by P. S. Power
Not that she could afford to get one going on yet.
Soon though. She was going to at least get some fruit. Even if it meant stopping off the highway. They all needed to get some new clothing soon anyway. That, or wash what they had. Kerry was starting to stink a bit. Penny probably was as well. For her part that wasn’t a factor yet, since the changes made to her kept bacteria from growing on her skin. Still, that didn’t protect her clothing that much, meaning she was next.
They drove, with Cin at the wheel, while the others ate.
“We need to get cleaned up. Any ideas how to do that without being tracked?”
Interestingly, Penny mumbled around a double cheeseburger, almost instantly.
“Camp ground. We already have a motor home, and can get showers and even washing machines there. Let’s… In the next state? I don’t want to be too close. We need to get rid of this beast soon, if we can.” Penny didn’t mention it, but the CIA people had freaked her the hell out. It had been too close the whole time she’d been in the building.
Worse, they knew it was an Infected person. That, or someone that had really advanced tech. When in doubt though, they were going to think the first one. Which was correct even, if a bit bigoted of them. So they drove almost all the way across the next two states, ending up just inside the mid-west. There they found a nice private camp ground, which had a theme to it. Jellystone Park. As in from the old cartoons with the two thieving bears who wanted to shank the park ranger.
Though, Cindy had to allow that they might not have been that upset with the guy. After all, they never mauled him or anything, and they were bears. That might have meant they were a little gentler toward him than she recalled from the reruns she’d seen as a girl. Which indicated that she’d been the one to want to shank the cartoon man.
They also had every amenity that anyone could ask for in a camping facility. Running water, showers and even a restaurant as well as a small store that allowed them to finally get some real food. Kerry pulled her own weight on that one, being a professional cook. Not that she wasn’t at least one up on Cin as far as deaths went. That was less than fun to think about, so she just didn’t for a while, just enjoying the dinner that was prepared over the outdoor fire pit.
That evening they roasted marshmallows and spoke in low tones, so that the family one spot over wouldn’t understand they were planning to go and kill people. If they’d caught on, it was just possible that their teen son might want to join them in the task. It wasn’t even a joke. He was actually fairly well messed up, if already getting better on his own.
Cin had some news on that score, at least.
“Mariah is on to what’s happening. Not who’s doing it yet, but they’ll get that one eventually. We need to head north next. They have a compound… Twenty people or so.” She meant that they could kill them all, but she doubted that the others would be that into it. Half of them were kids.
Even if they just got the adults, it would make a statement, she figured.
Penny didn’t get what was going on, but oddly, Kerry did. She’d been raised in a crazy cult after all.
“How…” She was trying to ask how many children they were going to have to murder, but couldn’t make the words come out. She knew that they would have to do that, since the group was filled with bad people.
Cindy smiled at her.
“We can just get the counselors. They really aren’t great people. It’s basically brainwashing. Drug therapies and things like that. They’re pretty much all turned into killers. Even the little kids. This isn’t summer camp. I mean, they don’t get toasty sugar on a stick even.” She managed that line just as she pulled her marshmallow from the end of her toasting stick and gingerly put the molten thing in her mouth.
The story there was pretty dark, once she started to go through it. The kids weren’t allowed to be normal, even if they had to pretend to be during the school year. These particular ones mainly went to private school, which was why they were off at the moment. In the summer, they were all put into intensive training, and basically drugged and tortured into absolute compliance. These early session kids didn’t get a break then, either, they just got a double dose of things. It was done so carefully that most of them didn't even meet the other kids at the camp. They saw adults, but those were all in masks. Constantly. Year after year.
Some of the people might, or might not show up in their lives at other points. It was done that way to keep things compartmentalized. Which she could attest to personally as being effective to keep telepaths from finding too much information out. It probably worked for spies and law enforcement, too.
The trick there was that the camp itself had some issues.
“They… Mariah watches their minds from space, constantly. If we get too close, we will be picked up. That’s about a quarter mile away. We can’t even send you in Penny. It will…” She winced, not saying what would be needed.
Kerry glared at her. The woman might not be imaginative, but she was pretty good with the whole idea of one thing leading to another.
“You want to make me kill them all, don’t you?”
“Yes. That’s the best plan. Or we could go someplace else. That would be… harder, but we can do it. There’s a decent target in Texas. A single man, but high enough ranking to make it worth doing. I was thinking that we could do it after the camp.” It wasn’t her call.
Penny though, didn’t speak for a while, finally shrugging.
“If we can take out ten people in one night, it will make an impact. These are insiders, right? Not just people hired…”
Cin nodded, not looking at Kerry at all.
“Right. Real Mariah group members. People that have information. The woman in charge is important to the whole thing as well. I mean, just connecting to her would have been enough to break things open for me. She doesn’t know everyone, but… Yeah, this is getting into the big time. She knows the final goal.”
Which was world domination, in order to bring an alien from a different reality into their world, destroying it all. The idea sounded a bit farfetched, but also a little familiar. She didn't mention that part. Not to hide it, but because it was kind of clear that Kerry was going to have a meltdown in about ten seconds. At least bits of the fire kept pelting Cindy, flying out every minute or two. Smacking her in the face.
Eventually her clothing blazed up, which got her to glare at the woman.
“Stop that, will you? I know that you don’t want to kill people. Trust me, I’d do it myself if I could, to save you from that. We just can’t this time. I’m sorry.” She wasn’t, but saying the words cost her nothing. It kind of worked as well, since the fire stopped flying at her as often.
It still happened, even after Kerry mumbled a halfhearted apology at her. Not really to her, which Penny noticed, but didn’t comment on. Things were getting a bit strained already, for all of them. Penny was holding up pretty well, actually, but Kerry was about to have a real nervous breakdown. As in an actual mental problem that might just need to have her committed in the end. The problem there is that they didn’t have time for that kind of thing just then.
Really, they needed to kill nearly a hundred more people if they wanted to actually stop the problem at hand. At a minimum. It might take a whole lot more than that to really do the trick. Things weren’t even all that bad yet, for them. They had good food to eat, at least that night, and things to roast on sticks.
“Eventually things are going to get bad. We aren’t even being followed yet. Not that I know about anyway.” She regretted saying the words the moment they came out, since Kerry hadn’t even considered that part so far. That eventually they were going to have people after them, if they kept killing people all over the country.
They were leaving signs all over the place, after all.
It was why they had to get rid of the motor home soon. Though buying a used car would make more sense than stealing it would. At least now that she’d thought about it for a while. T
hey could buy off book and just never put in the paperwork on it. That wouldn’t work forever, but by the time it was an issue, they’d need a new vehicle anyway. The problem there was that they couldn’t just go and steal from another bank. That kind of thing was tracked after all. Even if they spread things out, it would show a pattern. Which meant that she needed to do a bit of work, finally.
Not that she hadn’t been pulling her own weight, but it had been the boring stuff, so far. Finding the targets and plotting how to travel. Driving and going in to do most of the shopping for things. Being Kerry’s whipping post, so that Poltergeist could let off enough steam so that the motor home didn’t implode.
Smiling, she let herself nod. Pretending to be happy about an idea.
“I have some things to do, then. It will take a few days.” She didn’t mention what, which meant that Penny figured she was being sulky about how Kerry was acting. As if she cared about that. “Can you two hold out here for a bit? This shouldn’t really take long, but… Well, you know, it’s a special Cindy thing.”
It was a bit off, but Penny wondered if they were being ditched and Kerry just kind of wanted the other woman to be gone for a while. Then, she really did think of Cin as being evil. So, there was assent to the plan, if a bit reluctantly from one of the team members.
The next two days were spent finding the right targets. In this case it meant running for a full night, to find a city that was large enough to have a nice drug operation. Then she walked into the correct house, after ripping their heavy metal security door off its hinges, beat up the men and women there, and took all their money. Their drugs and guns as well, since the idiots there were all far too high to have that kind of thing. The meth was all dumped in a decently large river, which turned out to be the Mississippi. There was no sign there, but it was pretty big, which meant that Cindy should have guessed on her own, not just later when she read about it from a passerby.
Then there was more running, carrying a large duffle bag filled with joy, to find a gentleman who was selling his son’s van for him. It was nice enough, but the kid was off at college and had traded down for a car that actually got decent gas mileage. So, for only two thousand too much, she was able to drive off with the vehicle. One that had tags which were good for another four months, even.
It was blue, and not that horribly kept.
Finally, she got back to the camp ground, after not sleeping for two days. Kerry came out, when Cindy pulled up, having heard that someone was there. Penny popped her head as well, invisibly, only being given away by the floating words. That, and the handgun she was hiding behind the door.
“Oh… That’s what you were doing? I thought you might be making your way to Canada.”
She grinned and then shrugged at the door to the back of the motor home.
“This and getting some treats. Cash and other things for you. Here.”
The stuff was taken into the motor home, since opening the bag where it could be caught on camera was silly. Cin knew that one, since Penny thought about it clearly. It had come up in her training, more than once. She was used to doing things in the open without considering it, but some things would be noticed, if it happened. Like a bag filled with guns and money floating in the air.
Inside, Cooper laughed.
“Niiice. There must be fifty thousand in here. What did you do?”
“Stopped the regional drug trade for two weeks? Making the world a better place.” She pretended to care for a bit, then yawned. “That’s how I roll.”
Kerry seemed a bit grumpy, but that wasn’t really new. It was just showing more, because she was getting used to having Penny and Cindy around all the time. In short, she was always kind of a bitch, inside her head, but managed to hide it from most people, by acting shy and demure. That was a real act though, not how she honestly was.
The woman was kind of unpleasant, inside.
Not in a useful murder way, either.
Cooper moved to slap Cin on the shoulder, her voice pleasant.
“Get some rest. We’ll leave when it gets dark. We’ll take both vehicles, but park the motor home someplace and shift to the van. Then we’re off to Maine.”
The words were firm. Very nearly commanding. It was annoying to Cindy, but not Kerry. She actually responded well enough to things like that. The psycho inside of Cin wanted to scream about it, but she also understood that Cooper was kind of floundering, since she was picking up that Poltergeist was about to flip out on them at any time. The clues weren’t all that subtle, given how she kept clenching her fists, glaring and throwing objects at Cin.
With her mind.
Worse, the woman really wasn’t trying to do anything at all. It was her deeper mind doing it the whole time. Which still had Penny marveling at the forbearance that was going on. For her part, Cindy Mableton was about to knock the other woman out and toss her in the back, blindfolded and tied up. It nearly took place after they dumped the motor home in long term parking at an airport, since that would give them months before anyone noticed it hadn’t been picked up. They were seen on camera, but it was time for them to start hiding a little better anyway.
That meant doing some shopping at a real store. One that had hair care products. Then they had to find another camp ground while they altered their looks. She got a black dye job and a shorter haircut. So much so that she probably looked a bit butch. Snubby the incest twin became a rust red and copper haired version of herself, which actually worked for her really well. Better than blonde did, to be honest. It took her from kind of fugly to being passably cute.
“That works for you, Kerry.” She made certain her voice was genuine sounding, even if she didn’t really mean it. They still needed to get along, after all. They were in close quarters for too much of each day for them to start fighting. Doing that more than they were would end in death. Though honestly that was mainly about Kerry’s issues, not hers. So far.
As the woman started to smile and say thank you, a rock that probably weighed about fifty pounds if not more appeared over Cin’s head, fell on her and took her all the way to the ground with a smacking sound. She wasn’t injured, thankfully. Her new changes saved her, again, but for nearly the first-time Penny actually said something about it.
“WTF? I know that you have that thing, but it was a compliment, Kerry. You need to get a handle on this stuff, or we’ll probably wake up dead one of these days. I mean, what part of serial killer did you miss in the briefing?” Not that they’d had one of those in regards to her. Not one that Kerry Yoder had been invited to. She wasn’t in the need to know for that kind of thing. Mainly because she had a tendency to do things like drop heavy rocks on peoples’ heads when she got worked up.
That Penny had been taken aside early on over that kind of thing made sense. It was right there in the other girl’s tale. Ms. Turner inviting her into her office, then going over what to do with the new girl. That it had mainly been about getting her on board with the IPB program, possibly as a killer if they couldn’t fix her, was interesting. Marcia had always seemed ready to end her when she was around at the start of things there.
Which wasn’t a lie or trick on the Director’s part. She’d meant every moment of it. There had just been a chance that Cin would pull things out, so the boss had made a point of making certain they had more than one plan in place.
The cook sighed and shook her head for a bit, the words over her head angry and upset. With Cindy, since she was the one that was making her kill people. Except that the real problem was that she kind of liked it. Which terrified her. She felt powerful, and in her world that had always been a lie. She’d been small, weak and only a girl when she’d been forced to marry her own father. Twice she’d gotten pregnant by him and thankfully lost the children both times. They were too inbred to survive.
At Faithhome you were not encouraged, or allowed, to think for yourself. So she’d learned to bury her feelings as deeply as she could, never giving them voice or power in the world.
The biggest problem in the moment was that she felt strong, which wasn’t allowed to her. So she was blaming Cindy for it. Even knowing that doing that wasn’t fair at all. They had a job to do and she was failing at it, because of how she was inside.
Constantly angry.
Even without it being her first mode, there was real rage there, day in and day out.
Which probably meant that Penny Cooper was right. Cin had powers now, to go with her telepathy. Even having heard about how it worked, the other woman thought of it that way. She could read her mind and even control her. She knew from personal experience that she couldn’t beat a telepath. Not without suddenly attacking without warning. Which wasn’t going to work in a closed space now.
Cindy could crush her skull by leaning in and just punching her once. Nothing she did could get around that. Unless she attacked while the killer slept. Except even that might not work, as tough as she was now. Taking all the air out of the space was the best plan, but it wasn’t going to work in the van, since it would always be too easy for the other woman to just hit her.
All of it was considered, then set aside in moments. Nothing she did would really make things equal between them as far as Kerry could understand. That was, Cin knew, due to the fact that she just didn't have a great imagination at all. If Cin had been the powerful telekinetic, she would have just walked an eighth of a mile away, then moved the air out of the space that Cindy was in. That might get Penny as well, but it would probably work.
She decided not to tell the angry woman about that simple enough plan.
For her part, Cindy brushed at her now shaved head, which was longer on the top, and rubbed at it for a moment.
“No big thing. I get it. You blame me for what you’ll have to do. Which is correct. I’m in charge of that for us. So, what we have to do that way falls on me. Not just legally. Morally and ethically. If I make a mistake, that doesn’t have much to do with you.” It was insanely wrong, of course, since everyone was responsible for themselves in life, but Penny managed to agree.