God's Junk Drawer, page 20
Noah’s jaw shifted. He glanced up at Parker, gave her a little nod of acknowledgment, maybe wondering if she was going to pick up where they left off last night. “I’m just trying to get caught up on what happened to my sister. And the valley.”
“Oh.”
The android turned at the waist with a squeak. “It’s good to see you again, Parker.”
“Um . . . thanks.”
“A lot of this is kind of personal,” Noah said. “I’d like to just talk with Ross by myself.”
Parker briefly thought about how personal having her whole goddamned future ripped away was and maybe that should be his priority right now. Then she remembered when one of her undergrad roommates learned that a friend had died and Facebook algorithms had hidden the news from her for almost a year, and how much it’d devastated her. But then Parker also remembered that Noah had been lying to her for years about who he was.
And then out loud she just said “Sure.”
“You’re free to go anywhere in Roanoke,” Ross told her. “It’s safe within the walls. If you wish to go outside, you may want to ask a warden to go with you.”
“What about the big statue of Anubis we found in the cliff wall?” Noah’d already turned his attention back to the android, and Parker knew she’d been forgotten. Again.
She crossed the room. Pushed the door open into the eye-blinkingly bright sunlight. Three steps carried her down the rough steps and almost right into Sam, who squatted on one knee in the dirt path between houses.
“What are you—”
“I just—sorry—dammit!”
A few feet away one of the black-feathered microraptors let out a rattly hiss and awkwardly threw itself into the air. Its flurry of wings carried it to the far side of the path, where it perched on something that looked a lot like a mailbox made of bamboo. The little dinosaur’s claws scraped on the mailbox for a moment and then it hurled itself upward again, flapping and fluttering until it was on the roof of a cottage.
Parker watched it settle. “It’s like when chickens try to fly.”
“I was trying to lure it closer.”
“Is that smart? They probably bite.”
“Yeah, but I’d—how many people get to say they’d been bitten by a dinosaur and lived?”
She sighed. “I’d guess a lot more than we’d think.”
“Fair point.”
Parker looked around. After a night’s sleep, she noticed more details about the little village. The guest house had two big patches of wildflowers growing in front of it, or maybe they were gardens that’d been left to do their own thing. Looking at the other small cottages around her, she could see decorations hung on doors and a few windows with curtains. Some had simple bamboo blinds hung in them. A few other buildings had flowers. One down at the end of the wide path, closest to the big wall, had a little waist-high fence made of bamboo.
She didn’t see as many people wandering around as there’d been when they’d arrived yesterday, but maybe they were all at . . . work? Did people have jobs here? Was there a schoolhouse full of kids somewhere?
Sam glanced up at the sky. “What time do you think it is?”
“No idea. Why? Do you have to be somewhere?”
He snorted out a laugh. “No. No, definitely not. Just weird. I almost never sleep late.”
Parker shrugged. “We were exhausted. And didn’t you and Noah say everything’s different here twenty or thirty times?”
“I only said it fifteen.”
She let out a little laugh of her own. Looked around. Waited for him to say something else. Realized he was waiting on her. “We should go check on Olivia.”
Sam’s face danced through a few emotions. “Oh. Okay.”
“What?”
“A little confused, I guess.”
“About?”
She got the distinct sense Sam was deciding the best way to phrase something. “I know you and I—we don’t know each other that well, but with some of the talk around the department, I had the sense you and Olivia aren’t—you don’t like each other. Much.”
A handful of memories and responses bubbled up in Parker’s mind. “It’s all her. I try to be professional about it.”
“About . . . ?”
She looked up and down the path, tried to get her bearings and remember the path they’d taken last night. “Let’s just both be professional and go check on our colleague who’s in the . . . hospital. Doctor’s office. Whatever.”
He took the hint. “Okay.”
Parker looked back and forth on the street. Big wall one way. Big building the other. “I have no idea where that is.”
“Me either.”
“Retrace our steps to the front gate? Ask someone along the way?’
“Yeah, I—that sounds good. I’m pretty sure we came from that way last night.” He pointed toward the big two-story building.
As they approached, Parker realized why the big structure looked so utilitarian. Small, scattered windows. Two big doors. It looked a lot like a barn. Or maybe a warehouse.
One of the big doors was open a little bit.
“Do you . . . what do you think’s inside?”
Parker shook her head. The silver obelisk loomed off to the right, and the main gate past that. Definitely the way they’d come in. Had the bionic-looking woman carried Olivia this way, too? Was one of the surrounding buildings the doctor’s?
Sam nudged the big door open a little wider. “Smells like plants, maybe, or grain. And dirt.”
“Dirt?”
“Yeah, it sort of . . . it smells like a barn, I guess.”
Parker sighed. Moved a little closer. Sam pushed the door a bit wider.
It did smell like a barn. Parker’d never even been on a farm, but if you’d asked her to name the combined smells of dried grass and leaves and fresh dirt and dust, she probably would’ve gone with barn. The door was almost halfway open now and she could see bundles and baskets and bulging sacks everywhere. Fruit, vegetables, a wooden rack of what looked like basketball-sized eggs. Bolts of coarse fabric, coils of rope, a small lizard-bird thing gnawing on a potato, a whole shelf of—
The lizard was maybe the size of a cat and looked like a blue-green cartoon version of a T-Rex, with an overly rounded head, stubby beak, and plump legs. A crest of green and yellow feathers ran over its head, down its back, and thinned out on its stubby tail.
“Shoo,” said Sam. He stepped forward, waved a hand at the lizard, and it leaped out of the basket. Landing jarred the potato out of its mouth, and its head lunged down twice trying to grab it again. Sam waved his hand again and the little dinosaur dashed behind a stack of baskets.
Something hit the ground behind them. “Can I help you two?”
A woman about their age had come from . . . somewhere? She had dark, wavy hair, tanned skin, solid shoulders, and a wide smile. A bulging sack sat by her feet, dust settling around it.
Parker waved into the warehouse. “There was a . . . a little dinosaur eating something. A potato.”
The woman’s smile faded. “Chubby little blue-green thing? Feather mohawk?”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “Three or four of them snuck in here and I can’t ever get them all out. Doesn’t help when Geoff keeps leaving the storehouse door unlatched!” She shouted the last words to the sky, or maybe to somewhere else in Roanoke, but there didn’t seem to be much anger behind them. Then her gaze fell back to Parker and Sam. “So, hey, what’s crackin’, newcomers?”
Sam’s eyes bugged a little. “You remember us?”
“Well, y’know. Small town, we don’t get a lot of strangers.”
“Of course,” said Parker.
The woman stuck her hand out, half gesture, half offering. “I’m Marissa.”
“Parker.” She shook the hand. The woman had thin fingers, but a solid grip.
“Sam.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“How long have you . . . been here?” asked Sam.
“Four years. Up until last night, I was the newest person in Roanoke.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.” Marissa’s clothes reminded Parker of the quilt in the guesthouse. Enough denim to recognize the heavily-stitched-together bell-bottom jeans. The wide sleeves and deep V-neck that might’ve been lightweight and silky a dozen patches ago. The clothes of Theseus, she thought to herself.
“So is it, I don’t know, rude to ask where you’re from?”
Marissa shook her head. “Nah. I’m from New Jersey, but I was in Queens when I ended up here.”
“Queens as in New York City?”
“Yep. Right out of the Big Apple. Makes you wonder about all the people who disappear, doesn’t it?”
Parker gave a slow nod. “And when was this?”
Marissa gave her another smile. “September of ’73.”
“1973 was four years ago?”
“For me, yeah. Freaky-deaky, right?”
“Wow,” said Sam.
“Speaking of which . . . people have been talking about you all morning. And, y’know, the guy you’re with.”
Her gaze settled on each of them. Still friendly but waiting for them to speak.
“You mean Noah,” Sam said, filling the empty moment. “Billy Gather.”
The smile never flinched, but a whole collection of emotions rolled through the woman’s eyes. “So it’s really him?”
Parker shrugged. “Well, we only found out two days ago.”
“Oh?”
“He’s Billy Gather,” said Sam. “Really.”
“So he did it? He got out and came back?”
“Sort of.”
“And does he . . . does he know how to get out again?”
Parker’s mood sank again. “No.”
Marissa’s mood sank, too. “Oh.”
“Sorry,” said Sam.
Marissa shook her head. “My own fault. Should’ve known by now.”
“Do you think maybe you could help us, though?” Parker asked. “We’re trying to find our friend Olivia. They took her to the doctor last night. Where’s that?”
The woman shifted her feet and jerked her thumb over her shoulder, gesturing down the path toward the main gate. “See the house over there with the yellow flowers out front? Right across from the obelisk?”
Parker found it. “Yeah.”
“That’s Madame Monique. She’s the doctor.”
“That’s her office?”
“Her everything. Office. Clinic. Home. Hospital.”
“Right. Of course.”
Marissa sighed. “So you’re all from the . . . what, ’90s, if Billy’s all grown-up now? 2000-something?”
“2023.” Parker looked for a red cross or a barber pole or something that implied a doctor’s residence, but apparently Roanoke was small enough signs weren’t needed.
“Wild,” said Marissa. “We’re gonna have to have some long talks about music and movies.”
“Maybe after we check on our friend.”
She flashed them a two-fingered peace sign, crouched, and heaved the big sack back on her shoulder. “Back to work, then. Kill for a shopping cart, right?”
Marissa balanced the sack, kicked the door open a little more with one foot, and took a few heavy steps into the storehouse.
Parker and Sam walked down the path. As far as she could tell, this was the main road, running straight through the little village. Front gate to back wall. The whole place couldn’t be much larger than two football fields.
Sam paused at the obelisk. “He was right about this. Noah. It’s not supposed to be here. The platinum obelisk’s on a big savanna maybe a mile from their cave.”
“Maybe they built the town around it.” Parker examined the tall monument. It looked like the other ones, just shinier.
“We’re at least two miles from the valley wall.”
“Maybe it moved. Like . . . like the android was saying last night.”
“Ross. He’s a Rossum Seven. Roman numerals.”
She gave him a look.
“Some people memorize baseball games or Marvel movies. I memorized this place. Back then. When I was little.”
She nodded at the obelisk. “So how does this one kill you?”
He reached out a hand and she reached out her own to stop him. “It should be safe,” he said. “The glass one’s the only dangerous one.”
“You sure?”
“I mean, it did what he always said it did. He was confused because it was in the wrong place.”
“Like this one is.”
He still let his hand drop. Pointed at some of the engraved lines. “The runes light up when you touch them.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “They never figured out why any of them did anything. There’s, well, there was a gold one on the other side of the valley that hums in sunlight. And one made of marble that knocks you out cold.”
“It shocks you?”
Sam shook his head. “You just fall asleep. Instantly. His sister was the first one to touch it and she dropped so fast they thought it’d killed her.”
“Jesus. And they’d just lost their mom, right?”
“Yeah.”
“They must’ve been freaking out.”
“They did. Probably saved them, though. They got really cautious about touching any new obelisks they found.”
“Like the glass one.”
He nodded.
“Or this one, maybe.”
“Yeah, okay, point made.”
She walked up the stone steps of the doctor’s house and rapped her knuckles on the heavy wooden door. It looked like the kind of door someone would have in The Lord of the Rings. Rough planks and iron straps and square-headed nails.
A few moments later they heard movement inside. The movement became footsteps and the door opened to reveal the petite woman from yesterday. Parker got a better look at her now, free of shock and confusion. Not much older than her. Not much taller than Sam. Big eyes. Curly brown hair pulled back into a messy bun. Her long skirt brushed the floor, her long sleeves and high collar ended in frayed ruffles. The cords of her corset didn’t match, and they’d clearly snapped and been retied or replaced several times.
The woman smiled and looked even younger. “Ahhh. The other newcomers. Hello!”
“Hi,” Parker said. “We’re here about—”
“Your friend, oui, oui. Please.” She waved them inside. “She is in the side room.”
The doctor’s house felt more like a home, even if it still had the island resort feel. Bamboo furniture and shelves, a few bundles of dried flowers. Something about it felt more . . . permanent.
“We were not properly introduced last night,” the doctor said, gesturing at herself as she walked across the main room toward a short hall. “I am Madame Monique Cadieux.”
“I’m Sam.”
“Parker.”
The doctor tipped her head to each of them. “Samuel. Parker.”
Sam cleared his throat. “It’s not—it’s just Sam.”
She led them into the hall, pulled aside a curtain of what looked like coarse linen, and gestured them through.
Going off her bare shoulders, Olivia had been stripped, cleaned, and tucked into the bed. Her arms lay flat on top of another multicolored quilt, and one hand had been bandaged with a ribbon of off-white cloth. Slack face, eyes closed, and for an awful moment Parker thought they were looking at a corpse. Then the quilt rose up and sank back down.
The doctor stood by the side of the bed. “I have done what I can for her. She is not responsive in any way. Her pulse is weak, her breathing shallow. She has a bad burn on one arm. Dehydration. I sat her up earlier and fed her a bit of broth. Truthfully, all we can do now is make her comfortable and wait.”
Parker stepped forward. Reached for Olivia’s hand. Stopped herself. “Wait for . . . ?”
Monique’s hands came up, danced quietly for a moment in front of her chest.
Frustration and anger boiled up in Parker’s gut.
Sam broke the silence. “She’s still alive, though.”
“Oui. But I do not know why. No one has ever survived for more than a few moments after touching the glass obelisk. It is possible when the electrical charge was released, her friend acted as a shield, taking the force of the strike.”
“So she might live,” Parker said.
The doctor raised a thin finger. “Or she merely may not die as quickly. We should not have false hope, but it would seem there is at least a possibility of hope.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
Monique shook her head. “I have no other patients at the moment, so I shall continue to care for her as best I can. I shall let you know of any change in her condition.”
“One other . . . can I ask an unrelated question?”
Parker and Monique both looked at Sam. “Oui?”
“The monolith outside. It’s safe to touch, right?”
“Of course. If it was not, there would be a fence around it.”
“There isn’t a fence around the other one,” said Parker.
“They have tried. It is difficult to maintain something so far from Roanoke.”
She guided them back out of the house, and Parker had a gnawing, instinctive impulse to give her a phone number or email address. Something so the doctor could get in touch with them. She’d almost squashed it by the time she and Sam stepped outside and the heavy door closed behind them.
She stepped off the front step, down past the flowerbeds, and into the dirt path. Her brain spun to a new target. Sam took a few quick steps to keep up. “I guess it’s better than nothing,” he said, glancing back at the house. “For now, maybe we—”
“What’s your name?”
Sam froze. Considered. “What’s it—why does it matter to you?”
“I don’t like it when things don’t make sense. And you keep not making sense.”
“I don’t—I make sense.” His voice had that nervous, sputtering quality again. Trying to rush the words out faster than his tongue could make them.
“You won’t say why you joined this trip last minute, and now you won’t say what your real name is. I’m already dealing with two people on this trip who were using fake names.”
