The Raven Gang (Noble Animals Book 1)

by Brendan Walsh

  His last sense to leave was his hearing, so he had no problem understanding the well-dressed man when he spoke. “I’m Samuel Elder. It’s good to finally meet you, Patrick.”

  He barged back into his house to find it empty. The detective routinely unloaded the take out boxes onto the dining room table. However, he noticed something was different.

  The broken video camera was gone.

  His first theory was that somehow the FBI somehow found out it was him who had withheld the evidence, but his rationality assured him that if that were so he would be in cuffs being chaperoned to prison. Then his thoughts turned to his daughter. The only one in his family who had been in the house all day.

  “Lindsey?” he called out. Alarm was clear in his shout. “Are you up there?”

  There was obviously someone up there. Several different murmurs were audible from the closed upstairs door. After a loud tumbling of falling objects behind the wall, his daughter frantically scattered out, maintaining a heavy speed, even down the crooked steps.

  “Dad?” she settled herself a few feet in front of him. “You’re home early? What’s up?”

  He didn’t know how to respond. It would be best for his daughter not to find out he was in highly illegal possession of federal property.

  “I just came back from the restaurant. Hey, I had something in that bag over here-” he lunged forward, picking up the evacuated brown bag. “You haven’t seen it have you?”

  Lindsey hardly kept a straight face, folding her arms under her breast, in order to maintain her standing posture. She was making small leaps one foot after the other. “No I haven’t seen anything, been in my room all night, nothing happened at all ever.”

  “What about those people you said you had over?”

  “No nobody was here, not that I can recall, yeah I’m pretty sure I’ve been alone all this whole time?” her eyes never left the living room window.

  “What?”

  “I... I actually don’t remember, there might have been some people here, but I’m not sure.”

  The detective blankly stared back at his daughter, finding that the conversation was past its peak.

  “Lindsey, what’s going on?”

  Before she could answer two knocks sounded from behind followed by the doorbell. Someone was at the door. Perhaps the business at the door would give Lindsey time to get her story straight, he thought. He flicked on the knob, illuminating the front porch so he could see his visitors. They were two sharply dressed men, standing silently facing the door. The one in front was tall, athletic looking while the other looked like he’d won many science fairs. He had a feeling he knew exactly who they were.

  “Can I help you?” the detective greeted with his guilt kept at bay.

  The man in the front casually reached under his coat. Hunter couldn’t help but notice the shiny 9 millimeter secured on his hip. “Detective, we’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” both agents flashed their IDs under the bright porch light. “We’ve gotten an anonymous tip about the raven gang case.”

  “I hoped I’d never see your kind again. Whatever it is I can assure you that I’ve been here all day-”

  “We’re not here for you sir, we’re here for your daughter.”. The sciencey one blandly stated.

  “My daughter? What for?’ he mumbled. He turned around to see Lindsey standing in the same place as before. This time her face was more lighted with fear.

  “Apparently your daughter, Lindsey Hunter, has secretly been aiding the raven gang. Our evidence is damning, detective.”

  Both men wordlessly slipped past the detective into the house. The tall one extracted a pair of stainless steel handcuffs and strapped them to Lindsey’s hands behind her back. She tried to protest but they had a signed warrant for her arrest, so it was all clearly official. That didn’t stop her father from crashing their enthusiasm.

  “Wait!” the detective threw himself in front of the agents, blocking their leave. “Please you can’t do this. My daughter is innocent. Earlier today-” he paused almost unable to keep talking as the agents’ eyes judged him. “I stole evidence from the FBI. If you’re going to arrest anyone, arrest me.”

  Hunter thought that short speech would surely cost him his job and even some jail time considering how important the raven gang case was. But the silence that followed suggested otherwise.

  “We have no idea what you’re talking about, sir.” the sporty one replied. “All we came for is your daughter.”

  Without anything left to say the detective stood dumbly still as his only daughter was escorted away by the federal authorities. In his mind, he was still convinced it was all his fault for what was surely a mistake.

  The rear door slammed shut as the agents hopped into the front seats. After everyone was properly settled they drove off in their assigned black SUV. Behind the agents Lindsey was still acting in a way the agents would classify as ‘uncooperative’. She continued to vehemently argue for her innocence. It was time for her years of being a top participator in moot court to pay off.

  “You’re doing it all wrong!” she protested. “Neither of you bothered to read me my rights.”

  Neither the agents reacted. They both kept their eyes evenly on the road and the back of their heads to her.

  “Not to mention the reading of my charges was sloppy to say the least!”

  She tried to sound more threatening with every word, but she only got the same reaction from the stolid agents. She was tempted to unbuckle her seat and thrust her head between the seats to make sure they had some kind of reaction. But she was not ready for something that bold yet, even though she was still spiked with adrenaline by the visit from the gang.

  After a few more silent moments she noticed small devices hanging from the center of their ears. Leaning forward as far as the seatbelt would let her she made out a feint buzzing sound, as if a tiny bee was trapped in the compact device.

  “Have you been listening to anything I’ve said? My God, the authorities in this country are really slipping.”

  “If I were you-” the athletic agent in the passenger seat began. His right arm slipped around to reveal a Glock handgun of menacing proportions. “I’d think about shutting my mouth. Where you’re going arguing won’t help.”

  She hesitated, almost hovering over her seat. “You work for Sam Elder.”

  “That’s right. Now no more talking!”

  She turned her head to the window. Night was everywhere, as if it were begging for evil. Beneath sullen clouds there was a dark twinkle. Nothing a distant start could have produced. This thing in the sky was black, and wildly angry. And it was getting closer.

  “There’s someone you guys really pissed off.”

  Time was going nowhere fast. It would have helped if Detective Hunter had gotten a blink of sleep during the night. But the previous day’s events were too tiring to allow any break in consciousness.

  The past night he watched helplessly as his saint of a daughter was taken away by the ruthless feds, an organization the detective now had more than his fair share of. Now he was back at work as if everything was exactly the same, and his biggest personal outlet had been confiscated by the same people who had taken his daughter.

  All the cases now piled up around him mockingly on his desk were small petty assignments that any officer with a couple brain cells could handle.

  He wanted the raven gang case back.

  Everything about it was unique and mysterious. From the lack of a murder weapon to the strange violent and often futuristic attempts against the welfare of the state. It was a case that came maybe once in the full lives of three investigators.

  He was in a mid-sip of coffee when his investigative partner of five years, Rita Guajardo, came cautiously walking in with a brown file in a see through plastic bag. It wasn’t steady in her hands.

  �
��Has there been any more news on your daughter?” her eyes beamed with several emotions.

  “Nothing. Nil. Zero. Zip. By any definition of no. In fact, I even called the FBI office to protest her arrest, and they said they didn’t know anything about it.” with the booming of his voice Guajardo expected some of the files to tumble off the edge of his desk.

  “I’m sure something will turn up soon. There’s no way she could have anything to do with those terrorists.”

  “I guess you’re right, but there’s no way I can get any work done today. My mind is all over the place.” He took a final swig of what was left of his coffee hoping it would give him a powerful spike in energy. It didn’t.

  “Does it have anything to do with the piles of useless drivel staring you down right now?”

  “Exactly. If I’m going to care about anything I do today, it needs to be about the raven gang case. I need to do it for her.”

  Guajardo took a couple easy steps forward, her anxiety once again evident from her unhealthy posture. “Well, I think I have some interesting news for you then.” For the first time since she entered his office today, she had his full waking attention. “It seems we forgot to notify the forensics guys about the case being switched to the federal level, so they continued analyzing some of the blood from Black’s murder and comparing it with the blood that was found on the shirt left up in the bedroom. And the results have finally come.” she slammed the plastic covered report onto the desk, like she was trying to kill a bug. “You’re not going to believe what killed the doctor.”

  Patrick’s eyes inflated open at the wet acidic burning in front of his eyes. He grunted bitterly at the wet pain pounding his back legs against the ground. After moments of furiously rubbing, the scorching sensation dripped away and he was able to visualize the area around him.

  There was, in a word, nothing.

  He knew right away that he was dreaming. It hadn’t happened for a couple of weeks, but before he and his friends became the infamous raven gang there were several times when Patrick had some disturbing dreams. He’d lost track of how many he had had in the entirety of his twenty-year life, but they first began shortly after the death of his father.

  Each dream was slightly different from the last. The first one from what his memory could scrap up was one where all his classmates mercilessly made fun of him. ‘You look like a girl! Cut your hair!’ some called out from behind the lunch tables. ‘Look everyone, Patrick has four eyes!’ his teacher laughed, acknowledging that Patrick was the only one in the class who wore glasses back then. Of course, he was only an elementary school kid in those days, so his fears gradually grew deeper and darker as he matured.

  The more recent ones he remembered was when he met the mysterious man on the clouds, then woke up to the shoving of his friend Johnny, then later at night he dreamt of a world no longer inhabited by human beings, dominated by plant life. He had a brief conversation with a mysterious dark formless figure who sounded like a chain smoker. Whatever was talking to him in his subconscious, it wasn’t human.

  Now, in this dream, he knew better. He knew beyond doubt he was locked in a dream. And it was the most vivid one yet. The worse part was that there was absolutely nothing to this one. Below him was a small arched piece of land, like a strong stable dune slightly rising over an otherwise landless region. It was the only thing he could stand on.

  He stood unmoving, gazing across the sea of nothing that lead to the futile grasp of infinity. Finding nothing else to do, he bent down and carefully dipped his right hand into the surrounding liquid. He felt nothing, and there were no ripples. For a moment Patrick thought his own tiredness inside his own dream could be compromising his senses, so he swirled it around some more in a counterclockwise fashion. Still nothing. He had a sudden urge to jump into the matter-less liquid, though it struck him that he would likely sink to the bottom, drowning him in the empty void.

  Everything was silent. He could hear his heartbeat is if it were plugged to a megaphone and his own steps made him want to cover his ears. It occurred to him just how alone he was. He was surround by an infinite kind of nothing, and he was at the center of it.

  He tried to take control of the dream. It’s my dream, I can wish for everyone to be here, he thought. Straining the consciousness, he telepathically tried to make everyone appear around him: Slate, Johnny, Jane, Lindsey, Gary, Edgar, he wished for them all. No one came. So he wished harder...harder...and harder... the more he clutched his head, bent over in pain from thinking too hard, the more he wanted to give up and accept his place.

  As his pain rose inside him so did the empty liquid around. Either the water was beginning to overflow or the tiny scrap of land was sinking below him. Whatever it was, he was going to drown. Just as the first drops filtered into his lungs, a piercing, heatless light overthrew his senses, and Patrick was sure he had died.

  Patrick’s eyes tweaked open as Johnny shook him just as he did many days before in the center of Weller College campus. The physical non subconscious world was making a shining return to him, assisted by his friend’s determination to wake him.

  “Johnny...Johnny, it’s okay I’m awake.” he grunted sluggishly.

  “Sorry. You were making some weird noises. We thought it would be best to finally wake you up.”

  Through his still aching eyes Patrick could groggily make out his surroundings. Everyone in the gang was there. Johnny was still standing in front of him, assisting him onto his feet, while Gary, Slate, and Jane were each sitting solitarily in their own spots, watching him as he completed his standing efforts.

  Everyone except Edgar and Lindsey.

  “What the hell happened at Lindsey’s house?” Patrick clutched his forehead in pounding pain.

  “When you jumped out of the window we all were pretty quick to follow you.” Jane explained. “By the time we realized what was happening we all went down like dominoes.”

  “It seems we were all drugged with something and taken to this creepy techno place.” Gary added. He rose from his seat to face Patrick.

  Now that his vision and focus had recovered, Patrick no longer strained to learn about his current location. Large thick steel walls concealed them, which appeared to be used for radiation containment. They were all a bleached white. They powerfully encircled the entire room, ending in a door that was basically a carved piece of the wall. It seemed none of it was ever meant to be penetrated.

  The five of them could only see the whole room from a distance, since they were all behind steel bars.

  Patrick shoved himself against the nearest set of bars and shook as hard as his tired arms could permit. The metal stayed perfectly still. Without even a wobble.

  “We’ve already tried that. They’re not going to move.” Slate blandly said.

  He continued for another moment, making sure to release some of his fury that had built up since he had woken up. The immovable bars remained stable.

  “What happened to Lindsey?”

  “Right as we began tunneling out the window her father came in. I can’t imagine what she’s probably thinking right now.”

  Patrick moved away from the bars and settled in an unoccupied corner. For minutes everyone was silent, keeping to their own minds. He sometimes feared he was thinking so loudly that the whole room could hear him. It was that quiet. There was nothing happening, and the thick walls probably could keep even the sound of a hydrogen bomb from getting through. Someone, anyone, save us from this place!, his mind alarmed.

  As if it was a providential answer to his prayer the heavy doors sluggishly plowed open. The grinding mechanisms expanded loudly as if a drawbridge was descending over a moat. From between the loud doors a man entirely dressed in white, nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the room walked in. The only other noticeable colors on him were his blond hair and the black rims on his small-lensed bifocals. Patrick immediately identified
him as the man who had shot him with a dart.

  “Good evening my friends.” the doctor greeted with a sinister smirk. “I was wondering when all of you would wake up. I may be a doctor, but I have a surprising lack of patience.”

  Slate sprang to his feet, and bulged himself against the bars. It was time they all got to the bottom of it. Everything. “What do you want from us, and what was that thing you shot us with?”

  “Just your typical knock out drugs. But as far as the first half of the question: nothing. Nothing at all. You’ve already given everything I wanted from you.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Patrick snapped.

  Elder took a moment of pause to pour himself some freshly brewed coffee from a pot on the side of the room in a tall mug. He dunked in two cubes of sugar.

  “Let me tell you a little story that also happens to be something of an autobiography.” he gently stirred his finger in the cup, dissolving the solid sweetener. “Only a little more than a decade ago I was just an ordinary scientist, but due to my brilliant mind, I was surely bound to make some innovative discovery in my career as a geneticist. I kept telling myself that glory was just around the corner, that something once-in-a-lifetime would come my way, but I was already in my thirties and my once promising young mind was not something me or any of the others in the scientific community were confident in anymore.”

  He took a few short sips of the still steaming coffee as he seemed to focus on every molecule of taste.