4:00 A.M. Christmas morning, bloodshot eyes, a Glock riding shotgun…
At four o’clock on Christmas morning, Darwin Johnston briefly forgot the imminent threat to his life and marveled at the rivers of red and white lights. Who were all these people? Where were they going at this hour on this day?
He could partially answer those questions about himself. He had been a neuroscientist, and a damn promising one at that. Recently he was a stay-at-home dad. And now…he wasn’t so sure. A wanted man in more ways than one. He was going to San Francisco International Airport. The next logical question — why — made increasingly little sense.
Darwin’s understanding of the relationship between cause and effect had undergone something of a paradigm shift.
He hated driving at night. The red and white starbursts, streakier than usual in the rain, reminded him he was no longer a young man at the age of thirty-six. More alarmingly, they highlighted that he hadn’t slept in over five days. At least he thought it had been that long; the many harmful effects of extreme sleep deprivation included short-term memory loss. But they were still preferable to long-term memory loss, slipping further and further away.
While surveying the myriad points of light in front of him, he did his best to ignore those behind. Paranoia and hallucinations were expected given how long he’d been awake, but he was convinced the obnoxiously bright pair of headlights following him had been there since leaving his adopted safehouse. He did not think it a coincidence. He no longer believed in such things.
“Call Madeline Johnston,” he instructed the dashboard.
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that name,” replied the car in a voice that had almost ascended out of the uncanny valley. Oh, right.
“Call Madeline Lockhart.” The car understood this time, but her phone went straight to voicemail like it had for several days.
“Hey, this is Madeline.” Her voice was bubbly like it used to be; she’d had the same greeting for years. The sound made his throat tight. He had a creeping suspicion this was the last time he would hear it. He still loved her despite the pain they’d caused each other and how much she had changed, an especially salient feeling under the circumstances. “Sorry I missed your call. Please leave a message, or, better yet, text me.”
“Maddy, it’s Dar again. I hope to god — yes, god — that you’re alright. I ah…I think I really messed up this time. I’m on my way to Tokyo but…I’m not sure I’m going to make it. I’ll find you if I do. Please tell the girls I love them, and not to believe everything they may hear or read about me. Merry Christmas.”
For several minutes Darwin drove on through the pre-dawn in silence, the only sounds those of a car speeding in rain that would be snow if the temperature dropped a few degrees. The car in front of him put on its left blinker, which was odd given it was in the left lane going eighty-five. It followed its telegraphed intention and veered into the barrier separating the two directions of traffic, launching up into the air. Darwin’s delayed reactions didn’t even afford him time to brake, but when he glanced in his rearview mirror to survey the damage, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He shook his head and blinked hard.
A plane appeared out of the clouds ahead and above, or at least that’s what his eyes told him. It was logical given his location, so it was probably real. The plane’s blinking red lights looked something like Rudolph leading Santa and his sleigh. Maybe Madeline was right, and he should have let the girls believe, but Mister Rational just couldn’t let that stand. Strange how his mind wandered even at a moment like this.
A morbid mix of curiosity and fear propelled him to spare another glance in the rearview mirror. The intermittent windshield wiper cleared the glass, fortunately not leaving behind streaks of smeared blood. The offending headlights’ height made it look like they belonged to an SUV — not a good sign given his present worries. On the bright side, he was too terrified to be tired.
“Shit shit shit,” he whispered. He was ten minutes out from SFO, where hopefully the lights, crowds, and surveillance would discourage the worst kinds of violence. That meant they would likely make their move soon.
Honking shifted his attention back to the headlights ahead of him — one pair in particular. They were conspicuous amongst the flashing red taillights on the wrong side of the freeway and seemed authentic given his fellow drivers’ reactions. Someone who’d had too much eggnog and driven up the offramp? No chance, though presumably that’s what the media would report.
The car ahead of him began to brake and move to the left shoulder. Darwin followed suit, and the oncoming vehicle changed trajectory so that it was now heading straight for him. Unsurprising. He braked further only to have the trailing vehicle rear-end him, propelling him forward and confirming his worst fears and that it was indeed a black SUV occupied by at least two serious-looking men.
His smartwatch alerted him that his heartrate had spiked to over two hundred beats per minute, more than four times its resting rate. He was having a heart attack.
Darwin briefly thought about swerving to the right but only had time for one decisive action, and his subconscious had already made up its mind and started to put his body in motion. With his right hand he reached onto the passenger seat for the Glock 17. An actual fucking gun riding shotgun. Who had he become? It was insane how fast everything could change, especially for the worse.
But Darwin had a more pressing concern: The weapon was not there. It must have been jolted onto the floor. He took his eyes off the road and both hands off the wheel, leaned down, and frantically felt around in the dark for the black, full-sized handgun.
There.
Darwin twisted as he sat back up, his right hand gripping the Glock and pointing towards the back window. It was reckless but hey, it was better than getting smashed to pulp on the 101. However, the trailing SUV must have slammed on its brakes and was now dozens of feet back. When he twisted to face forward again, he knew why. His heart had been attempting to pound, but the sight that awaited him made it stop and drop: The onrushing vehicle was much closer than anticipated, its high beams blinding.
The gun’s lack of a traditional safety gave him enough time to get off a single, startlingly loud shot through the Volvo’s windshield and into the approaching vehicle, and also to realize it would do no good; although there was someone behind the steering wheel, which wasn’t a given in this day, age, and area, they were clearly not awake. The sleeping mask was a dead giveaway.
The gunshot had been quiet compared to the crash that came next. Shattered, blood-stained glass spilling onto the asphalt joined the cacophony of the downpour, which now sounded like thousands of tiny gemstones falling from the sky.
But Darwin, his heart now stopped, no longer saw the shining diamonds and rubies of head and taillights, only darkness.
This is an excerpt from Circadian Algorithms, a techno and psychological thriller about the dreams we have while both awake and asleep, now available on Amazon.
