Flee The Darkness

by Grant R. Jeffrey

  Mr. and Mrs. Hunter had not had a very merry Christmas.

  The bed was empty when Daniel returned to the hotel room. He stood inside the door for a moment and listened to the sound of running water. His wife was taking a shower. The thought sent a thrill shivering through his senses.

  Lauren stepped out of the bathroom a moment later, her hair wet and dripping, her face clean and freshly scrubbed. Wrapped in a towel, she came toward him and caught his face in her hands, then gave him a lingering kiss. Daniel locked her into his embrace, then held her for a long moment before she spoke. “Where’d you run off to?”

  “The pay phone.” Daniel reached up to swipe a strand of wet hair from her forehead. “I was worried about Christine. I just wanted to reassure her.”

  “Thinking about another woman already?” She grinned as she moved away, then rummaged through her suitcase for clean clothes. “I should have brought more—by the way, what’d you do with the tux?”

  He pointed toward the bed where the dog lay. “Stuffed it under the mattress. By the time they find it, no one will remember who put it there.”

  “Good idea. Should I do the same with my dress?”

  “No.” Daniel shook his head. The dress had been her wedding gown. “Keep it.”

  “I’ll just be a minute.” She gathered up a handful of clothing and walked back toward the bathroom. “Got to put on my face.”

  “Okay.” Daniel moved to the window, looked out at the silent parking lot, then let the curtain fall. He turned on the television, then heard the dog’s soft woof.

  “What’s wrong, Tasha? Hungry?” He found the bag of dog food and spread a handful of kibble on the bedspread, but the dog didn’t seem interested. She jumped from the bed and moved toward the door, then scratched at it—just in case Daniel missed the point.

  “Oh.” He found her leash, then snapped it on her collar. “Sorry, girl, but you’ll have to be patient with me. I haven’t had a dog in years.”

  He checked for the room key in his pocket, then stepped outside. A long strip of grass bordered the parking lot, and Daniel led the dog to it, then idly followed her as she sniffed the ground.

  The hotel lay on a hill overlooking the interstate, allowing Daniel a clear view of the road for about a mile in each direction. The trees along the highway were bare and skeletal, stretching gray arms toward the sky, and through them Daniel saw a pair of police cars ripping over the asphalt, lights flashing and sirens blaring.

  He froze as the cars took the exit ramp, then swerved in a broad left turn, nearly side-swiping an innocent Altima that sat at the light.

  All Daniel’s inner warning systems went off at once. They’re coming for us!

  “Tasha!” Daniel whistled sharply, then jerked on the dog’s collar. Responding to the urgency in his voice, the dog trotted behind Daniel as he thrust his hands into his pockets and lowered his head. He pulled out the key, opened the door, and pulled the dog inside just as the police cars roared into the parking lot.

  “Lauren!”

  She peered out from the bathroom, her hair still wet and uncombed, but at least she was dressed. The look on her face told him she knew.

  “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t have to be told twice. In one smooth movement she swept their toiletries from the sink and into her overnight bag, then she picked up Daniel’s small suitcase. Daniel waited by the door, the dog’s leash wrapped around his hand.

  “It’ll only take a minute for them to narrow the registrations down to us,” he said, his eyes meeting hers as he took the suitcase. “We’ve got to make a run for it.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Sobered instantly by the frightening possibility that they might already be trapped, Daniel put his hand on the door, drew a deep breath, then walked the dog toward the car—a dark blue Chevy Nova, he saw now. Lauren followed and casually tossed her bag into the backseat. Without a word, they slammed the doors in unison, and Daniel pulled out and away from the police cars.

  “Daniel,” Lauren whispered, her face as pale as paper, “won’t they have our license plate number? When you registered last night at the motel—”

  “I made one up,” Daniel whispered, driving as slowly as he dared in order to avoid drawing any undue attention. He exchanged an uneasy glance with Lauren. “Will you pull out the map? Find me a road north, but not an interstate.”

  “There!” Lauren pointed to a thin stretch of asphalt labeled with an arrow and the word Marysville.

  Daniel turned the car onto the two-lane highway and settled back against the seat, adjusting the rearview mirror as he eased the car up to speed. No one followed yet, but that didn’t mean no one would.

  Daniel and Lauren celebrated a meaningful, reverent Christmas in a little cabin in the Adirondack Mountains, then drove northward for three more days, traveling more slowly than a pursuer might expect, pacing themselves according to Daniel’s plan. They paid cash for hotels, food, and gas, and avoided telephones, televisions, and the Millennium Chip scanners now prominently displayed at nearly every store. Merchants accepted Daniel’s cash with reluctant laughter, and many times they were unable to give the proper change.

  “We turned all our paper bills in for equivalency credits a month ago,” a convenience store manager in Brookfield, New York, explained. “This bill makes a nice keepsake, but you can’t expect me to make change for it.”

  “That’s all right,” Daniel said, pulling another bag of dog food from the shelf. “Keep the change and the bill, too. Who knows? If we survive the move into the next millennium, your grandkids may ask about the good ol’ days when we actually used paper money.”

  The man’s expression changed into a mask of uncertainty. “Whaddaya mean—if we survive?”

  Daniel shook his head, mentally tabulating the bill as the food was totaled up and bagged. “Don’t mind me. My wife says I’m the eternal pessimist.”

  The bill came to $45.73. Daniel left one hundred dollars on the counter and gathered the two bags in his arms. As he turned, however, the sound of Adrian Romulus’s voice stopped him cold.

  He turned slowly and glanced up at a television the storekeeper had mounted behind the counter. Romulus was on the screen, standing outdoors on a crowded sidewalk. He wore a heavy coat, and a wicked wind blew his thick hair away from his forehead. Daniel recognized the words engraved into the building’s frieze: Neither shall they learn war any more.

  Romulus was in New York City, outside the United Nations building. Daniel was more than a hundred miles away, and yet the sound of Romulus’s voice still had the power to freeze his blood as if he were in the same room. The feeling that Romulus was evil had only intensified since Daniel’s surrender to Christ.

  “I’d like to remind the American people of something Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his fourth inaugural address,” Romulus told the reporter.

  “And what would that be?” the reporter prompted.

  Romulus’s eyes clouded with hazy sadness, and his voice deepened as he gazed dramatically off into the distance. “’We have learned that we cannot live alone at peace, that our own well-being is dependent on the wellbeing of other nations far away.’” His voice reverberated throughout the tiny convenience store. “’We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.’”

  Romulus’s eyes shifted again, and seemed to stare right into the interior of the store where Daniel stood with the proprietor. “Because we are members of one community, it brings me great pain to announce that Brad Hunter, a senior official of the NSA and special advisor to President Samuel Stedman, was found murdered in his home this morning along with his wife, Christine. Fortunately, the police have evidence that leads to a clear suspect—Daniel Prentice, who is known to be in league with the forces of the Morning Star Trust.”

  Daniel stopped breathing. The world grew quiet and still; he heard only the pounding of b
lood in his ears and the thick, muffled thrum of Romulus’s voice. “If you see this man—” Romulus continued as Daniel’s photograph appeared on a split screen in living color—“do not try to apprehend him. There’s no denying his genius—he helped us devise the Millennium Code—but we’ve recently learned that his loyalties have changed. We suspect that he has participated in the theft and dispersal of the nuclear devices with which the Morning Star Trust has threatened the world’s peace.”

  Daniel took a hasty half-step back and prayed that the store owner wouldn’t recognize him. He’d begun to grow a beard since leaving Washington, but perhaps this man had sharp eyes.

  “Such a shame,” the owner was saying now. His hands rested on the counter; his gaze remained fixed to Romulus’s mesmerizing image. “That Romulus fellow has done so much for the world. It breaks my heart to think that one of our own would turn against him.”

  Not waiting to hear more, Daniel gripped his bags and slipped through the swinging glass doors.

  After his close call in the convenience store, Daniel abandoned his plan to move slowly. Driven by rage, grief, and resolve, he and Lauren followed back roads through Boonville, Lowville, and Harrisville. When they drove past the city limits of Morristown, a small town nestled on the shores of the St. Lawrence River, Daniel told Lauren that they were close to safety.

  “Daniel,” Lauren spoke slowly, and he sensed that she hesitated to voice her doubts. “Honey, how are we going to get into Canada? They’re saying you’re a murderer, and you’ll never cross the border with a Millennium Chip in your hand.”

  “We’re not going over the border.” He cast her a smile as he drove. “We’re going over the water.”

  “Oh.” She shifted in her seat and leaned against the door, an uncertain look on her face. Daniel kept driving east through Chippewa Bay. Finally, when he reached Alexandria Bay, he pulled the car to the side of the road and took the dog for a walk on a strip of winter-brown grass along the water’s edge. When he returned, Lauren was sitting on the hood of the car, her hands tucked under her legs, her eyes on the northern sky.

  “Where are we?” She lifted her chin toward the water.

  Daniel leaned against the car, then reached up and tried to smooth away the deep line of concern on her forehead. “That’s the St. Lawrence River. And just across the water, through those islands—that’s Canada.”

  She nodded, not speaking.

  “I spent a lot of time here as a boy,” he went on, his eyes sweeping the vast watery horizon. “Just north of here, off Interstate 81, is Thousand Islands. The whole area is dotted with summer cottages that will be vacant now, and most of those summer homes have boathouses.”

  Daniel smiled as the light of understanding filled her eyes.

  “Boats?”

  He nodded. “Sure. I figure we can take one and row across to Canada tonight, as long as the weather holds. It’ll be cold on the water, but we’ll be okay. And we’ll leave this beautiful Chevy Nova to replace the boat.”

  “Daniel, you are a genius!” Her arms fell on his shoulders, and she pulled him toward her and planted a kiss on the top of his head. “I’m beginning to think we will make it.”

  “We’d better.” He checked his watch—12:27 P.M. on December 30. They had less than thirty-six hours to reach safety and warn the world about Adrian Romulus. If they failed, Brad and Christine had died for nothing, and the world would fall into Romulus’s hands like an overripe peach.

  Kord Herrick angrily stubbed the butt of his cigarette onto the convenience store countertop, then glared at the bearer of bad news. “What do you mean, he drove away?”

  “That’s what he did.” The manager spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “Good grief, how was I to know he was a criminal?”

  “He gave you cash!”

  “It’s not illegal yet! And he said I could keep the change.”

  “That didn’t make you suspicious?”

  “No.” The store manager folded his arms and matched Kord’s glare. “Folks like you make me more suspicious than that fellow did. He bought dog food, for heaven’s sake. What kind of terrorist loads up with Kibbles-n-Bits?”

  Deciding to try another approach, Kord struggled to bury his irritation. He gave the man a half-hearted smile. “You would be a great help if you could recall if he said or did anything unusual. Did he use your phone? Ask you to contact anyone? Did he ask if you had access to a computer?”

  The man’s small, bright blue eyes grew smaller and brighter, the black pupils training on Kord like gun barrels. “I told you everything I remember. Shoot, it was two days ago. He was a regular guy, even a nice guy. Now you can get out of my store! The government’s snooping into everything these days, and I’m tired of it!”

  Arrogant American!

  Shaking with impotent rage and frustration, Kord whirled, pushing past two of his agents as he strode to the van outside. Daniel Prentice was proving to be a most clever quarry, but he was running out of time. In less than thirty-five hours the Millennium Networks of Europe and the United States would officially merge. If Daniel Prentice intended to work mischief for Adrian Romulus, he’d have to do something soon.

  “General Herrick?” Agent Dengler climbed into the van and took the seat behind Kord. “Sir, if I may speak freely?”

  “Speak,” Kord barked, his impatience growing.

  Dengler rubbed his meaty hands together. “Sir, what if this Prentice is just running scared? They haven’t found any problems with the computers in Washington. What’s more, he can’t do a single thing to hurt us as long as he’s running.”

  “That is precisely the point,” Kord answered, his tongue heavy with sarcasm. “If we stop chasing him, he might grow confident and attempt something dangerous. But I am not so certain Prentice did nothing in Washington. He is bright—far more clever than you, Dengler—and I’d wager my life that he is planning something.”

  Kord crossed his arms and stared out the window, thinking. His men had been over the compromised Federal Crimes computer room at least a dozen times, and they could find nothing out of place. Prentice’s fingerprints were all over the mainframe and keyboard, of course, but nothing seemed amiss in the programs. Just to be on the safe side, Kord had ordered that the mainframe be wiped clean and reformatted with the program copied from an uncompromised system, but that seemed too easy a solution. Prentice would have thought of that, so whatever he did had to be much more significant.

  Brad Hunter had died without revealing any useful information. Dengler had run out of fingers to break, yet Hunter had said nothing useful. Even after Dengler threatened his wife, Hunter kept insisting that Daniel had done nothing to the mainframe but type in the directory command. Perhaps that was all Prentice had done, but Kord had to be sure. Hunter raged and stormed and threatened until Dengler shot his wife; after that he maintained a stony silence, dying without another word.

  If Prentice had done nothing, why was he running? If his actions had been innocent, he wouldn’t be hiding. . . and neither would the woman.

  Kord rubbed a finger hard over his lip, quelling the urge to laugh as he thought of the frightened minister who had come forward to confess that he had married Daniel Prentice and Lauren Mitchell, apparently just before they embarked upon a murderous rampage in Arlington Heights.

  Lauren Mitchell Prentice made Kord nervous, too. Something about her was unsettling—perhaps it was the fearless way she looked at him. Months ago Victoria Stedman had looked at Kord in that same way. And even though he had been disappointed that the car bomb did not kill both the president and the first lady, he had been secretly pleased that the stronger of the two died in the blast. Stedman was a stubborn elitist, but he was like iron, he would bend in the midst of fire. Victoria Stedman and Lauren Prentice were diamond-hard; fire only seemed to fortify their resolve.

  A black car pulled up alongside the van, and Kord looked out to see General Archer’s rectangular form emerging from the back seat. The big man looke
d around, then spotted Kord in the van and lifted his hand. “General Herrick!”

  Kord uncrossed his arms and reminded himself to be polite. For another day and a half, at least, this was Archer’s country.

  “General?”

  Archer wore a broad smile. “We followed up on your suggestion about cell phones. There’s no activity recorded on Prentice’s frequency, but we picked up something on the woman.”

  Kord straightened, amazed by the unbelievable stroke of luck. “The woman has her phone?”

  Archer nodded. “Yes. The scanner shows them a hundred miles north of here, pressing toward the Canadian border. Just like you thought they would.”

  “Let’s go.” Kord slammed the van door and yelled out the window for his driver. Before leaning back into the van, he called to Archer. “Prentice will not let himself be caught at any border crossing, General. I’d bet my life on it.”

  Archer grinned, then climbed back into his own car. The black sedan backed up, then gravel flew as the automobile moved out onto the highway.

  “Follow him,” Kord told his driver. He snapped his seat belt, then brought his hand to his cheek, momentarily regretting that the Americans had designed the beautiful bit of technology that enabled them to track any activated cell phone.

  But no matter. On New Year’s Day, everything America owned would belong to the Global Community, and Adrian Romulus would hold power over it all.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  6:49 P.M., Thursday, December 30, 1999

  NIGHT HAD FALLEN OVER THE RIVER BY THE TIME DANIEL AND LAUREN HAD located an empty house with a boat in dry dock. They parked the car next to the dock, then unloaded their two suitcases, the wire and other supplies in the trunk, and a shopping bag with supplies for Tasha. The Samoyed wasn’t exactly thrilled by the prospect of going on the water, but she stayed close to Lauren’s heels and watched silently as Daniel went into the boathouse and lowered the small fishing boat into the water.