Near Death (A Jake Townsend Science Fiction, Action and Adventure, Thriller Series Book 1)

by Richard C Hale

  Just then, Jake’s cell phone went off and they both jumped. Jake almost drove off the road. They both laughed nervously and Jake asked Maddy if she would get it. He never talked on cell phones when he drove anymore. Not since Beth.

  Maddy pressed the speaker button so Jake could hear. “Hello?”

  “Maddy? It’s Bodey. Could you guys get me some collards if they have them? I forgot to ask.”

  “Yes, Bodey,” she said. “We’ll get you some collards. Anything else?”

  “Sweet tea.”

  Jake was laughing now and Maddy giggled.

  “Sweet tea,” she repeated, hardly able to get it out.

  “What’s wrong with you guys?” Bodey asked.

  “Nothing,” she laughed. “We’ll be back in a few with the collards.”

  “Ok, great,” Bodey said, and hung up.

  Jake and Maddy were still giggling as they arrived at the restaurant. In a better mood, he stopped her from getting out and turned her toward him.

  “You’re something,” he said, leaning close to her.

  “Something what, Dr. Jake?”

  “Something special,” he said and kissed her.

  “Are you getting all mushy on me, again? You’re breaking our rule.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’m glad.”

  A car drove by and someone yelled, “Get a room!” and they laughed, embarrassed.

  “Should we?” she asked.

  “Get a room? Hell, yes! What about the food?”

  “We’ll call them back and tell them they ran out.”

  They touched foreheads and he said, “Later?”

  She nodded, smiling. “Later.”

  They got the food and headed back, making small talk and joking about Bodey’s collards. Everyone wolfed the food down and Bodey was disappointed there was only one serving of collards for him.

  As they worked, Jake would look up to find Maddy staring at him and they would enjoy a moment between them. Once, Maddy walked by and whispered in his ear that she would be in the bathroom, alone.

  He said, “Tease!” and she gave him a sexy, sly, look as she sauntered away. He saw Teri glaring at her and had a flash of anger, but he let it pass.

  Later, Bodey was discussing some property of digital film compression with him when Maddy came over and whispered in his ear, “I’m not wearing any panties,” and turned and left.

  His jaw about hit the floor.

  Bodey hadn’t heard what she said, but he grinned anyway. He watched her walk away and whispered to Jake, “Damn!”

  Maddy did look great in her short skirt and pumps. Jake hoped he could make it the rest of the day.

  A half hour later, Bodey was ready with the program updates. They all gathered around to see.

  “These files were even bigger than the audio files,” Bodey said. “But you would expect that with video. A lot more stuff going on.”

  He hit play and when the scene arrived at the life review he stopped it and restarted it at one thirty-second of the normal speed. He had hit the mark. The view was seamless and the gaps and skipping had stopped.

  “There’s a lot of information here,” Bodey said. “If I were to guess right now, we would be here eleven years watching all of it.”

  What Bodey said didn’t immediately sink in until Maddy asked, “You mean my mom’s whole life is there? I mean everything? At least up to age eleven when she died?”

  “I don’t know,” Bodey said. “I was being facetious.”

  Teri said excitedly, “Fast forward it.”

  Bodey jumped ahead some and the scene changed to a little girl of about four playing on a swing set.

  “Again,” Teri said.

  It jumped again and a man and woman were singing happy birthday to Sara on her seventh birthday.

  “Nana,” Maddy said.

  “Again,” Teri said.

  It jumped to a funeral. Sara was crying into her mother’s side as her mother cried into a handkerchief.

  “That must be my great grandma’s funeral. The one who predicted mine and Charlotte’s names,” Maddy said.

  Teri was smiling and then she was exuberant. “Jake! We did it! We cracked it. I can’t believe it!”

  Bodey was high fiving Maddy while Maddy clung to Jake’s neck and Teri was hugging Bodey, but Jake was a little more subdued.

  Maddy noticed first and said, “What is it Jake?”

  “This is a breakthrough,” Jake said, “but there is a problem.”

  “What?” Teri asked.

  “Think about,” Jake said.

  They all looked at each other, but none of them spoke.

  “Everything is there up to the time of the NDE,” Jake said, “but nothing after that. We’ve managed to access everything in her mind from her first day of life up until her body thought it was her last, but everything ceases after that.”

  “But that’s amazing, Jake,” Maddy said, still smiling. “You can now access that information like a computer. Isn’t that what you’ve been working for?”

  “You guys are missing one thing,” Jake said.

  Teri was nodding now, pulling on her hair.

  “This only works on people who have had an NDE.” Jake paused. “Don’t you see? The person will have had to die for us to be able to access their memories. They will have had to die and have a Near Death Experience for us to do anything with them.”

  27

  January 14, 2010 1:30 p.m.

  Orange Park, Florida

  “So—we kill people,” Bodey joked, but no one made a comment.

  Jake was pacing and thinking, but finally shrugged and said, “Well at least I can tell the General we’ve had a breakthrough and we’re making progress. I’m sure he’ll be glad about that. Good work, Bodey. You pulled out all the stops today to get me to this point. Feel like going home? We can get you on a flight back tonight if you’d like.”

  “Yeah, I should get back. I have lots of stuff on my plate back home. I don’t want to get too far behind.”

  “Maddy,” Jake said. “Can we get him booked on a flight out to O’Hare?”

  “Yep, I’ll get right on it.” And she left to make the reservation.

  Teri told Jake, “This is big time. Don’t belittle what we’ve done today. We’ll get the rest soon. I can feel it.”

  “I can too,” Jake said. “Something is bothering me and I can’t figure out what it is. It’s like something that is on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t quite get it out.”

  She nodded and said, “It’ll come to you.”

  “Teri?” Jake said, “I’m proud of you. You did good work today and I couldn’t have done any of this without you. You know that, right?”

  She smiled and gave him a tender kiss on the cheek. “Yeah, I know it.”

  Jake and Maddy took Bodey to the airport and walked him to the plane.

  Before Bodey left he told Maddy to take care of Jake. “I see how you two are. I wanted to let you know I haven’t seen him in this good a mood in—well—never.”

  “I will. Don’t worry.” And she gave him a big hug and kiss on his non-furry forehead.

  “Maybe it’ll be a rough flight and a redhead will need her hair held for hurling,” Bodey joked. “I like redheads.”

  She laughed.

  Jake shook his hand and said he would call if he needed anything else. Bodey turned to go and then stopped and put his hand to his head.

  “Jeez—I almost forgot,” Bodey said. “You’re going to need this.”

  He pulled a CD case out with a disc in it and handed it to Jake.

  “The new software modifications will not work without this disc. I didn’t have time to properly modify the system so this is just an add-on until I code the operating system back in Chicago. I’ll send you the new one when it’s ready. Don’t lose that.”

  “Important,” Jake said. “Got it.”

  Bodey waved and left.

  As Jake and Maddy walked back through t
he concourse holding hands, they didn’t talk. It was as if speaking would break the spell, and the glances and smiles they shared were more powerful than anything that could be spoken.

  When they got to the car, she slipped in next to him and they left the parking garage for the interstate. She kept running her fingers through his hair and softly kissing his neck, teasing him as they drove. It was driving him crazy.

  He had his hand on her bare thigh and she opened her legs a bit. He took the hint and slid his hand between her warm legs, surprised to find what she had whispered earlier in the lab to be true. She wriggled against him and then teased him through his pants as they arrived at his place.

  They jumped out of his car and as he fumbled the front door open, she attacked him before he could get it all the way shut. She laughed as they fell to the couch and as she slowly pulled the blouse over her head, he unzipped her skirt, tugging at it. She playfully shook her head ‘No’ and he stopped, letting her slowly slide the skirt up so it bunched at her waist. She slid onto his lap, straddling his legs, unbuttoned his trousers and loosened his fly. She grabbed him and rose up, guiding him slowly inside her. He finally spoke two words.

  “You’re something.”

  Afterwards, as he held her from behind, caressing the nape of her neck and languishing in the curve of her hip, she said, “Do you realize what you did today?”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “You achieved two of your goals.”

  “Was one of my goals bending you over this coffee table?”

  She slapped him playfully and said, “Will you behave?” but then she wriggled her rump against him as he spooned her.

  “Me behave?” he said, enjoying her tight rear against him.

  “Seriously.”

  “Ok—two goals?” He asked. “I didn’t even get one right.”

  She turned over, facing him, and placed a hand on the back of his neck.

  “You accessed the human brain and can now pull information from it like you were accessing files on a computer.”

  “But the brain has to have died for me to do that. I don’t know if that’s a victory or not.”

  “You’ll get the rest of it, I know it.”

  “Maybe.”

  She waited and finally said, “You have no idea the other one do you?”

  He shrugged. “No.”

  “You proved that there is life after death.”

  “How?”

  “By showing the Life Review is a real thing, that when you cross over, your life is shown to you in its entirety. We now know it’s real, because we have video proof it exists.”

  He thought about this for a minute and then held her eyes with his own, smiled and said, “You’re something.”

  * * *

  They ate dinner in, ordering Chinese and drinking beer, then they relaxed watching a little TV. He thought it cool she could drink like one of the guys.

  She belched loudly, not seeming to care, and he said, playfully, “OMG, you’re a pig!”

  “OMG?” she laughed. “Did you just say OMG? The old man trying to be cool. And do I look like a pig to you?” She playfully threw a pillow at him.

  “Old man?” he said, throwing the pillow back at her and then pinning her under him on the couch. “I’ll show you an old man.”

  He tickled her and she squealed, thrashing around and spilling a little beer. She managed to get him off of her, but he lost his balance and fell off the couch, hitting his head on the coffee table. She fell on top of him giggling and said, “OMG, is your head ok?”

  “You tried to kill me,” he said, rubbing his head.

  “You were tickling me. I have to warn you I lose all control of my bodily functions when I’m being tickled. The tickler beware.” But she kissed his head.

  “All control?” he asked, a little sneaky smile on his face.

  “All control.”

  He kissed her and liked the taste of the beer on her tongue. It was kind of sexy and bad girl all at the same time.

  Somehow, they ended up naked again on the floor and when it was over, he said out of breath, “Girl, you are killing me.”

  “Horrible way to die, isn’t it?”

  “Will you stay here tonight?”

  “I really want to, but my mom would give me this look of disappointment all week.”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t have to leave for awhile though,” she said.

  “Do you think they would be upset if I called Mike and asked him to take your mom back to your nana’s for like a month?”

  “Yeah—that would probably go over well,” she said, playfully punching him. “You really want me to stay that bad?”

  He nodded.

  “We might be breaking our own rules,” she said.

  “I look at it as an opportunity to know you.”

  “Are you making fun of our rules?”

  “No—I respect the rules. Our first one seems to be going really well.”

  She punched him again.

  “Ow! This arm is getting sore.”

  “How much can you ‘know’ me while I’m sleeping?” she asked, still joking with him.

  “I already know a lot,” running the back of his fingers casually down the curve of her face. “You have this little happy grin while you sleep, and you twirl your hair a little too. It’s cute.”

  Her eyes moved to his.

  “And this little dimple right here,” he touched the corner of her mouth, “comes and goes as your smile grows.”

  She smiled.

  He touched her earlobe softly and said, “This ear has three piercing holes where this one has only two,” and he touched her other lobe just as softly. “But my favorite thing is this mole right here,” and he placed a fingertip on a small mole next to her bellybutton, “it’s shaped like a heart when you look at it upside-down.”

  She was staring at him intensely now, and said softly, “How do you know this?”

  “I watched you sleep the other night,” he said, a little embarrassed. “I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you. You were like an angel lying in my arms.”

  “Jake…” she said, softly. “I…” but she didn’t finish. A single tear traced a line down her cheek and hung on the corner of her mouth, trembling. He kissed her softly there and brushed it away.

  “Well, I’m good at making girls cry.”

  She smiled and then said, “You’re making it very hard to stick to the rules.”

  “I know,” he said. “Doesn’t it suck?”

  She punched him again and laid her head on his chest.

  28

  January 15, 2010 – 9:02 a.m.

  Orange Park, Florida

  Friday morning loomed large with a massive cold front descending upon the First Coast bringing freezing temperatures into the upper teens at night.

  The low on Saturday morning was supposed to hit fourteen degrees, and the news stations were all saying the freezing weather could last as long as ten days. North Florida had not seen a cold snap like this since the 1860s. People were staying indoors or bundling up in whatever they had that might fend off a bit of the biting cold.

  The homeless shelters in the City of Jacksonville were filled to capacity with many being turned away to fend for themselves in the frigid temperatures. Two deaths had already been reported Friday morning. Both were being blamed on the temperatures.

  More would probably follow.

  Teri, Jake and Maddy were in the lab, going over some menial tasks. They had spent a little time searching cracks and crevices for bugs and video cameras they may have missed the previous day, but they did not find any.

  Mid morning, Jake had to run to the printer’s to have some paperwork copied and he left the two girls to tend shop. He returned to find a palpable tension in the air and Maddy clearly angry.

  When he asked if everything was all right, both women said they were ‘fine,’ which meant they weren’t, and Jake could get neither to comment about anything mor
e. When Teri went to the ladies room, Jake eyed Maddy, but all Maddy said was, “She’s a bitch!” and wouldn’t talk any more about it. Jake hoped he hadn’t created a monster. He decided it was time to talk with Teri.

  When Teri returned from the ladies room, Jake said, “Teri, could I see you a moment in my office?”

  She nodded and followed Jake to his office where he shut the door behind them. He sat on the corner of his desk while Teri stood looking at everything but Jake.

  “Are you all right?” Jake asked.

  Teri nodded and said, “I’m fine.”

  “You seem a little angry. Are you and Maddy getting along?”

  She didn’t answer right away. “To be honest, Jake, not really.”

  He nodded and said, “I may have made a mistake bringing in someone new without consulting you and I’m sorry for that, but I assumed it wouldn’t be a problem. Has she done something to upset you?”

  “I really wish you had asked me, Jake. We’ve been a team for a long time and then you throw a new person in the mix. One who has little or no experience in a lab such as this and you expect me to be all excited about it?”

  “We needed the help. I know she’s lacking in clinical expertise, but I hired her mainly for secretarial duties. Is she getting in the way of your work?”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “She’s a distraction.”

  “She’s distracting you? I thought you said she wasn’t getting in the way of your work.”

  “She’s not distracting me,” Teri said. “She’s distracting you.”

  “I don’t have a problem with her,” Jake said, but he had a bad feeling about where this was going.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Teri said, sarcastically. “You two are bumping into the walls, falling all over each other. Making eyes and giggling. It’s disgusting. She’s been prancing around here in her short skirts and tight blouses while you and Bodey drool at her feet.”

  “You have a problem with the way she’s dressed?”

  “I have a problem with the way she does anything. Jake, we don’t need her here. If you want to bang the first little girl who bats her eyes at you, be my guest, but don’t drag it in here where we have a serious chance of destroying everything by losing our focus.”