Minutemen- Parallel Lives

by David Danforth

  “Delta?”

  Delta flicked her purifier and smacked Kildere in the leg.

  “Ow, damn it.”

  “The next time he addresses me with anything other than ‘Alpha,’ shoot his leg off.” Jessica began walking back toward their slot car.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Kildere called after her.

  She turned to face him. “No hospital, but as I mentioned before I do know a doctor,” she said. “Unfortunately, we have to go back to Denver to reach him.”

  4

  Sneaking back into the Denver city limits was helped by the thick layer of smoke the multitude of structural fires provided. But this also worked to their disadvantage. Gabe’s strength depleted quickly as the smoke invaded his lungs; they had to stop after every block once they ditched the slot car.

  “How much farther?” Kildere looked weak, coughing as well. If Jessica hadn’t needed information he possessed, she’d be well rid of him by now and a lot closer to her objective without being seen. But he knew where Kaylan was. Jessica had expected to see her on the TPC grounds, but after she programmed all of her former teammates’ MyLife tags into Delta’s U-Board, she remembered Kaylan had ripped hers out. And she remembered who Kaylan said did it for her.

  “Four or five more blocks, I think,” she answered.

  “You think?” Kildere’s voice rose, then a volley of coughs followed.

  Jessica rounded on him. “It’s not like she input the coordinates into my U-Board, Kildere,” she snapped.

  One of the last conversations Jessica had with Kaylan was on the way over to the house where Kaylan’s mother, Dorothy, lived. When Jessica had asked Kaylan how she was able to evade Thorpe’s kill squad for so long, Kaylan had told her about Havelson. That conversation was just before they ran into Kaylan’s psycho grandkid. That was quite the scene: one psycho holding another psycho at gunpoint. God, what a screwed-up family. They were like a damn hurricane, sucking everything up and destroying anything in their path.

  It was Kaylan’s fault her brother was dead. All her fault.

  “Jess,” Gabe whispered, low enough for Delta not to hear.

  They were at the corner of East 16th Street and Logan Avenue. Jessica handed Gabe off to Delta and peeked around the corner of the broken building.

  The concrete felt hot to the touch—she guessed a fire was raging inside. Structural fire. They couldn’t stay here for long. The smoke made a long-distance visual confirmation impossible, but it appeared that the lizards had already made their way through here and moved on.

  Which meant odds were slim she would find what she was looking for.

  Come on, God. I think we can both agree I’ve lived a challenging life. Please just give me this one.

  “What are you doing?” Kildere whispered in a raspy voice.

  “Praying,” she muttered back.

  Jessica grabbed Delta’s arm to catch her attention. “Everyone stays here until I give the signal. If I’m caught or killed,” she swallowed hard, “leave Gabe here and make your way back to camp.”

  Delta shook her head. “No way, Alpha. I can’t do that.”

  “Your orders are to leave Gabe and make your way back to camp,” Jessica said, repeating the command at a slower pace. She looked at Delta until the girl finally nodded.

  Jessica took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the edifice. She wanted to run, but the large chunks of rubble littered about the street and sidewalk threatened to twist her ankle, and the smoke was reducing visibility by the second. She could barely see the far corner of the building they were hiding behind.

  She stifled a cough as she walked on; the acrid smoke felt as if it were choking her. From what Kaylan had told her, Dr. Havelson’s office was in the middle of the building. That should place the door about ten feet away. She couldn’t see it though.

  Jessica reached out with her hands. They touched brick and concrete, but because of the layer of dirt and grime, it felt like she was running her hands across sandpaper.

  She slowly stepped along the front wall of the building until she came to the door. The security pad blinked red, however.

  “Damn,” Jessica whispered. “Guardian, I’d like to enter, please.”

  “Yes, thank you, Jessica Waters,” rang out the Guardian security unit’s voice, and Jessica immediately looked around. She couldn’t see anything farther than five feet beyond where she stood, but Jessica figured that after that announcement, if any of the lizards were around, she’d be dead by now.

  For a moment, Jessica thought the Guardian system would open the door and let her in. When it didn’t, she turned to leave and head back to her group.

  “Apologies, Jessica Waters. Cannot comply with request. Parameter error: 3429801.”

  Jessica closed her eyes tight. Three, four, two. She was pretty sure errors beginning with that number string indicated a fatal hardware error with the system. She could try to bypass the panel. Hell, she could knock, but that could create too much noise, and Jessica still couldn’t see far enough to make sure they were in the clear.

  She absently reached into her pocket and grabbed the magnetic screwdriver.

  “Damn,” she said again. Then she got to work.

  Four screws held the cover to the access panel. Once the cover was removed, bypassing any Guardian system’s security protocols was relatively easy. Well, for her anyway. Remove the ribbon cable, remove the second, fifth, twelfth, seventeenth, and twenty-third conductor pins, then place the ribbon cable back.

  When Jessica replaced the ribbon cable, the access panel switched from blinking red to green.

  Now, here was the tricky part. With any normally functioning Guardian system, that would be enough. But with the three-four-two error hanging over her head, Jessica wasn’t sure if the system would let her in, even though the indicator light on the panel was lit green.

  Fuck it.

  “Guardian, let me in, please,” she whispered.

  One moment. Two. Three.

  You’ve got to be shitting me, Jessica thought.

  The door opened with a quick click.

  Jessica let out a deep breath, slowly pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

  The room was dark enough for her not to know how big the place was or even what furniture or other items were in the room. She had a sense that the lizards had not decimated the room yet, but did that mean they just hadn’t made it here with their genocidal cleansing? That didn’t seem right. Maybe there wasn’t anyone here to kill? Perhaps the office was vacant. Jessica felt her heart beat faster and told herself to calm down.

  She took one slow, hesitant step forward. No furniture, no debris, but she heard a low hum, which seemed to be about twelve feet away.

  “That’s far enough.” A man’s voice traveled through the darkness.

  “Dr. Havelson?” Jessica called out as loud as she felt was safe.

  “Get the hell out of my office,” the male voice returned.

  “Please, I have someone who needs your help—”

  Jessica heard a loud clack—she remembered hearing that sound as a child when her father took her hunting.

  “You’ve got five seconds to get out of my office. You may think I can’t see you in the dark. I assure you I can.”

  “I know Kaylan Smith,” Jessica said in a rush.

  After a hesitation that was way too long, the man’s voice came through the dark.

  “How do you know her?”

  Jessica tried to swallow the lump in her throat.

  “She’s my best friend,” she said.

  “Then you’ll know what I gave her when she left here,” he said. “What was it?”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Jessica said, frustrated. “My fiancé is dying, damn it. I need you to—”

  She felt the barrel of Havelson’s weapon touch her midsection for a moment.

  “The barrel of my shotgun is two feet away from your stomach. At this range, I pull the trigger, it will cu
t you in half. I’m really going to need an answer to my question. Now.”

  “If you pull that trigger, the noise will bring the lizards right to us, and we all die,” Jessica said quietly.

  “What makes you think I want to live?” Havelson replied. “Answer. Now.”

  “Fine,” Jessica sighed. “You sent her away in a gray Mustang.”

  The room fell silent for a moment.

  “Ah, yes,” Havelson said, his tone turning to one of relief. “The truth is out there.”

  The room lights suddenly came on, and Jessica was momentarily blinded. When her eyes grew accustomed to the bright white of the walls and medical equipment, she saw Havelson. He was a lot older than what she pictured when Kaylan told her the story of how he removed the MyLife chip from her neck. Havelson hunched over on a wooden stick, which he must have used as a walking stick. His gray hair was a mess, and although he had few wrinkles on his face, those he had were cut deep into the skin.

  “Not quite what you expected?” Havelson asked, noticing Jessica’s surprise. “Your company kept life out here on the fringes pretty tough.”

  “Fringes?” Jessica asked, still staring at him.

  “Those not...aligned with your company’s mission.”

  “They’re not my company anymore.”

  “They’re not anyone’s company anymore,” Havelson said. “So what brings you to my doorstep? You said you had a friend in bad shape?”

  5

  “Your friend needs to rest up, but he stubbornly refuses to do so,” Havelson said while washing his hands, which were red from mercurochrome and blood.

  “You don’t use gloves?” Kildere observed.

  “This isn’t a TPC district trauma center,” Havelson answered.

  Gabe appeared from the back room. He held on to the door frame like it was his anchor to life.

  “I’m OK,” he said. “Jess, we have to go now.”

  Jessica caught Delta staring at him, surprised by his use of her name instead of the name she was given by her people. It showed too much familiarity. She should correct him.

  “It’s quiet right now,” Jessica said. “Get some rest. If anything happens, believe me, we’re not leaving you here.”

  “I’m not going to be the reason people die here,” Gabe said.

  Jessica was bracing for the inevitable question from Delta. Instead, her teammate, bent at the waist, grimaced and walked gingerly toward Havelson. She whispered something to him.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Jessica joined them.

  “Your partner asked if I had ultrasound equipment,” Havelson said, nodding. “I’m impressed she knew the term. We haven’t used those in over thirty years.”

  “Why do you need to know about ultrasound equipment?” Kildere asked. He looked at her funny. “Are you pregnant?”

  Delta had enough strength to walk over and gut-punch him with her purifier. Now Kildere was as bent over as she was.

  “See, we couldn’t go anywhere if we wanted to,” Jessica said to Gabriel, pointing to the two newly injured travelers.

  “Delta, what’s wrong with your stomach?” Gabe asked, but Delta just shook her head. Her face turned more pale.

  “Would this ultrasound thing figure out what’s wrong with her belly?” Jessica asked.

  “It used to be what doctors used to get a clear picture of a patient’s insides,” Havelson said.

  “Well, what do you use now?” Jessica asked. She noticed Delta flashed a hopeful look.

  “Most likely a TPC issue portable bio scanner,” Kildere muttered. “Even if you had an older model, it could still interface with Ms. Waters’—with Alpha’s—U-Board.”

  Havelson nodded. “I do indeed have one of those, but what if our green-scaled overlords are monitoring tech as a way to weed out us remaining humans?”

  Delta groaned. Sweat began to appear on her forehead.

  “Look, Doc, from what Kaylan told me, it’s not going to matter whether you’re hiding or not. They’ll find you eventually. Please, you’ve got to help—”

  “Your friend. Yes, I know.” Havelson sighed. “Ah, what the hell. Help your friend lie on that couch. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Kildere, get Delta to that couch. Gabe, why don’t you have a seat next to them. I’ll help the good doctor with his scanner,” Jessica said and followed Havelson into the back room.

  “Don’t trust me?” he asked her as they walked into one of the storage rooms at the end of a small hallway.

  “I do now,” Jessica answered.

  Havelson picked up an instrument the size of a brick. It had a white plastic shell and a smooth, dark-glass finish on one side. He showed that side to Jessica.

  “You need to sync this up with your U-Board,” he said.

  Jessica pressed the power button on her unit and held it up, back to back with the bio scanner. She was about to hit the sync icon on her Home screen when Havelson grabbed her wrist.

  “If the Guardians of Time are monitoring tech use, they’ll be here in five minutes,” he said.

  “Probably sooner,” Jessica replied and pressed the sync icon. Her U-Board screen went fuzzy. What the hell happened?

  “It’s scanning the floor,” Havelson said in reply to her unspoken question. “Let’s go.”

  Jessica followed Havelson out of the back room, and her heart pounded a fast rhythm when she saw Delta, now lying on Havelson’s dusty waiting room couch. Her body was covered in a glistening sheen, and she was groaning through clenched teeth. Kildere was wiping sweat off her forehead, but failing miserably.

  “Well, this looks serious,” Havelson said. He brought the scanner to Delta’s body and hovered it over her lower abdomen. Jessica looked at her U-Board, shook her head, and showed the image to Havelson.

  “I have no idea what I’m looking at, Doc. Is this normal?” There were varying degrees of dark and light shapes that seemed to form a skeletal structure housing muscles and organs, but Jessica didn’t see anything that stood out as a problem.

  Havelson looked at it. “This is normal, young lady.”

  “Lower,” Delta grunted. “My right leg.”

  Still looking at the U-Board, Havelson moved the scanner to Delta’s upper right thigh and slowly scanned down her leg. He sat straight when he arrived just below her kneecap.

  “Good lord, what is that?” he asked. His eyes were wide.

  Jessica looked at the U-Board, then closed her eyes.

  “I know what it is,” she said.

  Kildere walked over and looked at it.

  “Oh, my God,” he said.

  “It’s one of them, isn’t it?” Delta’s face was pale. “A slug.”

  “A slug?” Havelson tried to catch up.

  “It’s...a parasite,” Jessica said. “The lizards are using them to scrub us from existence. They’ll eat anything, from what we could tell.”

  Havelson grabbed the U-Board and moved the scanner down Delta’s lower leg. “It’s moving fast. I’d have to amputate the leg now. Let’s get her to the back room.”

  Delta started crying. Kildere and Havelson grabbed Delta.

  “Wait, wait a minute!” Jessica yelled. “Why not just extract the thing. It’s small enough to stamp out. Why not just take it out of her leg?”

  “I can’t,” Havelson said, still looking at the U-Board. “It’s already eaten most of her calf muscle. It’s a miracle she could still stand.”

  “But she was doubling over,” Kildere said. “Holding her stomach. Why—”

  “Pain receptors fire in different areas when it comes to our musculature system.” Havelson sounded frustrated. “Look, either I do this now, or at this rate, she’s going to die in the next ten minutes.”

  They got Delta up and to the doorway before they heard a familiar beeping coming from her pack.

  “That’s my U-Board,” she grunted. “That’s the proximity alert. Lizards are here.”

  No one moved.

  After a moment, Jes
sica left Havelson and Kildare to prop up Delta and scrambled to get her teammate’s bag. Rummaging around, she found her U-Board. She looked at it, and sure enough, it looked like the lizards were only a couple blocks away.

  “It looks like we have five minutes, tops.” Jessica looked at the group.

  “There’s no way I can perform the amputation,” Havelson said.

  “Fine,” Jessica said. “Then we’ll move her to a place where you can amputate.”

  Havelson and Kildere moved Delta to the back room and laid her on a gurney.

  “You don’t understand. We need a sterile environment to do any sort of procedure. Extraction, amputation, it doesn’t matter,” Havelson cried. “I don’t have a TPC sterile environshell. They only gave those to approved medical agencies.”

  Jessica threw a hateful look to Kildere. She felt a hand grab her wrist.

  “Get out of here, Alpha,” Delta said. Then she screamed in pain, grabbing her leg. “I can hold the lizards off while you go.”

  “We’re not leaving you,” Jessica said. She wanted to slap Delta for spouting off such a ridiculous idea.

  “Jess.” Gabe’s voice came from the doorway. He shook his head.

  “We can’t just leave her here, Gabe.”

  “Yes, you can.” Delta propped herself up. “Give me my pack.”

  Jessica didn’t move. Kildere slowly walked over to Jessica, took the pack from her, and handed it to Delta.

  “Every second you waste talking about it is a second those lizards get closer. You need to survive. I don’t.”

  Jessica took her hand. “We all need to survive,” she muttered. Goddamn it to hell, this was all Kaylan’s fault. I would give anything to be in a room alone with her right now, she thought, clenching her fists. I would—

  She took a deep breath. Kaylan Smith needed to answer for a lot of things, but of course, this wasn’t her fault.

  “Just do me a favor,” Delta said, squeezing Jessica’s hand. “Please tell Rachel that I love her. I’ll see her in the next life.”

  Jessica closed her eyes, imagining the hard luck life had given Delta. Did she love Rachel while Rachel loved Timmy? Probably. That’s how life worked. To have love go both ways was such a rare thing in this world.