Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

much. It would still be there tomorrow. Right?

 

But she didn’t much care.

 

There was a civic-center across the street. She could walk over, and get away from the scientists and the bustle and the worry.

 

Tucking her toiletries bag away, she felt her fingers brush the gun again. She could hear cars on the road.

 

But she didn’t really know how it was out there now. With a pause, she grasped the gun and tucked it into the back of her jeans, then rummaged again until she came up with the clear snap case that held three extra tranquilizer darts.

 

She wouldn’t use it unless she had to, and it wouldn’t kill anyone.

 

Becky set out of the tent. Quickly making her way to the edge of the field, she gave one last look over her shoulder then bee-lined for the sidewalk that paced the turnpike. With a startled glance, she saw that the traffic lights were working. But of course they were. This was Oak Ridge - the town of physicists - if they couldn’t get things up and running no one would.

 

The few cars on the road obediently followed the signals, stopping patiently and waiting, even though the road was completely clear. Her brows lifted in shock. And she decided against crossing straight for the civic center, instead going down to the light where she wouldn’t have to jaywalk.

 

Becky was grateful for her decision when a cop pulled into the intersection and sat patiently while she got all the way across the street. The convenience store on the corner called to her.

 

She walked up the pavement and pulled back the door, startled by the loudness of the bell. Maybe it was just that the bell sounded so much louder now that the world lacked its usual turbulent background noise. She looked about, “Hello?”

 

But no one answered. She went to ring the old-fashioned ding-bell on the counter but saw the hand-lettered sign instead. Leave money. Make change. Honor system. Thank you.

 

Honor System!?

 

But there was already a pile of money. Pennies and quarters strewn amongst bills. Just waiting for whoever would take it. Becky could have. She wouldn’t have. But she could.

 

She contemplated it as long as it took her to decide that she needed two packs of Cheetos and a large fountain cherry coke. She was eating while she added up her purchases and looked up the total on the tax-finder card that had been left on the counter. She took coins in exchange and made her way back out into the strange day.

 

The civic center loomed ahead, and she crossed through the damp grass, wetting her sneakers and not much caring. There was a crowd gathered in front of a tiny stage; they cheered periodically but she didn’t know what at. A few steps further and she began to hear the voice.

 

“-we have almost all the police force!”

 

A cheer rose up.

 

“-and the FBI!”

 

Another cheer.

 

“Most of the thieves and murderers gone!” Cheers again. But Becky waited to hear what was coming.

 

“The CIA gone, too.” This time the cheers were punctuated with laughter.

 

The woman on stage raised her fist high into the air. “I tell you, it is The Ascension!”

 

The roar of the crowd continued for several minutes this time, while Becky stood on the frayed edges. Her eyebrows knit together, while she contemplated the deaths of Aaron and Melanie. The Ascension?

 

But the voice broke her thoughts again. “This is God’s world. And we are God’s chosen. And we are to re-build Eden. Here!”

 

Becky turned her back to the thunder of cheers. Hadn’t these people lost loved ones, too? Or did they just believe that those they had lost weren’t worthy?

 

With a heavy heart, she turned to go back to the safe little village of tents. Back to the place she had so recently sought to escape. This time she had to seriously fight the urge to jaywalk. But God forbid, any of the ascension-ites saw her and deemed her unworthy of Eden.

 

It was hard to be upset with people who wanted to make heaven on earth, who thought this was a chance to make a better place for everyone. But where did they get off thinking they were the ones God had chosen? Her mother had always told her that those who died were closer to God. So that would make this crowd a composition of the un-chosen by that standard.

 

Becky almost chuckled.

 

Jillian woke with a start. The gurney was uncomfortable, although not in any way she could pinpoint. It was also heartstoppingly high. From up here she could see the large brown envelope that held David’s processed x-rays.

 

She hopped off the bed, the icy dew from the grass seeping instantly through her socks.

 

“Shit.” She tried to keep it under her breath. A quick look revealed she hadn’t woken David. And the damage was done. She’d change her socks in a minute. First she wanted to see those x-rays.

 

She had kept several techs up half the night worrying over x-rays and demanding that the films be returned as soon as humanly possible. Every one was making weird faces at her and Jordan hadn’t stopped by at all. With a sigh, she held the x-ray up to the light and wondered where he was. No wonder these people all thought he was dead.

 

Her face pulled into a fierce frown.

 

There were no marks of a tib-fib fracture at all. She pressed her face closer, looking for details, but still found nothing.

 

Wanting desperately to believe it was the light, she moved to the opening of the tent, her socks squishing with each step. She frowned, turned the large stiff picture, and frowned again.

 

Nothing.

 

Even years-old fractures showed on x-rays. Bones bore the marks of past sins long after they had healed.

 

But David’s showed nothing.

 

Not on the chest x-ray. The tiny fissures she had seen on his earlier films were gone.

 

And so were the films.

 

She shook her head.

 

There was suddenly this veneer of organization. Protocol was being followed to the letter. Yet too much was messed up. David’s films had disappeared. Jordan was ‘dead’. Lucy was supposed to be dead, but was walking around.

 

And then the healing thing …

 

Her IV puncture was minor. But David’s tib-fib … that was huge. What if the reversal had sped up the healing process? It was hypothesized that the dinosaurs were so large because the

 

magnetic field had been stronger seventy million years ago - the bigger field supported larger life. Would it also heal faster?

 

Her heart started racing beyond her standard seventy-two beats per minute. It was enough to make her want to run to the cafeteria and steal a good serrated knife and cut herself, to watch how long it took for the scar to close.

 

But there had to be a faster way. A better way. Just in case she was wrong.

 

With her lower lip between her teeth, Jillian thought for a moment, then smiled.

 

Feeling every step upon the cold grass, she pushed through the flap into bright day. People milled everywhere, and she grabbed a tech as he walked by. “Did you ever break a major bone?”

 

He shook his head.

 

Damn.

 

But she tried again.

 

And again, until one guy laughed. “I used to skateboard. You’d be hard pressed to find a bone I didn’t break!”

 

“Excellent.” She didn’t bother to explain much beyond the fact that she wanted to x-ray all of him.

 

He grinned and handed his tray of urine samples off to another tech passing by, glad to give up the mundane in exchange for being a guinea pig. Jillian wended her way through the tents, the tech in tow behind her. Without much ado, and throwing all of her authority around, she shoved the operator aside and shot every inch of the kid, using up film like there was no tomorrow. Handing each one off in turn, she demanded that it be processed immediately.

 

The first film came back as she was finishing his jaw, having saved his head for last. And knowing that she’d radiated this kid, top to toe, in the name of science.

 

She held the film up to the light, with the tech looking over her shoulder. There were two breaks. One clean, the other not so much. “Did you break this twice?”

 

He nodded, pointing. “Six years ago, and ten years ago.”

 

Jillian frowned, then accepted a second film as it was delivered from the tent next door where two techs were developing the x-rays as fast as they could. He had broken his left femur. It had pins, and bone scarring. She could see the old collarbone break. He even admitted to having cracked it twice in the same place, which was perfectly consistent with the level of damage.

 

This kid was a mess.

 

And it was all still there, in black and white and foggy gray.

 

She asked him questions, pinpointing break after break. And about to give up as she slid the last film into the envelope. “Did you ever break anything else? Anything we didn’t look at?”

 

He shook his head. “I think you caught them all.”

 

Her breath sighed out of her, she’d been so certain that she’d find something. “Well, if you think of anything, come get me. I think I’ll be in tent 43.”

 

With a shrug and a sad smile, he went off to find more work to do. And Jillian went back to the tent to find David, and shoes.

 

Now that she’d proven nothing, the cold had seeped into her feet, and through the bone up her shins. She needed to soak them in a hot bath, or at least wrap them in a foot warmer.

 

Was it just her and David that healed rapidly?

 

She slogged around the last corner, looking into the tent at the back of the person standing by the gurney and laughing with David.

 

Memory tugged at her brain, until the woman turned around.

 

And Jillian screamed.

 

Becky Sorenson was smiling, until the bloodcurdling noise came out of Jillian’s mouth.

 

Techs and physicians rushed through the still open tent flap, dragging in biting air that she didn’t - couldn’t - feel.

 

Becky Sorenson was staring at her, questioning the scream that Jillian only just managed to shut down.

 

“Are you all right?” The physician had shoved everyone else out of the way, and had his fingers on her neck, already checking her pulse. Although why he would check that, when she was clearly alive and upright, was beyond her.

 

Jillian pushed at him, only wanting him to go away, and beginning to believe she was truly crazy. “I’m fine. I was just startled. Becky reminded me of someone who had died, and I thought .

 

. . well I had a shock. But I’m good, so you can go…”

 

She knew she was prattling, but she couldn’t stop.

 

Where was Jordan? He’d make her a flow chart and explain some of this. Or at least offer something. Was she really going insane?

 

At last when the extra people crowding the tent had been shoved out, Becky pushed her down into a chair. “Do you care to explain what that was really all about?”

 

Jillian shook her head, knowing she had held Becky’s hand while she died, just two days ago. The healing power of the reversals must be even stronger than she had thought. That was the only viable explanation she could come up with. But it was hardly a reasonable one.

 

She just looked up at her colleague, into Becky’s blue eyes, and asked, “Did you ever break any bones?”

 

“Just my finger. A long time ago.” Becky gave her that are-you-losing-your-mind? look.

 

“What does that have to do with anything?”

 

Jillian buried her face in her hands and fought back tears. She couldn’t go mad. She just couldn’t. She wouldn’t survive it. The only thing she always knew to be true was that she could put pieces together. But someone had dumped her puzzle, and nothing fit.

 

She started with what she knew. “David fell down the steps. About four days ago. Right after he woke up.

 

He broke his leg. But it doesn’t show on the x-ray. In fact, someone took off the cast I put on him.”

 

Jillian looked up