Denise tried to call the colonel, but no one answered.
Suddenly it was quiet and dark. Even the winds stopped howling. Denise and Rita got out of the car and they could now see a line of cars coming up the road from the valley below.
The MP took a call and after checking a few more times, finally moved the orange barrels. “All clear!” he said.
Denise and Rita stood there. Car after car passed them heading in the other direction. “Where’s my mom?” Rita asked repeatedly.
Finally, the Mercedes pulled into the rest stop parking lot. Rita was excited until she realized that there was only one person in the car, Dew. Her mother was nowhere to be seen.
Dew had a black eye. Someone or something had punched her. She also had some scratch marks on her face.
“Where’s my mom?” Rita asked. “Is she dead or something?”
“Your mom?” Dew had a blank look.
“She was with you!” Rita said.
Denise jumped in. “You told me that you both went back to the base today.”
Dew exited the car, dazed. There was a charred space where Rayne should be sitting. There were some melted computer disks and burnt papers where the evidence records should have been sitting. Dew looked blank. “I have no recollection of any of that.”
PART IV
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Chapter 42
Sunday, August 2
For the next twenty-four hours it sure looked like Team Turquoise was down for the count. Rayne was missing, Hikaru was incommunicado and Dew was hospitalized for “stress.” Honorary member Rita was holed up with her grandmother the colonel and might as well be in Leavenworth.
Even worse, Jen Song was having some “complications” and Centennial Hospital wouldn’t let Denise inside. When Denise drove back to Lordsburg to visit Denny, a handwritten sign on the door indicated the jail was on quarantine.
Denise walked back to the Kia. It looked worse for wear after the miles of live sand and dead bugs. The beaches of Puerto Penasco sure sounded good right now.
After a takeout order of won ton tamales from Shiprock Wok, she reluctantly drove back to the Last Palm. She locked herself in, bolted the door and practiced her katas as if they would protect her from invisible enemies. That night, she had the same dream over and over. Rayne was reaching out to her. Her friend was struggling in quicksand and was sinking fast.
“Save me!” Rayne said.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m even on earth.”
What planets in the solar system had toxic quicksand? Venus or Mars?
* * *
When Denise woke up the next morning, she skipped breakfast and hit the road immediately. She brought her staff with her just in case. She knew of only one place to find help. The drive to Albuquerque must have taken four hours, maybe five, but she had no recollection of the journey.
Encantado Gardens cemetery was empty when she passed through the half-opened brass gate. Her spark was picking up, she sensed something. Hotspur—the same guard as the last time—was rousting some sleeping drunks from the far side of the cemetery. Or maybe they were actual zombies, it was hard to tell from this far away. She had a minute, maybe two.
She parked and hurried over to Marley’s brick on the memorial wall. She got on her tippy-toes and touched the brick. Maybe it was all the death around her, but she was nervous. Had Rayne passed over? Or had she been abducted and taken to another planet?
“Can you connect me with Rayne?” she asked the brick.
Her spark was rattled by the distant sound of a leaf blower.
Nothing.
Hotspur shoved the zombie drunks out the front gate, turned and now noticed her from across the way. He was coming over.
“Can you connect me with Rayne?” she asked again.
Still nothing.
Had she ever really been able to talk to Marley at all, or was it all her imagination?
She released her grip on the brick and walked back to the car. Maybe she was wrong about Rayne being alive. Where would Rayne be buried? Or would the colonel scatter the poor girl’s ashes from orbit?
Denise thought for a second, on the last bit of pavement connected to the memorial wall. For some reason, she thought of Petro and the “We’re not going anywhere,” crowd. They had managed to stay put, by letting go and creating their own gravity, by somehow merging with the earth itself.
She did that, right there in the cemetery. It felt like she was connected to everything that had ever happened on the surface of the planet that had to do with Rayne. As she thought about her friend, she could suddenly recall what had happened with the three of them on I-10 hundreds of miles away. They had almost been abducted, but somehow fought it away.
She now had a recollection of that lost time and it was clear as day. Her mind kept probing and she felt the helpful energy of Marley, and perhaps all the others on the wall, all the others in the graves around her. She suddenly had more “reach” than ever before.
The dead knew things… They knew that Rayne was not among them.
Suddenly, Denise had an image of a small muddy lake surrounded by white sand, but most of all she was bombarded by an incredibly harsh smell. She could see Rayne in the middle of lake, alive but sinking. She still wasn’t sure whether this was on earth. Titan, a moon of Saturn had methane lakes, right?
In the vision, something whizzed overhead causing a sonic boom and waves in the shallow waters. By concentrating she was able to get an image of the markings on the object’s tail.
She couldn’t tell if it was Marley sending the vision, or Rayne. Or maybe one of the hundreds of other souls in the cemetery. It didn’t matter. She knew this place. She had been there. Hikaru had been there. She touched her phone. The photo Hikaru had sent her of this place appeared for a moment, and then disappeared. The aroma from the toxic waste lingered, however.
Rayne wasn’t dead… yet.
“It’s you again?” Hotspur yelled, breaking her reverie. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I have to find my friend this time.”
Why was Hotspur so angry? There was something more going on here. His antipathy towards her was visceral. She didn’t want to stay to find out why. Denise hurried to the Kia and got inside.
“Next time you’re here you better be here for a funeral,” Hotspur yelled. “Either as a pallbearer or in the box yourself.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Denise said from behind the window.
She drove the Kia south, very, very quickly. Should she call Rita and let her know about her mom? Not till Denise knew if she would be calling an ambulance or a hearse.
After three hours through the high desert, Denise finally arrived at Lake Holloman, the “wastewater evaporation pond” that took the waste and the water from the nearby Holloman Air Force Base. The place where she’d gagged on the stench of chemical death. In the setting sun, the white sands had turned blood red. The revolving searchlight from the air force base and subsequent fighter jet launches made it feel like Mars.
When the searchlight revolved again, she spotted the white binoculars icon on a brown sign. She was less than a hundred yards away from the water, well whatever the liquid actually was. She opened her windows and took in the chemical stench. Did she hear a scream?
Unfortunately, the gate across the dirt road that led to the lake was closed. She hesitated for only a moment, exited the Kia and ducked under the gate. She took her staff with her. She had some bottled water and put it in her thermos, in case Rayne was dehydrated. There was a big pocket in her pants that was able to hold the thermos. The lake was only a few yards up the road. She heard another scream.
“Rayne!” Denise yelled. The searchlight made another revolution.
She heard nothing and kept running for the w
ater.
“Rayne!”
“Help me!” a voice said.
When she hit the banks, Denise saw something in the water, a few yards from the shore. “Rayne!”
“Over here!” the figure said.
Denise used her phone as a flashlight and hurried into the pond, it was only a few inches deep, and she sank a bit in the muck. The water burned her skin like acid.
“Over here!” the figure said again.
The searchlight went around again. Denise saw Rayne laying prone on a boulder, her head barely above water. Despite her weight, the boulder had not sunk further into the muck. She had an object in her hand and she was putting it to her mouth.
Was it a gun? Was she going to blow her brains out? The searchlight swung away, and it was dark again.
“I’m coming!” Denise shouted, but she couldn’t see Rayne in the darkness even with the help of her phone light.
When the searchlight revolved again, she quickly waded the rest of the way through the muck and acidic water to Rayne. Rayne grabbed the staff with her free hand, and it seemed to steady her.
The object in Rayne’s hand wasn’t a gun. By the smell Denise knew it was a thermos filled with lake water and was now putting to her lips. Was that better or worse?
“Don’t drink that!” Denise said.
Rayne chugged it anyway. “The lake water saved my life.”
Standing on the boulder, Denise helped Rayne up, but the big woman outweighed her and the two sunk a bit when they walked out into the quicksand. Denise was able to steady herself with the staff.
Finally, by sheer force of will, and the help of the staff, the two women made it out of the lake and onto the rocky shore. Rayne took another chug from the thermos.
What was in the water? Denise smelled it and nearly retched.
“Get more of the lake water,” Rayne said. “Just in case.”
Denise filled up her own thermos.
She handed it to Rayne, but Rayne pushed it away. “That water’s for you.”
Denise shook her head, but kept the thermos just in case. “Not even. Come on, I’m parked over here.”
Denise had to help the big girl under the gate. Rayne collapsed into the passenger side of the Kia.
Inside the car, with the interior light on, Denise could see that Rayne was sunburnt but otherwise healthy. Her mother’s campaign button was conspicuously absent.
“Where am I?” Rayne asked.
“You’re safe. Let me guess, you have no recollection of anything.”
Chapter 43
Denise wanted to take Rayne to a hospital, even though Rayne actually looked healthy—despite her sunburn and smelling like alien wastewater.
“I’m fine,” Rayne said. “I’m really fine.”
“You need to go to the hospital.”
“You’re not my mother,” Rayne said. “She’s gonna kill me.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true.”
Denise took Rayne back to Centennial Hospital in Las Cruces, less than an hour away. The drive through the white sands was like driving through the Milky Way as it glowed in the starlight. She saw several shooting stars above and prayed that they weren’t aiming at her.
Thankfully, Piranha wasn’t on duty in the front, but Denise didn’t want to risk going past the lobby and be with Rayne. A sheriff brought some small children in “just for a checkup.” He mentioned to the receptionist that they were found in the desert just in time. Denise couldn’t help but be relieved until she noticed two Border Patrol officers following behind, handcuffs out.
Feeling slightly paranoid, Denise moved to some chairs at the back of the lobby. Right as she was about to fall asleep, it felt like an earthquake jolted her awake. Colonel (retired) Regan “Big Red” Herring arrived in the lobby an hour later, Rita in tow. The colonel wore her blood red power suit and elephant cowboy boots. Denise hurried to meet her, but the Colonel lifted up her hand as if ordering her to attention. Was she blaming Denise?
Big Red was even more intimidating in person. To Denise she might have been seven feet tall and built like an upright B-52. Denise couldn’t read her, probably because of the colonel’s military demeanor. This was General Patton in drag.
“We’ll take it from here,” Big Red said, and hurried to the elevator.
Rita waited till her grandma was out of earshot. “Thank you for saving my mom, Auntie Denise!”
“Does Big Red know that we’re ummm… related?” Denise asked Rita.
“She knows everything!”
“Rita catch up!” the colonel ordered.
Was that Piranha coming in for the graveyard shift from a side entrance? Denise hurried out to her car, just in case, and was thankful the doors locked automatically.
Was Rayne abducted by aliens? Or God forbid probed by them? Who dropped her off at the lake? And why did the lake’s toxic wastewater save Rayne’s life? Denise remembered that she had first noticed that stench in Nastia’s flask.
The Kia reeked from the fluid in her thermos, but she hesitated to throw it out. Denise was about to drive somewhere, but she was too tired to move and passed out in the driver’s seat.
Chapter 44
Monday, August 3
It was just after dawn when Denise returned inside to the hospital, but Rayne was no longer in her room according to the receptionist.
“You can probably catch her in the cafeteria,” the elderly woman said. Was she the same one as last night?
Rayne was indeed inside the small cafeteria, sharing a tiny booth with Rita. Through the window, Denise could see Big Red in the parking lot, barking orders into her phone.
“Are you sure you’re OK?” Denise asked Rayne.
Over the last piece of bacon, Rayne sighed. “I don’t really have any recollection of what happened, and don’t want to talk about it. I need some time for me.”
Denise chugged down a cup of coffee. Rita touched her on the hand. “Isn’t there something you need to tell my mom, Auntie Denise?”
Denise took a deep breath. “We figured out the identity of Rita’s father. It’s Denny, my brother and client. Rita is my niece.”
“Duh.” Rayne took a swig of coffee. “You think I didn’t already know that? That was the potential conflict.”
“Does that affect our friendship now that we’re family?”
“That isn’t my call,” Rayne said. “As for the case, I’m done.”
“Why?”
“She wants me off it from now on.”
Denise didn’t have to ask who she was. Big Red materialized and squeezed into the booth, pushing Denise to one side. The three tall people towered over her.
“I want to thank you for saving my daughter,” Big Red said. She didn’t look thankful.
“She would do the same for me.”
“One thing I don’t understand,” Big Red said. “How did you know where to find her?”
“I had a… hunch.”
“I was in the Air Force for twenty years. When we selected our targets, we didn’t rely on hunches.”
“I guess I got lucky.”
“Is there anything else?” Big Red asked. “I think it’s best for you to be on your way.”
“But grandma,” Rita asked. “She saved Rayne.”
“Back when I was active duty, we never let people come on base to do wild goose chases for lawyers.”
Denise wasn’t sure why the colonel was so angry. “I didn’t think I would put Rayne in any danger.”
“Syrinx is by its very nature dangerous,” the colonel explained
“My father needs our help. My auntie needs our help,” Rita piped in.
“Some cop-killing case out in Lordsburg is not our concern.” Big Red stood up, opening a narrow passageway for Denise to leave. Denise wanted to say attempted cop-
killing, but was too intimidated to say anything.
“Ms. Song,” the colonel continued. “I don’t want you, or anyone else in your crazy little family to have any contact with us, whatsoever. That’s an order!”
Denise shuffled away.
“Auntie Denise, give your best to my grandmother,” Rita called after her. “My other grandmother.”
Chapter 45
Denise wanted to take Rita up on her suggestion and tell Jen Song that she had a granddaughter, but Piranha intercepted her at the elevator, his teeth bared.
“I’m sorry Ms. Song, but you can’t see your mother.”
“How is she doing?”
“You’re not on the list that we can authorize that information.”
“I’m not on the list for my own mother?”
Piranha shrugged. “I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”
Denise went back to the parking lot and got in the Kia and sat in the car figuring out what to do.
First, she texted Hikaru and sent a pic of the hospital. “Rayne OK, Mom stable?”
He texted a pic of the Syrinx gate with a sign that said CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. That couldn’t be good. She tried him again, but he did not text back.
Before she could feel totally defeated, she reminded herself, she still had one teammate left, didn’t she?
When she arrived at Dew’s apartment at the Vista de Estrella, the party was over. Petro and his gang were gone.
The parking lot was empty except for Dew who was thanking an animal control officer closing the back door to a veterinary ambulance. Denise had never seen a veterinary ambulance. She noticed a small plastic bag inside.
“Suri’s dead,” Dew said after the ambulance sped away. “At least Sahar’s still alive.” Dew, all in black, sported a t-shirt for something called SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE. Denise didn’t know if it was for a band, a game, an apparel line, or the current condition of her soul.
“I’m sorry,” Denise said.
The Shakespeare Incident Page 25