by L. N. Carson
She said nothing because if she said what she was thinking, he’d probably try to arrest her. Instead, she merely signaled to Montu, and they got into the SUV and pulled away.
“So, what do you think?” Montu asked.
“I think Atum and his gal pal are hiding in those woods up there.”
“And what do you propose we do?”
“We flush them out.”
* * *
As Sam and Kathleen approached the small, ramshackle cabin, two dogs—a Rottweiler and a German shepherd—ran snarling toward them. The older man told them to “stand down,” and the dogs obeyed. He prodded Sam and Kathleen into the cabin.
Inside, the place didn’t look nearly as bad as it did outside, but it was still pretty rough. Sam figured the men didn’t have time to pay much attention to things such as housework what with all their time going to running a marijuana business and burying the bodies of trespassers.
He glanced at Kathleen when they were ordered to turn around and face their captors. She didn’t look frightened, but he knew she had to be.
“Let’s see some ID,” the older man said.
“Pop, you know that whatever they show us is gonna be fake, especially if they’re feds.”
Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Kathleen beat him to it.
“It’s feds who are after us. Sam found out about some kind of alien they had hidden in a tank on the property where he worked. And now they’re trying to kill him before he tells anyone else about it.”
The older man turned rheumy eyes on Sam. “That true?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’d you find out about it?”
“I worked at the lab as a janitor. I only found out about the alien when one of the scientists told me about it. They killed her right after that.”
“Why would she tell you?” the younger man, Donnie, asked.
Sam shrugged. “I guess she figured I was the only one there she could trust. As a matter of fact, I kinda didn’t believe her…at least, not until she turned up dead. Then I snooped around and found where they were keeping the thing, but the door was locked. I planned on coming back and picking the lock, but they realized I knew too much…”
“Surveillance cameras more’n likely,” said Donnie. “It’s hard to find anywhere that they don’t have eyes on you these days.”
“Tell me about it,” said Sam. “It seems like they’ve been a step ahead of us this whole time.”
“Could we pay you to drive us into town?” Kathleen asked. “We don’t have much money, but we’ll give you what we have.”
Pop slowly shook his head. “No. If we help you, they’ll come after us too.”
Donnie lowered his shotgun. “What about Avery’s truck?”
Pop lifted his chin. “Well…if you can get it started, I reckon.”
“Pop’s uncle died about three years ago, and his truck is still out behind the house. It’s registered in his name and everything, and they wouldn’t be able to trace it back to us very well.”
“If you can get the thing started,” Pop said to Donnie, “we can let ’em take it, and if anybody comes nosing around, we’ll say it was stolen.”
“I’ll see if it’ll start,” Donnie said. He turned to Sam. “Let’s you and me go see if that truck’ll start.”
* * *
Kathleen gave Sam a slight nod to let him know she was okay staying with “Pop.” Neither man had let go of his weapon, but they were at least pointing them at the ground now instead of at Sam’s and Kathleen’s torsos.
Once Donnie and Sam had left the cabin, Pop turned to Kathleen. “You seem to be a pretty good girl…smart…nice-looking… How’d you get yourself mixed up in this mess?”
She smiled. “I’m not as smart as I look, apparently.” She shrugged. “Sam wrecked his motorcycle right in front of me. I stopped to help, he explained his situation, and I knew that if they found him…” She shrugged.
“They’d kill you too.” Pop slowly nodded.
“But sometimes you have to do what you feel is right—laws be damned.”
“Ain’t that the truth? You hungry, darlin’? This was my mother’s homeplace. We’ve…uh…farmed this land since I was a boy. Me and Donnie don’t keep a lot of provisions out here, but you’re welcome to anything we’ve got.”
“Thanks. More than anything, I’d just like to have a seat on that sofa. We’ve been walking for miles, and I’m really tired.”
“You go right ahead.”
Kathleen sank her exhausted body onto the sofa. Pop sat on the recliner beside the sofa, keeping his shotgun within easy reach. It appeared that he trusted her a little more now, but not enough to ditch the gun.
They sat in silence for a few minutes until the truck roared to life.
“Thank goodness,” said Kathleen. “I hope you know how much we appreciate your help.”
“You’re welcome. I might need you to return the favor one day.”
As she stood, she heard the dogs snarling.
She gasped. “They’ve found us.”
She raced to the window, but Pop pulled her to the side. “Never stand straight in front of a window when you don’t know what trouble’s outside.”
The old man had a point. She ducked down and moved to the other side of the window. Pop stayed on the side where she’d started—shotgun now firmly in place—and peered out from a small slit in the curtains.
“Do you have an extra gun?” she asked.
“Got plenty. You ever used one?”
“It’s been a while, but, yeah, I have. And if that’s the people who are after Sam and me, it’ll take all four of us to fight them.”
He hesitated, squinting again out the window.
If he was seeing the same thing as Kathleen, it wasn’t much. There seemed to be some sort of skirmish with the dogs. There was so much dust, though, it was hard to tell for sure exactly what was going on.
Was it Hathor and Montu? An animal they’d sent? Or something else entirely? It could be a coincidence that whatever it was had chosen to attack while Kathleen and Sam were here. It could be…but she highly doubted it.
“It’s a bear,” said Pop. “The dogs are on it, and Donnie’s waiting for a clean shot.”
A bear. Poor thing. It had to have been sent by Hathor and Montu. She shivered and closed her eyes as a single shotgun blast rang out.
Chapter FOUR
Hathor and Montu watched the bear’s progress, thanks to the drone’s camera and an app on Montu’s tablet.
“I have to hand it to you,” Hathor said. “When you suggested calling in a bear to search the woods, I thought you were insane.”
“I know my weapons. Bears have an incredibly strong sense of smell, are fast, and have good vision.” Montu nodded at the creature quickly lumbering through the field. “Plus, our boy there is nearly seven feet tall and is five-hundred pounds of solid muscle. I knew all he’d need was a sniff of one of the bag’s handles they’d left behind in the car.”
They could have used their drones to implant the dogs on the property in an emergency. But the bear had been nearby, thanks to the program’s earlier capture and release test subjects, and he was much more efficient.
The bear reached a broken-down farmhouse and was immediately attacked by the two large dogs. He slapped them away with his paws, stirring up the dirt in a yard that hadn’t seen a blade of grass in years.
“That place is so dusty, I can barely see,” Hathor complained.
“It doesn’t matter…or, at least, it won’t for long.”
* * *
Donnie fired the rifle into the air to frighten the bear, but it didn’t work. Sam watched as one dog after the other was slapped several feet away by the bear. Before the dogs could scramble back to their feet, Donnie had got out of the truck. He attempted to train the rifle on the bear, but the creature raced into him, headbutting him in the stomach and knocking him to the ground. Donnie lost his grip on the gun, and it was thrown under the tr
uck. The bear then placed its huge paws on Donnie’s shoulders and pinned him to the ground while biting the man’s head.
Sam jumped into the truck and blasted the horn. This distracted the bear long enough for Donnie to stagger to his feet. By this time, the dogs were back and attacking the bear.
When the bear turned to swat at the dogs again, Donnie started to reach for the rifle.
“Don’t be an idiot!” Sam shouted. “Get in here!”
Donnie nodded and got into the truck, blood pouring from his wounds.
“Floor it. Your dad needs to take you to the hospital,” Sam said, as Donnie crawled across him to the passenger seat.
Sam realized Donnie was in shock. The bear had dislocated and clawed the young man’s left shoulder. Blood soaked through his shirt and poured from the puncture wounds on his scalp. Sam gunned the engine, swerved to miss the animals, and raced to the house’s porch.
Pop ran outside with his shotgun, and Kathleen was right on his heels. Pop hoisted the gun onto his right shoulder and took aim.
“You don’t have time,” Sam said, as he got out of the truck and ran up the porch stairs. “You’ve got to get Donnie to the hospital now! We’ll take care of the bear.”
Almost as if in a trance, Pop handed Sam the shotgun, got into the truck, and barreled away, leaving a curtain of dust in its wake.
“What do we do now?” Kathleen asked.
“Get inside and stay away from the windows and doors.”
She did as he’d ordered. “Who are we hiding from—the bear or your boss’s hit squad?”
“Both.” He strode in beside her, shut and locked the door, and handed her the shotgun. “Do you know how to use this?”
“Pretty much.”
“Good. If anyone or anything comes through that door or that front window, shoot.” He looked around the room. “Have you seen any sign of a computer or laptop?”
“No, but Pop didn’t give me the grand tour.”
“I’ll see what I can find.” He found a laptop in one of the bedrooms and brought it back into the living room. “This should work.”
“You’re going to deprogram the bear like you did the falcon?” Kathleen asked.
“I hope so. It’s a lot trickier with the bear than it was with the falcon.” Sam plugged in the laptop and turned it on. “The bird was basically a tracker and a reporter. The bear has carried out an attack. With the forest cobra in the lab, its attack on Sekhmet was believed to be a fluke. But once it did, it wouldn’t stop.”
“But cobras are aggressive, right? I know bears can be too, but—”
“Forest cobras aren’t naturally aggressive,” Sam said. “They’re typically shy and try to escape rather than attack. Nothing could stop our cobra, though, until it was killed.”
“The deprogramming didn’t work.” Kathleen’s voice was flat, a statement rather than a question.
“No. It didn’t. Had it not been stopped, that snake would’ve eventually killed us all.” He began the complicated task of rerouting the server to proxies to hide his location, even though Montu and Hathor likely knew exactly where they were. He hoped that the pair thought he and Kathleen were in that truck, but he wasn’t going to get too carried away with his optimism.
After trying and failing several times to log in, he sighed and swore under his breath.
“What is it?” Kathleen asked.
“I’m shut out of the main server. They’ve changed all their passwords.” He shut down the laptop. “Damn.” He stood, stretched, and walked toward the door.
Kathleen also stood, but he waved her away.
“Just stay here.” He took a pistol from his backpack. “I need to go destroy that killing machine. Then I’ll come back—hopefully—and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”
“Hopefully?”
He nodded. “If I don’t make it back, call 9-1-1 and get out of here. I don’t want to bring the DEA down on Donnie and his dad, but I can’t let you be a sitting duck for Montu and Hathor either.”
* * *
While Montu drove the black SUV in the direction of the speeding truck, Hathor looked up the nearest hospital.
“Are you sure Atum was in the vehicle?” she asked.
“You saw as much as I did. He was driving the truck, and he blew the horn to distract the bear,” Montu said. “I believe he’s driving the other guy to the hospital.”
Hathor shook her head. “He wouldn’t risk it.”
“He wouldn’t let a guy die.” He scoffed. “That’s pretty much why he’s in the mess he’s in. He wanted to be the golden boy. He hasn’t tarnished that much in a matter of hours.”
Montu had a point. Atum had become dissatisfied with the project when his applications for helping disabled veterans and apprehending poachers had been sidelined in favor of concentrating solely on creating weapons, such as chipmunks being given pouches of sarin in their cheeks and programmed to poison a village’s water supply. Atum wouldn’t let someone die in order to save himself.
“Still, I bet he’ll drop him off at the emergency entrance and keep going,” Hathor insisted.
Montu jerked his head toward the phone she held. “Then call ahead and have security guards posted at the emergency entrance to detain him.”
“Already on it.”
* * *
Kathleen hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until Sam came back into the house and she exhaled. “What happened? I didn’t hear a gunshot.”
“I used a silencer,” he said.
She looked down at her hands as she digested this information. The man she’d been travelling with not only had a handgun in his backpack—a gun with the capability of killing a bear—he also had a silencer. Just who was she dealing with?
“I didn’t want Montu and Hathor to hear a gunshot if they were still in the vicinity.” He gently lifted her chin. “Are you good?”
She nodded.
“Come on. While I was outside, I found us a way out of here.” He held out a hand.
Kathleen took it and shakily got to her feet.
Sam led her to the barn. “Look at this.”
It was a motorcycle. She nodded.
He blew out a breath. “Are you still with me, or not? If not, I understand completely. But at least let me get you out of here to somewhere safer.”
“All right.” She ran her hand over the handlebar of the motorcycle.
“This bike is an ADV. That means it’s good for travelling on and off road.” There were two full-face helmets on a nearby workbench. He picked up a black one and handed it to Kathleen. “This one is an oldie, but if it’ll start, it’ll get us out of here.”
“How do we know those two goons haven’t got some other animal tailing us?”
“We don’t.” He put on the blue helmet, straddled the motorcycle, and disengaged the kickstand. “So, do you just want to stay here and give up?” He opened the choke lever and turned the key in the ignition.
Kathleen put on her helmet and got onto the bike behind Sam.
He started the engine and revved it momentarily before taking off. As they drove out of the barn, Kathleen noticed a wad of cash on the workbench beneath an overturned mason jar. She felt certain neither Pop nor Donnie would have left money lying around. Sam had left it there to pay for—or to rent—the bike and helmets.
* * *
When Hathor and Montu arrived at the hospital emergency entrance, a security guard was standing outside waiting for them. The bald man appeared to be in his early thirties and was every bit as big and imposing as Montu. After Hathor and Montu presented their badges—created by Amun-Ra using fictitious names to preserve the agents’ anonymity—the guard ushered them into the building.
“I’m Officer Mellinger,” he said, as he led them down the corridor. “I apprehended the older male who brought in the other one, who’d been mauled by a bear. The younger male is undergoing treatment, but I’ve detained the older man in a consultation room. He says he�
��s the boy’s father.”
“Was there anyone else in the truck?” Hathor asked. “Specifically, another man or a woman?”
“Negative. I searched the vehicle myself as my partner was taking the older male to the consultation room and an orderly was transporting the patient.” He removed a key ring from his belt and unlocked the room.
Officer Mellinger pushed open the door to reveal a sullen man whose pronounced crow’s feet suggested a perpetual squint. “He’s all yours. I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
Mellinger vacated the room, and Hathor and Montu sat down in the two metal chairs across from the man. A chrome and faux wood table stood between them and the marijuana farmer.
Hathor took the lead. “Good afternoon, sir. I’m Agent Collins with the Department of Protection and Asylum, and my partner is Agent Fields.” She flashed her credentials.
“Hand that over here and let me take a proper look.”
“Of course.” Hathor slid the badge wallet across the table.
The man picked it up and scowled at it. His eyes flicked to her face and back to the badge. “How come I ain’t ever heard of the Department of Protection and Asylum?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the DPA should up our PR game.” Her smile was more of a snarl. “Now you know who I am. What’s your name?”
He sucked on his upper lip and appeared to be contemplating whether or not he wanted to answer. At last, he said, “Thomas Woods.”
“Mr. Woods, we’d like to ask you about a man and woman you were seen with earlier today.”
“Honey, I ain’t seen anybody today exceptin’ my boy, and he was attacked by a bear. I’d like to go see about him if y’all are done blowing smoke.”
“We know the two people we’re looking for were on your property today,” Montu ground out.
“What makes you say that, pal? You wouldn’t be guilty of unauthorized surveillance on or around my private property, would you? ’Cause I believe that’d be a violation of my constitutional rights.”
Hathor could feel the heat emanating from Montu as his anger grew, and she placed a hand on his arm. “Mr. Woods, the man we’re looking for is a dangerous criminal.”
“Well, what the hell do you want me to do about it? It’s your job to catch him, not mine.” He stood. “Now, are you gonna let me see my son now? Or am I gonna have to call my lawyer?”
