Get out now! Leave.

Yes, I’m going, he silently screamed back as he half-rose, stopping at a crouch. He then proceeded along the aisle (why hadn’t he sat on the end for a quick escape?), excusing himself as he side-maneuvered along the narrow gap. Nearly at the end, he almost lost his balance when he tripped over a woman’s bag placed in a most inconvenient spot.

By the time he cleared the row and reached the aisle, his panic had him close to hyperventilating. When he burst from the tent into the afternoon sun, he had to stop and grasp the canvas wall to steady himself.

Deep breaths and calm, he told himself.

The human bustle of hundreds of bodies milling, walking and talking, surrounded him. Little bees, they were. Little, idiot bees seeking flowers which contained no pollen for them. Flowers controlled by the elite and only open to the anointed few.

The buzzing increased even as he managed to gain his breath and bring some calm to his mind. A migraine perhaps was on its way. Low blood sugar maybe around the corner. He probably needed to just get away, like the voice said. And sit. Just sit. And soon, because his skull felt as though it vibrated like a dentist was mining a cavity in there.

He wasn’t getting back his life. He was giving more of it away to Orelia because of his obsession. Once he got these bees out of his head, he’d work out how he could live with that revelation. Right now, he needed to dunk his head in cool water and flush his mind.

Get away.

He didn’t like the voice, but its insistence forced him to listen. It was right too, he needed to get away to somewhere quiet.

Off to his right he spied a path which wound down to a quiet section of a river which formed one boundary of the park. A wall of tall trees, dotted in between with weeping willows, hid the secluded spot. He’d discovered the place a few years ago at this same festival, when he had been one of the speakers (back when people would listen to him). A memory of once sitting beside the fast-flowing water, considering his marvelous future, dragged at his mind.

Come on, get moving!

Well, the voice wanted him to go and that seemed as good an idea as any other. He would go there, and in the quiet beauty decide his next move, decide how to live without the future he’d once imagined.

That thought made him sad, which led him to think about the plan he hadn’t completed, which led him to hope that the demanding voice didn’t know he still had the gun in his pocket.

29

Nem had learned through the years to duck and cover, and bob and weave. She tried to stop using the diary, which was easier said than done. Sometimes she felt as though the book had its own agenda.