Chapter 27 - Reid #2
"I don't know. That depends entirely on Luna.
" He watches the road roll under Torrin's tires.
"I can picture our future down to the furniture, but it comes down to what she wants and what makes her happy. If she truly can’t get on board with any of this, then I don't have the first clue what we do. "
Neither of us has an answer for that, so we leave it there, and up ahead the trucks slow and put on their signals.
The turn takes us down a long, paved road with a green sign at the entrance.
Everything opens up at the end into a visitor centre parking lot big enough for tour buses.
Two storeys of glass catch the afternoon sun where the building sits flush into the face of the rock.
I know from the school trip that a cafeteria with about two hundred seats is sitting behind those windows.
Relief goes through me so hard my eyes sting.
We're here. Whatever comes next, we made it here.
Everybody spills out at once, stretching stiff legs and looking around.
The kids and Penny are running before their feet are all the way down.
Gage walks straight up to the main doors and hauls on the handles, which don't budge.
He bangs the side of his fist against the glass while Torrin heads for the truck bed to find something to pry them open with.
That's when a shape moves inside the dark lobby.
An older man comes toward the doors with a set of keys already up in his hand.
He looks to be about Anders's age with a narrow build and a solid, upright stance. There’s a laminated name tag hanging from a lanyard outside of his canvas jacket.
It’s almost eerie how everyone gets quiet while we wait for him to work the lock and it hits me that I never considered the possibility that we wouldn’t be able to get in.
He steps out into the sunlight, blinking at the size of the group that has just parked in his lot.
"Sorry, folks," he says. "We're closed. We're not running tours with everything that's going on."
Anders is already moving, hand out, easy as a neighbour at a fence line. "Well, turns out we’re not here for a tour. Could I borrow you for a private word, just inside those doors?"
The man looks past him at the buses, the trailers, the cattle liner, and the forty people standing in his parking lot.
I can’t hear people’s thoughts, but I can see on his face when he decides to be curious instead of afraid.
He holds the door open for Anders and the two of them disappear into the dark of the lobby together.
Then every bird in Alberta screams at once.
It hits the back of my skull and drives straight through, and my legs are gone before I understand that I'm falling. The sidewalk takes my knees. Both hands clamp over my ears, which does nothing at all, because it isn't coming in through my ears.
go go go the air is wrong behind us behind us
not enough sky not enough sky follow follow
don't land don't stop don't land
There are thousands of them. The flock comes over the rock face above the visitor centre in a black sheet that keeps coming and coming.
There's no shape to any of it, no argument, no small opinions about mice or snacks.
There is one single driving message in all those voices and it repeats without stopping.
Something is behind them. Something is wrong.
Something is coming. They can't outrun it, but they are going to try anyway.
The sound in my mind builds until my teeth ache with it and I'm pressing my forehead down toward the concrete.
Hands come down on me.
Luna drops beside me on the sidewalk, gets both arms around my head and pulls me in against her stomach, and the shrieking cuts out. All of it goes, every single voice.
The pressure behind my eyes drains away until what's left is a dull ache, the kind I get from a bad night of sleep and nothing worse.
Her hands stay locked over my ears. I can smell lilacs and the cherry thing she puts on her lips.
My fingers close on the back of her jacket, and I stay exactly where I am while the sky pours north over the top of us.
It takes a long time for the last of them to clear the ridge. When the sound of wings is finally gone, she loosens her arms. I lift my head to look up at her without a single word in me. Her hands come off my ears and cup my face instead, and then her eyes go huge.
"Reid," Her thumb moves once over my cheekbone. "Your eyes. Your eyes are glowing."
"What?"
"They're gold. I mean they're always gold, but right now they're lit." Her voice climbs. "What does that mean?"
Everybody is looking at us. I have no answer for her, not one, and I want that answer more than she does.
The visitor centre door bangs open before either of us can search for it. Anders comes out with the older man half a step behind him, and the relief all over his face tells me the answer before he opens his mouth.
"Everybody, this is Milton," he calls across the lot. "He's been kind enough to say yes, and better yet, he's staying on with us. The man knows every inch of this place."
Milton lifts a hand at forty strangers with the resigned look of somebody who has just agreed to something enormous and hasn’t had a chance to regret it yet.
"You'll want to get off this lot," he tells us.
"There's a service road along the east side.
Follow it around to the far end and you'll come to the equipment doors, big industrial rollups, they're how they used to bring the heavy machinery in and out.
You can back your trailers right inside.
I'll open them up for you from in here."
People start moving. Doors slam all over the lot, and Luna shifts to get her feet under her.
I don't let go of her hand as she stands.
She looks down at where I've got her fingers, then up at my face, and whatever she sees there makes her stop pulling.
I get up off my knees and wordlessly I take her with me toward the Escalade.
Julian is waiting with the back door open, concern etched all of his face for me, and I climb in after her.
He drops into the driver's seat, pulls us into the line behind Torrin, and adjusts the rearview mirror until he can see the two of us back here.
I don’t fully understand what just happened but while I sit there with Luna tucked in beside me, holding her hand, I know that I need her more than ever.
My eyes stay open the whole way around that service road, watching the northern sky where the birds went, scared of whatever they were running from.