Astounding! (25 page)

Since he was wet anyway, it seemed a good time to shower. He padded to the little bathroom and waited for the water to heat, then got under the stream. As he was soaping up, he lazily stroked his cock a few times but decided he was more hungry than horny. And his mind was wandering. He could jack off later.

He hadn’t had sex with anyone since John left. He’d thought about it a few times. Wasn’t like he could be unfaithful to a lover he’d never see again. But in the end, other men—ordinary men—didn’t interest him very much. Sure, he could appreciate a cute face or a nice ass, but he knew none of them could compare to John. And not just because none of them could fly. Sex with them would never be as wonderful as even the regular, human lovemaking he and John had shared. He was a little wistful over his situation, but nothing more than that. Yes, he was lonely. But he had a small and growing circle of friends—more than he’d ever had before—and those friendships gave him considerable solace.

God, he missed John, though.

After showering and drying off, Carter dressed in sweatpants and a tee. He wandered into the kitchen, where he reheated some leftover chicken and potatoes in the oven. He added some salad greens to his plate and sat down. He’d bought an ancient radio at a junk store and hadn’t managed to fry its electronics yet. Sometimes he listened to music while he ate. But tonight he leafed through the mail without really reading it—a couple of catalogs, including the one for shoes; a sales circular with pizza coupons; an exhortation to donate to a charity he’d never heard of. Then he looked at a printout Tammy had prepared for him the previous day, listing cats available for adoption at a local shelter. He was leaning toward an older female tabby who was FIV positive, but hadn’t quite made up his mind.

At first he’d hesitated to get a pet because he didn’t know how long he’d be able to stay in John’s house. But his salary from Far Out—while hardly gigantic—was enough to pay his bills, and he still had two cars and all the cash John had left him. Plus, John’s landlady—his landlady now—had already expressed her willingness to let him stay on after the New Year, when John’s prepaid rent ran out. He was content in Portland and had no reason to leave John’s house, so maybe it was time for that cat. He’d give the shelter a call tomorrow.

Carter finished his dinner dishes and, with a bottle of root beer in hand, walked into the living room. Freddy had sent him the printed manuscript for his newest book and begged Carter to do a round of edits. Carter still hadn’t clued him in as to why he was avoiding computers, but he had an inkling Freddy had guessed. They’d be having that conversation soon.

Carter picked up the thick stack of paper, tucked his red pen behind an ear, and sat in one of the matching green armchairs.

John’s chairs were ugly and the upholstery was wearing thin, but they were comfortable. Carter wondered why John had bought two of them. For symmetry’s sake? Or with the vague hope of someday having a partner? Hell, maybe he hadn’t bought them at all—maybe they’d come with the house. In any case, tonight Carter’s usual chair felt oddly lumpy. He wiggled his ass around like a hyperactive kindergartener before trying the other chair, but it was just as bad.

Fine. He moved to the desk instead. That chair was a large office model with a tendency to creak. Tonight the creaking grated on his nerves, so he tried to sit very still—but didn’t succeed. He pushed the blue typewriter out of the way so he could put the manuscript in its place, but he couldn’t focus. The lights seemed too bright, making his head hurt, and he almost but not quite heard a faint buzzing sound, like a wasps’ nest far away.

God
, he thought
,
rubbing his face hard.
I should go for another run.
Only it was dark outside and raining hard. Going for a jog would be crazy.

Fine, then. If he couldn’t run, he’d fly instead. Abandoning Freddy’s book, Carter switched off the lights; he could see well in the dark nowadays. He went to the bedroom and lay atop the blankets, wishing they still smelled like John. And dammit, the mattress felt lumpy too, even though it was usually great. Travis was a machinist at a futon factory. Maybe Carter should consult with him.

But really, Carter knew the mattress wasn’t at fault. Nor were the green armchairs or the living room lights. The problem was him. His skin was on too tight tonight, his nerves strung a twist or two too far. He wanted to shed his body, and yet he was suddenly terrified by the certainty that if he did so this evening, he’d never return.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” he shouted, leaping to his feet. He’d felt fine all day. He’d helped a lot of customers, reorganized part of the graphic novel section, planned via landline telephone a book signing for later that month, and sorted through several boxes of used books Tammy had acquired from an estate. A busy day, but fairly typical. Well, not quite. He kept thinking he heard someone saying his name—whispering, not calling—but when he looked, nobody was ever there.

“Maybe I’m going insane,” he said to the darkened bedroom. “Here I am, talking to myself, even. Pretty soon I’ll be arguing with myself instead.”

But he didn’t feel crazy. Just… restless.

He paced back and forth in the small room. But instead of settling him, the activity only increased his agitation. Something was tugging at him, as if he’d forgotten something extremely important and couldn’t bring it to mind. The hairs on the back of his neck stood, and he shivered, but not with cold.

A drive. He needed to go for a drive.

He paused only long enough to throw on his rain jacket and slip into his shoes. Then he grabbed his wallet and keys and hurried out the door through the pelting downpour to the Chevy. On the infrequent occasions when he drove, he generally took the Dart. But tonight that didn’t feel right.

The windshield wipers squeaked, and between the heavy rain and the refracted streetlights, he couldn’t see very well. Luckily traffic was light. Still, he had to concentrate very hard to keep a reasonable speed. His foot kept wanting to press harder on the gas pedal.

“Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up,” he muttered as he merged onto the Banfield.
Hurry up why?
He didn’t know. Something just felt terribly urgent. Something was chasing him. No, no, that wasn’t it.
He
was chasing something. Fuck knew what, though.

He drew near I-205, and for a moment he thought maybe he’d been overtaken by a ridiculous urge to visit Ery and Karl, who lived on a houseboat on the river. But he’d never been to their place and didn’t know the address, and anyway, he kept heading east past 205 instead of turning north. Once he was through Troutdale, the freeway hugged the Columbia River on his left. With the river and the rain, everything was water, and he felt as though he was piloting a boat instead of a car. Only the cliffs looming to his right kept him, very literally, grounded.

He saw a sign for Rooster Rock State Park, and despite his anxiety, he smiled. Rooster Rock had a clothing-optional beach, and when Karl heard about it, he’d dragged Ery there. Karl apparently wasn’t too fond of being dressed and had enjoyed the chance to cavort unclothed in the water. But Ery declared that he’d rather skinny-dip in private, thanks very much, since a naked Karl drew far too much attention for his liking.

Carter didn’t want to skinny-dip either. Especially not on a rainy November night. And that was fine, because he zoomed right past the Rooster Rock exit. He sped past the exit for Multnomah Falls as well.

Not too much later, though, he came to a sign marked Exit 40, and he slowed and angled to the right. He was slightly relieved to discover he wasn’t intending to drive himself to Idaho, but he couldn’t fathom why he’d been faced with such an overpowering urge to visit a fish hatchery. Which was closed at this hour, of course. He pulled into the empty parking lot, turned off the engine, and sat. The raindrops beat a noisy tattoo on the Chevy’s roof, but the inside of his head was noisier—all static and maddening drone.

And now he knew why he was here—had a good inkling, anyway—and it had nothing to do with watching salmon spawn. Nope. It had to do with those structures over there, on the river.

Carter had never been here before, but he knew what lay ahead through the darkness. Karl had mentioned this place the first time they’d spoken, hadn’t he? When he’d said that Carter thrummed. This was Bonneville Dam, which provided a good chunk of the Portland metro area’s electricity. Probably provided the power for John’s house, in fact—now Carter’s house.

His heart beat so fast that he honestly feared he would keel over.

But he didn’t die, at least not yet. He climbed out of the car, shut the door with a resounding thud, and sprinted toward the powerhouse.

His shoes slapped against the wet pavement, rain stung his eyes and blinded him, and the quiet but rational voice in his head informed him that somewhere security guards patrolled and they likely wouldn’t be amused by a madman racing to the dam at night in a deluge. Carter ignored all of this. With a move that would have impressed the fuck out of his high school PE teachers, he hurdled the chain that blocked the roadway, then raced over a short bridge, across an island, and along the spine of the dam itself. He arrived on what he suspected was an island. There were fish ladders, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. He sprinted toward the visitor center, long since closed for the day, fronted by a small concrete plaza edged by shrubbery.

And there, behind a bench, lying in the soggy bark mulch, was a corpse.

The body was naked, as thin as a famine victim, and curled into a fetal ball. The skin was so transparent that Carter could see at various spots the blood vessels, muscles, or bones beneath it.

With a wail that was lost within the rush of water, Carter collapsed to his knees beside the corpse. He reached out with a shaking hand, touched the sharp shoulder, and found the skin cold.

Yet inside the body, he felt… life. Very faint, and it stuttered beneath his fingertips, but it was there.

“John?” he whispered, knowing nobody would hear.

Moving slowly and carefully—although he wanted to rush, wanted to
know
—he rolled the man onto his back, taking care to keep the head turned so the rain wouldn’t fall straight into the face. Even though as skeletal as one of the skulls in Far Out’s Halloween window display, the face was familiar. As were the blond strands of hair, looking darker now and plastered tight to the scalp with wet. The tissue-thin eyelids were closed.

Carter placed his hand on John’s chest. He felt a heartbeat, trembling and slow. He saw terrible marks everywhere—burns and bloodless gashes, deep divots in the meager flesh. No human could survive in this state. And although John was
not
human, he was dying, the energy of his life force leaching into the cold ground.

Energy.

Carter was no scientist. As a student, he’d learned only enough biology, chemistry, and physics to fill out a good sci-fi tale. More than once, when he’d been given an especially technical story to edit, he’d run it by a few acquaintances with degrees in something other than humanities, just to make sure the tech stuff was plausible. Somewhere in the recesses of his brain, though, he remembered that energy is mass.

So if he wanted to add to John’s mass, giving him enough body to live, Carter needed to find enough energy. And conveniently enough, he was sitting adjacent to a whole lot of turbines. Enough to power a city. All he needed to do was convert all that handy energy to mass.

Easy as pie, right?

With his palm still flat on John’s chest, Carter closed his eyes and flew. But this time he didn’t dance up into the sky, pirouetting among the raindrops, flickering from cloud to cloud. This time he rose up only a hundred feet or so, spread himself out, and poured himself into the enormous generators.

Oh,
fuck
.

He’d sipped on starlight and streetlight, dined daintily on moonlight, nibbled at the warm beams that spilled from houses’ front windows. This was nothing like that. This was…. He’d tried cocaine once, back in college. He didn’t like it—it made him feel out of his own control. This was a little like cocaine, only a million times more powerful. And power was the key word here, because he
sang
with it. He goddamn
screamed
with it. It flowed in him, through him. It
was
him, and he was limitless. He was the mighty river that crumbled rocks as if they were rice paper. He was the sun that burned for billions of years in its plasma tango, bringing light and warmth and life to the little chunks of rock that orbited it like adoring fans. He could touch everything and go on forever, or at least close enough to forever that the end didn’t matter. He could—

With an agonizing wrench of will, Carter directed all that energy through himself, through his physical body, and into John. Not just the megawatts generated by the Bonneville Dam, because that wasn’t nearly enough. But the dam was a part of the grid, and the grid had other dams, coal plants, gas generators. Even nuclear plants. He drew, too, on the river and the vast ocean it connected to, on the sun and the stars he couldn’t see but could feel. Carter drew on them all.

The energy burst through him—and everything went black.

T
HE
BLACKNESS
was literal as well as metaphorical, since Carter lost consciousness and collapsed beside John. But when Carter came to—not much later, he guessed—the lights in the parking lot had blinked out. In fact,
all
the lights near the visitor center were out, and when he peered toward the Washington shore, where he might have been able to see the highway or scattered houses, he saw nothing. The rain had stopped, though. Not even a drizzle remained.

Carter didn’t know what it felt like to have a bomb explode inside one’s head, but he now had a pretty good inkling. Groaning, he tried to focus on John.