There was nothing he could do as she pushed her way forward but stand aside and let her pass. He was in shock, adrenaline was pumping through his system, and his mind was struggling to come up with some explanation, any explanation, for what had just happened. Getting steamrolled by an angry Latina with a gun was only going to make matters worse, especially if she chose to take a shot at him for good measure.
Temporarily blind with the flashlight’s absence, he fumbled his way towards his dresser out of memory and repetition. He wasn’t going to follow after while in nothing but his boxers, he wanted some pants at least, but he sure as shit wasn’t going to sit put while they hunted his wife down with automatic weapons, he didn’t care what the fuck was wrong with her!
He noticed a bulge in his shorts as he bent to the lower drawer to pull out a clean pair of pants; his body had reacted when his wife had jumped him. Had the strange woman seen that too? His face flushed, his mind shoved into overdrive. Too much stimuli was threatening to shut him down, pull the plug and give him a hard reset.
He fastened the buttons on his pants and nearly jumped two-feet in the air as a man’s voice spoke from just a few feet away.
“I’m sorry for the rude awakening Mr. Crawford. I appreciate the unique situation you are in and I am here to answer any questions you might have, though you’ll probably have more than I can give in the time we have together. Should I wait out here in the living room for you to finish? I would have already, but I didn’t want to startle you when you chased after my armed companion,” the man told him in a formal tone.
“So you settled for scaring the living shit out of me instead. Got it,” he snarked, pulling a white T-Shirt out of the upper drawer and pulling it over his head.
The stranger hovering in the doorway was atleast six-foot with short cropped gray hair, clean shaven, and a dark suit and tie. He had a long face, slightly pale, with prominent cheekbones and a round chin. His eyes were soft, his demeanor full of warmth, and it looked like he’d just come from a funeral himself. In fact, he looked familiar. “Were you at my wife’s funeral?”
“Sir, I understand that you are upset, and I realize you think that is important, but of all the questions you could’ve asked, that one is the least,” the man returned.
He nodded, “I thought so. Is this some insidious science experiment? What the fuck did you people do to my wife? She’s dead, I touched her cold hand while she lay in her casket. No way that was her, it’s just not possible.”
“You’re confused, you’re pushing to understand but you don’t have all the facts. If you will calm down and come sit with me in the living room, I’ll do what I can to explain it to you,” the man responded, his voice as calm as ever. Then he paused and cocked his head as if listening to someone talking into his ear. “Did she get tagged at least? Okay. Yes, I’m with him now. What do you—are you sure about that? Okay.”
The man, his name probably Benji—he doesn’t look like a Benji—, refocused his eyes and met his. “I’m sorry, but it looks like we’re going on a field-trip. Mind getting your shoes and whatever else you need to depart? Our ride will be downstairs in three min—.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you until I know what the fuck is going on!” he interrupted, sitting on the edge of his bed and pulling his socks on, his retrieved sneakers at his side. “I don’t need a medical degree to know that what just happened is scientifically impossible. The only explanation I can think of is an unauthorized experiment on my wife, one that caused her body to mimic death. She escaped from wherever you had her and came home. You look and sound like a lawyer, you should be prepared to hear from mine. Now, get out of my way, I’m going to look for my wife,” he stated, fully dressed, his hand sliding his wallet into his back pocket and his mind on what kind of implement he could turn into a weapon on his way out the door; nothing that could compete with an AR-15, but he was going to try regardless. His wife needed him.
“Mr. Crawford, your wife is dead, her soul departed into the afterlife. That thing you just saw? That wasn’t Amanda Crawford, it just thinks it is,” the man stated, putting a hand up in a staying motion. “You need to distance yourself from thoughts of your wife’s resurrection. It’s a monster, not a miracle of God.”
“It?”
“Like I said, I will answer all your questions as we make our way downstairs to where my comrades are waiting. You want to find out what’s going on? You’re not going to figure that out on your own. But by all means, run out of here and into the streets looking for the ghost of your dead wife. If my associates couldn’t find her, you sure as hell won’t. By the time you get back we’ll be gone, and you’ll never get the answers you so sorely desire,” the man finished, turned, and walked towards the front door.
It sounded like an ultimatum.
As much as he wanted to resist, to tell the guy to go fuck himself, what choice did he truly have? Running around in the dark calling out his dead wife’s name, sounding like a madman to any who might see? Call the cops? Hello, my dead wife was just in our bedroom and armed strangers showed up to capture and take her back to their secret base for an unauthorized science experiment. He could imagine the white paddy wagon pulling up and the straight-jacket they’d be putting him in. His delusion would be considered a hallucination brought on by grief; even he wouldn’t believe the story had someone else told it.
Begrudgingly, he snatched his keys from the hook next to the door and walked after the departing suit heading down the stairs.
III
Standing in the parking lot of his apartment complex, his eyes cast about looking for any signs of his wife, even though he knew it would be a fruitless exercise. He had seen how fast she could move, she had crossed the room faster than he could blink; she’d be miles from here by now.
Lightning might have struck her, turned her into a superhero!
Not real either!
The woman from his bedroom was walking along the sidewalk in their direction, her weapons secured and out of sight; she wouldn’t do that if she thought her target was nearby.
Target, as in my wife, when did I start thinking of her in that fashion? What episode of the Twilight Zone have I woken up in?
“Bitch got away,” the woman stated, coming to halt three feet to his left.
“That bitch, as you put it, is my wife,” he growled, not liking the snazzy look she was giving him. It was just his first impression, but it seemed accurate enough; she was a real cold-hearted bitch.
She pulled off her helmet and held it in the crook of her arm, her right hand brushing out her tangled up brown hair. “I told you gilipollas, that puta is not tu esposa. Guero, look it here, could your wife jump out a three-story window, land on her feet, and outrun two heavily-armed men, one of which used to be a basketball player? Not from what I’ve seen on your Facebook. She looked more of a Martha Stewart hausfrau to me. Unless the little woman made you dinner then trained for the Olympics for dessert? ¿Quê no?”
“Then you gave her some kind of performance enhancer!” he stammered, trying to come up with some logical rebuttal to her statement. He had heard his share of mixed English and Spanish, he was in Texas, but still her Spanglish could be hard to track at times. He still got the gist though. “And I’m not an idiot, quit calling me that!”
She raised an eyebrow in a mocking manner, “pues, you’ve been watching too many super-hero movies, no? She’s not Captain America or Spider-man either, far from it.”
Spider-man! Now there’s an idea. Maybe the reason they haven’t found her is that she went up, not down? He craned his head upward, trying not to look to obvious, and let his eyes roam the third story roof for any sign of her peering down on them; no such luck.
Wait, Facebook?
“How long have you been spying on us?” he asked, his eyebrows drawing together. His wife had died of heart failure, her body discovered hours later in a parking lot by an unsuspecting mall worker on his way home for the night. He had wondered if it had
been something else, suspected that she might have been murdered because the coroner’s report said it was a natural death, and his wife had never complained of any chest pains whatsoever; it made no sense. At her last doctor’s visit, they had found nothing abnormal in her bloodwork or her physical, people didn’t just die with no warning at all, did they? He was a graphic artist, not a police detective, but if there was something hinky about his wife’s death, they would have told him about it, right?
Now, he had begun to wonder.
She rolled her eyes and turned at the sound of an approaching vehicle. A black Humvee was coming through the gated entrance to the parking lot. How they got in without a passcode he didn’t know, but it wasn’t relevant in the scheme of things. A dark-skinned man in similar armor was in the driver seat, and he spied what looked like a white face peering out from the back. Presumably this was the Hoops and Ezio he heard her talking to.
“Looks like the teams all here,” he sneered, then turned on the older guy in the suit. “You promised me answers if I came with you, so far all I’ve gotten are insults. I want to know what’s going on, right now. Was my wife murdered? Was that her in my apartment? Why the fuck are you hunting her like some rabid serial killer?”
“We save his punk ass from getting his throat ripped out and he thinks we owe him something? What crap have you been spoutin’ Abuelo?” the woman snarked with a shake of her head. “I said handle him, not coddle his ass.”
Benji sighed and refused to meet her gaze. “Mr. Crawford,” the older man began, a comforting smile on his face, “I know what I promised, but judging by the sirens I hear off in the distance and by the look on my comrade’s face,” he said, nodding towards the driver of the Humvee who had a finger in his ear and was starting to look concerned, “I’m guessing we don’t have time for chit-chat at this exact moment. If you will accompany my associates, they will escort you back to our base of operations, and there, I promise, you will be brought up to speed.”
“Not riding with us?” the woman asked, the sliding door on the Humvee’s passenger side pulling back as it came to a stop before them, a grinning man in white and red armor and a black thin cloak waving his hand as if to say hello.
He half-heartedly waved back.
Benji shook his head, casting a look south in the direction of the approaching sirens. “No, I’ll call for a pick up. Someone needs to stay behind and assuage the authorities, try not to complicate Mr. Crawford’s life any more than it already has been. You could have saved me some time and not fired that shotgun of yours; in and out like we planned. You don’t always have to jump in guns blazing you know?”
She jerked her head in a quick upward slant, then smacked her lips. “This guero here was being straddled by that bitch, her teeth inches from his neck. What you want me to do, let her finish her meal before trying to stop her?”
“What is it with you and derogatory comments?” he asked, oblivious to anything else she said. It was a reflex action, took very little thought, and he was quickly getting tired of her use of the term bitch in reference to his wife. But that didn’t mean he didn’t comprehend what she was getting at. He remembered very clearly what he felt when lying there, his wife holding him down, that feeling of submission overcoming his defensive instincts and the taste of death upon his lips. Still, he wasn’t going to just admit that, admit that she saved him, not until he knew that this wasn’t a situation of their own making first.
“Okay, enough of this shit. You want to hang out and wait for the cops? We’ll catch you back at base. You, however, need to get your ass in the back of this Humvee so we can get the fuck out of here,” she ordered, grabbing him by the shirt and yanking him forward like he was a ragdoll.
He wasn’t heavy, but he wasn’t overly skinny either, so it took him by surprise with how little effort it took for her to shove him around. Maybe she was on whatever they’d given his wife as well? “Why don’t I hang out and wait for them too? What makes you think I’m going with you?” he declared, trying to take a step back, rebellious just on principle.
She intensified her grip and pulled him forward so that they were face to face, her fierce brown eyes penetrating his soul and making it quiver with fear. “You want to stay? Stay. She’ll be back as soon as we clear out, probably waiting just outside of range of our tech for just that reason. Me? I can give a shit what happens to you. You’re just another privileged white boy who thinks the world owes him; there’s plenty of you to spare. But if I do that, see, I’ll have to come back and kill you as well, and I figure, why not just save your ass and use you to lure her out instead? Better use of resources.”
“I’m bait,” he said, trying to process everything else but able to focus on that much at least.
“Maybe not so stupid after all,” she grinned, letting go of his shirt and slapping both shoulders with her hands. “Now get in there so we can leave, or I’ll just hang back here and wait, you can take your chances that you’ll survive the night.” She then opened the passenger door of the Humvee, gave a nod and grin at the driver and slammed the door shut.
“Naomi’s a little abrasive, but she means well,” Benji told him in a softer voice. “Go with them, you’ll never be safer than with them by your side. I’ll catch up when I can and if you still have questions, I’m all yours until you are satisfied.”
There sounded like there was a bit of innuendo in there, but he tried to ignore it, his eyes on the genuine smile on the man’s face and the compassion in his eyes. He didn’t know why, but he trusted the man, even if he was friends with a raging lunatic. “Okay, but if I’m not satisfied with what I hear, I walk. And I won’t help anyone track down my wife until I am sure it’s the right thing to do.”
“Deal,” Benji agreed, holding out his hand.
He took it gingerly, unsure of himself, then felt the older man’s hand land on his shoulder as he was led to the awaiting Humvee. Reluctantly, he climbed inside and took the open seat on his left, trying not to look at the grinning man beside him. The door shut, locking him in with a bunch of lunatics. Seconds later the large vehicle lurched forward and began its journey to the parking lot’s rear gates.
“¡Dios mío! How did you guys miss her? You knew there was only one way out of there if she couldn’t go through me,” Naomi inquired, her shotgun in hand as she secured it between her seat and the middle console, readily accessible should she need it.
Do I want to know where she keeps that AR-15?
No, he didn’t.
“Hey, she was fast,” the man next to him blurted out. “A bit more than usual. If you wanted to make it easier on us, you should have tranqed her. My condolences, by the way,” the man said to him, his voice laden with an accent he couldn’t quite put a finger on. “Not every day your wife tries to eat you for lunch.”
“I’m sorry, I got wrapped up in saving this guero’s ass, thought my hombres would man up and cover my ass. My bad,” she snarked back, making their driver snicker in response. “What you think is so funny? You like getting your ass handed to you by a little white girl?”
The man didn’t turn his attention from the road, he simply laughed again and shook his head, “no. It’s that you were so eager to blame us when you’re the one that let her get away. You weren’t relying on us to bag her, you just wanted to pop off that shotgun of yours. You like to make an entrance, make sure everyone in the complex knows you were there, counting on us to do the job and pick up your slack when you fuck up.”
“I’ll show you an entrance,” she growled.
“Seen it, been there, got the T-Shirt,” the driver shot back, getting a slap in the armored shoulder for the trouble.
“I haven’t!” Ezio proclaimed, eagerly waving his hand as if trying to get her attention.
She turned her eyes briefly in their direction, first at him, then at the man at his side. With a disgusted grunt she turned away, the seat blocking her completely from view.
“You people are crazy,” he muttered in
disbelief, finally convinced this wasn’t a dream. No way he could come up with this shit on his own, artist or not. This was Tim Burton level of imagination that would make his wildest dreams be that of a novice.
Naomi’s laughter erupted from the front seat and her face reappeared as she grinned back at him. “You don’t know the half of it, gringo. Ezio, show him.”
The man on his left turned to face him, and for the first time he took a second to look the man over. He was in his early thirties with dark black hair, a goatee and moustache. He had long sideburns that looked reminiscent of Elvis Presley and was apparently an Assassin’s Creed fan, judging by the elaborate red and white patterned chest plate, ordinately larger than needed belt, vambraces, gloves and shoulder pads. He even had a black hood, which was down, his long hair pooled up inside. The man had a squarish jaw and mocha colored skin, his blue eyes looking delighted as a gloved finger reached up and pulled back his lower lip.
His breath caught, revulsion flooding him to the core.
The man had a mouth of fangs reminiscent of a fucking T-Rex. A sickening realization dawned, and he understood that the man hadn’t been smiling the entire time he’d been sitting there, it was the two larger fangs on the bottom that had been pushing his cheeks to make it look that way. His ass was moving, his hand on the back of the front seat as his back slammed into the door, his only thought being that he had to get as far away as possible. “What the fuck?”
Laughter again from the front seat. “You’re not in OZ anymore, Dorothy,” Naomi’s voice snickered. “Best be nice, or Toto here will take a bite out of your ass.”
“I resent that, you know?” Ezio said, hand dropping away as he leaned forward to be heard over the driver’s laughter. “In no universe could I ever be confused with a mangy terrier.”
“I don’t know, you smell about the same,” she shot back with another cackle immediately after. “Kind of piss like one too. Always with the leg up, even in front of a urinal. That’s got to look odd, no?”
Legacy Sanguis Page 2