by E A Comiskey
The driver’s door on the SUV opened and a man emerged, the approximate size and shape of a wild buffalo—with about the same amount of hair, too. He came straight toward Richard, wrenched the door open with a screech of tortured metal, and informed him, “Mr. Peters said you need to get out of the car.”
Richard levered himself upward and peered up into the man’s face. The angle afforded him an excellent view of a vast amount of nose hair that fluttered like a party favor with every breath. His bowels churned around like a wooden water wheel had kicked into gear.
“Burke told me you’d come for her,” Albert said, drawing Richard’s attention away from the buffalo man. “She told me so many things. In fact, the past few hours have been the most informative of my whole life.” He snorted. His shoulders shook. “The most lucrative, too. Who could have suspected getting run over by some batty old lady would turn out so well?”
Stanley stood with his hands open, held slightly out from his sides as if to show how harmless he was, just an old man at their mercy. He gestured with his chin toward the men climbing down from the delivery truck and the few cars that had already stopped to watch the drama and, presumably, offer their assistance. “Even the Children of Cain can’t just get rid of us right here in front of God and everybody.”
Albert snorted. “Ignorant old man, The Children of Cain could have you and every one of these people wiped out of existence so completely, not a memory of you would exist by this time tomorrow.”
The water wheel churned faster in Richard’s gut. The prune juice might have been a bad idea. He clenched his butt cheeks together and wrapped his right hand around the handle of the gun in his pocket.
Bang!
The bullet ricocheted off the pavement so close to his foot it sent up a spray of shattered blacktop that bit into his ankle. He hopped away, bumped into the car and, ironically, was saved from falling when the human buffalo grabbed his shirt front.
“They have guns! They’re shooting at each other!” someone screamed behind him.
Albert ducked into the SUV and doused the lights, leaving the hunters’ shadows stretched like long, man-shaped tentacles, velvety black against the charcoal gray of the pavement. Within the blackness, two spots of white appeared and blinked up at Richard.
Stanley’s left foot shot out to the rear, shattering the lamp behind him.
Albert screamed from inside the vehicle, “I’ll kill you, old man! I’ll destroy you and everyone you ever loved! You have no idea who I am!”
Stanley’s calm British accent floated atop the chaos, “You’re no one, Albert. Just a slave to a man with real power. Tell him to give us the girl and do it quickly. And tell him we’re coming for his little rocket ship.”
Buffalo Bill jammed the cold, hard barrel of a gun into the soft spot under Richard’s chin.
Someone made a pathetic whimpering noise.
Did I do that? Richard wondered.
Red and blue lights sliced through the darkness, turning the nightmare block party into a disco. Sirens wailed.
Richard had never been so happy to see the cops. He didn’t even mind when they laid him across the hood of the car, took away his gun, and clamped his wrists in cuffs tight enough to squeeze the piss out of a flea. It was fairly annoying to realize, however, that Albert and his pet bovine had disappeared into the night. Tracking them from jail was going to be difficult.
Stanley sat next to him in the cruiser, peering into the darkness. “Bugger all,” he mumbled, apparently having come to the same conclusion.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Albert
Burke trailed along behind Albert like a puppy—a curious little puppy who never stopped yapping.
How many people have access to the mainframe?
Can they really access it from Earth, even as far away as Mars?
What kind of signal are they using?
What programming language did they use?
What kind of core processor did it use?
How did they keep something that powerful cool enough to prevent meltdown?
Who the hell cares? Albert wondered as he pushed through the steel door in the Coleum Corporation basement that led to the underground rooms he’d only learned about that day. A maintenance worker hobbled past on thick grey tentacles.
Burke’s eyes followed the creature. “There’s nothing like that in Stanley’s journal. What is it?”
Albert had been delighted to find that his mind had absorbed loads of information he’d never learned. He knew the average weight of a human being, and how much of that weight was meat. He knew the names and genetic strengths and weaknesses of every person on the ship’s manifest. He knew that creature did not come from any place he could explain to Burke.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay,” Burke said.
She was very agreeable. It was a little annoying.
They rounded a corner and found the room he was looking for. Inside, three tall, slim girls with glowing green eyes were packing equipment into trucks. The tallest of the three gave Burke a thorough once-over. “She’s the ride-along?”
“Yes. Jones wants her on the next flight north. When she gets there, you need to escort her to mission control. She’ll be helping out with the last-minute programming details.”
The girl sneered. “A human? Really?”
“She’s a freaking genius,” Albert snapped back. Apparently, the girl didn’t care enough to argue about it. She rolled her eyes and went back to work. Albert turned his attention to Burke.
“Listen, this isn’t how I wanted our first night to be, but we’ll have lots more, right?”
“Lots more,” Burke agreed.
“You’re on our side now, right? So, you need to do whatever they ask of you when you get there. Help them out, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
Albert brushed a curl from her cheek. “I don’t want to be away from you, but we both have work to do. Jones was not at all happy about the way things went with Stanley and your grandfather. He’s working on a new plan and I need to go find out what it is. We can’t have them coming after us, meddling in this launch. It’s too important.”
“They’ll stop the launch,” she told him.
She wasn’t arguing. She was just stating a fact, as she saw it. The words caused the thing inside him to shriek in fury and he had to grit his teeth against the sudden burst of pain in his head. “They can’t stop us. Believe that.”
“I believe it,” she said.
“Good.” The thing settled down. Albert took a deep breath to re-center himself. “I’ll get to you as fast as I can, all right? Be a good girl. Study hard. Learn lots up there. Make yourself useful to them and—” His own mind took control again and immediately replayed his favorite scenario. “Just as soon as I can get to you again, you can make yourself useful to me.”
“Okay,” Burke agreed.
“Kiss me,” he said, and she did. She was a fantastic kisser. She didn’t even object to his hands on her ass. Their time together was going to be even better than it was in his imagination. He just knew it.
But first, Jones.
He pulled away, savoring the longing. “I’ve got to go. Jones won’t be happy if I keep him waiting.”
“Okay.”
It would be nice if she’d at least show a little emotion. It felt weird to tell her to show some feelings when the other girls were right there in earshot. No worries. It would take six months to fly to Mars—plenty of time to program her to be exactly who he wanted her to be.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Richard
The city jail wasn’t exactly Alcatraz. Half a dozen drunks snored loudly from the large cell at the end of the hall—the “drunk tank,” so far as Richard could guess from eighty years of watching television. Across the concrete aisle, a woman dressed like a prostitute sat propped against the wall reading a magazine with a picture of a prettier-than-real-life celebrity couple on the front. Next t
o her, someone he couldn’t see tossed and turned on their bunk. Richard couldn’t blame him. The mattresses were thin as paper, smelled like pee, and he had the uncomfortable sensation something was crawling around within the pathetic stuffing. He couldn’t see Stanley because they’d been housed side-by-side in cells separated by a block wall.
Arrested. Who’d have ever thought it?
Worst he’d ever been in trouble with the law had been a pile of speeding tickets he’d accrued trying to get to work on time on the days he had to see Maddie off to school before going in for his shift.
Now, he was officially a criminal, with black ink on his fingertips to prove it. He supposed that if this had happened at pretty much any other time of his life, he’d have been devastated. In high school, he’d have been kicked off the track team and whipped within half an inch of his life by his father—not a cruel man, but not one to abide shenanigans. As a young man, he’d have disappointed Barbara, who never missed a Sunday at church if she could help it. Poor woman wouldn’t have been able to show her face at a garden club meeting ever again. Once Barbara was gone, there were all the responsibilities that came with being a single father. But now?
He grinned. It all struck him as kind of funny.
Darned if I don’t laugh at the stupidest things, he thought, remembering being nearly hysterical with mirth after his first real hunt with Stanley.
Then he thought of Albert’s words. “Burke told me you’d come for her.” The laughter withered and dwindled away.
As if he sensed the weight of Richard’s thoughts, Stanley said from the other side of the wall, “We’ll get her back, my friend.”
“Yeah,” Richard mumbled, but his mind had already moved on to a different statement. The worm had said The Children of Cain could effectively erase him and Stanley and every person who’d witnessed their accident.
A vampire was one thing. Sure, they were strong and fast and vicious, but they were beings of flesh and blood, with weaknesses like anyone. Fighting such a creature presented a challenge, but it wasn’t an impossibility. How did a man fight an organization designed on a foundation of smoke and mirrors? It was more futile than the nonsensical, never-ending “War on Terror” the politicians used as an excuse for every bone-headed decree they passed down from on-high.
Who was to say The Children of Cain didn’t have agents right here in the jail? And for that matter, if the bad guys were working with some kind of shadow monsters, who was to say the creatures couldn’t pop right up in his cell? If they’d been prepared to kill him on the street in front of God and everyone, why not here in the city jail?
One of the drunks retched and Richard jumped half out of his skin. He levered himself up off the nasty cot and crossed to the opposite wall. With his fingers wrapped around the steel bars of his cell, he felt like a character in a bad black and white movie. “Stanley?”
“Yes, my friend?”
“Can they get in here?”
“Quiet!” the guard at the end of the hall barked. Nearly seven feet tall and just about that wide, he loomed next to the doorway, glaring in their direction.
The prostitute shouted lewd suggestions and the drunks stirred and hooted with laughter.
Richard shuffled back to the bunk and sat down with his elbows on his knees. His thoughts ran to monsters and demons, family and love, responsibility and joy, pain and purpose until all of it turned into one big blurry tangle in his brain, no one part of it decipherable from another.
At some point, he must have drifted off to sleep, because he woke with a start to the sound of his cell door banging open in a clang of metal. “You’re out, Bell,” the guard said. A grin tipped the corner of his wide mouth. “But by the looks of the woman who paid your bail, you might be better off here with us.”
Richard scowled at him and said nothing as he shuffled toward the exit. Screw pride and trying to lift his feet. He was tired and his bones hurt. If someone handed him his old walker, he’d take it and use it and be grateful. Stanley’s footsteps sounded sure and steady behind him. He’d probably slept like a baby and woke up in a freshly pressed button-down. Friggin’ Stan Kapcheck.
The guard hadn’t exaggerated. Maddie stood at the front counter where she’d presumably just handed over a sizable check to the clerk to cover their bail. The anger rolling off her hovered like a black storm cloud in the lobby. Even the officers seemed to be making a wide berth around her and keeping their voices low.
Maddie drove back to the house in ominous silence. Three times, Stanley attempted to engage her, but never once did her eyes leave the road. The nail of her left pointer finger tapped a relentless beat that reminded Richard of a telegraph operator in an old black and white western. He loved those movies. Good guys were good. Bad guys were bad. The hero always got the girl. Life was simple and easy to understand. John Wayne never had to be rescued from the police station by his own daughter. Certainly, he didn’t ride home in the back of the wagon, nervous about the scolding to come.
But she didn’t scold. She did something much worse. She pulled into the garage and pushed the button to bring the door down, closing the bright, cold morning out, and then she turned to him with tears rolling down her cheeks and asked in a shaky voice, “Where is my daughter?”
Stanley piped up from the back seat. “Maddie, dear, what you must understand is that no matter—”
She raised a hand in Stan’s direction, silencing him. “I would like my father to explain to me where my daughter is.”
Richard’s tongue was dry as a wooden god. He smacked his gums a few times to get them going and managed, “We don’t know, exactly.”
“You don’t know.”
The eerie calm of her voice raised the hairs along the back of his neck. “Well, we’re pretty sure she’s with Albert.”
“Pretty sure.”
“Nearly certain.”
Her swollen red eyes narrowed. “And yet Albert is the one who called the police and had you arrested, was he not?”
“No. Not exactly. I think it was the guy in the delivery truck that called the police,” Richard said, though he couldn’t have sworn to that. It was all a little hazy. Seemed like the cop with the ugly blue suit said something about a night manager at Coleum and trespassing charges. No point in bringing all that up now.
Maddie fished a crumpled tissue from her purse and blew her nose. “Please go inside. Please just...” her voice caught and she swallowed hard. “Please just stay in one place and be safe and don’t give me any more reason to worry.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand how everything got so strange. I don’t understand why you can’t just play Pinochle and go to physical therapy and stay in one place. I don’t understand—” The dam broke and she sat there, sobbing into her Kleenex.
Richard cast a panicked look at Stanley.
Stanley mimicked patting her on the shoulder.
Richard reached over and pressed a hand between her shoulder blades. She flinched away. “Just go inside, Dad. And for the love of God, stay there.”
Once they’d gone inside, Stanley disappeared into the bathroom. The shower ran for a few minutes leaving Richard time to fiddle with the lamps in the room, trying to figure the best way to make the least number of shadows. He finally took the shades off and stacked them in a corner. When Stanley emerged, he was still damp, with a towel around his waist.
“Put your dang pants on, man!” Richard said. “We have to find her.”
“I’m not sure we should rush off just yet,” Stanley replied.
“Well, yeah. You need to get dressed first. I ain’t going to look for the kid with a naked man at my side.”
“You could do with a shower, too,” Stanley suggested.
“I don’t wanna shower right now. We need to go find Burke!”
“You’re exhausted and in pain, not thinking clearly or moving efficiently. You can’t hunt like that. Not without being a liability to yourself and others.” Stanley retrieved a stack of clothes from h
is suitcase and retreated to the bathroom, leaving the door open a crack. “There’s Madeline to think of, as well. If you disappear again right now, she’ll likely as not have you committed against your will. I can spring you from a place like that, but I’d rather not have to waste more time doing it.” He emerged in a pair of plaid pajama pants and a tee shirt. “Take a shower, Dick. Rest. It feels like slowing down, but you’ll be better off and faster for it in the long run.”
Annoyance ate at him. Why was everyone telling him what to do? Worse, they were all too often right. Grumbling the whole time, he snatched up fresh clothes and stormed off to the bathroom. When he came out, Stanley was sound asleep in the bed. In a slow, somewhat painful process punctuated by a good many groans and the loud popping of his joints, he lay down on the floor where he slipped into a dreamscape full of monsters and Martians. The most frustrating moment of all came when he woke up in a world not so very different from his nightmare. The light had the golden hue of late afternoon. Apparently, they’d slept the whole day away. Fantastic. His granddaughter and the whole human race lay in danger and the two old men with enough knowledge to stop it were napping like fat lazy cats.
Well, knowledge implied they actually had some understanding of what they were supposed to be doing. That was a bit of a stretch.
“The GPS trackers are still going,” Stanley said from his perch on the warm, comfortable bed before Richard had a chance to speak. “The coat and purse are stationary, but she’s all over the building. Whatever they’re doing at that factory, Burke’s been given full access. She must have covered every square inch by now.”