by Jason Brant
She’d put him down with a bullet to the heart.
Saved a few lives.
And been suspended for her efforts.
They’d said something about her putting civilian lives in unnecessary risk. But she knew that wasn’t why they were pissed. She’d disregarded a direct order, and that couldn’t be allowed.
The detective bent down and looked through her spotting scope. He whistled. “Nice shooting. What is that... two hundred yards?”
“Two-fifty. Who in the hell are you?”
“Detective Andrew Lloyd. Call me Drew.” He straightened out, leveled his gaze on her. “Have you heard of me?”
Bree thought about it for a moment. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“I was in D.C. the day the president was shot. I helped take out the terrorist involved.”
Memories clicked into place. Bree recalled the press coverage. She’d seen the detective’s face all over her television for a week or two. He was a Baltimore cop who had somehow gotten involved in an assassination attempt in Washington D.C. How or why he’d been there had never been fully explained as far as she knew.
“Okay,” she said. “What do you want from me?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute.” Drew lifted his sunglasses, placed them on his head. His eyes were hard, intense. “Why did you take that shot? You could have missed. Maybe hit the people you were trying to save.”
“I already told you—he was going to kill the hostages. And I don’t miss.”
“But you had to know they would have your ass in a sling for disobeying orders.”
“So what? I didn’t become a cop to sit by and watch people get killed because some asshole downtown is afraid of the city getting sued.”
Lloyd kept watching her. “Why SWAT?”
“Because I’m good enough.”
“It’s tough for a woman to get to your position.”
“So I’ve been told.” Bree looked back at the helicopter. The rotors had slowed. “Look, if you’re going to keep beating around the bush rather than tell me what you want, then you can just get back in your bird and fly your ass out of here.”
“Is that a fact?” Lloyd chuckled.
“That’s a fact.”
“What if I told you that there was a job where you could save a whole lot more lives than a handful of people in a car lot?”
“Sure thing, buddy.” It was Bree’s turn to laugh. “I heard the hero speech at the academy too. Save it for the young and gullible.”
Drew unbuttoned his suit, took the coat off. Without the jacket on, his chest and shoulders looked even thicker.
Bree tried not to stare too much.
After undoing his left cufflink, Lloyd slid his sleeve up, exposing his mangled hand and wrist. He held it up in front of his face, slowly twisting it around. “I saw you checking this out.”
“Gnarly.” Bree squinted at the pink flesh. “How did that happen?”
“Arthur’s Creek.”
Bree’s eyes widened. “You were at Arthur’s Creek? During The Massacre?”
“I was.” Drew pulled his sleeve back down. “I’m still having a bit of trouble with the nerves in my hand, but the rehab is coming along.”
The way he casually spoke of such a horrible wound made Bree wonder just who this Detective Andrew Lloyd really was. What kind of cop was involved in stopping presidential assassinations in a city outside his jurisdiction? How could he go from that to being present during the Arthur’s Creek Massacre? Those were the two biggest stories of the past year. Hell, the country had damn near flipped upside down after each of them.
Bree had stopped carrying her cell phone after the Arthur’s Creek insanity. Most people had. Something about unwittingly turning into a crazed psychopath had turned her off from technology lately.
She said, “You have my attention.”
“I can’t go into too many details here. If you decide to come with me, you’ll be fully briefed later today.”
“Go with you where?”
“That’s classified. No one can know where you’re going or even that you’ve left. You’ll be stationed with us, working with a small search-and-rescue team, until our mission is complete. That could take anywhere from a few weeks to several months.” He held up a hand. “And no, I can’t tell you what the mission is.”
“You can’t tell me where I would be going, why, or even how long I’d be there? And I’m supposed to agree to this? What kind of idiot would say yes to such a stupid proposal?”
“Eight idiots so far, myself included.” Drew shrugged the jacket back over his thick shoulders. “It’s dangerous, highly classified, and... bizarre. The pay isn’t that great, and there aren’t any medals waiting for us at the end of this. But if you want to make a difference, a real difference, then this is your chance. We’ll also take care of your little problem with the city so you have a job to come back to.”
Bree studied her feet. What the detective was proposing sounded moronic. And dangerous. No one built a team like that. Even still, Bree had to admit that she was intrigued. The madness that went out over the cell signal in West Virginia had spiraled the country, and most of the world, into a blind panic. A lot of innocent people had been slaughtered during, and after, the cell phone call from hell.
If there was any chance that she could be a part of the solution to whatever problem had caused The Massacre, then how could she say no?
“How long do I have to decide?” Bree asked.
Drew looked over her shoulder, made a twirling motion with his finger at the helicopter pilot. “About two minutes.”
“Jesus.” Bree ran a hand through her red hair. “Can I ask a few questions first?”
“You can ask. I might not be able to answer, but you can ask.”
“Why me? I’m not some kind of Special Forces badass.”
“We have our reasons. Those will be explained in a debriefing later today. Should you accept, of course.”
“Later today? If I say yes, then we’re leaving right now?”
“Yup.” Drew shrugged. “I know it sucks, but secrecy is of the utmost importance for this op. We can’t have you asking around and throwing up potential red flags.”
“Red flags to who?”
Drew just stared at her.
“Fine,” Bree grunted. “But if I say no, then I’ll just go home and start digging things up about you. How is that any different?”
“You don’t know a damn thing about what we’re doing, except for my name and the fact that I was in Arthur’s Creek when the shit hit the fan. That won’t do much.”
Bree suppressed the rising level of frustration bubbling inside her. Nothing about her current situation had a semblance of fairness to it. She’d wanted to help people, to serve and protect and all that jazz. Now she might have a chance to make a real difference, but she had no time to contemplate the ramifications of accepting whatever it was the detective was offering.
The helicopter grew louder as the rotors picked up speed.
“How did you get wrapped up in all of this?” Bree asked.
“Through a friend.”
“Some friend.”
“Tell me about it.” Drew nodded at the pilot, held up a finger. “Time to decide, Manning.”
“One last question. Do you know who sent the cell phone signal in Arthur’s Creek?”
Drew held her gaze. “Yes.”
“I’m in.” Bree set her jaw. “When do we start?”
“Right now.”
3 – Slinging Iron
I straightened my back out, bringing my hips under me, and completed my final deadlift rep. After a two-second hold, I quickly lowered the weight, relishing the clanging of the plates as they landed on the platform.
A dull, throbbing ache consumed my shoulders and back.
I roared like a lion. King of the iron jungle.
Too bad no one was around to bask in my glory.
AC/DC blared over the gym’s sound system, Brian John
son wailing about kicking someone’s ass. No matter what decade, good ol’ AC/DC couldn’t be beat when it came to lifting music.
I rolled my engorged shoulders, enjoying the pump that inflated them. There was nothing like a good workout to make my problems feel small and inconsequential, even if just for a few minutes.
Some stiffness remained in the shoulder I’d taken buckshot in not too long ago, but I couldn’t complain too much. Considering what everyone else had gone through, I’d gotten off easy.
Drew had partially degloved his hand while escaping a pair of handcuffs during the madness that was Arthur’s Creek. We’d been held captive by a town full of people whose minds were mangled into a psychotic mess, and our end had been rapidly approaching when Detective Andrew Lloyd had decided to go full badass.
Without so much as a whimper, Drew had pulled his hand through the cuffs, removing vast swaths of skin in the process, and took out a madman who was about to kill us.
The shiny flesh on his wrist had healed for the most part, but he hadn’t recovered full use of his hand yet. The surgeon who tried to put him back together said the nerve damage was severe. He couldn’t promise Drew that he would ever be the same again.
The dexterity in Drew’s fingers had gone to shit for a while. The palm of his hand tingled constantly. But slowly and surely, he’d worked his way close to normalcy again. He still couldn’t lift weights, which had him lagging far behind me in the strength department.
It wasn’t like he could ever keep up with such a hulking mass of testosterone anyway, but now he had zero chance. And through all of that shit, I’d never heard him bitch about it. Not once. He was the toughest SOB I’d ever met.
Other than me, of course.
Allison had been sliced up like a fillet of fish. I hadn’t seen her since that day, but Drew had looked her up a few days ago and found that she was recovering nicely. From what he said, she’d even weaned off the sauce a bit.
I wished her well. With any luck, she could lead a semblance of a normal life again.
We hadn’t heard anything from Jimbo. He’d taken a large, monetary settlement from the government and split town. Couldn’t blame him there. I would have done the same thing if given the choice.
And then there was Sammy.
She’d paid the ultimate price.
And it was all your fault, she whispered in my ear.
I grimaced, shook my head.
As Sammy died in my arms, I’d gone deep into her mind. Our personalities, our memories, our consciousness had intertwined in a way that I’d never experienced before. Unfortunately, that Vulcan Mind Meld had brought a piece of her back with me.
To say that she was less than thrilled would be an understatement.
No one could have witnessed the horrors that we had and not been fundamentally changed. Some things stuck with you forever. Some things pulled you out into deep water and tried to drown you.
We’d all been running from our own personal demons since that day in West Virginia. It turned out that my demon was a woman who tried to save me, who had given her life because she wanted to make me a better man.
So yeah, I felt as guilty as a whore in church. Assuming they would feel guilty, that was.
I bent down, picked up a gallon jug of water, and downed a few inches of it.
Went to the pull-up bar, started banging out reps like a boss.
Your strength will fail you. Just like it failed me.
I grunted in the middle of a rep, kept going.
Anger blossomed in my mind.
The image of a demented doctor standing over Allison, slicing into the flesh between her exposed breasts, flitted through my mind. I remembered her screams, her blood, her fear.
A growl escaped my throat as I did another pull-up.
More grotesque memories filled my vision: Butch popping heads like melons with his hammer, a woman planting a severed head in her flower garden, a belt made of tongues.
My anger boiled into fury.
I let go of the bar, dropped to the floor. My chest heaved, back ached. Blood pumped through my hands as I worked them open and closed, open and closed.
A heavy bag hung from the ceiling in the corner of the gym. I stalked over to it and hammered away at it with a barrage of punches. The bag hadn’t been used much, and it was stiff as hell. My wrists weren’t wrapped and my hands didn’t have gloves on them. Only an idiot would hit a heavy bag without any kind of protection.
I didn’t care. I threw bombs at the bag, channeling my energy into my fists. Guessed that made me an idiot.
My knuckles split.
Blood smeared on the bag, pattered to the floor.
I punched harder, faster.
The jug of water on the floor to my right began to vibrate. The gym mats under it were sluiced with water from the open top. Small weight plates on the deadlift bar rattled.
A chain hanging from a hook on the wall clanged.
I finally stopped pounding on the bag and stared at my bleeding knuckles.
Took deep breaths.
Focused on relaxing.
My fury slowly abated. The movement around me subsided. I regained control of myself little by little, willing my mind to calm.
After everything stopped clattering around me, a piercing headache formed behind my eyes. That always happened after I had a bout of rage followed by my weird telekinetic shit. It felt like an instantaneous migraine set in.
Wooziness overcame me as I stood there, and I had to grab onto the heavy bag to keep from falling over. I swayed on my feet for a few seconds, fighting against the pull of unconsciousness.
The urge to vomit settled in my stomach. My vision blurred.
“Ash-hole?” a small voice called from overhead. “You still in the gym, butt pirate?”
Nami. She was using the intercom system to give me shit while I was seconds away from passing out. What a nice girl.
She paused for a second, though I could still hear a slight hiss coming from the speakers. She still had the mic keyed. Whenever the intercom was active in the gym, a microphone in the ceiling automatically kicked on. It saved meatheads like me from having to go across the room to a console to talk. All I had to do was speak and she could hear me.
I was just a little preoccupied at the moment.
“I don’t hear any plates banging around,” she said. “Oh God, you aren’t rubbing one out in there, are you? I know you love those weights, Ash-hole, but they can’t love you back. We’ve discussed this before. Just because you rub your di—”
“What do you want, Short Round?” I grumbled. My vision had begun to clear.
“I can wait until you finish. Can’t imagine it takes that long.”
“Just tell me what you want.” My teeth were grinding. “I’m a little busy right now.”
“I know you are. That’s why I said I’d wait. I can hear you grunting in there. It’s gross.”
“I’m going to punt you like a football when I see you.”
Nami laughed. “Dude, I’d pimp slap you so hard that—”
“Get to the point, Short Round.” Most of my symptoms had finally eased up. Only the piercing headache remained. That would last for a good hour or so. Lucky me.
“Someone is extra pissy this morning,” Nami huffed. “I need you up here in the lab.”
“For what?”
“I need a test dummy. Emphasis on dummy.”
“I’ll be there in twenty. Gotta shower first.”
“Thank sweet baby Cthulhu for that.” Nami switched off the comm system, and AC/DC came back through the speakers.
I reached down, grabbed my water. Poured some over my face. Toweled it off after a few seconds. My anger had teetered on the edge of being uncontrollable the past few weeks. If I didn’t get it wrangled into some semblance of restraint, I feared that my head might explode one of these days.
The idea that I could move things with my mind would have excited me not too long ago. Now that the consequences of
using my newfangled ability pounded in my head like a bass drum, I didn’t want anything to do with it.
Grabbing my stuff, I turned the music off and headed to my room.
4 – Freaking Out
Christie’s hands quivered as she attempted to unlock the front door of her apartment. Two hours had passed since she’d fled the subway and her fear had yet to abate. Adrenaline had kept her legs moving even as exhaustion and cramps threatened to send her crashing to the sidewalk.
She’d sprinted, jogged, and then walked through alleys and side streets until she finally arrived back at her apartment. After seeing what had transpired on the subway, Christie wanted no part of any public transportation.
There was no chance in hell she’d ride a bus or take a cab.
Even taking the fastest route home had seemed like a dangerous idea. What if one of the crazies was following her?
Christie knew the idea was ludicrous. They would have attacked if they were tailing her, but rationality had taken a detour after what she’d seen at the station. She’d taken a long, meandering path to get back to her apartment, hoping to ensure that no one from the subway could have tailed her.
The key finally slid home. Christie burst through the door and slammed it shut behind her.
She worked all three locks.
Placed her back against the door, slid down it.
Sobs shook her body. The keys and small cylinder the man had given her fell to the linoleum floor. She held her face in her hands, finally letting out a flood of emotion that had built inside her for the past two hours.
The memory of the blood, the screams, and the death—they all overwhelmed her. The worst thing she’d ever witnessed in person before tonight had been a handful of fistfights at the bar. Those were scary, but they’d also had a trace of humor running through them. Watching two drunks wrestle around on a beer-soaked floor usually made her chuckle after it was over.
There would be no laughing tomorrow as she recalled the horror of what she’d just experienced. Christie had read dozens of articles chronicling the PTSD problems that soldiers returning from war struggled with. She’d always sympathized with those poor men, but she did so at a distance.
It was one thing to acknowledge an issue and something else entirely to live it.