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

frantically, barely able to wait while Jack thumbed through the books looking for that county. “They were visiting, so that’s where they’d be listed, right?” Right?

 

“Your guess is as good as mine.” But with two hands he held out a gray bound volume, green and white striped computer paper was compiled and clipped inside, looking like an ancient corporate budget.

 

She set it carefully across her lap, barely registering that the man in the next bed had asked to see the local book. Lifting the front cover she saw only the word LIVING at the top of the page, and immediately with no fanfare it listed names, social security numbers and addresses on some. A few were just descriptions. In the order they’d been found. No real rhyme or reason.

 

Names sounded familiar to her, but not familiar enough to pause and think back. She was searching frantically for her family. She found her father. Her breath escaping. She had one.

 

Three pages later she found Brandon. Both listed at Aaron’s address.

 

Twenty pages later she had found no one else. Just a half unfinished page, and the top of the next page reading DECEASED, as casually as LIVING had been labeled at the top of the first page.

 

Breath held, Becky read on. She knew what she would find. Her mother, her brother Aaron, and baby Mel. But she had to know for certain.

 

She found her brother on the second deceased page. Melanie was less than half a page later. Becky felt her lower lip curl, her teeth biting into it in a rabid attempt to stop the tears even if she couldn’t stop the knife cutting through her heart.

 

She blinked it away, telling herself she would let go when she found her mother.

 

But nineteen pages later she still hadn’t.

 

Jack had stood by patiently, helping Wilson, as his name seemed to be, locate people he knew.

 

She interrupted, not caring about the manners her mother had drilled into her. Not when she didn’t know where her mother was. “What about the people not listed? In either place?”

 

Jack shook his head. “It usually means they’re unknown. Not found. Still comatose.” He shrugged. “Like we just put the word out on you two, and a couple others from the past hour. But there’s still a good handful of people here who haven’t either come around nor given up the ghost yet.” He shrugged again, looking like the whole world had gone crazy and he just wanted to be a nurse. Well, Becky thought wryly, the world is now populated with patients. “Other towns fell after us, so they’re coming around later as well. They have even more undecideds.”

 

Undecideds?

 

That was what you were in college if you didn’t know your major. It seemed a remarkably callous label for people who had not yet died.

 

Her mother was ‘undecided’. “When do we find out about them?” She couldn’t lose her mother.

 

“We’re getting wires and phone calls and faxes all the time. If you want to give a few names the hub will keep an eye out for them. I think there’s a form to fill out. Would you like one?”

 

A form to fill out?

 

But Becky held it together enough to nod.

 

Jack swept away the juice cups and de-cluttered the tiny tent in efficient motions as he made his way off to retrieve the offensive forms. But Becky stopped him short. “Do you have the local lists?”

 

She had to do something to keep from breaking down. She couldn’t turn into Jell-o now. She forced herself to breathe deeply and evenly. She chewed her lips. And graciously accepted the green bound forms.

 

She found no one on the LIVING list. A few techs, a few nurses. But of the small handful she really knew, there were no names.

 

The DECEASED list held just as much mystery as answers. Only two names were on the list. Early on, Leon Peppersmith. His even had an asterisk by it. The small star took her to the ends of the row where it was listed:

 

*blow to the head. She had to flip back to the first page to discover that the notation meant he had died of something other than the reversal.

 

Blow to the head.

 

Had he fallen while he carried her? What? God forbid, murdered?

 

Becky shuddered, and shoved it out of her mind. There wasn’t a damn thing she could accomplish from this hospital bed.

 

Jillian Brookwood and David Carter II were missing. But on a fresh page, labeled DECEASED and obviously quite recently added, were ten names. Dr. Jordan Abellard appeared near the end.

 

Jordan hauled Jillian back to their tent, her weight getting heavier every minute. He’d barely come out of a coma himself. But he wasn’t about to complain, everyone was making superhuman efforts. Trying to keep as many alive as possible didn’t allow for relaxation and recuperation. Unless you were Doctor David Carter the second.

 

The geologist sat propped up on the gurney that Jordan had initially put Jillian on several days earlier, toying with his IV and drinking a soda. Jordan resisted the urge to tell him that both actions were bad for his health.

 

But then again, if you were willing to pitch yourself down the stairs to get out of helping, then Jordan didn’t have a real vested interest in making things rosy.

 

He pressed his lips together, forcing the thought aside. David certainly hadn’t thrown himself down the stairs. The man was no idiot. It was just circumstance. So he forced a smile. “Hi David. Are you feeling better?”

 

Dr. Carter nodded, then motioned with his chin – probably everything else hurt – to Jillian lying limp in Jordan’s arms. “Is she okay?”

 

Again a nod was sufficient. Jordan spoke coolly as he arranged her on the bed he had vacated only hours before. “She’s either sound asleep or passed out. Too much work in too little time with too little to eat.”

“So what will you do?”

 

Jordan shrugged. “Let her sleep. Maybe run an IV if it looks like she’s dehydrated.” Out of habit and the necessity to do something, he checked all her vital signs. Of course they all checked out. Jillian probably wouldn’t suffer her pulse or blood pressure to be anything less than textbook. He asked David if there was anything he needed. Without coming right out and saying that quiet was necessary for Jillian to sleep, he suggested reading materials, or a headset.

 

But David shook his head, and rolled away, making like sleep wasn’t far off the horizon for him either, and Jordan was grateful for that small thing. He closed the flaps to the tent, hoping to create a false darkness in the room, but only succeeding in marginally dimming it. The tent leaked sunlight like a sieve.

 

He considered letting himself back out, thinking he should go and be useful. But David’s chest was already rising and falling in steady cadence. And just the short time watching the two of them sleep was enough to lull Jordan into a chair. Painfully uncomfortable, he leaned back, lolled his head to one side until it contacted the pole of the tent.

 

He watched Jillian lie still on the gurney for …

 

Well he wasn’t sure. Only that he dreamed Landerly had shown up and was shaking his shoulder.

 

Then the tent pole thunked his head as Landerly tried a little harder.

 

With a purposeful wrenching of his eyes, Jordan got them open to see that Dr. Landerly was, in fact, standing beside him, a cane clutched in his hand. As Jordan looked, he became more convinced that he had woken within his sleep state.

 

The left side of the older doctor’s face had a bit of slack to it. His left arm seemed a little less rigid than usual. But Landerly looked just as formidable as ever. And now in his right hand he grasped the cane, either as a walking implement or a weapon. Jordan had no doubts that Landerly would never use the cane on anyone.

 

He could simply point out faults and weaknesses until you admitted you were lower than worms, and begged to be beaten instead of fired. “Sir?”

 

The dream vision answered back. “Abellard. Good to see you awake. How long has our girl been under?”

 

He looked at his watch. 5pm. It was getting dusky outside and that translated to a portion of the dark he had strived for inside the tent. “Five hours. I figure she has another ten before she even begins to catch up on what she’s missing.”

 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Landerly lifted the cane from the ground as he gestured.

Jordan sniffed away the last clinging vines of sleep and told Landerly. “I think she only slept about six hours over more than two days.” He sighed. “And about worked herself to death.”

 

“You’ve been asleep.”

 

It was just a statement. But from Landerly’s mouth it was a bit more of an accusation. Why wasn’t Jillian awake to talk to the boss? The two of them would be laughing like old pals in a heartbeat. But no, he got Landerly all to himself. He decided if things got tough, he’d just sic David on the old man. He nodded his acquiescence - yes, he’d been sleeping, God forbid.

 

Landerly leaned down. “She’s not asleep.”

 

“What?”

 

“She’s comatose.” Landerly walked over to her and lifted her hand. She showed no response, neither to the invasion of another person moving her limbs, nor to the drop her arm endured flaccidly back to the mattress when Landerly let it go. “I checked her. She’s showing nothing.”

 

Jordan was on his feet and wide awake. But this time he was desperately trying to talk himself into the fact that it was a dream. “She was asleep when I brought her in here.” He paused, thinking back. “She almost passed out, but she showed movement. She murmured or something.”

 

“Well, not now.” Jordan heard Landerly drop himself into the chair he had just vacated. But he kept his back turned. He blinked. He breathed deeply. Did everything he could think of to wake himself up from this. He did everything he could think of to wake Jillian up.

 

But she didn’t rouse. Not to pressure or pain. Not to her name or his. And he realized that she hadn’t moved from where he had laid her when he brought her in.

 

Through tightly clenched teeth, he turned back to Landerly and asked, “Well, what do we do now?”

 

But he saw his anger was misplaced. Landerly’s cane sat off to one side, his head rested in his right hand, and that elbow rested on the arm of the chair, as though the effort to hold any part of him upright was just too much.

 

Jordan didn’t ask. He suspected that Landerly’s own coma hadn’t been too kind to him. He hadn’t been sure the old man would make it out. Especially when, with the final sweep of the reversal, so many young, vibrant, and perfectly healthy people were succumbing.

 

But the poles had swapped. David had predicted it and, as usual, he’d been right. Everyone had fallen under for at least some period of time. The world had lost billions as best he could figure. The whole population reduced by slightly more than half.

 

No more China’s Only Child Policy. Property values would be reasonable again in New York and LA. There was clean-up to do - everywhere. The earth was shattered as far as he was concerned. And fallout was going to last for decades, minimum. At no point in his memory could he pinpoint a worldwide disaster like this since the dinosaurs had died out.

 

But at least, he had thought, they were finished.

 

Now was the time to pick themselves up and move on.

 

But Jillian…

 

How was she under again?

 

What the hell did she have?

 

He threw all these questions at Landerly and then some. But Landerly shrugged, said he didn’t know.

 

Jordan shook her again. But, of course, there was no response.

 

His eyes blazed holes in the top of Landerly’s head, the only part the old man was showing.

 

“How the hell are we supposed to figure this out? She’s