The Third Rescue

by Jay Mackey

  A waste of ammunition. It’s too far, probably sixty or eighty yards. Maybe they’ll empty their guns taking these wild shots. They don’t look like experienced gunmen, especially the one in the white shirt.

  The men out across the parking lot didn’t shoot back, not since they’d aimed something in this direction right after they yelled for everyone to drop their weapons. Whatever it was that they fired off, it made a funny phoot sound and something landed harmlessly out in the lot. Strange weapons they had. If that’s all they were packing, then they were all in trouble.

  Gus’s mind quickly changed when a loud explosion sounded at the rear of the white car. “WHAM!” Only much louder than that. The car’s rear end jumped off the pavement, blown back about six feet, knocking both of the men down. They each scrambled back up, but the car had rotated. Gus would have a clear shot now. All he had to do was to crawl around to the other side of the tire.

  60

  Nevada, April 2018

  CJ panicked. He was frozen, Stringy Hair heading straight for him, with only a slightly open door between them. Run, or shoot? He looked behind him. Could he make it to the little office down the hall? Hide there?

  He turned to run, but he was too late.

  “What the hell, kid?” Stringy Hair had seen him.

  CJ froze, and looked back. A very large gun was pointed right at him. Only the huge hole at the end of the impossibly long barrel was in focus. Everything else was a blur.

  “Drop that gun, kid.”

  A movement refocused his eyes. Behind Stringy Hair, on the ground.

  “Now, kid!”

  It was Penny. Sitting on the floor in the reception office, just behind Stringy Hair. With a gun.

  CJ remained frozen. Stringy Hair was now just a blur. A voice.

  Penny aimed carefully, holding the gun with both hands. One eye closed. Funny, CJ could clearly see her tongue sticking out, just as she pulled the trigger.

  Stringy Hair looked like didn’t know what had happened. How had he suddenly been blown two feet to his right? He turned, slowly, toward the source of the noise.

  The recoil had shocked Penny, throwing her back, nearly knocking her flat. Had she held on to the gun?

  Stringy Hair saw her, but his face no longer registered surprise. Now it was anger. He took a step. Raised his gun.

  Shoot him! Shoot him! Stop shaking!

  Stringy Hair’s knee buckled. His gun was coming up toward Penny.

  CJ got his gun up. Pointed at Stringy Hair.

  Penny’s eyes were wide. Scared.

  CJ fired.

  Stringy Hair slowly crumpled. Still trying to get his gun up.

  Something moved, from beyond CJ’s focus.

  “Who the fuck?” It was Blankenship.

  CJ’s aimed his gun in the general direction of Blankenship. He pulled the trigger.

  “Goddamn,” Blankenship said as he disappeared through the door.

  But Stringy Hair was down, not moving. Penny stood, holding her gun, not pointed at anything.

  “I . . . I shot him,” she said.

  61

  Nevada, April 2018

  Gus was positioned for a shot. He hoped he could take out both men before they knew where he was shooting from. He steadied his aim, took a breath. But then, gunfire. From inside the lab.

  White Shirt jumped.

  Gus shot almost simultaneously, but White Shirt’s movement made him miss.

  What the hell! Nobody’s been shooting from inside there.

  Big Man heard Gus’s shot, and quickly spotted him under the van. Looked at him, raised his gun. Took a shot. BLAM! Something hit Gus in the left leg.

  Gus fired again, twice. Hit Big Man. He was down.

  White Shirt saw him now. Scrambling, getting his gun pointed in the right direction.

  The guy is pitiful.

  Two more shots.

  White Shirt is no longer white. He’s still standing. Hit him high.

  “Grandfather! I’m shot! I’m shot!” cried White Shirt.

  “Fuck!” A new voice.

  Gus turned toward the sound of the voice, toward where White Shirt was looking, back toward the lab. He didn’t have a good view. Could see legs.

  Someone is coming out of the lab. Toward the van. Does he see me?

  He’s veering toward the SUV. Door opening.

  The voice: “Damn, Venus. We’re getting out of here.”

  Gus tried to get out from under the van.

  Leg isn’t working right. Get out. Get out.

  The voice: “You two, get out. Get out of the car. Now!”

  White Shirt cried out, “Grandfather?”

  WHAM! The white car jumped again.

  White Shirt is down. He’s dropped his gun. Get out from under this van.

  The voice, “Trey? You all right? Fuck it. Venus, you’re driving. Get us out of here.”

  Goddamn leg. Don’t let him get in that SUV!

  A new voice: “No!”

  A shot.

  Violet: “CJ!”

  62

  Nevada, April 2018

  CJ saw old man Blankenship go out the front door. He started after him. Penny was standing over Stringy Hair, holding her gun in one hand, her cell phone in the other.

  “I shot him,” she said again. She didn’t look up at CJ as he walked past.

  CJ didn’t bother to look out the window before he went out the door. His focus was on Blankenship. He didn’t see the two men by the car off to his left, or the van to his right. Only the SUV in front of him, where Blankenship was pulling the door open.

  Nini? Is that you? Don’t talk to Blankenship. He’s evil.

  WHAM! The concussion knocked CJ back a step. The white car to the left was hit with something. Something big.

  That man in the white shirt is the one who’s been following me.

  CJ moved forward again. Toward Blankenship.

  What is he saying? Now he’s opening the back door.

  “Get us out of here!” said Blankenship. He started getting into the back seat.

  CJ yelled, “NO!” You’re not leaving here. Not with Nini.

  Blankenship turned and saw him. Stood up next to the SUV. Smirked. He raised his gun. He knew CJ wouldn’t shoot him.

  BLAM!

  Violet screamed, “CJ!”

  Blankenship wasn’t smiling. He fell against the SUV and slumped to the ground. The gun fell out of his hand.

  CJ dropped his gun too, just as Penny tackled him from behind.

  “You shot him,” she said. “You shot him.” She was crying.

  An old man with dirty clothes and a bloody pant leg came up to the SUV. He leaned over to look at Blankenship and then kicked the gun away.

  “Noga,” said CJ.

  “Are you all right?” asked Gus, looking at CJ but moving toward Violet, who was still sitting in the SUV, her hands covering her face. She, too, was crying.

  One of the black jumpsuit-clad men from across the parking lot had walked over, carrying a slender tube, about three feet long with a short handle. He bent over to White Shirt, pulled him to his feet, and then looked at Big Man, who he left on the ground. He came around the car and embraced Violet, who had emerged from the car.

  “My child,” the man said, giving Violet a long hug, “why haven’t you ever responded to me? I’ve tried reaching you every time I’ve come.”

  CJ thought it strange that the man, who looked to be younger than Nini, called her “child.”

  “I know,” she said into his chest. “But I’ve never needed you, never wanted to leave. My life is here.”

  The man nodded.

  “Who is this?” asked Gus. “Should I know you?” He stepped closer to the man.

  “Let me introduce you,” said Violet. “Gus, this is my grandfather. People called him Zeus. Zeus, this is my husband and savior, Gus Mazza.”

  They shook hands. Looking at Gus’s leg, Zeus said, “It looks like you’re bleeding.”

  “I thin
k it’s just shrapnel from the parking lot,” said Gus, touching his leg. “I’ll be okay.”

  Violet turned to CJ, pulled him close, and said, “And this is the light of my life, my grandson, and your, um, great-great-grandson, Christopher James.”

  CJ stuck out his hand to shake, but Zeus stepped forward and embraced him. “Hello, Christopher,” he said. “I’m thrilled.”

  “Me, too,” said CJ. He wasn’t sure how to respond, really.

  Great-great-grandfather? How is that possible?

  “Wait,” he said. A thought came to him. “You said you tried to reach Nini—er, my grandmother. How? Do you have some kind of secret radio thing?”

  Zeus laughed. He had a deep voice, surprising for someone as small as he was, and his laugh boomed. “No, nothing like that. It’s more like an ability we have to communicate directly with each other, and especially to those in our own families.”

  “You mean, like telepathically?” said CJ.

  “No—or well, maybe, if I understand the concept,” Zeus replied. “But it’s not so much words we communicate, it’s emotions, pains, fears. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the message. I sent messages. This time, she responded.”

  “Was that you I heard in my head?” asked CJ. “I’ve been hearing voices. I thought I was going nuts.”

  Zeus smiled. “Yes, that was probably me. But not just me.”

  Now another figure came limping across the parking lot. “Epic VTOL, man,” said Oval. Then he burst into tears.

  Violet went to him and gave him a hug. He put his head on her shoulders.

  “Jack is dead,” he said. He lifted his head and looked at CJ. “I’m glad you shot that fucker.” He nodded at Blankenship, on the ground.

  “VTOL?” said Zeus.

  “Vertical Takeoff and Landing.” He wiped his eyes.

  “Oh, my . . . uh . . . lander, you mean. Yes, thank you. And who might you be?”

  “I’m Oval Smythe, best friend and right-hand man to the awesome gunman, CJ Mazza.” Oval took a bow, as best he could since he was still on crutches.

  “Oval is my best friend,” said CJ. “He saved our lives, by attacking that asshat”—he pointed at Blankenship—“with his crutch, if you can believe it.”

  “No biggie,” said Oval, who looked like he was blushing, even if it didn’t show with his dark skin.

  Oval looked at the ground and wiped his eyes again. “Jack died. I feel so, so . . .”

  “Me too, buddy,” said CJ, wiping his eyes.

  “Who is Jack?” asked Gus.

  “I think he’s my father,” Violet said, tearfully.

  “Is that Dr. Jack Omdahl you’re talking about?” asked Zeus.

  “Yeah,” answered CJ. “Or Jack Dobbins, now. But he told us he used to be Dr. Omdahl.”

  Zeus nodded. “I’m so sorry he died. I’d been looking forward to seeing him.” He turned to Venus. “Yes, he was your father, Venus. But he didn’t know until long after you’d disappeared and he and your mother made their escape with me. Leaving you behind was something that he never forgave himself for, even though it wasn’t his fault. It was mine.”

  “No, it wasn’t anybody’s fault,” said Violet. “I didn’t want to go. Really, I didn’t. And I’ve had a wonderful life here. Mostly.” She paused and looked down, wiping her hand across her face.

  “How did Jack die?” she asked.

  “That devil shot him,” answered Penny, who was being held tightly by her mother. She pointed to Blankenship. “I hope he’s dead.”

  “Jack helped us,” said CJ. “He must have known all along who I was, and that we were related. I don’t know. But without him, we’d never have learned any of this, or met you, Mr. Zeus.”

  A long silence was broken by Oval. “So did you zoom in from Mars, or wherever you hang out, just to rescue us?” he asked, clearly trying to change the mood.

  “Not Mars, certainly, but—”

  “Where from, then?” interrupted Oval.

  “I don’t know, really,” answered Zeus. “We travel through some kind of fault line in space that brings us here, or at least close to here, but it’s not clear where ‘here’ is relative to where we started. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I just fly the things. I don’t invent them.”

  “So can you communicate all the way from your home?” asked CJ. “Is that how you know when to come?”

  “Oh no. We can’t communicate until we—our space plane, for lack of a better term—is here in orbit. That’s where it is now. This is just the lander we use to get from the space plane to the ground.” He pointed over to the lander sitting on the other side of the parking lot.

  “So why don’t you come more often?” asked CJ.

  “It’s the time-compression effects,” said Zeus. “See, I’m traveling back and forth almost constantly. The trip takes me something like one of your years, or a little more. Round trip, two years. But you will have aged something like seventeen years in that time. It’s all because of the high relativistic speeds we travel, plus the gravitational effects of the black hole, which is what we think causes the fault line. Like I said, I just fly them. Don’t ask for more science from me.”

  “Why are you here now?” asked Oval.

  “Oh, well, I was about to tell you. We came with another mission. It seems that we have a delivery. Another couple who were actually saved by Jack, themselves. And it turns out, they were related, too, although neither Jack nor anyone else knew it at the time.” Zeus turned to look back at his lander. Three people were walking across the parking lot, nearing the knot of people now gathered in the midst of a jumble of vehicles and blood.

  Venus gasped. She grabbed Gus and burst into tears.

  To CJ, the couple walking next to the man in the black jumpsuit looked vaguely familiar. He’d seen them before. In pictures. They looked just like the pictures in Nini and Noga’s house. Wedding pictures. Pictures with them holding their newborn. Holding CJ.

  The woman started running. “Christopher?” she cried.

  “Mom? Really?” He couldn’t stop the tears as he fell into her arms.

  “Ann? My God, is it really you?” said Violet. She joined the hug.

  Gus just shook his head. “This isn’t possible.” He grasped his son-in-law in a bear hug. “Why do you look just like you did the day you left?”

  “Why do you look like an old man?” said Tom.

  After a round of hugs and cries, Zeus said, “I live a lonely life. In the stars. Like I said, two of my years are like seventeen of yours. When I come home, people barely remember me. When my daughter Aphrodite agreed to travel with me, it was perhaps the happiest day of my life. A child to share my life with. But then we crashed. A long and difficult time later, we escaped. And maybe the worst day of my life was then, when we lost you, Venus. But now, this day, this ranks right up there with my happiest.”

  CJ was overflowing with emotion. He’d just met his great-great-grandfather Zeus, but lost his great-grandfather Jack. He’d met his mother and father for the first time, really. He’d escaped a gun battle, but had shot and killed at least one, and maybe two men. He cried, without knowing if it was tears of joy or of sorrow that ran down his face.

  And then reality barged in again. Sirens blared in what was now the darkened desert.

  Guess someone called 911. That was quick.

  “It seems my lonely life is intruding again,” said Zeus. “The authorities here frown on our occasional visits. I can’t let them capture these youngsters who came with me and do to them what was done to us.” He pointed to the man in the black jumpsuit who stood off to the side holding Trey, the man in the white shirt.

  Zeus leaned over and kissed Nini on the forehead. “Doc Jack loved your mother, and she him,” he said. “And we all loved you and worried about you. I’m so glad to see you well. Goodbye, my dear. See you in another seventeen years, perhaps?”

  She said, “I don’t know what to say. I never thought I’d see you again. But
now, maybe we’ll meet one more time.”

  Zeus nodded, and then reached over to shake CJ’s hand. “I’m glad I got to meet you, young man,” he said. “Your mother, father, and grandmother can tell you all about us when they think you’re ready.”

  “Thanks,” said CJ. He found something caught in his throat, or he would have said more.

  Zeus turned and shook hands with Ann and Tom, waved to Gus and the others standing nearby, and walked quickly back to his lander with the jumpsuited man. They lifted off just as a trio of police cars screamed up into the parking lot.

  63

  Nevada, April 2018

  Things got very confusing after that. Cops swarmed over everything, taking all the weapons, not making any assumptions about who was a good guy and who a bad guy. They had Gus in handcuffs, despite being told of his innocence by many of the others.

  Ambulances arrived soon after. Trey, the man in the white shirt, was placed into one, and Blankenship, who was still alive, joined him. Only one of Blankenship’s three men was dead—the big man that Gus had shot. Stringy Hair was still lying on the floor where he’d fallen after Penny shot him. He was put into a second ambulance. Skinny Kid was found walking through the desert behind the lab. He was taken away in a police cruiser.

  Jack’s body was put on a stretcher and placed in a third ambulance.

  Gus got his leg cleaned and wrapped by one of the paramedics, but he refused to go to the hospital.

  Before the ambulances left, a group of five or six—CJ couldn’t tell for sure, there was so much commotion—black SUVs pulled in, blocking the road. A group of vaguely military-looking blue-shirt-clad men poured out of the SUVs.

  A chill went down CJ’s back. The men looked familiar, and it wasn’t just the blue shirts and black pants. One looked very like the man who’d come into the coffee shop and tried to kidnap him and Jack. So what was this? Escape from one kidnapping only to get kidnapped by someone else?