"So you're going to be a tough interview. I understand, but everyone on your home world wants to know more about you." She's got her biggest smile out, and she's six inches from me now, her blonde hair moving gently in the light breeze, sparkles of light from somewhere providing enchanting highlights. "Why don't you tell me your story, or as much of it as you can?"
So I lie, or mostly lie, not wanting her to go anywhere. Whatever cologne she's wearing, I'm buying it for my next girlfriend. I talk about waking up one morning able to do things I couldn't before, how I'm not really sure what all I can do even now, about listening to my police scanner and knowing something was up, about circling around LA trying to figure it out, and then, just getting lucky and finding the right place at the right time.
I tell her I have a regular nine to five job, go to work, buy groceries, pay taxes, just like everybody else. She asks me if I have a girlfriend, and I tell her no. She asks me if my family knows, and I tell her no, and I'm trying to keep my face from being seen, helped by the fact that none of the four helicopters got a good look at it.
She asks me if my eyes are always black, and I tell her now they are, but I got some contacts to make them look green when I go out in public.
I ask her if she has a hidden camera, to which she says no, but she hoped I'd let her take a picture with me, and points to a blanket spread out on a table a few feet to our left, with a nice digital camera sitting on it, pointed away from us. I never noticed, must have been looking at something else. I tell her no, and ask that she not have one drawn. She asks if she can take one from behind me, with her face in it, using her timer. I agree, but not until we're done talking. I don't tell her she's my dream girl, but I remind myself not to let her walk away unnecessarily.
She asks me what I plan to do now, and I tell her I have no idea, other than I want to help. Could I end a war or stop drug shipments or derail a tsunami or move a hurricane? I don't know, but I will eventually find out. She asks me if I would appear on her weekly football show. I say no, but promise that if I ever decide to go on television, her show will be my first stop.
Then she's standing next to me, her breasts touching my chest briefly, then pulling back ever so slightly. Her hand reaches up and she slides two fingers down the sleeve of my undershirt.
"Not exactly designer. And not what you had on the other night." It's a question in a statement. I am having serious trouble concentrating. And something is happening in my underwear that makes me glad there is no camera around. She can't help but notice, it's not two inches from her stomach.
"When I fly fast, my clothes flap in the wind, these are the only ones that don't. I needed the extra warmth the other night, so I wore more. I also sometimes burn them off by flying too fast."
"That was you," she's realized something now, "Those streaks of light a couple weeks ago, that was you."
"Yes. I went to Paris and London, and back here in between. Sort of a test flight."
"Would you take me flying?" She's looking at me with those huge green eyes. I have no choice. I move to her side, just as I've done twice with Perez, put my left arm under her right and around her back, lift slightly, put my right hand under her legs, steady myself, grab some molecules, and lift her 10 feet off the roof. I take her to the edge of the building, briefly over the side above the city, turn around, and come back in, landing us next to the table so I can accommodate her picture request. In total, maybe 50 feet of flight.
Her left hand is on my chest as I put her down, her breathing is hard. She puts her face inches from mine, and runs her nails down my chest, then across my stomach, then between my legs, and over my hardness. I sigh just a little for the pleasure, and the fantasy come to life.
She reaches her hand back up, grabs me behind the head, and pulls me in to a kiss. I try to think for just a second, but give in, my hand coming up behind her back, pulling her to me. Our tongues meet, and I am in a reality that is better than all my fantasies.
She pulls back momentarily, takes my hands, intertwines them with hers, and together we rip her top open, buttons flying in every direction. No bra, just a perfect set of medium breasts, smaller than I imagined them. She helps me take my top off, then pulls us back together, half naked, into another remarkable kiss.
Her hand is on me through my underwear, pulling me toward her while she leans back against the table. I lift her up and she pulls her panties down, then her left hand has a hold of the elastic band, and her right has found the salami. She stares at it, and then back at my eyes, lust all around. She pulls me toward her, and into her, no resistance of any kind even at the periphery of my thoughts. I have dreamed of doing exactly this hundreds of times.
She's wet, and I assume warm, though I can't feel the temperature change. I have heard of people's eyes rolling back into their heads, but I have never seen it or been the cause until now. She's laying beneath me, only the whites of her eyes visible, moaning with pleasure, and all I've done is go half my length inside her. I move now, relishing the sight of this spectacular woman, the beautiful face, chest and tight stomach, muscular legs spread wide, convulsing in pleasure with every stroke. There's no reason to get fancy, so I keep it simple, and soon I finish, my eruption less intense than normal.
I stop moving, catching my breath, still inside her. Her eyes remain blank, her moans unceasing, her body racked with the same periodic tremors despite the fact I haven't moved in a while. I pull out and every muscle in her body makes a final seizure, and then relaxes just as completely. She is unconscious or out of her senses, either way, the interview is over.
My pants go back up, and my top goes back on. I can't leave her this way, so I locate the two buttons that didn't pop off her top and refasten them, pull her panties back up, and as best I can restore her to pristine condition. Her breathing is firm and regular, and I'm not sure what else I should do, other than hang out until she's conscious.
There's a noise behind us, and, startled, I turn toward it. Fuck me. It's an army officer, who must have been there the whole time, emerging from behind the stairwell entrance. He walks part way over, keeping a respectful distance. There's a star embroidered on his collar, so I assume he's a general, though not a big one. There's a name, presumably his, ‘Church' sewn onto a patch on his chest. He's got some grey in his hair, maybe my dad's age, definitely in shape, hard, dressed in a camouflage uniform, not some fancy deal. Wearing boots. No staff.
His voice is human, but not grandfatherly. He's used to having people pay attention when he talks.
"We've been watching you for almost six months. After your performance the other night, I convinced Ms. Nortin that I could get her an interview. Figured you'd go for that," he nods his head at her, "and we could have a chat afterwards. It's been interesting, but not exactly what I expected. What did you do to her?"
"I have no idea," I answer, "First time I've had sex since I got strong."
He nods, probably to himself, not to me. He rubs his chin, the classic thinking pose, probably also to himself, or a learned technique to buy time.
"I'm going to give it to you straight. We know about all the windows you've broken from here to Denver. We know about your little rock toss jayhawk field out in the desert. We know about your flight route through the Valley. We knew it was you lit up the sky in December. We know it was you who did the deed in Korea. We know where you live. We've seen your face, even if Channel 2 missed their chance, it won't take us long to draw up your family tree."
"We've had a drone hovering over downtown since July, picking you up on every pass, and following you until you finish, with some satellite assist. We have a camera out in the desert. I don't have the drone here tonight, so that there's no evidence we had this little talk."
"You may not know what you can do, but we have a pretty good idea. Our lab boys have analyzed hundreds of hours of footage of you. We've been out in the daylight and measured and weighed your rocks. They did the math on how far they thought you could throw that helo, and gu
ess what, when we measured it, they hit it within six inches. We know how strong you are and what it would take to take you out."
I'm not laughing, but the light is rolling on the floor of my insides, laughing his ass off.
"Short story is that now, you are ours. No out of town trips on business without our permission, if you take my meaning. We'll occasionally be sending you an assignment or two, which we'll expect you to do for the good of your country, no questions asked. You give us any grief, and we'll burn your life down in front of your eyes, and then put you down."
He walks a couple feet to his left and picks up a manila envelope that's been sitting on top of a vent of some kind. He flips it toward me, landing it a few feet in front of my feet. We both watch it spin and slide until it comes to rest an inch from my right big toe. Nice shot.
"Your first six jobs are in there. Pick one, any one you want, and get it done next week. You won't see me again. Ms. Nortin will be on this roof every Thursday night we have a message, she'll be our courier. And unless you want your mom to see your dick on YouTube, you might want to wear pants in the future. The drone will be hanging around. You haven't managed to spot it in six months, you're not going to spot it now."
I laugh at him. "General," I respond, "the only thing a video of that would do is get me a whole lot of dates."
He gives me a stern look. "Don't fuck with us son, you have no idea what you're up against. We control the banks, we control the Internet, we can get you fired, we can make sure everyone you've ever met is living in a box in South Central. And you gotta believe that the Chinese and North Koreans have figured it out too now, and they'll be coming. We can protect those same people for you."
He takes out his phone, and says two words into it. It beeps back at him. Then he turns back to me and points at the envelope.
"Do the job and follow instructions and you're safe, and your family is safe. Ignore me at your risk, the consequences will be severe."
A helicopter is coming down toward the roof, a really nice Black Hawk, he must have called it. It hovers a few inches above the roof, the general steps on the skid, and is helped into the body. The door closes and it heads off into the night sky.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know. That's not the story he told me." It's Celeste, she's awake, but looking pretty groggy.
"You OK?"
"Fine. Better than fine. That's the most fun I have ever had, and by a wide margin. You want to do that again, any time, any place, I am all yours."
"If you're OK," I ask her without responding to her last comment, "I need to be gone." She smiles, and tries to hand me her card. I go get it, and grab the envelope too. It's only in my hands for seconds before I know there's something wrong. I fly away with it anyway.
Helicopters are relatively slow, I am not. I manage to take my clothes off between BofA and Bank of California, and dump them, the card, and the envelope on the roof of the second bank, my intention to follow and learn. Naked I am invisible on radar.
Then I feel it. Someone's watching me. All these months that I thought it was fucking Fog Dude, it was the frakking army. I punch the molecules and swing through a full circle around downtown. The feeling stays with me, the drone still invisible, but now I know to look for it. Then, like a bicycle across the moon, I see it black against the side of a high rise.
I hit the molecules and go vertical, six hundred miles per, straight up. The drone can't match it, no aircraft can. In two minutes I am 20 miles high, out of its range. The helo left BofA roughly flying northeast, and in the three or so minutes I've been farting around with the drone, it would have covered no more than six or seven miles. I fly that far out at my altitude, then plummet earthward at high speed.
I spot it, maybe 1,500 feet above the ground, plunking along toward the Inland Empire. I settle at 10,000 feet, a mile or so to the north of the flight path, parallel though slightly behind, straining every sense I have, human and fog, for drone sign. The helo eventually turns more northerly and starts to follow Interstate 15, climbs to six thousand feet. I keep formation. Two and a half hours later, it's landing at Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, and I am turning for home.
My clothes and the envelope are waiting for me on top of the bank, along with the card of a woman no longer in sight. For three hours I've been running the conversation and the past six months over and over in my head. The general is a good bluffer, that's my conclusion. He knows more about me than I'd like, but he has no idea who I really am, where I live, or anything else of substance. Otherwise, he'd have visited me there to prove it.
He also never mentioned Hawai'i, which I'm sure he'd have done if he realized I had been responsible for three million dollars of damage to the roads and beaches there. He's got his ace up his sleeve, not on the table. I sit down on the roof of the bank and look at the envelope. Standard manilla, big clasp on the back. Inside, a bunch of pages, grouped together with a heavy clip. Somewhere in here is a tracking device, I'm sure, or more than one, and it's not obvious to me.
For safety sake, these pages are not going anywhere I go. I put the pages and the card into the envelope and reseal it, carefully hiding it in one of the big square vents sticking through the roof, being as sure as I can be that it will still be there when I come back. I wouldn't mind it if something happened to the pages, but that business card is priceless.
I give my paranoia free reign. It's time for more suborbital practice, heating my body to several thousand degrees, burning my underwear to ash, just in case something might have been placed on me. If it is, I am already done, because they will know I followed them to Vegas.
I pop back to Anaheim, but sit naked on the dumpster behind the Chinese restaurant for 20 minutes making sure I wasn't followed. Then it's into Starbuck, but south on Harbor, then south on the 405 to Lake Forest, before doing a U turn and heading north. I exit two exits south of my normal 710 junction, and head to the surface streets, on the theory it will be easier to spot a tail there at five in the morning, in total driving 80 miles to go 30.
Home in time to shower twice before going in to LAX, I need Perez and I need her bad. Not that way, I have to figure out what to do.
Chapter 3
I turn Starbuck into the LAPD lot, Perez is there, holding me a spot next to her Mustang. She's looking cheerful, but apparently I am not. Whether it's my stupid look, or just my depressed look, she picks up on it.
"Not holding up well are you, Air Force." Only a friend can insult you before saying good morning.
"Good morning to you too, Officer Perez, and no, I have issues."
"That is the understatement of the year. It's OK to be depressed about Jen, but you'll get over it."
I look at her. In the past two weeks she's been shot at, beaten, and kidnaped, yet she looks just as strong and ready to get to work as ever. I, on the other hand, am a mess.
"There's more now, we need to talk."
"This have anything to do with a certain blonde television reporter?"
"Fuck me. I thought she'd wait a few days at least."
"The biggest interview of her career, maybe eventually one of the biggest in forever if you keep your act together, and you thought she'd wait? How did you get all those high scores on those tests?"
We walk together into the building, not talking about what we want to talk about. The only thing I say during the transit is to express my surprise that she still wants to work Terminal 7, and she explains that she's gotten used to having lunch on the flight deck of airplanes, the one benefit of working with a pilot. We stop in the office to check in, and replace the overnight crew. The morning Times is sitting there, nothing about me on the front.
"OK," I say to her when we're finally alone, walking south down the concourse, "spill."
"I watched SportsCenter this morning, and your friend Celeste was on. She said she had received a tip that you would be on the roof of a downtown Los Angeles building after midnight, though she didn't say which one. She said she met you there, and th
at she interviewed you for 20 minutes, and you flew her around. She told a story which sounds like you would have made up, just enough truth to keep it real. She said you were responsible for the flashes of light last month, and that you didn't know what you were doing, you just wanted to help. She kept calling you MFM, the Mysterious Flying Man."
"What else did she say?" I must have sounded worried.
Perez looks at me, her eyes narrowing to slits. "Did she ride the salami, Air Force?" I don't know what my face looked like, but Perez now looks very disappointed in me, and there's something else on her face I can't quite put my finger on. There was just a touch of anger in her voice too.
"What else did she say?," I repeat myself.
"There's something else beyond that?" Perez is shaking her head and walking even faster than her normal 200 miles per hour.
"Like the Army was there?" Perez stops walking and pushes me over against the wall between one of the gates and the food court.
Fog Bastards 2 Destination Page 2