by Lee French
The fish put a dent into Bobby’s hunger. Not a very big dent, but a dent all the same. It let him relax and think about other things. “Dragons won’t come out ‘less there’s food for ‘em. They done starved, too.”
“Understood. We’ll have to be careful, then.” He sighed wearily. “I need to get some more sleep before we hit land, Bobby. There’s a bowl of oatmeal here, an apple, and a glass of juice. Also, the envelope is mostly okay. There’s some water damage, but it’s still all as legible as it was before.”
“‘Kay.” Finally opening his eyes as the bed shifted under Stephen’s weight, Bobby found himself in a bedroom. Everything had a nautical theme with a dark blue background. Their uniforms had been draped over every available surface to dry. He mustered the energy to sit up and finish off the fish and devour the rest of the food. It gave him enough to feel a more normal level of hunger. Given the choice between finding more food or getting more sleep, though, sleep won.
A knock on the door woke both of them. Stephen sat up as the door opened. It was a woman with white hair up in a bun, wearing a light blue shirt and white pants. Bobby rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow, thinking she must be sixty or so. “Boys, we’re about twenty minutes out from the marina, it’s just past noon in Myrtle Beach. Denis is wondering if you might be up to helping us dock? It’s just holding ropes and that sort of thing.” Her light Southern accent made Bobby feel like he’d come home.
Stephen smiled. “Yes, ma’am, we’d be happy to as soon as we’re dressed.”
“I’m glad you’re both okay.”
“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” Bobby managed to get out. “We’re pretty happy about that, too.”
She chuckled. “I’m sure you are. Just come on up when you’re decent.” Backing out, she shut the door again.
“Ma’am,” Bobby muttered, “I ain’t been decent for near on a week already.”
“It’s been a lot longer for me.” Stephen grabbed clothes and pulled them on.
Rubbing his face, Bobby sat up and ignored his belly rumbling. “Did we make the right choice, leaving instead of staying?”
Stephen sat back down to get his socks on. “How many bodies did you pile up again?”
“Yeah, you got a point.” Scratching what had become a full beard while he’d been busy, Bobby sighed. “One good thing about this whole stupid flying across the ocean thing: it feels like that happened a million years ago.”
“I hear you. I know I said otherwise at the time, but that cruise ship was a good idea. Made for some pleasant detox. And we didn’t even kill anyone.” He said it with a grin. Dark brooding lurked underneath. “Thankfully, Joan there isn’t really enticing to me, so I haven’t had to worry too much about the Hunger taking over. I’ll need to hit something before we go too far, though.”
“You can do that while I hit a junkyard.”
“Yeah, good deal. I’m sure we’ll be able to find one not far from here. I can carry you there.”
“From there, we head for…did we decide?”
Stephen tucked Hanamidi’s envelope into his coat and buttoned it up. “Not really. Either Albuquerque or the farm. I suggest we hitch on a plane.”
“I’m good for that. Let’s do Albuquerque and figure from there.”
Chapter 11
Myrtle Beach didn’t have a junkyard, but another town just up the road did. Stephen dropped him off inside, then went off to find his own food. The dragons descended on that place like a plague of locusts, tearing through it with delight and fervor. They spent a full hour diving in and under and through, chomping and chowing. Poor guy who owned the place got ripped off something fierce. One more pile of crap on his soul, if he even had one.
They met back up and flew to Columbia, where Bobby grazed on dumpsters before they sneaked onto a plane bound for Dallas. He stayed in the swarm for the flight in the cargo compartment. Stephen stretched out on the luggage and took a nap. The next plane to Albuquerque kept them waiting for a few hours.
Another hour after their second flight landed, they stood in front of Adesha Wahiz’s house. The neighborhood made Bobby smirk. Half the houses all looked the same and the other half were really, really different. It’d probably been built a while back by folks with all different ideas about what a house ought to look like. Then, some time recently, other folks came through and bought some of them, knocked them down, and replaced them with faux adobe, “properly Southwestern” houses.
Adesha lived in a faux adobe one, of a not-quite-peach color. It had cacti and rocks for a front yard and a small courtyard space in front of the door. Keenly aware they still wore in military uniforms, Bobby opened the gate and led Stephen to that door without hesitation, where he rang the doorbell. At least they didn’t have guns. That would probably send a much worse wrong message.
All the way here, neither broached the subject of how to handle this conversation. Bobby pondered it briefly, only able to think of the worst possible way: “Hi, we killed your dad, and he wanted you to have this!” He glanced at Stephen while they waited for someone to answer the door. They’d crossed into shade, so he pulled his headgear off, and Bobby snatched his hat and sunglasses off, too.
The door cracked open, the woman inside holding it open while bracing it with her body. She looked them over, her brow furrowed and eyes suspicious. Bobby could see Hanamidi in the straightness of her nose, and a little around the chin. The woman in the pictures he figured for her mother showed a lot more.
He threw on the most pleasant, friendly smile he could manage. “Howdy, ma’am. We’re looking for Ms. Adesha Wahiz.”
She let go of the door enough to cross her arms defensively. “That’s me. What do you want?” For some reason, he’d expected her to sound Afghan like her father. Instead, she had a hint of a Southwestern twang.
“Well, I’m not sure how to paint this nice. I’m sorry to inform you that your father passed a few days ago.”
Adesha narrowed her eyes. “Is this some kind of scam? He’s been dead for years.”
Bobby glanced at Stephen, who shrugged and produced the envelope from inside his coat. “Welp, he put your name on this here packet, at this address. We just figured you must be his daughter.” Maybe he’d faked his own death? Bobby shrugged and pressed on. “At any rate, this is addressed to you, and we were kinda hoping you might be willing to tell us what the notes are about.”
She took the envelope, expression clouding over as she ran her fingers over the writing on the front. “You looked through it? ”
“It wasn’t sealed,” Stephen said. “And everything got wet on its journey here. We made an effort to dry the papers for you.”
Tapping a finger on the envelope, she looked them both over again, then opened the door wider. “Come in and sit down while I look it over. If I can tell you anything, I will.”
“Thank you kindly, ma’am, we appreciate it.” They followed her inside the well-appointed and clean house to sit on plush couches, both choosing to perch on the edge rather than sink in and get comfortable. Watching her pull the papers, Bobby found himself fidgeting, like her opinion or reaction or something mattered more than anything else.
“This is his will, this is my father’s name.” Adesha sat down across from them in a matching armchair, confused and upset. “Where did you find this? Are you sure he died just a few days ago? ”
“Yes, ma’am, it was found in a town in Afghanistan, along with him.” He wanted to tell her the truth, as much of it as possible. If anything happened to his Momma, he’d want that courtesy.
Shaking her head in disbelief, she said, “I thought he was already dead. Nothing from him for years. What about my mother? Was she there?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, we got reason to believe she passed a few years ago.”
“Huh.” Adesha frowned as she leafed through the pages. When she found the pictures, she flipped through them and stopped at one. “He was a scientist, worked on some top secret government thing. We us
ed to ask him what he did, and he’d tell us silly things like ‘looking for worms’.” She set the pictures aside and scanned the notes.
Bobby scoured all the corners of his being for every scrap of patience he could muster. The woman needed to take her time and deal with this stuff. At the same time, he hoped she took forever. Once they got what they needed from her, they’d go back to the farm. Screaming and yelling probably awaited them, then lectures and cold shoulders.
“I guess he wasn’t lying.” Adesha sounded both amused and surprised as she looked up, papers in her lap and hand and the arm of the chair. “This is about wormholes. Unless I’m mistaken, he was working on the idea of interdimensional travel. He calls it out as an absolute possibility, starts from that basis. There was an event that convinced him it was possible, and he had data he was trying to use to re- create the event. He never succeeded, but thought he was getting close when he finally gave up and retired.”
Stephen leaned in, looking more keenly interested than Bobby felt. They already knew this part, after all. If they acted like they knew it already, though, she might clam up. “Why did you think he was dead? ”
She sighed and slumped her shoulders. “They lived in Alamogordo. He worked at White Sands Missile Range, so too far to see all the time. I used to talk to my mother a few times a week. One day, she just stopped calling and didn’t answer her phone.
“My husband and I drove out there to check on them that weekend, and we found the place trashed, like someone went through everything. The police investigated, or said they did, and never found any evidence of what actually happened to them. After a few months, we assumed they were taken by someone and killed. That was years ago.”
Bobby shared a glance with Stephen and knew he thought the same thing: if he worked at White Sands, maybe the project was still there. Also, Hanamidi’s bosses didn’t mess around, so they needed to be careful poking around this stuff. Kurt Donner had, more or less, suffered the same fate, after all. This sort of thing happening two separate times suggested some unpleasant things.
“That’s a crappy thing to have to deal with, ma’am, I’m real sorry you had to go through that.”
Adesha nodded. “Do you know how he died?”
“It was quick and painless.” Thank goodness Stephen answered right away, because Bobby would have sat there looking guilty and probably given the whole thing away. “We don’t know anything about your mother.” He stood up, apparently convinced they had all the new information they were going to get.
Taking the cue, Bobby stood, too. “What’re you gonna do with them notes?”
She looked down at the pages. “He wanted me to put them on the internet. I guess I’ll do that.”
“Be real sure before you do that. There’s folks what might not appreciate it.”
Nodding, she set the papers aside and also stood. “Yeah. I’ll talk it over with my husband first. Thank you for bringing this to me. If for no other reason than so I have the pictures.”
“Thanks for taking the time,” Bobby nodded. Adesha showed them out, and neither said anything until they’d turned up another street and lost sight of her house. “We were gonna head for the farm now.”
“We’re really close to the missile range, though. Its just south of here.”
“Yeah.” They both stopped. Stephen leaned against a lamp post. Bobby crossed his arms and scuffed his boot on the sidewalk. “I ain’t keen to go back.”
Stephen snorted. “I keep thinking about how much we’re going to be bitched at for having done this.”
“That pretty much covers it. If’n we go back now, though, we can maybe have a better chance at White Sands, on account there’ll be more talents to choose from.”
“There may also be more chances for things to go wrong because of more people being involved.” The vampire sighed and stared off at nothing in particular.
“Maybe we oughta just go back and get the tongue-lashing done with. At least we got something to show for it.” It seemed to Bobby like both choices sucked. “I guess there’s something else to consider, which is that the suits gotta know we bailed by now. They might be expecting to see us at White Sands. It’s been near on a week since we left already, and that’s plenty of time to set up for us here, just in case.”
Stephen sighed heavily and straightened away from the post. “Fine, fine, we should just go back. I suppose it’s not that far anyway. I want to see Kris before I deal with the rest, though.”
“Coward.” Bobby gave the vampire a flat look, because he knew that meant he would go back first, by himself. “After I done pulled your ass outta the fire, and you did it back, more’n once, you’re gonna bail because of a little social pressure?”
The vampire made a little whiny noise. “I don’t like dealing with angry women.”
Bobby snorted and started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. “Big, bad vampire is scared of girls yelling at you? Really? Mr. I Am The Monster In The Shadows don’t wanna get bitchslapped.”
Stephen scowled. “Oh, shut up.”
He gave Stephen a mock glare. “If’n you think I’m gonna let you go off to get laid in Denver while I face the firing squad, you’re nuts.”
“Fine, fine, let’s just go before I decide to try and eat you.”
“Yeah, it’ll be ‘trying’. Let’s see them fangs work on metal.” Still chuckling, Bobby broke apart into dragons spiraling upward.
Aside — Camellia
When the two men got far enough away to not notice her even if they looked back, Camellia stepped away from the wall she’d been leaning against and let her body’s camouflage fade away. She pulled out her phone and hit the speed dial on the way back to her rental car.
“It’s Camellia. You were right, they came here.”
“What did they do?” Privek sounded like he always did: sharp, focused, crisp.
“They went inside and talked to Adesha for maybe ten or fifteen minutes, then left.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“Yeah.” She took a deep breath and hoped she hadn’t joined the wrong team. Privek and his people rescued her from those suits, but all she had to go on was the video and what he said. Whether Mitchell and Cant and the others really did all that damage for the reasons Privek said they did, she had no idea. Still, they were obviously capable of causing plenty of harm. That made them a particular kind of dangerous, no matter what.
“They’re going to someplace they called ‘the farm’, and expecting to be yelled at. They’re also planning to go to White Sands Missile Range, but not until they go back to that farm place.”
“Did you get any impression for where this farm is?”
“Kind of. They went north, and said it wasn’t far. Mitchell mentioned Denver, but like it’s nearby, not where they are.” She decided not to pass on the name Kris, on the off chance Privek would tear Denver apart and ruin all kinds of normal lives to find her. Even if it would help, she’d be pissed if he harassed her friends, and assumed they’d feel the same. “What do you want me to do?”
For several seconds, she heard something tapping. Maybe he fiddled with a pen or pencil while he thought. “Was it due north?”
“I’m not a compass, Privek, I’m a chameleon.” She went ahead and gave the car an annoyed glare even though he couldn’t see it. At least he could probably hear it.
“Could you follow them if you left now?”
Shading her eyes, she peered at the last place she saw them in the sky. That dark spot and collection of glinting flashes around it was probably them. She wondered if they followed roads to navigate, or had some weird, innate sense of direction. Chelsea said she could always somehow tell north. “I doubt it, they’re pretty fast and I don’t know the roads very well.”
Another pause let her hear clicking noises might be him tapping keys on a computer. “Go to White Sands. Wait inside the base. Whoever shows up, follow them around and try to hitch a ride back with them. If you can’t, call me when they’re g
one.”
She unlocked the car and slid into the driver’s seat. “Will I be on the access list, or do I have to sneak inside?”
“You’ll be on the list. If you’re not, tell the gate guard to call his supervisor.”
“Understood.” The impulse to chuck all this and go home lurked in the back of her mind as she hung up the phone. In six or seven hours, she could be back home in Phoenix. Now that she had this weird superpower, no one would find her if she didn’t want them to. Her brother missed her, and she missed his stupid puns.
She started the car and thought again of the footage she’d seen in her mind’s eye. Soldiers had shot themselves, things had spontaneously blown up, people had had arms ripped off. Men as dangerous as those two and their friends needed to be stopped. Normal people had no chance against them. She’d agreed to do her part to take them down because she believed it needed to be done. With a heavy sigh, she checked her purse and pulled out enough money to grab something to eat. At least she could get authentic Mexican food around here.
Chapter 12
Bobby and Stephen landed together at the far end of the driveway. The sun had gone behind the mountains in the distance about five minutes ago, putting them in twilight. Stephen pulled off his balaclava, hat, gloves, and sunglasses, stuffing all of it into pockets. Bobby tucked his own sunglasses into his breast pocket. They set a slow, unenthusiastic pace up the long drive.
“I’d suggest sneaking in, but I’m starving.” Bobby’s belly rumbled to punctuate the statement as truth.
“Damn you and your stomach,” Stephen smirked. “Someday, it’ll get us both killed.”
“Got close already, not sure I wanna test if it can do the job proper-like.”
“Do you have any brilliant idea for what to tell them?”
This last flight took nearly four hours. Both of them had had plenty of time to think about it. Bobby had ignored that in favor of enjoying the flying. After starving the dragons by being stupid, he thought they deserved a little time with his head not annoying them. “I’m thinking we should go real light on details. They don’t gotta know what all we done, just the important parts.”