Mark Justice - The Green Dawn

“Jubal?” She didn’t sound sleepy and he suspected she’d been up with the woman. He glanced at the clock.

2:30 a.m.

“What’s wrong?”

“How fast can you get over here?”

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand. He could use another few hours of sleep.

“Do I have time for a shower?”

“No.”

He sighed. “On my way.”

He used the bathroom and washed his face. Next, he checked on his mother. He wasn’t surprised to?nd her still sleeping. As much as he wanted to wake her up, turn on the lights, maybe?x her some toast and turn on another Gunsmoke episode, he didn’t disturb her. He tried to tell himself that it was simply because she needed her rest. But he knew that wasn’t true.

He was afraid he would see blisters on her face, and he didn’t think he could handle that right now. He closed his eyes. He had never been particularly religious, but now he said a silent prayer, asking for his life to return to its boring normalcy.

Jubal slipped out of the house as quietly as possible.

The stench of the sick woman still lingered in the cruiser, so he had to drive with the windows down again, but it was a typical cool desert night; the breeze felt good after the scorching hot day.

When he pulled into Fiona’s driveway, he saw lights on throughout the house. It would soon be his house, as well. He had already moved some of his clothes and personal belongings in, and Fiona had allowed him to set up a woodworking space in the garage. She had asked him if he needed space for any hobbies. He hated to admit he didn’t have a hobby, so he decided he was a woodworker. The birdhouse he started back in February still sat on the bench, covered with dust. Fiona never mentioned his lack of progress and he knew she never would. It was just another reason he loved her.

Since she was expecting him, Jubal didn’t knock.

He smelled the sick woman before he crossed the threshold.

He had carried her to the couch in the front room. Fiona had suggested the bed in the guest room, but Jubal didn’t think he could carry the woman that far and still hold his breath. And if he didn’t hold his breath, he thought he would have thrown up.

Kind of like right now.

Fiona met him in the foyer and hugged him tightly. The stench of the sick woman was in her hair and on her clothes. She was still wearing the clothes she had on yesterday, as he was his.

“Jesus,” he said. “How can you stand it?”

She sighed against his chest. “You get used to it, I guess.” She sounded very tired.

“Is she dead?” Jubal was already running through the options in his head. If she had died, Jubal had decided he was going to wrap her in blankets, put her in his trunk, take her to the edge of town and burn her. Fiona wouldn’t like it, but he would insist.

“Not yet. But it won’t be much longer.”

Jubal nodded and tried to breathe through his mouth. “You wanted me to be here when she passed?”

“No. I wanted you to hear her story so you wouldn’t think I was crazy.”

She led him into the front room and he saw how quickly the woman had deteriorated. Her swollen face was gray, bloated and wet from the?uid that had leaked from the boils and blisters. Her lips were as cracked as if she had wandered for days in the desert.

Maybe she had, if his suspicions about where she had come from were right.

Her chest rose and fell only two or three times in a minute. When her eyes?uttered open, he could see that the whites were now yellow shot through with streaks of red.

“Renee,” Fiona said, “are you still with me?”

The woman moaned.

“Renee?” Jubal said.

“She told me her name is Renee Spencer. She worked for the government. In Nevada.”

Jubal felt the room spin. Everything he feared was coming to pass.

“It wasn’t a weapons program,” Fiona continued. She was speaking to Jubal but she was watching Renee Spencer. “It was something called-”

“Magellan.” The voice was ragged and full of phlegm and sounded as if it came from a thousand feet below the earth. Her tongue was as cracked and cratered as the surface of the moon. As she spoke, a tiny stream of blood ran down from each corner of her mouth. “Project Magellan.”

“What was it?” Jubal said.

“It was weapons development…at least at?rst…that’s what I heard.”

“You’re a scientist?”

She laughed. The laugh turned into a cough, which sprayed blood down her front and onto the blanket. Jubal and Fiona took a step back. When she could breathe again, she seemed to have more energy. She said, “I’m Army. Systems Analyst. I was assigned to Groom Lake Proving Grounds to assist on the project. They were trying to develop something called a quantum bomb.”

Oh, that sounded promising.

“What was it?” Fiona said.

Renee shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what happened?” Jubal felt the?rst?ares of panic in the back of his mind.

“I know what happened,” she said. “I just don’t know what a fucking quantum bomb is. It doesn’t matter. They couldn’t make it work.”

The woman closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. She didn’t speak.

“It’s okay,” Fiona said. “She does this sometimes.”

Jubal rocked back and forth on his toes. He wanted to grab her and shake her awake, to demand answers, to?nd someone to blame. But he stood there with his?sts clenched at his sides.

“Renee?” Fiona said. “Are you still with us?”

The yellow and red eyes opened again. She stared at Jubal for at least a full minute. “You’ve seen them, haven’t you?” she said. “The dead army.”

“What? No-”

“Yes. In your dreams. Just like her.” She nodded to Fiona.

His dreams? Two nights ago he had dreamed, but he didn’t remember much. Something about a?gure in red, maybe. And this morning, hadn’t there been a dark group of?gures marching across the desert, like A dead army.

He looked at Fiona.

She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Jubal shook his head. Two or three people dreaming the same thing wasn’t possible. He didn’t believe it.

“Forget about my dreams,” he said. “What’s the dead army?”

“First I have to tell you about the lab,” Renee said. “About the work.” Her face glistened in the low-wattage light from the lamp on the end table. As he stared at her, Jubal could see blisters swell and burst, leaking yellow?uid. She didn’t seem to notice. He wondered if she even felt it at this stage of her illness.

“Do you know anything about string theory?” Her voice had lost a little volume. He had to strain to hear.

“I thought you weren’t a scientist,” he said.

She tried to smile, which caused further cracking of the skin on her lips. Blood oozed out from the new wounds.

“I’m not. But I’m not a dummy, either. A lot of the folks at the lab talked. And I listened.”

“String theory has something to do with gravity and black holes, right?” Fiona said.

“You’re teacher’s pet today,” Renee Spencer said. “It does, indeed, concern black holes and gravity and quantum physics. Imagine a guitar string stretched across all of space and time, connecting everything there is. Now imagine playing different notes on that string, accessing different times and different universes.”

“That’s string theory?” Jubal said.

“Hell, no. I’ve barely given you the outline of the outline. I don’t understand all of it myself. And I don’t think I have a lot of time left to explain it, do I? No, don’t bother to answer. I can see it in your eyes. I can feel it, too. So let’s get to the point.

“When the scientists at Project Magellan tried to build their little quantum bomb, I think they were trying to develop something that would explode over an enemy force and just send them…somewhere else. They couldn’t get it right, though. But one failure leads to another discovery, and they found a way to build a gate.”