by Milt Mays
Children cried somewhere and a low voice murmured, trying to comfort them. Feet shuffled. The camouflage netting caught a breeze and ruffled in a wave from the top, ending in wavelets that dispersed midway down. People shuffled and sat and stood and whispered. The dirt smell from the ground mingled with the smell of gasoline.
Jeff shrugged off Alex’s hand. “Where’s your truck?”
“Outside.”
How great that Alexis had her father here. Great for her. The sinking feeling he’d had for the last four years clenched his chest. He would never see his dad again. This cave would be his tomb.
He walked to the big cave’s entrance. The smell of gas and oil and dirt brought acrid phlegm to the back of his throat. Fouled beer and food would soon follow. That smell was deep in his memories, a war he had fought in another life. He wanted to leave, move on, get away from this fight. Find his dad and get back home. No more fighting. No more.
Alexis joined him and took his hand in hers. “We’ll find him. A few days are all we’ll be here. Don’t worry.”
Her touch made at least that side of him feel better. Like the poster of the right brain and left brain, he felt split in half. One side, the side she undoubtedly touched, wanted to turn and hug her, kiss her, stay and help. The other side was calculating, planning, already stealing a car and driving away, into the night, north and west. North and west.
“He’s not there anymore,” she said.
That stopped him. “What?” His voice again sounded like that young boy he was desperate to quit parading in front of her.
He shook her hand off, cleared his throat, wanted to spit, but swallowed the acidity. “Why not? He’s at home. That’s where my home is, close to Denver. I have to go.” Better. Not a little child, a man.
She started to talk and he stopped her with an open palm in her face. “Can you not do that? Let’s talk like real people. Quit reading my mind. I feel exposed, like a total mind slave to you. I can’t—I mean, it was cool at first. But now—we can’t go on like this.”
He wanted to look at her, peer into her delicious eyes, feel that warm bath all over. Wanted to, but wouldn’t. How could he love her after knowing her for only a day? He didn’t know her, any more than she knew him. Even with her mind thing. How could she ever love him? If she could see everything inside him, hell, if he could see everything again, fresh as the day he did it, he would find a bullet for his gun right now and blow his damn head off. This was just stupid.
She never moved. He could feel her waiting, watching the top of his head.
The crying children were down to one or two of them sup-supping, quick inhalations that were involuntary after a total breakdown.
He shook his head. “I don’t think you and me, you know—us—is a good thing.”
“How can love be bad?”
He kept his head down and kept wagging it side to side, watching the dirt. How could he measure up, a mere human, to this alien creature? No, not alien. Maybe the new generation of humans: powerful but always kind. Don’t forget beautiful and sexy.
“You’re upset about something. I’m not reading your mind. It’s obvious. You’ve changed since the attack. What’s wrong?”
He kept shaking his head, but he did not close his eyes. If he did, he would see it again.
“This is what two people who love each other do,” she said. “They share things, bad and good, mediocre and so-so, the best and the worst.”
He stopped moving his head. Maybe “us” could work. Tell her to not read his mind, ever, and then it would work. It seemed she could turn it off if she wanted to.
He looked at her. “Charlie’s dead.”
Her eyes pleaded with him. Acceptance. Patience. Waiting for something else.
“The thing is . . . he died because of me. He came to get me, to wake me up, and if he would have forgotten about me and run, he would be here now.”
He dropped his head. “I can’t do this again. The War keeps sticking me in bad places. It hurts. I have to leave. If I don’t I might lose my dad forever. He’s out there and I have to find him.”
Alex was next to the combine, talking to Charlie’s wife, Lorna, occasionally glancing back at them. Alexis said nothing and they walked back to the car, pulled out two sleeping bags and foam pads and spread them on the ground. They sat down and he looked at her. “Tell me where my dad is, please. Tell me and I’ll go there.” He heard the desperation in his voice, and didn’t care.
She cupped her hands around the curve of his jaw, leaned in and kissed him, her fingers gentle, her lips soft. It was a long kiss; she held it until he melted again. He gave in. Or did he simply know this was right? She was right. For him.
He hugged her tight and started to cry. There was no way he deserved any of her love. He’d killed people, left a girl pregnant, ran away from her and his mom and dad so he could be a hero. And then he had deserted his buddies in war. No way he deserved Alexis’s love. But she was giving it, over and over.
He cried for a long time, and must have missed her dad saying he was leaving.
Chapter 38
They’d been driving for over three hours, Rachel at the steering wheel, Sam in front, and once again, Dan relegated to the back seat. No problem. He was used to that. Not that he really liked it, but it seemed to be his place in life. Though, sitting next to these crazy, hissing, fanged mice was unnerving. Mice were supposed to be cute, not fanged and angry. Maybe they didn’t change with the moon, but they sure reminded him of werewolves. He put a blanket over them; they quieted and he could concentrate.
They got out once at a rest stop, all of them washing up quickly, Rachel changing into a gray shirt and tan pants. The green shirt and tight jeans were gone. That was good. Dan didn’t change. He liked his fleece top. That was good, too. Two good things. Now he could do his job on the computer.
They passed through Iowa City, or at least the multitude of green highway signs overhead and twinkling lights of the city to the south. Otherwise, the interstate was pretty much just a tunnel through darkness. The lanes had gone from two, to three, to four with exits, and were now back to two. It was his job to navigate using the 5G network on his computer. The 4G networks had only been going a few years when the ultra-high-speed 5G networks sprouted. It was expensive, but the CIA was paying, so what the hell. You want a state-of-the-art computer whiz? That’s what it takes.
After the last president was elected, everything got expensive, and the USA had migrated from middle class being most important, to the wealthy and their super lobbyists getting big business cranking. Ambrosia was one of the results; another was the oil and fracking industry pretty much taking over North Dakota, most of northern Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, and some new fields in Alaska. The biggest expense, the 5G network, connected all these super-wealthy who had to be constantly wired-in to make the most profits. Worked well for all the law enforcement and government agencies, too, as they were part of how the wealthy kept the others in the dark, literally—the rest of the U.S. only able to afford the slower, though still pricey, 4G networks, and having little power to run any electrical systems at night, including computers and lights.
Dan didn’t have the brain jacks that many of the wealthy had, implants in various parts of the frontal and occipital lobes that allowed them to become increasingly smarter, faster, and more efficient. That is, if they were jacked into a computer, or 5G network and Stratos. The Cloud had been replaced by a better storage network: Stratos, like the stratosphere above the clouds, tons more space, and so fast, light barely beat it. Even better, programs could go on calculating while there without disruption. A computer god, thinking.
“So what’s the deal on our route?” Rachel said. She had info that Ambrosia might be using Interstate 80 and 70 for their armada of combines in the next few weeks. Not for harvest but for some major maintenance or upgrades. Also, there were the tolls.
“You were right. Good you decided against getting your BMW in Chicago. First of all, t
his rental has the newest 5G antenna and jacks for my computer.”
Sam eyed him. “Not the real reason we got it.”
“I know. You prefer fast and fuel-efficient. But that little antenna will keep this machine moving, instead of stopped at roadblocks for days. You can take I-80 until before Omaha, then it’s back roads all the way to Lamar.”
Rachel looked at Sam. “You listening, cowboy? Omaha’s about three hours. I’ll be ready for sleep about then. Maybe you should snag some now.”
Sam turned to Dan. “What about the other thing, now that you’ve got the route figured?”
Dan held up a hand. “Wait. I need to know exactly what I’m getting into. You said we’re going to Lamar, Colorado because Rachel’s husband is there and the two of them can work faster together to figure out what is going on with the GMO mice and grains. I get the feeling there’s something more. Does this guy, Jabril, have anything to do with it?”
Sam looked at Rachel. She glanced his way, twice. The road hummed by. A scurrying noise came from the blanketed cage.
“Yes,” Sam said.
Dan gave Sam a flat smile and raised eyebrows. Of course.
Sam rubbed his forehead with two fingers. “There’s a major Ambrosia field lab near Lamar and we think Jabril is going there to produce more poisoned GMO food.”
Sam squinted his eyes at Dan. “There’s something else.”
Dan frowned at him.
“Jeff might be there.”
Dan sat back and closed the laptop. His feet started bouncing bent legs up and down so fast he thought of a piano bar in New Orleans, a black man tapping his fingers under a tray of coins, and what Dan’s knees would do to that same tray, a tambourine on speed. It was Pat O’Brien’s, the only time Dan had gotten drunk and danced with Marci. He smiled. Colors of the rainbow burst in his head with the prime 18181 floating around inside an apple-green balloon. Jeff was alive?
No. Sam was trying to get him to do his bidding. Jeff was dead. Dan frowned and raised one eyebrow at Sam.
“I know,” Sam said. “It was hard for me to believe, too. That’s why I didn’t say anything right away. In fact, I wasn’t going to say a word until we got there and saw him. But Rachel talked with Alex about an hour ago when you and I were taking a piss at that rest stop, and that’s what he said. He’s pretty reliable, too. Even knew you were with us.”
“How does he know it’s Jeff? Have him send a photo.”
“Alex wanted to, but they’re having a problem with Ambrosia right now. No Internet or 4G access, and they’re at war with the local Ambrosia goons. That’s another reason we’re going. We need you to tap into the Ambrosia field lab and disable their security so we can do damage before—”
“Before they kill Jeff,” Dan finished. Not again. He could not have this again. He had to get there. Whatever it took.
“How long do we have?” Dan said.
“If you could disable the security now, Alex could wreak havoc and give us time to get there and help.”
Dan opened the white laptop, started typing and said nothing else. Sam would understand his not talking. Some thought it rude, Dan’s lack of placating, time-wasting, unnecessary stupid little phrases like, “Okay, I’ll get started.” Not Sam. He would know. Sam and Dan were friends. Sam knew all about Jeff so Dan would help Sam. Now.
Sam laid his head back and was snoring almost before Dan connected to the Ambrosia security system in Lamar. An hour later, after many difficult firewalls, he was in. He figured out how to easily disable the north and east security gates. He nudged Sam’s shoulder.
Sam opened his eyes like he was never asleep, though his eyes stared at Dan a little too widely open.
“I can disable the security anytime you’re ready.”
Sam nodded and called Alex but could not get through. He ended the call.
Dan stared at the side of Sam’s face. Sam looked straight ahead. The car bumped and hummed along for a full minute by the computer clock. Sam glanced at Dan’s persistent stare, sighed and called again. Still nothing. Dan’s gaze did not waver, stuck on Sam, willing him to call again, now.
Sam looked at him. “Watching me won’t get Alex to answer, or his cell phone to work any faster. Why don’t you work on that other thing we need?
Rachel had given him three samples: a piece of mouse tail, one grain of the corn and one from the wheat. She had a portable atomizer that took each sample, broke it down almost to the size of DNA, then took electromagnetic photos of the vapor and sent it into their Stratos analyzer. They would have the results of the microanalysis in an hour or two. Or so she said. She’d used it all of five times, though it had worked well then. Five times. Whoop-dee-dang-doodle. What kind of scientist was she? In her series of somewhat under a thousand!
He took a deep breath, glared at Rachel, scrunched his face with his top two teeth showing and tried to look like one of the werewolf mice gnawing a sour bone. Her eyes got big and she gave him a look like he was crazy. He smiled without showing teeth. There. That felt better. Though, her five-case study was still all he had. She said it had showed not only the DNA sequence of the plants but the structure of the nano-coating as well, though she was not sure if the nano-part was read correctly. That was where he came in. The analyzer he used for his nano projects was also on Stratos and included the project he had sent to Ambrosia. He should be able to tell if they had used his coating.
Rachel had the forethought to grab normal mice and normal plant samples from the lab. They could use them for controls or test subjects. The initial plan was to send everything back to the D.C. lab, but now, thinking Jabril may be going to this lab, and with Alex and Jeff in danger, Dan told Rachel they would have to do things on the fly.
“Not really a problem,” Rachel said. “Been doing that for most of sixteen years anyhow. When I almost lost Alex, I became more . . . uh, self-reliant.”
“You mean bossy,” Sam said.
“So what? Gets things done. My way. Usually the best, anyhow.”
Sam grinned.
“Don’t give me that bullshit phrase, ‘It is what it is.’”
Sam sighed.
“You’re right,” she said and raised both eyebrows. “It is what I make it.”
Dan wished like hell life was that simple. Sometimes life threw you curves that you could not even come close to hitting. Or in his case, made you think you’d killed your own son. But now?
Sam snored.
Dan typed furiously. The car may have bumped a few times; there might have been bridges with rivers and trees outside; Sam may have snorted or awakened; Rachel may have swerved around a coyote in the road—Dan had no idea. His life for the last four years plus—the first half lost, the last half floundering—would all be worth it. Marci would be ecstatic. Dan could hug one of the few people in the world that he actually enjoyed hugging. More than enjoyed. Lived for. And he could introduce Jeff to his son. They would be a family again.
He stopped typing and the numbers dropped out of his head; the pastel curtains and balloons disappeared as if brushed aside by a black broom.
Krista was dead. How could he tell Jeff? His love was gone, died giving birth to his son. Jeff would be depressed, heartbroken, just at the time he should be most happy.
Sam turned around in the seat. “I don’t hear the pitter patter of little fingers. You’re not working. We gotta have that info by tonight.” Then Sam’s eyes narrowed, as if he noticed a change in Dan’s face.
“I’m thinking of the best way to approach this problem.” Dan looked at his watch. Another ninety minutes gone. Computers were time black holes. He yawned, feigning tiredness and disguising his sad face. “Kinda tired, too. Haven’t had a lot of sleep.”
“I’ve got one of the new energy drinks.” Sam mimicked the ad’s singsongy promo, “A four-hour hot shot in the brain pot.” His voice sounded chipper, but it did not match his doubtful look.
“No thanks. I’ll be okay once I get back into this program.”
>
And he would have been except for the roadblock ahead with men holding machine guns.
Chapter 39
Jabril’s luck was holding. Not really luck. He knew that, felt it so close that it calmed him. Like he was connected to a greater power. At the knock on the side door of the Vanagon, Jabril was prepared for the FBI. He opened the door, one hand behind him, claws bared. The man from the check-in booth smiled in the half-moonlit night, yellow-brown teeth except for one gold eyetooth glinting. “Sorry to wake you, sir, but your lights is on. Might run down your battery.”
“Oh, yes. Thank you. You are so kind.”
The man wore a brown baseball cap with a yellow “Brewers” logo on the front, his greasy black hair straggling out below. Bibbed jean coveralls layered atop a white tee shirt with brown, quarter-sized stains on the front. A hick. Jabril closed the door. It was dark outside; his cell phone read 12:30 a.m. He’d slept long enough. First, money, then more food, then drive as fast as possible.
Jabril turned off the van’s lights and peered through the windshield. The man walked slowly away, his left leg held out straight, as if the knee didn’t want to bend. He would have access to money, lots of it, judging by the number of trailers and RVs in the campground.
Jabril waited until the man was far enough away so he would not hear the door open. He exited the van. All the campers and RVs were dark. An owl hooted. A slight breeze rustled the trees, sparse as they were in the campground, though in the back, where the hick was heading, larger trees were thick, probably marking a stream or river. There was a faint smell of pot in the air. Jabril did not approve of marijuana. Alcohol was okay, but pot brought out too many gigglers. Ridiculous.
He followed the limping hick.
It didn’t take long. He waited for him to open the door to his trailer, then rushed in and pushed him inside, one hand around his head and over his mouth, the other pulling the door closed. He needled one claw into the top of the man’s Adam’s apple, at the vocal cords. The man tried, but he couldn’t scream. He proved to be strong in his arms, but not strong enough. His arthritic knee was a handy place to start with one razor-sharp claw. Jabril was learning, too. He left only a tiny spot of blood this time. Nothing on the carpet. After gaining the security code for the office, the password to allow him access to the money drawer, and the key, Jabril used two six-inch claws to pierce the man’s chest and heart. He wriggled the claws. The man struggled, lashed out with a fist and hit Jabril under the jaw. He staggered, withdrawing his claws. One more swing and the man went limp. Jabril checked for a pulse. Nothing. Once again, a small spot of blood on the bib overalls. A clean kill. The cops would not figure this out for a while.