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

voice, and no longer startled by the fact that his Dad would cry over the phone. Jordan didn’t know what had connected them again, finally, but he wasn’t about fight it or hinder it in any way.

 

Now he watched as David passed through the initial phases of morphine intoxication. David’s musculature relaxed, his face no longer quite so tense. The glazed look wasn’t uncommon either. But David hadn’t been really talkative since they had brought Jillian back in.

 

When Jordan explained that she was under again, Carter had wrenched himself around trying to get a look at her, even though she was directly behind his head, and the shoulder harness prevented him from doing anything of the sort.

 

What Jordan hadn’t been able to get the geologist to say what he was feeling. Jordan had two good guesses. The first was that he was actually concerned for Jillian, which normally Jordan would have dismissed.

 

But Dr. Carter seemed to have developed an attraction to the little dark spitfire and Jordan certainly couldn’t fault that. The second option was that he and Jillian had gone step by step together. Immune in Nevada. Falling under here just after everyone else. Waking early. It was a logical progression that David was watching her to see what was coming next, if he might fall back under as well.

 

But he just stared at the white walls of the tent. He said he was writing his paper in his head while he waited for his laptop. Someone had confiscated it for medical use, while he’d been recuperating from his fall, and the staff had yet to locate it. David wasn’t happy about that either. His theories were floating out there in the ether, he had said.

 

Jordan watched while David sank into a peaceful slumber, then woke the man, just for a second. Just to be sure.

 

Then he steeled himself, knowing he had no more cause to avoid Landerly, which he knew in his heart of hearts was exactly what he was doing. And he marched himself right back into the records tent.

 

Landerly didn’t look up, or acknowledge his return in any way other than to begin speaking. Jordan briefly wondered if Landerly had simply continued the conversation all along, not even realizing he was gone. He suppressed the smile that fought to be free and tried to pay attention.

 

“We don’t have an age bias. Or a race bias. Nor seemingly a continental bias.”

 

“Why ‘seemingly’?” Jordan seated himself and picked up one of the tomes.

 

“Many continents aren’t fully reporting - like Africa. There’s an interesting case. With their numbers of AIDS infected I’m curious how they’ll fare. But they’re barely reporting at all. The towns that are look like they match our numbers here and Europe.”

 

“What about India?”

 

“Same. Their reporting is better, but not great.” He removed his glasses, aging himself ten years in the process, and rubbed at his eyes. But his voice continued. “There’s some issue with the Australian Outback as well. There are a lot of people, some aboriginal, that may never have been accounted for. And we don’t know what happened to them.”

 

Jordan thought for a minute. They had been frantically writing everything down as they thought of it and discounted it. Although he hadn’t been sure what it mattered until Jillian had slipped back under. But now there was a goal – they had to see if there was any way to pull her out. And help anyone who went back under like her.

 

“What about gender bias?”

 

“What?” Dr. Landerly had already engrossed himself in the next long list, jotting on it in slashes of pencil, with no regard for the fact that the book would be looked over by anyone with family in that area. That they might not want to see Landerly’s number counting or comments on age and race in their family member’s margins.

 

Jordan spoke, knowing he was rehashing, but thinking that it might trigger something important. “The women went under first, pretty much everywhere. So this thing does have some sort of gender distinction. The only person who’s slipped back under is female.”

 

“Hmmmmm.” He flipped through several pages. “I haven’t seen it in the survival rates.”

 

Jordan just set down his pencil and began flipping pages looking for anything unusual. But after several hours his butt hurt. He hadn’t found anything that stood out. And he needed to check on David.

 

And Jillian.

 

Without a word, he got up and walked out. He couldn’t go into the tent though. And without even a hesitation stalked past, going through the dark of night, under glaring overhead field lights creating enough light between the tents to see by. Stepping carefully on the cold dark grass, he made his way into the now functioning cafeteria and got himself a soda. Which he’d gotten hooked on again after having practically given them up when he graduated med school. Oh well. He wasn’t dead. He’d survived a disease worse than the plague. What was a soda going to do him really?

 

With his soda in hand, he forced himself back to the tent that Jillian and David shared. Afraid of what he would find when he checked Jillian, he tried to rouse David first. And had no success.

 

Tamping down the frisson of fear that escaped up through his senses, he set down the drink and went about it the right way. But he got no response. “David!” He tapped on the man. Pinched him. Yelled again.

 

Nothing. The geologist didn’t even sputter when Jordan yanked up his eyelids and shone his penlight directly in. Damn the man.

 

“Landerly!” He used all his lungpower. “Somebody get me Dr. Landerly from the records tent!”

 

A tech popped his face in and asked Jordan to repeat the instruction. Jordan thanked him and went through with the rest of a vital signs check. After he’d been through everything he knew to do, twice, he gave up and turned to Jillian. Landerly walked in just as Jordan finished taking her vitals.

 

“Landerly.” He heard the shaking in his voice, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

 

“Her respirations are at sixteen.”

 

“So? That’s within normal.”

 

He shook his head. “Jillian’s always textbook. She’s always eighteen. Right when she went under the first time and this time, too. When she’s asleep … she’s eighteen.”

 

Landerly cocked his head.

 

But Jordan kept going. “She’s slipping.”

Chapter 19

With her lower lip between her teeth, Jillian walked out into the dark beyond her tent. People scuttled here and there, each seemingly with a purpose. Many of them held charts, and most of the tents were lit like Jack-o-lanterns, a soft glow perfusing through the canvas and pouring blindingly out of the openings. In one of the open tents doctors in white coats were passing papers around in a lively debate while a mechanic in the background took a wrench to one of the UV-and-visible-light machines. It looked like a Christmas card for the scientific community.

 

It was organized. Purposeful.

 

What a difference a day could make.

 

Jillian took a deep breath and found her own purpose. She was starving. All the family notifications could wait, but she’d pass right back out if she didn’t eat something. With determination, she headed toward the building, passing square white tents, the flaps ruffling in the breeze, and she pulled her jacket a little tighter.

 

With luck, she’d find Jordan in the cafeteria. Maybe even David, if she’d been asleep for twenty-seven hours and woke up in his bed then his hip must have been well enough to get into a wheelchair. He could be anywhere, as long as he had someone to keep an eye on him. She figured he’d be downgraded from morphine to Percocet by now.

 

And if they weren’t there, then at least someone she knew would be. Throwing open the door she was assaulted by the smells of cheap Italian food. The pasta wouldn’t be quite al dente, and the sauce would be thin. And the bread would be steamy, meaning not crusty.

 

And it would be heavenly.

 

She followed her nose, not even bothering to look around for anyone she knew. If they wanted her, they would have to yell. Loud.

 

She grabbed a thick Corian tray and piled it high with food as she moved down the line. The bread was in her mouth before she even began ladling up soggy looking green beans.

 

But in minutes she was sitting alone at a table, methodically moving the fork from plate to mouth, eating as fast as she could, breathing deeply and inhaling the smells until she had finished every bite.

 

After sitting for a moment, she hauled herself up and stacked her tray on top of the trashcan as she exited into the cold night air. The sky had gone from trailing reds, that she remembered as fact and not as feeling, to dark navy set with bright stars.

 

For the first time in her life it gave a deep feeling of belonging, of being a tiny part of something else. Jillian stood silently. Digesting. Breathing. Staring. Wondering if the world would shift again beneath her feet. If she’d get sick, pass out, fall under again. But she was fairly confident that it would stay steady now. That her deep inhales wouldn’t draw in anything dangerous.

 

It was all broken by the revving of an engine as the car pulled into the drop-off lane, reminding her that they had hijacked a high-school.

 

Her brows pulled together.

 

If the car was pulling up, that meant it had been somewhere, even if it was just around town.

 

The reports told that the whole world had switched. That everyone had gone under and either woken up or died. But that meant as soon as they cleared things up here, they could go home.

 

Suddenly the air wasn’t so inviting. She didn’t feel so safe.

 

She longed for the streets of Atlanta. Not even Signal Mountain where she’d grown up. Georgia was the home she had chosen. She could go back to her job, maybe even get in a few days of nine-to-five, write some reports. Jillian snorted to herself, likely she would spend the rest of her career writing this report.

 

Turning away from the parking lot, she heard another car turning over and pulling out, more evidence of freedom seeping in through the closed gates of the city. She headed back into the tents to find Jordan and David. A smile played across her lips. At least David wouldn’t be able to move very fast, and that ought to make it easier to catch up to him.

 

In her own tent again, she was shocked to see that all evidence of Jordan was gone. Jillian frowned before realizing that he had probably moved back upstairs.

 

Without thought, she turned and pounded her way up the four flights. Thinking that signs of David had been removed from the tent, too, and he certainly wouldn’t have moved back up stairs he couldn’t climb. But she continued. Empty of life and sound, the dim hallways were lit only at every fourth fluorescent, to give you a way to see, but saving energy as well.

 

Jillian started to laugh out loud at that, but stopped herself when she heard the noise start a macabre echo down the length of the hallway. Energy conservation would be a whole different ballgame with less than half of last week’s occupants