Authors: Lippe Simone
The pre-sunrise glow had turned the sky a cobalt blue and the tips of the San Gabriel
mountains were already burning with the first layer of bright orange when Clint cut the engines and hopped down the ladder to the stern and poked his head into the salon.
“Up already?” he asked Honor, who had installed herself at the banquette table with a bowl of dry cereal. She was dressed in a fuchsia bikini and a sarong and had one naked leg up on the other bench.
“It’s almost showtime.” she said, “I didn’t want to miss it. I also didn’t want to have my memory wiped clean. In fact, on balance, I especially don’t want my memory wiped clean.”
“You won’t miss anything. Nice outfit by the way.”
“I found it in my cabin. I didn’t think you’d mind much.” Honor stood and modeled her bikini in 360°.
“Not much. I’ve seen it all. I’m sorry that you don’t remember what an item we were in the psycho ward. They tried keeping us apart but you seemed to enjoy the challenge.”
“That sounds like me.” said Honor, “Shouldn’t we be getting started?”
“There’s time. The instructions say the closer to the event, the better. Don’t worry Gale, I’ll take care of you.”
“Call me Honor. I’m relaunching my career. Speaking of which I’m curious, how long have you known that you were Ray?”
“I thought that was clear.” he said, “I never stopped knowing I was Ray. When I woke up on the yacht I really had no idea what I was doing there but that was down to drinking a crate of whiskey washed down with a vat of champagne. Initially I made up the name Clint because I couldn’t remember Marmalade and Apricot and I didn’t know that they didn’t know that Ray was a wanted man. When I saw LA in chaos and then that you and Spivic didn’t recognize me I just continued being Clint Hardcastle.”
“Hardcliff.”
“Right. Hardcliff. Well now we can be whoever we want. We can do whatever we want. We can be one-eyed royalty in the land of the blind and we can race Ferraris and hunt mimes and no one will try to cure us with radiated neurotoxins.”
“You’re sure this is going to work, by the way. I’m still more than happy to go for an early morning swim.”
“It’ll work. We’re living proof. We were at least partially immunized by Spivic’s ‘memorectomies’ that were supposed to cure me of wanting to kill everyone who looked even a little bit like my step-father and you, presumably, of wanting to have fun.”
“Which raises the question — why did I forget everything prior to the event and you didn’t?” asked Honor.
“Because I had more treatment?” Clint guessed. “I certainly had more recent treatment. You escaped weeks ago. Or, more precisely, you walked out weeks ago, dressed as a nurse. You stole an ambulance and apparently led a very merry chase across downtown Los Angeles. The last I heard they’d found the ambulance abandoned at the zoo.”
“That explains a lot.”
“It does? Well, anyway it works. By accident maybe, but I’m immune to the sun’s radiation and now we’ve got the final vaccine you will be too.”
“Are you sure? I don’t think I’d enjoy life as a mindless galley slave. Too outdoorsy.”
“I’m sure.” said Clint. “Spivic told me himself that he was working on a vaccine and that he’d finally made it. He was a mess by that point. Not as bad as now, obviously, but he’d been injecting himself everywhere and comparing our test results like a man driven. And anyway by then he trusted me completely. You see, I’d been giving a very convincing impression of a man cured which, I think it’s safe to say, I’m not. I still remember my step-father and everything he did to me and everything I’ve done since.” Clint looked wistfully out the window, as though remembering a bright Christmas morn.
“But why didn’t Tom just take the vaccine himself?” asked Honor.
“He didn’t know that he needed to. Anyway I didn’t give him the chance. When he realized that he’d isolated the vaccine he told me that it was in the nick of time, because he wouldn’t have me for comparison purposes after today in light of the inconvenience of me going back to prison to complete a mandatory life sentence.”
“So you escaped too. What made you think to take the vaccine with you?”
“That was mostly the finer instincts of the scoundrel. He’d written the combination to a safe on his arm and I just memorized it as a matter of course. When he let slip that my psycho-ward vacation was coming to an end and I was going back inside I flipped the switch and let crazy Ray do the heavy lifting. And heavy it was, too. I had to take out the doctor and a giant of an orderly named Leonard. You remember Leonard. Big fellow.”
“No. I do not remember Leonard.”
“Oh, no, of course you don’t. Sorry. Anyway as luck would have it in the close-quarters combat I managed to stab Leonard in the hand with a hypodermic and stun them both and smash an entire rack of blood work over Spivic and myself, particularly myself. So I stopped by the doctor’s office looking for civilian wear and encountered a lab assistant — a deft hand with a hypodermic, incidentally, he nearly stuck me while I was opening the safe. But I got the better of him and took the vaccine and some hospital whites and, as a happy bonus, the keys to the front door and Spivic’s car, which I drove directly to the marina. Then I hijacked this yacht with, I suspect, the intention of sailing to Mexico but, alas, the demon drink must have got its clutches into me.”
“And the crew?”
“I barely remember what happened, frankly, but it stands to reason that I killed them all.”
“Well then why the restraint since? You cleaned up the boat, threw the bodies overboard and you could have easily dispatched Spivic with a spear gun or, doubtless, your bare hands at any point during the night. Instead we went on a shopping spree together.”
“I’ve got a soft spot for the doctor.” said Clint. “Or just for you. I’m not sure. I tried to sabotage last night’s outing with a carefully delivered sack of toasted corn and lose Spivic in the confusion, but you were having none of that, apparently. Whatever happened, though, I wanted to play my advantage until the final moment, meaning now, when you’d kind of have to cooperate no matter how you felt about me or the doctor. And nothing really bad is going to happen to him. We’ll just leave him in his cabin until high noon at which point he’ll merely be reset to the state he was in yesterday morning.”
“Talking of which, the sun’s coming up.” said Honor, “Maybe we’d better get started.”
“I’ll get the stuff. Be right back.” Clint said, ducking out the door of the salon.
“And I’ll ring for drinks.” said Honor.
Clint retrieved the square plastic medicine box from its new hiding place in the storage chest and returned to the salon just as Marmalade entered with two zombie glasses unevenly filled with brown and purple liquids.
“That’s an improvement.” said Clint, sliding into the bench opposite Honor and placing the medicine box on the table between them. “He normally only brings one at a time. We should keep him.”
“Here’s to one-eyed royalty.” said Honor, taking up her glass. Clint did the same. They touched their glasses conspiratorially and drained them.
“Sweet.” said Clint. “I wonder what he put in it this time. Tastes like pancake syrup.”
“Hangover medicine.” said Honor. “I picked it up last night when we were hiding in the pharmacy. It’s called syrup of ipecac.”
“That was thoughtful.” said Clint, holding his glass up to the first rays of sunlight streaming through the windows of the salon. “What’s it do?”
“With a concentrated dose like that you should find out in about fifteen seconds.” said Honor. Clint eyed her suspiciously and put his glass down. His suspicions were confirmed as Tom stepped in through galley door. Then his suspicions were made physical as something very like a partially inflated beach ball came into existence in his stomach. The ball began rapidly inflating in quick, assertive bursts, until there was no place left for it to grow and his insides fluctuated with a violent will to disgorge.
Honor shot out of her seat with the reflexes of a rabbit dodging a fox as Clint spouted pressurized vomit from his mouth and nostrils like a burst dyke. His eyes bulged and streamed tears and his abdominal muscles clenched him shut like a mousetrap, slamming his face into the ooze on the table. There was a brief respite during which he looked at Honor with a strangely complementary combination of admiration and betrayal before the process began anew.
Honor and Tom looked at the spectacle with undiluted disgust.
“Go get the box.” said Honor. “I’ll wait here.”
Tom approached the table but Clint recovered his sea legs sufficiently to gather up the box and run out the door of the salon, spewing a slimy trail which Honor and Tom reluctantly followed.
The sun was now fully over the horizon, or at least it should have been. It was impossible to say for sure where the sun was because it seemed to be everywhere. The entire sky was sun and the air was buzzing with a sound or a vibration or the oscillation of some unseen frequency. Anyway it came to their ears like a buzz and it was growing louder.
The ocean seemed to be steaming and the white deck of the yacht glimmered and with the buzzing and the miasma of everything Clint had ever eaten splashed about the deck all their senses were on a rough par with a drunkard in a hall of mirrors. Clint staggered out onto the diving platform clutching the box of vaccine.
“Ray, just wait.” Tom said, or rather yelled, he couldn’t be sure which. “You’re not immune and that won’t make you immune. It’s not a permanent vaccine and we all need to take it just to make it through today.”
Clint huddled over the box of vaccine like a hobo with a precious hoard of whatever it is that hobos like to hoard. He peered over the box at Tom and Honor and coughed something disgusting onto it.
“Please Ray.” said Honor. “I’m sorry we had to spike you, but we had to spike you. Give me the box.”
Clint looked at her with the eyes of a rejected puppy. Moments passed as he recovered some stability and ceased leaking and slowly relaxed his tight squat until he was sitting on the diving platform with the box in his lap. Then he dropped it over the side.
The frequency of the buzzing hit a peak that cancelled all sound. Simultaneously the sun and sky achieved a perfect absence of color to match the deck of the boat and there was only silence and white.
Tom and Honor ran into the white toward what they hoped was the diving platform and dropped into the bathwater warmth of the Pacific Ocean. Visibility under the water was like a clear summer’s day in the mountains and they could see every fish and fleck for a dozen feet beneath them before the darkness began. Against all instincts they swam toward the darkness.
Ration and reflex fought a spirited battle to keep them in the cool, drowning darkness or return to the surface for a breath of sweet, burning air. Honor stopped fighting first and began to float skyward and Tom grabbed her hair and swam deeper, his eardrums collapsing and a cast iron pressure on his chest. When they could go no deeper they kicked their feet and wrestled their reflexes to just stay in the shadows a little longer, just that single millisecond more that might allow the danger to pass.
But reflex won and ration admitted that plain, mindless survival was probably a better fate than another split second of deliberate drowning. Decision and action were simultaneous and they turned like trout and fought with their remaining strength to get to the surface before reflex could experiment with trying to breath underwater.
The first deep breath was like inhaling escaping steam and they needed two or three more before they could spare the strength to shout a throaty celebration of a world with oxygen in it. And then they shouted and laughed some more because the sky was blue and the sun had returned to its normal duties and they had the faculties to know all these things.
The yacht was only about 20 yards away and they treaded the calm water slowly toward it. When they were at the diving platform they could see that Clint was no longer Clint nor Ray nor anyone else. He sat as and where they’d left him, looking toward the horizon with the familiar expression of absolutely nothing, finally cured of his demons. And in the water where he’d dropped it floated the box of vaccine, completely still in the currentless waters as though resting in soft earth.
They recovered the box and climbed to the bridge and Honor surveyed Los Angeles through the high-powered binoculars. It was dead again. Any people she could see stood just where the sun had found them and left them completely blank.
“North?” asked Honor.
Tom looked at her like he was about to tell her that her dog died. “I’ve been thinking about that. Honor, we need need to go back.”
“Back?” she asked, with the exact tone she’d use if he’d suggested that they sink the boat.
“Back to LA? I can only assume you’ve lost your memory of the last 24 hours. We need to go north. To Seattle or Canada. We need to find help.”
“Honor there is no help. There’s no one. Don’t you think the army would be here by now if there was? Don’t you think that someone would have noticed that a city the size of LA had stopped answering the phones? If there’s any hope it’s back in my laboratory.”
“Tom, you don’t remember how you made the vaccine, if it was even you that made it.”
“We can get a generator and get the computers working. We can go through my notes. We’ve got a working lab and a sample of the vaccine. We can do it.”
“I could drop you off.” she offered.
“Honor, I need you. You know that. You can open doors and drive things and make things work.”
Honor looked at the cloudless sky and the mindless city and Clint and one or a combination of these things told her that Tom was right.
“Promise you won’t try to cure me again?” she said.
“Not even if I thought I could.”
Honor turned the key in the ignition and when the propellers caught she steered toward shore.
“Thanks Honor.” said Tom.
“Forget about it.” she said.