Christa Faust: Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

The driver got out of the Newport. He was a tubby, red-faced guy in a pair of skin-tight white pants that did extremely unfortunate things to his nether region. He threw his hands up in the air.

“Engine no good,” he said, with a thick, Eastern European accent. “Is overheat!” He made a pushing motion with both meaty hands. “You help?”

“Oh, crap,” Leslie muttered. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder, checking her watch again. “The sooner we get this guy’s car out of the way, the sooner we can be on our way.”

“What?” Susan looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I’m not pushing anybody’s car. That’s a man thing. Let Payton do it.”

Leslie restrained herself from raising Susan’s consciousness with a boot to her skinny little ass, and got out of the van.

“Payton, you coming or not?”

“Okay,” he said, following her like a reluctant child.

“Thank you, thank you,” the man said when the two of them approached. “I steer, you push, yes?” Leslie nodded, struggling not to look down at his catastrophically squashed and all too visible crotch.

“Right,” she said, grabbing Payton by the arm and dragging him around to the rear of the enormous vehicle.

She placed both palms on the trunk.

“Don’t just stand there,” she said.

Payton put his hands on the car like he was petting a Doberman of questionable temperament. Leslie rolled her eyes.

“Now,” the man called, putting the car in gear and then getting out to steer with one hand and push with the other. “ Push!”

Leslie did so with all her strength, but the massive beast of a car was so heavy that even with the three of them, it rolled up the driveway slower than a slug. Not that Payton was doing much in the way of pushing. More like just resting his hands on the car.

“Come on, push!” Leslie said. “We’re already nearly ten minutes behind. The other teams are depending on us!”

Payton put a little more effort into it and the Newport started moving a little faster, rolling into the parking lot. The man in the tight pants guided it into an empty parking place and then came back to shake both of their hands, thanking them and offering to buy them a couple of Butchie burgers as a reward.

“No time,” Leslie said. “But thanks anyway.”

Payton, who had started to look a little green as they were pushing the car suddenly lurched off to the left and threw up the strawberry milkshake into a nearby trash can.

“Gee, imagine that,” Leslie said. “Who knew?”

Payton continued to retch, while Leslie crossed her arms and checked her watch again.

They were never going to get out of this parking lot.

43

As May worked her way through the snarled traffic around City Hall, dipping down into the Lower Haight to avoid the worst of it, she heard her mother’s voice in her head, criticizing her every move.

So aggressive, the way you change lanes. No wonder you don’t have a husband.

May hadn’t seen her mother in over a year, estranged as she was from her large family, but that voice was alive and well in May’s head. She could still hear the sharp little tooth-sucking sound of disapproval she would always make, wordlessly cutting May to ribbons over some unforgivable moral transgression, like wearing a short skirt or taking too much food for herself at the family table, instead of making sure her brothers all had enough first.

Ever since she got the job at the Institute, May felt as if she’d found a brand new family of open, like-minded people who accepted her for who she really was, and didn’t think she was a whore because she took birth control pills or failed to live up to some antiquated stereotype of how women should behave. But the ghost of her disapproving mother wasn’t so easily exorcised. And whenever May was worried or anxious, that voice came back to remind her of what a disgraceful failure she was at every single thing she did.

She distracted herself from the critical ghost by thinking about that guy from MIT, Walter Bishop. There was something about him that she found appealing, with his terrible coat and wild hair and gentle, curious eyes. He didn’t seem at all intimidated by her intelligence, and shared many of her most passionate interests. She had been deeply moved by the bravery and determination he’d showed in choosing to fight against the Zodiac Killer and was exhilarated to be a part of that fight.

And she’d always thought she was the only one in the world who actually liked Necco wafers.

“I don’t feel a thing,” Gary said, leaning his head out the window like a dog. “Are you sure this stuff is gonna work?”

“Remember,” May replied. “It’s supposed to take fifty-four minutes to kick in. It’s only been...” She looked at her watch. “Thirty-seven.”

“Do you believe all that business about the Zodiac?” Gary asked. “I mean, what if that’s just a part of the experiment? Testing to see how we react when an element of danger is added in to the mix.”

May hadn’t thought of that.

“I suppose that’s possible,” she said, heading up Divisadero to Fell. “I mean, it sounds a lot more plausible than the idea of fighting a psychic serial killer, doesn’t it?”

“No,” David said quietly from the back seat.

“No?” May asked, looking up into the rearview mirror. But his head was down, gaze aimed at the floor. “No, it doesn’t sound more plausible?” she said.

“No, that’s not what’s happening,” David said. “This is real.”

“What makes you say that?” Gary asked, turning back with one arm thrown over the top of his seat.

“I just...” David looked away, out the window. “I can just tell. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always... known things. And as soon as I saw Doctor Bishop, I knew that this was real. That this, being a part of this, is what I was meant for. All of us, we have to be a part of this.”

“Wow,” Gary said, turning back around. “That’s heavy.”

“I see men,” David said. “Watching me.”

May frowned, looking up into the mirror again, and then down at her watch.

“Right now?” she asked. “You shouldn’t be hallucinating yet.”

“No,” David said quietly, speaking to his folded hands in his lap. “All the time. They wear hats. Like Alain Delon in Le Samourai. And they never say anything, they just... watch.”

May looked over at Gary, who smirked and pointed a very unsubtle circling finger at his temple. This revelation was actually deeply worrying to May. David was clearly suffering from some type of mental illness, probably schizophrenia, and the idea of linking minds with a person like that seemed like a spectacularly bad idea, especially with so much at stake.

Yet, many progressive thinkers had recently suggested that so-called mental illness was really nothing more than freedom from culturally imposed restrictions on the mutually agreed upon “reality.” It was possible that May was being too uptight in her thinking. She should allow herself to be more open about unconventional views of reality.

After all, just because she couldn’t perceive them, who was she to say that mysterious men with fedora hats weren’t actually watching David?

Still, she had no way of knowing how David’s unconventional view of reality might effect the experiment.

Only one way to find out.

44

Walter, Nina, and Bell stayed lying on the floor the rest of the way to Golden Gate Park, but even hidden Walter felt as if the whole of San Francisco was watching him. He kept thinking he heard police sirens coming after them, but every time he strained his ears they seemed to fade away again.