“Good word,” he said. “Maybe that fits.” He remembered he had said I think I caused the earthquakes in front of a roomful of people. No, more than that. He’d said I know I caused them.
“People say you’re spooky,” Nikki went on, her single eye fixed on him.
“Yeah, another good word.” He turned to face her, and he pulled up a smile and gave it to her. “If I’m so whacko and spooky, why did you climb up here to see me?”
She said nothing for a moment. Then she blinked, and it was her turn to shrug. “Maybe…I like whacko and spooky. ’Cause maybe I am, too.” She rubbed at an imaginary spot on the boards with the toe of a dirty blue Nike. “My folks said I was. After I got my third tattoo. They’re like…skulls and vines and stuff, on my back. You know, a little freaky. A friend of mine was studying to be a tat artist, so he did ’em for free. But I don’t have a tramp stamp,” she said quickly. “That would be a little much.”
“I guess so,” Ethan agreed.
“You got any?”
“Tattoos? No.”
She approached him. “You’ve got a bad bruise…right there.” She could see the dark purple of it just above the neck of his t-shirt, and she touched her own neck. “I mean…it looks real bad. What happened?”
“I’m not sure. That’s something I can’t remember.” Or don’t want to remember, he thought.
“Does it hurt?” Maybe impulsively, Nikki reached out with her right hand and the index finger touched the bruise. Then, immediately, she gasped and stepped back. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh…wow,” she said. “I mean…look at that!”
He tried to, but he couldn’t see it. He didn’t like the tremor in her voice. “What is it?” His own voice had climbed.
“Where I touched…my finger…the place turned silver. It’s starting to fade now. Wow,” she repeated. Her eye was wide. “Pull up your shirt.”
Ethan did. Exposed was the ebony bruise that covered his chest.
“Can I touch you again?” she asked.
“Go ahead, it doesn’t hurt,” he answered, but he was scared, and his heart was pounding.
Nikki reached out again, slowly, spread her fingers, and touched them to Ethan’s chest. Ethan felt nothing but her touch, though it appeared that the flesh seemed to shimmer around her fingertips. When she pulled her hand away, the fingermarks remained there in silver.
Quickly, they began to fade. Ethan saw the look of wonder on Nikki’s face abruptly change. She stepped back from him in fear, as if she were about to leap from the tower, and he said in an outpouring, “I’m human. I am. It’s just…there’s something different about me that I don’t understand. I’m okay, I’m not going to hurt you.” He pressed a thumb into his chest and watched the silver mark it left melt back into the darkness of the bruise. “Listen,” he told her, “I’m not an alien. Like…one of their experiments. I’m not.”
Her voice was very quiet when she spoke. “If you don’t know who you are or where you came from…how do you know what you are?”
That was a question Ethan couldn’t answer. He lowered his shirt. “Please don’t tell anybody about this. Not yet. Okay?”
She didn’t reply; she had backed away and was almost to the platform’s edge.
“Please,” he said, and didn’t care that he was begging. “I feel like there’s someplace I have to go, and something I have to do. It’s so strong in me, I can hardly sleep. The place is White Mansion Mountain, and it’s in Utah. Dave found out where it is for me. I have got to get there. Nikki…I think maybe…there’s something that wants me to go, because there can be an end to this.”
“An end? An end to what?”
“Their war. I’m just saying…I feel like if I can get to that mountain, and find out why I’m being called to go there…there can be an end to it. Do you understand?”
“No,” she said, very quickly.
“Ethan!” It was Dave, calling for him from below. “We’re loading up! Come on!”
“Okay, I don’t either,” he told the girl, “but please…please…don’t say anything about this.”
“Maybe you’re turning into a Gray Man,” Nikki answered. “Maybe that’s what’s happening to you, and I ought to go down there right now and tell them, and they’ll take care of you before we pull out.”
“You mean shoot me? Listen…Dave trusts me. So does Olivia…and I think Dr. Douglas kind of does. I’m telling you…I have got to get to that mountain, and if I do…when I do…I think something important is there for me. Either to have, or to know.”
“What, you think you’re Jesus or somebody? Like you’re supposed to lead your believers out of this…this shit…somehow?”
“I’m not Jesus,” Ethan said. And I’m not really Ethan either, he thought. “Just give me a chance, okay? You tell people about this, and it’ll scare them. I don’t need that. Nobody does.”
“Maybe we should all be scared of you.”
He was done. He could go no further with her. He said grimly, “Do what you want to do. Either tell them, or not. But I’m saying…I feel like I have a purpose. A reason to be here. Maybe we all do, but we don’t know yet what it is. The only things I want to hurt are the Cyphers and the Gorgons. I want them gone off this earth.”
“We all want that.”
“Yeah, I know.” Ethan had to look away from her frightened and accusing eye. “I’m going down to the bus,” he told her, in as calm a voice as he could manage. “Whatever you want to do…do it.”
She didn’t wait for him. She was down the ladder so fast she nearly blurred out like a Cypher. I’ve freaked out the freak, he thought. He climbed down, expecting…he didn’t know what to expect. But the last group of people were being helped or herded into the bus, and Nikki Stanwick was among them. She didn’t look back at Ethan or speak to Dave as she went past him and Olivia.
“Let’s go,” Dave said to Ethan as he approached. “Squeeze in back there.” Seats had been removed starting from about the middle of the bus back to the rear, thanks to the toolkit Darnell Macombe had saved from destruction, but still the bus was packed. The badly wounded were lying down or being supported by other people. The hardest part of this was the fact that JayDee had pronounced three wounded too severely torn up or bone-crushed to travel, and that their deaths were imminent. No other way, JayDee had said as he held himself up on his crutch. They may pass in an hour or two, or they may hold on for another five or six hours, but they don’t know where they are. It’s reality. There’s nothing I can do for them but suggest mercy.
And just who’s going to do that, Doc? Dave had asked. Who’s going to pull the trigger three times and live with that?
They shouldn’t be left alive here, JayDee had answered. In the dark, alone.
Shit, Dave had said. Is there absolutely nothing you can do?
I can’t even give them any pain pills. Only thing I’ve got is one bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I can’t fix Neal’s punctured lungs, and I can’t fix Dina’s broken back and her shattered legs, and I can’t give Asa a new brain to fix the one inside his crushed skull. I’ve got too many others that I can at least help…but…I guess what I should do…is…give out the medicine of mercy, because we don’t want any of our friends left behind—alive—if the Gray Men come tonight. So I’m going to take a pistol, and I’m going to walk over there where they’re lying, and I’m going to do what a doctor is sometimes called upon to do…play God. An imperfect, tortured, and feeble God…but someone has to do this. Now excuse me, Dave, while I finish my rounds.