by Milt Mays
“Flesh wound.”
“Jabril?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice claws, huh?”
“Impressive,” She pursed her lips “You got a phone?”
“In the back seat of the car. Satellite phone plugged into the cigarette lighter. Press two for Alex.”
“Any water?”
He smiled. “Lots of it, cold and fresh. Only a few miles back.”
She smiled.
He pushed on his belly and winced. “I think there are a few bottles in the back seat.”
She walked to the RX-7, the car Alex had given Alexis. Dan was lying in the back seat. He looked like he had on a dark-blue, down straitjacket, arms wrapped tightly around him. His knees were pulled up and his face scrunched shut.
“Dan, you okay?”
No answer. No movement.
She looked him over. No blood. She felt his carotid pulse. Strong but fast.
“Dan!” She shoved him.
He rolled an inch at her shove and fell back, stiff and responsive as a dead tree.
She yelled out the door, “Sam, is Dan okay? He’s not moving.”
“Arms wrapped around himself, eyes squeezed shut?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s not physically hurt. Kind of like an autistic kid who lost his best puzzle. Only it wasn’t a puzzle, it was Jeff. He’ll be okay in a little while.” He paused. “Find the phone?”
She hunted around the seat and found the satphone and a black briefcase, pushed Dan’s legs aside and opened it. Glock.
“Got the phone and your Glock.” She left the phone but took the Glock, stood up quickly and did a three-sixty check. No Jabril. She stuffed the Glock between her pants and the small of her back.
She looked back inside the RX-7. There was a towel in the back seat and three bottles of water. She grabbed them and walked back to Sam, opened one bottle and gave it to Sam, then squatted down. “Let me put this towel over your belly and wet it down.” He let her, though shivered as she poured.
She walked to Tony, took off his coat and his shirt and came back and laid the dry part of the coat over the wet towel. She ripped off a long piece of non-bloody shirt, folded it into a long wrap, slipped it around Sam’s lower back, pulled it tight and tied it off, the knot to Sam’s side.
“Thanks, Rache. Forget the surgeon. I’m good to go.” His words were weak and his face gray.
“Right. Let’s get you into the car, out of this cold wind.”
Getting his arm around her neck, the other hand holding the bandage on his abdomen, and her pulling and lifting with her good right arm, Sam stood. She helped him into the front seat of the RX-7, closed the door, and ran around to the driver’s seat and got in. She retrieved the satphone and punched in the number.
Alex answered on the first ring. “Hey, Sam. Where you at, buddy?”
“Sorry to disappoint, but it’s me.”
“Rachel. I thought you were—Lorna said . . .”
“I got away. But Jabril has Alexis and Jeff. And he now has some nasty claws. He sliced Sam open at the gut. Sam’s alive but needs a surgeon. Dan Trotter is here but useless. We’re sitting inside the RX-7 and could really use your help.”
There was a long pause.
“Are you there, Alex?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I was starting up my tracking software. I’m in the truck, inputting the RX-7’s locator.”
She waited.
“Got it. Should be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“Hurry. I love you.”
The line went dead. The satphone screen showed only two satellites and one bar.
“Sam, Alex said he should—” But Sam was unconscious. She twisted around to see Dan. Nothing changed. What a worthless dweeb. A sad, worthless dweeb.
She peered out the windshield, searching for Jabril’s van. Nothing. A gust of wind buffeted the car. High thin clouds had formed and the bright sun had been replaced by a gray-white curtain. To the west, ominous low clouds were rolling in. There was frost forming on the windshield. She turned the key to the ignition and twisted the fan to full, the heat to max.
She opened her window a crack to be able to hear if Jabril’s van returned. Not knowing Sam’s Glock, she began a very fast field check, every few seconds stopping to listen and look outside.
Chapter 51
Jabril hoped the VW van would withstand a crash through the walls of the outbuildings. Those buildings had to be the key, and ramming the van through the walls would get him inside fast. As he got closer, the shooting from the machine gunner in the Humvee behind him stopped, confirming his suspicions. Those buildings held valuable cargo the shooters did not want to risk hitting.
He mashed hard on the accelerator. Another thought barged in: How could he use the daughter and her lover as bait if he rammed the building and killed them?
He braked hard, but it was too late. He jumped into the back, hugging both bodies to him.
The impact threw him forward against the back of one seat. Something smashed his skull. Again. The girl was beating the back of her head against his forehead. He saw grainy fog and everything spun. He tried to grab her more firmly, but his arms did not respond, his thoughts muddy.
She smashed the back of her head on his forehead again and wriggled out of his weakening grip. He shook his head, gritted his teeth, willed his change.
Nothing happened.
His vision cleared, though. She twisted her head and calmly gazed at him with eyes so green they seemed to fluoresce. He began to relax. With a deft twist of her body, she kicked at his head with both feet.
A trick, he thought. He must not look into her eyes. He moved his head in time to take her feet on his neck and shoulder. His claws grew, shoulders swelled, thinking cleared.
A sound of ripping tape and her hands were free. He pounced on her, but not before she grabbed his head with both hands and tried to look into his eyes. He twisted away, almost ripping one of his ears off. He grabbed her wrists. She twisted out. Again, and she twisted out once more.
He pinned her wrists over her head, using all his strength. She wriggled but his grip held.
He could not help but glance into her eyes. So beautiful, and he felt so . . . She did not falter at his imposing stature, fangs hanging over his lower lip, and eyes probably glowing red. Warmth exuded inside his head and his mouth relaxed.
She struggled again and nearly twisted away. He looked away from her and held her wrists tightly above her head against the side of the van. “You have your father in you. I can see that.” His voice was an eerie octave lower than usual and sounded robotic, even to his ears.
Blood dripped down his jaw from the tear on his left ear. He licked it. The roaring engine and rattling of the Humvee’s accoutrements of battle grew closer.
She struggled harder. He head-butted her as hard as he dared—a shame to hurt someone so beautiful. Her eyes rolled up and her body relaxed.
He opened the side door to the van, and with her under his left arm, the boy under his right, he pivoted outside and stood by the van, stepping backwards toward the tin building, while holding their bodies in front of him as a shield.
The Humvee stopped abruptly; the soldier in the turret pointed the M50 skyward and watched Jabril. Jabril quickly backed up against the outbuilding and leaned against it. The wall bent inward like a mattress, not metal. There was a weird tingling in his shoulder. The appearance of a solid wall was, like the door to the ranch, another falsity.
He kept the girl under his arm but dropped the boy and punched his right hand at the wall. After an initial feeling of resistance, similar to what he imagined punching through soft balsa wood would feel like, his hand disappeared; yet his wrist was enveloped in the outer wall, as if it was some type of liquid, and the wall seemed to hold his hand. Pulling his hand back slowly didn’t work. It was trapped. He wrenched his hand out. The place where it had been tented outward, like he had taken his hand out of soft, sticky mud. Then the wall surface re
formed as if nothing had happened.
The walls would resist slow deformation, but fast trauma could penetrate.
The sound of the Humvee doors opening brought his attention away from the wall. Two soldiers got out. They had M4 rifles held ready, but did not shoot. They were fanning out, one left, the other right, probably trying to get a better angle to shoot him and avoid hitting the building. There was something very important inside.
He slammed his claws into the wall above his head and ripped down to the level of his shin. The wall parted; not as a piece of cloth, flapping and loose, but as a piece of plastic to a red hot knife, the edges dripping but retaining the shape of the wall.
He grabbed the boy and jumped through the gap. The gap was narrow, even for him, much less holding two others. He slipped through, but the melted sides of the rent started to close around them. Similar to birthing two calves in his boyhood, he gripped an arm around their waist, and pulled; their butts, thighs and torso visible, but the rest still inside the mother’s womb. The womb did not want to release its hold. His breathing came in labored gasps. He was losing them. Pull harder or the self-repairing wall would cut them in half.
He wrenched hard and they popped through, toppling him onto his butt. The sides of the wall slipped off them like lips off a popsicle. After an initial flap, the fingers of the wall laced and webbed between the parted edges, and healed the rent.
His breathing came in deep gasps and he sat up, prepared for the soldiers. The soldiers were visible for an instant in the narrow gap. But they were getting back into the Humvee. The gap closed, the wall unblemished.
Jabril let his captors go and they rolled to their sides. He heaved labored breaths in and out, then stood and surveyed his surroundings.
It was warm, almost hot, and the air was dense with humidity and smelled of earth, animals and foliage. Chuckling of pigs and small animals gave an undertone to the occasional low of cattle. This was definitely the GMO farm. The walls, in addition to being impermeable to most environmental hazards, were apparently great insulation, both for sound and temperature.
There was no direct sunlight, but inside it was bright as day. On closer inspection of the walls, tiny strands hung inches inside the outer walls, like the plastic filaments that prevented air-conditioning from oozing out of a building in Dubai. He had apparently fallen through these strands and not noticed them, but now it was obvious. Though they were almost transparent, they were a thin film between him and the walls. And their phosphorescent glow helped light the inside.
He looked at his hands: The claws had retracted. He felt exhausted, and knew he had returned to his weakling, human state. Yet, in a way he was glad. With his curiosity piqued, he wanted to explore, not destroy.
He touched the thin sheet of phosphorescence and it resisted his fingers. It took both his hands and great effort to pull apart the veil. It parted with flashes, like an electric current, but he felt no shock. This must be a magnetic field, a second barrier to normal environmental flotsam blown against the walls. He could imagine blown dirt or hail being easily resisted by the outer wall, but a larger clump possibly blowing through and hitting this curtain and falling. The vital plants and animals inside were protected better than any timber or metal. Even a tornado would have difficulty penetrating. It had been hard enough for him, and he had never had problems breaching even thick stone walls.
The daughter moved a leg and groaned. It was time for him to leave.
He attempted to heft them, but could not in this human form, so he dragged them down the central path of the greenhouse. His heart pounded and his breathing came in gasps as he released them and stood and surveyed the inside. There were rows and rows of wheat and corn in various stages of ripeness, some corn with foot-long ears as thick as his arm, and heads of wheat looking more like small grape clusters. Crates of mice similar to the ones he’d stolen from the medical school in Wisconsin were stacked in twos along the right wall. He stopped, realizing at once he must go back for those mice and plants in the van or he would have nothing.
The daughter started wriggling. He kicked her head, not trusting his weakling arms, but hating to kick this lovely woman. She lay still. He put a hand on her face, tracing her smooth jaw and chin with a finger. “I am sorry, my beauty. It will not always be this way.”
He laid the boy on top of her and started back to his van. If the Humvee and soldiers had left, he could reclaim his treasures and be back in minutes.
No, he couldn’t. He leaned over, hands on knees, catching his breath. Not unless he could change to the form he desired. And, even if he could, it would be risky. There were no windows through this odd wall to check and see if the Humvee had gone, or if they had left a soldier to search the van. The time might be better spent preparing for the soldiers that were undoubtedly coming in another way.
And then Jabril felt Alex breathing on his subconscious, hot, heavy and close.
Chapter 52
Rachel leaned back in the driver’s seat of the RX-7, stared at the depressing gray sky, and surveyed her situation, trying to shuck off the hopelessness. She rolled her injured shoulder and gingerly probed the stab wound with her fingers. Sore, occasional flashes of pain, crusty, dried blood, but nothing wet—not as serious as she initially thought. The bleeding had stopped and the fatigue was less: probably not from blood loss, but bottoming out after the adrenaline surge. Getting warm helped, too. She had an operable Glock, another M4 in the back and her good arm and hand worked well. Sam had a knife she could use. All good points.
Now for the bad. Sam was not moving. She shook him but all he did was frown. He was breathing fast. She palpated his carotid pulse: rapid, but strong. Probably going into shock. No peeps out of Dan in the back seat. Yeah, those bad points didn’t help the depressing day.
The worst point, the one that made her put the car in gear, was Alexis. She was with that monster. And where the hell was Alex?
She accelerated. She was going to get her daughter. Alex would have to catch up. Jabril may be strong, fast, and heal quickly, but bullets still hurt him. If she sprayed enough, hit the right organs, and this time, like Rocca had suggested, cut the asshole’s head off while he was down, it would end. And there was no General Hanson to keep Jabril alive. Or torture him more.
The car bounced over a pothole. Sam groaned and his eyes fluttered open. “What’s going on?”
“I’m getting Alexis.”
His eyes closed, and a subtle but definite smile crossed his lips, his response barely audible. “You go girl. You go.”
He was going into shock but still putting Alexis first. She wanted to kiss him, turn the car around and go back to find a doctor at Realfood. They surely had IV fluids. They could save him. But Sam would never have it, especially if he knew about Alexis and her special genes. He would want to save Jeff, too, knowing their kids would start a new world, end the long history of human hatred and killings. Alexis and Jeff were the hope they needed. No way could Jabril ever force his seed into Alexis.
The car nearly flew. She needed music, Whitesnake or Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin. The road sound and wind against the windows was deafeningly mellow. The download selections probably only held music Alexis liked, the New Age headbanger stuff or those weird new twangy flute instrumentals. She touched the screen and smiled at the displayed albums. Like mother, like daughter. She tapped a Whitesnake choice, cranked the volume, and sang along at the top of her lungs, “Here I Go Again.”
Before the song ended she topped a rise and saw the ranch. The VW van came into view next to a long gray outbuilding. The van, the place Jabril had—her foot let up on the accelerator. To the left, almost a city block further, at the other end of the long outbuilding, a Humvee was visible, driving the other way. Red brake lights shone, soldiers jumped out, and they were enveloped by the gray building.
She stomped on the accelerator, hurtling toward the van . . . closer, closer. She had to get Alexis. When it looked like she would ram the van, she st
omped on the brake, shifted into low gear and pulled up hard on the emergency brake. The car engine growled. The tires skidded and when she was sure the car would stop a few feet from the van, she let go the wheel and grabbed the Glock. She was out of the door before the RX-7 came to a halt. Where was Alexis? More importantly, where was Jabril. The side door of the van yawned open but she could not see inside.
She quickly glanced at the back seat of the RX-7. The M4 was not visible. It must have slid under the seat when she stopped so suddenly. Damn! To kill Jabril she would definitely need more than the Glock. She had to get the M4. If only she hadn’t hurried so.
Keeping her eye on the van, she reached and patted the floor. No M4. She had to have it. She listened and looked at the van. Nothing. All it would take was a second or two.
She turned her back to the van and leaned across the seat, stretching and looking for the gun, knowing Jabril would jump out of the van and slice her as he had Sam.
Chapter 53
Jabril was torn between staying with the girl and the boy, finding out the secrets of the animals and plants in the building, or going for the plants and mice he’d taken from Milwaukee. Yet, there was no way around it. He had to get the mice and plants left under the van’s rear couch. They were the mistakes. If he couldn’t get Rachel, they were the key.
Now to change back. He thought of fighting, of being angry at Alex.
His fingers remained human, his arms scrawny and teeth flat. He wanted to sit and rest. He was starving. Nothing to eat in almost a day. The fuel he’d had last night was gone. In order to change, he must have food.
Seconds surged by like a waterfall of time. Food.
An unconscious act of licking his lips. A taste of dried blood. Probably splatter from Sam or the big man. Delicious. He looked back at the boy. Meat. But how? He had nothing to tear with. His teeth were not capable. Maybe there was a knife around here.
He searched and found more than he needed and only steps away.