Alex thought back to that moment a few minutes earlier when Jack had reached down and put his hand on the top of the bed. Alex hadn’t been able to see anything, but from reading his mind she could sense he was seeing the psychic residue of his friend’s corpse.
Jack had only held his hand there for a few moments when she was flooded with two sets of thoughts projecting from his head. They were muddled, but she remembered the flavor of Barry’s mind from her earlier run-ins with him. Both the voices flooded her mind, frenzied, and their volume increased by the second. She’d lifted her hands to cover her ears as the two screams rose to piercing levels. It was the first time she had ever tried to stop hearing the thoughts around her. Hearing other people’s thoughts was like breathing, completely natural. But this had been like being stabbed in the head.
Her brain had felt like it might explode from the mounting pressure. She wanted to claw at her ears to make it all stop. Then it got even worse as a third, more alien set of thoughts piggy-backed on the other two. The thoughts were barely intelligible, but they carried an inherent impression of hunger and delight at the suffering and fear of Barry’s mind. The thoughts came more as pictures. Gut-wrenching pictures of Barry in horrible pain were followed by the image of psychic teeth sinking into the boy’s psychic energy. Those teeth ripped into Barry like a wolf tearing into corpse, except the teeth almost seemed alive. The images came from two places at once: from Jack’s mind and the alien vision of the Leech. They combination of all the thoughts and pictures formed a disjointed nightmare.
Then, without warning, all the sound silenced. Alex was left with ringing in her ears—no, not in her ears, but in her mind.
Once upon a time, Alex’s father, in one of his moments of “brilliance”, had thought it a good idea to make her feel the effects of a flash-bang grenade. The concussion and light flash had been enough to bring her to her knees. She’d been completely disoriented for a few minutes, and it took another fifteen to feel totally fine. Through it all she hadn’t been able to hear anything with her ears or her mind. The psychic concussion she’d just experienced was on par with that grenade.
She shook her head attempting to clear the disorientation, and after a few minutes her sense had begun returning. She lay on the floor, having collapsed at some point during the experience. Jack was also on the floor. The position of his body and awkward angles of his legs and arms made him appear like a puppet who’d had its strings cut.
Alex had rushed over to him, feeling a spike of sudden fear. Was he OK? She couldn’t hear any thoughts, but was that because she was still screwed up from the effects of the psychic vision?
Or because Jack was gone?
She stared down at him for an eternity. She tried to check his breathing, but it was still hard for her to focus. She’d talked herself into believing his breathing was so shallow she couldn’t see or feel it in her current state.
Her eyes burned from tears she forced herself not to shed.
Whispers began floating into her mind, louder and louder until they were at the volume she was used to. She realized she was shouting at Jack, asking him if he was OK. Then he’d opened his eyes, and she’d never felt relief so strong in her life.
Crystal clear, focused and strong, came his thoughts as he gazed up at her. Then he had dissolved into tears and pain as the reality of his friend’s death crushed him.
Alex held him for a long time, there on the floor of his dead friend’s bedroom. Most kids their age were worrying about what clothes to wear to school the next day, or if they’d finished their homework. She and Jack were worried about people dying, friends and strangers alike. They worried about a world full of crazy things that would drive most people to insanity.
Jack calmed down, and pushed her away from him gently. He gave her an embarrassed smile and got to his feet. After he took a series of deep breaths, he seemed almost calm. He didn’t say anything about his earlier thoughts, and his mind focused on what he’d witnessed in the vision.
Alex felt oddly…disappointed…he wasn’t thinking of her. Then she felt ashamed. How can I be so self-absorbed at a time like this?
“I couldn’t have stopped it,” he finally said. “It was just bad luck. Even if I had been here, I don’t know what I would have done against that thing. I feel like my insides have been cut out of me with a dull knife.”
“I know,” she replied. He needed to talk it through. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m done sitting around.” Alex could sense the anger in his thoughts. The determination. “We need to find this thing. I can’t let it kill anyone else. I can’t lose anyone else, and I don’t want anyone to feel what I’m feeling.”
“What about finding your dad?” Alex asked, and immediately wished she could take the question back.
Instead of freaking out, Jack said, “If—when—I find him, I don’t think I could face him if I let this Leech run around killing people. I couldn’t face anyone—not him, and especially not you—if I didn’t try my best to stop it.”
Alex found herself nodding along with his words. It was a start.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I was beginning to think I’d made a terrible mistake.
The gun seemed to weigh more than it should, and I was extremely nervous. Alex said it was her favorite pistol; a Sig…something…blah blah…whatever. The gun metal was dark, but I could swear I saw the psychic purple tint to it. I filed the detail away.
The morning after the craziness at Barry’s house, Alex drove us twenty miles east of Calm Waters along an old service road. There weren’t hardly any trees out here, and even fewer animals or tourists. Shooting guns. What a terrible idea. Even worse—this had been my idea. Definitely not how I normally spent my Saturday mornings.
“It’s OK to be anxious,” she said. “It happens to most people when they shoot for the first time. Honestly, I’m a little surprised you haven’t shot before. Your dad was one of the better shots around. We used to have competitions in the range under Helix.”
“Who would win?” I asked, trying to keep my mind off the fact I held something that could kill someone.
She let out a quick laugh. “Me, of course. Well, about eighty-percent of the time. So are you going to shoot that thing or what?”
I was pretty sure she was the worst instructor ever.
“Probably,” she said after reading my mind. “Doesn’t change the fact you asked to be taught how to shoot. Point the gun at the can over there.” She pointed at a Coke can sitting on a stump. “Line up the sights like I told you, and pull the trigger.”
I straightened my right arm, gun in hand, and brought my left up to steady my aim. I leaned forward slightly.
“A tad more,” Alex said. “The lean will help your body absorb some of the recoil.”
After a few breaths to try and calm my nerves, I aimed as best I knew how, and pulled the trigger. It was an odd experience, and at first I thought I did it wrong. Maybe the safety was on. It seemed like I kept pulling the trigger back further and further, yet the gun wasn’t going off—
The gun roared and bucked in my hand. The bark off a tree trunk three feet to the right of the can exploded outward. It was loud even through the ear protection Alex had insisted I wear.
“OK, now do it again,” Alex said leaning in by my ear.
My actions were far less sure this time around. Part of it due to adrenaline and part due to the expectation of knowing what the kick felt like, and how the roar sounded.
“Uh…why don’t we use that silencer-thing you used before?” I asked. Maybe that would help a little bit.
“You need to get used to the sound. Not everyone will be using suppressors when they are shooting around you or at you. Though the suppressor would save you some hearing loss, I suppose.”
“So I can use the silencer?”
“No. Shoot the can.”
I let out a breath, disappointed, then aimed again and squeezed the trigger. I figured I should b
e prepared this time for a long pull on the trig—
The pistol roared again and jumped. I didn’t even see where the bullet struck this time, but the soda can still stood there, mocking me.
“Sorry, I kinda forgot to mention the trigger pull,” she said. I was pretty sure she was snickering behind my back. “The first pull is a lot longer than the subsequent ones.”
Aiming again, I squeezed and saw the bullet hit right below the can on the stump. Feeling better, I shot again and was rewarded with the Coke can jumping off the stump. Alex had me set the gun down on a TV tray she produced from the trunk of her car while she placed three more empty cans on the stump. She also set up an aluminum tripod with a circular target on it.
“OK,” she said with a grin, “time to go through a pile of ammunition.”
“Isn’t there a smaller gun I can start with?” I asked. “You know, one that kicks less?”
“My Sig is the smallest gun I carry. .22’s and 9mm’s don’t have the stopping power against a lot of the potential supernatural creatures running around out there. What’s the point of shooting at something if you can’t stop it completely?”
“Uh…there isn’t one?”
“Exactly.” She slapped me on the back. “See, you’re learning already.” She directed me to replace my ear and eye protection, then motioned to the cans. “I want you to shoot until you knock off all three cans, then fire at the circular target. Obviously when you get there, I want you to aim for the center of the target.”
I nodded my understanding and hoped I didn’t appear too shaky. It took me six more shots to knock off the cans. This was a lot harder than what I imagined it would be when I had asked her to give me some lessons. The thought was that I wouldn’t always be able to rely on the psychic abilities I was developing. When that failed, I had the knife Alex had given me a few days ago, and I wanted to be at least passable with a gun. Not that I was looking forward to the idea of shooting anyone or anything, but I was done being under-prepared. Why was this so difficult? I was aiming pretty good…or so I thought.
“You’re anticipating the noise and the recoil,” Alex said in my ear. “Block it out. It doesn’t matter. It’s like the beep on the microwave. It only serves to tell you the action has been completed.”
The noise didn’t matter. The kick didn’t matter. Just accept they are going to happen. “All that matters is the aim and the trigger?”
“For now, yes,” she said.
I fired twice, one hitting the edge of the center-circle of the target, and one the ring outside of that one. The gun’s slide locked back.
“Nice!” She pointed to the button that made the magazine—a magazine, not a clip; she’d been adamant about that—slide out. I shoved another one in and went right back to firing.
When I focused on aiming down the barrel and almost letting the gun shoot itself, I seemed to do better. Soon I hit the target with every shot, and the “spread” was becoming more and more grouped.
“You’re doing really well, Jack,” she said. “Put the gun down, and I’ll go move the target back a little bit. Ten yards is where a majority of your shooting will take place, but I’d like to make sure you can hit from a bit further away.”
Once she was back, I loaded a fresh magazine in her pistol and took to firing again. My grouping wasn’t as close, but I still hit the target with a high frequency. Alex changed the target once, then twice. I continued shooting, and she continued loading empty magazines for me.
At one point I reached down for another magazine and discovered there weren’t any. I set the gun down and glanced back at Alex. She gave me a thumb’s up. I wondered how well she could shoot.
Alex’s eyebrow raised a fraction and she waved at me to bring the gun to her. She stood a good ten feet behind me. After handing over the gun, she took a magazine from a belt she wore and walked me back several dozen yards further away. “Do you see the upper portion of the outer ring?”
“Yeah,” I replied. None of my shots had hit there.
“OK. In the center of that area.” Alex let out a quick breath and brought up the gun, pulling the trigger twice as fast as I figured was possible. She holstered her pistol and started walking towards the target. I followed after her, curious how she’d done.
She pulled the target down and pulled a dime from her pants pocket. There were two connecting bullet-holes right where she said she would put them, and they both could be covered by her dime.
Nodding with satisfaction, she pulled her ear protection down around her neck. I did the same as she started talking. “One of the benefits of being part of a rich company that has a virtually unlimited ammunition budget is that I have become pretty good. Not just with pistols, but with shotguns and rifles too. Since I turned ten, I’ve shot at least two-hundred rounds of ammunition every day. Sometimes that takes an hour, or sometimes only a few minutes.
“Some girls do cheerleading,” she said with a dazzling smile. “I shoot stuff.”
There was something undeniably sexy about it all. I was starting to think cheerleaders were overrated. Mostly. She laughed at my internal comment, but blushed a little as well.
“The unfortunate thing is I can’t just take you out shooting whenever I want,” Alex said as she collapsed the tripod holding the target. “I had to pull some strings at work to get this much ammo. I’ll do this as often as I can, though. If you want.”
My hand was numb from the shooting, and the reek of gunpowder burned my nose. My hands shook, not from adrenaline, but from over-using muscles I didn’t even know existed. Even then, I still had about a dozen reasons to say yes. Some of them were rational. Some…not so much.
“I’d love to.”
“Awesome,” she said with another smile.
I’d helped her load the items into her car when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. She waved at me to take it while she set about cleaning up the shell casings with a dirty broom and dustpan. I had the feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d snuck off to shoot out in the woods.
I suppose I really shouldn’t have been expecting anything different. My number of contacts had shrunken significantly over the past month. The blank caller ID was the give-away.
“How was your morning shooting session, Mr. Bishop?” The Insider said. “It’s my understanding she is quite the excellent shot. I have always wondered if that translated into being an excellent teacher. Tell me, does it?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
How had he known our plans? I hadn’t even fully realized what we were doing until we were almost here.
“Alex is a great teacher,” I said. Alex stiffened, and dropped her broom and pan to walk over and put her face right next to mine to try and listen in on the conversation. Her face was very close to mine. My mouth was suddenly dry. She shot me an annoyed look before turning her full attention to the phone.
“I’m glad to hear it.” He sounded like he was in an amazing mood. “I was also heartened to discover your psychic abilities have been progressing. Tell me, have you been able to completely shut out another person’s attempts to enter your mind yet?”
Such an awkward question. He knew the only person I could attempt that with was Alex. “I haven’t really attempted it. Been a bit busy with murders and that whole not-getting-killed thing.”
“You disappoint me, Mr. Bishop,” he sounded far less pleased than before. “It is my job to know everything about everything. Did you know that?”
“I don’t know much of anything about you,” I retorted.
“Well, I suppose that is true. And guess what?”
“What?”
“I don’t care,” he said, his voice flat. “I risk everything by calling you. So when I do, I expect a little more respect than you are showing. Or have you forgotten that most of your knowledge—which I certainly hope has been increasing by the day—is due to my help?
“I think, however,” he continued, “that it is time for us to meet.”
“Why?” Ale
x blurted.
“Ah. Hello Miss Courtney. I should have assumed you would be listening in. Though, a man in my position really should really never assume.
“We need to meet,” the Insider continued, “because the game has changed. Things have been put into motion that require direct intervention on my part.”
The game had changed? “What’s changed?”
“Simply put, Mr. Bishop,” came a tired reply, “everything. I have information about you, your father, Helix, and Whyte Genetics. The stakes are now much higher than they were before, and keeping you in the dark would be stupid of me.
“So I can either be a walking cliché, and tell you ‘there isn’t time’ to properly educate you on your now dire situation. Or, I can just tell you what you need to know in the hope it will give us a better shot at living.”
My dad? My heart instantly began hammering in my chest. I was most definitely in favor of option B, but I wanted that information now. “Why can’t you just tell me over the phone?”
“Because I’m going over on my minutes for the month!” Sarcasm dripped from his words. I heard a deep breath. “Seriously, what ever happened to the day when a kid would just do what an adult requested? Is it too much to ask that you trust me?”
He was really starting to piss me off. “I’m a little short on trust these days,” I said, voice raising by the word. “Considering I psychically experienced my best friend’s murder, I think I’m entitled to ask any question I want!”
My words echoed in the clearing we stood in. They earned me an approving nod from Alex.
“Fair enough, Mr. Bishop. I can’t discuss it over the phone because of several reasons. The first is mostly due to my paranoia. The second, which is related to the first, is because I suspect people are always listening in on my conversations, no matter how careful I am. In person, I can somewhat limit the number of ways I can be eavesdropped on. Plus what I have learned is far too much, and too detailed to discuss verbally. I’ve prepared physical documents for you, and I always deliver things in person. And honestly…I feel it is time to get your measure in person.”
Residue Page 17