“Wrong planet,” she replies, standing up and admiring her handiwork. I stand back as well, although I’m not sure what I’m admiring.
Planet?
Did she just say planet?
Maybe I didn’t hear her correctly. I try to think of the names of various countries that sound like planet. Nope, can’t think of any. Plano? Maybe she’s from Texas.
“The police are here,” I say, trying to be helpful.
“Oh, good,” she replies, reaching around behind me and pulling back the curtain. She pulls a handgun from the small of her back and fires three rounds blindly out the window. The sound of gunfire in a tiny tiled bathroom is like thunder breaking directly overhead, rattling my bones. I grimace, closing my eyes for a second.
And she’s gone.
I look around and Sharon has disappeared.
I peer through the window. The crowd has panicked. They’re screaming and running for cover as the cops duck behind their vehicles. The cops have their guns drawn, pointing at the building—pointing at me!
“Shit!” I whip my hand away from the curtain. The lacy fabric can’t fall back in place fast enough.
“Fuck. Fuck,” I repeat with my heart pounding in my chest.
“We need to get out of here,” Sharon says, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, only she’s talking to a banana.
I blink and look again, wondering if my eyes are deceiving me. Nope, I got it right the first time. Sharon is holding a banana like a phone and speaking into it. I can’t help myself. I reach out, wanting to touch the banana as she speaks, wondering if it’s like a joke phone or something.
“No, I don’t want a shuttle,” she protests to the banana. “I need a direct evac to the Moon.”
My fingers finally touch the banana. The skin feels like regular peel, while the banana itself is motley, with flecks of black in the skin and a bruise at one end. I wouldn’t eat it. My mother would make banana bread with it, or muffins, or something. She certainly wouldn’t talk to it.
“I don’t have time for this,” Sharon snaps. “He’s dead, don’t you get that? If I don’t get him out of here, he’s gone. A shuttle isn’t good enough.”
Sharon drops the banana to her side. I’d call her crazy, but my father told me, never call someone crazy if they’re holding a gun. I think that’s good advice.
“We’ve got to get to the lab,” she says. “If I can get a cerebral imprint, I can reconstruct his conscious awareness before it fades, but we don’t have long.”
The banana drops to the floor. I’d be happier if she dropped the gun.
“What’s going on?” I ask, trying to walk a tightrope with someone undergoing a severe mental breakdown.
“Oh, the banana?” she says.
It’s not just the banana I’m interested in, but that’s a start.
Sharon says, “They’re a great source of potassium isotopes—half-life of over a billion years!”
I raise my eyebrows. That’s not quite the explanation I was after.
“Potatoes will work too. Brazil nuts are the best.” She appeals with her hands. “It’s tech you wouldn’t understand. I can use the nuclear resonance of the isotopes as a natural amplifier. It allows me to communicate with the others.”
“Oh, I think I understand,” I say, backing into the corner of the bathroom by the sink. Carrying Mark inside, okay, I was trying to help a grieving neighbor. Shooting at cops, talking to bananas… yeah, this isn’t my circus, these aren’t my monkeys.
“Do you trust me?” she asks, and I must admit, looking into those pretty brown eyes and hearing her soft feminine voice is somewhat hypnotic, but I’m officially freaked out.
“No,” I reply, deliberately looking down at the gun in her hand to emphasize my point.
“See,” she says. “Honesty. I like that in a man. I get hit on by creeps all the time. They’re never honest, you know? I appreciate your honesty.”
Sharon grabs the tinfoil from the floor and tears off a couple of strips roughly two feet long. She hands one to me.
“Ah,” I mumble, looking at the thin, shiny foil drooping under its own weight.
“Quick,” she says, wrapping the tinfoil around her head. She crumples the foil so her head looks like a Hershey’s Kiss.
“Hurry,” she adds, waving the gun around.
“Uh, okay,” I say, somewhat reluctantly mashing the tinfoil over my head. I’ve gone for a World War II combat helmet look, but I look utterly pathetic in the mirror.
“Is tinfoil really necessary?” I ask as I mash the foil in place.
“A-lu-min-um foil,” Sharon says, correcting me. “Oh, aluminum foil is an invention ahead of its time. Horribly underappreciated. People just shove it in ovens, not realizing its potential. Did you know the docking collar on the Apollo missions was protected by aluminum foil? This is the stuff of rocket launches and moon landings. It’ll shield us from surveillance.”
I’m not convinced.
“Can I go now?”
“Yes, yes,” she says. “We need to go. Grab Mark.”
Ordinarily, I would say, “Fuck no,” but she gestures with the gun and it seems only polite to comply and stay alive for a few more minutes. I don’t want to end up like Mark—dead and buried in ice—so I hoist him and his ice-head up and over my shoulder. Slush runs down my arms.
Without looking, Sharon squeezes off a few more deafening rounds, firing out the window.
“Come on,” she says, but I can’t hear her words. My ears are ringing, but I can read her lips.
I follow her out into the foyer of the building. Nervous eyes peer from the corner of the stairs on the second floor. A cell phone camera snaps a shot of me with the iceman slumped over my shoulder and Sharon with her gun. That’ll make it onto the evening news. Sorry, mom.
We head out the back of the building into the alley.
Sharon’s able to move much faster than me. She keeps beckoning me on with her gun. I’m trying to recall how many shots she’s fired. I’m racking my brain. I don’t recognize the make of the handgun. How many rounds does the magazine hold? She’s fired four or five shots. She’s probably got at least the same number left.
“Quick, the shuttle’s coming.”
I jog down the dark alley behind her. My lungs are burning. My heart is pounding in my chest. Alien or crazy woman? I’m thinking crazy, but I’m half wondering if I’m going to see some kind of UFO alien space shuttle thingy arriving in response to her banana call. Nah… She’s a nutbag.
Headlights blind me as I round the corner of the alley.
An old-fashioned bus pulls up, the kind with the 1950’s flares and grooves, and an absurd amount of polished chrome. Instead of a digital display, there’s an old hand-cranked sign above the driver: Downtown Shuttle. I can’t help but let out a soft laugh.
Pneumatics sound as the door opens and Sharon scrambles up into the bus. I climb in behind her, seriously thinking about dumping the body and running, wondering how good a shot she is, but not wanting to end up like Mark.
“Thanks, Joe,” Sharon says, which confuses me for a moment because my name’s Joe but she’s not talking to me. She stands behind the driver, adding, “For a moment there, I thought we were screwed. Good old Joe. You’re always there when I need you.”
“No problem,” Good Old Joe replies. “I was in the neighborhood anyway.”
Good Old Joe’s an African-American in his late sixties. Tight grey curly hair and a receding hairline are the only clues to his age, as his skin is young and vibrant. He’s wearing a uniform, but he doesn’t look like a regular bus driver.
I plop Mark and his impromptu ice helmet onto an empty seat. His body slumps sideways and I have to stop him from falling onto the floor. I look up at the passengers apologetically. No one seems to notice. I’ve just climbed into a bus with a dead body draped over one shoulder and no one cares?