The sight of DJ sitting in the back of the bus, smiling broadly, stopped Milton mid-step. He considered fleeing, but then he involuntarily pitched forward as the bus renewed its tireless tour of the city.
I wanted a confrontation. Looks like I’ll get it.
Heart pounding, his snow-crusted shoes sliding across the smooth floor of the aisle, he slowly made his way to the only other passenger on the bus. He ignored DJ’s wordless invitation to take the seat across from him.
“Why are you following me?” Milton demanded. He glared down at the young man, but DJ’s crooked smile never faltered.
“Me follow you? That’s rich.” DJ leaned in and whispered, “In case you didn’t notice, I was here first. Why are you following me?”
Milton shook his head. He had nearly forgotten how infuriating DJ could be. “It can’t be a coincidence. I don’t know how you got ahead of me—”
“Ahead of you?” DJ scoffed. “This is the same route I always ride. The last time we met was two stops up from where we are now. You’re going in circles, man!”
Milton’s shoulders slumped, and when the bus made a fast right turn, he didn’t fight the inertia, falling into the vacant seat beside DJ with a thud.
“That’s impossible,” he whispered.
“Maybe you should buy a map,” DJ said. “Or you could tell me where you’re trying to go. I know this city like the back of my hand.”
To emphasize his point, DJ raised his left hand. The baleful stare of the snake tattoo met Milton’s own red-rimmed eyes.
“Where am I going? I’m running away from you and your friends!” Milton shouted, unable to look away from the peculiar tattoo. Not a viper or a cobra. The serpent’s broad face and thick body looked more like a prehistoric creature than the sleek, sinuous species typically chosen for emblems of rebellion.
DJ sat up a little straighter. “Shows what you know, old man. I don’t have any friends anymore, just family.”
“But…but the last time I saw you, you threatened me,” Milton argued.
DJ scratched the red stubble on his chin. “Did I? Oh, you mean ‘You can’t run forever’? I was just pointing out a fact. And even if you could run forever, why would you want to?”
Milton didn’t know what to say. At the time, he had been so convinced DJ was one of his enemies. Maybe he was harmless after all.
“But wait,” he said, suddenly remembering more of their prior conversation. Was it a coincidence that his thoughts seemed clearer when he was with DJ? “You said something about the end of the world…”
DJ rolled his eyes. “Lucky guess?” Milton’s body language must have conveyed his skepticism because DJ added, “I’d figured you for a schizophrenic. Delusions of persecution…everyone is out to get you…the government is evil, so you have to expose the sinister plot. Blah blah blah.”
“I’m not crazy,” Milton said.
“Maybe you are, and maybe you aren’t. I’d be happy to make a diagnosis. Why don’t you tell me how you got into this mess in the first place?” DJ pulled his sweatshirt’s hood up over his messy hair and slid closer to the aisle. “Who is really chasing you and why?”
Milton searched DJ’s face for signs of treachery, but if there was anything sinister lurking beneath the eager expression, the boy hid it well. To Milton’s surprise, he truly wanted to tell the boy everything, to unburden himself from the terrible secrets—if he could only remember them.
I just need more rest…more time…
“C’mon, Milton,” DJ prompted. “Don’t be such a bore.”
Something about that last word tugged at Milton’s weary mind, but he lost the thought before it could even be born.
What do I have to lose? If DJ is one of them, he already knows the truth.
“Like I told you before, I believe the CIA is involved.” Milton shivered in spite of the bus’s toasty interior. “Their scientists are doing horrible things…meddling with our minds.”
“How?”
“Dreams!” Milton blurted, surprising himself with the force behind the word. He closed his eyes and once more saw the balding man in a white lab coat.
“But why mess with people’s dreams?” DJ asked.
Milton rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands and stifled a yawn. “I…I’m not sure.”
“Wake up, man. This is important!” DJ snapped, hastily adding, “Unless you really are delusional.”
“No…no…” Milton reached for the answers, but the truth was buried somewhere deep. The snowstorm outside had nothing on the tempest raging inside his brain. “To get into people’s thoughts,” he said at last.
DJ jumped up. “Mind reading? Really?”
“Yes…I think…but that’s not the whole of it…I just can’t…can’t seem to…” He yawned again.
DJ crouched down, his face inches from Milton’s. “Where are they doing this?”
“Here.”
“Here?” DJ growled in disgust. “Here is nowhere! What kind of an answer is that?”
Milton closed his eyes again. He could almost see a picture in the darkness. The laboratory. The man with gray-green eyes. The syringe. The sword.
“Odin,” Milton whispered.
“What did you say? Milton? Don’t you dare fall asleep!”
Milton barely heard DJ over the voice in his head—his own voice.
“Odin is chief god in the Norse pantheon. He is associated with wisdom, magic, prophecy—”
A different voice chimed in:
“And battle and death.”
Someone grabbed Milton by the shoulder and shook him. He opened his eyes, expecting to find the man with the high forehead and lab coat. But it was only DJ. Or was it? The man crouched beside Milton resembled DJ—certainly the bright blue eyes were the same—but the intensely serious look on his face aged him by a decade or more. The man’s bloodshot eyes were wide, expectant.
DJ’s sweatshirt was gone, replaced by a black leather jacket. Milton glanced down, searching for some sign of the wolf. He gasped. Something dark and wet was dripping from a hole in the front of the jacket. The metallic scent of blood assailed him.
Milton scrambled away until his back was against a window. Then he must have blinked because the wounded man was gone, and young DJ was back.
“Easy there, Milton.” DJ stood in the aisle, draping a hand over the back of the seat in Milton’s row and his other over the one in front of it. Standing squarely between Milton and escape. The crudely drawn wolf head was at eyelevel.
“Were…were you bleeding just now?” Milton asked.
DJ replied with a question of his own. “Who is Odin?”
Tires squealed from somewhere nearby, and Milton jumped. From the aisle, DJ turned to the rear window of the bus and quickly looked away when a bright light flooded into the bus. Milton thought they were too bright to be headlights. He turned in his seat, craning his neck to see—
“Get down!” DJ yelled, taking cover in the opposite row of seats.
Ignoring the warning, Milton peered into the painfully bright light. The vehicle behind the bus was too big to be a squad car or even the black sedans government agents always drove in the movies. It appeared to be a large van.
And it was getting closer.
Milton dove down onto the seat at the exact moment that the van’s grill struck the bus. Pieces of glass poured down on him, cutting into his hands and the parts of his face he couldn’t cover.
Oh God, they’ve found me. They’ve finally come for me!
The van’s motor roared angrily through the glassless hole in the back of the bus. Judging by the sound and the blur of streetlights in the remaining windows, both the van and the bus were accelerating. Milton wondered why the bus driver didn’t pull over.
Something tugged at Milton’s leg, and he kicked out in sudden panic.
“Ouch! Damn it, Milton. It’s just me,” DJ said. Half of his face was whitewashed with artificial light. “Looks like you’re not crazy after all. Now move to the front of the bus. Go!”
Milton did as he was told, cringing when his movements sent glass shards clattering across the floor. He dared to glance at road behind them. The van was a little farther back, but it was picking up speed, its tires sending clumps of snow spraying in its wake.
As Milton pushed past DJ, he saw the young man remove a silver pistol from the back of his waistband. Their eyes met.
“What can I say? I have enemies too,” DJ said with a shrug before firing at the approaching vehicle. Over his shoulder he cried, “Get going!”
The bus started to sway from side to side, skidding on the slick road. Milton was forced to grab onto each seat in succession to keep his balance. Another gunshot. He focused on the big broad windshield ahead, though he had no idea what he was going to do when he reached the front of the bus.
How ever did I get here? I’m a scientist, not a—
He halted halfway to his destination and repeated aloud, “I’m a scientist!”
The next bang was far too loud to be DJ’s gun. The bus pitched sharply to the side, flinging Milton forward into a sideways, bench-like seat. He thought, for one maddening moment, that the van had fired a cannon at them, but then all he could do was hold on as the bus started to spin.
He felt the crash in every nerve of his body. Even after the bus’s momentum was absorbed by whatever it had struck, everything kept swirling around and around. Milton closed his eyes, as much as to shut out the nauseating spectacle as to retreat from reality.
“Hey, wake up.” DJ gave Milton a shake. “That van spun out a little farther up the road.”
Milton accepted the young man’s hand and was pulled to his feet. All he could manage to say was “Who?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” DJ muttered, frowning. “These guys play by their own rules.”
DJ half guided, half pushed Milton to the door of the bus. There was no sign of the driver. The folding door was already open. Since the front, right wheel was suspended a foot or more off the ground, he and DJ were forced to jump down.
Milton numbly took in the crash scene. The bus had struck into the side of an old business building. One of the pillars, having snapped in half, rested horizontally in a self-made trench on the top of the bus. A clock, which must have been attached to the building, now lay in the street. From where he was standing, the clock’s face appeared to contain only eights.
Farther down the block, the van’s driver-side door opened. A tall man stepped out.
“Time for you to start running again.” DJ raised his arm, and a loud crack rent the still night.
The tall man didn’t flinch. A spark on the side of the van revealed DJ’s aim to be off by a good three feet.
Milton turned and ran, but after a few steps he stopped. DJ hadn’t budged. “Come on, boy!”
DJ shook his head and aimed again at the slim driver, who was walking purposefully, if not swiftly, toward them. “I’ll buy you some time.”
Milton started to argue, but the tall man shouted the word “bore.”
No, not “bore.” Borr!
His thoughts started to swim, but his concentration shattered when DJ started firing again. Bullets whizzed past the long-legged man, hitting the van and the street but not the intended target.
“Son of a bitch,” DJ spat.
Suddenly, a bright light poured down from the sky, bathing the van in blue-white light. For a fraction of a second, Milton caught a glimpse of a gray, eight-legged horse painted on the side of the vehicle, but then the spotlight swept over to DJ. Milton shielded his eyes. He heard the unmistakable staccato of a helicopter propeller.
Standing between him and the tall man, DJ fired at the sky until the gun was empty.
DJ turned toward Milton, smirking. “Well, it was worth a shot.” He chuckled. “Get it? ‘A shot’? Guess I’ll catch you later, Milton.”
Before Milton could reply, DJ charged toward the tall man, who remained in shadow despite the spotlight overhead.
Milton hesitated. “DJ!”
He squinted up at the aircraft, a menacing mass of black against the white sky. The vehicle grew larger as the machine descended. Artificial wind sent frenzied snowflakes flying in all directions. Despite the whir of the helicopter’s blades and the wind screaming in his ears, he heard DJ shout, “My, you’re a tall drink of water.”
DJ, you fool!
Then the searchlight landed on Milton, and he fled.
Running as fast as he could in the ankle-deep snow, Milton suddenly remembered the vision of the man in the bloody jacket who momentarily had replaced DJ on the bus. Had it been a premonition or simply a hallucination manufactured by his sleep-deprived mind?
He abandoned the question, however, as he turned down one nameless street after another and lost himself in the rhythm of his wheezing breaths and the crunch of snow beneath his feet.