A Mirror for the Stars Read online

  4

  The first thing I was aware of was pain. Excruciating pain. It pressed down into the comforting darkness and lifted me out with cold, steely hands. I could smell ozone and burning plastic. I tried to move, but I was pinned down by what appeared to be a bathroom sink. With herculean effort I managed to push it up and out of the way so I could sit up and get a look around.

  As far as I could tell, we'd basically spiraled down and drilled right into the runway like an out of control lawn dart. There was wreckage everywhere, and a lot of it was on fire; pieces of fuselage lying around broken, charred pieces of chair, an overturned food service cart with airline meals scattered all around it, still freshly sealed in neat, unbroken foil.

  "What do you know?" I mumbled to myself. "Coughing Dude is out of commission, but the roast chicken with vegetable medley might just live to see action after all."

  I chuckled at my own joke, but if any of the other survivors heard it they didn't appreciate my sense of humor. The ones that could make noise were just moaning, or crying out for help. I guess it wasn't the worst reaction I've ever gotten to one of my jokes, but I digress.

  With great fear and trepidation I took a look down at my body to assess the damage. Judging by the amount of pain I was feeling, I two-thirds expected gigantic shards of metal impaling every inch of me from the chest down, but I didn't see any major visible injuries. I moved my arms. I wiggled my toes. They weren’t particularly excited about it, but they followed directions. When I tried to stand, my legs screamed "Fuck you!" at my brain in Painese, the language they speak in Hurtsestan. I fell forward onto the asphalt hard enough to scrape a good bit of skin off the palms of my hands.

  Before I could give it another go, I heard something that made me think it might be better to lay low.

  “His name is Jack Kalinowski. He’s a known terrorist with connections to radical militias and racist, right-wing groups. We believe he may have been involved with the bombing. Have you seen him since the crash?” It was Charlotte, but now she was dressed in a charcoal gray pantsuit with a pair of sunglasses. She held a picture from my Facebook profile in front of a panicked looking soccer mom who was pinned under a piece of fuselage.

  “I haven’t seen him,” said Panicked Soccer Mom. “How long until the ambulance gets here?”

  “Emergency medical teams are already on their way. Any information that could help us bring this fiend to justice would be very much appreciated, ma’am.” Charlotte reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, thin object I couldn’t make out.

  “I swear I would tell you if I saw him.” Panicked Soccer Mom squirmed, and tried to push the chunk of twisted metal off of herself. “Please help me! It hurts!”

  Charlotte scowled and unfolded the object in her hands. It was an old fashioned straight razor, the kind you might see in a Three Stooges short about a barber shop. Charlotte brought it down in a smooth, straight arc across Panicked Soccer Mom’s throat.

  Panicked Soccer Mom screamed, but it came out as a terrible, wet, gurgling sound.

  “There you go. No more pain,” Charlotte said coldly.

  Panicked Soccer Mom reached up and grabbed at the lapels of Charlotte’s suit jacket, but Charlotte stood and batted it away, as if a gnat had been buzzing around her. Charlotte worked the blade of the straight razor open and shut absently with her thumb. Her eyes reflected the firelight with murderous intensity as she surveyed the wreckage.

  I lay completely still, hoping she might not notice me. I could almost feel her gaze moving across the runway.

  Charlotte’s eyes settled on something in the wreckage a little to my left.

  “Hey, little girl? Are you awake?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  My heart began to pound in my chest. I recognized the voice. It was Morbidly Curious Freckle Face Girl.

  “This is Jack Kalinowski. We believe he may have been the one who bombed the plane. Have you seen him since the crash?” Charlotte held up my picture and smiled, but she had the straight razor ready in her other hand.

  “He sat in front of me,” said Freckle Face.

  “Uh-huh, but what about since the crash? Do you know if he’s still alive, hon?”

  “I haven’t seen him since the masks came down,” said Freckle Face.

  Charlotte brought the razor up over her shoulder.

  Now, I’m not claiming to be some kind of hero, but I’m not going to allow a psychopath to slice up a tweener on my account. That’s just not how I roll.

  I forced myself up onto my knees. My entire body stung, ached and agonized. My legs were throbbing. My head was pounding. I was so dizzy I could hardly see. With what little strength I had, I launched myself at Charlotte. I guess it was more of a “fall” than a “launch,” but I managed to knock Charlotte off balance and away from Freckle Face. I face planted right on top of a twisted, upside down row of chairs. An arm rest went up into my guts, knocking out what little air I had in me.

  “Ooooow,” I groaned.

  Charlotte sneered and swung her razor at me. I rolled off the chairs and fell onto the asphalt. I felt my teeth click together and I saw stars, but I kept moving. This time I rolled to the side and I felt Charlotte’s razor slice through the air in front of my face. I’d been about a millimeter away from losing my nose. I kept rolling until my muscles gave out and I stared up the stars for a moment. My ears were ringing, and I could hardly breathe.

  “You’re a hard man to kill,” Charlotte said.

  “That’s what she said?” I added.

  Charlotte scowled. “That didn’t even make sense.”

  She was right. I couldn’t even crack wise. I was in bad fucking trouble.

  “You’re in way over your head here,” Charlotte said. “You’re on the FBI’s most wanted list. We’ve frozen all your assets and posted your picture all over Pittsburgh and Chicago. You can’t hide from us. Your life is over. Why don’t you just sit still and let me cut you? It will just hurt for a second.”

  “Um… How about ‘fuck you’?”

  Charlotte rolled her eyes, unbuttoned her suit jacket and tossed it away.

  “Asshole. Ok, fine, if it has to be that way,” she said. She brought the straight razor up to her bare arm and pressed the razor up against the skin in the notch of her elbow. With a quick, deft motion she pulled the razor down to her wrist, slicing her own arm open right down to the bone. Blood spurted out of her opened veins and flowed down her open palm through her fingers to pool on the asphalt at her feet.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  “I told you, you’re in way over your head,” Charlotte said. She curled her fingers up into a clenched fist, and the stream of blood slowed and stopped. I don’t mean that there was no more blood coming out of her cut arm, I mean the blood was just hanging there in the air. It looked like someone hit the pause button on life. Charlotte lifted her arm and snapped it to the side, the stream of blood whirled and cracked in the air, like some kind of whip.

  I thought I might be hallucinating, but I wasn’t sure. In any case, Charlotte was dangerous and I knew it was better to be as far away from her as possible. My valiant fumble to save Freckle Face was pretty much the last hurrah for my muscles, though. There was no chance I was going to be able to stand again, so I kind of crab walked backward on my elbows and ankles.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Charlotte growled. With a snake’s quickness she lashed out with her weird blood whip. It lashed around the bent row of chairs between us. Charlotte yanked and flung the chairs violently up and out of the way. “Why won’t you just lie down and die?”

  Of course, I didn’t tell her, but I was damn tired, and the idea of surrendering did have its own bent appeal. God knows, in the empty, years since the end of my relationship with Karen I’d come pretty close to jumping off a bridge anyway. But that’s just the thing. Karen was talking to me again, and however brief and
cryptic the conversation had been, I was going to see where it might lead.

  Charlotte grunted and cracked her whip at me. I was too slow this time, and before I could skitter out of the way, I felt the tendril wrap around my midsection. It was wet and viscous, but it had a grip like steel. The tendril tightened, and I could barely breathe.

  “Dumbass,” Charlotte muttered under her breath. She brought her other wrist up to her mouth and bit into the soft flesh there. This time her blood flowed up into a strange teardrop shape that hovered in front of her hand.

  “Jesus fucking shit! What are you?”

  “Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to worry about anything anymore.” She hovered over me and pushed the floating orb into my face.

  Warm, wet, coppery blood flowed into my mouth, up my nostrils and down my throat. I coughed and gagged, but I couldn’t clear it out. My vision blurred and faded, even worse than it already had. I was drowning.

  “Just go to sleep you obnoxious dipshit,” Charlotte said. “Don’t waste my whole night.”

  A heavy, thunderous sound rang out, blunt and deafening over the crackling of fires and the incoherent lamentations of the other survivors. Charlotte tensed up, and most of the blood flowed out of my nose and mouth. I spat out the rest and got in a frantic breath, and some of the color and definition came back into the world. Charlotte had both hands up in front of her face, and her blood had curved up around her into what amounted to a shield. Little spatters of blood sprayed out here and there. It took me a moment to realize that the little spatters were bullet impacts.

  “Jack! What are you doing? Hurry!”

  It was Karen! I scrambled to my feet and immediately fell again.

  Karen was sitting gloriously astride her tiny pink Vespa, shooting at Charlotte with a tremendous hand cannon. Her baby-fine red hair peaked out from under a little peanut shell helmet, and each shot rocked her entire body with the force of the recoil. From my vantage point on the ground she looked like an avenging angel, with all of heaven’s terrible wrath and gentle beauty.

  “Get on,” she commanded, pausing to load another magazine in her gun. “Hurry.”

  I obeyed. The world seemed like it was trying to shake me off, and I could barely keep my balance. I teetered over to her and climbed up onto the Vespa. The rear was still covered with stickers for things like “Save the Eastern Californian Sand Crane” and “END irresponsible deforestation.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Don’t hug me,” she said. “Use the handles on the back.”

  I begrudgingly complied.

  “Goddamn it,” Charlotte screamed. She was fucking pissed. Her hands were balled up into fists, and tendrils of blood were waving around her, like the flailing tentacles of a furious octopus. “You two are a pain in my ass.”

  Karen reached into the breast pocket of her weather worn leather jacket and came up with a beaker full of clear liquid which she immediately tossed at Charlotte. The beaker shattered and the liquid splashed all over her.

  “Wha?” Charlotte said, then she started to scream. The blood tendrils lost their shape and splashed on the earth, and the massive wounds on her arms started bleeding openly again. Charlotte fell to her knees and started pressing down on the cuts, but the blood kept flowing out between her fingers.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked.

  “Anticoagulant,” said Karen. “I thought it might keep her from using her blood to make solid weapons.”

  “Looks like you were right,” I said. God, you have to admire her.

  “Of course.” Karen nodded, an adorably exaggerated gesture under her helmet. “Hold on tight.”

  She pulled back on the throttle, the Vespa’s engine whined to life, and we made an annoyingly slow but admittedly effective escape.