Linkage (The Narrows of Time Series Book 1)

by Jay J. Falconer

  “Okay. Okay,” Lucas said, turning his chin away to avoid another strike. “You’re right. We were on a date, but it was a blind date. I never actually met her.”

  “I doubt that. Her personal journal mentioned you by name and included explicit details of your relationship.”

  Jasmine must have been as nuts as her old man. Either that or she’d been stalking him. Maybe Abby and Jasmine were both stalking them, setting up him and his brother for whatever was going on. But that didn’t make any sense. “I don’t know what she wrote or why, but I swear on my brother’s life, we’ve never met. I only knew Abby, and I’d never even heard Jasmine’s name until that day.”

  “Stand him up,” the general said to one of the two soldiers with him.

  Lucas looked over his shoulder and realized the man holding his arm was the same soldier who’d drugged Drew earlier, in the apartment.

  “Wait a minute,” Lucas told the general, trying in vain to pull away from the guard who’d just pulled him to his feet. “You’ve got this all wrong. I didn’t kill your daughter. It was an accident, we—”

  “I know all about your supposed lab accident. Randol filled me in on all your lies,” Alvarez said, pulling his sidearm from its holster. He checked its ammo clip, then cocked it. “Gag him, Thompson.”

  “Wait, you don’t have to do this—” Lucas snapped, before Thompson stuffed a thick cloth into his mouth.

  The general walked to where Drew was sitting and pressed the barrel of his weapon against Drew’s left temple, then looked back at Lucas. “You took my precious little girl away from me, and now I’m going to return the favor.”

  Before Lucas could scream at him to stop, the general pulled the trigger, and the weapon recoiled as the gunshot echoed across the barren landscape.

  Lucas gasped and the muscles across his chest tightened all at once when he saw the far side of Drew’s skull blow apart in a spray of red. His brother’s limp body tumbled sideways, disappearing head-first into the unmarked grave.

  All the energy ran out of Lucas’ body, sending him to the ground on his knees. He felt a stabbing pain pierce the ventricles of his heart, causing his logic to shut down in an instant. His jaw seized up and he suddenly couldn’t breathe, or think—his mind was a jumbled blur. He couldn’t take his eyes from the edge of grave, hoping Drew would somehow climb out of it, unharmed.

  His heart needed to weep for his brother, but his brain and mouth had other plans. They fought back the flood of emotions wanting to escape his body, holding them in and letting them fester and mix together. All he could see was red in his mind as something inside snapped, taking him to a deep, dark place where he’d never been before. Revenge was the only thought on his mind as his heart turned from sorrow to pure hatred.

  “Motherfucker, I’ll kill you!” he screamed at the general, but the gag muted his words to an indecipherable level. His adrenaline spiked as he tried to shake free from Thompson’s powerful grip, thrashing from side to side, but he couldn’t break the man’s hold. If Lucas had still been standing and not on his knees, he figured he might’ve been able to use his legs for added leverage.

  A second later, Alvarez swung his head and sent Lucas an evil, sadistic smile, then turned his focus back to the hole where Drew’s body had landed. He fired two more shots.

  BOOM! BOOM!

  The reverberating sound of the gunshots echoed across the desert terrain and tore an even bigger hole in Lucas’ heart. His lungs were now pumping at full tilt, and so was his heart, thumping well past its red line. Insanity was next, if his heart could hold out that long.

  Alvarez turned to Lucas and aimed the sights of his weapon at him. “Now you know what it feels like to have a loved one ripped from your life. Before I kill you, too, you’re gonna watch us piss on your brother’s body. Then I’m gonna bury you both and leave you to rot in the dirt.”

  Before Lucas could suck in another angry breath, the general’s cell phone started ringing. Alvarez pulled the device from his pocket and looked at the phone’s display and promptly answered it.

  “Alvarez here,” he said, his eyes and body language indicating it was someone important. He turned and walked to the front of his Humvee, then climbed up the hood and across windshield, coming to a stop on the roof. He was now facing away from Lucas, looking off in the distance with the phone stuck to his ear.

  “Yes, I see it,” Alvarez said into the phone.

  The call continued for bit, then ended with, “Yes, ma’am, right away.” The nimble general jumped down from the vehicle and told the second soldier, “Rodriquez, you’re with me.”

  “Is something wrong, sir?”

  “That was the governor. Another energy field is heading toward the capitol building. She wants us there ASAP.”

  “Sir, what do you want me to do with this one?” Thompson asked, still holding on to Lucas.

  “Finish him, then bury him with his brother,” Alvarez said before sliding into the front passenger seat of the Humvee.

  “Gladly, sir,” he answered with exuberance.

  The general’s driver, Rodriquez, sat behind the wheel and started the truck. He shifted it into reverse and spun the tires hard, sending a hail of rocks and dust at Thompson and Lucas. The Humvee made a one-eighty before darting off in the same direction as the general had been looking when he was perched on top of his vehicle.

  Lucas knew he was running out of chances and decided to use the distraction of the speeding vehicle to gain the upper hand. He stood up and tried to turn around to attack Thompson, but the soldier punched him in the left kidney before he could complete his spin. Lucas gasped and fell back to his knees once again.

  Thompson moved in front of him, pressing the razor-thin edge of a long-handled knife to Lucas’ throat. “Britney and Carl Junior,” he said with fury in his words.

  “What?” Lucas mumbled through the gag, trying not to scrape his throat muscles across the man’s blade.

  “My wife and unborn son. Two of the people you killed on campus.”

  Lucas’ mind filled with a vision of the pregnant woman and her friend being swallowed up by the energy field eating its way across the grassy mall.

  Thompson leaned in close, forehead to forehead. “I’m going to enjoy bleeding you, slow.”

  It was time to act, Lucas decided, whipping his head back and bringing it forward in an instant. He rammed the center of his forehead into the soldier’s nose, making Thompson stumble backward with a stunned look on his face. He landed flat on the ground, face up.

  Lucas sprang to his feet and hustled to Thompson’s position. He jumped high into the air, aiming both of his knees at the man’s face. He heard a crackling snap when they made impact.

  He rolled off the soldier, dodging a steady stream of blood jetting out of the man’s nose. Thompson’s eyes were closed and his limbs weren’t moving, but Lucas could see the soldier’s breath puffing into the night air. Thompson’s knife was a few feet beyond his head, thrown clear by the man’s tumble.

  Lucas’ heart howled for revenge, demanding he finish Thompson off for his part in Drew’s death.

  An eye for an eye, his temper screamed. Go ahead and do it; do it now. No one will blame you. This man, along with Alvarez and Rodriquez, deserves to die.

  His logic agreed, temporarily blinded by the rage coursing through his veins. Lucas was eager to play the role of the Reaper and take this man’s last breath away. He raised his right foot until his thigh was level with his waist, ready to crush Thompson’s face with every ounce of strength remaining in his body.

  The instant before he unleashed his wrath, sanity broke through the cyclone of fury consuming his thoughts and stopped him. He lowered his leg to the ground and stared at the unconscious man’s bloody face, seeing him not as a guilty soldier, but as a young husband, not much older than Lucas was. He thought about Thompson’s pregnant wife and unborn son, killed by the rampaging energy dome.

  If they’d been his family, wouldn’t he
have responded the same way? In fact, wasn’t he about to do the very same thing—wield the sword of vengeance for a loved one?

  If he took Thompson’s life, then he’d be no better than those who’d just murdered his brother. He wasn’t a killer; he was a scientist, his logic yelled at him. How could he ever live with himself?

  The answer was . . . he wouldn’t be able to. Not after promising to do everything he could to man up and make the situation right for the deaths he caused on campus and everywhere else. And killing a man out of revenge was wrong—no matter what Thompson had just done.

  Then his brain connected more of the dots, reminding him none of this would be happening if he’d just followed orders and not run the experiment a second time. Everything up to this point was his fault, not Thompson’s. That included Drew’s death.

  Lucas backed away, his heart no longer consumed with exacting revenge. Even though he was insane with grief over the death of his brother, he’d rather kill himself than become a cold-blooded murderer like Alvarez.

  He was suddenly filled with an overwhelming desire to hold his little brother in his arms. He needed to say goodbye, then take Drew’s body back home for a proper burial. He wasn’t sure how he was going to face his mother and explain what had happened, but he’d have to find a way.

  He knelt down next to Thompson to search the man’s pockets. Lucas’ hands were still cuffed behind his back, making it difficult to see what he was doing. He found an aluminum key in a third pocket; he hoped it was the right one. He fumbled with the key, trying to insert it blindly into the handcuff’s keyhole. It took several attempts, but he managed to unlock the restraints and free himself.

  He removed the gag from his mouth and ran to Drew’s grave. When he looked into the hole, his brother’s body wasn’t there; only a muddy pool of red liquid remained along the bottom.

  “What the hell?” he said, staring at the emptiness, trying to wrap his head around what he was seeing. Or more accurately, what he wasn’t seeing—a corpse.

  Before Lucas could decide what to do next, he heard rustling behind him. He turned to see Thompson’s limbs squirming in the dirt. He ran to the soldier and punched him in the jaw, making sure Thompson stayed unconscious. Then he used the empty pair of handcuffs to secure the man’s hands, before standing over the man to admire his conquest.

  He was proud of his self-restraint for not killing Thompson when he had the chance. But after additional consideration, he decided a smashed nose and sore jaw wasn’t sufficient punishment. He pulled his leg back and kicked Thompson in the ribs hard—just like Thompson had done to him earlier. He desperately wanted to hurt this man more but kept his hunger for all-out revenge in check.

  He considered, for the briefest of moments, picking up the soldier’s KA-BAR knife and carving his brother’s initials—DR—into his forehead. It would serve as a constant reminder of Thompson’s role in Drew’s death. But cutting into a man’s face was too disgusting and he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Drew wouldn't have wanted him to do it, either. Not on his behalf and certainly not at the hands of a fellow Ramsay. Lucas hoped he’d never become the kind of sick, twisted animal who was capable of disfiguring another human being.

  Lucas went back to the grave and searched in and around the clearing for his brother’s body, scouring every inch of dirt within a two hundred foot radius. But he found no evidence of Drew’s body anywhere—no footprints, no drag marks, and no blood trail. Nothing.

  He didn’t understand it. Somehow, Drew’s body had simply vanished.

  SIXTEEN

  Lucas opened the driver’s door to Thompson’s Humvee and found the keys in the ignition. When he started its engine, the dashboard displayed the time as 11:11 p.m.

  The GPS system installed into the center console beeped twice, then booted its operating system. Moments later, he knew his exact location—thirty-five miles northwest of the Phoenix metropolitan area. He used the GPS interface to plot two courses: One was to the capital building in downtown Phoenix, where he knew General Alvarez was headed. The other was to his mother’s home in north central Phoenix.

  Both destinations required him to take the same route southeast to Phoenix until he ran into Interstate 17, giving him about thirty minutes to decide on his final destination. If he chose to go home, he still had time to make it there before midnight to wish her a Merry Christmas, and it would give him time to rehearse what he was going to tell his mother about Drew’s death. On the other hand, if he decided to hunt down Alvarez, he’d have time to devise a stealthy approach.

  He stepped on the gas and drove off across the desert in the same direction as General Alvarez. The road, if you could call it that, was filled with gullies, sand, and rock, sending his head crashing into the Humvee’s padded ceiling numerous times. Tumbleweeds, bushes, and a few cacti careened off the truck’s grill guard as he plowed through everything in his path.

  Just when he thought the uneven terrain would never end, he came across a paved, two-lane highway. He turned left and headed southeast toward the freeway.

  He drove about a mile down the road, then over the crest of a steep hill near one of the state’s manmade lakes. A skyline view of the Phoenix metro area opened up before him, catching him off guard for a moment. It was a stunning nighttime panorama of the sprawling desert metropolis. The spectacular view would have been jaw-dropping beautiful and soothing, if not for the pair of killer energy domes glimmering in the distance and the fresh wound from Drew’s death squeezing his heart. Death and destruction seemed to be all around him and following his every move.

  Shit, they’re back. More blood on my hands.

  One of the domes appeared to be devouring the downtown Phoenix area, while the other was near Scottsdale, a suburb thirty miles east of Phoenix. Pockets of the city’s power grid were now failing, flickering off and leaving dark, featureless voids across the brilliant nightscape.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, he arrived at the north side of Phoenix, where he turned right and took the south access ramp onto I-17. Downtown Phoenix was straight ahead and still a bit of a drive. He jammed the gas pedal to the floorboard, plastering his back against the driver’s seat.

  The opposite side of the freeway was crammed with a long line of cars and trucks, each filled with people trying to evacuate the city. He appeared to be the only one dumb enough to be heading south, directly toward the chaos.

  Ten minutes later, he was nearing the point in his trip where he needed to make a choice—track down General Alvarez or go rescue his mother? A mile ahead was the Thunderbird Road exit, the point of no return if he wanted to drive to his mother’s house.

  The terrain blurred by his window, seemingly speeding up the passage of time. The tires churned and the engine roared, taking him forward at high speed. Second by second ticked by, until he could see the exit ramp approaching on the right. Reason and rage battled within him. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Which path should he take?

  Suddenly, his mind detached from his body, filling his consciousness with the sensation of being outside of himself. He was now floating high above the truck, looking down through the top of the windshield like an observer. He could see his dirt-covered fingers gripping the steering wheel as the momentum of the Humvee took his body forward into the future.

  Without warning, his flight path changed, swinging him around the driver’s side of the truck and lowering his viewing angle. He could now see himself working the steering wheel, his face smothered in emotions.

  At that instant, he knew what his body was thinking about: his mom, his dad, and his brother—everyone who was important to him.

  What would they want him to do?

  Alvarez or rescue Mom?

  The answer came to him the instant the Humvee swerved to the right, down the Thunderbird Road exit ramp. Family first, he decided.

  His out-of-body sensation passed, and he was now back behind the steering wheel and in full control—full control
of the vehicle, his emotions, and his future.

  Intersection after intersection flew by, and so did the traffic heading the opposite way. He was now only a minute from his mother’s house.

  The rest of his plan was simple—get Dorothy out of town and away from the energy fields. He needed to save what little family he had left, and do it now. Then find the words to explain to her what had happened to Drew.

  * * *

  Lucas arrived on the street to their family home just short of midnight. Dorothy was normally in bed around 9:00 p.m., but he figured she was still awake. He imagined her sitting on the plastic-covered living room sofa, staring out the front window, sipping eggnog from her favorite coffee mug, which had a nonsensical mathematical calculation on its side with the humorous caption, “Friends Don’t let Friends Derive Drunk.”

  Dorothy was probably worried and still awake after he and Drew failed to show up in time for Christmas dinner. There was sure to be a pile of homemade oatmeal cookies sitting on the coffee table, next to a cold glass of milk with his name on it. Oatmeal Crispies were his favorite and she made them for him every year. It was a Ramsay family tradition, one started by his Grandfather Roy, back before the gruff old man was banned from the household.

  The thought of cookies and milk stirred in his brain, making his stomach growl with hunger. If he was going to face his mom without Drew at his side and explain his death, he needed a sugar fix first, to bolster his energy. Then he got an idea, wondering if the general’s men had any food in the Humvee. A second later, the vehicle’s center console was open and he found two power bars tucked under a pair of sunglasses. He ripped off the wrappers and wolfed them both down in seconds as he crept closer to Dorothy’s house on the right.

  His foot eased off the gas pedal a bit when he saw a white van parked along the curb in front of his mother’s house. The streetlights were still blazing, providing ample light to identify the vehicle—a campus security van. If its driver was someone he knew, it would make explaining the night’s events all that much easier.