They peered at him.
“We will take you back to your room now.”
“Damn straight, you will.”
“And I will find you some magazines.”
The door slid open, and Val stepped into the hall, face to face with the armed guard. The guard’s fingers twitched on the rifle (was it made of plastic?), but a look from Jones II stayed his hand.
They left Jones I behind, and resumed their walk down the long hall. It took less time to get back to the room than Val remembered. The guard stayed behind at the first door. They entered the space between, waited for the door behind them to close completely, and then the second door opened. Someone made the bed while Val was gone. He hoped they’d given him clean sheets. How did laundry work in space, anyway?
“Are you all right?” Jones II asked. “Do you need a sedative?”
“No. I’m good.” Another sedative would mean more tests while he slept. It also meant more dreams. Neither one sounded terribly enticing. “What about TV? Or something to read. Anything.”
“Magazines.”
“Please.”
“Anything else?”
“Clean clothes?”
Jones II nodded.
Val took a deep breath when the door closed behind him. He looked at the camera, and went into the bathroom. He closed the door, and turned on the shower, as hot as it would go. He braced his back on the door and slid down onto his haunches. Reaching up to the sink, he picked up a bar of soap and set it on the clean white linoleum in front of him. The white wrapper was a shade darker than the floor, and Val relished the contrast. The steam from the hot shower collected as a fine mist in the air.
“Move, soap.”
When he’d made the spoon move, when he’d slammed his fists into the wall, he hadn’t spoken aloud. Nor had he spoken aloud when he took control of Maria’s knife.
The soap did not move. He was sure he’d made the spoon fall when he got angry. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. And they’d expected him to be able to do it, and they’d let him go as soon as it dropped. When he’d moved the knife, he’d been in a blind panic. Thinking he killed all those people. Thanks, Space Puma. Move, soap.
He shoved harder, crinkling his nose with the effort. A warming sensation grew. He pictured the atoms. It had to have something to do with movement on an atomic level…right? It sounded good, anyway. He pictured the atoms, in his mind they were little white balls, and he visualized them moving, all together, and the soap, wrapper included, shifting its location in space. Go, soap, go.
It moved! He moved the soap!
But it felt like he’d moved a damned Volkswagen. His muscles felt all trembly, he felt weak like a kitten and his stomach churned. He’d seen it move, though, and it had made a faint scraping sound on the floor.
Great.
The bar of soap moved a quarter of an inch, if that. It wasn’t even a cool party trick to do at the bar, because someone would accuse him of bumping the table with his knee, or something. He picked up the soap with his hand (much easier) and set it on the edge of the sink. He could smell his shirt as he stripped it off, reminiscent of onions, and he dropped it in the corner. He looked at himself in the mirror. Wondered if he could crack it, just by looking at it. It would put him to sleep to do so. His eyes were red and bleary; it looked like he’d burst another blood vessel in one. Reaching up, he rubbed at them for a good long time before tugging down his pants and boxers.
By the time Jones II returned with an issue of Good Housekeeping from October of 2004, a pair of khakis and a plain white T-shirt, Val, who lay on the bed in a towel, staring at the ceiling, had a plan.
He thanked Jones II, and took his spoils. He waited for him to leave, then dressed in view of the camera. They wanted a show? Val Slade could deliver a show. He even picked up the magazine, sat at the little table where he ate breakfast, and read about money-saving tips using household items.
It had become a waiting game, and the plan relied on him not being in this room. He found himself dozing off over an advice column about a woman wondering if she could, in good conscience, substitute dessert forks for regular forks at a dinner party. The answer, politely, was no. Val could hold out as long as they could. He was cold as ice. He had a plan. This whole thing was in the bag, baby.
Val’s icy demeanor lasted until he finished reading the magazine (for the second time) and he woke up screaming from another white nightmare. He hadn’t sweated nearly as much this time, but he’d fallen asleep in the chair with his head on his hands on the table, and he banged his knee on one of the legs when he woke up. He could still feel the screams dying in this throat, could see the little empty black smiles on gray skin. He shivered in the hum of the air conditioner.
The bounds of his ability were tight. He needed to figure something small, but effective. He could close off the aorta, just for a moment. The guard would pass out, and he could run. It nagged at him that he’d have to stick around to reopen the aorta and he would lose valuable time. But he wasn’t about to go around killing any more people. No sir. Val Slade? Not going to become a killer. Though…were they people?
There wouldn’t be time to stick around to rouse the guard, to rouse Jones II, or whoever was with him. Hell, he didn’t even know if he had it in him to do more than one of them. He suspected killing one of them would diminish their hospitality, whoever they were.
He wondered what Kate was doing, right now. Since he had no concept of time, she could be doing anything. Was she worried? She must be.
He wondered what Felix was doing. That sonofabitch would pay. Val waited, head on his knees.
30
The little one-story adobe sheriff’s office never seemed welcoming to Kate, and today was no different. She parked Val’s truck in one of the street-side spaces out front, and threw all her weight into the parking brake. It tended to stick.
She sat for a moment, regarding the building. The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows. The sheriff’s office was front-lit, the tan adobe seeming to glow in the pinkish light. Locking the door behind her out of habit, she squared her shoulders and headed in. It was only Spence. And it wasn’t as though she were driving the car with the rotting body inside it.
Daphne sat at the front desk behind bulletproof glass, looking blob-like in her chair; her hair dyed a glaring red never found in nature. Daphne had been pissed when they outlawed smoking in the work place, and her flabby jaws worked at a piece of gum.
“Haven’t seen him, Kate,” she said, barely looking up from her computer screen.
“Can I see Spence?”
Daphne did not look up, but raised her penciled-on eyebrows, reminding Kate why she’d left this shitty little town in the first place.
“Let me see if he’s available.” Daphne picked up the phone, started to dial, looked at Kate and said, “Have a seat.” Kate sat, glad her taxes no longer went to this woman’s salary. She picked up a new issue of People and flipped through the pages, not registering any of the glossy images before her. She peered over at Daphne, who had resumed a vacant stare at the computer screen.
There was a click of a lock, and the door opened. Spence popped his head out, and called to her. She resisted the urge to flip Daphne the bird, and followed him.
“Have you heard anything?” she asked.
A fellow in a blue FBI windbreaker hurried past them.
“What’s the FBI doing here?” When a small town had three—four, if you counted Val—missing persons in a few days, she guessed the FBI would get involved.
“First National Bank stuff.” Spence hurried her into the tiny office he shared with Harvey, who was mercifully not in at the moment. Was that what they wanted her to think? She sat, crossing her arms across her chest, hunching her shoulders forward. The old window air-conditioner blocked most of the natural light and hummed louder than most. Someone had placed a tray below it to catch its drippings.
“I haven’t heard anything from him. I did wander into
Woodstone’s on my way in, and I didn’t see him there. Rick Juarez was working the bar, and he said he hadn’t seen Val.”
“That’ll set the gossip mill churning.”
“Oh, probably. But my hands are pretty well tied until tomorrow. Because I like you—and because Val seemed so twitchy—I’m making a bit of an exception. All I can do is ask around. Have you tried calling this Felix back? See if he’s heard anything?”
“No.” She’d thought of it, but it seemed intrusive.
“Why don’t you start there? Wouldn’t you feel silly if Val was flaking out on you?”
Her face burned, and she knew she was blushing. She pulled out her phone, and kind of turned away from Spence. She faced Harvey’s desk, which had a big “terrorist hunting permit” poster behind the desk. The number was third on her list of dialed calls, and she selected it. It rang several times, then a recorded operator said: “The number you dialed is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again.”
She swiveled in her chair and looked back at Spence. “It’s been disconnected.”
“Let me make a call to USCIS. I want to speak to this Vargas guy.”
Kate nodded and sat back in her chair.
Spence asked to speak to the guy then made a chorus of “uh-huh”s, and incredulous sounding “really”s. He drummed on his desk with a pen, the tempo picking up.
He returned the phone to its cradle with a click. “I think we have a problem. Officer Vargas wasn’t working this morning. In fact, Officer Vargas has been out of the office for the last few weeks going through chemotherapy. For lung cancer.”
“So who took Val?” Kate asked.
“An excellent question. I’m going to see if I can flag down Taylor. This’ll tickle him much more than the bank bullshit.”
“Taylor’s the FBI guy?” Kate asked, the saliva draining from her mouth. What if they wanted to come out to the house? What if they wanted to search the car?
“Yeah, this is serious business.”
She didn’t want serious business. She wanted Spence, Val’s old buddy. God, how to get rid of the car? Rich would know, but she couldn’t ask him. Would you get red flagged somewhere for Googling “How to dispose of car”?
“Wait here,” Spence said, hefted his not-inconsiderable bulk out of his chair and lumbered out of the room.
This was all way too much. She picked up her cell phone and tried Felix’s number again. Same results as last time.
Spence came back with the FBI guy in tow. He was clean-cut and handsome, looking like an overgrown boy scout. With a firm handshake he introduced himself as Special Agent Taylor Anderson.
Then he perched on the edge of Harvey’s desk, putting Kate in the middle, where she had to scoot her chair back in order to see both men at once. They filled him in on what had happened to Val, and he took a few notes into a smart phone.
“This guy is bold,” Anderson said. “Did you guys check his creds?”
“When was the last time we checked yours? Cooper put him through, and I glanced at his badge, which seemed to be legit.”
“Cooper will be lucky if he keeps his job. Did you see what this guy was driving? Can you give a description of him?”
“He had a Crown Vic.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“We use Impalas.”
“Some of our guys are getting Chargers. Nice cars. Gives you a bit of an edge in a chase.”
Kate wanted to scream at them. Who cares what they’re driving! Cars, of course made her think of her own car, which she didn’t want to be thinking of here and now.
“Did you get the plate number?” Kate asked.
“It was a government car. Blue plates.”
“I wonder if Vargas is all right. We should check up on him.” Anderson made another note on his phone.
“Kate, I think you can go home, at this point.”
“I can’t,” she said. We were supposed to have left by now.
“There’s not a lot we need for you to do.”
“I can’t leave…” she let her voice trail off.
“You might want to be at home in case he comes in on his own,” said Anderson.
“Okay,” she said, not relishing the idea of going back there and waiting. “You have my phone number in case you hear anything?”
And with that, they dismissed her. Daphne was gone for the evening and Cooper, the dumb hick shit that had let Val go with some imposter, sat at the desk. He waved at her and she ignored him, moving past without making eye contact. He was lucky she didn’t fling herself over the counter and claw his eyes out.
The forty-minute ride out to Val’s place gave her too much time to think. Pulling into the driveway, her headlights swept her car, the burned-out barn, and the yellow-green reflection of a pair of glowing eyes near the door. Something tan dashed away, too fast for her to get a good look at it. Could have been a deer. Nevertheless, she pulled up as close as she could get to the trailer. She tried to peer into the night, but the truck’s headlights reflected off the siding, killing her night vision. She killed the engine, keeping her hand on the key in case she needed to get away fast. The engine ticked as it cooled, and she turned off the headlights. She peered out at the night. The shapes of the land, the dry brush and the big stones were familiar by day, but tonight they seemed alien, as though they only served to conceal the monster.
She could get a hotel room in town. It would break the bank, but she could manage. She’d be sleeping with the pistol under her pillow tonight. If she slept at all.
The night was barren and quiet, and the squeak of the door’s hinges made her cringe. She sprinted, whether she needed to or not, reaching up (since there was no front step) and jamming the key in the lock, willing it to turn. She stumbled into the quiet trailer and slammed the door behind her. She clicked on the light, listening to herself pant.
Now what?
31
Something stirred Val from sleep. The white of the room accosted him, and he realized as he awoke the lights were always on here. He rubbed at his eyes. It seemed he hadn’t screamed himself awake, as his throat felt no worse than yesterday. He rubbed at it, wondering why he was up. Once again his mouth tasted terrible, and his stomach gave a malicious growl. Hungry.
He sat up, the floor cold on his feet. Goosebumps stood up on his chest and arms. From the other side of the airlock there was a muffled “thud.” That must have been what woke him, though it didn’t seem loud enough. Maybe Jones I and Jones II were roughhousing out there. Val went to the door, pressed his ear against it.
Nothing. Silence.
It should have sent him back to bed, nothing to worry about. But the silence had a weight, a texture to it that didn’t sit right with him. Tiny hairs stood up on the back of his neck, and the primal region of his hippocampus—or whatever the fuck gland responds to threats—warned him of something out there.
A tiny, metallic tinkling sound came from the other side of the door, the sound of a delicate instrument clattering to the floor and instantly retrieved. Like bells, almost. It meant there was someone there, someone right there outside his door. He took a step back, and then another. Silence. Adrenaline began to pulse through him, he could taste it, bitter and metallic, drowning out the sleepy old-food taste in his mouth. Something smelled like burning out there. Oh, fuck, if this place was burning...He let it trail off, couldn’t finish the thought. When he was in Cambridge with his aunt and uncle their neighbor’s place burned down. He was at school, but one of the kids who’d stayed home sick tantalized them all the next day with stories about the elderly woman on the top floor. They couldn’t get to her, and she screamed and screamed, too scared to jump out the window. He said it smelled like roast pork, but Val guessed he’d read that somewhere.
The upper left corner of the door flexed.
Just a little motion. So slight he almost couldn’t see it. The shadow between white walls and white door grew a little bit bigger, that was the only clue.
He s
tepped back again, but he was pressed against the table, nowhere else to go. He could barricade himself in the bathroom, but that didn’t seem very useful.
Val had no concept of how quickly or how slowly time was moving. He saw the corner move again, away from him. That shouldn’t be possible. The table dug into the backs of his thighs, but he didn’t know where else to go. He tried to control his breathing, but then the door pulled away from him a bit more.
Someone was peeling the lid back from a can; did that mean he was the treat inside?
He could see through to the airlock now, a sliver of dark. Before he’d had the thought he might be in space, what did this mean if they were pulling the airlock apart? Were all sorts of noxious gasses going to come rushing in, destroying him? He didn’t want to die so far from home.
In a massive burst, the door peeled back, about an eighth of the way. The metal gave a demure little groan. The smell of heat was stronger now.
“Come and get me already!” he shouted, but his voice sounded rough against the quiet, and it made his throat hurt.
The door gained momentum. It gave another heave like the one before, and now Val could see shadows moving. There were things in the airlock, moving around.
The suspense pulled at him, it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t interesting, he was tired of being scared, what the fuck was behind the—
The door pulled back, so over half of the thick metal was peeled back like a can lid.
Two of the aliens, the gray ones, stood there, short, naked, peering at him with luminous almond-shaped eyes. They looked to one another, then to him again. Their little black mouths curled up into smiles.
They say once you see something it’s automatically less scary than not seeing it. The sound, the implication is worse, what you can dream up beats what you can see any day.
These things weren’t supposed to exist. But here they were. Campy little shits that looked too cheesy for even a Fox exposé or an X-Files episode. And he’d been with them, they’d taken him to their ship, they’d tested him. He was a part of them.
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