“This is urgent,” Markwell pressed. “And that car’s got one of the best navigation systems you’re likely to find anywhere in the Midwest.” Then Markwell paused and gave Dorian a hard look. “Alex! Ask not what your country can do for you…and you know, all that good stuff.”
“Well, I suppose,” Dorian said at length with a wavering voice.
“You’re a great American, Alex,” Devon added.
“And when we find out something history-changing tonight,” Markwell said, “and when the cameras start rolling, Alex and I will be right there next to you.”
“Of course,” Rick said.
Dorian had a look on his face that said, “I’d better be.” But out loud he said, “Can you drive a manual transmission?”
3.
Rick could drive a manual transmission quite well, and the Lamborghini, powered by its six-hundred and ten horsepower V10 engine, had left Knight and Lacy’s rental Honda Accord well behind, no matter how much Rick tried to make sure they could keep up. Cornelia, giving them directions by phone, tried to assume they would not get lost on their way out to the Foster homestead.
As Rick had predicted, the Fosters’ quite prosperous-looking, sprawling property was hardly on the end of a network of country dirt roads. It was merely secluded.
“And it looks completely deserted,” Cornelia said as they rolled up to the house’s front drive.
The lights all around the property were indeed out, except something was still off as far as Rick’s cop’s instincts were concerned. “But the gate to the driveway was still open.”
“Come on, Rick. This is middle America. You know, people here leave home and leave their front doors unlocked.”
Rick stopped the car on one side of the stairway leading up to the Fosters’ porch. “Not in a world,” he said, “that’s very violently divided between people who love the globes and the ones who think they’re Trojan Horse gifts from demons.” After they got out of the car, he added, “And right now no one loves the globes more than the Foster family—”
But Rick’s words were cut off by a sound that chilled the blood more than perhaps any other sound for a person having even a passing familiarity with firearms. The metallic snaps of a shotgun pump-action slide getting racked no more than a few feet away stopped him and Cornelia dead in their tracks.
“And just which side of the divide are you on, my man?” a male voice called out with a mild Midwestern twang.
4.
“Believe me, Mr. Ballantine, when I tell you that there was a time when I would take a piece of paper and very, very gently push a spider out of my house. The thought of taking any form of life was just completely abhorrent to me,” said the leader of five men holding Rick, Cornelia, and the Foster family at gunpoint in the middle of a spacious living room. “My name, is Henry Roberts,” he said, somehow surprising Rick by the fact that even his name was as prosaic as his appearance. Maybe, a crazy thought skittered through Rick’s mind, he was expecting his captor to be called something like Billy Clyde, or Buford, or Big Enos. “And believe me how sorry I am that circumstances have brought me to this.”
With his jeans, sneakers, and a brown windbreaker, the middle-aged Roberts looked like he could have been a small-town car salesman taking a long weekend to relax in the country. The big problem, however, was the M-16 assault rifle he appeared to be quite adept at handling. A hunch also told Rick that the weapon was, more likely than not, converted to full automatic mode.
“What circumstances?” Rick asked as neutrally as he could. As he did so his eyes darted once again to the Foster family—parents Charlie and Rosemary and kids Sean and Sally—each of them seated in rattan chairs in front of the large fireplace on the left side of the room and held at gunpoint by four of Roberts’ partners. The fifth gunman was back outside on sentry duty.
“Haven’t you been watching the news lately?” Roberts asked, his voice betraying something akin to dismay—disappointment, even, with the unread ignoramuses that had stumbled into the middle of his assault on the Fosters—rather than any true menace or rage.
The looks coming from Roberts’ compatriots, on the other hand, told a different story. Their looks belied the small-minded cruelty of petty thugs Rick had seen enough times on the streets of Los Angeles. Whatever this attack on the Fosters was all about, Roberts was definitely the mastermind of everything, a man with some sort of a grudge that could no longer be contained, and he was smart enough to command the respect of and somehow control a group of men who were capable of the sort of violence he might not have been up for on his own.
But Rick couldn’t help shaking his head at Roberts’ question. “Reading the news? You wouldn’t believe me.”
“All those debates going on and on and on, day after day, one show after another saying the same things, making the same arguments over and over again,” Roberts said, almost as if he was oblivious to Rick’s words. “They’re good. They’re evil. It’s something great. It’s the end of the world. I swear to God, I could just sit there with the sound off and say every single line that would come out of their mouths.”
When Roberts paused, a thick pall of silence hung over the room. Except for a tiny metallic rattle that caught Rick’s attention. The noise lasted no more than about two seconds, but Rick could have sworn it sounded like a thin piece of metal of some kind being jostled by a vibration.
“All talk,” Roberts went on, oblivious to the vibration. His eyes appeared to be searching some distant points in the room as he spoke. Again, the signs were all ones Rick had seen numerous times before, had read about in countless police reports, and had seen in interrogations. Henry Roberts was typical of most people doing time for murder. This was a crime of passion unfolding here. Something had been stuck in Roberts’ craw for a long time, and now something had at last set him off. He had probably never committed a crime before in his life, except one festering little grudge had finally boiled up into something toxic, something he could no longer control. This monologue was his way of airing all of his grievances. “All talk all the time. Everyone trying to sound so intelligent and rational and poised and in control. Planes of reality, they say. Hyper space. Alternate dimensions. Quantum string, whatever the hell. And what no one is willing to admit is that we are dealing with some evil, cold-blooded selection system. Do you realize that?” At last he paused and shot a tense, angry look at Rick and Cornelia. “It’s a selection system. That’s why it’s here. To select some and let others die—”
“Mr. Roberts,” Cornelia said very softly.
Rick wished she wouldn’t have done that as one of Roberts’ henchmen, a heavyset, bearded man in some type of a hunting jacket and cradling a shotgun, flinched.
“Mr. Roberts,” Cornelia went on. “I know what you’re talking about. This selection system that you think is—”
Roberts’ look darkened, and Rick noticed the M-16 shift in his hands. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Trying to talk your way out of this? Because you’re not doing it well.”
“Please,” Cornelia insisted. “Just listen to what I have to say—”
“Do you remember those stories out of San Francisco?” Roberts cut her off. “That globe going down that hill and—”
“I know,” Rick cut in, hoping to divert Roberts’ focus from Cornelia. “We were there.”
Nonetheless, she said, “One of the people killed there, Sarah Robinson, was one of my best friends from childhood.”
Roberts raised his voice in indignation now. “I’m sorry to hear that, because my brother also died. Except my brother wasn’t crushed by a globe. He got some damn fool idea in his head….” As Roberts paused, his gaze skipped to the Foster family, beaming ferocious hatred at all four of them. “Had some idea that the globe would save his life. All those TV shows put on one earth spirit-power hippie asshole after the next about world transformation and a new ag
e and how we will all live forever. Live forever, huh? Is that what you want to tell a man who’s in the hospital with cancer? That he should leave his doctor, his medication, and try to get to the spirit mountain in California where the first globe appeared because he will be healed?”
I guess we found what we were looking for, the words screamed through Rick’s mind. When he shot a quick look Cornelia’s way, he could see comprehension dawning on her as well.
But someone else replied to Roberts’ rant first.
“Mr. Roberts, I am truly so very sorry for your loss,” Charlie Foster spoke in what sounded like a strangled wheeze. “But please—”
“You shut the hell up!” Roberts hissed, and briefly swung the barrel of his rifle in his direction.
“Look, Mr. Roberts,” Rick jumped in, “this is not their fault.”
“No,” Roberts replied, contempt searing his voice. “His daughter was just selected to be saved while others get to die.”
Rosemary Foster now whimpered, “Please! I beg you….”
What again no one else seemed to notice was the tin metallic rattle from somewhere in the house. Rick’s eyes darted about as he tried to remain still, but he saw nothing that could have been making that sound.
“What the fuck is that?” one of Roberts’ thugs, a guy in a woodland camouflage overcoat, sounded off.
And Rick couldn’t be sure whether he was glad to hear his words or not. Someone else had taken note of the noise apparently.
“Nothing!” Roberts snapped as his underling before glaring at Rick again. “So now you people tell me what it is exactly that makes her…,” he stabbed the barrel of the M-16 toward Sally, “special. What makes her better than everyone else.”
Rosemary began sobbing now, her body heaving and convulsing.
“Why does she get healed while others deserve to die?” Roberts raged.
“It’s not about deserving to die…,” Rick tried to answer.
“Oh no!” Roberts cut him off. “You mean there’s some selection process here that makes sense? That’s fair?”
“Believe me,” Cornelia said, “I asked myself that a million times after Sarah died. What’s the purpose behind this? Why? But I don’t know.” She paused and pointed toward Sally. “And she doesn’t know either.”
“She’s a kid, for God’s sake,” Rick tried to implore Roberts, hoping there was still some chance of talking him out of this frenzy, this hatred that had been bottling up inside him, ready to burst. “What are you going to do, kill her? Are you going to kill a little girl because she lived while…?”
“A kid?” Roberts asked. But instead of the roiling anger in his voice, there was the slight halt of confusion. Rick wondered if that little pause was something significant enough to offer hope. Maybe Roberts didn’t have it in him to either kill, or allow his goons to hurt, anyone. “So maybe that’s it? She’s an innocent kid, and that’s why the globes chose her to live? Well, guess what, friend? How many other kids do you think are out there? In hospitals! Suffering and dying right now!” Roberts’ glare darkened again as his delivery was getting more and more vehement. “Kids whose families don’t live in big fancy houses like this. Ones who don’t have a big fancy Cadillac SUV in the garage. So is that it? Huh? Are they all better than everyone else? If you don’t live in a big house you deserve to die? Huh? My brother fixed copy machines for a living. So I guess that means he’s not as good.”
“Look,” Rick said as he heard the clatter of something metallic resonate from what must have been the entrance to a kitchen on the far side of the room. “I don’t pretend to understand any of this. But this is not her fault. She is not making any of this happen….”
“Oh no?” Roberts spat. “But what is she, what are they…,” he waved his gun at the Fosters again, “doing about any of this? Do you know? Do you know what they’ve been doing since their daughter’s been miraculously healed? Going to all the hippie globe earth-power gatherings, talking about how all of this is all so wonderful and the globes will heal people, that’s what. Just have faith, that’s all.” Roberts paused for a long beat, his nostrils flaring almost as if he was trying to suck all the oxygen out of the room, before he bellowed, “Lying! That’s what they’re doing.”
“No!” Charlie Foster cried. “I swear! Please understand…I swear to God that—”
“Oh, you can swear to God all you want,” Roberts yelled back. “Your globe god, you mean. Isn’t that right? The one who’s making the selections.”
“Whatever those globes might be doing,” Rick, too, raised his voice, hoping there was still a chance of calming Roberts before he spiraled completely out of control. “It is not that little girl’s fault. Do you understand? Do you think she asked for this…?”
“I think she,” Roberts continued raging, “I think they know how the selections are made. They know how it’s decided. Who is good enough, who gets to live and who gets to die. And I’m going to make them talk. They’ve deceived the world for the sake of some bloodthirsty—”
Except Roberts’ word froze in his throat as the entire living room was bathed in light.
5.
A moment after the room was flooded by lights, it was assaulted by noise; flooded by the noise of a revving engine, a gunshot, then the sounds of wood tearing, disintegrating, glass obliterating, the scream of a man knowing his life was about to blink out in an instant.
As Rick spun toward the sound of the noise and the lights, he saw the front end of a car barreling toward the Foster house. At first the vehicle hit the stairs to the porch, began crushing it, yet at the same time getting its momentum deflected upward as if by a ramp.
Rick dived through the air, his arms grasping for Cornelia as an oncoming car slammed into the front door of the Fosters’ home, tore it to shards of wood and glass, instantly killed one of Roberts’ gunmen who had taken a shot at it, then skidded across the living room, ran over a second gunman, and went ramming into the wall on the far side.
As he and Cornelia slammed into the hardwood flooring, Rick’s glance shifted toward the spot where Roberts used to stand, finding him sprawled on the ground as well. But, unfortunately, Roberts was not on the ground because he had been hit by the incoming car. He was down because he, too, had dived out of the way.
And another unfortunate sight was that of two remaining gunmen still on their feet, unhurt. One of them, in fact, was raising his own M-16 now, searching for the nearest target of opportunity. The target he seemed to have settled on was Rick and Cornelia.
Except he didn’t get a chance to take the shot. Three ragged holes burst open on his chest as semiautomatic gunfire thundered through the house. Roberts’s goon staggered backward, exit wounds spraying blood all over the Foster’s fireplace and mantle, eventually losing his footing and melting to the floor.
Before the last standing thug could even get as far as aiming, gunfire battered his upper chest, drilled into his face, and a final round caught him in the right temple and removed the left side of his skull.
Rick would have liked to have known who their saviors were at that moment, but first Roberts had to be dealt with. The leader of the assault on the Fosters appeared unhurt, about to rise to his feet and go for the M-16 only about a foot or two from his grip. So Rick reacted by springing upright and lunging for Roberts.
Rick connected with Roberts in a battering tackle, having invested all of his strength in hitting the man as hard as possible and moving him away from the assault rifle. The hit, however, turned out to be so hard—and Roberts’s body weighed much less than Rick anticipated—that they both hurtled farther backward than Rick had thought they would. Their bodies crashed into a picture window on the left side of the living room, obliterating it into a crystalline spray, then they caught on the window sill, flipped over, and exited the house.
Still tangled up, Rick and his opponent landed on a section of
the porch that wrapped around onto the side of the house. After plowing onto the glass-covered wood flooring, though, they both made the effort to rise to their feet first. Roberts was going to run for it, Rick surmised, as the unhinged man had probably just figured out that Rick outweighed him by great deal of lean-muscle bodyweight. But after everything that had gone down back in the house, there was no way Rick was going to let him do that.
Except Roberts thought he could buy himself a little lead-time in his escape by taking a swing at Rick’s head…and doing it with an improvised weapon. Just as Rick was almost completely upright, Robert’s right hand flew toward his face in a wide haymaker swing, a brief flash of moonlight glinting off something in his fist.
Glass! Rick’s mind screamed, urging him to duck before at least one of his eyes could have been taken out. Roberts had apparently taken hold of a glass shard and tried to cut him with it.
But Rick’s evasive move worked and his attacker’s hand flew less than an inch over his head. Then, before Roberts even completed the full swing of his arm, Rick went on the offensive, launching a fist into his midsection and doubling him over with pain. Exploiting his on-target assault, Rick hit Roberts again, sending him staggering backward toward the porch railing, then striking yet again with a fist smashed into Roberts’s face.
The battered would-be assassin fell against one of the posts supporting the roof above the porch. Blood now gushed from his misshapen nose and split lip, yet he still remained upright. As he stared at Rick, there was still a frenzied energy behind Roberts’s eyes, no matter how bleary and dazed they might have appeared.
Something in that look made Rick lash out again, grabbing him by the throat and holding him fastened against the post.
“More…,” Roberts wheezed at length, despite the pressure Rick kept on his throat. “There will be…more…,” he groaned, blood and spittle flying from his lips and nose. While back in the house he had still kept some semblance of a grip on sanity, now the energy radiating out of Roberts’s frenzied glare spoke only of completely implacable madness. When Rick let up the pressure of the choke hold, Roberts hissed, “The deceivers will be killed!”
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