Ethan almost laughed, but the stony expression on Dave’s face said it would be a bad idea. “That would be a trick, wouldn’t it? I don’t think I can do that.”
“Why not? You caused a freakin’ earthquake! Using your mind, is that what you’re saying? And now you can’t use your mind to move a little hat?”
“I had to want to do it…like…because it was the only way. I don’t know how I did it. I just knew…right then…that minute…I had to try, because I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want anybody else to die. I had to do what I could…whatever I could. So…it just came out of me. I felt it. Then when it was over I felt it go back into me, and it went to sleep.”
“What did you feel? What came out of you and then went back in?” There was a note of sarcasm in the man’s voice.
“I guess…power. That’s all I can say.”
“Power.” Now the sarcasm dripped. “Yeah, right. A fifteen-year-old boy with the power to make an earthquake happen, but he can’t move a hat a couple of feet. Can you levitate yourself off the bed? See the future? Can you tell me how all this hell comes to a happy ending?”
“No,” Ethan said, his face shadowed in the lamplight. “No. And no, I can’t.”
Dave ran a hand across his forehead. He listened to the rain hammering down outside. He stared intensely into the boy’s eyes. “Did you know about the spring under the pool?”
“No.”
“Then what were you doing? Why were you walking around in there?”
“I thought it was where I ought to be.”
“Something told you that? Something spoke to you? Is that it?”
Ethan shrugged. “I don’t—”
“Why don’t you know?” Dave had almost shouted it, but he was holding himself back with a massive effort. “Or better yet…what the hell do you know? Not your real name, where you came from, or where your folks are. You just ‘woke up’ and you were running, isn’t that what you said? And suddenly you can make an earthquake, and a swimming pool cracks open right where you’ve been walking and clean water flows out? Because you thought it was where you ought to be?” Dave grinned crazily, with fury and frustration behind it. “Christ!” he said. “Okay, you found us some water! How about more food? More bullets, too. That’s what we need, because we’re not going to be able to hold off another attack. So conjure us up some more ammo, Ethan! Can you do that for us? If you can’t…we’re done for. Got it?”
Ethan frowned. He knew the seriousness of what Dave was saying, but something else was working at him and it was relentless. “The white mansion,” he said. “Have you ever heard of it?”
“What? Do you mean the White House? In Washington? What’s that got to do with—”
“The white mansion,” Ethan repeated. “Not the White House. I think it might be a real place, and I think I need to go there.”
“Really? Well, I think I need to go to the freakin’ moon. Are you crazy, kid? Is that it? You’re out of your mind?”
Ethan stared into the glow of the oil lamp. Who was he, really? Where had he come from? He didn’t know the answers to those questions, but he knew some truths and he decided to speak them. “I think I have to go there. I think something wants me to go. It’s important, but I don’t know why. This place…the apartments…it’s no good. No one can stay here. The next time they attack…it’s going to be all over for those who stay. But I believe the white mansion is a real place…and I think…I believe…something is telling me to go there.” He looked steadily into Dave’s eyes. “That name came to me in a dream. I keep thinking about it. Can you find out for me if it’s a real place, and where it is?”
“Oh, you’re having revelations in dreams now? What’s next? Water into wine? Make it whiskey, and I’m sold.”
“I’d settle for lemonade,” Ethan answered, his face solemn. “I’m telling you what you already know about Panther Ridge. Sir,” he said, so as not to sound disrespectful. “Can you please help me find out about the white mansion? Ask if anybody else has ever heard of it, and where it might be?”
“Oh, sure! We’ll check the Net, how about that?” Dave stood up. He put on his baseball cap, still damp with oily rain. He had no idea why he’d come here to ask the boy these questions, but there were no answers that suited him. Maybe he’d wanted there to be…something…some answer he could grasp and hold onto. Instead…the boy had to be crazy, and that was that.
Ethan got out of bed and followed Dave from the room. In the hospital, a few people were sitting in chairs either waiting for treatment or being treated. As in Dave’s apartment, pipes and wires dangled from the crooked ceiling. JayDee was busy applying a cast to the left arm of a weary-looking middle-aged man in a dirty white t-shirt and jeans, and the two nurses were tending to other patients.
“You okay to go?” JayDee asked Ethan as he worked on the man’s cast, and Ethan nodded. Dave was almost to the door, which like the one in Olivia’s apartment would not close in its damaged frame. “Be careful,” JayDee told Ethan. “Raining pretty hard out—”
“Hey! Just a minute! You…son!”
The man with the injured arm had spoken. He was staring at Ethan. “Wait. I know you from somewhere. Don’t I?”
Dave stopped just short of the door and looked back. Outside, the rain was slamming down.
Ethan didn’t recognize the man, who had curly gray hair, brown eyes and the patch of a bandage across his bruised forehead. “I don’t…think so.” A little spark jumped in his heart. “Do you know me?”
“From somewhere. I came in a few days ago, with my wife. It seems like I’ve seen you before. Damn, that’s hurting!” he protested to JayDee, and then he returned his attention to the boy. “I think I’ve seen you, but I can’t remember from where. Wait a minute…wait a minute…you had on…different clothes. A shirt…a dark red shirt, with one sleeve torn off.”
“That’s right.” Dave came back to stand nearer. “That’s what he was wearing when he was brought in yesterday. So where’d you see him?”
The man started to speak and then seemed to stop himself. He wore an expression of dismay.
“Go ahead, tell us,” JayDee urged, pausing in his wrapping of the plaster bandages.
“I remember,” the man said. “We were with another group. In a strip mall. Maybe six or seven miles from here. The place was wrecked. We were trying to find a new place to hide, because our other place was torn up. They were fighting up over us…and we were trying to find somewhere to crawl into. Then…” He looked from Ethan to Dave and back again, and once more he seemed not to know what to say. “The aliens must’ve just gone through. We came to a place where there were bodies. People dead maybe a few hours…lying in the bricks where the walls had been blown apart. And…you. You were lying there, too. That’s where I saw you. Only…you were dead. Like the others. Six people, all dead. Lying in those bricks, and that’s where you were.”
“Bullshit!” Dave snapped, with rising anger. “If it was him lying there, you can see he’s not dead!”
“Yeah, but…he was dead. It looked like an explosion had thrown them around the room and blasted the walls out, but…his face…he looked like he was just sleeping, and Kay said for me to check him and make sure…because he was only a boy and we shouldn’t leave him. So…I checked his heartbeat and his pulse, and there was nothing.” His gaze found the floor. “I did check. I did. There was—”
“You were wrong,” Dave interrupted. His face had reddened. “Damned wrong! Maybe his heart and pulse were slow, but…look at him! Does he look dead to you?” And then Dave caught JayDee staring at him, and Dave remembered he and the doc standing in the Secure Room looking at the ugly black bruises on Ethan’s chest and back, and JayDee saying I think he’s suffered a very violent concussive event. An explosion of some kind. Might have been caught in a shockwave. “Wrong,” Dave repeated to the man with the broken arm, and then he turned away and walked out because questions led to questions and there were no answers and even in a madhouse world like this had become a dead boy did not rise from the dead. He kept walking, faster and faster, out into the driving rain that felt like small lead weights striking his skull, back and shoulders.