Loose ends r-1

by Greg Cox

  "It's no good, Max," Isabel confessed, feeling like a failure. She hated to disappoint him, but it was the truth. "I can sense him, somewhere nearby, but wherever he is, he's awake, not dreaming." She tried to explain, to make Max and the others understand why, no matter how strenuously she labored, she couldn't come through for them. "It's like his waking mind forms a wall around his identity, his essence. I can't slip inside until that wall comes down." She looked at her stylish designer watch and saw that it was not even 3:30 yet; the only creatures sleeping right now were the bats at Carlsbad Caverns. "He might not go to bed for hours."Alex put down the cell phone, which he'd taken custody of earlier. "I keeping trying his number," he volunteered, "but no luck. Either he's not home or he's not answering."Great," Michael said sarcastically. "For all we know, the damn ringing is keeping him awake." He shoved his plate away from him in frustration. "Isabel is right, Max. This is getting us nowhere. We need to get out there and start looking for Morton and Liz."What do you suggest, Michael?" Max asked skeptically "That we drive up and down every back road between here and the Rio Grande? We don't even know what kind of car he's driving now, if he's on the road at all. For all we know, he could be holed up anywhere."He turned toward Isabel, his face drawn and haggard. Isabel hadn't seen him look this bad since that time he thought that liz had cheated on him with Kyle. "Please, Iz," he begged her. "Try one more time."If it will make him feel better. "Okay," she agreed, giving the worn scrap of paper her attention again. Caverns of Cheese slowly receded from her awareness as she closed her eyes and went into a familiar trance. One more time, she thought, with little hope of success. Just to ease Max's mind…

  The floor of the cave was moist and surprisingly cool. Lieutenant David Ramirez lay bleeding where he fell, unable to move at all. Morton's bullet had shattered his spine, he realized, after blowing a hole in his chest. He couldn't feel anything at all below his shoulders, which was probably a mercy of sorts. He felt cold and dizzy, light-headed even.

  He was dying, he knew that, alone in a cave with no one to hear his last words or confession. So this is how it all ends, he thought bitterly, mourning his once-promising future. He wished he'd never heard of Roswell or aliens or secret UFO technology. At least, he thought, this spares the air force the expense of a court-martial.

  His eyelids drooped, and he found it hard to stay awake. Just as well, he decided, his ebbing consciousness surrendering to the encroaching darkness. Oblivion called to him and the lieutenant decided not to fight it anymore. Goodbye, he thought, shutting his eyes forever. Guess this qualifies as a dishonorable discharge.

  Then, just as he was letting go of life, he heard another voice calling his name. David? Is that you? The wall came down, disintegrating into nothingness, and Isabel slipped into Ramirez's unresisting mind. She realized at once that this was no ordinary dream; the colors were strange and distorted, gray and monochromatic in some places, while luridly bright and garish elsewhere. Shapes and angles were stretched and pulled out of proportion, as though glimpsed in a funhouse mirror. What's happening here? Isabel wondered, disoriented. Where am 1? It took her an instant or two to get her bearings, then she found herself standing in an unfamiliar cave, less grandiose than Carlsbad's magnificent caverns, and more like the hidden Pod Chamber outside of Roswell. The ruffled limestone walls of the cave were black-and-white, like an old-time movie, but fluorescent golden sunshine, brighter than daffodils, invaded the rocky chamber from an opening to her right, giving her just enough light to see by.

  A feeble moan caught her ear, and she looked down to see Ramirez lying at her feet, a gaping wound in his chest. The injured pilot was black-and-white, too, but someone had colorized his blood, which glowed as psychedelically as the pigments in a black-lighted painting. Neon-red fluid pooled beneath the lieutenants body and leaked from the corners of his mouth. Isabel stepped back in horror, yanking the toes of her boots away from the spreading pool of gore, and threw her hands over her mouth. She suddenly became aware of a rhythmic throbbing noise, pounding in the background like rolling thunder many miles away. The muffled thumping, which she instinctively knew had to be Ramirez's own failing heartbeat, grew slower and fainter by the second.

  "Oh my God," she realized. The lieutenant wasn't dreaming, he was dying! Morton must have shot Ramirez, just like he killed Okada, and the biker in the alley. But where was Liz? Isabel looked about rapidly, but saw no sign of the kidnapped girl, only Alex's backpack, lying crumpled on the stone floor. Where had Morton taken Liz after shooting the lieutenant? Perhaps only Ramirez knew.

  I have to hurry, she thought, and not just for Liz's sake. She had wondered sometimes about what would happen to her if she stumbled into someone's mind at the very moment of their death; now she seemed dangerously close to finding out.

  And, even more terrifying, she knew she would have to go even deeper into the dying man's consciousness to learn everything he knew of this place, and of Liz's fate. What ijl stay too long? she worried, dread eating away at her resolve. What if he takes me with him wherever he's going? "David?" she whispered, then tried again more loudly. "David!" The dying pilot's eyelids flickered momentarily, but that was all. All around her, the fading pulse ticked away toward its inevitable cessation.

  Unable to avoid kneeling in the sticky, sickening crimson pool, she took Ramirez's head in her hands and tried to rouse him from his terminal slumber. "Wake up, David!" she shouted into his face. "Talk to me, please!"At first, there was no response and Isabel feared she was too late. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw ebony shadows creeping in on them from every corner of the cave, threatening to extinguish Ramirez's last spark of life. She could barely hear his faltering heartbeat anymore.

  His eyes opened, making contact with hers. "Isabel?"She dived into his deep brown orbs, the portals to his soul, and instantly landed inside his head, looking out through those same eyes at the craggy ceiling of the cave. Darkness closed in perilously, obscuring his/her view, but Isabel found what she was looking for in the churning recesses of his memory. Yes! she thought ecstatically, swimming back toward the rapidly shrinking light. Time to go.

  Part of her regretted leaving Ramirez to face the ultimate blackness alone, but then she remembered how, on the phone, the blackmailed lieutenant had worried only about his security, not Liz's. She decided not, to lose too much sleep over Ramirez's tragic end, despite the intimate bond they had just shared.

  "Good-bye, David," she whispered, using his own quivering lips, then woke herself up…

  Max was there, right where she'd left him, watching her with eyes so naked in their agonized hope that she had to look away. The rest of her friends were there as well, seated around the empty pizza trays. Alex took her hand and offered her a sip of water. "How did it go?" he asked gently.

  She appreciated the tender treatment, but declined the water, unwilling to let her tormented brother suffer in suspense an instant longer.

  "I did it," she told them, the salvaged memories and impressions still fresh in her mind. "I know where they are."

  26.

  “I'm coming for you, space-girl! You can't get away from me! Give me back that case or I'll dissect you myself!"Morton's threats reverberated through the twisting labyrinth of underground chambers, the echoes making it impossible to guess just how near or far away he was. Hiding in a chapel-like grotto, carved out eons ago by seeping water and sulfurous gases, Liz kept her eye out for the telltale gleam of Morton's flashlight, which she assumed he had appropriated from Lieutenant Ramirez, who had no doubt joined the gunman's ever-growing list of victims. Periodically, over however long she had been fleeing through the convoluted caverns, she had glimpsed the leading edge of the beam falling upon a glistening limestone wall nearby, spurring her onward through yet more branching tributaries and tunnels.

  The incandescent handprint upon her belly, which seemed to glow all the brighter the more frightened she became, was an extremely mixed blessing. On the one hand, it helped her navigate, albeit ra
ndomly, through this light-less subterranean realm, helping her avoid stumbling into solid walls or yawning chasms; on the other hand, it made her visible to her relentless pursuer, advertising her location like a neon sign on a moonless night.

  For the moment, however, she seemed to have gained a slight lead on Morton, who must have taken a wrong turn somewhere amid the diverging corridors. Liz took advantage of this lull in the chase to do something about the sticky tape binding her wrists together. Locating a sturdy stalagmite with a notably jagged tip, she backed against the stony fang, using it as a saw to gnaw away at the overlapping strips of duct tape. Doing so meant dropping the purloined attache case, but Liz decided she needed her hands free even more than she wanted to hang onto the coveted spacecraft debris.

  "I know you're in here, Tess!" Morton called out, still laboring under the false impression that that was her name. Liz wasn't sure how she felt about facing death with that particular name on her would-be killer's lips. Do I want to spend my final moments on Earth mistaken for a trampy blond homewrecker from anotherpla.net? The duct tape was maddeningly durable and hard to cut through, but she eventually succeeded in poking a hole in the tape between her wrists, then used that tiny gash as a starting point for tearing away at the gluey fibers holding the tape together. It was taking way too long, though, and Morton sounded like he was getting closer.

  "Don't be stupid!" his booming voice railed at her. "It won't do you any good to get hopelessly lost down here. You're just going to starve to death in the dark!"He had a point, Liz realized, but the alternative, putting herself back in Morton's bloodstained hands, was even less appealing. She'd cope with finding her way out if and when she finally got away from the murderous gunman. Tom and Becky ultimately made it out of the caves, she recalled, clinging to that storybook happy ending for comfort. So can I.

  Only a few gooey strands held together the tape confining her arms. She tugged her wrists apart with every ounce of strength she could muster, while simultaneously sawing away at the last fraying filaments. All at once, her wrists sprang apart and Liz discovered she could see her own hands for the first time in hours. At last! she thought gratefully, savoring this one small victory over Mortons brutality. Eager fingers peeled away the rest of the tape, revealing wrists that were red and chafed, yet blissfully free.

  Moving quickly, to get farther away from Morton, she rescued the briefcase from the floor and headed away from the sound of his approaching voice. Feeling like some exotic bioluminescent lifeform, evolved to exist far below the Earth's surface or at the bottom of the sea, she turned her silver light upon the escape route ahead of her.

  Two separate pathways-one wide, one narrow-diverged before her. Iiz hesitated, uncertain which natural aperture to take. Morton might have trouble squeezing his bulk through the skinny crevice, but what if that aisle kept on thinning until it ceased to exist? She shuddered at the thought of getting wedged into a dead end, unable to turn around and go back the way she came without running straight into Morton; all the killer would have to do is wait right where she was standing now for thirst or starvation to drive her back into his clutches. Okay, she decided, the wide door it is.

  "There you are!" Before she could even act on her choice, Morton suddenly rounded a curve, less than twenty yards behind her, his flashlight beam sweeping across both Liz and the juncture ahead. Liz looked back in surprise, squinting into the glare of the flash, and spotted Mortons intimidating bulk charging toward her, only seconds away. "Give me that case!" he yelled. "Give it back, you alien freak!"Changing her plan at the last minute, Liz raced through the narrower opening. Swinging behind her at the end of her arm, the briefcase caught in the doorway, holding her back, and she had to stop and turn the case sideways before making it completely through the gate. The delay cost her precious seconds, so that Morton was almost upon her by the time she got the briefcase loose. His body slammed into the limestone walls of the skinny archway, but, just as Liz had prayed, he was too large to pass through the gap in his entirety. An arm and one shoulder squeezed into the shallow corridor, groping wildly for the escaping teenager. "Come back here! Come back or I'll shoot!"He drew back from the slender opening, aiming both his flashlight and his gun at the murky passage into which Liz had fled. Hearing his threats, and knowing from experience that Morton had no qualms about gunning down those who crossed him, Liz quickened her pace, looking frantically for a turn in the corridor. Straight lines were her enemy right now; only a more crooked path would keep her out of Morton's line of fire.

  No! Not again! she thought, unable to hold back painful recollections of the first and only time a bullet tore through her body. The jarring impact, the searing agony, rose like restless phantoms from the memories lodged in her flesh and bones. The handprint upon her stomach, where the mortal wound should have been, flared all the brighter for her terror. Please, no! Not again! At the last minute, the confining wall fell away to her left, and Liz ducked into the much-needed detour, only an instant before the blast of a gunshot disturbed the sepulchral quiet of the caverns. Jagged chips and flakes exploded from the end of the improvised shooting gallery she had just abandoned, followed by the dancing beam of Morton's flashlight as he feverishly sought to see if Liz had been hit or not. A volcanic curse erupted from the enraged killer when he discovered that no humanoid body, alive or otherwise, lay in the path of the searching beam.

  (Liz had to wonder just how Morton had expected to retrieve his precious attache case from the far end of the skinny corridor, in the event that his angry shot had killed her instantly. Then she realized that the bad-tempered gunman was beyond reason at this point; as his behavior at the Crashdown had proven years ago, he was more than capable of shooting first and dealing with the consequences later.) "Where the hell are you?" he roared in frustration. His hate-crazed voice echoed through the winding catacombs. "Don't think you're getting away from me for good, space girl. I'm not leaving this godforsaken hellhole until I've got that briefcase-and your alien hide!"The side-tunnel she had so luckily discovered was no wider than the narrow passage she had just escaped, and it continued to constrict inch by inch, until Liz had to turn sideways just to squeeze her way forward. Increasingly afraid that she had trapped herself with no way out, except past Morton, she was forced to slide with excruciating slowness between the unyielding cavern walls, which, she recalled from her science courses, consisted mostly of the petrified remains of prehistoric mollusks and coral. Would her lifeless bones, she wondered, also become part of this vast prehistoric mortuary, buried for eons away from the light of day? She felt horribly sorry for her parents, who might never find out what had befallen her. Would Max or Maria explain to them about Morton and his deadly schemes, or would that risk exposing Max's and the others' alien roots? She hoped that, somehow, her mom and dad could receive some sort of comfort or closure. Surely, Max would make sure of that, in her memory.

  Max. She couldn't believe she might never see him again. There was so much that she still wanted to share with him, so much of their future yet to be written. At least Romeo and Juliet died together, she thought mournfully, not separated by hundreds ofjeet of solid rock.

  It occurred to her that, in a sense, she had been living on borrowed time ever since that fateful shooting at the Crash-down. Perhaps death, once again in the form of Joe Morton and his ready pistol, had finally caught up with her.

  Claustrophobia added to other fears plaguing her mind, but just when she was half-convinced that the dwindling corridor was destined to become her eternal tomb, the aisle opened up and, expelling an enormous sigh of relief, she stepped into what appeared to be a spacious underground grotto, perhaps the size of a high school classroom. Gnarled stalagmites sprouted from the stony floor while towering columns reared up toward a ceiling whose full altitude and dimensions were hidden by the all-encompassing blackness shrouding the roomy vault.

  Liz listened anxiously for the sound of Morton's heavy footsteps, not at all certain how many separate routes or e
ntrances might lead to this particular grotto. She didn't hear anyone approaching, but something else caught her ear: an unusual rustling coming from high above her, accompanied by occasional high- pitched squeaking and chittering.

  Bats, she realized with a shiver. The grotto sounded as though it were home to a great many bats, all roosting overhead. The air smelled like a zoo, she swiftly noted, while the floor of the chamber was slick with accumulated bat guano, causing Liz to wrinkle her nose in disgust. Glancing at the lighted face of her watch, she saw that sunset was still three or four hours away; the bats would not be flying forth in search of their evening meal for quite some time.

  Liz emitted a frustrated sigh. In theory, the bats' nightly departure might have pointed her toward a way out of the confusing maze of caverns. Was it possible she could stay put here until dusk, she speculated, or would Morton catch up with her before then? Tired of carrying the awkward briefcase around with her everywhere, and remembering how it had almost slowed her down fatally back at the juncture between the two corridors, she looked around for something she could use to break open the lock. A slender stalagmite, about the size of a model rocket, attracted her eye, and she grabbed onto the tip of the tapering calcite formation with both hands, trying to break off the top. Might make a decent weapon, too, she thought, admiring its jagged point.

  As before, actually doing something, taking positive action, helped to keep her post-traumatic fears at bay. Her desperate struggle to survive was proving excellent therapy, if nothing else. Go figure, she mused, wondering what Alex would make of that.