by Lee Driver
Furniture was wood and chrome or a metal of some type. A couch against the side wall was leather and looked inviting. He dropped the gym bag on the floor, stretched out on the couch, and told himself he would just rest for a few minutes.
The gray hawk settled on top of a utility pole. Across the street was the silver Chevy. The hawk had scanned the area enclosed by fencing after locating the car. So far its visual acuity had not detected any human movement.
Unsure if there were cameras around, the hawk wasn’t about to take any chances. It flew across the street to another building and through an open window where it quickly shifted to the wolf. The wolf immediately picked up Dagger’s scent. He had been in this building. It followed the scent down the stairs and out the back door. The wolf paused at the bottom of a stairway which led up to a tower. It picked up the scent again and tore off toward the missile silo. There were danger signs on the fence but the gate was unlocked and pulled open several feet, just enough for a man to pass through. The wolf retreated, made a slow circle, looked at the area beyond the fence, then returned to check out the rest of the buildings.
Unlocked doors yawned open in the breeze. The wolf listened for movement, voices, tilted its head to catch any scent of danger. The air was as vacant as the small outpost. It passed what looked like a post office then darted into a clothing store. There were racks for clothes with little more than frayed rags and empty hangers. But one glass case held out hope. The wolf quickly shifted to Sara. The warm air licked her bare skin. Although Sara was sure she was alone, she didn’t like the exposed feeling of walking around nude. She pulled out one of the garments and unfolded it. All of the garments were blue in color and resembled one piece janitorial suits. But it would have to do. Most of them were in a large size. Settling on the one lone medium size, Sara slipped into the suit. Six inches of fabric flopped past her toes. This wouldn’t do at all.
There were drawers by the counter. Searching through them, Sara found a pair of scissors. She slipped out of the jumpsuit, folded it in half, laid it across the counter, and cut off the sleeves and half of the length in the pant legs. With this heat, the last thing Sara wanted was anything long. She slipped back into the suit and zipped it up. Deep pockets were on the sides of the pant legs. Now she needed shoes. The doors below the counter opened up to a mixture of dust, dirt, and dead snake carcasses. Sara shuddered and checked the cabinets on the opposite wall. Success. Several boxes were stacked in the cabinet. Sizes were stamped on the boxes. She selected a size seven and opened the box.
“Yuk.” Black work boots were not a girl’s best friend. She moved to the next cabinet. “Yes.” These boxes contained blue and white athletic shoes. Sara shuffled through the boxes until she found a size seven.
A search of the rest of the store didn’t yield socks. After lacing the shoes and plaiting her hair, Sara turned to leave. A door in the back had a sign which said, Authorized Personnel Only. Do Not Enter.
Her curiosity piqued, Sara walked over and pressed her ear to the door. Nothing. She tried the doorknob. Warped from the heat, the door was wrestled free from the lock by brute strength. The door opened to a round room, no more than six feet across, with what looked like chrome walls. She stepped into the room and the door snapped shut. Sara jumped. This side of the door was paneled in chrome, like the walls. And there wasn’t a doorknob.
Vertical lights flashed on opposite sides of the tubular room. Then she heard a sound, a whooshing, like air escaping. Her ears started to feel strange. The room was dropping.
“What’s happening?” Sara braced herself against the side, palms flat against the wall. Her heart pounded in her chest and she felt panic set in. She tried to count the seconds. How far down did this chute go? How many floors? Was it really descending or was it an illusion?
At the count of ten, Sara felt the room slowing down. She was surprised she didn’t have to yawn to pop her ears. It was as though this makeshift elevator were pressure-controlled. She heard a hiss but nothing happened. Was she stuck in this tiny place with no way out? But then the chrome door slid open. Sara stared at the room beyond. It was as large as her living room at home. All chrome and glossy wood with a floor…where was the floor? It looked like she was stepping out of a spacecraft with nothing more than the universe under her feet. There were stars and comets, distant universes. Another illusion? She tapped one foot where she thought the floor should be. It was solid. Sara smiled. It was a glass floor and underneath it was a map of the universe.
“Neat.” She emerged from the elevator and made her way to the doorway. She stared down a long hall to her right. It was empty. There was a shorter hallway to her left with a door. She went for the door. It opened out to a short set of concrete stairs.
Dagger leaped from the couch, gun in hand as a sharp alarm blared. “What the hell?” Checking his watch, he saw that he had slept for almost two hours. Shadows passed beyond the closed blinds. He scrambled on all fours to the closest window and splayed the blinds. Hordes of people were walking down the cobblestone street. Kids in baseball caps, mothers pushing strollers, men casually dressed, others in lab coats.
“Shit.” Dagger opened the door and peered out. Staying in the shadows, he waited until the last of the group passed, then he moved along the overhang.
The alarm died as people stood around in clusters. Dagger found shelter behind one of the large concrete pillars and watched from a distance. The workers were talking, laughing. Were they doctors? He doubted it. Something told him they were researchers. There wasn’t a clipboard among them though, much less a briefcase. It was like the town of Stepford. An alarm sounds and they all walk out in unison. What comes next?
A straggler approached close to the pillar. Dagger pulled back and waited. There was something familiar about the way she walked. It couldn’t be! Just as she passed close by him, Dagger reached out, wrapped the gun arm around her waist, clamped a hand over her mouth, and pulled her behind the pillar.
She tensed and he could feel her start to struggle. “What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered in her ear. Sara relaxed against him and he took his hand away.
“Saving your ass.”
“Yeah, right. I thought Skizzy had you under lock and key.”
“Nice try, big guy.”
“Sara.” Dagger tried to keep his anger in check. “This is dangerous. You have no idea what you are walking into.” He jutted his chin toward the courtyard. “As you can see, we are a bit outnumbered.”
Sara gave her patented eye roll, said, “Oh, jeez,” and pulled away from him.
“Sara!” Dagger whispered as she slipped from his grasp and strolled over to the closest cluster. He aimed the gun, ready to shoot if necessary. He watched as she approached a group of five people. Not one person acknowledged her presence. She turned back to Dagger, smiled, then walked through them…literally. It was as though they weren’t even there. Sara turned and walked right back through them as though they were wisps of air.
Dagger shook his head in amazement as he joined her. “How did you do that?”
“They are holograms.” She nodded toward the ceiling. “Just like the sky. Everything is fake, Dagger. The dogs and kids playing in the park, the cricket sounds. I was able to see partially through the people.” Sara’s enhanced eyesight could detect things Dagger couldn’t. “I spent time walking the area. The horizon isn’t even real. It’s just made to look like wide open spaces.”
The crowd started to disperse, fading into various doorways or dematerializing, it was hard to tell. Within seconds the courtyard was abandoned again leaving Dagger and Sara gaping after their transitory visitors. Sara did a slow turn, studying the buildings, much the same way Dagger had when he first stumbled out of the stairwell. “Want to explore?”
Dagger shoved the gun back into the holster and moved toward the bench. “I need to rest my legs a bit more after trekking down one mile of stairs.” He saw the look of utter amusement lighting up her eyes. “What?” He pl
opped down on the bench next to her feeling every muscle scream for relief.
“You walked down one mile of stairs?”
“Yeah.”
Her smile spread, brightening her eyes even more. “I took the elevator.”
“What?”
Sara laughed, that carefree laugh that sometimes made him feel as though he brought some joy into her life. Other times, like now, he felt like the ass end of a very bad joke.
“The clothing store had a closet or storage room. I was curious because it was completely empty and was a strange, tubular shape. Once I stepped inside, the door slid shut before I could stop it. There weren’t any buttons or controls but I felt it plummeting. I ended up here.” She placed her chin on his shoulder and stared up at him with those gorgeous eyes. “And you walked down over five thousand feet?”
He held up a hand in warning. “Don’t. I may be tired, but I’m still armed.”
Sara stifled a laugh, grabbed his hand and placed it palm down on the bench with her hand on top of his. “Feel it?”
“So? It’s marble, slightly warm.”
“No, the movement. I can feel the ground, the bench. Everything has a slight humming or vibration.”
Dagger concentrated, tried to feel what she was sensing. And then it hit him. It felt as though some mild electrical charge was arcing through the air. “Yeah, I do.”
“There’s an electrical source somewhere. The holograms, the sounds, the movement of the clouds in the sky, something is controlling everything.”
“Or someone.” Dagger lifted the silver tube clipped to a belt loop. “Skizzy’s invention has scrambled any cameras in the area if there are any.”
“You haven’t seen signs of life, have you?”
Dagger shook his head. “It’s as though everyone left in a pretty big hurry. They didn’t even take time to empty coffee cups.” If he had found coffee cups with warm coffee he would immediately suspect everyone was holed up in some large panic room somewhere sealed off from everything yet with a screen to monitor what he and Sara were doing. It wasn’t a far-fetched idea.
Sara stood abruptly. “You’ve had enough rest. Let’s go check out the neighborhood. There are houses down the block.”
“Damn, my Kimber for a car.” His legs protested as he stood.
An overhead door across the courtyard started to roll open. Dagger grabbed his gun and he and Sara darted for the nearest pillar. They waited as the door ended its ascent. “Check it out,” he told Sara.
“Sure, I’m the one who gets her head blown off.” But it was Sara’s enhanced eyesight that he needed. “All I see are motorcycles of some sort.”
Dagger peered over the top of her head. She was right. From what he could see, it appeared to be a garage. “No humans, animals, or holograms?”
“No.”
They crossed the courtyard, eyes scanning the buildings, windows, looking for signs of life. Once inside the garage, they saw close to twenty vehicles resembling motorcycles but without wheels. They were made of a steel gray metallic construction, built for two people with a platform to place the feet but without pedals.
“Strange. I don’t even see a start button.”
“What’s stranger,” Sara added, “is that you no sooner mentioned needing a vehicle when we suddenly have a choice of vehicles.”
Dagger let that slide right off the logical side of his brain. He was too busy trying to figure out how to turn the damn thing on. “Bizarre. No key, no gas cap.” He slipped the sunglasses on and studied the front panel.
Sara climbed on the back and wrapped her arms around Dagger’s waist. “Maybe you just have to tell it to go.” The vehicle started humming and Sara let out a yelp as it rose six inches off the ground.
CHAPER 29
The vehicle moved silently through the streets, passing what appeared to be a commercial area and into a residential compound. The vehicle was so quiet they didn’t have to scream to hear each other, not like when they road Dagger’s Harley.
“It’s hydrogen or steam-powered or something.” Dagger turned the grips on the handlebar and realized he could control the speed. Not everything was out of his control. “This is like a Hover,” Dagger said. “Skizzy found a print out for an experimental vehicle on a government web site. If the price of gas keeps going up, we’ll all be driving these.”
“I wouldn’t mind. These are fun, as long as they don’t take total control.”
Dagger didn’t like the sound of that and the logical side of his brain grasped for the significance of Sara’s previous point: that he no sooner needed a vehicle and one was provided. Maybe he should have tested whatever was controlling this small town and asked for a medium rare steak. Perhaps if he said it aloud the Hover would zip right over to a restaurant.
He steered the Hover down a tree lined street of cookie cutter houses. Each house had the same type of fencing, the same evergreens placed in identical spots, and identical front windows.
He decelerated and said, “Stop.” The Hover stopped, then settled down to street level. They climbed off. Dagger took a step back and lowered his sunglasses, as if for the first time assessing Sara’s legs, the firmness of her calves. “Where did you get the clothes?” He popped the sunglasses back in place. “I know you didn’t haul them all the way from Cedar Point.”
“If you had taken one of your many cars instead of Skizzy’s, I would have had something of my own to wear since I keep a change of clothes in each trunk. I had to settle for what was in the outpost clothing store. Not much to choose from. Had to do some of my own tailoring.”
Dagger glanced at the zipper that stopped a hair’s breadth above her cleavage. “I like your method of tailoring.” He turned his attention back to the houses and out of force of habit, pulled his Kimber from its holster. “Are the houses holograms?”
“No,” Sara replied. “But they look more like upgraded Army barracks. You would think they would have ultra-modern housing.”
Dagger reached down and pulled a Kimber sub-compact from an ankle holster. He handed it to Sara but she refused. “We’re the only ones here. I’d probably end up shooting you,” she said.
Dagger kept a gun in each hand as they crossed the lawn to one of the houses. He stopped and ran his foot across the grass. “Astroturf, or something like it.”
“No need to cut the grass.”
They moved cautiously down the sidewalk with Dagger watching the houses for movement while Sara scanned the houses across the street.
“You will let me know when you see someone who isn’t a hologram, right?”
Sara smiled. “Thought you didn’t need my help.”
A movement in one of the windows had them running to opposite trees.
“I’ll take that gun now,” Sara said. Dagger tossed the sub- compact to her.
Sara caught the gun then waited several seconds before stealing a glance at the house and the person standing in the window. She called on her advanced sight and studied the window closer, then the area around the window. “Dagger, there isn’t any glass in those windows. They are empty.” She stepped out from behind the tree. “Those pit marks around the windows are bullet holes and the people are fake.”
“What?” Dagger moved cautiously from behind the tree and approached the house.
Sara turned and studied the houses across the street. “This is like some type of military practice range. Look.” Across the street another figure popped up behind the window. This one was a child.
Dagger moved quickly up to the front door and kicked it in. The wood frame splintered, spraying wood into an empty room. It wasn’t even a completed house, just a front with one room. Sara came up behind him so quietly he almost turned his gun on her.
“Little jumpy there.” She walked over and kicked at the figure. It clanged and clattered against the floor. “Seems to be made of metal.” Several other figures lay in a corner, their metal frames melted and twisted.
Dagger knelt down in front of the remain
s. “Something had to be pretty hot to melt these.”
Sara ran her hand over the window frame. “I thought they were bullet holes but they aren’t. The house looks like it’s made of stone or marble. A bullet would have shattered it, right? Not made a clean hole through it.”
Dagger joined her at the window. Everything about this place was a little too high tech and he expected any moment to wake from a bad dream.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Sara was several steps ahead of Dagger. They were a few feet from the Hover when Sara stopped dead in her tracks. “Do you feel that?” she asked.
“I don’t feel anything.”
“Right. Something turned off. I don’t hear the humming. Don’t feel the vibration.”
As though someone had hit the dimmer switch, the sun started to disappear, slowly fading on the horizon. Street lights clicked on and a full moon rose in the sky as though pulled by some invisible string. Sara slipped her hand into Dagger’s and held on tight.
“Did it rain while we were in there?” she whispered. Water puddles glistened under the glare of the lights.
Someone or something was messing with their minds. Dagger shoved the sunglasses in his shirt pocket and checked his watch. “It’s only six o’clock.” They walked trance-like into the center of the street, keeping their backs to each other as though waiting for something to jump at them from dark alleyways. “I think now would be a good time to return to the courtyard.”
Sara slipped the gun into the pocket of her jumpsuit. Dagger holstered his before climbing back onto the Hover. One bright halogen beam lit up their route. “Courtyard,” Dagger called out and the Hover took off.
“Where does everyone live if these houses are fake?” Sara asked.
“Like you said. These streets are more like a training camp. Maybe the sleeping quarters are another floor below.” Dagger had a feeling they did more than just military training here, he just wasn’t sure what. He hadn’t seen enough of the compound to get a feel for what had been going on. Even the office he had slept in didn’t have much in the way of office equipment. Whatever prompted the evacuation was serious enough that they dropped everything and ran.