Leonard could only blink. When was the last time that Val had called him Grandpa? He couldn’t recall.
Leonard spent the day sick with worry. The two duffels, packed full of food bars, canteens, fresh fruit, and a few clothes and books, sat near the kitchen door as if to mock the old man.
He’d started to phone Nick Bottom to tell him that they were coming and then put it off. He’d wait until they were actually on the road.
Val came home a few minutes after eight o’clock. The boy’s clothes were filthy with mud and there was blood on his forehead and shirt. His eyes were wide.
“Leonard, give me your phone!”
“What? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Give me your fucking phone!”
Leonard handed the phone to the crazed boy, wondering whom he was going to call and with what news. But Val smashed the phone under the heel of his heavy boot—once, twice, as many times as it took for the components to spill out. The boy grabbed the chip and ran out the door.
Leonard was too surprised to chase after him.
Val was back in three minutes. “I tossed it onto the back of a truck headed west,” he panted.
“Val, sit down. You’re bleeding.”
The boy shook his head. “Not my blood, Grandpa. Turn on the TV.”
The Los Angeles News Channel was in the middle of a special bulletin.
“… of a terrorist attack at the rededication of the Disney Center for the Performing Arts earlier this evening. Shots were fired at Advisor Daichi Omura, but the Advisor was not injured. We repeat, Advisor Omura was not injured during the terrorist attack, although two of his bodyguards were killed along with at least five of the terrorists. We have video now of…”
Leonard could no longer hear the announcer’s words. Or, rather, he could no longer make sense of them.
There on the screen were the dead faces of several of the terrorists. They were all boys. Their faces were blood-streaked, their dead eyes open and staring. The camera paused on the last dead face.
It was the face of young William Coyne.
Leonard turned in horror toward his grandson. “What have you
Val had both duffels and was shoving one against his grandfather’s chest. “We gotta go, Leonard.
“No, we have to call the authorities… straighten this out…”
Val shook him with a strength that Leonard never would have imagined in the boy. “There’s nothing to straighten out, old man. If they catch me, they’ll kill me. Do you understand? We have to
“The rendezvous at the railyard’s not until midnight…,” mumbled Leonard. His extremities were tingling and he felt dizzy. He realized that he was in shock.
“It doesn’t matter,” gasped Val as he splashed water from the kitchen sink onto his face, wiping the blood away with the small towel hanging on the washing machine. “We’ll hide there until it’s time. But we have to
“The lights…,” said Leonard as Val dragged him out the back door.
Val said nothing as he tugged his grandfather to the bicycles and the old man and the boy began pedaling madly down the unlit alley.
1.07
Six Flags Over the Jews—Monday, Sept. 13
There was a man crucified above the iron gates of the Denver Country Club but it didn’t slow Nick down in his Monday-morning commute up Speer Boulevard to Six Flags Over the Jews. The phone news had no identity on the crucified man and there was no announcement yet on the reason for his crucifixion. Traffic moved briskly and Nick had to flog the gelding to keep up, getting only the briefest glimpse to his left of various emergency vehicles around the entrance and cops on ladders. The once -expensive and -exclusive country club hadn’t been a country club for some years now and the golf course and tennis courts were covered with several hundred windowless blue tents of the sort the UN liked to bring in to Third World countries after tsunamis or plague. No one that Nick knew was aware of the purpose for these tents here at the club—or, for that matter, which country or corporation owned the country club these days—and no one seemed to care, including Nick.
He’d used all the flashback Sato had given him and slept all Sunday afternoon and Sunday night. This sort of full-systems crash happened often with heavy flashback users; the drug’s effect seemed like sleep, down to the rapid eye movements, but it wasn’t sleep. At least not the kind of deep sleep the human brain required. So once every couple of weeks, flashback users crashed and slept for twenty-four hours or more.
Except for a headache that felt like the world’s worst hangover, Nick had to admit that he felt more refreshed.