by John Corwin
"They were unwilling to use authority to control a few renegades. Now look. More independents all the time. Soon, anarchy."
"I'm sorry, Mikhail. I'll not use this crisis as an excuse to round up the independents and force them to choose a side. Our factions have been at a stalemate for such a long while, that it behooves us to allow some flexibility."
Mikhail shrugged. "Very well. I hope this crisis will not lead to large numbers of rogue or unregistered Scions. Perhaps then you will reconsider."
They bid each other farewell. Mikhail gathered his people and left. A knot of stress pressed against Andre's stomach. Mikhail had not been subtle about his ulterior motive. What made him think the independents would align with the Statists? Perhaps he didn't care. His faction cared more about tidy packages of governance than independence and free thought.
None of that really mattered, however. Andre needed to keep the Statists off balance. Keep them chasing false leads. Andre had a secret hidden in plain view. By the time Mikhail realized its significance, it would be too late for the Statist faction.
* * * * *
"We need more people of our own in Atlanta," said Anne-Marie, Mikhail's attached seeker.
Mikhail nodded. "This is why you and Swain will go. I want to know where video came from, how Andre got such information before us."
Swain, Mikhail's executor was sitting next to Anne-Marie. "Our network is already sending back info. Apparently, IARE is investigating. Andre probably has an insider."
"Discover this insider. Make him ours."
"What if we find the rogue before the task force?" Anne-Marie asked. Her French accent thickened as it usually did when she felt deeply concerned about one of Mikhail's ideas.
"Capture him. I want his associates. I want to know everything."
"And then?"
"We protect their identities best we can."
Swain raised an eyebrow. "We're gonna let them keep killing?"
"Andre must realize importance of reigning in the independents." The incident was not yet a major crisis. If Mikhail had his way, it soon would be.
Chapter 20
Alexia was at the fifth grocery store of the day investigating the produce robberies. So far Big Foods was the first store with decent security footage. The head of security, a young man in his early twenties, had shown her how to operate the system. It was basically a glorified computer in a glorified closet of a room barely four feet squared. A laminate countertop held up the computer. On the other hand, the first four stores had either no cameras at all or ancient video-tape systems with footage so bad it was useless.
She fast-forwarded the digital video with a mouse click to the time the grocery store had been robbed. So far, internal cameras revealed little to nothing. Most of the cameras were located on other aisles besides produce. She'd been poring over the footage for an hour. Despite a pot of coffee, her initial excitement about investigating the vegetable robberies was quickly waning. Now she felt a step away from comatose as boredom seeped in to fill the vacuum.
Even with the high quality of the footage she hadn't found any yet that offered a precise view of the produce department. The security guy had vanished to take care of other duties. Maybe bagging groceries. She was about to go find him when she discovered video files named after parking lot sections. She opened the first one and skipped up to the time of the incident as recorded by the silent alarm logs.
This parking lot camera captured the center of the large parking lot. A few seconds before the alarm sounded, a figure appeared at the top corner of the screen. Alexia advanced the video and the figure vanished. She reversed the footage and advanced it frame by frame. At this distance, the figure looked ghostly in the dark footage, but it was definitely a person. A few frames after entering the recording, however, he simply disappeared. There weren't any obstructions between the camera and the empty parking lot except a couple of narrow lamp posts which would be difficult to hide behind.
Alexia advanced frame by frame, a painstakingly slow process, to make sure she hadn't missed anything. Several frames later, the person reappeared just a few feet from the camera, at least half his body did. This close to the camera, she could see his face and the top of half his head. The rest seemed to be invisible. At this point, his reappearance didn't surprise her. Not after everything that had happened. All the same, a jolt of electricity pulsed into her chest when she saw the man's face. It was the man that had saved her.
Each frame showed more of the man's body as it seemed to form from the air until he was gone, past the camera and into the store. She backed up the footage until she had a clear image of his face and saved it as a picture. She sent the picture in for a federal image search. Given how long the queue for that was, she had no idea how many weeks it would be before results from that came back.
"Finding everything okay?" asked the security kid from the doorway.
"Which footage shows your produce section?"
He walked over and looked down the file list, clicked the mouse on a file. "This is the closest we have. Most cameras record the other aisles since produce is harder to steal."
She skimmed through the footage but the angle didn't take in enough of the department to capture anything worthwhile. Not that it mattered. She had what she needed: a connection. Her savior was involved. In fact he might be the perpetrator. Alexia had never believed in magic, but necromancy and wizardry were starting to sound reasonable at this point. Who was this man and why was he killing people only to raise them from the dead? Was it all part of some elaborate hoax to throw the city into an uproar?
Whether magic or science had revived these people didn't matter. They were animated, insane, and murderous. She felt that calling them "creatures" in her report was imprecise. Calling them by their former names attributed them with a humanity they no longer seemed to possess. Given that they'd apparently risen from the dead, she listed them as "ghouls" in her annals. It seemed an appropriate compromise.
The police had remained remarkably silent about the wilder aspects of the case. So far, people hadn't started a serial killer panic. That would change. She'd highlighted several stories in the morning paper that seemed unrelated but bore striking similarities. Most involved vanished pets. Some were found mutilated. One story involved a hooker and her pimp, both bashed into mangled heaps of flesh against a brick wall. It wouldn't be long before the ghouls attacked normal citizens. In fact, it was a miracle they hadn't yet. Did they sleep? Eat?
It was evident from her close encounter with the ghoul formerly known as Maria Wood that the woman was confused, maybe frightened. Perhaps brain damage was a reason for the insane babbling. After all, the brain tissue supposedly hadn't received oxygen for several hours. That still didn't explain how the woman was resurrected or why.
Alexia returned to the hotel and retrieved a Google map she'd made of the area, complete with pinned references to grocery store robberies and murders. The crimes she'd related to the ghouls were happening in the north metro area over a three-mile radius. Then again, she didn't have enough data to correlate those happenings to anyone. Only the stirring of her extra sense provided a sense of relevance.
By now there had to be two or three of the ghouls roaming about. That meant she should expect random surges in violence all over the place. As of yet, that hadn't happened. Perhaps the ghouls expired a few days after resurrection. Maybe they killed themselves. Her tingle had never led her astray. If she felt it when reading a story, there had to be something to it.
To find out more about the ghouls, she needed to find her rescuer. She redirected her attention to the green markers she'd placed for the grocery store robberies. Whoever he was, he certainly liked his veggies. She considered visiting more stores but discarded the notion. She knew what he looked like. Now she needed to triangulate his location. After piddling with the markers on her Google map for a few minutes she realized it would come down to old-fashioned detective work. Thankfully, she had the Internet. She pulle
d up the business directory and narrowed it to all grocery stores within a five-mile radius of the center-most robbery location. After weeding out the convenience stores she was left with a little over one-hundred places to call.
Alexia groaned. She got up, made a large pot of coffee. Before sitting back down, she glanced out the window into the parking lot. Victor still wasn't back. Since his visit with the mystery people yesterday, he hadn't spent much time at the hotel. She'd given him her last reports and he'd barely glanced at them. She hadn't decided whether to give him her leads on the grocery stores. It could wait. Whoever he was beholden to had him distracted from her for the time being. She took another look at the long list of grocery stores, finally took a seat, and picked up her phone.
It took a few hours to work through nearly three-quarters of the list. By then she felt like foaming at the mouth. She could practically hear the on-hold music burrowing deeper into her brain and taking up permanent residence. Who in the hell listened to that crap by choice? After that torture she'd still learned nothing new. None of the stores had been robbed of large quantities of produce. The next store on the list was a small independent provider of organic goods—the type of food she knew she should eat but could never afford. A woman answered and handed her off to the owner who apparently worked there as well.
"No robberies here," he said. "We sell a lot of produce, but haven't had anyone desperate enough to break in and take it all." He chuckled.
"Heard any reports of other stores having large quantities of produce stolen?"
"No. I sell to local restaurants every day, although that's in wholesale volumes. We've got one retail customer who started buying a crazy amount of vegetables recently."
"Define crazy."
"Our delivery boy dropped off thirty pounds of carrots the other day. A few days before that it was several pounds of turnips, corn, broccoli, cabbage. You name the veggie, this guy bought it during the past few days. Before that, he probably bought something once a month, usually fifty cans of organic tuna, and an assortment of canned vegetables."
A shock raced down her neck. Bingo. "May I have the customer's name?"
He hesitated. "Is that legal?"
"I can get a warrant and have the records seized if that will make your conscience clearer."
"You think this guy might be the robber?"
"He may be linked to several murders in the area."
The owner whistled. "Our delivery boy has been there several times. If this guy is dangerous, you need to find out."
"Exactly." People could justify anything.
"His name is Lucas Fowler." He gave her the address.
This was the guy. Had to be. Alexia grabbed her gun and holstered it. Time to pay him a visit.
Chapter 21
Lucas stuffed a few changes of clothing into a duffel bag along with a couple bags of carrots. After stewing over the possibilities for several hours, he'd decided that Phillip's offer was the only viable alternative to suicide. There seemed no darker fate than suicide, but staying alive and turning into a mindless killer seemed worse. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger. Phillip's offer had won by default.
"Shut up," he said to himself, trying to head off another round of rationalizing. Phillip had offered him the one thing suicide didn't: hope. Hope that he might overcome whatever demon possessed him. Hope that he might discover who was behind his compulsion. Whoever it was, he would kill them and feel no remorse. Of all people who deserved leniency, the arbiter who'd hooked into his brain wasn't one of them.
He sensed the change in air pressure before he heard Phillip. It actually wasn't so much a change in the air pressure as it was a knotting sensation in the back of his head and the feeling that his ears wanted to pop. He turned and looked at Phillip who'd appeared in the middle of the den.
"You've decided," Phillip said, his eyes glancing at the duffel bag.
"I'm coming with you."
"Excellent. Got everything you need?"
Lucas hefted the duffel bag and secured a strap over his shoulder. "Yep."
"Let's head outside first."
Lucas opened the door and a fist conked him on the nose.
"I'm sorry," said the woman who owned the fist. "I was just knocking." Her large green eyes widened slightly. Her body tensed.
Lucas's gut tightened. He knew this woman. From where? Black shoulder-length hair framed her remarkably large green eyes. Her nose was a touch large, her lips just verging on full, her skin pale olive. He wouldn't consider her beautiful, but those huge eyes sucked him in. He jerked from his trance. "Hi." He tried to say something else but his lips felt glued shut.
"Going somewhere?" she asked, looking behind him at the duffel bag on the floor.
Lucas turned around. Phillip was gone. "Uh, yeah." How did he know her? He felt the urge to reach his hand out and cradle her cheek. What in blazes was wrong with him? She seemed more than familiar to him, like a former lover.
Her cheeks turned red and she looked away from him, paused, and cleared her throat loudly. "I'm Alexia—I mean I'm agent Sciouris with IARE."
He didn't recognize her name. And yet, he felt almost at ease with her. Like he'd known her his entire life. "I are?"
"It's a subdivision of the FBI. Internal Agency on Religious Extremism."
"I don't go to church." He couldn't stop staring at those marvelous eyes of hers.
She looked back at him and the tension in her body seemed to fall away. She smiled. "I have to ask you a few questions."
Lucas gazed at her smile. It made her eyes seem to twinkle. He stepped outside, shut the apartment door behind him, and locked it. He looked at her and saw the spark of recognition in her eyes as well. She looked as puzzled as he did one moment, then her jaw would tense as she struggled. He felt another overwhelming urge to touch her. To talk to her. Tell her everything. Had she drugged him?
He'd obviously have to get rid of her before Phillip would return. He walked past Alexia and out to the parking lot. She followed without comment. He stopped and faced her. She was tall. Even with flat shoes on she was only a head shorter than he.
"Mr. Fowler. Lucas. I really need to ask you some important questions." Her eyes were almost pleading. Soft.
He steeled himself. She's with the FBI you dolt. She's probably here to arrest you. He should be afraid, but somehow the thought of mortal authorities didn't frighten him much. Not after Phillip's revelations. "All right. Ask away." He glanced at his apartment for any sign of Phillip. If that idiot wouldn't have vanished, he could have transported them away as promised.
"Do you like carrots more than the average person?"
Lucas's eye twitched. This woman was smart. Had she somehow tracked him down using the grocery stores he'd robbed? How in the world had she made that connection? It was too late for her to do anything about it.
"Actually, I really need to be going."
Her eyes narrowed. "Lucas—Mr. Fowler, if you don't answer my questions, I'll be forced to detain you."
"Arrest me?"
She shrugged. "Bingo."
Lucas turned away. "I'm leaving."
"Hold it."
Lucas sensed danger like a wave of heat passing too close to his neck. She had a gun. A big one. Pointed at his back. He turned and faced her. Adrenalin pulsed through him. His muscles tightened, coiled. She seemed to sense it and took a step back. Too late. He flashed to her side, tore the gun from her grasp. He tossed it away. It clattered behind a car several feet away. His hand went into the duffel bag. As he rotated, he pulled out the ender. Grabbed her arm. Pressed the cylinder against her ribcage. He couldn't stop himself.
Alexia gasped. Her huge green eyes flared.
"Time to go on, sister." Lucas's thumb went for the infinity symbol. Stopped. He couldn't. Not her. His instincts were strong. He had to be stronger. He had to overcome this murderous instinct. It took everything he had, but he forced his hand open and dropped the ender.
It rolled a few feet and stopped.
"You're a murderer," Alexia said, her voice laced with unbearable disappointment. Tears glistened in her eyes.
"Please, Alexia, I don't want—" A nauseating feeling struck him. He gagged and clenched his stomach, releasing Alexia. His vision shifted into the decayed landscape. A glowing figure perched atop the apartment building.
Alexia spun on her heel. Looked at the glowing figure. "Oh, god no. A ghoul."
It was the young black man Lucas had killed. The one who'd come back to life. The one whose neck he'd broken. The ghoul snarled something unintelligible and leapt from the roof and landed on a car. The roof caved. Glass exploded. Alexia screamed. The ghoul darted straight for her.
Lucas launched himself, his shoulder braced like a linebacker and slammed into the ghoul. Its body caromed off his and crunched against the trunk of a rusted car. It screamed either in agony or anger and launched itself back at Lucas. For some reason, his vision hadn't switched back to normal. The sickly yellow glow from the creature hung about it like a haze of putrescence. Black streaks snaked through the glow. Alexia, he noticed was squirming for her gun underneath a car. Lucas dodged as the ghoul rushed him. It caught his arm and spun him around in an attempt to stop its forward momentum.
They both stumbled against a pickup truck. The ghoul punched. Missed. Its hand plowed through the truck's grill and cracked the radiator. Green fluid spurted in its face. Lucas leapt backward. The ghoul shrieked and grabbed the front of the truck. It hefted. The front of the truck came off the ground about a foot. The ghoul's glowing face turned red. The bumper groaned and came off. The truck bounced on its shocks.
"Freeze!" Alexia said to the ghoul.
The ghoul picked up the metal bumper and flung it toward her. Lucas dove. The bumper smacked into his back. He ricocheted and sailed over Alexia's head before smashing through a car's windshield. His vision blurred and turned back to normal.
People were shouting and screaming from their windows.