The Snow Swept Trilogy

by Derrick Hibbard

  She thought of the kind bus driver who'd saved her life, and her heart ached. It was a dangerous road of thought to begin down, always ending with the cabin in the woods, and the many people who'd died in her wake. Her mom had always said that it wasn't her fault, that it was the people who hunted her who'd caused the loss of life. She didn't want to think about the cabin in the woods, or the bus driver, or the countless people who'd died, but pictures of them flashed in her mind. When you get close to someone, they might get hurt, her mom would say. The closer you are to someone, the less alert you are, the more chance they have of sneaking up on you. They'll get to you through the people you love. Because of your love, you'll want to stay, and they will never stop hunting you.

  Except she was sure that they didn't know where she was, or they would have moved in by now. Those shadow people, the hunters, they would have swarmed her hotel room, or Ryan's house, long before now.

  Mae was certain that she was safe, at least for the time being. She'd finally found the place that she had fantasized about for all those years on the run, the place where she would be safe and protected, the place where no one would find her, or know about her past. She was safe, and if she was safe, then Ryan was safe. For now, that was all that mattered.

  “Hello?” Ryan said again, interrupting her thoughts.

  “I'm still here, just thinking, sorry.”

  “Don't be sorry.” He was cheerful, and the cheerfulness rubbed off on Mae. He was always cheerful, even when her thoughts caused a darkness to come over her. She had caught a concerned look in his eyes a few times, but mostly, he was all smiles.

  “So, what are you thinking about?”

  “Oh, nothing really,” she said.

  “Come on,” he laughed, “you were in the twilight zone for a good 90 seconds!”

  “Yeah right,” she said, giggling herself. She tucked some loose strands of hair behind her ear and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Okay, really,” she hesitated, “I was thinking about you, and how I'm really glad that I met you. I feel safe ... and I haven't felt like that in a long time.”

  He didn't say anything, and Mae imagined that he was pacing the floor now--something she noticed he did when he was feeling nervous or embarrassed. He was like a little kid in that way, as he couldn't sit still for longer than a few minutes, especially when the social situation was awkward.

  “Really,” Mae said, “I don't think I would be alive if it weren't for you.”

  “Now you're just being dramatic.”

  “I am no more dramatic than any other girl.”

  “Yeah? Well, I didn't save your life. It didn't need saving. I just gave you place to stay in between gigs.”

  “Gigs.” She laughed again, and was again surprised at how easily the laugh had come.

  “Sounds like you had a good night’s sleep,” he said.

  “Well, I did,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. Mae ran her hand over the lush mattress and sighed. In reality, each night in that bed was in serious competition for the best night's sleep she could remember. Everything about the hotel room was nicer and more luxurious than she'd ever experienced. The carpet was softer, the hardwood furniture sleek and shiny, the television bigger and clearer, and the bed... the bed was like a cloud. Every night, after Ryan dropped her off at the hotel and she climbed into bed, it was like slipping between slices of heaven.

  “There you go, fading away again into that super awkward silence, where I sit here on the other end of the phone and you do whatever you're doing, or think whatever you're thinking.”

  She laughed and lay back on the bed, nestling into the covers.

  “So, what do you want to do today?”

  “Well,” he started, “I was thinking that we could have breakfast in the restaurant there. I heard they're serving up some browned-butter waffles brûlée. I'm in if you are.”

  “That sounds awesome.”

  “And, today I was hoping you'd come with me to visit a friend who just got out of the hospital.”

  “I didn't know you had any friends,” Mae said. She was teasing him, but immediately felt bad for saying that. She knew that he had a life outside of entertaining her, and she wondered again why he spent so much time with her.

  “Believe it or not,” he said. “And this friend has been through the ringer. A terrible accident a few weeks ago, and from what I understand, he is just now able to get around on his own. It's a pretty crappy situation, and I don't even know if he will want any visitors, but it might be a nice drive. If you don't want to—”

  “No, I'll go,” she said, interrupting him. “What kind of accident?”

  “A car accident. The seatbelt on the car apparently failed, and he was thrown through the windshield. He's a good friend of mine, great guy. His name is Sam.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Paul awoke a few seconds later, staring at the square of skylight above. He tried to sit up, but his back was stiff with pain and his muscles protested. Better to just lie there for a few moments and catch his breath.

  “Paul? Are you there?” He heard the voice, a woman's voice, as if it were coming from very far away. It took him several seconds to remember his phone, and he felt around for it in the darkness. He finally found it down by his feet. He held it up and saw that the screen had cracked in the fall, a spider web of lines running from one corner to the other.

  “I'm here.”

  “Good. It looks like they're going back the way they came. They'll probably wait for you to come out rather than continue the chase. You've lost them, but you've got to keep moving.”

  “I'm not going anywhere until you tell me who you are and who ‘they’ are.”

  “My name is Heather, and that's all you get,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

  “How do you know so much about me, and about all of this?”

  “I'm good with computers,” she said, as if that answered the question entirely. “The data is there, you just have to know where to look for it, and how to read it when you find it.”

  “Okay, so why me?”

  “Because of the article you wrote.”

  “About Miami?” he asked, and propped himself up on his elbows.

  “Yeah, about Miami and the bomb at Biscayne Tower. I have a friend who is... ah, interested in the greater good of society. In other words, he likes to lay the smack down on corruption, specifically corruption in government. He likes nothing more than to destroy careers built on lies and debauchery.”

  “I bet he's loving life now, then.”

  “Yeah, the current state of things is like Disneyland for him,” she said. “So anytime something like your exposé on the alleged cover up of a terrorist attack in Miami appears, it draws some heavy scrutiny from him and his friends, which sometimes includes me.”

  “Sometimes you?”

  “I get my own kicks and giggles in other ways, but yeah, his projects are sometimes intriguing.”

  “Okay, so you guys read my article and started digging.”

  “We did, and while we didn't find anything conclusive, we're sure that there was a cover up, and we think you've struck a nerve, more than once.”

  “You think?” Paul said. His leg throbbed from where he'd been shot only a few weeks before, and his body ached from his fall down the access chute.

  “Yeah,” she said. “And they're obviously not playing games.”

  “Who's they?”

  “Why don't you start moving, and we'll keep talking. If you stay put, they're going to find you.”

  Paul grumbled as he rolled over. He used the ladder to pull himself to his feet. His leg was not in good shape. It throbbed, pain radiating out from the bones. He hated to think that he'd be forced to wait for it to heal again. And the physical therapy.

  Assuming he lived, of course.

  “Go up the ladder to the roof,” she said. “You should be able to get across to the other end of the block and down a fire escape in an alley that shouldn't
be guarded.”

  “Are you sure they're gone?” Paul asked and waited in silence, assuming that she was double-checking her data.

  “I don't think they could cross the catwalk, or maybe they just thought better of it. They may have figured that when you disappeared into the hatchway, it would be easier to catch you at ground level. I don't know, their thoughts don't appear in the data.”

  Paul nodded, looking up the ladder and trying to think of a better way than going back the way he'd just come. He tried the access door opposite the ladder and found that it was locked. He shrugged. No way out but up.

  “Thanks, Heather. For all of this.”

  “You're welcome.” She paused and then said, “You've got to get out of there. As far as we know, you are the only person to have knowingly crossed paths with them and survived.”

  “So, who is ‘they’ and ‘them?’” Paul asked. He put the phone in the crook of his neck and began to climb. The little square of light above seemed to be far away, and he winced at the thought that he'd just fallen that distance.

  “We don't know for sure, but they go by the name Il Contionum, at least sometimes. We think it might be a nickname that is only used by some people in the organization, and never in writing. We've found the name in transcripts from telephone conversations recorded by the NSA, but any reference is quickly cleaned from the record.”

  “You have access to NSA records?”

  “The data is there, you just have to know where to look.”

  “So, Contionum.” Paul winced at the pain in his leg. “Who are they?”

  “We think an ultra secret branch of the Mac-V SOG, part of the Special Activities Division of the CIA. The guys responsible for covert missions, associations, and uncongenial warfare. As far as we can tell, the group was formed during the Vietnam war and progressively became more and more secret, until no one knew who they were. They answer to no one, and we haven't found any evidence that they receive directives from any source outside their organization. They are completely independent and virtually non-existent.”

  “So, a rogue secret organization?” Paul said, feeling the breeze from the open hatchway above. He was about ten rungs from the top, and he hadn't realized how hot and stuffy it'd been in the chute. “How do they get funded?”

  “We're still looking into that,” Heather said. “But they are very powerful and very well-funded, regardless of their source of funding.”

  “Why the name Il Contionum?”

  “We think its someone's idea of a joke, maybe a reference to the Illuminati or Knights Templar. Could be that someone along the way was infatuated with ancient secret societies and gave the group a nickname. Regardless, the term is Latin for assembly or group. Vague, of course, but the ambiguity works for what they're trying to do.”

  “And what exactly are they trying to do?”

  “Well, stay hidden for one,” she said and hesitated before speaking further. The sunlight outside on the roof was bright, and Paul squinted as he neared the top of the ladder. He could feel the cold and biting air on his face.

  “I think we've stumbled onto something, but we're not sure how it relates to the organization.”

  “Go on.”

  “There's a girl that they're after. We don't exactly know why, only that she is extremely dangerous. I've seen paperwork on this girl that describes her like someone would describe a wild animal or some kind of monster. They want her alive for some reason, desperately. And that's weird to me, because if this girl is so dangerous, then why not just get rid of her somehow? I mean, I don't want to sound heartless, but they don't want to get rid of her. They want her alive.”

  Paul stopped climbing, stuck in thought about the emails and papers he'd looked at the night before. For so many hours since being shot in the hospital, he'd struggled to come up with a connection between Miami, Morales and his current goals, and this girl.

  “Do you know the name of this girl?”

  “No, we haven't found any names yet, only that they're after a girl who is to be considered deadly.”

  “Does the name 'Mae' ring a bell?” he asked. “Mae Edwards.”

  “Haven't come across it, but having a name is helpful.” Her voice was muffled, as if the phone was in the crook of her neck and she was writing. “How'd you come up with that?”

  “I got papers from Morales during the scuffle at the hospital.” Paul said, forcing his mind not to return to the moment when he'd been shot.

  “Why didn't you say anything about this before?” Heather demanded, her tone suddenly harsh.

  “Your call this morning took me a little by surprise. And since then, I haven't really been thinking about it.”

  “You have to tell me this stuff. Everything. Information is all we got on these guys, and every piece to the puzzle helps. What else did you find out.”

  “Something about godmen and a bunch of stuff about psychokinesis. Pretty unbelievable really. To be honest, I didn't think it was connected.”

  “Everything is connected, Paul.”

  Paul stopped hearing Heather when he reached the open hatchway and felt the cold muzzle of a shotgun at the base of his skull. In that moment, the whole scenario seemed very silly to him. Here he was, a grown man who wrote articles for a respected newspaper, climbing around on roofs, dodging bullets with people trying to kill him. An adult who was still suffering pains from his last brush with death, yet he couldn't just walk away. Why did he not drop it like Dennis, and just walk away?

  “Paul?” Heather said when he didn't respond. He didn't know if she'd asked a question, or was just waiting for a comment from him.

  “Good to see ya, Paul,” a man's voice said, instantly recognizable from his nightmares. Paul turned slightly to peer at the man holding the gun. The sun shone brightly behind the man, causing him to appear as a silhouette, dazzling light all around him. Morales shifted his stance, his body blocking the sun enough for his face to come into view. The first thing Paul noticed was how thin he'd become, gaunt even. His cheeks had sunk into his skull, and his eyes were dark. His expression was so full of hate and anger that Paul's mouth fell slack.

  “Who you talking to?” Morales reached forward and snatched Paul's phone from his grasp, the muzzle of the shotgun never leaving the base of Paul's skull.

  “Hello?” Morales said into the phone, and when his only response was silence he said, “We know about you too, Ms. Anon Seventeen.”

  Morales ended the call. At first, he seemed about to put the phone in his pocket, but then thought better of it and dropped it to the roof. He stomped on the screen, shattering it. He stomped again, this time with the hard edge of his boot, and the device snapped. He ground it into the rooftop gravel until he was satisfied it was dead, then turned his attention back to Paul, who was still frozen in place.

  “How ya doing, buddy?” Morales said, “come on out of there, I wouldn't want you to fall. Come on. MOVE!”

  He jabbed the shotgun barrel into Paul's neck, an angry lump swelling almost instantly. Paul climbed the rest of the way out of the chute, and Morales pushed the gun into his neck hard, harder, until Paul couldn’t try to stand, but stayed on his knees. Paul was surprised to find that he wasn't scared of what would surely happen next. He stood up on his knees and felt the cool breeze on his face. The morning sun reflected off the snow, making the day bright. If anything, this was confirmation that he'd been right, that he'd stirred the pot and kicked the hornet's nest. They wanted him dead.

  “So, it's been a few weeks since we met, Paul. Did you think I'd forgotten about you?”

  “Screw you,” Paul spat back. “Your little web is unraveling, Mr. Forester. I know about you and your real name, and about where you come from. I know about your little group.”

  “Hm,” Morales said as if giving Paul's retort some serious thought. “Seems you've done a little research. Help from Ms. Anon, no doubt. I think you will find that the group is not so little, not so harmless. Now, we, or rather you, have
a choice. I can shoot you here, on the roof of this building. I can put a bullet in your head right here and it would be the end of it for you. A quick way to go, of course, but messy and I'm not in the mood for a mess. No, I'd much prefer it if you cooperated.”

  Morales pulled a familiar metal case from the pocket of his jacket and popped it open with his thumb. Inside was a syringe, a cap over the needle, a bluish black liquid in the clear base.

  “No, I'd like to take you to a place that's a little more intimate. Give you a little peak behind the curtains of this little organization. A payoff, so to speak, for all your hard work and investigating. I understand that most everything else in your life has failed, but you kept pushing for the truth. And besides, you did save my life there, back in the hospital. I suppose door number two is my way of saying thank you. Tit. For. Tat.”

  The way Morales said these words, slowly and with deliberateness, was like the taste of battery acid. Paul glanced over his shoulder and saw the glint of craziness in his eyes. A dark fire that sputtered and sparked. He was psychotic, of that Paul was sure.

  “So, you choose, Mr. Reporter Man. Bullet to the head right here and now, or glimpse behind the curtain.”

  “Screw you,” Paul said, his voice low.

  “That wasn't one of the options,” Morales said in a sing-song voice. He unexpectedly reared back and kicked Paul in the center of his back. Paul went sprawling, and Morales was on him in a second, landing his boot on the back of Paul's neck and pressing hard. Paul's face rubbed into the roof, and he got a mouthful of the roof-top gravel in his teeth and mouth. He tasted dirt and blood and saw stars.

  “Let's go with the prize behind door number two,” Morales said, and Paul felt the sharp pinch of the needle in his shoulder. He could feel Morales pressing the liquid into his body, something thick and sluggish. His muscles around the needle immediately felt numb and hard, somehow separate from his body. Darkness ebbed at his vision, flowing toward him on unseen waves, churning him in the exploding shadows of his unconscious.