Resonance by J. B. Everett (free ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📕

night and decked her, blacking both eyes. He knew that wasn’t the case, since he’d seen the color forming for several days now. “You miss your boyfriend?”

 

That, at least, startled her. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

 

“Friend with benefits?” If you dug with a little trowel you could get pretty deep before anyone noticed what you were doing. Or decided they didn’t want to answer your question.

 

She laughed. “Yeah, benefits. Like I can sleep.”

 

“Huh?” Digging with his little trowel only worked when he was prepared.

 

“Since McCann, I have nightmares when I sleep alone.”

 

“Jesus, Jillian, all you had to do was knock. You know you can stay with me.”

 

Her eyebrows went up, making the fatigue look almost delicate across her fine features. All of it was clear across her face, left unhindered by the deep mahogany hair pulled up into her ponytail. He could easily read the distrust and the laughter.

 

“I don’t think I would get any more sleep with you than I do by myself.”

 

“Hey. I’d let you sleep.” What the hell? Was he defending his own honor? Even he knew he didn’t have any.

 

“Right.”

 

Twenty minutes of silence later they arrived at the penitentiary. He pulled the tires onto the soft sand lot where they parked with a slew of other cars, but Jillian was out of the car before he flipped the key. She almost closed the door, but then was across the lot like a streak of green, her hair flying behind her.

 

David looked beyond her fleeing form to see what she was running to. The only thing his brain processed at first was that something was wrong. He wanted to yell, to tell her to come back. But she was gone before he could call out. And all he knew was that something was dreadfully not right.

 

Canvas fluttered in the air. Fans and machinery could be heard. But nothing human moved.

 

Except for Jillian, who disappeared between the tents, running toward whatever was so wrong.

 

Grabbing his briefcase, David took off after her. Even as he ran, he tucked one hand down in the side pocket to pull out a small electronic compass. He clicked the power button and was rewarded with a screen full of dashes followed by a blinking error light.

 

The reversal. That was the only explanation. He pulled out an old needle compass his father had given him back in his days as a boy scout. Even now, the feel of his hand around the metal case brought back the warning that he had better not lose it. But he slipped it out to watch the classic red arrow sway like a drunken sailor.

 

“Jillian!”

 

His heart was ready to pound its way out of his chest, and his breathing seared his lungs it was so deep and ragged. Jesus, had he just been talking about sex? And now …

 

“Past the computer tent!”

Or, at least, that’s what he thought he heard, the wind ate portions of her words like a staticky broadcast.

 

So he ran to his best guess, stopping short when he did finally see her.

 

Jillian was on her knees, working the hood off of a fallen suit. Another lay behind her, his head lolled to the side, mouth open, his helmet lying a foot away in the sand.

 

He heard the precious compass hit the dirt, and instantly his knees bent, his body’s immediate reaction to protect its treasure. Her face turned up to his, her stethoscope hung from her ears, her penlight clung to her fingertips. “They’re all under.” Her eyes tracked wildly to either side of him.

 

“Jillian-” He grabbed her arm to pull her to her feet. Thinking to embrace her in a hug, and comfort her. But she jerked her arm out of his reach.

 

Before he snapped out of it, Jillian was on her feet, racing away. Her standard uniform of running shoes carrying her well from one tent to another. He raked his fingers through the sandy earth, sifting out the round silver compass and he followed, watching as she lifted flaps and peered inside each one. He checked the needle periodically, noting where it went from the wild swinging to pointing due south.

 

This whole shanty town the CDC had erected was now in the reversal.

 

Jillian dove into one tent and David ran the distance to join her. Not knowing what he could do, but that he would do whatever was needed. They were in a maximum security prison made of loose canvas. There was no telling when or how the prisoners would get loose. Or what they would do to the cute little doctor if they did.

 

The tent was darker than he expected and his eyes took several seconds more than he felt was reasonable to adjust. When he finally was able to focus on Jillian, she was kneeling on the floor where a CDC employee, not in a hazmat suit, had curled up between the patient gurneys.

 

Jillian put her stethoscope on the woman’s chest, rolling her from her side onto her back even as she checked the prone woman. The badge hanging around her neck flashed as the woman rolled over, revealing that she was an RN.

 

He didn’t really want to know, but he asked anyway. “The others?”

 

She made eye contact finally, but he almost wished she hadn’t, her vivid blue eyes were bright with a gloss of unshed tears. “All the same.”

 

He reached down for her with his right hand, having shifted the compass to his pocket and the briefcase into his left. “Jillian, we’re standing in a reversal. We have to get out.”

 

“What?” She focused on him. In him, somewhere inside his soul.

 

“We’re deep in the reversal right now. Everywhere you ran is backwards.” He tugged her to her feet, whether she wanted it or not. All of it made him uncomfortable: her gaze, the polarity.

 

“And judging by what’s happened, it’s pretty powerful. We have to get out.”

 

He simply turned and yanked her along, brooking no protests. He kept going until they had arrived at an untouched cluster of cactus, well beyond the tents, opposite the parking lot where they had come in. It had been the fastest way out. Finally, when it seemed she wouldn’t protest, or just dash back in to save some chart or blood sample, he dropped her hand and plucked the compass from his shirt pocket.

 

North.

 

True north.

 

He breathed out.

 

But while he gathered himself together, Jillian fell apart. Her legs gave way and she sank onto the sand beneath her, gathering her knees in her arms and burying her face in the space between.

 

It took a few moments with him standing there, looking out over the desert while she cried at his feet before she spoke. “Why didn’t they call?”

 

He shook his head, but mentally he flipped through image after image of what he’d just emerged from.

 

“You know, it looked like people just fell wherever they stood.”

 

She started to uncurl. And David knew he’d handed her something for that brain of hers to chew on. She’d come back around for that.

 

“No.” She looked up into the sky and he waited for what she’d reveal. “They didn’t fall. There were no broken bones, or bumps to the head. It was like they curled up or lay down where they were. They had at least a few moments.”

 

He nodded for her to continue.

 

“That would mean they got sick very quickly… even the RN didn’t get out of the tent to tell anyone. But she didn’t fall. Not the way she was lying.” He thought he saw a ghost of a smile pass her lips. “That nurse was smart. She even thought it through and lay down on her side. In case she vomited. So she wouldn’t choke on it.”

 

Pleasant, he thought to himself. But he’d have to remember that, in case he came to needing it.

 

“Help!”

 

It cut through the air. A human voice that wasn’t theirs, calling from the other side of the camp.

 

Jillian was on her feet in an instant, dashing back in towards the tents, until David caught her arm and hauled her off her feet, nearly yanking her shoulder from its socket. “You can’t go back through there. We have to go around.”

 

So she pulled him at a breakneck speed. He wouldn’t let go and she wouldn’t slow down. David wouldn’t abandon his briefcase, so it slapped against his leg a few times until he learned to hold it out of the way. He ran with the compass in front of him, watching for the shift and pulling Jillian off to the side more than once as the needle jerked too much for his taste.

 

It wasn’t reliable, this running and reading. The compass was meant to be used by a camper who had a moment to stop and let the needle settle, not running at high speeds around fatal pole reversals.

 

Just then Jillian stopped short and, without any warning, he crashed into her back, eliciting a grunt from her and a quick save as she managed to keep them both on their feet.

 

Five county cars were sitting in the lot where they hadn’t been before.

 

“Shift change.”

 

Her voice caused a swell of nausea to rise in him. Twenty officers had just arrived to relieve their friends, only to find them comatose, scattered across the ground like forgotten toys.

The sound came again, from off to their right. But this time it wasn’t a cry for help. It was a muffled noise, a grunt, a groan, or somewhere in between.

 

And she was just too fast for him to catch. Jillian jumped into the fray, dashing between two tents and disappearing from his view. What the hell, he was going to die anyway. He might aswell go out chasing a hot doctor.

 

When he arrived, she was leaning over an officer who was curled on the ground with his arms wrapped tight around his stomach. “Ahhhhh.” It was soft. Not so much in pain as it was a release. And even as David stood there dumbfounded, the arms slackened. The officer’s face lost its tension and his head eased to the ground.

 

The officer looked like he had suddenly gone to sleep.

 

Jillian looked over her shoulders at another man who was standing over a fallen colleague. A quick sweep revealed that almost all of the officers were already down. Only a few remained, clutching their stomachs, and one had his hands clasped over his ears, as though the eerie desert silence was the loudest feedback.

 

As David watched Jillian rushed, helpless, from one man to another. Not able to help any of them without sacrificing the others. Not able to help any of them anyway. And one by one they dropped. Creating a pattern of fallen bodies in grey-green uniforms, aligned in small clusters, attesting to how they had tried to help each other.

 

The whole shift down.

 

“Jillian!” He paced up to her in several hard steps, again grabbing her behind the elbow and dragging her along. “We have to get out of here. Look at what it’s doing to people.”

 

He thought of nothing else but reaching the edge of this freak of nature and walking beyond it. He hauled her with him, completely unconcerned for her well-being. Mostly he figured he should take the only other standing person out of the reversal with him.

 

When he felt he was far enough beyond, probably way further than necessary, he pulled out the old boy scout compass again. This time he was able to use it in its intended style, standing still. Although his hand shook like Richter seven.

 

North.

 

Again the needle direction freed his lungs of their breath.

 

Jillian just stood next to him, a statue in kelly green, her eyes blinking on and off azure blue. He wanted to lean over and put his hands on his knees and breathe like he had just finished wind sprints. Feeling his lungs contract so rapidly and painfully was almost a relief.

 

“Why are we still standing? Why did they collapse and we didn’t?”

 

He looked up to see her eyes connect with his. He felt it like a hit, square in