by Shirl Henke
“Probably hasn’t been turned on in so long the connection’s rotted,” Matt said, not really caring since he was too tired to press a remote button—assuming the ancient equipment even had one.
Sam checked the bathroom window and the front door lock, then opened the door adjoining to her room, a clone of the first one, except for the wall trophy. “Good. I couldn’t sleep with her staring down at me,” she said, pointing to the deer on the wall in the other room.
“Him. It’s a buck, Sam. Antlers, you know? Sort of a symbol of other things they can’t mount on the walls.”
“Around here I wouldn’t count on it,” she shot back. “Let’s catch a few Zs, then hit the road. I’ll set the alarm for six.”
Several hours later, Sam and Matt slept soundly. Neither was aware of the Jaguar XJ6 that pulled into the parking lot, its powerful engine a low, even purr as Elvis Scruggs cut the ignition. He wore a big grin as he slipped quietly out of the vintage car and reached under his jacket with one big hand. He withdrew a large shiny knife concealed in a sheath.
After studying the dark, silent motel to be certain no one was stirring, he moved soundlessly toward the white van, parked directly in front of the room where Sam slept.
Chapter 13
The sound was enough to raise the dead. Loud, earsplitting and ugly. Sam bolted upright in the middle of the rumpled grayish sheets, disoriented, her eyes gritty from hours spent negotiating twisty back roads in impenetrable darkness. “What the hell—” She rubbed her temples, certain her head would split apart like a ripe melon if that noise didn’t stop.
Then from the other room Matt’s voice called out, “Shut off the damned alarm, will you! Shit, I’ve heard less horrible sounds coming from a slaughterhouse!”
She groped across the lumpy mattress and found the culprit, practically smashing it as she punched every button and dial on it until the buzzing stopped. “Thank you, all the saints, I’m not naming any favorites these days,” she muttered, scooting to the edge of the bed where she dangled her legs.
Faint streaks of pale light filtered in from a crack where the drapes separated, hanging unevenly on their rod. Six in the morning. Time to hit the road again. She’d been doing retrievals for how long now? “Too damn long,” she said to the empty room. Behind the wall she could hear the shower being turned on. The rusty plumbing protested with a vibrating screech that reminded her of a dentist’s drill.
Great way to start the day. She climbed out of bed and dug through the small overnight bag, pulling out her robe. Before she showered herself, she’d have to check on Farley, then let Matt take over that chore. The kid was too weak to hurt a fly. No sense having him stink up her van by depriving him of bathing privileges.
She walked into the adjoining room and looked over at his thin body stretched across the mattress, one arm cuffed to the bed frame. That was a precaution she always took with retrievals. Remembering Matt’s reaction the first time she’d cuffed him, she suppressed a grin. “Good morning, Farley. Sleep okay?” she asked as he blinked at her.
That glazed look was still in his eyes. Not much food in his system to counteract the drug. She sat down beside him. “Let me take a look at you, see if you’re all right,” she said.
“I’m fine, honest,” he said, trying to scoot away as if embarrassed to have a woman see him up close wearing only pajamas. The cuffs stopped him.
She reached down and unlocked them, then took his hand in hers and measured his pulse. Fast but even. “How about I get us some breakfast?” she asked.
“I’m so starved I could eat that poor creature on the wall, antlers and all,” Matt said from the bathroom door. “I’ll go for breakfast while Farley showers. I saw some vending machines in the registration area last night.”
Within ten minutes Farley was showered and Matt had set out big paper cups of coffee—decaf for the boy—packages of cake doughnuts white with powdered sugar and chocolate cupcakes. “The filling tastes like sweetened shaving cream,” she said over a mouthful.
“Sorry. All the chef had to offer—the automated chef, that is,” he replied cheerfully, chowing down.
After being certain they weren’t intent on poisoning him, Farley ate a doughnut and drank some decaf. “C-can I have a pill now?” he asked, not for the first time since the alarm had awakened them.
Sam dispensed another half of one. Within thirty minutes they were back on the road. They made it about a dozen miles on the twisting mountain road when the van gave a sudden lurch and the power died. Sam fought to hold the wheel on a sharp curve, steering the Econoline to the berm. The drop-off directly to her right was a good fifty feet over a steep rocky incline sprinkled with scrubby evergreens.
Matt looked out the passenger window and shuddered. “Damn, I hate heights.”
“I though you were a Spacefleet Commander,” Farley said. “How can you be afraid of a little mountain?”
Matt gave Farley a stern look as he replied, “Obviously, you’ve never been aboard ship, Ensign. In space there is no sense of height. And for planetary exploration, we use Centarian Crawlers—not clunkers like this.” He turned to her. “Any idea what happened?”
“Let me check the engine, sir,” she snarled, getting out of her beloved Econoline.
He could hear her curse as she stomped to the side door and opened it, yanking her tool chest out from where she kept it behind her seat. “Can you fix it?” he asked.
“Timing belt’s busted. I don’t usually keep those in stock,” she snapped, still angry at the insult to her van. “Hand me the first aid kit from under the dash.”
“You gonna give the van CPR or something?”
“Funny, Commander, but then you spacers don’t know jack about internal combustion engines that run earth clunkers, do you? Don’t teach that at Spacefleet Academy, do they?” She slammed the door.
He got out of the car with the first-aid materials she always carried and watched, mystified as she used a screwdriver and wrench to remove a rubber belt from the engine. She held it up for his inspection. “What am I looking at—wait a minute, that’s been cut partway through,” he said with an absurd burst of pride. But his grin immediately faded. “Sabotage.”
Sam had already pulled her .38 out of her fanny pack and was eyeing the road. “You know how to use this. Watch out while I jerry-rig the engine.”
He took the gun and stood guard. Not a sound broke the silence on the deserted highway for a minute or so. Then one junker truck filled with watermelons wheezed past them. “So much for down-home Samaritans,” he muttered as the ancient tub disappeared around the bend.
By then Sam pulled a roll of narrow elastic athletic bandaging from the kit and measured it against the belt, allowing for flex. “Not gonna last long, but if the map’s right, we’re only a couple of miles from the next burg.”
In spite of their predicament, Matt had to laugh as he watched her. “You’re using an Ace bandage in place of a running belt?”
“Timing belt. Yeah. It should hold until we can get to what passes as civilization around here.” She had the thing rigged in a couple of minutes.
Matt held his breath as she started the car. The engine sputtered, then caught, but just as he was ready to let out a whoop of elation, a big maroon Jag pulled into sight, headed directly toward them.
“It’s El! I knew he’d come for me!” Farley exclaimed, unfastening his seat belt, prepared to jump from the speeding van.
Matt seized the boy by his shirt collar, yelling to Sam over the noise of the engine, “Can you lock his door so he can’t open it?”
“Done,” she replied. “Just watch him so he doesn’t hurt himself.”
“Him!” he echoed in outrage as the boy’s puny fist connected with his nose. Not much strength, but damn, it still hurt, reminding him of why he’d quit boxing in the army. He couldn’t stand getting his proboscis punched. Matt leaned over the seat and subdued Farley, who was wriggling like an eel. Finally the kid started panting in exhausti
on, too drug weakened to struggle further.
Matt suddenly realized they were in a desperate race and neither he nor Farley had on their seat belts. Bad. He used his long arms to strap the boy in, saying, “Don’t do anything stupid or you could get us all killed, you copy that?” When Farley nodded and turned around to watch the Jag gaining on them, Matt decided the kid was willing to take his chances on being rescued by his hero instead of battling his own way to freedom.
He turned around and fastened his belt as Sam took a curve on two wheels. “Jeez, look at that drop-off,” he said, shuddering. “Should I try to hit his tire?” he asked her.
“He’s not shooting at us,” she replied, her forehead creased in a frown of concentration as she caught up to the watermelon truck.
“He doesn’t want to hurt his meal ticket,” Matt replied.
“True, but I think I have a better idea,” she said, swerving around the old junker just as they leveled out on a stretch with a scenic turnoff space on the opposite side of the road, offering respite from the steep drop-off. She honked at the truck, then hit her brakes when she was only a dozen yards or so in front of him, all the while watching her side views to judge the distance between the two vehicles. Now, don’t let anyone come from the opposite direction…just yet.
The truck slammed on its brakes with a loud screech and started to swerve across the road toward the lookout turnoff rather than crash into her or the rock wall of the mountain. When the driver hit the gravel, his truck fishtailed in a circle as he cut the wheel to regain control. The flimsy tailgate’s rusted hinges gave way and a torrent of big ripe melons started flying over the highway, airborne until they smashed like bright crimson cluster bombs on the road.
Seeing the Technicolor catastrophe unfolding in front of him like Fourth of July fireworks, Elvis hit the brakes of his Jag. Sam sped onward, heading downhill toward another switchback in the road. The last thing she saw in her mirrors was the Jag skidding on the slick mush of mashed melons, twisting and turning onto the wide gravel ledge where it came to rest against the guardrail.
“Roman Numeral’s really gonna be pissed,” she sighed.
“You ever think there might be more money in drag racing than retrievals?” Matt asked her.
“Too dangerous,” she replied. “Now, how do we give him the slip?”
“You just did, and the slide, too.” Matt looked at the map. “Cornersburg is about a mile down the road.”
“Too far. He’ll be on us in a minute and I can’t keep up this speed or the jerry-rigged ‘belt’ will go out again.”
“Whoa,” Matt said, spotting an unmarked turnoff about fifty feet ahead. It quickly vanished into dense vegetation. “Turn there.”
Sam took the van onto what barely passed as a gravel road that twisted down the steep mountainside, leading to God knew where. Out of the back window, Farley, with a startlingly renewed burst of energy, started yelling at the top of his lungs, “El! El, I’m here, down here! Turn here!”
His high-pitched shrieking could’ve carried over the sounds of a jumbo jet during takeoff. Matt cursed and snapped off his seat belt, twisting around so he could grab Farley and clamp his hand over the kid’s mouth. Farley bit him. Matt withdrew his bloodied fingers with an oath. “Sit back and shut up or I swear on my great-aunt Claudia’s Cross of Lorraine, I’ll choke the shit out of you.”
“You’re no Spacefleet Commander,” Farley accused, sitting back with his arms crossed defensively over his skinny chest. “You’re a Klingoff agent.”
“And you’re a bratty kid. Crap, I’ll probably need a tetanus shot,” Matt groused.
“Will both of you just chill out until I can figure out where the hell we are?” Sam snapped after the van hit a big rut in the road and she bumped her head against the roof.
Being much taller and without a seat belt, Matt hit his head a lot harder. “Damn, watch it, will you? I’d like to walk away from this wreck with my brains still in my skull, not on the roof.”
“You’re in no danger since you haven’t got any to start with,” she said, pounding the steering wheel in frustration as they hit another pothole. “First those turkeys turn the door into a lunar landscape, then the timing belt gets cut and now the suspension’s shot. I’ll be lucky if I can sell my baby for salvage if this keeps up.”
They pulled out of the shadows of post oaks and kudzu, bouncing from the steep decline into a small clearing in the narrow valley. Only one building stood beneath a canopy of sugar pines. Perhaps stood was saying too much. It really sort of leaned together as if each warped, gray board was dependent on the kindness of its neighbor to hold it upright. The entire shack was just waiting for one swirl of wind or the removal of a single slat before the whole place went down like a row of dominoes.
“You think there’s a still inside?” Matt asked with a chuckle.
“Wouldn’t bet against it,” Sam replied. “I only hope whoever owns the place doesn’t take us for revenuers.”
Matt snorted now. “I bet no one’s inhabited that shack for a couple of decades.”
“You lose,” she replied as an old woman appeared in the door, which hung ajar at an off-kilter angle.
She walked the same way, leaning on a cane for support. It would have been difficult to guess her age—anywhere from seventy to a hundred. Wrinkles covered her sun-weathered face like the hide on an elephant’s rump. She had no teeth. Her hair was gray and frizzy, pulled haphazardly back in a braided bun. She might have resembled an older variation of the female figure in American Gothic if it weren’t for the pipe clenched firmly between her gums.
“Don’t get many visitors,” she said as Sam pulled up.
“I can’t imagine why,” Matt muttered beneath his breath. Ignoring his aching head and hand, he gave her his best Tom Selleck grin and climbed out of the van. “Howdy, ma’am. I’m Matt Granger and this is my wife, Samantha, and our—”
“Our patient,” Sam said, jumping out from the shot-up door.
“They’re Klingoffs in human disguise. Don’t let them fool you,” Farley said as he climbed out of the damaged vehicle. “It’s all a plot to take over Earth—”
The old woman looked at the boy’s flushed face, then back to Matt and Sam. “He—you know?” she asked, making a circling movement around her ear with one gnarled hand.
“Yeah, he thinks we’re all characters from Space Quest,” Sam replied.
“That one of them TV shows?” she asked with a frown. “I don’t hold with watchin’ that junk. Rots the brain. Why’d you come here? Not much of anybody does, ’cept for my boys.”
“Your boys?” Sam asked nervously, half expecting to see a bunch of hulking knuckle-draggers in bib overalls carrying double-barreled shotguns materialize from the underbrush.
“Got two sons. Grown now. Had a husband, too, but he’s gone to his reward.” They way she said it indicated the direction he’d gone.
“Your sons live around here?” Sam asked.
“Nope. Would you if you didn’t have ta?” She fussed with the pipe and relit it with a wooden match. Then she fixed them with shrewd dark eyes of an indeterminate color. “Like I said, I don’t get many visitors, specially ones driving shot up trucks.”
Sam almost corrected her and said it was a van, but decided Matt’s charm would work better. She let him handle this.
“We had an accident,” he said. “Someone wants to keep us from bringing Farley back to his family for medical treatment.”
“They want ta stop you bad enough to open up with one of them newfangled IMI or H & K assault weapons? Nasty things. Don’t hit what they aim for. Give me a good ole Mossberg .410 full choke any day. Knock a squirrel out a hickory tree at forty yards.”
“To be honest, I’m kinda happy they didn’t have one of those,” Matt said with a disarming grin. “How’d you come to know so much about modern weaponry?”
“Just cause I talk slow don’t mean I’m stupid,” she drawled. “I read Tom Clancy, ’n some other st
uff.”
“We didn’t mean to sound patronizing, Mrs.—?” Sam waited for a name.
“Flowers. Daisy Flowers. Ain’t that a good one. Usta be Daisy Grover till I met up with a slick-talking moonshiner named Bobby Ray Flowers. I never got to finish my school-in’,” she said with genuine regret.
“But I bet your sons did,” Matt ventured.
She nodded. “I seen to it. They’re good to me.” She appeared to take his measure, then turned to Sam. “Missus, you ’n your man ’n that boy look in a bad way. Come on inside and set a spell. It ain’t much, but I got fresh, cool well water, ’n a bite to eat.” With that she turned and hobbled up the single step into the shack.
Matt and Sam exchanged glances and shrugged. If Elvis had seen the cutoff, he’d have found them by this time. “Come on, Farley, we wouldn’t want to turn down Southern hospitality,” she said.
“El will turn you over to Spacefleet Intelligence for a mindmeld.”
“Ouch, that sounds bad,” Sam said. “What’s it mean?”
Matt sighed. “Didn’t you read any of the books I gave you? Earth’s Vulcant allies use the technique for probing inside an interrogation subject’s head.”
“You better watch it, buster, or I’ll check you into the same hospital with the kid,” she whispered. Farley ignored them, walking inside as if entering an alien spacecraft.
The cabin was a surprise to all three of them. Composed of two rooms, it was as neat and clean on the inside as it was ramshackle on the outside. The maple table and chairs in the center of the room and the hutch against the far wall appeared new. Fresh curtains in a sunny yellow print hung over the side windows. A small but comfortable sofa sat in front of a wall filled with bookcases. Its shelves contained everything from Charles Dickens to Tom Clancy.
“No sci-fi,” Farley said, perusing the titles.