Нил Шустерман - Shuttered Sky

“Hello, friend,” the gentleman said, as Winston approached. “Do you know Dillon Cole?”

Winston had to smile at the question. “Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”

“He died for you.”

“I thought that was Jesus.”

The man grinned, knowingly. “History is a mirror, my friend.”

Winston was sure the man had a pat response for any comment thrown at him. Responses that were paradoxically as obtuse as they were wise. “Buzz off,” Winston told him.

The man grinned like a leprechaun. “I saw the Backwash!” he told Winston. “It was real! I stepped in the flow of the river, and my dead pancreas was reborn. You’re looking at a diabetic who hasn’t needed insulin for a year!” He put an avuncular hand on Winston’s shoulder. “Son,” he said. “Say what you like, but I know I was touched by God.”

“It’s human nature to see divinity in anything greater than oneself,” Winston said, recalling the prophetic words from his troubled past.

“In the coming days, there will be wonders.”

And horrors, thought Winston. A world full of horrors, if Dillon’s dire predictions were true. Winston wondered how much truth had filtered down the chain of rumor to these people. True, the Backwash, for as long as it had lasted, had been a quantifiable “miracle,” but most everything else was subject to distorted word of mouth. How much did any of these people really know? And what would they do if they knew that he was the Winston Pell? Did they even acknowledge that there had been five others beside Dillon Cole, whose souls shimmered with the powerful light of the Scorpion Star?

“What about the others,” Winston dared to ask. “The other great souls, whose powers rivaled Dillon’s?”

“Servants,” said the man dismissively. “Servants only.”

lt was a slap in the face, but, thought Winston, a deserved slap. It had been their unbridled hubris that had created this mess to begin with. The brief time he and the others had walked the ways of Gods had set the world teetering off its balance. This man was prime evi­dence of that.

And now, in spite of how hard Dillon had tried to prevent it, he had become a religious icon of the highest order, with the speed of a satellite transmission—not like in the old days where it took genera­tions to spread the word. There was a time when Winston had hated Dillon, until Winston finally came to realize that this destroyer/creator was neither god nor demon. Dillon was, in the end, just like Winston; a kid with no clue how to rein in his own powers, much less handle the affairs of a rapidly failing world. Dillon, who had once been a hated enemy, was now a friend. The only one he had left.

“Dillon brings life from death.”

“So I’ve heard.” Winston couldn’t decide whether talking to this man was mental masturbation or more like picking at a sore. Either way, Winston had had enough. He reached into his pocket to hand the man a dollar, if only to shut him up. The man smiled indulgently, but he wouldn’t take it.

“It’s not your money we want,” the man beamed. “It’s your soul.”

Winston shivered in the hot wind.

As Winston drove toward Newport Beach, he could see that the Santa Ana winds had already done their damage this year. The winds had ripped over the mountains, tearing up overwatered trees in the Stepford-green neighborhoods of Orange County, and sending a bar­rage of plastic trash barrels rolling in and out of traffic, because the Santa Anas invariably blew in on trash day.

Michael’s beach house was easy to find. It was the one with the big “Sold” sign staring across the beach to the Pacific. He heard some noise from the rear of the home and made his way to the alley behind.

He’d expected he’d be paying his respects to Michael’s father, but instead he saw Drew Camden laboring with some boxes toward a U-Haul truck.

Seeing Drew brought back too many memories he’d just as soon forget, so he took his time, and waited before stepping into view. Drew had been Michael’s friend—Winston didn’t know him well. Drew had been their biographer, deep under Michael’s nature-changing influ­ence in some unsettling way. Although Drew was not one of the Shards, he was currently the closest thing to an ally.

Winston had only seen Drew once since the collapse of the dam. It was back in July. Drew had sought out Winston that time, finding him in the remains of his overgrown Alabama neighborhood, where few people lived anymore and the wrecks of homes stood over­whelmed by vines, like a Mayan ruin. Winston’s effect in action.

“I want to put some closure on all of this,” Drew had told him on the buckling boards of Winston’s front porch. No longer under Mi­chael’s influence, Drew’s nature seemed . . . well, much more natural. He had come all the way to Alabama to tell Winston how Michael and Tory had died, for he felt Winston deserved to know. According to Drew, they were caught in the dam the moment it gave way, most likely buried under thousands of tons of rubble. So it was a shock when Drew called weeks later to tell him that Michael had, indeed, been discovered—and in the desert, no less—almost ten miles from the fallen dam. How he got there was a mystery that Michael had taken to his grave. As for Tory, her remains were still unaccounted for.

The muffled sound of pounding waves resonated in the narrow Newport Beach alley. Winston stepped out into full view as Drew approached the U-Haul with a box. Drew saw him and set down the heavy box in the back of the open truck. If he was surprised to see Winston, he didn’t show it.

“You missed the funeral,” Drew said.

“I’ve got a problem with cemeteries.”

Drew considered that. “They grow on you.”

Winston dredged up a grin. “Yeah, that’s the problem.”

Winston found himself gazing off at some bermuda grass poking through the cracks in the pavement. It was already growing fast and furious like the kudzu back home, new shoots sprouting before his eyes. Most of the time he chose not to look. He had long since dis­pensed with worrying about the things that were beyond his control.

Michael’s father came out carrying a lamp in each hand. He was a man of forty-five, prematurely gray but in good physical condition, as Michael had been. He seemed to be bearing up well under his grief. He nodded a hello to Winston, and looked to Drew. “Friend from school?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Drew said.

Mr. Lipranski put the lamps in the back of the truck. “Take a break if you want, Drew. We’ve got all day.” He went back inside.

“I’m helping him move,” Drew said. “He could afford it back when Michael was selling his services, but not now.” Drew leaned against the side of the rental truck, wiped some sweat from his brow, then reached into a cooler and handed Winston a Dr Pepper. “Any word from Dillon or Lourdes?”

“Still AWOL.”

“Both of them?”

Winston nodded.

“Do you think they’re together?”

Winston popped his tab, feeling the fine spray graze his face. He shrugged, “I doubt it. I’ve got some hunches where Lourdes might be, but no clue about Dillon.”

While Lourdes had ridden into the sunset the day the dam broke, Winston had kept in close contact with Dillon . . . until the day Dillon just up and disappeared six months ago, leaving Winston alone to watch all of Dillon’s prophetic predictions come true. Shifting alli­ances; breakdown of communication; a plague of apathy, the disso­lution of reason. And where are you now, Dillon? We’ve found Michael’s body—where the hell are you?

Since the old times were not worth catching up on, Winston got to the point. “I’d like you to show me where Michael is buried.”