Chapter Three
Under other circumstances, if I wanted to burn off a load of energy or drag myself out of a bad mood, I'd have gone ghost and looked for some other ghost's butt to kick. But on this auspicious night, I stubbornly resisted the urge to change forms.
I can't really remember how long I was out there, walking aimlessly around the city, seeing with a kind of double-vision. Part of me saw what was there, and part of me remembered with strangely vivid clarity the glimpses Clockwork had given me ten years ago of the doomed city. Even as I had watched my older self—I guess I'll always think of him that way, no matter how old I get—even as I had watched him rain death and destruction down from the sky, I noticed that his Amity Park was a compact cluster of gleaming skyscrapers huddled tightly within the center of a ring of utter desolation. My Amity Park was sprawling and well-worn, brick and stone and concrete, vigorous, boisterous, noisy, messy—home.
I was born here, I've lived my whole life here, but there are parts of Amity Park I've never seen except from the air. I found myself in one of these areas tonight, a slightly seedy neighborhood of depression-era apartment buildings and Victorian row houses a few blocks away from the waterfront. Lost in thought, I strolled along the cracked and buckled sidewalk, past patchy postage-stamp lawns and tiny fenced gardens. Although it was close to midnight, sounds of life echoed through the streets: automobiles idling at a stoplight, a heavy dance beat booming from an open window, a baby's cry, a lovers' argument.
I was halfway down a nearly deserted block behind a dilapidated factory when a police cruiser floated down, drew alongside me and slowed to match my pace. I turned to let the officer know that I was not in need of assistance, then felt my skin grow cold when I saw it was Valerie. She pulled her car over to the curb and stopped; her passenger-side window opened and she leaned across the seat. "Get in," she said, in a voice that was simultaneously friendly and drop-dead intimidating. Over the last two years she had taken to police work like a fish takes to water.
As I slid into the passenger seat, I noticed the change in her appearance with a start. Was the universe actually conspiring to drive me insane on this particular night? For the last three years she had worn her hair in tight cornrows, gathered into a neat cascade down her back, but tonight the braids were gone. Her hair had been cropped close, subtly flat across the top. She must have noticed the astonished—horrified—look on my face, because she grinned and ran her hand across her tightly shorn 'do. "You like it?" she asked, her husky voice flirtatious. She meant nothing by that; it was just an old game between us. "I don't know what came over me, I just told the stylist to cut it all off."
"Uh. . . yeah, I guess. It's a good look for you. A pretty big change, though. It's. . . uh. . . going to take some getting used to." My mouth was blabbering on auto-pilot because I was once again seeing double: she was sitting there beside me in her crisp, blue uniform and at the same time she was hovering over me in her armor, threatening to kill me with an ecto-grenade launcher. I closed my eyes and tried to suppress my physical reaction to the hallucination: my heart racing, my fists clenched, a cold sweat drenching my clothes.
"Are you okay?" She laid a hand on my left arm, which made me jump and recoil as though she'd given me an electric shock. "Sam called me a couple of hours ago, told me you had gone off without your Thermos and you hadn't checked in. She asked me to keep an eye out for you."
I opened my eyes again and was relieved to see only my friend, her face filled with concern. Of course she looked exactly the way I remembered her from the nightmare vision of the future; we had aged together over the course of ten years to this moment. Without making a big deal about it, I had quietly taken steps to avoid growing to resemble that evil apparition. There's nothing I can do about my height, or my boyishly round face, but I try to avoid the sorts of exercise that might bulk up my chest and shoulders. I keep myself clean-shaven and my hair cut fairly short; I even make an effort to pitch my voice a little higher and softer than it sounds naturally. Valerie, on the other hand, had matured into the exact same woman I remembered: trim, striking, commanding and deadly.
She finished her cautious inspection of me and my fraying nerves and turned her attention to lifting her cruiser back into the travel lanes.
I found my voice. "Are you running personal errands for my wife, then?" Even though she and Sam had built a fragile peace long ago, I imagined that it would require more than the usual share of late-night anxiety to make Sam call Officer Gray for help.
She laughed. "I would have been looking out for you, anyway. I have a package for you." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. I took a look behind me and saw her Thermos on the back seat,
bulging and roiling with at least two captive ghosts. (This newest design from FentonWorks, a pouch of flexible Kevlar, lies flat when empty—much more comfortable to wear slung across the back—but grows fatter with each capture. And the more ghosts you stuff inside, the more they thrash around. Even though they no longer remotely resemble their vacuum flask namesake, we still call them Thermoses.)
"Anybody I know?"
"No, just a couple of critters this time. Lots of teeth and claws, no discernable intelligence. You'll get rid of 'em for me?"
"Sure. Why don't you drop me off?" We were idling at a red light, she could pull down in the next block.
She gave me a level gaze, then returned her attention to the floatway as the light turned green. She accelerated smoothly through the intersection and did not pull down. "It's late, Sam's worried about you, why don't I just take you home?"
Was she being overprotective? Hardly necessary, she knows what I am. But there was a touch of concern in her voice, for a guy who can fly but who had chosen instead to walk aimlessly around the city in the middle of the night. I wondered what Sam had told her.
Val exited the express floatway at Chestnut Street, then turned right on Russell. In this part of town there were only few cars in the air, graveyard shift workers for the most part. It was a lonely, silent time, and we rode together in companionable silence. After a few minutes we floated past the Nasty Burger, which was dark, deserted, peaceful.
She dropped down and pulled to a stop in front of FentonWorks. I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached into the back seat to retrieve her Thermos, which was wriggling its way toward the floor. "Stop that!" I said with a smile, giving the pouch a playful punch. The ghosts inside couldn't hear me, of course, but part of the drill was to discourage them from venturing into our world again.
As soon as I was on the sidewalk in front of FentonWorks she throttled up her cruiser and it lifted off the ground. She leaned over and called to me through the open window. "I'll swing by tomorrow afternoon to get that back from you, okay?"
"Sure. I'll see you then."
I started to walk away, but she called me back. "Hey, Danny!"
I turned around again. She was leaning across the seat, peering at me through the window, eyes filled with concern and sympathy. "Are you sure everything's okay?"
"Yeah. It's just. . . it was such a peaceful evening." I looked up to the sky, where the moon (last quarter) was just rising above the trees. "It's a good night to be alive."
"That's it? Just. . . happy to be alive?" She bit her lip, watching me as though I had just turned purple or grown a third eye. "There's nothing else?"
"Well. . ." I paused, trying to find the words. "I'm happy you're alive, too. And you know something? I like the short hair. It really suits you."
"Hmmph. Good night, Danny. Get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow." With that, her vehicle shot back into the floatway and disappeared around the next corner.
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