THE END
Preview of Fallout – The Incorruptibles Book 2
Owen arrived with the newcomer after the rest of us were assembled and I couldn’t help but stare. This man shared the stunning glow of Cain, Owen, Jude, and Nadine. Other than that he would probably pass for a normal, good-looking kind of guy. Athletic, tanned, with almond-shaped green eyes, his hair close-shaven. He looked serious, a frown frequently creasing his forehead. Was that a crucifix around his neck? It was silver and small, similar to the one I’d once worn. The oddest thing was the tug I felt. It was a sensation of being tied up to something and suddenly pulled closer. A coming together, like I’d somehow been waiting for Léon to come and felt better now he was here. Maybe it was the recognition of yet another special being like Cain and the other three. Léon’s eyes searched all our faces keenly, often coming back to mine.
Then he was shaking hands all-round, introducing himself as Léon in a French accent. That surprised me until I remembered something Owen had said about the French region of Québec. I was last in the introductions. Léon stood in front of me with a warm smile on his face, shaking my hand in both of his.
“Francesca,” he said, although I’d been introduced as Frankie.
He did that two-cheek kiss thing the French do. He hadn’t done that with the other girls. And calling me by my full name―only Cain did that. I flushed and glanced awkwardly at Cain. His smile had frozen and a look of confusion crossed his face.
“I bet you’re jetlagged,” Nadine said, breaking the uncomfortable moment.
“I am,” Léon admitted with a laugh. “Owen is very kindly hosting me and I expect he will be troubled by my snoring for many hours later tonight.”
Liz fussed about and got Léon a drink. He accepted a plastic ‘glass’ of wine before settling into a beanbag to smile around at us all. I couldn’t help a reaction to that smile. It reminded me vividly of the one Cain had given me on that very first night, the one that was etched permanently into my heart. I smiled myself, remembering it, and looked at Cain where he sat beside me but found him regarding Léon with a faintly puzzled air.
“This is the ledger we keep,” Liz told Léon, showing him the notebook. “Owen said you wanted to see it. All our visions are written down in it, as you can see. We record as much detail as possible to try to help us find out where and when an event is going to happen.”
“This is so clever,” he murmured, flicking through. “You have weather observations, estimates of the time of day, even maps and drawings ...” He fell silent, examining the book’s many filled pages. “The colors, they are of significance, I understand?”
“Yeah,” Nadine said. She couldn’t take her eyes off Léon. “There’s often just one item in color in our visions and it’s always a primary color. The rest is kind of grayed out.”
Owen shifted position, nodding toward the ledger. “You remember, Léon, what I told you about the colors, yeah? The color we see might not be the actual color in real life. The primary colors tend to represent other colors. Something we see as red could actually be orange or pink, or something we see as yellow could be cream or tan.”
“Frankie noticed that,” Jude said. “She also realized the colored item is usually significant to the event in some way. Like, there was this woman we saw who got her bag snatched but tried to hang onto it, and then fell over and broke her hip. She died a few days later. The bag was the colored item in that vision.”
I winced, remembering. That vision had come a week too late for us to help. The others always talked so comfortably about the grisly things they saw. Léon stared at me with open admiration in his eyes. He leaned forward and spoke directly to me.
“You must be very astute, Francesca, to discover such things.”
I shrugged, flustered.
“Frankie’s our puzzle-solver,” Jude told Léon, a trace of pride in his voice.
“When did you first become aware of your gift?” he asked me.
Was he really asking me that? I wanted to hide under the sofa. “I haven’t got a gift,” I mumbled. “I’m a normal.”
“A normal?” Léon replied without a trace of humor. “I don’t think so.”
I glanced at Nadine and then Jude. Was it possible Léon couldn’t see our differences? That he didn’t see their intense beauty and power the same way I did? We were all in suspense for a moment, waiting for his explanation, but he simply said he regretted that his own group members had never thought of writing down their premonitions. I was left wondering about his words while Owen asked Léon about the other members of his group.
“There were four of us,” he said, a shadow crossing his face. “There are some I have not yet found. But we were broken apart by circumstances of our lives and families.”
He explained how he’d found one of the women at his college; a man working at a food stand in the city; and the last was the sister of a school friend.
“And you had a medium working with you?” Owen prompted.
“Yes, we had another woman helping us,” Léon said. “She was a friend of my mother. Very spiritual and claimed to be a medium. But I am not sure she had any genuine gifts. She was never able to help us put together our premonitions. She gave us nothing of any real use before she stopped coming to our meetings. I believe she has left town to stay with her ailing father.”
Helen spoke for the first time, her voice timid. “Have you been able to help anyone through your visions?”
Léon hesitated. “Our visions are not quite visions, not as Owen says you have visions. You see fragments, correct? Until the transformation?”
Liz nodded. “Yes. All in washed out colors except for the item of significance.”
“And then when an individual has transformed he sees full and complete visions of the scenario?”
“That’s right, but less often,” Nadine told him. “Before we transform we see them every day, only fragmented. But after the transformation, it’s only once every couple of weeks, on average.”
“But the visions of those who haven’t transformed are still useful,” Jude put in. “They build up a picture and sometimes even seem to spark the full vision.”
“That is the same for us. Fragments until transformation, and then more complete premonitions. But me, my group, we do not see, as such.” Léon appeared to struggle to put it into words. “Our precognition comes to us as a rush of sensory information, usually without sight. The experience can be like sitting in the middle of a scene with your eyes closed.”
“That’s hard to imagine,” Nadine said.
“Let me illustrate.” Léon thought for a moment. “One of my group, Sara, heard the sound of a crying infant through several walls, as though in another part of the house. She heard heavy footsteps and a dog sniffing, its claws clipping on a tiled floor. She smelled the earthy, smoky scent of an extinguished fire, and felt cold air on her face and arms, and a man’s voice called, ‘Mariah.’ The footsteps paused. There was the honking sound of wild geese outside and a rustle of wind through grass. The creak of a door being pushed open and the sound of dripping. The dripping of a tap into water. Then a man’s voice gasping, ‘Mariah,’ again and sobbing. She smelled a powerful metallic odor and heard running footsteps, with a rush of the cold air past her face. The infant stopped crying and squealed with happiness.”
There was silence for some moments. Tears filled my eyes and I shook my head, distressed. “Did you find her in time?”
Léon straightened and gave me a penetrating gaze. “Did we find whom, Francesca?”
“The woman who ...” I trailed off, confused. I’d made an enormous assumption about what Sara’s peculiar sightless vision had represented.
“Yes, there was a woman.” Léon’s eyes lit up. “Do you know what she did?”
“No,” I said.
Cain watched me. “You have an idea though, don’t you? Go on. What is it?”
I hesitated and then blurted, “I thought it could be a woman with post-natal depression
. She put her child down for a nap, and then went to run herself a bath and cut her wrists. Perhaps Sara heard the husband discovering his wife and running to pick up the baby while he cried.”
Léon sat stock still, not speaking.
“Is that how you try to interpret―” Nadine started asking, but she didn’t get a chance to finish her question.
“You’re right,” Léon said to me, his voice as intense as his eyes. “You’re absolutely right. That’s what happened. No, we didn’t get to her in time. Sara was devastated.”
I tried to reassure him. “It had to be practically impossible without seeing anything.”
“How would you have gone about finding her?”
I thought about it. “It seems like a country area, not a built-up city. The grasses and the geese and the fireplace―it’s like a small house in a farming area. Is there agriculture in Québec? I’m sorry, I don’t know much about the region.”
“I live in an agricultural area.” Léon’s excitement was growing. “There are a number of small towns and the Canada geese love to forage in the harvested cornfields.”
“Did the geese sound like they were close to the house?” I asked. “If they were close then the building might be near the edge of the cornfield. You could maybe use satellite imagery to search the area? It was cold so it was probably winter, and the fire had gone out so they must have a chimney, plus there was a dog, and a baby old enough to laugh and squeal when it recognized its father, and the woman’s name was Mariah. Are there any public birth records you could access to find out where a baby had been born to a Mariah in the local area, up to six months before?”
Léon stared at me raptly while we conversed as though no one else was in the room. “Our group has become pretty good at establishing possibilities using little things as clues,” I finished awkwardly. “That’s why we record so much detail.”
“It’s much easier since Frankie came along,” Jude said. “It’s like she’s inside our heads sometimes.”
“Yes, she seems be able to consolidate the fragments we describe,” Owen agreed, “sometimes more clearly and more completely than we can, ourselves.” He observed me for a moment as though Léon’s interest had kindled his own curiosity. From the corner of my eye I saw Nadine roll her eyes at the praise they were heaping on me.
Léon finally stopped staring at me. “We were never able to put the information together like that.” He gave a shake of his head, eyes regretful.
“Owen said you get messages from spirits,” Nadine commented. She tried to sound neutral but I could hear the skepticism in her voice.
Léon smiled at her. “We don’t know where the messages come from but, because we hear whispers and words, it does sometimes seem that we are hearing the voices of ghosts. Yousef is convinced he hears the spirits, although Tania scoffs at him. We hoped Celine―the medium―would be able to help us with translating the messages more clearly. But it was no good.”
My imagination fired. I wanted to know more of Léon and his circle, to see how they worked. I was suddenly glad he was here. He could gain a lot from our group and maybe go home empowered to help more people.
“Why did you come here, Léon?” Cain asked.
I looked at Cain, shocked by his thinly-veiled hostility. Léon considered Cain with a steady gaze…
Fallout – The Incorruptibles Book 2
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