Tether

by Jeremy Robinson

  And yeah, it’s working. I’m scared shitless. But this isn’t the first time I’ve looked into the eyes of a man who had the power to end my life. This used to be my job, and I was good at it. The one thing that men like this are thrown by is a total disregard for the threat they present.

  “Actually, why don’t you eat a whole box of dicks.” I say. “Shake them out into a bowl and nom, nom, nom them with some milk and sugar.”

  I’m laying it on a little thick, bordering on silly, but when the man’s cheek twitches, I know I’m getting though. The only problem is that I don’t know why. I’m kind of just acting on reflex here, coming to the defense of a friend who this man was trying to psy-op. Really, this is just a big, ‘Fuck you,’ moment. All we really need is for him to get out of the way and let us go.

  Somewhere at the edge of my attention, I hear a distant, metallic crash and screeching tires. A car accident, I decide, and I move on.

  Ice-man’s eyes snap back to Rain. He thinks he’s done with me.

  “Hey,” I say, snapping my fingers, until he looks at me again.

  I’m so dead. “You might think you’re the big man in charge. That you’ve got all the power. That I’m impressed or intimidated by your dead eyes and zombie complexion, but…”

  Something in my mind tweaks.

  I don’t know what it is. Some kind of realization in the depths of my being bubbling up to the surface. I’m not yet aware of what it is, but my body reacts to it with a burst of tingling panic.

  The subtlest grin I’ve ever seen slips onto the man’s face.

  I clear my throat and double-down. “But you are nothing without us. When the Riesegeists get here, your lab, all your work, and your lanky ass are all going to go the way of the velociraptor.” The quiver in my voice and my lame metaphor don’t do much to sell my insolence, but the message is on target.

  “Actually,” the man says, his voice like tearing paper. “All I need is you.”

  Rain tenses. She understands the message and is about to take action. But she doesn’t have enough bullets to deal with all the suits, and Reggie’s status is about to shift from shield to target.

  The hairs on the back of my neck spring up, warning me of danger. For a moment, I think it’s something supernatural, but Rain isn’t glowing, and the sound is familiar.

  An engine.

  I spin around to find a teal 1966 Ford Thunderbird screeching beneath the plane. I’m not a car guy, but I recognize the vehicle from Thelma and Louise. While that ill-fated duo used the car to take their own lives, this one is being employed as a weapon.

  Tires shriek, trailing smoke, as the car slides. The Thunderbird twists around, its back end swinging like a baseball bat in the hands of Manny Ramirez, whose name I know because Randy dresses as the former Red Sox slugger every Halloween.

  Metal crunches as the heavy vehicle’s back end collides with the stone-cold, still-nameless SpecTek exec. The man doesn’t scream. Doesn’t flinch with fear. He doesn’t have time. One second, he’s looming like an evil birch tree. The next, he’s airborne, pinwheeling high into the air until he strikes the 747’s underside and then plummets back to the ground.

  I want to cheer, to joke, to exclaim my amazement, but there isn’t time.

  The car’s acrid smoke billows past, revealing the vehicle and its occupants.

  Garcia looks over from behind the wheel. “Get in!”

  “What the—” I say. “Where did you get this?”

  “We landed in a classic car show,” Garcia says, and she gives her passenger a shoulder-slap. “Do it!”

  Bjorn rises from the front passenger seat, letting out a battle cry his namesake would be proud of. And he’s… He’s holding an Uzi! He pulls the trigger, unleashing a torrent of bullets toward the suits and their vehicles, forcing them to take cover.

  Reggie, Rain, and I waste no time leaping over the side of the convertible, landing in the white leather back seat. I push myself up as the car speeds off, peeking over the backseat. What I see—the SpecTek exec standing up and dusting himself off—takes my breath away. How? is all I manage to think before bullets ping off the car’s back end. I duck back down, hoping the old vehicle’s solid metal body will protect us.

  It’s not until we bounce over the airport’s ruined gate and squeal onto the road that I sit up and help Rain extract herself from Reggie.

  Bjorn pumps a fist in the air, whooping like he’s at the end of an 80s movie, his long hair blowing in the wind. Apparently, his recent brushes with death either broke his mind, or loosened it.

  He turns around with a smile on his face. Then he sees Reggie.

  The smile descends into a deep frown.

  He levels the Uzi at her. “What is she doing here?”

  “Bjorn,” Reggie says, but she’s silenced when he shoves the Uzi in her face.

  “Bjorn,” I say, trying to sound calm, but failing, because I’m having to shout over the wind. “She didn’t betray us.” I struggle with the words, because I’m not 100% sure I believe them yet. Logically, I do, but a wounded heart takes a little longer to heal, or trust. “She was misleading SpecTek.” His eyes ask the obvious question, ‘How?’

  “They had a listening device in her neck,” I say. “If she had told us the truth, they would have known. It was the only way she could really help us without tipping our hand.”

  “And now?” he asks, still seething.

  Reggie turns her neck, revealing the still bleeding, self-inflicted incision. “I took it out!”

  Bjorn winces at the sight of the wound. And then softens. “You did that?”

  “On the plane,” she says. “With a steak knife.”

  “Bad ass,” Garcia says, glancing back. “Nice to have you back on the team.”

  I smile at her last three words. ‘On the team.’ Is that what we are? Some kind of monster-fighting squad? An FBI agent, a genius, a warlock, a glowing assassin/kaiju lightning rod, and a criminal investigator who can talk to the dead.

  Holy shit, we’re a monster-fighting squad!

  Bjorn lowers the Uzi. “Sorry.”

  Reggie places a gentle hand on his cheek. “It was deserved… And I’m happy to see you feeling…”

  “Alive,” he says, smiling again. “When we fell out of the sky, I thought for sure we were going to die. Again. But this time…I just felt, I don’t know. At peace. Death has lost its sting. I don’t understand it, but knowing there is more, that the story continues… I just feel fr—”

  A bullet strikes Bjorn and knocks him into the front seat.

  39

  I’m frozen in shock, staring at the blood-spattered front windshield. Time moves slowly and doesn’t catch up with me, until I’m flung to the side.

  The Thunderbird screeches around a corner, up an onramp, and onto Route 71. The highway is flat and straight, framed by single-story car parks adorned with solar panels. The engine growls, picking up speed and coughing out a cloud of exhaust.

  Reg leans over the front seat. “Bjorn!”

  “I’m okay,” the wounded man says, righting himself with a grunt. His shoulder is a bloody mess, but he’s alive, and somehow not in a fetal position.

  “You’re not okay,” Reggie shouts. “You’ve been shot!”

  It’s the most upset I’ve ever heard Reg. An hour ago, I wouldn’t have believed it, but she really does care about the man.

  “Tis but a scratch,” Bjorn says, quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail and scoring some brownie points with me.

  Reggie climbs over the seat back as the classic car hits 80mph. She ducks down when bullets start flying again. I glance back. They’re hard to see in the orange glow of the setting sun, but they’re there. Two SUVs, a hundred yards back, gaining fast. The Thunderbird might have some pep to it, but it can’t compete with the black beasts roaring up behind us.

  “We can’t outrun them!” I shout.

  Garcia glances in the rearview. Then she holds up Bjorn’s discarded Uzi. “Hey, Rai
n. You up to—”

  Rain snatches the weapon from Garcia, ejects the magazine and frowns. It’s empty. Before she can complain, Garcia lifts her hand again. This time she’s holding two fresh magazines. “The guard on the plane was very helpful. Speaking of, what happened to—”

  “They’re dead,” Rain says, taking the magazines and not revealing Reggie as the killer.

  “Wait until we get close,” Garcia says.

  “Until we get close?” Reggie asks, looking up from tending to Bjorn’s wound.

  “We can’t outrun them,” Garcia says. “Can’t outmuscle them, or outgun them, either. Only thing we can do…” I brace myself when I see Garcia’s eyes tracking a rapidly approaching trailer park entrance. “…is keep them off balance.”

  She yanks the wheel and hits the brakes, putting us into a sharp, sliding turn. Before we spin all the way around, she crushes the gas again and pulls the wheel the other way. The result is a perfectly smooth, high-speed turn into a maze of trailers positioned around dirt roads and separated by lush trees.

  Dust kicks up behind us, obscuring our view of the SUVs, and their view of us. Garcia doesn’t let up on the speed, despite the twisting turns. Instead, she takes every opportunity to cram the gas pedal to the floor, making the tires spin in the loose dirt, kicking up a never-ending cloud.

  And then, we make a beeline down a straight-away. “Oh, shit,” I say, as we approach a T junction at the road’s end. “Oh, shit!”

  Garcia swings out wide, hits the brakes, and puts us in a spin that fills the air with enough dust to make me start coughing. Before I can ask what she’s doing, I’m pinned back in my seat, as the car rockets back the way we came—racing through the streak of dust.

  “Get ready!” Garcia shouts.

  Despite the sphincter-puckering intensity of Garcia’s driving, Rain stands in the back seat like she’s George Washington crossing the Delaware, and raises the Uzi.

  But at what?

  All I can see is brown dirt. Even the mobile homes on the sides of the road are hard to see now.

  But then I hear them. The SUVs. They’re barreling straight toward us, following the dust trail, assuming we’re running away, rather than charging. Despite the Thunderbird being a metal titan of the 60s, capable of crunching the bodies of most modern cars without fear of damage, the tall SUVs will likely plow up and over us. Anyone sitting up will have their torsos crushed, if not torn clear off.

  I want to duck, but curiosity and faith keep me upright. Garcia is good at this. Rain is better. And neither of them is suicidal.

  A shadow slips out of the billowing clouds. A dark dragon with soulless eyes.

  Rain lets it pass. I twist as the SUV careens past us. I make eye contact with one of the suits, whose look of surprise matches mine. There’s a flash of red and a shriek of tires as the driver hits the brakes.

  When the second SUV passes, Rain opens fire.

  Rapid-fire bullets spray from the Uzi—and miss the driver. In fact, I don’t see a single round strike the windows or spark off the metal body. For a moment, I think she’s done a worse job of shooting the enemy than I would, but then the SUV’s driver side front tire explodes, leaving nothing but metal rim.

  Reacting to the spray of bullets, the second SUV’s driver cranes the vehicle away from us, just as the tire bursts. The rim digs into the dirt road and sticks. While the front end of the vehicle comes to a sudden stop, the back end—propelled by Newton’s first law of motion—shifts from moving forward, to moving forward…and up.

  The SUV catapults into the air. I see it rise up, trailed by a column of dust, like a rocket blasting off toward orbit. And then it’s out of sight, hidden by the cloud. For a moment, all I can hear is the Thunderbird’s V8. And then, the sharp, grinding, metal-on-metal crash of two vehicles colliding.

  “We got them!” I shout, turning forward. “We got them!”

  Rain sits back down beside me. “We?”

  I smile. “Hey, I didn’t duck or cry. That’s something.”

  She pats my knee, and slathers on the condescension. “Good job. What a brave boy.”

  She cracks a smile, and I can’t help but laugh, as we burst out of the dust cloud and shriek back onto the highway.

  We’ve dodged a proverbial bullet, but SpecTek’s resources are vast. If they can black-out news of Boston’s attack, what else can they do? Frame us for murder? Have every cop in the city looking for us? Track us through security cameras, traffic cameras, and satellites? We’ve escaped, but we’re not even close to being out of the woods.

  Hell, we’re driving straight into the forest, and it’s full of monsters.

  “Stay to the right,” Rain says, when we reach a fork in the highway.

  “What’s to the right?” Garcia asks.

  “Downtown Austin,” I say.

  She gives me a questioning glance.

  “South by Southwest,” I say. “I’ve been a few times.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Of course, you have.”

  Before I can ask her what that’s supposed to mean, Rain says, “That’s where the SpecTek lab is.”

  Reggie finishes patching up Bjorn. The bandage, made from her scarf, is crude, but his bleeding has stopped. Her neck, on the other hand, is still oozing blood. It’s slowly congealing, blood cells doing their job, but the wound is deep and will take a long time to heal without stitches, especially while she’s moving around. She looks back at Rain. “I didn’t know they brought you to this facility.”

  “They didn’t,” Rain says, and she lifts her glowing hand.

  I look around, half expecting to see kaiju-ghosts slipping out of the sunset behind us.

  “Far side of the city,” Rain says. “They haven’t resolved yet, but…it won’t be long.”

  Garcia speeds up, racing us toward the horrific unknown.

  Bjorn grunts as he pushes himself up a little straighter. “I know I’m not as experienced in these things as some, but can I suggest developing a plan before rushing headlong into the unknown?”

  “Rushing headlong into the unknown is what we do,” I say, loving the way it sounds when it comes out of my mouth. Like Bjorn, I feel like I’m coming into my own, rising above my fears and anxiety, believing for the first time in a long time that I am capable, strong, and bold—without Morgan around to prop me up.

  Though she still is here, isn’t she? I think, looking down at my chest, where the invisible tether still links me to her monster-self. In a way.

  All four other people in the vehicle turn to me, incredulous.

  “If you say anything that corny again,” Garcia says, “I might slap you.”

  I purse my lips, happy I didn’t express my earlier ‘monster fighting squad’ realization. “Okay,” I say, recalling that I’m somehow the de facto leader of our ragtag group, “let’s head toward the lab, but keep a safe distance. We know that SpecTek is going to try containing the Riesegeists, which would probably work out best for Austin. If they do manage to contain the kaiju, then we’ll… We’ll find a way to destroy them. If the trap fails, we’ll try what we did in Chicago—lead them out of the city and try to shut them down.”

  “There’re untold variables you’re not considering,” Reggie says.

  “And part of your plan is, ‘Find a way to destroy them,’” Bjorn adds.

  “That’s what you smart people are for,” I say.

  “And what are you for?” Bjorn asks.

  “Inspirational leadership,” I say with a grin, “And I’m a real-life Haley Joel Osment.”

  “What?” Bjorn asks.

  “He can talk to dead people,” Garcia says over her shoulder. Off Bjorn’s blank stare, she says, “C’mon, man. You’re a warlock. The Sixth Sense? Bruce Willis?”

  “Is it like Die Hard?” Bjorn asks.

  After a moment, Garcia says, “Yes… Exactly like Die Hard.”

  The off-topic conversation continues, but I don’t hear it. I sit back in my seat, thinking about the fact
that I can speak to the dead. And not just to Wisp.

  “What are you thinking?” Rain asks, sitting back next to me, while the others continue talking in the front.

  “I’m thinking that SpecTek can’t be trusted to solve this—not in a way that’s good for anyone.”

  She nods. “And?”

  “That you and I need to stop running away from what we need to do.”

  “And that is?”

  I look into her pale blue eyes. “Say hello.”

  Silence pulls my eyes forward. Reggie and Bjorn are staring back at us. Garcia is watching through the rearview. Somehow, they heard the new plan over the rush of wind and their own conversation.

  “That’s crazy,” Garcia says. She flashes a grin. “But I like it.”

  40

  During the ten-minute drive to Austin, we fall silent. I don’t know about the others, but I spend the time contemplating my life and how I feel about it ending. Within a minute, I shift from fear to acceptance, to ‘What better way could there be to die?’ I mean, I could live until ninety and die in a hospital bed, or I could meet my maker at the hands of a ghost-kaiju while trying to solve the riddle of my wife’s death, and while protecting the people of Austin and foiling a nefarious government program that tortures and weaponizes human spirits. Dying of old age because I feared to risk my life for something noble feels…wrong.

  To be clear, I don’t want to die. I’d much rather come out of this with my life intact. But I’m not about to let fear control me. Bjorn already came to this conclusion. With evidence of an afterlife, death has lost its sting. If I survive, I’ll have to look into what all this really means, and where religion comes into play, but for now, I’m satisfied with shedding the fear that comes from the concept of post-mortem non-existence.

  “Exit here,” Rain says. Her hands are lit up. I can tell she’s containing her radiance, which means the kaiju are close…but they have yet to make their presence known.

  We exit Interstate 35, turning right toward downtown. The tall buildings blaze orange in the sunset. In twenty minutes, the sun will be gone, but I suspect it will be dark before then. Storm clouds are swirling into reality above the city, dark and ominous.