspiciously similar to the one he had fallen asleep on earlier in the day.
The three made their way over, with Teresa hastily making space on the blanket once she smelled their breath.
“Somebody’s had more than one glass.”
Darwin grinned and pulled her in for a kiss. She pushed him away with a grimace while Carlos and Mellisa laughed. God, how he had missed these people. The last year on the road had been good, he reminded himself. There had been ups and downs, there always were, it’s what made life worth living. But he had missed these two.
When he’d first come to this world, he’d been a loner. His friends had left him when he missed over a year of school after the accident. No, that’s not when it had happened. They had gotten distant, but they had never truly left. They left when he finally went back to school, trying to catch up to his classmates and friends, and ending up passing them. Teenagers didn’t like being around someone who left them in the dust. At least his friends didn’t. Maybe they hadn’t really been his friends after all. He couldn’t see Carlos and Mellisa and Teresa doing that. In fact, they hadn’t. When he was in control of the Threads, he’d surpassed anything they had done, and they’d celebrated with him. When he’d lost his abilities, when he’d gotten his scars, they helped him cope. They stayed with him until he was ready to move on.
That’s what friendship was.
The Darwin of two years ago would never have been able to sit here laughing and waiting for a concert to start, no matter how much alcohol was in his system. It wasn’t who he had been. He joined in the laughter. The booze was making him melancholy.
A hush fell over the attendees as a group of six men took over the back deck. Teresa elbowed him in the ribs, cutting his laugh short, turning it into a short bark that echoed off the back of the building. Carlos and Mellisa snorted into their hands.
The men nodded to a person off to the side of the deck, and when the shortest one spoke, his voice was amplified. For just a brief moment, Darwin wished he could See again. What color were the Threads required to do it? Was shape a factor, or something else? He pushed the thoughts away and listened.
“ . . .a crowd that’s already happy is the best place to start. We’re an a cappella group, which means no instruments will be used during our show. Everything you are about to hear is created by us. My wife,” he gestured to the side at the Threader amplifying their voices, “is simply making sure that even those in the back can hear us.”
He stepped back in line with the others and another member of the group stepped forward and began to sing in a deep bass voice. The others behind him filled in the space in the music with their own voices. A cymbal sounded and Darwin looked for the instrument, remembering they had been told everything they heard was created by the six on the deck. It took him a minute to realize it was the short one who had introduced them creating the sound with his mouth.
The familiar words of “House of the Rising Sun” filled the space and the cymbals turned into a full drum kit. Darwin let himself be pulled into the music. The last time he’d heard any was when he and Teresa had been in New Orleans. That music had spoken to his soul, and he desperately missed his phone full of music and photos and memories. The music swelled and his body filled with it, drifting with the notes, feeling the drum beats against his chest, floating on the highs and sinking with the lows.
Teresa reached for his hand and he gripped it tight, squeezing her fingers in time with the beat.
The song switched to an old Simon and Garfunkel tune and he let out a long, slow breath, returning back to the blanket behind the apartment building. The music continued on into the night. Several people had cleared an area off to the left and created a dance floor, filling it with bodies that moved to the sound. An echo of what Darwin felt in his soul. Teresa pulled him to his feet as the music slowed, dragging him to the dance floor. They found a space in the middle and stood holding each other, swaying in time to the song, their feet shuffling in the trampled grass.
Darwin closed his eyes and held her close. The alcohol had worn off long ago, leaving him with a slight headache. It disappeared as they danced, and he knew that if he could See he would see the white Threads of healing. Without him having spoken a word, Teresa had known and had taken it away. He was pretty sure she could have done it sooner, but she believed in the saying don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. In this case, don’t drink to excess if you can’t handle the hangover. His headache was nowhere near a hangover, but he was glad for the end to it anyway.
“Thank you.”
She squeezed him tighter in response. He didn’t know what he had done in this life or a previous one to have deserved her.
As they danced, he felt the familiar sensation of the Threads around him. Without even trying, he could feel his dance affect the Threads as they responded to his movements and his emotions. Teresa’s feelings pulled into him and the Threads warmed and darkened, moving with the same languid pace of the other dancers on the floor.
The song ended, moving into something a little faster, and Darwin pulled Teresa back to the blanket. They wove between the seated audience and sat down beside Carlos and Mellisa.
“I felt Baila in that.” Mellisa’s rasp cut through the music. Darwin nodded in response.
9
LOSS
Darwin and Teresa had slept in, only rising from the warm bed when the smell of breakfast wafted in through the open window. It was a habit they had formed in the two weeks they’d been in Chollas.
The room was still cool from the night, and the hair on his arms stood up as he threw off the covers and got his clothes from the other side of the room.
“Wake up, sleepyhead. We might be late for breakfast.”
An inarticulate sound came from the bed as he pulled on his pants.
“You want me to bring something back for you?”
“I’m up.” Teresa’s voice stretched into a yawn. “I’m up.”
“I’ll meet you there, okay?”
Teresa stuck a foot out of the covers and jerked it back in. “Jeez, it’s cold. And what kind of gentleman are you, taking off and leaving me alone?”
“The kind that wants to make sure there’s enough food left for the both of us.” He threw her clothes, half of them landing on the bed and the other half on the floor, and closed the bedroom window before he left, hoping to keep some of the heat of the day away. Their room faced southeast, and even shaded by trees, the sun still warmed the place up to above uncomfortable.
Since coming to Chollas, they’d made a habit of joining Carlos and Mellisa for breakfast. The two were the best friends he had ever had, and being with them made him feel good. It also brought him up to date on what was happening in and around the dam. Carlos got reports every morning along with the person running the second shift. The shifts took turns protecting the QPS at the dam, with Sandra and her group doing the first four months, the other group taking the second four months, and Carlos taking the third. It helped to keep everyone fresh, and gave them a chance to be at home with their families for most of the year.
He also found out that the QPS still supplied most of the power needed by Las Vegas. The city was still against Threaders, but they had woken up to the realization that the two groups needed to work together if the city was to remain alive. Though the no-Threaders-inside-the-city rule had been removed, they still didn’t let them inside the casinos, and the red badges had been moved inside to monitor if Threads were being used to win at games. The black squad had been disbanded, and most of them had either left the city or stayed and struggled to survive with no job and no authority anymore. Mellisa didn’t care for Las Vegas at all and just wanted the whole thing to disappear. She thought keeping it fed with power was the worst thing they could do. Darwin didn’t think she was wrong.
He trotted through the playground and to the end of the cul-de-sac, knocking on the front door before just walking in. He could smell fresh-baked bread, and Mellisa came in from the back door carrying a load of pancakes.
“One of these days Teresa and I will have to host you. Tough to do from the apartment, though.” They’d gotten in the habit of doing all the cleaning after, letting Carlos and Mellisa get on with their day.
“If you plan on staying, we can get a house assigned to you. There’s a couple of empty ones near the corner of Fauna and Indian Fig. Nice and close to a playground.” He nudged Darwin in the side and winked.
Darwin chose to ignore the seemingly regular ritual of teasing about kids. He poured three cups of acorn coffee and put them on the table.
“Where’s Teresa?” Mellisa asked.
“We both kinda slept in. I figured I’d run over while she was getting dressed to make sure this lug didn’t eat all the food.”
They laughed as Teresa walked in the back door, carrying the dirty pancake mix bowl and flipper. Carlos was right, though. They’d been treated like guests since they’d been here, rather than as members of the community. Teresa had already started showing up at the clinic and hospital every day . . . Chollas was still known as place of healers, and her contribution while she was there hadn’t gone unnoticed. She’d been asked to stay as a full-time healer, and they’d both spoken about it last night.
Darwin wasn’t sure what he would do here. He had no abilities with the Threads anymore. Talking with Carlos, he knew they needed another cook while they were at the dam, but that would mean being away from Teresa for four months out of the year. And for the time he was here, he had no idea what he would do. Despite that, they both agreed they’d traveled enough. Teresa hadn’t realized how much she’d missed working every day, and he hadn’t realized how much he had missed being with friends. Always being on the move didn’t give you time to build deep relationships. There were people they would never forget, that if they showed up on their doorstep, they would have a place to stay and a warm meal until they decided to move on again. But those friendships, although deep, weren’t the same as the ones you had with people you saw almost every day.
Teresa put the dishes in the sink and came back to the table.
“I think we’d like to take you up on that offer,” Darwin said. “If you still need a cook at the dam, I can do that as well. I’ll figure something out for the time I spend here. I’m not sure about a house by the playground, though.”
The grin that spread across Carlos’s face was echoed on Mellisa’s. She jumped up from her seat and gave Teresa a huge hug before moving on to Darwin. When she’d turned into a hugger, he didn’t know, but he was getting used to them. Carlos got right down to business.
“I’ll introduce you to Eric today. He’s our head chef, and you’ll be reporting to him. He’s the one to say yes or no to you’re coming on board as a cook, so try to be nice to him. He cooks up at the hospital when we’re not at the dam. I don’t know if he needs anyone up there, but if he does, do you think you can handle working so close to Teresa?”
