The Fifth Day Read online

Jimmy leaned over his drawing, coloring the Cyclops’s eye a bright green. “Do you think monsters are real?”

  “My mom says they’re all myths. She told me some stories about stuff they believe in other places. Each place has different ones, so she says they can’t all be true. She said people made them up to explain things like thunder and lightning and volcanoes, and also because people like to tell stories about scary things.”

  Jimmy didn’t answer for a moment. “But they could be, right?”

  He frowned. Jimmy was a quiet, introspective kid, a nice foil for Ben’s natural enthusiasm. But something in his tone was oddly serious.

  “I guess. Why?”

  “’Cause I saw one.”

  The answer was said so matter-of-factly that Ben didn’t laugh or accuse his friend of lying. He only said, “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Where?”

  “This morning I got woken up early because Mister Hsu’s dogs were barking. It was still mostly dark. So I got up, and went to my window.” He pointed at the small window next to his desk. “I don’t know why. For some reason I knew something was out there. I saw it across the street, kind of sneaking along, and then it went down next to Missus Foyle’s house and around the back. I watched for a while longer, but I didn’t see it anymore.”

  “Are you making this up to scare me?” The objection was perfunctory. He knew his friend didn’t do that sort of thing, but he had to ask.

  “Nope.”

  “What did it look like?” His voice was hushed.

  Jimmy pushed the drawing of the grotesque, slouching figure toward Ben.

  He shuddered. “That thing?”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “Weren’t you scared?”

  “Yeah. But I was still really sleepy, and after it went behind Missus Foyle’s house, I thought, ‘Was that a dream?’ I have weird scary dreams sometimes, but they’re not real, and I wasn’t sure if I’d really seen it or not.”

  “I’d have peed my pants.”

  “I almost did. I thought about going and waking up my parents, but I knew they’d just tell me I’d had a bad dream. So I thought I’d wait and tell you. I knew you’d believe me.”

  “Do you think it’s still out there?”

  “Where else would it be?”

  There didn’t seem to be any answer to that. Ben stared at the drawing of the baleful, lopsided face, and another shiver rippled its way across his body.

  What if that thing came upon them while they were down playing in Cutter Creek? Jumped out from behind a tree and grabbed them?

  No matter what Missus Acosta had said, maybe Jimmy and he should stay inside today.

  Maybe tomorrow, too.

  3

  SOME SAW THE change coming. In every age, there are women and men who are prescient, and often do not know how they know. The future appears before them, as solid as the road beneath your feet. Some bring that knowledge to the people, and others hoard it for themselves, for it is also true that in every age there are good women and wicked women, men who share what they have and men who would keep their riches hidden away, as dragons do. For knowledge is no guarantor of wisdom, and gifts bring no assurance of reciprocity.

  —

  JACKSON ROYCE WAS waiting.

  The little bay where the village of Santa Isobel sat had a rugged promontory on its north end that the residents called The Bluff. The Bluff was a prime spot for star watching, and was also a favorite for amorous couples who wanted a place to make love under the open sky. Everyone from the village knew this went on, and everyone pretty much ignored it, as long as you gave at least a passing attempt to keep your romps away from the main path up to the top.

  But that evening there was no one up on The Bluff but Jackson. He sat on a chunk of rock that seemed to adhere to the cliff edge with nothing more than hope, feet dangling over a hundred-foot drop onto the rocky shore. The tide was in, so the waves came right up to the base. Anyone who by some combination of luck and providence survived the fall would be dragged out to sea by a vicious undertow and drowned.

  The Pacific Ocean was not forgiving.

  Jackson didn’t give that any thought. He never looked down, but kept his eyes, narrowed against the glare, fixed on the horizon, as if the change he expected was going to come from the west.

  He’d known all along that this couldn’t continue, known since his teenage years, now twenty years gone. All this running around, pretending that the day-to-day jobs and hookups and breakups and bills to pay and Christmas bonuses mattered. On a visit to LA he’d heard some eco-wacko chick on a street corner, nattering on about “sustainability,” and even though most of what she said was tree-hugging horseshit, the word had stuck with him.

  None of this was sustainable. But not because of what the eco-wackos thought, with all their talk about global warming and deforestation and endangered species. No, humans were the ones who were endangered. And after humans were gone, the rest of the species on Planet Earth would get along fine.

  He’d known that for twenty years, felt it coming, creeping up on him slowly like a leopard moving through the grass toward its prey. Hardly anyone else realized it, he knew that. But he could sense it, a sharp, burning smell like ozone and gunpowder and blood.

  It had gotten stronger in the last couple of days. He was on edge, and when he was on edge he liked to go to an edge. A cliff, a bridge, the top of a building. Somewhere he could face outward, one step away from ruin, and then turn back alive, flipping the finger in the face of Death. He’d had a fascination with heights from his childhood, and in his Army days he’d always volunteered for any job that required climbing. Each time, he’d pushed himself to get closer, closer to the edge, closer to the point where he couldn’t manage to hold onto his grip or keep his feet, and each time he’d come back alive and unharmed.

  “You crazy sumbitch,” his commanding officer had once said, shaking his head, after Jackson finished repairs on a radio transceiver eighty feet up on a steel tower during a windstorm.

  He took that as a compliment, which it probably was.

  But now, it was all about to end. He didn’t know how, but he knew it as certainly as he felt his heart beating inside him. So he came up to The Bluff to sit and wait.

  There were no cars in the parking lot when he got there, which was good. It was a stiff walk from the village, so usually the hikers, dog-walkers, teenagers wanting to smoke some weed, and couples looking for a nice place to fuck came by car. This meant that more than likely Jackson would be alone, which was how he liked it.

  Now he sat, facing the endless expanse of the Pacific, waiting.

  The sun dipped toward the horizon, reddening, rippling in the shimmer off the ocean. He watched it set, dropping toward the twisting crimson ribbon that reached out like a path on the water’s surface. Nothing happened. The wind picked up, and the temperature was already falling as the first of the summer stars came out—Aquila, Capricorn, and Scorpio with its bright red eye.

  He sat until almost ten o’clock. It was completely dark by then, and the long drop to the rocks was invisible beneath his dangling feet. Unconcerned, he scrambled up and back to the path, walking it without hesitation by memory and the light of a half moon.

  He got into his car and drove home to the spare little apartment he occupied in a run-down building on the east side of Santa Isobel, between the Exxon station and Leandro’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant.

  Not tonight, then. Not tonight, but soon. The smell was stronger now, hanging like a pall in the air. He could taste it at the back of his throat, a taste like he remembered from his tour in Afghanistan, when he’d had to clean up the aftermath of an IED that had blown a Hummer apart, leaving scattered limbs and guts and chunks of metal. Two other soldiers had vomited, but Jackson willed his stomach to calm down, and took the smell and the taste in, wanting to remember it, knowing it was a warning that one day he’d need.

  He readied himself for bed, still smelling and tast
ing it. He had been sure it was going to be tonight. A part of him was disappointed. He wanted it to happen so he could get on with his response to it, so he wouldn’t have to keep going to his job at the hardware store, pretending that there was nothing wrong. Pretending that his oblivious coworkers and the faux-perky customers he saw every day had what it took to survive.

  As he slipped off to sleep, he had a sudden realization that he was still on the cliff edge. It was just a much bigger one. He was ten miles up, and so was everyone else. They’d all be headed toward the rocks soon, and he was the only one who saw it.

  And he planned on surviving.

  4

  THE PEOPLE FEEL the change, but the Sibyl alone knows why it has happened. The Sibyl sits in her cave, near cracks in the stone that give forth a pale miasma that confounds and enlightens, that brings delirium and knowledge simultaneously. Her voice is ancient and young, creaking like an old crone and singing like a young maiden newly come to flower. When the change comes, the people seek her out, not knowing what else to do, standing lost and solitary in their utter desolation.

  And she says to the people who stand trembling before her:

  Take heed. You will see portents in the water and portents in the earth, you who are left to witness what is to come. Find what good counsel and strength you can. Trust each other, yet trust no one, for you will meet many who carry within their bodies powers untested, and some who are not what they seem. And even those whom you trust, remember that each has wisdom and foolishness unto his own kind. But now wisdom is survival and foolishness is death. Hear my words.

  —

  WHILE JACKSON ROYCE sat on the cliff edge waiting, Lissa George stood at the kitchen counter in her girlfriend’s kitchen, staring at a bouquet of flowers.

  Of course this would happen.

  She tried to figure out whether she was amused or pissed off, and finally decided that she was both.

  Julia was so predictable. It never failed. They would fight over something stupid, with Julia shouting and crying and throwing a tantrum, Lissa dispassionately trying to explain her side of things and calm Julia down at the same time. And it always ended the same way. Lissa would decide for the twentieth time that she didn’t need this, that a relationship with Julia was the emotional equivalent of being tied to a yo-yo string. That maybe, right now in her life, she didn’t need a relationship at all.

  So they’d break up. Julia would ugly cry, and Lissa would feel guilty, wondering how someone as logical as she was could be suckered again and again like this.

  But then there’d be the apologies, the gifts, the promises that things would be different this time. Lissa would see her—once, she said, only for lunch or dinner, so they could bury the hatchet, end on a good note—and Julia would pull out the humor and charm that was what had hooked Lissa in the first place, two years ago, when they’d met at a used book sale in San Francisco. So Lissa would relent, they’d go out, they’d both have a great time. And then it was back to one apartment or the other, for some really spectacular sex.

  For crying out loud, Lissa was a scientist. She was trained to base her decisions on facts and evidence. And the fact was, Julia Alvarez was crazy. Lissa was going to be crazy herself, soon, if she didn’t break this off and keep it broken.

  The flowers were beautiful, though. Against her better judgment, she opened the card.

  “Lissa… I’m so glad you came down yesterday. I’ve missed you so much it aches. You gave me another chance, probably more than I deserve, and I want you to know how much that means to me. I won’t be home till about 9, but I wanted you to think about me, and have something pretty to look at. I’m counting the minutes till I’m in your arms… love, Jules.”

  Lissa looked out of the kitchen window at the swaying leaves of the mimosa tree. At least it was quiet, down here in the little coastal town of Furness, eighty miles south of her home in El Cerrito. Her own apartment was on a busy street, and never far from the dull roar of traffic and the rumble of trucks.

  Here, it was tranquil, even during the tourist season, and when the windows were open and the wind blew in the right direction, she could hear the sea.

  “Shit. I will never learn my lesson.”

  She set the card down, went to the fridge, and foraged about until she found the remains of her chana masala from last night’s dinner at Diamond’s Fine Indian Cuisine. It wasn’t very much, but would do for a light dinner with a cup of tea and a piece of fruit.

  —

  THREE HOURS LATER, it was nearly dark, and there was the sound of a key in the lock, and a voice saying, “Lissa, are you here?”

  “Of course I’m here, silly girl.” Lissa looked up from her reading. “Where did you think I’d be?”

  “I was worried you might have reconsidered.”

  “I did. And I decided to stay. For now. It was the flowers that did it.”

  Julia laughed, dropped her purse on a chair, then kicked off her shoes. She came over to the couch where Lissa was lying, her long legs stretched out, and fell forward. She ended the fall an inch away from Lissa’s nose, catching herself by planting both hands on the arm rest on either side of her head. She gave her a warm kiss.

  “One day, you’ll miscalculate your distance doing that, and break both of our front teeth,” Lissa said, as the kiss ended, smiling up into Julia’s face.

  “Always the physicist.”

  “Not always.” She closed her book, which was a historical romance, and set it aside. “Tonight I’m reading about horny eighteenth century Scottish people who are having little luck at getting laid. No wonder all of their songs are so sad.”

  This prompted another, longer kiss.

  “How was work today?” Lissa touched her girlfriend’s face. Such soft skin. She was falling again, regardless of what she knew about Julia, regardless of their past turmoils. She was ruled by her guts, heart, and hormones, no better than Duncan MacWhatever, lusting after his lass even though their fathers were sworn enemies.

  Always the physicist. Right.

  “It was okay. The usual people returning dive gear, a couple of groups wanting spots for next weekend. Nell is going to take my shift tomorrow, though. I told her you were visiting, and she said I should take the day off so we could enjoy it.”

  Lissa’s first thought was, lord have mercy, a whole day together? How many opportunities would that provide for things to go awry? But she smiled and said, “That sounds magnificent.”

  “We should go up to the State Park tomorrow, go for a long walk. It’s supposed to be beautiful weather.”

  “I was going to suggest the same thing.” She hadn’t been, of course, but comforting lies came easily to her lips when she was dealing with someone as volatile as Julia. So far this evening, though, she’d been acting so… normal. Lissa recalled five days ago, when Julia’s brown hair had been hanging in front of her face, clinging to the combination of tears, sweat, and snot on her skin, and her weeping turned her words into an incomprehensible hash.

  It was like she was two different people, and you never knew which one you were going to be dealing with next.

  The evening passed as if they were just another normal couple. A movie, cuddling on the couch eating popcorn until almost midnight, then back to Julia’s bedroom followed by the anticipated fireworks. Lissa lay on her back afterwards, her muscles unstrung and her mind spinning in a post-orgasmic fog.

  When it was good, it was amazing. But was it worth it? This crazy American girl was taking a toll on her. She recalled her father warning her about Julia when they’d met.

  She lay there, remembering.

  It was on a trip to Belize to visit Lissa’s parents, shortly after Julia and she had become an item. Lissa had been terrified to bring her. Even at that point, she’d realized how explosive Julia’s temper could be, although she’d yet to have it turned against her.

  That would come later.

  But the visit went swimmingly, and Lissa found herself relaxing for the
first time since they’d stepped off the plane. Thomas and Theresa George were, apparently, impressed with their daughter’s choice of a lover. Julia had complimented Theresa’s cooking, keeping it enthusiastic enough to be appreciated and restrained enough to be sincere. After dinner, over glasses of wine, she’d chatted with Thomas about his work as a lecturer in English literature at the University of Belize, asking intelligent questions, making thoughtful comments, and showing enough evidence of knowledge in the field to be credible.

  So it had all gone off brilliantly, and Lissa was blindsided that evening when her father took her aside. They were standing on the Georges’ front porch, looking at the stars in the black velvet tropical sky, swatting away the occasional mosquito. Julia had made her apologies and gone to bed early, claiming exhaustion from the day’s travels.

  And then Lissa’s dad had dropped the boom.

  “Now, you be careful about this woman, do you hear me?” His deep voice was mellow, uninflected.

  Lissa stared at him, uncomprehending. “What….” Her memory informed her that she had, indeed, heard him right. “What do you mean, Papa?”

  “There’s a twist in her personality. You don’t see it, then?”

  “A twist?” The tension of the past days of preparation for the trip rose back like a wave. “What kind of a twist?”

  “It’s not what you’re thinking. I’m no prude. Your mother and I knew you were attracted to women since you were about ten years old, and now you are an adult with an adult’s desires.” He tapped his forehead. “It’s up here.”

  “You’re saying Julia’s crazy?” Lissa gave a tight laugh.

  “I didn’t use that word. There’s an instability I sense in her, something that could turn on you, get dangerous quickly.” He patted his daughter’s hand. “I have known people like her.”

  Lissa jerked her hand away. “You got all of this from one dinner?”