Part 36 (1/2)

Should I keep my eyes open or hold them shut?

Should I sing along?

Danny stops by on occasion.

He showed up the morning after our trip into the tunnels. At the house. He said he never made it underground. He got to the tunnel in the park with a half dozen soldiers but found the way forward blocked. Nothing but dead ends to the left and right.

I don't believe him. I can't believe him.

I saw him down there in that bas.e.m.e.nt. And I never doubted that it was him. This person, now ... I just can't trust him.

I don't know who he is.

He says that there are other places like Spokane now, popping up all over the world. A neighborhood in Kobe, j.a.pan. A town in Iowa. A building-a single building!-in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. A valley in the Ukraine.

It isn't mushrooms, obviously. It isn't hallucinogenic spores in the air. The army burned all of that from the ground, and still, nothing has changed.

People still disappear. I still see spiders on occasion. The sky still turns red.

Danny tells me that the UN has a.s.sembled a task force. Peacekeepers, to help in the affected areas. He mentioned something about a telethon airing on all the major networks. I can't even imagine what that must have been like. Celebrities and phone banks. Did it have its own song? ”We Are the World”?

”We Are Spokane”?

He says my photographs have made a difference, in the effort. Raising awareness. Some s.h.i.+t like that.

I don't know.

I could have stopped him from posting the images, but I didn't.

I could have destroyed them when I had the chance. I could have ground the camera into dust. I could have thrown it from the top of the hospital, out into the dead red wastes. But I didn't.

He-Danny, his ghost, whatever-asked to see my camera, and I let him have it. He popped out the memory card and put it in his pocket. I saw him do it. He wasn't trying to be sneaky or anything, wasn't trying to pull a fast one on me. In fact, I think he was waiting for me to try to stop him. But I didn't. He posted the pictures on the Web, on the message board, without text-not pretending to be me, at least, not putting words into my mouth. Just putting the pictures out there for the world to see.

I don't think I would have bothered if it had been up to me, but I certainly didn't stop him. I still had my ego. I was still me-aspiring photographer, artist, poor excuse for a human being-and part of me, at least, wanted people to see my work.

According to Danny, the pictures caused pandemonium on the board, and the reaction rippled out into the real world. Picked up by news weeklies and cable TV. Mainstream media. Apparently, a Republican senator printed out a poster-size copy of Danny's picture-dead, arm waving out from his chest-and paraded it around the Senate floor, demanding answers. At first, he was dismissed as pandering to the lunatic fringe, but I'm sure he's seeming more and more prescient with each pa.s.sing day.

And Danny didn't say a word.

He saw that picture, obviously, he saw himself, down there underground, but he didn't ask me about the circ.u.mstances, didn't ask me about what I'd seen. Him, lying dead and mutilated on that bas.e.m.e.nt floor. He didn't want to know. And that, at least, endeared him to me, whoever he is-this thing, this maybe-Danny.

There are some things we just shouldn't know. Some things we shouldn't ask about, shouldn't explore.

And I miss Danny. I really do.

Out of all of us, he was the one who had his s.h.i.+t together. He was the one I would have trusted with the world.

Danny brought me this bottle of Wild Turkey.

For that, at least, he's got my thanks. Even if he isn't real.

I was writing just now, and a loud roar filled the room. It was a physical sound, vibrating through my core. My desk started to shake. You can see the ink on the page-roller-ball quiver, EEG scrawl.

I stood up and looked out my window, craning my head to peer north. I didn't see much. A wing, tilting, over the line of buildings.

And then an explosion. As the plane crashed.

I don't want to be human. Not anymore.

There is smoke rising over the city. A line of military vehicles tore through the street beneath my room, and I cracked open a window. The city smells like fire.

f.u.c.k.

I don't know about this. I don't know what to think.

And then the crowd of survivors began to pa.s.s beneath my window. They looked sh.e.l.l-shocked, dazed, completely out-of-their-minds f.u.c.ked, but they were alive.

They shouldn't have been alive, but they were alive and marching on the street down below, the military leading the parade. They had vehicles to transport the wounded: Hummers and Jeeps. And I don't know how many died on impact in that crash. How many met their maker, here, in a crater, in the city, wrapped tight in fuselage and fire?

This is fertile land here, and things that shouldn't grow, grow. Things that land, still and static, breathe and breathe again.

And, of course, I remember the view from the hospital's roof.