Resonance - J. B. Everett (best novels to read for students TXT) 📗

thought back through the code –

 

“You’re probably dialing his number from the last hotel we were in.” Jordan’s voice came over her shoulder, indicating that he hadn’t taken his cue from her, and hadn’t moved an inch. “I bet you remember them all. All the room numbers and the layout of each place…”

 

Jillian was just happy that he couldn’t see her blush. The poor boy had been subjected to Jillian-24-7. She could be her own sad reality-TV series. She punched in the code for David’s current room and he answered on the third ring. “Carter.” She curled her lip at the phone. She had to get a new ‘hello’. They were all such techies.

 

“David, it’s me, Jillian.” Well, that was a hell of a lot more human than ‘Brookwood’ barkedout like an army order. “We’re on the move again. To the Nevada-California border.”

 

“And what’s there?” She could hear him rustling in the background. He was probably already starting to pack.

 

“Maximum Security Prison. With a bubble.” Stopping herself, Jillian realized she was starting to sound like Landerly. Subject-Verb, minimal clauses and don’t bother with articles or adverbs. And she seriously doubted it sounded charming on her. So, with a sigh, she started again.

 

“They can’t move the prisoners. We’ve got a tight deadline.”

 

Jordan’s whole body was leaden; the bubbles had grown black and faster moving. One was going to overtake him, but he couldn’t force any more speed from his legs. Jillian and David had been running with him, but they had both disappeared along the way. David into thin air, and Jilly, smiling and waving, had been happily engulfed by one.

 

Although Jillian had gone willingly, Jordan knew there was no good in the reversals. It was certain death. In testament to that fact, there were lifeless, rotting bodies strewn around him on the street. The smell was overwhelming. And the rumbling of the bubble was freight train loud as it got closer. The ear pain and nausea overtook him, as he knew they would.

 

“Jordan.”

 

He looked, still running, for the source of the sound. The second time the voice said his name, he recognized it as Jillian’s, but he couldn’t find her in the black.

 

With a jolt he slammed into the cushioned seat of the airplane as though he had been dropped from a high place, his eyes opening as the vicious dream faded into the back of his head. But the ear pain and nausea were real, surely byproducts of the rapid descent they were pulling.

 

He felt himself sinking through the seat, giving up and giving in, when Jillian grabbed his arm again. “You have to wake up. David’s up. We’re landing in two minutes.”

 

They would call Landerly when they got in the car and got the secure line set up. They would tell him all they knew, and all they had seen, and wait for his mind to churn. Not that Landerly had been a banner help lately. That he was as stumped as they were had been a small comfort.

 

Jordan blocked all else from his mind and thought of the hot tub and the pool that would await them where they would stay near the state line. It was cheaper on the Nevada side, and that would mean gambling and lights and noise. But that would be all right he supposed; it might keep his mind off what he had left behind. And how Lake James was doing.

 

Kelly and Lindsey had been evacuated right away, in a bald and scary attempt to save them from the reversal that was growing in the corner between the two bedrooms, creeping a little wider each day like an infestation of mold in the walls. Lindsey had already been sick, stomach ache and ear pain that same morning they had arrived.

 

And that had scared the crap out of Jordan. Lindsey was the only living proof of Eddie’s existence.

 

Everything else would fade with time. He soothed himself with the thought that it seemed if they were able to pull a person out of the reversal in time, before they got too sick, they wouldn’t have any effects.

 

On the flip side, if they didn’t get the person out in time, there was only one course - the victim always ended up dead. And no one had any idea what the cut-off point was.

 

In his head he counted out the death tolls. Florida was at seven. Lake James at five, and maybe more. Twenty total in McCann, although no more since they had figured out to get people out of the area.

 

Both McCann and Florida had traceable paths. A patient zero. The look of contagion. Lake James didn’t.

 

The bubbles were cropping up all over the place and taking out random people. Or at least it seemed that way now … Jordan desperately wanted Jillian to have an epiphany. He wanted to interview someone, anyone, who would give him that last shred of information that would allow his mind to grasp the picture in the puzzle even though they were nowhere near complete.

 

And if Lindsey had truly had it … Well that was another story. He had seen her labs himself. And she was a perfectly healthy kid by all known measures. It would have almost been easier to take if she had been sick and nobody had known it. But if this thing was taking out healthy people now … there really wasn’t an answer.

 

And why wouldn’t it take out healthy people? Diseases killed without prejudice or forethought. They could wipe out entire populations without conscience. And even if this was simply an environmental hazard then what would they do when David’s predictions came true and the poles swapped? When the whole earth was a reversal field?

 

He knew he was possibly looking at the end of ‘life as we know it’. If it wasn’t disease that did them in, then they would have to stand on their Darwinian principles and die the brave death of the non-fittest.

 

Becky trudged through the high grass in the far back of her parents’ property, hiking boots laced tight, stomach full from the family breakfast her mother had insisted was necessary because her oldest daughter had returned home the night before. And Becky had let her do it. Since she was heading back to Atlanta and the bio lab right after she packed her things. Which was right after she assured her parents that she wasn’t going out to the frog site.

 

Which was a bald-faced lie.

 

She was heading crosswise through the property. Toward the back corner fence, carrying a walking stick with a mounted compass. Her backpack full to the brim of lightweight CDC equipment and empty lexans. By necessity she was out here alone. Was that a stupid thing? Probably. Who knew what this site would do to her? She might go into a coma and die right there on the spot. But something told her she wouldn’t.

 

Jordan and Jillian and their infectious disease cronies hadn’t told the biodiversity team any more. They hadn’t found out if the illness was caused by one-time long-term exposure or if all the little exposures added up to get you sick. If that was the case then she had been plenty exposed and just walking into a site like this was asking for trouble.

 

And the docs had no real theories. No one could tell if the older sites were stronger, or if the newer ones were. Or if size mattered. No, the one thing they had told her about that was they were counting on her to sort that thing out. No one felt the need to evacuate the animals from the sites. And it was Becky and John Overton who were supposed to be exploring those possibilities. The boundary tape was dirty now. Little leaves clung to it. The bright color faded away. Maybe they shouldn’t have put it so low to the ground. Maybe tent stakes hadn’t really been the best idea. What if an animal tripped and injured themselves? What if a person did? Closer up she saw pink tape. It wasn’t staked but wound around tree trunks and draped across low lying branches. It was brighter, newer. The CDC had tagged it but not marked it ‘keep out’ or ‘biohazard’. God only knew if the neighbor kids crept over the fence to play. About ten feet from the tape she saw the compass jump. Dammit. She knew this site was growing and she hadn’t been paying attention.

 

Fingers of sun came through the tall trees now, and winds found their way around the trunks. Becky pulled up her turtleneck, glad now that she had dressed a little warmer. Starting back again toward the site, this time she kept a clear eye on the compass. Strands of her hair slipped across her face and into her mouth right as the needle jumped.

 

This time she set down the backpack and pulled out a rubberbanded bunch of weighted flags. CDCP DO NOT TOUCH emblazoned in repeating letters across the orange streamers. She dropped one where the compass started to bounce.

 

The red needle danced in every direction, unsure which way was true north, confused by the one thing that was supposed to keep it constant. She dropped another flag where it became steady again. Of course this time it was pointed south.

 

Standing several feet inside the site now, Becky looked over the two dropped flags. The fuzzy edges were getting larger as the bubble grew. Her brows pulled together against the thoughts in her head, even as her shoulder blades pulled together against the wind that had picked up again and was biting at her exposed skin.

 

Becky breathed deeply, concerned about just what it was that she was breathing in. Unsure if the reversal caused the problem or brought the problem or fed the problem. God, they didn’t know anything.

 

She thought she should feel something different. That her body should instinctively know she was somehow being exposed to something deadly. Her heart did beat faster, but Becky had no doubt that was due to her own adrenaline surging rather than any external force altering her heart rate.

 

In that instant the sun disappeared, causing her heart to speed up as her head snapped back. She saw the cloud dusting its way across the sky even as her brain reminded her there was, of course, a logical explanation.

 

But chasing the cloud was a jet. Probably taken off from McGhee-Tyson and headed into Nashville.

 

Her breath sucked in, and she stood, trapped, mesmerized, petrified, as the jet blazed a trail toward where she stood. In the clear sky it took almost two full minutes for the plane to reach a point directly overhead, and for the entire time she simply stood there, tense as a piano wire. Adrenaline keeping her whole body on high alert. Her brain flipping and discarding thought after thought about where to run and how to escape if the plane came tumbling down out of the sky. Somehow, no one had thought to check the height of the bubbles. She knew it now. A possibly fatal error - if the plane flew low, and if the bubble reached up that far.

 

The bee columns from LA indicated that these things could and did achieve some altitude. What would the pilot do if all the dash readings went suddenly out of whack? If the compass started jumping? If they looked down and saw they were headed east when they should be headed west? Would they change altitude, to avoid a crash, only to lead them head first into another plane actually traveling east? But the jet passed over without any events, leaving Becky sucking lungfuls of the air inside the site. This job was going to kill her. Well, that was if it didn’t kill the whole planet first.

 

She shoved her thoughts to the back of her brain - the disturbing ones anyway - and focused on the frogs.

 

They would be harder to find this time. It was later in the season. There might still be a