Marc Zicree - Magic Time

“No,” Cal said, and it hit her like a blow, her surprise at his rejection cutting him to the heart. “It would be great, Colleen,” he added quickly. “But there’s been a change of plans.”

Goldie lost just a beat but kept on playing, while Doc drew up beside them.

“At first, I thought we could run from this force that’s gotten into Tina and Stern and who knows how many others, get somewhere it couldn’t reach us, reach her. But Tina sensed- saw -it’s far off, part of it to the west, part-the weaker part-to the south.” Cal gazed through gauzy curtains onto the city. He thought of dying things, and the kind of life that fed on them. “If it can reach us here, I think it probably. . I don’t know where it’s safe.”

“And so what do you propose to do?” Doc asked quietly. “She’s still plugged into it. Like a receiver that’s off the hook. If she can home in on it, we might be able to locate the part that’s not strong yet.”

“And then what?” Colleen’s tone was glacial.

“Strike at the heart of it, if we can, and make it stop .”

“This thing that can smash the world to pieces? That can shoot lightning from the sky? Boy, Griffin, it’s not enough for you to launch yourself from the top of a skyscraper latched to some fire-breathing dinosaur-”

“That’s why it has to be just the two of us.”

Colleen’s green eyes flashed protest. But before she could speak, Cal put his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve done enough.”

All of Colleen’s bravado deserted her then; she deflated. “Fine.” She stormed out of the room.

“ Colleen. .”

Doc shook his head. “Calvin, my friend, I don’t want to presume to tell you your business, but I’m going to tell you your business.”

“Doc-”

“Kindly sit your behind in that chair and cease speaking.” Doc cut off Cal’s protest. “ Sit .”

Sighing, Cal sat.

“You may have noticed that certain events have been transpiring around us, demanding we extend ourselves to new and surprising heights. I think we are in a process of transformation. Not physical, all of us, but. . in other ways.” Doc moved closer. “I know it feels terrible. Painful. Frightening. Some won’t even survive, but that’s how birth is.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Calvin,” Doc’s tone now gently scolded. “Three days ago I was serving hot dogs on the street. I could smile, make jokes, but I was a dead man. Or at least, in deep coma. And Goldman here. A derelict soul, friendless, living-” He gestured the image away. Goldie continued strumming, seeming not to have heard. “And you. A timid rabbit in a business suit, denying who you are.”

Doc’s eyes shifted, followed Colleen’s path of retreat. “As for her. .” Cal caught something, or thought he did. A tenderness. “Well, you would know better than I. But my point is, we are all of us changing, perhaps rising to something we might only have dreamed of. A purpose. A destiny . Is any of this getting through to you?”

“I’m not going to lead you to your death.”

“ Olukh !” Doc erupted. “Didn’t you just hear me ask you to lead me away from it?”

They glared at each other, the lilting tones of the guitar swirling between them.

“What about Roosevelt General?” Cal asked finally.

“A good doctor goes to the root of the malady.” He shrugged. “Calvin, if I could have walked into that reactor, shut it down before its poison reached out to the men, their wives and children. .” And here Doc thought of his own dear Yelena and Nurya, gone to aching memory. He did not tell Cal. Let the dead have their secrets.

“The pestilence spread because there was no containment vessel,” Doc continued. “Here, perhaps, we can be that vessel.”

He crouched before Cal, grasped his hands. “You are a leader, Calvin, that is your self . And if you deny it, you weaken any chance you might have for your survival or your sister’s. It is arrogance and stupidity, two traits you have not evinced of late, so I would advise you not to start. If any of us care to follow you, let us. ”

Cal peered into the lined, compassionate face. “And what if I’m wrong?”

“Then you’re wrong.”

After a long moment, Cal nodded assent. Doc grinned. “ Speciba ,” he said. “Thank you.”

Cal rose. He felt like one big bruise. Only then did he notice the tune Goldie was softly playing, nodding to himself in the golden dawn light.

“Let’s Face the Music and Dance.”

Goldie lifted his eyes to Cal, and they were glistening.

He feared she might have left the apartment, but he found her in the kitchen.

“Christ, I hate instant coffee,” Colleen murmured, tossing the flat, cold remnant of it down the drain.

Cal said, “I’m sorry.”

She knew he wasn’t talking about the coffee. They both looked down, avoiding each other’s eyes. He moved closer. She took a step back.

“No water in the pipes, I’m startin’ to reek like a pair of old socks.”

“Try getting the smell of blood out of your hair. .”

“Hey, the day’s young.”

Silence settled over them, oppressive. At last, Cal broke it.

“Colleen, Doc and I had a conversation. .”

She lifted her eyes, their brightness returning. “Yeah? Russkie set you straight?”

Cal nodded.

The tension in her shoulders relaxed. “So you’re not gonna march into the mouth of hell.”

“Well. . yeah, I am. But Doc and Goldie are coming, too.”

“Shit.” She averted her face, and Cal had the impression that tears had sprung to her eyes. She swiped a wetness from her cheek and turned back. “You know, when the Wizard told them to get the Witch of the West’s broomstick, it wasn’t any fucking worthiness test-it was so they’d bite the big one and be fucking out of his hair.”

“Look. . I know it’s crazy. It’s. . I just don’t know what else to do.”

“You’ll die.”

“Can’t promise that for sure till I get there.”

Colleen glowered.

Cal said, “Sorry I’m letting you down.”

“You?” Surprise lowered her defenses. “You’ve been a brick.”

“Sure you don’t mean ‘p’ instead of ‘b’?”

“Nah. I know the difference. You’re talkin’to a connoisseur.”

She gazed out the window then, the light full on her marble-fair skin, her eyes glinting jade. He watched her, saying nothing, wondering if she was reflecting on the long night and what remained for her in this broken city.

“Maybe hell’s a real fun place,” she said at last. “No way to know till we get there.”

And though he felt weary and weighted and grim, Cal felt himself smiling as she looked back at him.

WEST VIRGINIA

A man named Jerome Bixby wrote a story called, “It’s a Good Life,” in which the inhabitants of a town were trapped in the tiny, completely arbitrary confines of their village by a child born all-powerful, unhuman and mad.

Wilma had always hated that story; hated the nightmare of helplessness it implied, the subjection to unknowable power and rules.

She thought of it many times, in the days and weeks that followed the grunter attack on the Wishart house.

Seven or eight people tried to leave Boone’s Gap in the twenty-four hours that followed Wilma’s attempt. Two made it back to town, scraped and scared and hornet-stung and exhausted, with tales of things heard and seen in the mist that started just beyond the confines of the town. Al Bartolo, who was gone three days, reported finding the bodies-or what he thought were the bodies-of Phil and Nancy duPone, who’d disappeared into the mist shortly before Al’s attempt. He wouldn’t say what had killed them, but he said over and over again that they were definitely dead.