by Mark Lukens
“Both of them?” I asked. “The anti-anxiety medication and the sleep-aids?”
Alicia nodded quickly.
“You mean the pills I’ve been taking for the last two years were never real.”
“Not the ones my friend tested.”
“Why would Dr. Valentine, or whoever she really is, prescribe me sugar pills?”
“Maybe she didn’t want to give you anything that would interfere with the mind control programming,” Stan said, then he looked up, his mouth clamping closed.
A waitress walked up to our table with her ticket book in her hand. “What’ll you have?” she asked.
We all ordered coffees to start with and the waitress left.
“What about you guys?” Alicia asked. “What did you find out?”
“We found a time and date,” Stan said. “It was in one of those strings of numbers.”
Alicia’s eyes widened in shock.
“April eleventh at four o’clock,” Stan said.
“And we think we know what I’m being programmed for,” I said.
“A Manchurian Candidate,” Stan added, but he didn’t seem so excited about it now. “Just like I thought.”
“We found out the company that owns the house across the street from mine also owns a storage unit business. I’m pretty sure I have a storage unit there.”
“But you don’t know for sure,” she said.
“I’m not going there to check,” I said and then explained as briefly as I could about the bags of fertilizer stolen from work.
We clammed up when the waitress came back with our coffees.
After she left again, I said, “It’s kind of obvious now what’s going on.”
“But why?” she asked. “Why would our government—”
“They call it a cabal,” I interrupted. “Like a deep state inside the government. Or outside of it; some powerful group of people that wants to rule the world.”
“Why would they want you to kill people?”
“To push their agendas,” Stan said, and then he cited the same reasons Adam and Joel had only an hour ago: “Gun control could be one reason. They need to get the guns out of the hands of the people. Or it could be to keep provoking fear of other religious and racial groups, to keep us divided, to keep the hatred going. Or to keep us used to the forever wars on terrorism. Or the wars on drugs. Maybe to eventually declare some kind of martial law, or a partial police state, to get the people begging for it.”
Alicia glanced at Stan, then me, then back at Stan again. “And you believe that? You think something like this has been done before?”
Stan nodded. “Yes. I think so. I think it’s been done plenty of times. All the way back to JFK.”
We were all quiet for a moment.
Alicia sipped her coffee. Her hands were shaking.
I felt instantly at fault. “Look, Alicia. I really appreciate everything you’ve done so far, all of your help, but I don’t expect you to keep going with this.”
She just stared at me.
“You can go home if you want to. I wouldn’t blame you at all.”
“I don’t think I can.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“What do you mean, you don’t think you can?”
“After my friend at school gave me this chemical analysis of your medication,” she said, her voice much lower now, “I went back to my apartment. I can’t say for sure, but I think someone had been inside before I got there.”
“Someone broke in?” I asked her.
She shook her head no. “No, I mean maybe. It didn’t look like it. I couldn’t point to one thing in particular that was out of place, but it just felt like someone had been there.”
I knew exactly what she was talking about. I’d felt the same thing when I had woken up in my own home.
“This is getting too dangerous,” I said. “You guys don’t have to keep doing this with me.” I looked at Stan this time. “I would definitely understand. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done so far, but I know this got a lot bigger than any of us probably ever imagined.”
Neither one said they were backing out. But neither one said they were staying, either.
“What are you going to do?” Alicia asked me after another sip of her coffee.
“I don’t know. Stan’s friends didn’t have any advice for me.”
Stan seemed to ignore my comment about his two ex-agency friends. Instead he looked at Alicia and said, “And we’ve been warned.”
“Warned?” She looked at me. “What does that mean?”
“Michelle called,” Stan blurted out before I had a chance to answer her question.
Her mouth dropped open in shock for just a second. “Michelle,” she whispered. “She called you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “From a cell number I’d never seen before.”
“What did she say?”
“She just told me to stop digging and to stop asking questions. Then she hung up. I called the number back, but it was disconnected.”
“So she was involved with this the whole time,” Alicia said.
“I told you,” Stan said.
“Yeah.” I spoke to Alicia, ignoring Stan. “I think she’s been involved from the very beginning, right after my parents died in a car crash. That’s when Michelle and I met, a few weeks after they died.”
I saw the look in Alicia’s eyes, the same conclusion that I had come to less than an hour ago, that my parents’ death had been no accident, that their death had set all of this up. They had been planning this for a long time.
“There’s got to be something we can do,” Alicia said. “Someone we can talk to, someone who can help.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t share Alicia’s positivity, especially after my meeting with Adam and Joel.
“This is still America,” she said as if I had argued with her. “We need to get all of the evidence we’ve got and store it somewhere.”
“I’ve got it somewhere safe,” Stan said. “It’s in the cloud. I’ve got the password.” He wrote it down on the notepad he’d just bought and slid it across the table to me.
“Good,” Alicia said. “But we need someone to help us. We’ll get a lawyer. We’ll find one tomorrow. Tell them everything. Show the evidence we have. They’ll know what we can do.”
“We’re gonna sue the government?” Stan muttered, snorting out sarcastic laughter.
I wasn’t even sure if you were allowed to sue the government, but I thought I’d heard of it happening before. I remembered something about people suing the FDA or something.
“We’ll look up some lawyers tonight,” Alicia said.
Stan looked at her—it was almost a glare. “You’re staying with him tonight?”
She looked shocked. “Someone has to. You aren’t?”
“After everything you’ve heard tonight?” Stan asked.
“And leaving him alone would be a good idea?”
I felt like telling them I was right there across the table from them.
“Someone needs to be there to monitor him when . . . when he wakes up in the middle of the night,” Alicia said.
“When I sleepwalk,” I corrected.
“Maybe I could set up a new series of commands to override the ones that have already been programmed.”
“You can do that?”
“I don’t know. I could try.”
We were all quiet for a moment.
“Maybe we should send an email to someone,” Alicia said. “Or mail a letter or a package with a video in it. Some kind of evidence in case something happens to one of us.”
A silence settled over us for just a moment, each of us considering the idea of something really happening to us.
“What about you?” Alicia asked Stan. “You’re not staying?”
“I gotta go to work tomorrow. I’ve already missed too many days. Steve’s already pissed at me. I can’t lose my job.”
My job was the furthest thing from my mind
at that moment, and except for the bags of stolen fertilizer and cans of organophosphates, I hadn’t even thought about that place. That job, that part of my life, was back when things made sense, when Michelle was still my wife and I wasn’t some robot who could be turned into a monster anytime these shadowy people decided to activate me.
“I don’t think you should stay at your house either,” Alicia told me.
“She’s probably right,” Stan said. “This is getting serious.”
“Where, then?” I asked. “A motel?”
Stan shrugged. “I don’t know. Anywhere might be better than your own house.” He looked at Alicia.
She nodded. “Yeah. Just for tonight. Then we’ll talk to a lawyer in the morning.”
“Where are you staying?” Stan asked.
“We’ll find somewhere,” she said, giving him the cold shoulder.
I thought Stan was going to reconsider and stay in the motel room with us, but he didn’t. I knew he had some kind of feelings for Alicia, and he probably didn’t like the idea of me spending the night alone with her. I admit, even at that time, I was attracted to Alicia in a purely fundamental way, but, like my job, it was the last thing on my mind with everything else going on. I couldn’t believe Stan was letting petty jealousy get in the way.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll go get a room for the night somewhere.”
“I know a place we can go,” Alicia said.
“I need to go back to your house,” Stan said, not hiding his unhappiness about us running off together to a motel room.
I looked at him.
“My truck is at your house,” he said. “Remember, you drove?”
“Okay,” I said, nodding, pulling out my wallet to pay for the coffees and to leave a tip. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
It was fully dark as I drove back to my house. Stan had been quiet for most of the drive—I could tell he was brewing about something.
“I’m not trying to move in on your girl,” I told him.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
I was suddenly angry at Stan, but trying not to show it. My life could be in danger, and most likely was, and he was worried about me hooking up with Alicia, and worried about getting back to work tomorrow. I was concerned he might let it slip to Steve that I had stolen the fertilizer and chemicals.
Of course I would deny it. Stan’s story wouldn’t sound exactly sane. Steve, like everyone else there, knew about Stan’s crazy, paranoid stories.
But I didn’t say anything more about it.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Stan said again. “I’m not interested in her. Not anymore.”
I glanced at him as I drove past a streetlight, the orange light washing over him. I saw it then—he was scared.
“Stan . . .”
“Zach,” he snapped before I could finish. “This is some serious shit. I don’t know if you understand how serious this is.”
“We’re gonna get some help.”
He chuckled; it was a nasty, humorless sound. He shook his head slowly. “Man, you need to run.”
“Run?”
“Yeah. Run.”
“We’re going to get some help tomorrow,” I said again. “Talk to some lawyers. They’ll know what to do. We’ve got evidence of what’s been going on.”
He chuckled again, that same sinister laugh. “Yeah, I can see a lawyer listening to your story about sleepwalking and sending passwords to email addresses in the middle of the night.”
“We’ve got the video.”
“Nobody’s going to believe that shit,” he snapped. “Can’t you see that?”
I was stunned for a second as I drove.
“It could be faked,” he explained in a more reasonable tone. “They’ll say we faked it all. Made all of it up.”
I could see his point. I hadn’t thought about that.
“Man, they might come after me and Alicia.”
That sick feeling was back in my stomach again. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m going to have to cooperate, if they do,” he said. It almost sounded like a threat, like he’d been covering for me while I did something illegal. But I’d done nothing wrong—this shit had been done to me. He knew that. Once again, that flash of anger sparked up inside of me.
“Look, man,” I said after I calmed myself down for a few seconds, “I know you’re scared.”
“Of course I’m scared,” he snapped.
I glanced at him again and saw the tears in his eyes, his face contorted in fear as he stared at me.
“These guys are powerful,” he said. “They don’t fuck around. We’re in some serious shit here. You don’t think they’ll erase the three of us and move on to the next Manchurian Candidate? It doesn’t matter how much money they’ve got invested in you. Money doesn’t mean anything to them. Money doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s all a fucking illusion. We’re so close to being totally controlled, just like Adam and Joel said.”
I stayed quiet as I turned onto my street.
“Look,” Stan said. He seemed calmer now, like he’d needed to get that out of his system. “Before you go see any lawyers tomorrow, go back to the RV park and see Adam and Joel before they pack up their camper and take off. Go knock on their door. I don’t know if they’ll answer, but keep knocking until they do. Tell them you need to get new identities, new IDs, passports, social security cards, the works. They’ll know where you can go to get them.”
I still didn’t say anything as I drove around the bend toward my house, almost expecting to see the flashing lights of police cars, or dark SUVs with men in suits and pistols waiting for me. But there were no cars; the street was as empty and dark as it usually was, only the one lone streetlight illuminating part of my driveway and the road with a yellowish-orange glow.
“I want you to take my phone,” Stan said. “And my laptop. Both are clean, no link to me or you. Get rid of your phone. Don’t put the battery back in. Just find somewhere to toss it. Not around your house. Get Alicia to toss her phone, too. They can track you by your phones.”
I nodded so he could see that I understood. I pulled into my driveway, parking right next to Stan’s pickup truck. Alicia parked along the street at the end of my front yard. She didn’t get out, just waiting in her car with the engine running.
“I’m sorry I can’t stay,” Stan said as he got out of the truck.
“No, I know. I understand.” I got out of the truck and slammed the door shut. “We’ll find a way out of this.”
Stan didn’t look too hopeful about that. He took off across my front yard to Alicia’s car, then bent down to talk to her after she rolled down the window. He was probably giving her the same advice about her cell phone.
I went up to my front door and unlocked it. I stepped inside and turned on the front porch light, then the foyer light. I closed the door but didn’t lock it. I hurried back to my bedroom and grabbed a duffel bag from my closet, shoving changes of clothes, socks, and underwear inside. I grabbed some stuff from the bathroom. I still had the notecards and bank receipts I’d gotten out of Michelle’s boot in my truck. I wondered what else I should take.
For a moment I made myself stop and look around. What else was I missing? For some reason, I wasn’t sure when I would be able to return to my own house. And I felt like I needed to hurry, like something bad was racing toward my house and I only had minutes to get out.
I grabbed the video camera and charger from the top of my dresser and shoved that down into the duffel bag. I went through the house, making sure everything was turned off and unplugged. I left the front porch light on and I left my home, locking the door behind me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I followed Alicia to the beachside. She said she knew of a motel where we could stay.
I waited in my truck while she checked us in, paying with the cash I had given to her. She used a fake name and address, but she had to give them her auto informa
tion: the tag, the make and model. That information would be in the system, but maybe it would take a while for them to find it. We would be out of the motel by tomorrow morning.
We brought our bags up to the motel room—a courtyard room on the second floor with two double beds and a nice bathroom. The motel was a small place, squeezed in between two fifteen-story hotels lit up in the night, both chain hotels. More and more of these family-run motels were selling to the big companies, but there were still plenty of them around.
I realized that in my haste to leave my house I’d forgotten to take my toothbrush and toothpaste. I made a mental list of what I needed and walked across A1A to a 7-11. I bought the things I needed and a twelve-pack of beer. I hadn’t drunk alcohol in years, but I really needed a drink tonight. And I didn’t have to worry about the beer interacting with my medications because the meds had never been real.
Fifteen minutes later I was back in the motel room. Alicia was in the bathroom, taking a shower. I stuffed as many bottles of beers as I could into the small refrigerator in the “kitchen” area of the motel room, which consisted of the tiny fridge, a sink, a microwave oven, a coffee maker, and a toaster. There was a small shelf above the sink and a trashcan underneath it.
After making sure the door was locked again, including the safety latch, I turned on the TV, but kept the sound down low. I cranked the window-unit air-conditioner down to the lowest setting it would go to. I watched a little bit of the local news. A reporter on the beachside was talking about an upcoming music festival for the college kids in town on Spring Break.
“You want a beer?” I asked Alicia when she came out of the bathroom.
“Sure,” she said as she finished drying her hair. She wore a pair of shorts and an oversized T-shirt. “Actually, I think I could use something stronger right now, but a beer would be great.”
The first sip of the beer tasted terrible to me, but after I had sucked down half the bottle, the old familiar taste and buzz came back. I had fought so hard to quit drinking after meeting Michelle. I had been an occasional drinker my first year in college, but after my parents died I started drinking heavily and missing classes. The school forgave me for a while because of my parents’ death, but that was only going to last for so long.
