Exit (12 page)
Authors: Thomas Davidson
By the curb nearby, a car door slammed shut. A cab shifted into gear and rolled off into the dark. Someone was going home.
Lucky them.
The theater closed before midnight on Halloween.
Just after 2:30 A.M. a small light winked on inside the dark foyer. Inside, a shadow moved. Then the front door opened slowly with a hint of a squeak. The box-office cashier emerged into the night, her head wrapped with a paisley scarf. She wore blue-tinted glasses, a gold shirt and a black vest. She stepped through and pushed the door all the way back,
click
, locking it open. Then she stepped outside and stood on the sidewalk, hearing the wind rattle the trees overhead.
She looked up at the Gateway's marquee:
Gone
. She smiled thinly. This was an experimental film that redefined
experimental
. And there could be more on the way, a new generation of innovative movies coming to America, interactive stories that lived up to the hype. Truly interactive. Avant-garde in 3D with surround sound. These films thrust the passionate moviegoers right into the action, offering a cinematic experience they wouldn't soon forget.
The new cinema was coming, and everyone adored movies that put them right into the action.
Down the street a lone car passed by, its headlights piercing the dark. At this hour Harvard Square was dead. Then she thought of two actors tonight. Somehow they had escaped from the film set, so to speak. A pity. And perhaps a problem.
Within a minute or so, a very faint sound could be heard. Something inside flew through the open door, into the night, so small it would remain unseen unless you were looking for it, peering intently.
Seconds later, another object followed the same trajectory, through the open door and into the cool, night air over Cambridge.
A few more mysterious objects trailed behind, and went sailing into the wind. Stardust over Cambridge.
The stranger on the sidewalk kept her eyes upward on the sky. And she said, in a low voice usually reserved for a lover's whisper:
"Find them."
PMS
Prefer My Solitude
“Surveillance breeds conformity.”
— Glenn Greenwald
"People are sheep. Drones are the shepherd."
— C.C. Seymour, Minister of Security at EyeSoar Corporation
November 1, All Saint's Day
“Wendy, wake up. Get up, Wendy.”
Are…you…serious?
Wendy could feel some rude idiot shaking her shoulder, shaking her out of her slumber. The voice was familiar. The voice sounded like a policewoman making an arrest.
“Hurry, Wendy,” her mother insisted.
The rude table lamp clicked on. The bright light was really rude, stinging her closed eyelids.
Wendy Darlington, age 10, opened her eyes and saw the clock on the nightstand. 1:03 a.m. On a school night. Their house must be on fire. Good. She could use a day off from school. Then her blanket was whipped away. Totally rude.
“Hurry!”
Wendy was abducted.
Within minutes she was held hostage, sandwiched between her parents in the front seat of their Chevy, watching nearly leafless tree branches shoot by above a dark windshield. The windblown branches suggested skeletons waving their arms, pointing their bony fingers down at the car:
Beware, little girl.
The Darlingtons sped to Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary. Her mother drove, dead silent. Dad, riding shotgun, held a bloody cloth pressed against his face, over his eye, which had been injured from a swinging tree branch outside their house’s back door after he had returned from the night shift at the factory.
Her father breathed through his open mouth and repeated what her mother had said: “Hurry.”
She sat directly beneath the rearview mirror, a shiny Saint Christopher medal dangling from it via a thin chain the size of spaghetti, and peeked at the scary tree branches overhead. She wondered if the branches were trying to get her, if it was her turn now. Even fearless Saint Christopher looked nervous, swinging in the air as the car careened. What a night!
After ten kid-sized heart attacks, she was dragged into a gray stone building with the screaming warning:
Emergency Entrance
.
Just after 2:00 a.m., she was sitting in the waiting area, the size of a big living room. In the chair beside Wendy, her mother was quietly snoring, head bowed as if in a church. Maybe this was a church. When they had arrived here, her mother had said, “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this. Jesus, Michael, your eye. Jesus.”
Nearby, a TV was tuned to a middle-of-the-night newscast. Low volume. The newscaster had the tone of voice of a parent reading their kid’s crappy report card. The newscaster said something about:
“…the threat level...”
Whatever that meant. Actually, it probably meant
the shit level
. Wendy was 10, but she wasn’t an idiot. She knew what was happening. And the shit level at the Darlington household had hit a new high tonight.
Wendy looked around. Most of the chairs were empty. At this hour, there were six other people. All adults. Two wore bandages. Three wore frowns. All strangers with one thing in common: bad luck.
Wendy blocked out the TV, her mother, everyone here—except the young woman sitting straight across from her. The slender girl with dark hair wore faded jeans and a black tunic sweatshirt. The girl was asleep in her chair, her head slightly tilted back against the wall. No one sat near her. She looked different from everyone here. Wendy could tell that she wasn’t an asshole (Wendy’s expanding vocabulary now included
asshole
). There was something mysterious about the girl. Of course, if she was here at this place, at this hour, well, she had a story. Everyone here had a story. Even the assholes. Everyone here had experienced some sort of
threat level
.
At 2:13 a.m., things got really creepy.
Wendy was still bunched up in her chair, arms wrapped around her knees, inside the scary emergency room, at a scary hour, when she saw it. Now, the scare-factor went up.
Literally
up.
The sleeping girl’s sling bag with a long strap was set in the chair beside her. The brown leather bag began to wrinkle, to move ever so slightly. Wendy noticed it, leaned forward from across the floor. How could a purse move by itself?
Something inside the bag was alive, and coming out. It moved along the inside, pushing against the leather. For a moment, Wendy thought of a caterpillar emerging from a cocoon. Then it happened. The mysterious thing rose right up out of the top of the purse.
A big…bug.
Wendy thought:
A dragonfly?
The dragonfly rose in the air, directly over the girl in black. It remained suspended a foot above her head, like a halo, reminding Wendy of the stained glass windows at her church, Saint Veronica’s Catholic Church. Later, Wendy was supposed to attend mass before classes at Saint V’s Grade School. November First was All Saint’s Day. Each day, the older kids in the playground at lunchtime had taught her swears, which she appreciated. Saint V teachers had taught her that the world was filled with sinners and saints. Like, duh? Spend time in your playground. Tonight, Wendy surveyed the waiting room—the sinners were winning. And maybe, just maybe, the devil was here in a weird disguise.
Wendy watched, pressing her sweaty palms together. How could there be a dragonfly in November? In a hospital? Answer: Satan.
Then her heart quickened when she saw the dragonfly move horizontally in the air away from the girl, then slowly descend like a spider until it reached a spot directly across from the girl’s face, and just out of reach. Its wings were a blur of movement without sound. It remained in that spot. Didn’t shift left or right, up or down. It appeared to be watching the girl.
Wendy thought,
a tiny helicopter
. And froze.
Probably every hospital emergency room in America was a scary place. But this…this was scary and weird. Really weird.
Wendy glanced at her unconscious mother. No help there. She turned back and watched the girl with the tiny helicopter by her head.
From twenty feet away, the newscaster repeated,
“…the threat level...”
Threat level. Wendy wondered if this was a threat level. A threat. Wendy was ten. Wendy was not stupid. It was time for Wendy to take action. She was gonna wake that girl up and warn her. Because, well, maybe in another minute it’d be Wendy’s turn. Maybe that tiny helicopter would fly over to Wendy’s chair. And if that happened, the threat level was gonna go way up.
The ER really gave Wendy the creeps. She started shaking as she rose from her chair, and took an uncertain step into the
threat zone
, as if the heel had fallen off her shoe. Except her sneaker didn’t have a heel.
#
Rayne Moore was slumped in her chair, down in a dark tunnel of sleep—the tunnel shape-shifted into an alley and this time she didn’t escape into the theater—when she felt something shake her wrist. She jerked, made a sound. Rose up from the murky depth at lightning speed and opened her eyes.
Two green eyes stared back. A little girl stood before her, clutching her hand.
“Miss,” the girl said in a low voice.
Rayne stared at the whispering girl in the purple quilted jacket. Immediately she felt a sense of unease. She said one word, “Tim?”
“What?” the girl said. Her face was blank.
Rayne looked across the room at the admissions area. No nurse or doctor waved their hand, signaling her. She turned back to the girl.
“Miss,” the girl repeated, “I think there’s something wrong.”
Rayne stiffened in her seat and glanced across the room. She looked back at the girl, leaning forward. “Wrong?”
In response, the girl’s eyes traveled upward, but not quite at the ceiling.
Rayne felt herself tighten up inside, and now the room seemed deathly quiet, which reminded her of nature’s early-warning sign. Eerie silence seconds before a quake. The little girl had looked up. Had she looked in any other direction…
“Yes.” Her emerald eyes flicked back to Rayne.
Rayne leaned closer and whispered in the girl’s ear. She almost asked,
What did you see?
But Rayne was already past that now. She said, “Where is it?”
The girl looked up, scanned the ceiling. Her eyes turned toward the waiting area’s entrance, by the admissions desk. A middle-aged woman sat inside the glass booth. Overnight shift.
Rayne stood slowly, cupped the girl’s shoulders and steered her into the chair. “Thank you, honey.”
The girl smiled nervously. “It came out of your purse.”
Rayne processed that for a moment. She thought of the horrific ride with Tim in the stolen taxicab. A churning, teeming cloud of tiny drones had appeared in the dark alley, and some had flown through the cab’s broken windows, attacking them.
One of them had gotten into her purse.
“It looked like a big bug. But…it didn’t act like a bug.”
Rayne pictured the tiny drone, the Tink, now inside the infirmary. She had to think this through quickly, step by step. The Tink would be equipped with a surveillance device. She imagined it sending back images of the waiting area and its surrounds. Sending it back to whom? And what if the video feed included images of Rayne and Tim? She didn’t know if the drone was equipped with a sound feed, not that it really mattered. A transmission of images of this area would tell the tale. Posted signs of Mass Eye and Ear were plastered all over here. Whoever was monitoring the drone could figure out the location in no time—unless, of course, that person suddenly had their retinas detach. But tonight, Rayne wasn’t feeling that lucky.
She reached for her leather bag and slung the strap over her shoulder. “Stay here. You’ll be okay, I promise.”
A small voice. “Okay.”
Rayne affected nonchalance as if standing up to stretch her legs. She needed to scan the ceiling without drawing attention to herself. Staring straight up would look peculiar at the very least. So she reached around and placed both hands against the small of her back, pretending it was stiff, massaging her muscles. She leaned back on her feet, inhaled deeply, and looked straight up.
Nothing.
She turned to her right toward the TV set and searched the area near the ceiling. All clear. She rocked on her feet, slowly moving side to side as if swaying to inner music, still massaging her back. Her eyes flicked directly up and then carefully across the white ceiling. Still nothing. Still swaying to an inner beat, she made a quarter-turn with her head tilted up and scanned straight across the room to the admissions area.
She focused her eyes, saw nothing out of place. Then she had an idea, and didn’t look for the drone. If it wasn’t nearby, she might not see it. So she concentrated on movement, any sign of flittering movement at that level. After a moment she noticed a small change of color above the glass booth. The color moved horizontally, skimming alongside the wall, toward the adjacent foyer by the main entrance. She focused, saw the tiny drone become more defined in her field of vision.
And if she spotted it…someone, somewhere, knew the hunted was now hunting.
Now: two choices.
Rayne had to decide quickly. She could try to capture the drone inside the hospital. She imagined chasing after it through the busy corridor, pulling off her tunic and swinging it like a lasso, trying to swat a tiny drone. Hospital security would be all over her in no time. A surreal football game—Rayne would be midfield, running toward the end zone, and getting tackled by a squad of defenders. Pinned to the floor.
How would she explain her actions, never mind the long night’s events?
Another possible scenario came to mind. If she couldn’t subtly intercept the drone—a long shot at best—then it was just a matter of time before Tim would emerge from the examination room and be caught on camera. Instant transmission, back to wherever.
The drone slipped out of her field of vision. Darted around the corner and into the corridor.
Rayne thought:
Get out, head for the exit
.
She walked slowly into the foyer with the EMERGENCY ROOM sign overhead, eyes straight ahead on the bank of glass doors, and cut between a few people clustered inside. She hoped she was spotted making an exit. Again she stepped outdoors into the chilly night, and considered her next move.
She turned right and stepped over to a cluster of benches facing the narrow one-way street. She sat down on a cool slab of wood. A man and a woman wearing powder blue scrubs stood nearby, talking and smoking cigarettes. Behind Rayne, plate glass windows shielded the lobby. Anyone or anything could be watching her from inside. Maybe, she thought, it was to her advantage to pretend she was unaware of the drone. She didn’t turn her head toward the entrance to watch for the Tink to subtly appear and fly through an open door. Eventually it would exit the building; and it may have already.
Rayne recalled the last several minutes. When the Tink rose from her purse, Tim was already gone, and couldn’t have been spotted. Maybe the isolated drone was off the grid, disconnected from the parallel world. Unmonitored, useless.
A rogue drone? The thought sparked a cold smile.
Could it be? Was she worrying for nothing? Or…