by Darrell Bain
"Great. That's more than I have. What's in my gun was it. Hell, I should be taking lessons from you."
"You are. Where are we going, by the way?"
"If you can stand it, I'm going to find a side road and park until dark. And it would help if you have a screwdriver and a wrench or two. Otherwise, we'll have to take a chance on stopping somewhere else."
"There's a tool kit in the trunk."
"All I saw was a pink case of some sort."
"Well? Can't a woman have a pink tool kit if she wants one?"
* * * *
The pills had Mona a little woozy by the time I found a place to park where, if we were disturbed, I hoped we would be taken for a couple of clandestine lovers. As soon as I killed the engine, I had Mona remove the windbreaker. Surprisingly, there was hardly any blood marring the inside lining. I removed my soaked handkerchief and looked closely at the exit wound. It was still gory but it wasn't bleeding and the skin flaps appeared to be firmly back in place. I used my pocket knife to cut two strips from a hand towel Mona must have retrieved from the little bag I had gotten for her. I saturated both with the two tubes of antibiotic ointment I had bought at the store.
When I removed the tampon lying on the entrance wound, I could see that it was simply a pucker in the skin and it wasn't bleeding now. Just in case, I had her hold my makeshift bandage with the antibiotic on it in place there while I did the same in back, while awkwardly managing to get the stretch bandage going, and all the time one or the other of us had a gun pointed at the back seat. I wound the bandage around her shoulder and crossed it under her arms. It brought back memories of having bandaged a similar wound back in the war, but then I had been able to clean the wound with something besides water.
The bandage wasn't long enough to do as good a job as I wanted. I should have bought two of them, but what I had would have to do. After that I got out of the car and used tools from her pretty pink tool kit to loosen the front and back license plates so that they would come off quickly when I wanted them to. By the time I had that finished, Mona was leaning against the door frame with her eyes almost closed, pretty well out of it from the pain pills. Fortunately, our prisoner was, too, but I got his eyes open by speaking sharply to him. Mona sat up straighter to keep from dozing off and missing what he said.
"Listen up, shithead.!” I don't curse unless I really have a reason to, but I wanted to make him believe I was the meanest mother in the valley right now. A few vulgarities couldn't hurt.
His eyes blinked open.
"Start talking. What the devil is this infection we have and why is the government trying to kill every one who has it?"
He opened his mouth then closed it again without speaking. He was trying to be a hero.
I thought for a minute. “Listen closely, motherfucker. We want some answers and we want them now. You've got about 30 seconds to make up your mind, then guess what?"
He didn't say anything.
I took out my pocketknife and opened the big blade. “See this? Start talking or I'm going to slash the nerves and tendons in both wrists then put out both your eyes. After that I'll just dump you here. How would you like to live the rest of your life blind as a bat and having to get help to wipe your ass?"
That did it. Some men and women can face death with hardly a quiver, but very few of us are able to resist pressure of that type. He began talking.
"Give me another pill first, please. My hands are really hurting and I don't feel very good.” I could see he was telling the truth. His face was white and he was shaking.
"Okay, but remember what else is going to be hurting if I catch you in a lie. One eye for the first lie. No mercy for the second. Got me?"
"Yes, sir."
By God, he was totally cowed! I got out two more pills and helped him swallow them with a drink from the water bottle.
He leaned back. “I don't know exactly what you've got, honest. My bosses said that everyone who gets it dies."
"How about that patient who wound up in the hospital where I worked? He wasn't dead. For that matter, neither are we."
"He was one of the others. All the federal prisoners died, though."
"Prisoners?"
"They were using federal prisoners to experiment with, ones on death row with nothing to lose. All of them are dead, I think. The others—” He stopped talking and stared into space. He appeared to be rambling. Others?
"All right, but where did the bug come from in the first place? And who or what are the others?"
"They told us that terrorists were spreading it.” He got a puzzled look on his face. “I don't believe it, though."
Now that was interesting. Even the agents were being lied to.
"Why not?"
"I overheard a couple of the scientists, or maybe they were doctors. Anyway, they were saying that they couldn't figure out why the others weren't dying."
"What others?” I asked again, insistently.
He tried to shrug, doing a poor job of it. “I don't know. I guess they were talking about the ones they captured. There were more, but some of them escaped."
"But who are they? What country are they from? Are they Arabs? From the Mideast?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. The whole thing is being kept quiet. We were all sworn to utmost secrecy and still not told much. Bastards—"
"You're talking about Homeland Security?"
"Yes. No, not—but—I—military types in the compound, too. I don't—” He got a puzzled look on his face, as if something wasn't right.
"Compound? Where is it?"
"I don't know. Agents like me were always taken to and from the place blindfolded and—car with windows we couldn't see out of."
"Is it underground?” I was thinking of Cheyenne Mountain or some such.
"No, I don't think so. I think it's—” His voice was becoming weaker. Maybe I shouldn't have given him those other pills.
"All right, let's get back to the others, you said. How many escaped. Do you know?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe three or four—a dozen, though. I think—Oklahoma—one of them said—Ri..mountain—"
His eyes closed and abruptly, and like a stalled car, he stopped breathing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I should have twigged to the signs that he was going into shock. I had certainly seen it often enough in patients, but I had been so intent on getting information out of him that I ignored everything else. It didn't sound as if he knew much more anyway, except-what had he said? Oklahoma? And something about a mountain? Well, whatever, he wasn't going to ever kill any more innocent men or women.
I got out and opened both side doors to let the stink of death out of the car. Mona opened her door too, but held on to the door handle in case I had to take off suddenly. I pulled the dead agent out of the back seat and dragged his body down a little slope to a big drainage ditch.
Have you ever tried to stuff a body into a culvert? Believe me, it is a hard job, even when the opening is two feet in diameter. I was exhausted by the time I got him far enough in so that he couldn't be spotted from the highway. If a hard rain didn't come, the body probably wouldn't be discovered for several days.
I got Mona to drink a whole bottle of water to replace the fluid loss from her bullet wound. She even managed to get down a few bites of cheese and crackers. She wanted to stay awake and help watch, but I told her to rest while she could.
After that it was simply a matter of waiting until dark and hoping for the best. I kept the car radio on at low volume, tuned to an all-news program. It was well into the afternoon before the story broke and even then there was very little to it, just a simple report of gunshots at a “residence in Cedar Hill” where a DEA agent had been “wounded in a brief fight with drug dealers". Well, the fight had been brief, anyway. That much of it was accurate, but the rest of it was obviously an attempt to play the story down, almost certainly by request of some Homeland Security spokesperson-or maybe the military. There was no mention of bo
dies or a missing agent.
That suited me, especially if local law enforcement officers hadn't been notified. I thought there was a good probability that they hadn't been, considering how the story of our fight had been downplayed so much. From what the agent had told me, they were obviously trying to keep a lid on the bug story. No, more than that; they were disposing of anyone they thought had contacted it. Which gave me some hope that we still had a chance to get away yet, if I worked it right. Homeland Security is a huge agency but they have a lot of ground they have to cover, and they couldn't be everywhere. Even if they were working for the military, their resources weren't infinite. I hoped.
* * * *
I checked us into a motel on the outskirts of Dallas after it was fully dark, asking for a room toward the back to ‘keep traffic from bothering us'. I paid cash and wrote down a fictitious license number on the registration card. The clerk didn't bother checking. They never do.
I waited until late that night, then went out and removed the plates from our car. In that same back corner of the motel parking lot, I took the plates off a car of the same model as ours and put ours on it, then quickly put the stolen plates on our car. That should keep us relatively safe, especially since my mustache was coming along nicely and I planned on having Mona cut my hair once she felt like it. I wasn't too worried about her appearance. Women can do the damnedest things with makeup and hair styles when they take a notion to change their looks.
Mona was sleeping. She had eaten some more, drank some more water and appeared to be resting easily, sleeping on the side away from her wound. The bullet had gone into the upper slope of her breast and exited right under her scapula. It might even have chipped or broken it, but I didn't think so. My main worry was infection. Bullets always carry a lot of debris from clothes into the wounds they make. If she didn't get an infection, and if the muscle tissue wasn't torn too much, she ought to recover without too much of a problem. Big ifs. I was still worried.
I tried to be quiet when I came back in, but then Mona flicked on the bedside light.
"Where have you been? I was worried,” she said.
I came over and sat down on the bed beside her. “Sorry, I was trying to let you sleep. I was out being a crook."
"How so?"
"I switched our license plates with someone else."
"Won't they report them stolen?"
"Maybe, but I doubt it. I mean, who ever looks at their own license plates? It might be months before they discover it, especially since I was careful to switch Texas plates. How are you doing?"
"Okay, I think. You could fill my water glass though, please."
I did and she sat up long enough to swallow another of her pain pills. I didn't know what they were. I hadn't ever had to use scheduled analgesics often enough to recognize the brand.
"Thanks. I believe that's the last one I'll need. I'm feeling much better. Now as long as we're both awake, what do we do next?"
I had been thinking about that. “Tomorrow, or possibly the next day, depending on how you feel, I'd like for us to head north toward Oklahoma."
"Why-oh. I remember now. That agent mentioned Oklahoma didn't he? But he also said something about a mountain. Are there any mountains in Oklahoma?"
"No big ones, I don't think. Anyhow, that's not the reason I wanted us to go there. And we may not go at all. I'll have to risk calling Jim again before we do."
"Jim? Oh, your colonel. Why?"
I took her hand. “Listen to me, making plans as if you aren't equally a part of this. It's just that he's a real old friend. After we both retired and there wasn't the social divide between officer and enlisted, we got to be pretty close. I want to see how he made out with the bug, but also, he had a little hidey hole I'll tell you about later. I want to find out if it still exists. For now, trust me; no one in the government will know about it. We can lay low there for a while until the heat dies down a bit and your arm heals. That's if you agree, of course."
"Oh Mike, of course I will. If you wanted to storm the White House, I think I'd follow you.” She grinned. “I hope you don't though. I doubt we'd get away with it."
I leaned over to kiss her, being careful not to jar her arm. Then I got undressed and crawled under the sheets. Suddenly I was very tired. It had been a long, rough day.
* * * *
I woke up first, much later than I normally would have and hit the shower, while wishing I had at least some clean underwear and a toothbrush. We were going to have to go shopping as soon as we left here.
Mona was awake and waiting when I came out, sitting in one of the chairs and not looking very comfortable. It had been visited by the hotel chair gremlins, as usual.
As soon as I opened the bathroom door, she said “Mike, come here and look at my back please. It feels funny."
Uh oh. “Is it hurting?” I asked.
"No, more like a tickle, as if little insects were crawling around in it."
That didn't sound good. I got behind her and she leaned forward and sideways to give me a good view. I didn't say anything for long moments, just stared.
"What is it, Mike? Is it infected?"
"No, more like you were shot by a pellet gun than a pistol bullet. There's no sign of infection at all. And those skin flaps that were hanging loose-I can barely see where the tear marks were now. And the wound is smaller already, like it's healing about five times faster and cleaner than normal."
I came back around in front of her, looked at the other gremlinized chair and sat down on the bed. “Mona honey, I think our little bug is at work again. What I'm seeing isn't normally possible I don't think. Can you move your arm?"
"Sure.” She demonstrated, raising it then moving it in slow circles while holding it upright. “There's some twinges, but not enough pain to matter. I could probably even wear a bra, if I had a bra to wear."
"You don't need one anyway, but if you think you do, and you feel well enough to travel, we'll stop in Dallas and buy you one."
"Among other necessities,” she reminded me, and headed for the bathroom while I went out and rounded us up some coffee and a pastry from the lobby. A half hour later we were on our way and shortly after that, I swung into a Walmart I remembered from the last time I had been up this way visiting my sister.
I gave Mona my sizes in clothes and let her shop on one side of the big store while I ran through the grocery section and picked up some staples, enough to last a while. We met back up front and were on our way within the hour.
The Dallas traffic was worse than I remembered, even though the morning rush was long gone. It kept my mind occupied with trying to stay in the right lanes until we were finally past the downtown section and on the road to Plano, an upscale city northeast of Dallas. The city went on and on, but the driving was easier from there and we had time to talk.
The first thing I did was get Mona to dial Colonel Shell's home number. There was no answer. I delved into my memory and finally came up with his cell phone number. I dialed it.
"Hello,” he said simply.
I recognized his voice. It wasn't much stronger than the last time we had talked, but at least he was still alive.
"Glad to see you're still fishing,” I said.
"They're biting slow, but I may catch one yet. Must be the bait."
"I'm heading to the fishing hole myself,” I said. “Why not meet me there?"
"That's where I am.” The phone went dead. He was being every bit as careful as I was. I rolled down the window and tossed the phone, one of several disposables we had bought.
As soon as I had the window back up and Mona could hear without the roar of the wind interrupting, she spoke up. “You can explain now. I'm as curious as a cat touring a puppy mill. Fishing?"
"Sort of a code word we used to use,” I said. “Remember, James Shell is part Cherokee. In fact, while he was still in the army, he married one of the chief's daughters. They had one child, a daughter. She's married to a Marine serving overseas now, I thin
k. Anyway, I told you his wife had died. What I didn't tell you is that she was his second wife. His first was his one true love. I believe he and Doris, his second wife, married more for companionship than anything else. At any rate, I'm sure he would never have told her about the little place the chief gave him as a wedding present for his first marriage. It's a cabin way back in the boonies and not even on the ledger of any land office. It's hidden and the location has been passed down from generation to generation. He and Keena, his first wife went there when they wanted to get away from the world. Not often. And I think I'm the only other person he's ever let in on the secret. He invited me up right before I moved down to Lufkin and we spent a week there, just talking over old times, telling war stories and stuff. He never did that while I was married; I guess he knew better than I did that neither of my ex's were right for me. Anyway, that's where we're going."
"You didn't mention me. Suppose he thinks I'm not right for you?"
"He's too smart to think that. And don't you tell me you're not right for me or I'll drive over the first cliff we come to. Besides, it sounds like we saved his life. Remember?"
"Oh my God, yes! He injected himself with the bug! I wonder if it will cure his cancer like it did my Lupus? Or like I think it has, anyway."
"He didn't want to stay on the phone. We'll just wait and ask him. By God, I'm glad to hear the old bastard might make it. He's just about my only true friend in the world, other than my brother."
"And that makes three of us."
"Three? Oh, yeah. All of us with Cherokee ancestry.” I thought a moment. “That agent said it killed everyone they tried it on, but obviously it doesn't kill everyone. Think we have a trend here?"
Mona laughed. I was glad to hear the tinkle in her voice again rather than the trace of pain that had tinged it the day before. “Maybe.” Then she veered off to another subject. “Mike, how did they trace us to my house? I could swear I didn't leave any tracks when I bought the place."