“Father?” Wyatt said with caution. He waited for an answer. None came. “What is the young man’s name? How do I find him?”
Mulcahy didn’t respond. Instead, his body slid down the wall, landing in a crouched position on the floor. A few moments later, he slid backward and spread out on the floor until he was flat on his back, with his arms out to his side. His body began to shake, sending his legs, arms, and torso flopping in the air like a seizure. The convulsing stopped after thirty seconds. Mulcahy stood up, ran his fingers through his wild hairdo until the mop was semi-combed in slicked-back direction.
He turned to face Wyatt. “How can I help you today?”
“I need to know the scientist’s name?”
“What scientist?”
“The one you just told me about.”
“I’m sorry, my son. You must be mistaken. You just walked in. We weren’t speaking.”
Mulcahy looked down at his naked body, but didn’t seem surprised. “Oh, crap, not again!”
Wyatt shuffled his feet over to a red-cushioned chair sitting solo by the wall next to the door he’d just entered. He sat down, resting his elbows on his knees, then put his face in his hands. He couldn’t hold back the surge of emotions any longer. Tears exploded, running down through his fingers and onto the floor.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Lucas followed Rico as they made their way through the back alleys of the city. Fisher’s Bakery wasn’t far, maybe two blocks. Lucas tugged on Rico’s shirt when he heard organ music playing in the distance. “You hear that?”
Rico turned and nodded. “You don’t hear that every day.”
“Must be a party ahead. But I don’t recognize the tune.”
“Neither do I. Sounds more like special effects music than a song.”
Ten minutes later, Rico stopped walking ten feet short of the front door to Fisher’s bakery. He pointed across the street. “There’s the source of your music—a church. Maybe they were tuning their organ. It would explain the melody, or lack thereof.”
Lucas nodded.
Rico looked down the street to his left, then to his right. He put his hand behind his back and lifted the tail of the black shirt he was wearing, pulling out the stunner handgun from inside the elastic waistband of his pants. He flipped on the power core, adjusted its discharge level, then slid it back into his pants.
He turned to Lucas and spoke in a soft, but deliberate tone. “You ready for this?”
“Yeah, but I still think I should have a stunner. What if I need it?”
“Then we’ve got a serious problem. No offense, but you having a weapon in this situation is a variable I can’t control. This is a recon mission. We’re here to gather intel, nothing more. The last thing we need is for you to get trigger-happy and turn this into an all-out firefight.”
Rico was right. Lucas nodded.
“So, let me do the talking,” Rico said. “We don’t want to tip them off.”
Lucas didn’t respond. It felt wrong to agree. Deep down he knew he was better suited to deal with the Fishers than his major; he had known the Fishers for over a year and figured he knew best how to handle them. He feared Rico might use a hardline approach, scaring Carrie Anne off for good. But he knew he wasn’t exactly front and center in her thoughts, anyway, so maybe he was over-thinking the situation.
Rico grabbed Lucas’ shoulder. “You with me on this?”
“I’m not so sure. I know these people. I eat here all the time.”
“That’s precisely why I should take the lead. Your history with them puts you in a compromised position. A neutral approach will be more successful. Trust me on this. Just introduce me as your cousin Dave from the Badlands who’s just moved here. Tell them I’m looking to purchase a business and would pay top dollar. That way, maybe I can get a good look around the premises.”
“Okay, but go lightly on them. Especially the daughter. I still can’t believe she’s involved with Cyrus. It just doesn’t fit. Something is wrong here.”
Rico stared at Lucas for a three-count, then rolled his eyes. “Holy shit, you’re sweet on this girl. Damn it. I told the professor during my debrief to send me in alone.”
“I can handle it,” Lucas said, looking down at his feet.
“Have you changed her oil already?”
“No, we’re just friends,” Lucas answered, thinking about her supple lips, wondering what it would be like to kiss them. He smiled, then looked up at Rico.
“Oh, yeah,” Rico said with conviction. “I’m definitely taking the lead on this one. End of discussion.”
Lucas decided not to argue the point. He promised Kleezebee he would follow Rico’s orders and keep his head down. He nodded.
“What do the Fishers look like?”
“Stump is five-five and runs about two-fifty—all flab. Just look for the balding, crotchety old fart with the word asshole painted across his forehead. He’ll probably be sitting on a stool in the corner by himself, sporting a stay-the-hell-away-from-me look.”
“And the daughter?”
“She’s a little shorter. Chunky. Big boobs and missing some teeth. She’ll be the one behind the counter doing all the work.”
“All right, let’s do this,” Rico said, turning away from Lucas. He stepped toward the bakery door.
Lucas looked behind him out of habit, to see if anyone else was following them—there wasn’t. However, as he turned his head back toward Rico, something caught his eye from across the street: a tall, slender woman wearing a skintight bodysuit with a bird emblem stenciled across the chest.
It was one of the Baaku shaper sisters. She was standing with her back against the front of the Nazarene Church. She didn’t wave or smile. Instead, she stood perfectly still, as if she were a religious statue that had been stuffed and mounted on the church wall. Her uniform wasn’t silver this time; it was bright orange. Her hands and fingers were pressed together in such a way that they formed the shape of a triangle.
Lucas reached behind him and grabbed Rico by the arm, spinning him around. He looked Rico in the eye, leaning in close to whisper. “Do you remember when I told you earlier that I got sidetracked a bit on my way to Kristov’s underground complex?”
Rico eye’s tightened, responding with a single head nod.
“Look behind me, across the street. See the skinny old lady in the orange bodysuit? She’s the reason why.”
Rico leaned to his right, looking beyond Lucas. “What lady?”
Lucas turned, but didn’t see the alien. “Shit. She was just there.”
Rico furrowed his brow. “Nice try, Doc. But now’s not the time.”
“I’m dead serious,” Lucas said, pointing his index finger across the street. “She was standing right in front of the church, staring at us. I’m not bullshitting you.”
“Well, she’s not there now,” Rico said, with a look of disbelief on his face. He pulled the door open. “Let’s go. We’ve got work to do. Secure the door,” he ordered, stepping inside and veering to the right, heading toward the restaurant’s seating area.
Lucas locked the door from the inside, then followed Rico, wondering if he were hallucinating again. But why now and why here? Who in their right mind dreams about a Baaku-shaper-bitch making a Delta symbol with her fingers in front of an old church? Sure, it was Fuji’s mathematical symbol for change, but what the hell did that have to do with anything? He shrugged it off. Too much stress today, he figured.
As soon as he navigated his way through the tiny foyer and entered the bakery’s main seating area, he couldn’t believe what his eyes were reporting to his brain.
Stump Fisher was lying on his back, near the left end of the service counter, bleeding from a four-inch gash in his forehead. But that wasn’t all—there was a fist-sized, gaping hole in the center of his oversized belly gushing blood, too.
Rico pulled the stunner from his waistline, taking a defensive stance just three feet in front of Lucas. He aimed the gun at several locations in
the room, then he worked his way to the far side of the room in seconds. “All clear,” he said.
Lucas could see at least seven other bodies scattered about the bakery, each with missing limbs and blood squirting from multiple wounds. None of the bodies, except Stump’s, still had its head attached.
Gallons of blood spatter and hundreds of chunks of human tissue and brain matter covered the walls, ceiling, and floor of the bakery—all dripping to the ground. The scene looked fresh.
Lucas turned his head away, covering his mouth with his hand as he doubled over. Nausea flared up in his gut, sending a golf-ball-sized dollop of stomach bile up through his esophagus and into his mouth, flooding his tongue with the acid taste. He spit it out, fighting the urge to let any more of the rancid substance make its way up his gullet. It worked. He stood up and wiped the beads of sweat from his brow.
The horrific scene reminded him of the double-date night back on his version of Earth when he and Drew were meeting Abby and Jasmine on the steps of the Student Union, where the first Krellian incursion ripped a hole in Earth’s space-time—blood, guts, and body parts were everywhere, but Lucas didn’t see any signs of a Krellian energy dome or a recent inter-dimensional rift, so he believed the patrons were attacked by a squad of assailants. This was probably Freakshow or Cyrus’ work. Yet, there were no signs of blast patterns, bullet holes, casings, or shredder rounds anywhere in the room, at least not in visible range. Maybe the attackers had used some new type of weapon, something they hadn’t seen before.
He sniffed, taking in a distinct smell of fresh oranges in the air. It was almost powerful enough to mask the stench of death. He started thinking about the unique citrus scent. He’d smelled it before, more than once, but never this strong. Just then, his mind flashed a vision of Carrie Anne’s rosy cheeks and her infected belly button piercing. Where was she?
“Carrie Anne!” he called out with his loudest voice, rushing to the closest victim. He prayed the corpse wasn’t the sweet, tender woman who had captured his heart and invaded his dreams.
He checked the first body and detached head—they belonged to a man—slender, blond, maybe fifty, partial beard and lying on his back. Not her, he told himself quietly, checking off one fatality on the list that was forming in his mind.
“Please, don’t let her be here,” he mumbled, continuing the frantic pace. The next five fatalities were also men, but Lucas wasn’t sure until he turned them over to inspect their chests for signs of the female form.
One more body to check. It was lying on its right side, facing the wall, in the corner opposite Stump, by the checkout register and padded stool.
Its physique was that of a shorter, overweight person wearing a wraparound apron. Could be Carrie Anne’s. The hair length and color were correct. Maybe she was taking payment from one of the customers when this tragedy happened. Oh no, he thought, as a feeling of heartbreak suffocated his chest.
He headed toward the cadaver, but his feet slipped out from under him when his heels surfed through a pool of blood surrounding another body along the way. His legs flew up in front of his face, as his body hurled itself in the air a few feet off the ground. Seconds later, his back slammed into the floor with a stern thud. He rolled over, gasping for breath, as pain surged through his spine and into his chest. It took a long minute, but he recovered his breath and stood up.
“Damn, that had to hurt,” Rico said, with a splash of amusement in his voice.
“You have no idea,” Lucas replied, shaking his head.
He could feel a warm dampness flooding the back of his pants and shirt. He craned his neck to get a peek. The visible areas of his clothing were soaked in a deep shade of red. So were his hands. He wiped them off on the front of his legs, taking an extra few moments to clean off the area between his fingers.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, just need a minute,” he answered, blinking his eyes repeatedly. He took one more deep breath to fully charge his lungs. The cobwebs in his head were still thick, making him a little woozy after the fall. He walked unevenly to the last body, bent down, and rolled the carcass over.
The remains were that of another man. He exhaled quickly. “I don’t think I could have handled that,” he mumbled, thinking about Carrie Anne lying there bloody and in pieces.
“Hey, Doc? This one’s alive,” Rico said with a sense of urgency in his voice.
Lucas turned.
Rico was standing a few feet from Stump’s body with his legs spread and stunner pointed at Fisher’s head in a firing position, as if he expected the fat old man to somehow rise up and attack him.
“That’s Stump. Is he conscious?” Lucas asked, walking to Rico with carefully-planted footsteps. He changed his course to avoid as much of the blood as possible.
Rico bent down on one knee, just to the left of Stump. He tapped the wounded man on the cheek. “Barely. He’s lost a lot of blood. Won’t be long.”
“Ask him about his daughter. Where is she?”
Rico stared at Lucas for a handful of seconds, tilting his head slightly—then looked at Stump. “Mr. Fisher? Can you hear me? I need to know what happened here. Who did this?”
Stump didn’t respond. Rico asked the same question, this time in a louder voice. Stump still didn’t answer.
Lucas joined Rico at the old man’s side. “Stump? This is Lucas Ramsay. Where’s Carrie Anne?”
Stump opened his eyes, turning his head to look at Lucas. He sat up slightly, then grabbed Lucas by the shirt collar, pulling him close. “The Collector took her,” he said in a weak, slow voice. “He wants his weapons back in seventy-two hours or he will kill her.”
“Who the hell is the Collector?” Lucas asked the old man.
“You have . . . to . . . save—her. Promise . . . me.”
“We will. You have my word on that. But we need to know who took her.”
Fisher’s head dropped back to the floor and tilted to the side, as a shallow exhale released from his chest. The baker’s eyes went blank.
Rico put two fingers against the side of the man’s neck. “He’s gone.”
Lucas pounded the floor with his fist. “Damn it! Just a few more seconds.”
“The Collector?” Rico asked.
“I don’t know. But if he took her to get his weapons back, why kill her old man?”
“Doesn’t make any sense. Who kills the parent before the ransom is paid?”
“Only a moron.”
“Or a psychopath,” Rico said, scanning the room. “Whatever this was, there’s intense emotion behind it. This was an extermination.”
“Maybe someone else did this. Like Cyrus or Freakshow.”
“Okay, but why?”
Lucas shrugged, thinking about the note Rico found inside Kristov’s top. “It’s possible that Piston was supposed to meet Kristov here for some type of weapons exchange.”
“Fisher may have been providing a neutral site for the meet.”
“Or he was the one selling the weapons.” Lucas wished they hadn’t killed Kristov earlier. “When Kristov didn’t show, Piston went nuts and slaughtered everyone. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“That still doesn’t explain who The Collector is, or why he took his daughter.”
“Well, it’s a theory,” Lucas said, standing up to unkink his knee.
“Maybe, but it’s pretty thin.”
“Hey, thin in my middle name,” Lucas said with a smile, pointing both index fingers down at his skinny frame.
“With Kleezebee’s cooking, I can see why,” Rico said, laughing.
“Have you tried the man’s omelet? I don’t know what he uses for ingredients, but it tastes like ass,” Lucas said, laughing through the words. He walked the room, checking three of the severed heads. He studied the angle and size of the outward-facing tissue hanging from the hole in the top of each skull. “It looks like their heads exploded from the inside—pushing the brain matter up and out, with tremendous force. What kind of weapon
can do that?”
“Nothing I’ve seen, or ever heard of, for that matter.”
Lucas looked at the door to the kitchen. “We should search the back. There must be some clues around here somewhere. Carrie Anne told me their apartment is on the second floor and the office is on three.”
Rico didn’t hesitate. He bolted through the kitchen door with Lucas right on his heels.
“You take the kitchen and freezer. I’ll check upstairs,” Rico said. “Meet back here.”
“Copy that.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Wyatt slid out of the deteriorating bench seat in the first row of the Mag-lift train, paid the exit fare to the operator with a single swipe of his digi-card, and walked at half speed toward the sprawling entrance of the Supreme Commander’s fenced-off, forty-acre residence in New Robyn City.
A pair of twenty-foot-tall Roman-style pillars bracketed the steel-reinforced front gate that was wide enough for two heavy transport skimmers to enter at the same time. A red horizontal sign hung over top of the gate and stretched from one pillar to the other. Its white letters spelled W A R N I N G !
A fixed spotlight sat on top of each column, with its lens angled at the ground in front of the gate. Just to the outside of each pillar was a black, six-inch pole that rose up from the ground to match the height of the spotlights. A large-caliber shredder gun sat on top of each pole with a set of heavy-teeth gears and other rotating metalwork underneath. Wyatt assumed they were being controlled remotely, probably by someone on the inside. If he were right, that meant some type of video surveillance was being used as well, though he couldn’t see any evidence of that from his position.
Incursion (The Narrows of Time Series Book 2) Page 20