Antiestablishment

He felt the bullets' impact, but there was no pain at first. Just a horrible sense of intrusion - those foreign things fused with his flesh in a way that just felt wrong. He ignored it and ran, taking random turns, hoping to lose the gunmen in the maze of the lab complex. It wasn't him they wanted. Not really. He and his colleagues were just in the way. When he could run no further, he took refuge in a storage closet. For a few hopeful moments, he thought he might just live after all, but the slow, measured steps approaching and stopping at the door of the closet told him otherwise. The door opened and he had only an instant to register the impassive gaze, and the leveled weapon before...

           Jon surged into wakefulness, panting and shaking with the adrenaline rush. Third time in two weeks, and he was more than a little sick of it. He shoved the sheets aside and got out of bed, only because the pall of dread was still hanging over him and he needed to move, to defy it. Damned if he'd hide under the covers like a scared kid. He paced the house for five minutes, and then went back to get what little sleep was left to him before morning.

           He still couldn't figure out what was triggering the nightmares. Sure, the stuff he worked with had some weaponization potential, and the facility had some fairly hefty security, but he'd been there for five years without a single incident, and never really thought beyond the problems inherent in his research. Maybe a pattern in the data that he was picking up on subconsciously was trying to get his attention.

           He rose a little early, and stopped to grab a cup of coffee on the way to the ferry landing. Yesterday's rain had cleared, leaving a watery sunlight, and a fresh breeze off the water. Jon leaned on the railing, watching a crowd of gulls begging bits of donut and croissant from the tourists.

           "It's almost like a dream, isn't it?"

           Startled, Jon turned to look at the girl leaning on the rail beside him. He'd been so preoccupied that he hadn't noticed her arrival.

           "Hm?" he said.

           Her vague gesture took in everything—the weather, the rising mist, the gulls—and  she smiled up at him. She looked like a refugee from Woodstock, about nineteen and slender, her long, straight hair stirring in the breeze off the harbor.

           "You know. All this. It's such a beautiful day. Just like a dream."

           He couldn't help smiling back at her. "Yeah, I suppose it is."

           "Do you know what I'd do?" She pulled her rainbow colored shawl closer around her shoulders.

           "What's that?" he asked, obliging her, because even if she was a little young, a guy couldn't help playing along with a girl who looked like that.

           She looked up at him, meeting his gaze with another of her sunlit smiles. "I'd take the day off. The whole day. Drive along the coast. Walk on the beach. Eat lunch in some little café you've never been in before. Watch the sunset from a cliff. I'd just take the whole day, and not come back until it's all over."

           "Until what's all over?"

           "The day, silly. The whole day." She shook her head. "Were you even listening?"

           "Sure I was." He looked out idly over the water. The ferry had come into view but it would be ten minutes yet. "I heard every word. It sounds fantastic. But I have to go to work."

           She made a face. "I'll bet you work way too hard. I'll just bet you have like a month’s vacation days you've never used."

           "Busted."

           "So take one. I dare you! You won't though, because you're all establishment, through and through."

           "Hey!" Jon protested. "My grandparents were at Woodstock. My dad was conceived at Woodstock."

           "So take the day off." Her eyes challenged him.

           He shook his head, chuckling.

           "I'm older than I look, you know," she announced.

           "What?"

           "That's what you were thinking. What does a kid like me know about responsibility? Well, I have a lot of responsibilities."

           Now it was his turn to be challenging. "Yeah? Like what? You can't be older than nineteen."

           She nudged him playfully. "Right now I'm responsible for getting you to take the day off. Come on. Buy me breakfast." She rolled her eyes at his expression. "You heard me, right? Because I said, 'Buy me breakfast,' not 'Have sex with me.' I'm harmless, I swear." She glanced out at the incoming ferry. "Come on. Say yes, right now. Don't think about it. Just say yes."

           He looked down into her eyes, and for a moment, he felt dizzy. She looked up at him, still smiling. "You see? You know you want to."

           "I don't even know your name."

           "It's Gabrielle. And don't you dare call me Gabby. I hate nicknames. Come on. There's a great bakery just across the street."

           He let her lead him away from the rail. She moved like a dancer. They bought coffee, and cream cheese Danish and ate them sitting on the beach. Jon felt a slight twinge of guilt when he called in to say that an emergency had arisen and he was taking a vacation day, but he put it out of his mind. A day off might be just what he needed to destress and get rid of the nightmares.

           "Do you believe in fate?" Gabrielle asked, licking the last of the cream cheese off her fingers.

           "You mean, like, what's going to happen happens, and we have no choice? Nah. We make our own fate."

           She stood and walked to the edge of the water, where she kicked off her sandals to let the waves wash over her toes.

           "We do have choices." She looked over her shoulder at him. "But I think, sometimes we need a little nudge in the right direction and maybe the universe provides that." She sighed and bent to pick up her sandals. "I have to go."

           "What happened to taking the whole day off?"

           Gabrielle smiled and shook her head. "You're the one taking a vacation day. You think you're my only job today? I have half a dozen more establishment types to corrupt before dinner."

           He watched her walk back to the landing, and after a moment he followed. When he reached his car, he sat for a time without starting it. Then he got it running and turned it toward the coast road. His cell vibrated in his pocket. He turned it off and tossed it into the jockey box.

           It wasn't until the sun had set and he'd turned his car back toward town that he thought again about Gabrielle's odd choice of words.

           Don't come back until it's all over.

           He pulled his cell from the jockey box and turned it on. Fifteen messages. He keyed up the first one.

           "Jon? Where the hell are you, man? All hell's broken loose! There's… we don't know how many are dead, but Mark, and Janet and… They shot, like, everyone! For God's sake, call me when you get this!”