Death Glitch

by Ken Douglas

  “ No wind and it’s not cold anymore,” Izzy said.

  “ So where’s the fog coming from?” Lila stopped. “Aliens?”

  “ You think?” Izzy said.

  “ Couldn’t be. That’s crazy talk.”

  “ You’re the one doing the talking.” It was quiet, save for their voices, there were no sounds out there on the ledge. No wind, not a hint of a breeze. No night sounds. It was as if they were in a vacuum.

  “ We should hurry this up,” Lila said.

  “ Yeah.”

  Lila started moving faster, pulling Izzy along with her as the fog started closing in, blacking out the city lights below.

  “ Would you look at that?” Mouledoux stared out into the fog, which was rolling in thick and fast.

  “ I better get Manny.” Peeps left the room.

  He didn’t know how, but all of a sudden Mouledoux knew Isadora Eisenhower and Lila Booth were coming in through the back. Manny Wayne had said it was impossible, but somehow they were going to do it. Cliff, dogs, electric fence, him and Peeps at the window, it made no never mind. That’s the way they were coming and somehow the fog was aiding them.

  Keeping his eyes glued on the back, Mouledoux saw the fog stop just short of the house and he couldn’t shake the thought that it was alive. There was something going on here bigger than Isadora Eisenhower and the Fountain of Youth she’d apparently discovered or stumbled upon, whichever, it made no difference, because her rebirth as a young woman was only a part of a bigger picture that he didn’t want any part of, especially now that he’d learned it was Peeps who’d taken out the lawyer Drake and doctors Jordan and Romero and not Eisenhower. True, she’d obviously done those hospital security guys at her home, but looking at it now he saw that it was probably self defense and Shaffer had had a heart attack, Eisenhower wasn’t responsible for that.

  She wasn’t a killer, not if you didn’t count defending your life and Mouledoux didn’t. That being the case, he didn’t have a dog in this fight and that was good, because this was a fight the Waynes, with their Blackwater thugs, concrete foxholes, dogs and firepower were going to lose, because those women had something on their side that Mississippi Bob Mouledoux was afraid of.

  What it was, he didn’t have a clue, God, ghosts, extra-terrestrials, some kind of voodoo or mother nature herself, Mouledoux didn’t know, but it was mighty powerful, whatever it was, and though he didn’t believe in any of that stuff, his mama hadn’t raised a dumb boy. He’d been confronted with some pretty compelling evidence that one of the former had a hand in this, or something equally as powerful.

  Those women were going to be here any minute and they were going to get those girls upstairs and take them out of here and anybody who tried to stop them was going to get dead and Mississippi Bob Mouledoux didn’t want any part of it.

  Chapter Twenty

  Izzy hadn’t seen such thick fog in Northern Nevada ever. But as a child, she’d grown up near the beach in Southern California, so she was familiar with fog and the eerie feeling of being caught in it.

  Her mind went back to a time when she was fifteen years old. She’d been walking the neighbor’s collie, Skipper. It was a Sunday evening and it had just turned dark. They were crossing the baseball diamond in Jose San Martin Park, when the fog rolled in. It was December, three days before Christmas and the park had been deserted, save for her and the dog. It was as if they were alone in the world. She’d been both frightened and exhilarated.

  She’d been cold that night in the fog, enveloped in the clammy wetness of it, afraid because she didn’t know which way to go, exhilarated because she felt like she could do anything she’d wanted out in the middle of centerfield-dance, strip naked, make a fool of herself-and nobody would see, so she’d shucked her clothes and swayed nude to an imaginary song, goosebumps peppering her body, while the dog sat patiently, waiting for the song in her head to end.

  And when the song was over, she’d put her clothes back on, gave the dog his head and let him lead her home. That was one of her favorite memories, one she’d revisited often as her cancer had progressed.

  Izzy remembered that fog. It was an alien thing.

  “ Lila wait,” she said.

  “ We’re almost there,“ Lila said. “Just a little further and we’ll be at the top.” They’d been going steadily up hill, not at a very steep grade, but up. And the ledge had widened, so Izzy was feeling safer, even though the snow had started to come down harder, but it had stopped with the fog.

  “ This isn’t right,” she said.

  “ What?” Lila said.

  “ This fog.”

  “ It is strange, but it’s a good strange. It’ll give us cover.”

  “ No, it’s more than strange. This isn’t like fog. It’s dry, like it’s sucking the moisture right out of the air. That’s the opposite of fog. Fog is wet and fog is cold. It’s not cold anymore. And what happened to the snow?”

  “ Izzy, this isn’t the time or place for this. We’ve come here to do a job. Let’s just do it. We’ll sort out all this strange shit after. Okay?”

  “ Alright,” Izzy said and again she followed Lila, keeping close, because the fog, or whatever it was, seemed to be getting thicker.

  “ We’re here,” Lila said a couple minutes later. Then, “They’re still here, after all this time.”

  “ What?”

  “ My rebar ladder,” Lila said. “My beau put these in, you know, the guy I was telling you about who helped build the electric fence.” Lila raised a hand overhead, grabbed onto a rung that seemed to be coming out of the cliff face. “It’s only about ten feet up, then we’re at the top and just about in Manny’s backyard.”

  “ You weren’t sure this ladder would still be here?”

  “ Not a hundred percent, but the odds were pretty good. After all, it was built by a lovesick young man who wanted to see his girl, who was a virtual prisoner in the castle.”

  “ The ladder could have been discovered and taken down.”

  “ But it wasn’t, when we get to the top, you’ll see why.” Lila put her foot in the bottom rung, started up and was at the top in short order. “Come on.”

  “ Right behind you.” Izzy grabbed onto the ladder and a chill rippled through her, her old fear of heights still raising its ugly head, but she fought it off, went up. At the top, Lila reached a hand out. Izzy took it and Lila pulled her up.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected, a palatial estate maybe, but not this. She was confronted with a dense forest of tall pines. Now she understood how Lila’s beau was able to build the ladder without getting caught. Wayne’s estate wasn’t here, so there had been no one to catch him.

  “ So what now?” Izzy said.

  “ Manny’s place is a ten minute hike that way.” Lila pointed into the trees. “He’s secure in the fact that his home can’t be approached from directly below the back, but we’re almost a quarter mile away here and off to the east. He couldn’t secure the whole damn mountain, that’s why the fence.” Lila started into the trees.

  Izzy followed and in seconds she was surrounded by the trees and though they were pine trees and though Christmas was just around the corner, the atmosphere was far from festive. In the fog, the trees seemed like ghostly apparitions, reaching out for her as she brushed past them. In another life, she’d’ve been terrified, but after surviving the last couple days, including the ledge out on that cliff, it would take a lot more than a few trees on a foggy night to frighten her.

  Ahead, Izzy saw gauzy strings of light penetrating the forest through the fog.

  Lila stopped.

  “ We’re here,” she said.

  They were through the forest and Izzy saw a hazy circle of light up ahead in the fog and she was struck with the thought that she was dead and supposed to go toward it.

  “ That’s it?” Izzy said, knowing it was.

  “ Yeah,” Lila said. “I thought we’d be belly crawling from here to the fence, then along it to the
cliff, trying not to get electrocuted, but with this fog, it’s looking like we can walk right up, invisible to everybody but the dogs.”

  “ You hope,” Izzy said.

  “ Hope what?”

  “ That we don’t get electrocuted.”

  “ Everything else is going our way, that will too.” She reached out to Izzy’s shoulder, gave it a gentle squeeze. “It’ll be okay, you’ll see.”

  “ I believe you.”

  “ Come on.” And side by side they started toward the light.

  Mouledoux got himself another cup of coffee. Took a sip of the steaming liquid as the Waynes, pere et fils, came into the kitchen followed by Peeps.

  “ That’s all we need,” Tucker said, looking out at the fog.

  “ What do you make of it?” Mouledoux said.

  “ It’s fog, that’s all.” Manny Wayne had a monster of a weapon.

  “ A Dirty Harry gun,” Mouledoux said, sidetracked by the pistol. “A Smith amp; Wesson Model 29.”

  “ You know your guns.”

  “ I do,” Mouledoux said. “Four inch barrel, forty-four Magnum. Rare, hard to get.”

  “ It’ll kill what I hit,” Manny said.

  “ That it’ll do,” Mouledoux said. Then, “It’s weird, this fog, the way it just stops there. It moved in and stopped. It’s clear here, but out there, fifteen or twenty feet into the back, it’s thick as pea soup.” He took another sip of his coffee, as if he needed it, because all his systems were firing on overdrive. “It’s that way on both sides of the house, too. Fog about twenty feet out, but the front is clear. It’s like it moved in, saw the house and surrounded it.”

  “ That’s absurd,” Tucker said.

  “ Could Lila Booth have done this?” Peeps said.

  “ Don’t be stupid,” Tucker said.

  “ Look at the dogs,” Peeps said. They were standing guard at the edge of the fog, silent sentries.

  “ They don’t seem nervous or afraid of it,” Manny said. “So I wouldn’t be either.”

  Then, as if they’d heard them, the dogs went into the fog and it was as if they’d vanished before Mouledoux’s eyes.

  If he hadn’t been a hundred percent sure he’d screwed up big time by coming here, he was now.

  A couple three yards from it and Izzy saw the fence and all of a sudden she saw the dogs on the other side of it.

  “ Wait,” Izzy said. She went to the fence, careful not to touch it. She went down on one knee. “You boys aren’t going to bother us, are you?”

  The dogs sat, noses close to the fence, but like Izzy, they were careful not to touch it. Fierce looking though they were, they seemed tame enough now.

  “ I don’t think they’re going to be a problem,” Izzy said.

  “ I don’t get it.”

  “ It’s like it was with Hunter,” Izzy said. “He took to me when he first saw me, like we had a bond. It’s that way with these dogs, too. Don’t you feel it?”

  “ Yeah.” Lila stared at the dogs, kind of smiled. “So you think we can just take them with us when we leave? I got a neighbor says he wants a big dog, maybe he’ll take two.”

  “ We could do that,” Izzy said.

  “ That’s great,” Lila said and Izzy could see the relief on her face. She’d been planning on shooting off her grenades, then shooting the dogs in the confusion and now she was visibly glad she didn’t have to. Killing the men, that she could do without compunction, but killing these dogs, that bothered her.

  Izzy got up off her knee, keeping her eyes on the dogs. It really was the same as it had been with Hunter, these dogs were hers to command now. Was it going to be that way with all animals, or just dogs? She shivered, because with Hunter it was almost as if he’d understood her and now she instinctively knew she had the same bond with these two dogs. She’d never thought of animals as intelligent before, she’d been wrong, they were, but in a different sort of way, a way humans couldn’t understand, but that somehow she was beginning to.

  “ Are you in lala land or what?” Lila said.

  “ I was, I’m back now.”

  “ Then let’s get this over with.” Lila followed the fence and Izzy followed Lila till it ended at the cliff face and what looked like a wall of solid grey fog. Somewhere out there was Reno, the most beautiful city in the world as far as Izzy was concerned, but she couldn’t see it. She could barely make out Lila, who was only a few feet in front of her as she reached around the last fence post, grabbed onto the chain link, pulling herself around, spider like, onto the fence.

  “ Holy shit!” Izzy said. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “ Sure you can.” Lila crab crawled on the fence around to the the other side and once safely on the ground, looking almost angelic in the mysterious fog, said, “Now you.”

  “ Yeah, now me,” Izzy muttered. She moved to the cliff edge, stared out into the grey nothing, feeling that, despite the fog, a million eyes were on her as she grabbed a breath, reached around the insulated post, grabbed onto the chain link as Lila had done and pulled herself around, jumping off into the nothing fog, pulling herself onto the fence, even as the weight of the duster and all the gear she was carrying threatened to pull her off and to her death below.

  Cold lightning jacked from the base of her neck to her tailbone, turning into hot electricity, shooting back up her spine to the very animal center of her brain, where it landed like ice. The fingers of her left hand, holding onto the chain link, were scalding hot and freezing cold at the same time as she hung by one hand in the nothing.

  Panicking, she flayed wildly with her right hand and feet as she felt her grip loosening. She was going to fall.

  “ Izzy!” Lila shouted. “Focus!”

  “ Did you hear that?” Tucker Wayne said.

  “ It’s Lila,” Manny said. “I’d know her voice anywhere.”

  “ But where did it come from?” Peeps said. “The back, the front, inside the fence or out? It sounded like it just came out of the fog, like it was everywhere.”

  “ Your ears are playing tricks with your head,” Tucker said. “They’re out front, where else could they be?”

  “ He’s right,” Manny said. “Let’s get out there.”

  “ What about us?” Peeps said.

  “ Good question,” Manny said. “I’d half thought Dr. Eisenhower would call and come up here in a civilized fashion. We’d talk, she’d work with us and in the end, everybody would get what they want.” He looked toward the floor, shook his head, as if he were speaking about a child who’d failed to mind, like he was about to spank it. “But she’s obviously turned Lila to her side. How I don’t know, because I’d thought Lila was loyal. I’ve done everything for that girl.”

  “ I never really liked her,” Tucker said.

  “ Oh stop,” Manny said. “You’ve wanted to fuck her ever since I took her in, but she saw through you and wouldn’t have any of your bullshit.”

  Mouledoux heard respect and maybe even a little love in Manny’s voice when he talked of Lila Booth and he also heard the derision he felt toward his son. But as much as he seemed to care about Booth, he was willing to throw her to the wolves to get Eisenhower’s secret.

  “ Fucking and liking are two different things,” Tucker said.

  “ Yeah, yeah.” Manny waved a hand in front of himself, dismissing Tucker as he turned toward Peeps. “Coming up through the back isn’t possible. They’re out front. How they plan on getting in, I don’t know, but Lila’s brilliant, she’s got a plan.”

  “ So,” Peeps said, “you want us up front with you?”

  “ No, we’ve got the front covered, but there is that one in a million chance Lila could figure a way to get in through the back. You two stay here.” He turned to go, stopped, turned back to face Peeps. “Besides, we need somebody in the house in the unlikely event they get in. Leaving the house empty would be just plain stupid.” Again he shook his head. “I’d planned on staying inside myself, with a couple of my men, but wi
th the communications out and this fog, I need all my men outside, but someone’s gotta be the last line of defense with me, so it looks like you two are it.”

  “ You’re staying in the house?” Tucker said.

  “ Yes, if Lila gets in, I want to be here to greet her.”

  “ What about me?”

  “ You’ll be in charge out front.”

  “ Alright.” Tucker seemed to swell before Mouledoux’s eyes and it seemed to him that perhaps Mansfield Wayne kept a tighter reign on his son than people realized.

  “ I’ll keep watch from the living room window,” Mansfield said, “which covers the right side of the house and Peeps, on second thought, you should come up front with me and take the den on the left side. Fog or no, if those women get past the men out front, we should see them. As far as Lila is concerned, shoot to kill. Wound Eisenhower if you have to, but I want her alive.”

  “ Got it.” Peeps seemed to be puffing up like Tucker had only a few seconds ago. What was it with this frail old man that made people turn themselves into lapdogs? Was it the money? Peeps had been a good cop once, now he wasn’t. Mouledoux found it hard to believe he’d been bought for just dollars.

  “ You’ll be alone back here, Bobby,” Mansfield said and that reconfirmed everything Mouledoux had been thinking. They didn’t expect a threat from the back and that’s where Manny had wanted him. Old Manny Wayne didn’t trust him and come morning, if he’s successful tonight and gets his hands on Eisenhower and her secret, his fate was going to be the same as Lila Booth’s.

  “ Right,” Mouledoux said.

  “ Don’t think I have you back here because I don’t trust you,” Manny said, almost as if he’d been reading Mouledoux’s mind, “because I do. Peeps vouched for you and that’s good enough for me.”

  “ Okay.” Mouledoux wasn’t believing a word coming out of the old man’s mouth.

  “ It’s just that I trust my men more. They’ve been with me a long time.”

  “ I understand,” Mouledoux said.

  “ Okay, let’s get ready.” Manny turned to go. “Be on your guard, Tucker.”