Truman nodded, then continued on.
A number of trails led through the development off the main road—some more utilized than others. Truman realized that hundreds of people could be living here in the basements of houses or the partial structures still standing. What seemed a wasteland from the air was really a well-traveled forest. And although most of the houses had been pretty well destroyed, people had come to the area afterwards and gathered what was salvageable, putting together lean-tos and other rickety shelters.
Truman checked in with Captain Lopez, who had gone north along the largest path away from the main street. He decided to move south. Adjusting his PlusPhone scanner, he reminded his troops to keep an open comm link. “Remember,” he said, “there are wolves and bears in this area—even a few lions and tigers freed from zoos by ecoterrorists—so keep a sharp eye out. And you all saw that Cookie Monster fellow.”
“You think there are more pseudos out here, sir?” Adams said.
“Count on it,” Truman replied.
Adams’ face paled slightly.
Truman’s PlusPhone flickered for a second. He tapped it with his fingers until it stayed on. As he moved south along the path, Truman’s PlusPhone scanner came alive with multiple hits, farther to the east. Seven. No, eight people.
“Are you reading this activity, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Adams replied. “Moving too quickly to be human. Pseudos?”
Truman nodded. “Likely.”
Adams cleared her throat but said nothing. She had proven before that she had an active imagination. She moved stiffly, gripping her Las-rifle tightly. Truman hoped to God she wouldn’t shoot anyone by mistake. “You have something to say, Lieutenant?”
“Some of the homeless men have seen creatures, sir. Big and fast. Violent.”
“We have Las-rifles, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir,” Adams replied. But her voice sounded shaky. Truman recalled that she’d never seen combat operations before.
“Relax, Lieutenant. Remember your training.”
Adams nodded. She checked her Las-rifle’s power setting as she paralleled Truman along the path. “What if they’re not pseudos?”
“What else could they be?”
Adams glanced behind her at her fellow soldiers, then blushed. She pulled her Las-rifle in tight to her flak jacket and pursed her lips. “We heard there are mutants in these woods. Humans damaged by the Susquehanna Virus.”
Truman shook his head. “That’s mythical crap, Lieutenant. Like Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness monster. The kind of story that often crops up in remote areas, especially where people aren’t well educated. There might be a bear loose, or even a tiger. But most likely it’s Cookie Monster’s friends. They won’t be any match for us.”
“Yes, sir,” Adams replied.
Why did so many of his troops believe in the supernatural? Even the “educated” ones like Adams? Letting their religious leaders tell them how to answer the hard scientific questions seemed crazy.
“Just breathe deep,” he said calmly. He rapped her knuckles lightly. “Ease up your grip. Focus on the job. You’ll get through it fine.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The images on Truman’s PlusPhone scanner moved even more quickly now. He ordered Captain Lopez to an intercept point and brought his detail up to double time. If he was right, the two forces would converge in approximately half a mile, with the “enemy” caught between them. Adrenaline surged through him as he hustled over the rough terrain.
Though he knew Adams couldn’t be correct, that there were no nightmarish creatures in the forest, he found the hair on the back of his neck rising as his own imagination kicked in. These people they were after—these pseudos—were moving faster than he would have thought possible. He’d never seen them in action, but if they’d fought the Elite Ops to a draw, they were dangerous. Truman’s squad stood little chance against them. Yet he couldn’t back down. This was his job. He tried to swallow, managing to moisten his throat slightly.
And then the blips were gone.
His PlusPhone scanner showed only his fellow soldiers as targets. The eight people they’d been tracking simply vanished. He said, “Lieutenant, what does your scanner show?”
Adams checked her PlusPhone, then looked at him with wide eyes. “They’re gone, sir.”
Captain Lopez’s voice sounded in his ear: “We’ve lost contact, sir.”
“Keep moving,” Truman replied. “Target the coordinates where they disappeared.” But he had a bad feeling that they were chasing air.
“How could they just vanish?” Adams asked.
“They might have dropped into a hole in the ground,” Truman said.
“What if they didn’t, sir?”
“Mutants, Lieutenant? Demons? Is that what you’re thinking?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Adams said, her voice quavering.
“They’re not demons, Lieutenant. Worst-case scenario is that they’ve got scatterers—new tech stuff that’s better than our scanners. If so, they’ve got some serious hardware. But we’re not dealing with demons. You can bank on that.”
Truman hoped he was right. If the pseudos had particle beam cannons, he and his squad were finished. Even if they only had Las-rifles, they could pick Truman and his people off one by one.
Truman increased to double-time, his detail keeping pace. They ran along the path until they encountered Captain Lopez’s squad, but they found no trace of the enemy, no holes in the ground, just a small clearing. Trails led off in three directions, but the people they were chasing could have taken any of them.
Truman studied the fifteen homeless men Lopez had rounded up. They looked old, frail, mentally ill. The captain had bound them all together and they stood in a cluster, breathing heavily. They obviously posed no threat to the soldiers. Shame and anger filled Truman’s mind, even though he recognized that he might have done the same as a younger man.
“Take them back to the shelter,” he said. “And, Captain, untie them. They’re not prisoners.”
As Lopez and his squad took the homeless men back to the shelter, Truman replayed the data from his PlusPhone scanner, plotting direction and speed, extrapolating where their prey had likely gone. Every indication led him to believe they’d come out on the highway south of the shelter. He turned his detail in that direction and they resumed their search.
Chapter Ten
From her office, Sister Ezekiel heard Ahmad Rashidi’s distinctive voice out in the lobby. In his middle-eastern accent he said, “Don’t shoot. I surrender.” She glanced out through the wall-window, saw him standing in the doorway, two stun clubs pointed at him. He raised his hands, a briefcase in one, his PlusPhone in the other.
“He’s my lawyer,” Sister Ezekiel said to the soldiers as she exited her office. “Good morning, Ahmad.”
“He’s going to have to be scanned,” Major Sims said. She got up from her chair, followed by the technician, Hayes, who had been going over the results from the earlier scans with the major.
Ahmad said, “Mornin’, Sister. Nice day for a splash of radioactivity, no?”
“If you’ll step over to the arch, sir,” Major Sims said. She pointed to the DS-9000. Hayes stood at the controls and when the pudgy Ahmad stepped over to the machine, the technician started the scanner. As it ran through its course, Ahmad groaned and grimaced, feigning pain.
“Ow! Ouchie! Hey, watch it!” he yelled. “That smarts! Agh! My God, does this torture never end? Oh, the agony! The awful, unbearable agony!”
Dr. Mary appeared at the door to the infirmary. “What’s going on here?” She saw Ahmad under the arch and said, “Oh, it’s…you.” She turned to Major Sims. “He’s a menace, Major. You’d better double-check your results.”
The machine beeped and Ahmad stepped out without being told. He said, �
�Thanks a lot, Doc. Nice to see you too.”
“You’re too late for breakfast,” Dr. Mary said, flashing her bright teeth in a wicked grin. “No food for you.”
“Now that hurts. I brave the dangers of the highways, come all the way down here from Minneapolis through an untamed wilderness where I saw a tiger. Can you believe it? Standing by the side of the road, staring at me as I drove past, like he was about to clamp his jaws onto one of my tires. A huge beast! And after all that you can’t find it in yer heart to spare a dried-up egg? A piece of cold toast? A half-eaten bowl of oatmeal with a maggot floating on top?”
“How about some pork sausage?” Henry asked, a smirk on his pale face.
Ahmad shook his head. “Allah forgives your sacrilege, my boy. As an infidel, you don’t know any better.”
“I’m sure we can find something for you in the kitchen, Ahmad,” Sister Ezekiel said.
“Hold the bacon too,” Ahmad said to Henry. He turned to the major. “We done here? You sure you don’t need to insert a testicular electroshock emitter? Or a rectal probe?”
Henry snorted with laughter. Major Sims glared at Ahmad as Dr. Mary chortled. Hayes’ shoulders bobbed up and down while the guards at the door sniggered quietly. Sister Ezekiel sometimes wished she could join in the fun. But someone had to be the adult.
“Come into the office, Ahmad,” Sister Ezekiel said. “Henry, bring him a tray.”
Ahmad stepped into her office and Sister Ezekiel gestured toward her chair.
“So,” Ahmad said, “they must not have found him yet.”
When Sister Ezekiel shook her head, he said, “What about you? You run across him?”
“Haven’t seen him. He might not even be here.”
“If Weiss says he’s here, he’s here. Plus, I was thinkin’ about it on the way down. You’re the kinda person Devereaux would take advantage of. The coward must be hiding.”
“We’re not here to criticize, Ahmad. We’re here to help—him and anyone else who needs our assistance.”
Ahmad held up his hands in surrender, then picked up the piece of quartz that Sister Ezekiel displayed on her desk. Rock Man had given it to her a few weeks ago when she’d told him how beautiful it was. He’d ignored her protests that it was much too valuable to give away and proudly handed it to her. White and gray, with a thin striation of black through the center and polished to a high sheen, it looked like a rare jewel and she treated it as such. If Rock Man considered it a treasure, she would too.
Ahmad set the rock aside and took up the tablet Colonel Truman had provided. As he scrolled through the various documents, Sister Ezekiel stood by the open doorway watching. She smiled at the way all his humor disappeared when he pored through the legalese, like nothing else existed.
He stroked his beard with his left hand, holding the tablet with his right, his dark fingers caressing the bushy salt and pepper hairs. Sister Ezekiel knew he did this when he didn’t have khat to chew. Probably, despite his contrarian nature, he was afraid to chew the leaves with the Army and the Attorney General here.
“Where’s Gray Weiss, out in his mobile command center?” Ahmad asked.
“I believe so,” Sister Ezekiel answered.
“Okay. Lemme check a few things before we go visit him.”
While she waited for Ahmad to complete what he was doing, Sister Ezekiel looked through the wall-window into the lobby. Major Sims and the technician, Hayes, had returned to the table next to the DS-9000, where they continued to sort through the scanning results. The two guards monitoring the entryway faced each other, talking and smiling, but Sister Ezekiel couldn’t hear them. The lobby was quiet. Most of the homeless men had left the shelter after they’d been scanned. As she leaned against the wall, Sister Ezekiel noticed a beautiful young woman enter the shelter—an innocent creature of breathtaking beauty. Like Dr. Mary, the newcomer wore an interface. The two guards stopped her, and Major Sims rose from her chair.
Major Sims held out her hand and the young woman produced her ID card. The major examined the young woman’s ID, her eyes bouncing between the card and the woman’s face while the two guards did their best not to stare at her. Ignoring them all, the young woman looked around the room confidently until she caught Sister Ezekiel’s eye through the wall-window. She smiled. As Sister Ezekiel smiled back, Henry appeared from the kitchen with a tray. Walking toward the office, he caught sight of the woman and nearly dropped the tray, his mouth open, eyes wide.
“Come along, Henry,” Sister Ezekiel called from the doorway as the major directed the woman to the scanner.
“They scanning gorgeous young women now?” Ahmad said.
Sister Ezekiel turned, saw her lawyer eyeing the woman—a cat following the movements of a goldfish.
“The major must be a lesbian,” Ahmad said. “If she’s Devereaux, that’s one helluva disguise.”
Henry chuckled as he placed the tray on the desk. “You crack me up, Ahmad. You’re the funniest lawyer I ever met.”
“Ahmad, please,” Sister Ezekiel cautioned him. “Let’s focus on helping Douglas and Cookie Monster, and on getting that monstrosity out of here. I’ll go see what she wants.”
She stepped out to the lobby as the DS-9000 completed its scan. “May I help you?” she asked.
“My name is Lendra Riley,” the woman said. She looked briefly at Major Sims before turning back to Sister Ezekiel. “I have a personal matter I’d like to discuss with you.”
“My,” Major Sims said, pointing to the machine, “aren’t you the bright one. Never seen a reading that high.”
“My enhancements are legal.” Lendra pointed to her ID card. “Sister, may we talk?”
“Very well,” Sister Ezekiel replied. “However, someone’s using my office at the moment.”
Major Sims held up her hand. “What’s the nature of your business, honey?”
Lendra said, “As I indicated, it’s personal. Can we take a walk outside, Sister?”
“I don’t know if I should allow that,” Major Sims said.
“Come now,” Sister Ezekiel said as she gestured for Lendra to precede her out the door. “You can’t detain her just because she’s intelligent.”
Sister Ezekiel stepped outside and said, “It’s not often the shelter receives female visitors. And, except for Dr. Mary, I’ve never seen one come here alone. What can I do for you?”
Lendra stared at the Attorney General’s command center, then the Army transport trucks parked at the edges of the parking lot. “Actually, Sister, I need you to come with me.”
“You do, do you?” Sister Ezekiel stopped. “Why?”
Lendra turned to look at her. “It has to do with Devereaux and the soldiers you have here. I have a colleague who would like to meet you.” “A colleague?”
“We’re here on orders from the President.”
“President Hope?” Sister Ezekiel backed up a step, stunned. She searched Lendra’s face for any sign that the young woman was joking and realized that Lendra was serious. “Very well,” she said. “Lead on.”
Lendra led her north toward the statue. Across the street, three two-story office buildings, recently abandoned, faced the shelter. Ahead, Sister Ezekiel could just make out Ernie Olsen’s Market, which served the town’s dwindling population. Just beyond that, “Emerging Man” towered over the road. Once a tourist attraction, now an almost forgotten jewel buried alongside a rarely traveled highway. Everyone chose to meet at “Emerging Man.” And why not? It was beautiful. She wandered up this way at least once a week. She loved the flowing curves, the suggestion of straining muscles as the granite man attempted to rise above the earth. Most of all, she delighted in the conflicted face—the subject’s struggle to balance happiness with sorrow. How could certain religious “leaders” call it atheistic rubbish? It didn’t make any kind of statement about religion or God. It was simply art
. And like all great art, it left the interpretation of its significance and meaning to the observer. The statue certainly didn’t offend her. Yet many in the religious community called it “abomination” and “sacrilege.” What narrow-minded fools.
Sister Ezekiel took off her glasses and cleaned them on her handkerchief as they walked. “Tell me something, child. Do you believe in God?”
“I keep an open mind,” Lendra said, “although I think Devereaux’s ladder provides compelling evidence of the necessity to move beyond religion if we wish to survive.”
“Who is your colleague?”
“I’d rather let him tell you, Sister.”
“I don’t know anything about Devereaux.”
“Then it will likely be a very short conversation.”
As Sister Ezekiel expected, Lendra turned when they reached the parking lots for the statue. The north lot, once filled with tour buses, now sat empty, grown over with weeds. Farther up the street at the north edge of town, Sister Ezekiel could just make out an Army checkpoint. Strangely, the Army had let a tour bus of schoolchildren through to visit the famous statue.
At one end of the south lot, a line of children, each hoisting a large stick of cotton candy purchased from Bert’s souvenir stand, marched toward an armored bus under the watchful eyes of a pair of security guards, their rainbow-colored treats bright against the drab green and brown of the bus. Good old Bert. Whenever schoolchildren visited the statue, he outdid himself with the cotton candy.
A heavyset woman with curly red hair and a tan uniform stood by the door of the bus counting the children as they slowly made their way up the stairs. Three teachers kept the children in line and tried to move them along. Off to the side, ignoring the statue, an athletic-looking man watched the children boarding their bus. He stood with shoulders slumped, his face fallen as he followed the children’s progress. Sister Ezekiel, having seen deep suffering in her life, knew this man was in pain.
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