“All right,” he said after a few moments. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Two
We rode in silence. The trip to Helix didn’t take long, but once we reached the corporation’s land Deputy Path took back-roads for another thirty minutes. I didn’t even know these roads existed.
What was my dad doing driving way out here? His words repeated themselves in my mind. What was set free? Had he gone to look for something out in the woods? What did a company like Helix even possess that could be set free? None of this made any sense.
The dirt road we drove on opened up to a small clearing. I had the door open and hopped out of the deputy’s truck before it had even come to a complete stop. I could hear voices in the distance which I imagined belonged to either more deputies or some Helix employees. I glimpsed the back end of my dad’s F-150 between a few trees and ran to it.
It seemed odd to me that my dad hadn’t parked the truck in the clearing itself. Mud coated the lower half of the truck, and when I got closer I realized the front of the truck was smashed against a tree. Suddenly I found it hard to breathe, but ran around to the front of truck praying not to see an impact mark in the windshield where my dad’s head would have struck. I let out a ragged breath I didn’t know I’d even been holding. The windshield was fine. A quick glance inside the truck somehow lifted some of my anxiety since I didn’t see any obvious blood.
This was all too much. I crouched down, resting my back against the nearest tree. With my hands in my armpits to ward off the cool October temperature I asked myself the obvious questions. What was I doing? What did I think I could really accomplish by coming out here? There were professionals out here searching for my dad, and here I come thinking I can help and do what they can’t. It was so absurd.
That was when I noticed something on the ground. Tracks.
They started at the door of my dad’s truck, leading away—deeper into the forest. If I hadn’t been crouched down I might never have seen them. They seemed to shine a weird purple in the afternoon light, probably something to do with the reflection of water on the ground or something.
I kept clear of the tracks while following them deeper in the woods. I found myself dreading every tree I passed, every giant fern. I kept imagining I’d suddenly stumble across my dad’s body, half-covered by the foliage. Maybe he would be leaning against a tree, slumped over and dead. Maybe covered in blood…
I stopped walking and tried to steady my breathing. I closed my eyes and shoved away those thoughts.
Away from all the other searchers, the forest grew quieter. I heard birds and insects making what I imagined were their normal sounds. The redwoods towered over me.
The tracks led further and further into the trees. At times they seemed to fade, but I would pick them up again a few feet further along.
The tracks entered another clearing ringed by ferns. What I saw on the ground brought me up short. There were tracks everywhere. I spotted my dad’s jumbled in the clearing, but mainly I saw other imprints…strangely long, and almost animal looking. The pawmarks vaguely resembled human hands and feet, but were misshapen and I could even make out where claws came from them.
They were everywhere. The ground and the plants in the area were torn to pieces.
Something—several somethings—had surrounded my dad. Animals of some kind. Not that I was a tracker or anything, but the marks didn’t bring to mind any animal I was familiar with. All kids growing up in a town like Calm Waters knew at least what deer and cat tracks looked like. Even wolf. The tracks mixed with my dads were completely different from anything I’d ever seen.
A huge grouping of them led off further into the forest. I wasn’t really sure if I should follow. Had these animals—or whatever they were—taken my dad? How dangerous were they? I started to follow.
“You aren’t supposed to be out here.”
I spun at the voice. It belonged to a girl about my age, her blonde hair pulled back into a pony-tail. I looked closer and realized I recognized her.
“Alex?” Alexandra Courtney. She was literally in all my classes at school. She was the girl most everyone hated because she aced everything. She was also drop-dead gorgeous and way out of my league. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, hey Jack,” she said, surprised. “I’m out here looking for…well…” She waved a hand at me and seemed embarrassed.
“Right.” Seeing her outside of class or Helix was odd. She worked there sometimes on weekends like I did, though I didn’t have a clue what she did. Probably filing for the important people. Instead of the nice, fashionable clothes I always saw her in, she wore cargo pants tucked into boots. It was strangely…military. Is this what she thought tracking people wore? She’d obviously been watching too many old Tom Clancy movies or something.
“So?” She gazed at me expectantly, a little annoyed even.
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing out here?” she asked.
Of course. My head was all over the place. I rubbed my eyes before answering and tried to steady myself. “I’m sorry. I had a deputy bring me down here. I thought I could help…or…I don’t know. I spotted some tracks by my dad’s truck and followed them here.”
“Tracks?”
“Yeah.” I frowned. Was she blind? How could anyone have missed them? “Isn’t that why you are here too? Didn’t you follow them?”
“No. I followed the sound of you crashing through the woods.” She glanced around in confusion. “What tracks are you talking about?”
Really? At this rate my dad would never be found. I pointed behind her to the boot prints my dad had left. “Look, right there…” I trailed off. There weren’t any tracks. “That’s weird,” I mumbled. They were clear as day before.
“I followed them here to this clearing,” I continued, almost talking more to myself than to Alex. “To all these other tracks…”
The prints from the small clearing were gone too. No. Something was wrong. “They were here. I saw them! A bunch of them that looked like they belonged to some weird four-legged animals.” I realized my voice had gone up several decibels. My vision swam, and before I knew what hit me I lay sprawled on the ground. I was feeling nauseous, and I pain spiked in my skull. The beginnings of a migraine. Perfect. Just perfect.
“Take it easy, Jack.” Alex crouched down next to me. She appeared concerned, but also strangely curious. My vision blurred. My head started to throb even more. The pain grew as if my head was about to split open.
“Jack? You okay?”
Her voice seemed so far away. Suddenly I couldn’t see anything. Pain burned away any ability to think. Pain and darkness. Nothing else. I drowned in them. Suffocated. I let myself sink until the merciful darkness claimed me.
Chapter Three
Alex Courtney stared into the clearing as paramedics carried Jack Bishop’s unconscious form back to the main road. They had concluded he’d passed out due to the stress of the situation.
She knew that wasn’t the case.
Jack’s words replayed themselves over and over in her mind, and though she couldn’t see any of the tracks he described leading here, she knew Jack hadn’t been lying. He had been genuinely confused, and she believed him. She could always tell when someone was holding the truth back. Alex had a sense for these things. Always had, going back as far as she could remember.
It was her gift.
The other thing confirming Jack’s story was the clearing she stood in. Well off the beaten path and with evidence a struggle had taken place. Jack was right, something had happened here recently. She couldn’t see the tracks he had talked about, but the other signs were clear. Scuffed ground. Trampled twigs and leaves. Obvious if you knew what to look for.
She walked further into the clearing, examining the ground for any further clues. Jack had been surprised to see her, the doubt in her abilities or qualifications clear. The truth was there wasn’t a teenager in the city who could do what she did. Her hand went to her side where her Sig 226 us
ually rode. Alex shot better than any firearms instructor she had met so far—an area of pride for her—but her superiors had given her strict orders not to wear a side-arm in public even though she had a permit issued personally by the Director of Homeland Security. She had to seem like a normal kid.
Normal, she scoffed. I’m not even close. Thankfully.
Alex knew what really existed out there in the world, hiding in the shadows.
But instead of devoting her complete attention to fully developing useful skills like hunting, shooting and tracking, she had to continue with school. Her other skills got her through school without a hitch, but still. It all seemed like such a waste.
She located the spot in the clearing where the creatures—likely more Hounds from Whyte Genetics—had gone deeper in the Redwoods. How many were there? Five? Six? Without her gun she knew it would be suicide to follow the tracks further. What were they doing here? Just sending one to free the Leech seemed…off. Alex let the thought go. She’d call it in. Let the clean-up teams deal with the situation for now. She had more important things on her plate.
Alex’s thoughts kept going back to Jack Bishop. Something was definitely happening with him. She couldn’t put her finger on what the “something” might be exactly, but it was there. The way he’d acted, and the way he’d rambled on about tracks apparently only he could see…well, that meant she’d have to watch him more closely. More closely than usual, anyway. School would start back up after the weekend. She nodded to herself.
Jack would need to be watched very closely.
Chapter Four
I woke up in a hospital bed and found myself clothed in nothing but one of those creepy, backless gown-things. Not seeing any IVs or tubes attached to me I assumed not too much time had passed between the woods and now.
The last thing I remembered was Alex Courtney staring at me like I was some sort of mental patient while I raved about tracks she couldn’t see. I knew I wasn’t crazy. I saw those tracks. Something freaky was going on.
My head still hurt, and so did my eyes. Constant pressure pulsing behind them, but nothing like the world-ending pain from before. Taking it slow, I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. So far so good. I stood up, feeling better with every breath. A clock on the wall over my bed read 4pm. Only a few hours then.
“Glad to see you’re up.”
I turned and saw a nurse standing in the doorway to my room. The backless nature of my “robe” left me feeling…well, exposed. I clutched the back of it together.
“You gave some people quite a scare,” she continued. “How about you sit down for me?”
I backed up until the backs of my knees hit the bed. The corners of her mouth turned up in a small smile at my self-consciousness. What did she expect?
“I’ll just check a few things before clearing you to go,” she said. “Your aunt is here to take you home. Wouldn’t come in the room to wait. She’s an odd sort, that one. Everyone worries in their own way I suppose, though I told her there was nothing to worry about. You’ve been under a lot of stress today. More than anyone your age should ever have to deal with.”
The nurse prattled on and on, her tone never veering from cheerfulness. It seemed like everyone knew my dad was missing. Oddly, I didn’t feel as worried now as I had earlier today. Whatever had taken my dad—I hadn’t seen any blood in that clearing, so I had to assume he had been abducted—probably still had him alive. Somewhere. I was sure of it. Why cart him off and then kill him if you could have done that in the clearing where he got caught?
Was I fooling myself? Giving myself false hope? Maybe. But what else could I do? My dad and I had talked about this sort of thing before. Son, he had said, when a parent’s kid goes missing, all they can do is hold out hope. Once they let go, it’s the beginning of the end.
The beginning of the end.
No, I wouldn’t go there. I wouldn’t give up on my dad being found. Ever.
“Jack, did you hear me?”
Oh, she was talking to me. “I’m sorry, was thinking about…what was going on. What’s up?”
She gave me the sad, pity eyes I’m sure all nurses are required to learn, while still managing to keep a cheerful smile on her face. “I said you are all set to go home. Your aunt is in the lobby. I’ll leave you to get dressed.” She winked at me. Geez. I was pretty sure that was illegal somehow. At the very least it was just wrong.
My aunt waited for me in the lobby like the nurse had promised. The lights in the hospital struck me as overly bright and the sounds amplified. I'd had migraines before, and the after effects always sucked, but this was excessive. I still had all the fun side effects and symptoms of a migraine without suffering the actual headache itself.
Luckily my Aunt Martha was the quiet type. She'd always been that way as far back as I remembered. At the few family gatherings we had when I was growing up, sometimes you didn’t even realize she was there.
"Ready?" she asked. I nodded, a little surprised she even said that much. I winced as the door to the lobby slammed shut when another patient left the hospital. Our hospital hadn’t upgraded to sliding doors everywhere yet. My aunt wordlessly handed me a water bottle and a couple of pills as if she had been expecting my pain.
The drive home was quiet and uneventful. Martha turned the radio off and kept her eyes focused on the road. She didn’t offer any condolences about my dad. I remember my dad once saying his sister had never been talkative. Martha didn’t ask what happened in the forest. It was oddly refreshing. The last thing I wanted was another person giving me sympathy—false or real.
We pulled in to my driveway a little after 5pm. Martha popped her trunk and walked back to pull out some of her bags. They were small and couldn’t have held much. I guess she didn’t plan on being at my place long.
Walking back into my home was strange, the atmosphere colder and less welcoming without my dad. Martha walked upstairs straight to the spare room, and I followed her up on my way to my own. I didn’t peek in my dad's room. I knew he wouldn’t be in there no matter how much I wished it so. He was gone. Taken.
I heard Martha walk back downstairs, followed by the sounds of her pulling out some pots and pans. In my house for less than five minutes and she was already cooking. She may not talk much, but she knew exactly what was needed.
I lost myself in thoughts of how I would go about finding my dad. I didn’t have much to go on other than those tracks in the woods. Of course my dad would never have been out there anyway had he not received that phone call. Several things about the call nagged at me. The vague hints that something kept at Helix had been set free. My dad mentioning a rescue mission. Most of all his fear.
I pulled out my phone and plugged it in. The battery had died while I was in the hospital. I flipped on the TV in my room hoping this time there would be some sort of press release about the incident. The first story mentioned a series of mysterious pet disappearances. The poor reporter, this must have been her first assignment. She managed to appear absolutely devastated.
The next story railed about rising medical costs. Awesome. My recent visit would probably cost us a fortune. My dad always complained Helix’s health insurance wasn’t all that great.
Finally the report I’d been watching for came on.
Tragedy struck Helix Corporation’s Calm Waters’ location last night, the news anchor said. Her dark hair was perfect, her teeth blinding white. Every line of her face gave a crispness and directness to her words. The whole package so neat and tidy I wanted to reach through the TV and slap her. I couldn’t help but think of her as nothing more than a professional liar.
An equipment malfunction resulted in the injury of several employees, and the deaths of ten others, the news anchor continued. The identities of the victims have not yet been released by the company while they conduct an internal investigation. The footage cut to one of the PR guys at Helix. He looked familiar, but it was hard to say if I had ever personally met him. A small text borde
r appeared on the screen naming him Mel Smart. I almost laughed. Of course his last name was Smart. I wondered if it was his real name.
As most people in the country know, he began, Helix Corporation utilizes the most cutting-edge equipment in the surveying of the environment. Late last night one of our new machines used in the prediction of weather patterns somehow overloaded and exploded. This terrible incident claimed the lives of ten employees on duty.
Smart paused, no doubt trying to delve deep into his bad acting roots for a tear or two. The absolute falseness of it all sickened me. How could anyone believe this joker’s lies and insincerity? Worse were the people I could see on camera buying his story without question.
The hearts of every person at Helix Corporation—we are a family—go out to the loved ones of those who were tragically taken from us in this terrible accident.
The news cut to another story. “That’s it?” I heard myself ask. “Unreal.” No mention of my dad. Nothing about anything being rescued or anything escaping. Why were they lying? Was this a cover-up?
No. I wasn’t going to let it all be swept under a rug. Whatever had really happened at Helix last night had somehow gotten my dad abducted. My eyes fell on a badge half-buried under text books. I moved the books to the side and picked up the badge. My face stared back from the shiny surface, looking bored like most teenagers do when having their picture taken. My Helix Corporation ID. I didn’t have access to much at the building, but I did have access to a huge selection of old files. Maybe something in them would help me out.
Luckily tomorrow was Monday and one of my normal days to work.
Chapter Five
School. The bane of my existence. School sucks under all normal conditions. Especially Mondays. When you add all the extra crappy conditions on top? Unbearable. I didn’t want to be here. Maybe I couldn’t do much to find my dad, but I was positive I wouldn’t learn anything about what happened at school.
Residue Page 2