Allison

by Strand, Jeff

  It was a promising sign that Buster was still alive and unharmed. Allison wasn’t feeling very calm, yet she hadn’t accidentally broken any of his bones. She was already getting better at this.

  She’d start by trying to break his leg. If she broke something higher up, he might decide to risk getting shot and just flee.

  She stared at his leg, trying to focus specifically on the left one, to imagine the bone ripping through his flesh, poking through the fabric of his pants.

  Nothing happened.

  Buster clearly didn’t understand what she was doing. His muffled tone now sounded like an attempt to negotiate.

  She continued to focus on his leg, trying to harness all of her rage.

  Nothing.

  That was fine. That’s why she was practicing.

  Break, you shitty leg. Break in half. Shatter. Just the leg. Break into a million pieces. Spray fragments of bone everywhere. Break. Break. Break.

  Buster let out a muffled cry of pain.

  He fell completely back against the car but didn’t topple over. He lifted his left leg as he whimpered.

  If she’d broken his leg, he wouldn’t be able to stand there like that. Had she broken his foot?

  “I’m going to need you to take off your shoe,” she told him. “Both of them. And your socks.” Technically, she should make him strip naked so she could best see the impact of each of her experiments, but she wasn’t quite prepared to ascend to that level of depravity.

  Buster sat on the ground and obliged. He took off his right shoe and sock first, then yelped in pain as he took off the left. His big toe was bright red, though it hadn’t yet begun to swell.

  Now she’d try to break it worse.

  She focused on the toe, imagining it breaking, creating a vivid picture in her mind of the toe twisting around until it popped right off his foot.

  Twisting. Twisting. Twisting.

  She moved her fingers as if twisting his toe off with them.

  The toe twisted and snapped.

  Buster’s reaction was extremely loud. She probably should add a few more layers of duct tape before she broke him further.

  She got the tape out of the car and wound it around the lower half of his face several more times, ignoring the pleading look in his eyes.

  Back to work.

  Now she wanted to break the toe next to it. She didn’t know what the toe was called—the one that stayed home from the market.

  She focused on twisting that particular toe, and moved her fingers again. Maybe that helped.

  His toe twisted, but not the one she meant to break. It was the big toe again.

  She tried to bend it upward.

  The toe bent exactly as she intended.

  The extra duct tape had been a good choice. Buster screamed and thrashed around in pain.

  The hand gestures definitely helped. Instead of going for precision, she’d try to break his leg. She wasn’t feeling as angry now, so she took a moment to remember that they’d kidnapped Cody. He was counting on her. They’d kicked him in the face, and they might be hurting him right now.

  She concentrated on his left leg, then moved her hands as if snapping a branch over her knee.

  His leg bent sideways and broke. A red splotch appeared near the knee of his pants.

  It worked! She was learning how to control her ability! This could change her life!

  She was ecstatic!

  Buster’s right arm broke.

  Shit. She had to remember that strong positive emotions could have the same effect.

  Focus.

  Pinky finger on his right hand.

  She concentrated and gestured.

  His index finger began to bend.

  Nope. Pinky. Focus.

  His ring finger twitched.

  Nope. Focus.

  His pinky twitched. Began to bend backwards. Snapped.

  Buster screamed. His eyes were wild, delirious with pain. She hoped he didn’t pass out, and then she thought that it might be better if he did. Her abilities should still work, right?

  Okay. What next? She’d flung Daxton across the room. She should try something like that with Buster. Toss him into the air.

  Eight failed attempts and three accidental broken bones later, Buster left the ground. He went up a few feet and crashed down upon the trunk of the car, landing on his broken leg.

  He tumbled off the car and lay still.

  Allison knelt beside him. He was still breathing.

  She tried to break the middle finger of his right hand. Got it on the first try.

  Then she tried to break each of the toes on his left foot. She got three out of the five. On the second try, she broke the remaining two. She twisted his big toe over and over, like unscrewing the lid of a jar, until the skin split wide open.

  It only took three tries to fling him into the air again.

  Then only one.

  She walked about a hundred feet away from him. Now she’d try for distance.

  She tried to raise him into the air. Couldn’t make it happen from this far away. Tried to break his arm. Couldn’t do that, either.

  She walked twenty paces closer and tried again.

  No luck.

  Fifty feet was still too far away.

  Forty feet was too far.

  Shit. She’d thought she could do it from this distance. She’d made Daxton’s nose bleed from further than this, but she’d had to shriek to make it happen.

  Buster let out an agonized moan. His fate was probably disproportionate to his crimes. He simply tried to kidnap the wrong woman at the wrong time, and now he was a very unfortunate guinea pig. Allison wished she felt worse about what she was doing to him.

  She took one step at a time, trying to lift and break him after each one. Nothing was happening. It wasn’t until she got about twenty feet away that his wrist bent back until it snapped. Buster shrieked beneath the duct tape. He was clearly not getting numb to all of the pain.

  Allison could kill a man from twenty feet away. Good to know.

  She didn’t have much accuracy from that distance. An attempt to break his leg—in more places than she’d already broken it—broke his jaw instead. At least she thought she’d broken his jaw. The lower half of his face had given a violent jerk, but with all of the tape she couldn’t be sure of the actual injury.

  With her next move, his neck twisted, Exorcist-style. That wasn’t her intention. He went silent.

  She tried to lift him but nothing happened.

  She walked right up to him and continued trying. No effect.

  Okay. She couldn’t do anything with dead people. No zombie army at her disposal.

  Now she wished that she’d lifted him into the trunk while he was still barely alive. Or flung him off the side of the road. It was going to be difficult to get him into the trunk without help.

  Actually, thanks to the situation at the rest area, the police might be looking for black-haired middle-aged women driving silver Prius V’s. It probably wouldn’t be such a great thing for her to have a dead body in her trunk. She didn’t have nearly enough time to dig a shallow grave, but she’d drag Buster off the road and assume that nobody would find him for a while.

  He’d suffered an awful death, but he’d given his life for scientific research, so in the end he’d brought some good into the world.

  Allison and Spiral had been back on the highway for a few minutes when Buster’s cell phone buzzed.

  Dominick Winlaw.

  Allison decided not to answer it. Let that asshole wonder what was happening for a while longer.

  Winlaw slammed his phone down onto his desk. Of course it couldn’t have been that easy. Of course not. Why had he ever imagined that it could be? He didn’t know if Allison had somehow gotten the upper hand, or if Buster and Dean had some other reason for not answering his calls, but he had to assume that he’d be transitioning to the second phase of his plan.

  It was time to move the captives to the campground. And almost ev
erybody else.

  He’d probably lose more men. If he counted Buster and Dean, and also Daxton, he now had nine fewer employees than he did before he’d heard of Allison. It wasn’t as if he had a global operation with thousands of people working for him. She’d goddamn well better be worth it.

  The door opened. Matt again. This time he was holding a gun.

  “Time to get moving,” he told Cody and Maggie, who were seated on the floor against the back wall.

  “Where are we going?” Cody asked.

  “Your graves, probably.” Matt chuckled. “I’m just kidding. Our boss is obviously very stable. I’m sure he’ll be able to work out a peaceful resolution to this whole thing.”

  Allison was having good luck on the drive back. No cops, no traffic issues, and no tires falling off her car. She was close enough to home that it was time to answer the next time he called Buster, which he’d been doing every few minutes.

  “Hi,” she said, when he called.

  “Allison.”

  “Was that a question?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you keep calling? If Buster’s phone ends up with the FBI, won’t it seem suspicious that you’ve called him a dozen times?”

  “That won’t be a problem.”

  “I’m sure you’ve worked it all out. You seem very smart.”

  “What happened to Buster?”

  “Oh, he’s dead as fuck.”

  “I see.”

  “I mean, he’s really, really dead. The other guy is dead, too, but he got off easy. Everybody you send after me ends up dead. I’m not telling you how to run your business, but I personally would stop sending people after me.”

  “Noted.”

  “We had a deal. You violated it. How can I trust you?” Allison asked.

  “I understand why you’re upset,” said Winlaw. “To be fair, I never said I wouldn’t send anybody after you. It’s not my fault if you got that impression.”

  “Are you being serious right now?”

  “I still have something you want. I will still kill Cody if you don’t follow my instructions. I know you’re feeling angry and homicidal right now, but don’t forget who has the power here.”

  “Did Cody try to tell you we’re soulmates or something? Maybe I care more about killing you than saving him.”

  “Do you?”

  “I guess you’ll find out.”

  “So is our negotiation over?”

  “Not quite yet.”

  “I’m going to text you the address to a building. You’ll park behind the building, and go through the unlocked back door into the garage. From there you’ll get your next instructions.”

  “I don’t want further instructions. I want to know where the fuck Cody is.”

  “And if you don’t want the answer to that question to be that he’s scattered in pieces all across town, you’ll do what I say. Right now he’s safe. He won’t be safe if you forget who’s calling the shots.”

  “All right,” said Allison. “Send me the address. Is there anything left on your bucket list?”

  “Why? Are you saying that I won’t have a chance to complete them?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. It didn’t come out as clever as I’d intended, but yes, I’m saying that you’re going to die tonight and never finish your bucket list.”

  “Maybe meeting you is on the list,” said Winlaw.

  “Is it the final item?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Well, no, that’s not how bucket lists work, but it doesn’t matter. This conversation is becoming stupid. Send me the address.”

  24

  Glenn and Rory were the sacrifices. Winlaw really didn’t want any more of his men to perish, but he hoped it would be worth it in the end. The more of his men she killed, the more excited he was about the possibility of having her under his control.

  Maybe Glenn and Rory would catch her. That would be great. Mostly, Winlaw was interested in watching the whole thing live, via the cameras that were already in the garage. He could see how exactly she killed them. Was it truly telekinetic powers, or was she just an insanely skilled assassin?

  The cleanup of this mess was going to be a nightmare. If he’d known how much of a body count she’d rack up, he would’ve never sent the first wave of men to assist Daxton. But he didn’t want them all to have died for nothing, and he didn’t want the loose end of Allison lurking around, being all unpredictable. So he was willing to risk losing a few more.

  He was at the campground. He’d managed to gather about thirty men. Many of them were not his employees, but he’d called in a couple of favors and acquired more reinforcements. A couple of them would actively guard Cody and Maggie in their cabin, which was one of sixteen units. Unless she could see through walls, Allison would have a difficult time locating them.

  He’d considered leaving Maggie here. Allison had no bond with her, and in fact might wish her nothing but the worst. Still, Maggie was pregnant, and was Allison so far gone that she would let something awful happen to a pregnant woman, even one who was a despicable human being?

  Maybe. Maybe not. It gave Winlaw one extra possible advantage.

  He’d taken away all of the guns, which did not make the men very happy. If this went anything like the raid on her home, he didn’t want anybody panicking and deciding that she was too dangerous to live. He would be the one to decide that. If things got too out of control, Matt and Vincent were authorized to shoot her in the head. They were good shots.

  He could only get a couple of tranquilizer dart rifles on such short notice. He was, however, able to get a bottle of ketamine and enough hypodermic needles to go around. With so many people attacking her at once, surely at least one of them could inject her.

  It was definitely not ideal. With more time, he could probably come up with an infinitely better way to incapacitate and capture her—figure out a way to block her powers, if she actually had them—but on such short notice, he had to go with “She can’t possibly kill thirty men at once.”

  “This is fucked up,” said one of the men guarding Cody and Maggie.

  “He didn’t say to kill them,” said his partner. “Just to watch them.”

  “It’s still fucked up. I don’t care if I have to shoot him,” the first man said, pointing his gun at Cody, “but I didn’t get into this business to shoot a pregnant lady.”

  “Again, he didn’t say to kill them.”

  “If she makes a run for it, we’ll have to kill her.”

  The second man nodded. “That’s true.”

  “And I didn’t get into this business to do that.”

  “You didn’t get into this business on purpose, did you? You didn’t go to college to get a bachelor’s degree in drug distribution.”

  “Shut up. Why are you talking about this in front of them?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “You want them to know our business?”

  “They’re hostages. We’re talking about maybe having to kill them. You think it’s the drug angle that will make us seem like unsavory guys?”

  “I think you should just shut the fuck up.”

  “Fine. I’ll shut the fuck up. We can sit here in silence.”

  “I’m cool with that.”

  The men sat there in silence.

  Cody and Maggie sat in silence as well. Their hands and feet were still duct-taped together, and they were on the floor, leaning against the cabin wall. It was a one-room cabin that needed some serious dusting, and he’d counted four spiders since they were led in here at gunpoint.

  The thought that Allison would save them seemed pretty ridiculous. He’d come up with an idea, and Maggie had said she was receptive to giving it a try when the time was right, but it was a token gesture, and the odds were that they wouldn’t survive until nightfall.

  Allison parked behind the two-story building. The front of the building said Two Nephews Inc., a name that would not fill people w
ith an intense desire to know what kind of business went on within the walls.

  “I’m here,” she told Winlaw on the phone.

  “Are you still in your car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get out.”

  Allison got out of the car. “Okay.”

  “Walk up to the door.”

  Allison walked up to the door. There was a security camera mounted above it. “I’m there.”

  Winlaw knew she was. He could see her.

  “Knock on the door,” he told her.

  “What’s inside?”

  “Two of my associates. They’ll take you to where Cody is being held.”

  “How about we skip this step and you tell me where he is?”

  “How about you stay on the phone for a minute, and then you can listen to me slice off Cody’s lower lip? Then we’ll do a video chat and you can watch me slice off his upper lip. That’ll leave his teeth nice and exposed. You like removing people’s teeth, don’t you?”

  “I just like kicking them in the mouth. Whether the teeth stay in place is irrelevant.”

  “I was going to use a chisel and a claw hammer.”

  “How about you text me a picture of that chisel and claw hammer right now?”

  Winlaw grinned. He wasn’t bluffing. He was absolutely prepared to knock out Cody’s teeth if necessary. The chisel and hammer, among other tools, were on the table next to him. He took a quick picture and sent it to her.

  “What do you think?”

  “Send another picture, where the chisel is on top of the hammer like an X.”

  Winlaw did that. “I don’t think it would’ve been possible to do an image search that quickly, but kudos to you anyway for trying to keep me honest.”

  Okay. He was serious.

  She’d have to play along for now. She knocked on the door.

  It opened right away. A man who looked like an action movie star whose name she couldn’t remember stood there.