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Noah’s having trouble finding his words. My friend is beside himself, his mouth struggling to catch up with the avalanche of thoughts spilling through his head. It’s a lot to take in.
“That was just—that was—that really just,” he fumbles, some variation of these words continuously tumbling from his throat. He looks straight ahead, gazing through the windshield in a state of confusion as his synapses frantically work to close the verbal loop.
Behind us, Marlo is totally silent. I’m steering with one hand, the other reaching back and gripping my daughter’s.
“We gotta call the police,” Noah blurts, finally managing a complete sentence.
“They can’t do anything,” I counter.
“Why not?”
“They won’t believe a word of this, and even if they do, Eddie will turn them against us the second he gets a chance.”
The timing couldn’t be better as we crest a small hill to see a blockade of flashing red-and-blue lights in the distance, cop cars lined up across the road several miles ahead.
“Looks like he already thought of that,” I sigh.
I pull over immediately, disappearing behind an old gas station and then turning back the way I came.
“All it takes is for one influenced cop to put out the bulletin,” I explain. “Suddenly, every road out of town is an Amber Alert checkpoint. Eddie’s smart, don’t forget it.”
I drive another mile or so, then finally pull over.
We’re on the edge of downtown, far from the previous storm of violence and chaos. The bar patrons have long since dispersed as morning creeps closer, night owls staggering home and leaving these blocks in a state of surreal emptiness.
Our street runs parallel to the Palm Springs Art Museum, the mid-century modern structure resting nearby. Between us and the building, a lush, palm-filled sculpture park hosts an enormous statue of Marilyn Monroe, her smiling face cast in the glow of upward lights.
Forever Marilyn is the name of this statue, one of the few Palm Springs monuments that people actually seem to recognize (despite the fact that it toured all over the world before finally landing here).
It stands twenty-six feet tall, the smiling starlet fighting to keep down her white dress as imaginary air blows up from below.
Of course, this is more than just a depiction of Marilyn, it’s a statement.
It’s a looming monument to the power of fame, for better or worse.
“Where are we going?” Noah asks, but my mind is already racing ahead.
I ignore the question, offering up a query of my own. “Why did that happen when Eddie bit you?”
“Eddie bit me?”
“The bug.”
It’s the second time I’ve explained this to Noah, but the first that he actually hears me.
Noah takes a moment to process. I can tell his instinct is to laugh or scoff or reject my assertion, but this reaction is quickly escorted off the premises by the reality of what he’s just seen. The whole world has shifted.
“He didn’t like the taste,” Marlo chirps from the back seat.
I smile, but I don’t turn around, still protecting her from seeing my face.
“That’s true, sweetie,” I reply. “Why do you think that?”
Marlo is quiet.
Noah lifts his shirt, wincing as he pulls the sticky fabric away from his leaking wound. A chunk of flesh is missing, leaving a ragged patch of exposed muscle and fat in its wake, but it also lacks any substantial depth. Eddie was going for skin.
“The cancer,” I murmur.
There’s a huge problem here, two very important “mind files” directly contradicting each other.
I’ve been so careful arranging these mental folders, laying them out on the floor of my consciousness and adding to each one.
This attention to detail is the only reason I’m still alive—the only reason any of us are still alive—but now an odd inconsistency has emerged.
Eddie’s biology is unlike anything this world has ever known, and he subsists on a particular type of cancerous growth during this part of his life cycle.
He’s spent all night devouring sheets and sheets of skin from people with metastatic cancer, building up his strength for a horrible rebirth.
Suddenly, however, it appears to be the one thing that could take him down.
“Let’s just hide out for a while,” Noah says. “We can walk out into the desert. Avoid people. Disappear.”
“He’ll find us,” I sigh.
As if called upon by these words, something catches my attention in the rearview mirror. At the far end of the street, a foggy sheen of rosy pink dust has rolled under one of the streetlights. It’s a faint, thin haze, barely visible and suggesting some distance, but it’s there.
Noah follows my gaze, noticing the cloud, too. “Isn’t one of your neighbors a private investigator?” he asks. “There could be a tracker hidden somewhere on the car.”
“She is,” I confirm. “There’s no time to search for a tracker, though.”
“Then let’s switch cars.”
“The kid three houses down from us has a drone,” I add.
Noah’s gaze lifts to the dark sky above.
“I’m not running anymore,” I continue, firm in my convictions. “The only thing running does is force Eddie to kill more people. He won’t stop.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I wouldn’t.”
Noah sits with this for a moment, not quite understanding the implication here, but accepting my analysis all the same.
This is what he does. He accepts. He trusts.
I turn to Noah. “You should go, though. He’s after Marlo and me.”
Noah’s expression wavers for a moment. He glances back at Marlo and bites his lip, then finally shakes his head and lets out a long sigh. “I can’t just abandon my post.”
I reach out and place my hand on Noah’s shoulder, sitting with this for a moment, then I put the car in gear and pull back onto the road. We’re cruising now—a moving target.
I pull Eddie’s folded paper from my pocket and hand it over.
“Eddie needs to eat the skin of people with skin cancer before jumping into a new host,” I explain. “This is who he visited tonight.”
Noah unfolds the page. He looks it over, studying the words.
“So the question is: What’s the difference with you?” I press. “Eddie is damn near indestructible, but nibbling you looked like it almost killed him.”
Noah remains deep in thought. “It’s hard to say.”
The mental filing cabinet springs open, folders erupting and pages flying everywhere as I sort through the tornado.
I start transmuting thoughts into words.
“I mean, if he needs cancer to shift bodies, then chemotherapy can’t be great for him,” I suggest. “Your body is pumped full of radiation, right?”
“Afraid so,” Noah replies. “But these people are also stage four. They’re probably getting the same treatments I am.”
I glance over, suddenly recognizing the awkward position this might put Noah in. We talk about this stuff a lot, but in tonight’s context the whole thing has taken on a bizarre new light.
Fortunately, my friend seems totally fine with the subject, and given his outlook I suppose that makes sense. Noah is dealing with cancer in a way I’ll hopefully never be forced to strive for—fighting for his life while also displaying a sort of uncanny, meditative gratitude.
“What about mom’s treatments?” Marlo asks from the back seat. “Exfoliating whatevers. All that stuff you put on your face.”
I give myself a quick glance in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think those are gonna help us.”
Marlo shrugs. “You always say ‘never underestimate the power of a daily moisturizing cream.’”
I want so badly to trade a silly grin with Marlo, but again I stop myself. I’m not quite ready—at least not while my face looks like this, and it’s gonna take a lot more than moisturizer to pull the mess back together.
A jolt of inspiration suddenly rips through me—thoughts of my former beauty routine abruptly snapping something into place.
“Your cream!” I erupt, punching the steering wheel.
Noah flashes me an awkward look. “My what?”
“From the medical trial!” I shout. “Nobody else would have access to that stuff. When did you last rub it on your scar?”
“I put it on every day.”
“And from the looks of it, a single layer almost killed Eddie,” I continue, my excitement growing. “Do you have any with you?”
“I just ran out at home,” Noah replies. “There’s a container in my locker at work, though.”
I take a sharp left turn, my tires squealing as I slam on the gas and rocket up the road with a newfound purpose. There’s finally a path forward: a next step, a way out.
* * *
Seven days a week, morning till night, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway provides scenic trips up and down the San Jacinto mountainside. It’s an incredible experience, though often overlooked.
The tram is a hanging gondola, suspended from a long, thick cable.
It soars up the rocky crags at an incredible pace, more like taking off in an airplane than casually meandering in a trolley.
The ride to the top is approximately ten minutes long, often bringing passengers from scorching desert to frosty snow in this short time.
At the top, there’s a visitor’s center, a dining area, and several quality hiking trails through the thick forest of Mount San Jacinto State Park.
Marlo and I have come here plenty of times during the day, and the location has generated its fair share of Instafeed content.
I’ve never dropped in at night, though. Noah, on the other hand, has worked evening shifts as a tram operator.
He’s used to seeing the canyon shrouded in darkness, the cliffsides rising on either side to swallow any vehicle trekking up the long, winding road on its way to the base station.
I press my foot down a little more, picking up speed as we cut through the night.
In the daytime, these rolling desert hills would be a vibrant yellow, but right now there’s nothing but a vast, black abyss and the sense of something much larger waiting out there in the void.
Behind us, the lights of Palm Springs are starting to reveal themselves, our small change in elevation just barely enough to offer a view.