“The concept came to me from my nightmares,” he admitted. “I call it the Kreesh. I’ve discussed the design from time to time with three of my friends when we go running together. They helped with working out some of the details.”
***
Two months later, Geppetto Klendin was found dead in his workshop. In his will, he left the entire Cantina Collection to the “beautiful young woman who both understands and appreciates the challenges of my work.” Along with the notification from his lawyer came a personal note from Geppetto addressed to her. Ms. Stevens, I hope this finds you well. I write this knowing I have only a short time left. My doctors give me a few weeks, at most. I finished the Kreesh, flawed though it may be. It feels like that is what is killing me. I almost wish I never started the project. It threatens all of my other creations. I am pleased that you arrived while there was still time. I now deliver their fate into your hands. Protect them for me. Save them from the Kreesh.
Lexi didn’t know what to make of that. She wondered if whatever he was dying from was affecting his mind. Then she wondered what became of the Kreesh marionette.
Chapter 23
The Striped Bass
Ron smiled as he looked around the fancy Philadelphia restaurant Lexi drove them to. “This is very nice,” he stated as he took a sip of a crisp Chardonnay, noting it had been served in an appropriate glass. “I know I didn’t miss our anniversary, so what’s the occasion, kiddo?”
Lexi laughed. “We’re celebrating two occasions tonight.” She seemed unusually merry. Ron appreciated that. She was far too serious much of the time.
Lexi paused as their server, a young woman whose nametag identified her as Risha, brought their shrimp cocktail appetizers. As it was getting darker outside, Risha asked if she could light their table decoration, a glass rose in a small vase. Lexi handed it to her, watching as Risha touched a spot on the bottom before handing it back. Lexi set it down on the table. A gentle pink glow emanated from the ornament. Lexi found herself momentarily intrigued by the interesting patterns of light it gave off.
Risha was a pleasant pale-skinned, platinum blonde who spoke English with the slightest accent. Lexi assumed it must be Swedish. The woman looked like she might be Scandinavian. Before she moved on to another table, Risha said, “You guys remind me a lot of my boyfriend’s parents.” She blushed. “Sorry, I don’t mean you look old. They both look really young for their ages. Please, let me know if you need anything. Your meals should be out soon.”
Both Lexi and Ron nodded and smiled at her before she turned away. “First,” Lexi began, “we’re celebrating your promotion, making you the youngest foreman at Hepca Consolidated Mining, North America. I’m proud of you, lover.” Ron called her earlier that day, letting her know that he had indeed been offered the anticipated promotion and the accompanying salary increase. That would come in handy. As of tomorrow, he would be foreman of his own crew at the mine. The company was fast-tracking him to management as they promised. She raised her water glass in a silent toast as his glass touched hers.
“I picked the Striped Bass because this is where the restaurant scene in Sixth Sense was filmed,” she continued. “We live so close, I couldn’t resist the opportunity. She looked around the dining room as she said that and then added, “I don’t believe it. I think that’s actually Bruce Willis three tables over. What are the odds of that?”
“Don’t know. Where does he live? They can’t very well be filming a sequel, can they?” Ron turned to look. Bruce noticed him looking, smiled and gave a small wave in the direction of their table. Ron smiled back, nodded and turned back to Lexi. “You’re right. He’s with that actor who played the Russian guy in Red. Maybe they’re working on a sequel to Red and thought it would be cute to work in a scene in the Striped Bass. I’ve seen them do silly things like that in movies before. Then again, more likely just two friends having dinner.”
“Ivan Siminov was played by Brian Cox,” Lexi recalled. “I think he’s really Scottish.” “Red,” in that movie, was an acronym for Retired, Extremely Dangerous. Sometimes I feel like that. Except I’m not retired. I have a full-time job doing the kind of technical research I love. I’ll be a mother soon. None of which makes me dangerous, extremely or otherwise. Except maybe to the evangelists who keep ringing my doorbell spouting nonsense about storm winds gathering, locusts swarming, and the end of the world being at hand. Why do I keep having these weird thoughts?
Ron interrupted that particular weird thought by prompting, “You said we’re celebrating two occasions?”
For a moment, Lexi looked as happy as he had ever seen her. “We’re pregnant, lover.”
The wonderful dinner prepared by the excellent chefs at the Striped Bass was sadly anticlimactic after that. As Risha presented the bill, Lexi reached forward and took it from her while Ron was still reaching for it. “Don’t be silly,” she said to him. “It’s your day. We’re celebrating your promotion!” As she put her credit card in the folder, she added, beaming, “And your child.”
Chapter 24
July 4th
The months flew by quickly. Before Lexi knew it, it was the Fourth of July. A number of her neighbors organized a block party. It was to be a pot luck type of affair, with each family bringing dishes large enough to serve forty people. Everyone dragged their backyard picnic tables out to the street and covered them with matching disposable red tablecloths. Lexi was too busy with everyday life to help organize, but Ron pitched in with a will, helping families carry tables from their backyards.
Three families owned projectors that could be hooked to their laptops. The plan was to show movies projected on closed garage doors for the older kids after the fireworks were over. The E’Krets planned on screening Toy Story starring Sheriff Woody protecting the neighborhood and Buzz Lightyear, a space ranger tasked with protecting the universe. Another family had The Incredibles, superheroes fighting against enormous odds, queued up. The third movie was Silverado with its all-star cast defending the residents from powerful men who forced them to live in fear. When Lexi mused about it, she noted a common theme running through the movie choices. She thought the kids would like their options. If she had a choice, she would have re-watched Inception. She doubted that would go over well with the neighborhood children.
Lexi cooked a Hawaiian dish both she and Ron enjoyed on their honeymoon. Shoyu chicken, while not as exotic as a lot of Hawaiian dishes, was nevertheless relatively easy to prepare and not too expensive. While fixing it, she lamented the lack of Star Trek food replicators. She would have liked to make a raw seafood salad called Poke, but the cost of the amount of sushi-grade Ahi yellowfin tuna she would have needed for the crowd would have made their mortgage payment problematic this month.
The oddest dish she and Ron encountered while grazing the street was Cervella Fritte, an Italian dish made of bite-sized battered and fried morsels of veal brain. It was relatively bland if not dipped in one of the several sauces the E’krets provided. That entire family came across as a little rough around the edges, but still, the Samue family had become close friends with them almost as soon as they moved into town.
An unusual number of her neighbors were pale-skinned platinum-blonds like her best friend Jis. She supposed that was explained by the large Swedish population in the area. You would have thought someone would be serving Swedish meatballs. She laughed to herself. Instead, we have unusual Italian, exotic African, and hard-to-find Mediterranean, along with the American standard hot dogs and hamburgers.
Their son Crane was a big hit as the only baby at the party, gurgling happily in his stroller and sucking on his toes. He was supposed to be taking a nap but didn’t seem to need the normal amount of sleep a child his age should be getting. He may have been too excited from petting the dogs some of the families had outside with them.
She and Ron discussed months ago the possibility of getting a dog after the baby was born. Maybe it was time to take care of that. They already owned, if you could te
rm it that, an outdoor cat. Kalia was a stray that showed up on the porch of her friend Jis but followed Lexi home. Lexi had been feeding her for the last several months. She had a name picked out for their dog too. She was going to name the pet after a famous director and screenwriter. Considering her love of movies, it seemed fitting. Ron laughed and gave her a huge hug and kiss when she broached the name to him.
At four weeks, Crane was already calling her “Mommy.” Unnatural. At least he didn’t really have the word for cat, or their stray’s name down, calling her Ka-Ka. Her pediatrician wanted to dissect him, although she was pretty sure he was kidding. She chided Ron to, “Be nice,” when he suggested that Dr. Helgan looked like an alien, telling him he was getting to be as bad as her father. True, the man was horribly obese at about five-six, with a huge floppy midsection, a round head, large eyes, a tiny nose and over-sized ears. For that matter, his mouth looked odd. But still…
Frankly, she was more concerned that she felt as though she was continually seeing people who she knew were supposed to be dead than she was about her odd-looking doctor. By this time, both she and Ron knew most of the neighbors, the majority of whom seemed to be nice people. But Lexi kept having the eerie feeling that she had met many of the non-Swedes before and that they all died tragically.
She brought it up again at the cookout after Ron introduced her to Kree, one of the miners on his team. Kree wasn’t a neighbor. Ron invited him because he felt the man didn’t socialize enough. Kree’s face bore a long scar down the right cheek and it looked like his nose had been broken and poorly set more than once. With several days of beard stubble, he was not a handsome sight. Lexi felt that she knew him, somehow, somewhere, and that he should be dead. In fact, she was pretty sure she was the reason he was dead. Which makes no sense at all!
As they walked away from Kree, she said to Ron, “I see dead people.” She felt as though an extraordinary number of their neighbors, most of whom were either employed at Hepca, the mining outfit Ron worked for, or who had spouses employed there, should be dead. When she mentioned it, Dr. Helgan dismissed her concerns as post-partum depression and maybe that was all it was. She did some reading on it and if he was right about his diagnosis, hers was an unusual case.
For some reason, when the fireworks started going off, all she could think about was fleets of starships battling a swarm of life-size versions of Geppetto’s Kreesh. She was fairly certain Dr. Helgan would claim it was merely another symptom of her depression and they really should give serious thought to medicating her. Not going to happen.
Chapter 25
Widow
Ron died in a horrible mining accident in mid-August along with seven hundred twelve others, just five weeks after the neighborhood cookout. Lexi was suddenly alone. Many of the other deaths had been among her neighbors’ families. Nothing could have been done to save them. Lexi passed the awful news on to Geena, who promised to fly in for the funeral. During that strained conversation, Lexi lamented tearfully that, “This time, I couldn’t save him.” Geena, in shock herself, didn’t respond to that and it wasn’t until much later that Lexi thought about what she said. What did I mean by that? When did I ever “save” Ron?
At the funeral home, Toby Rojo, one of the few survivors of the mine disaster, told her how grateful he was to be alive and how heroic Ron had been that day. Looking at him, Lexi wondered if Hepca was violating child labor laws, although she knew Ron wouldn’t have stood for that. Still, he looked so young. Maybe I’m just getting old.
She was given the official story of what happened. Blasting in another section shook the entire mine and dislodged several older roof supports, trapping a safety inspector and hundreds of miners, including her Ron, deep underground. With the electrical grid down and the pumps offline, water in the lower levels began to rise.
Following Ron’s instructions, his team disconnected the cutting head from a relatively small gasoline-powered robotic drill. Despite the machines small size, it was far too large to fit the small crevice Ron thought they stood a chance of boring through. Lashed to his chest, Ron held the drill against the rock managing to cut an opening large enough for his people to squeeze through. He drilled for hours. The punishment he took must have been brutal. No one else was strong enough to take over for him and give him a break. Lexi supposed the strength enhancers Ron took each morning played a part in that.
Once he broke a crawl space through the rubble, Ron lifted one of the collapsed beams with his shoulders and held it long enough for the others on his crew to scramble under it to safety. With awe in his voice, Toby said, “It must have weighed over eight hundred pounds.” Tragically, before Ron could free himself, the tunnel above collapsed, sending tons of rock on him. His body was never recovered.
Chapter 26
At the Mall
When Lexi thought about it, she was amazed that it was already time to move Crane out of his crib and into a big-boy bed. She picked up his new bed last weekend from Ikea, the Swedish superstore, of course. It came with enough clever storage that it would have looked right at home on a freakin’ starship. Sometimes she went there with Jis just for the meatballs they served.
Crane still needed sheets, pillows, and other bedding items. Which is why she found herself standing outside of the Bed, Bath & Beyond store, a handful of their big-blue twenty-percent-off coupons cached in her purse, when she heard a loud crash from the center of the mall. Looking in that direction, she watched, horrified as shards of the large glass and steel dome, designed both to give the central atrium a Victorian ambiance as well as an open, airy feeling, rained down on the hapless people sitting or standing beneath it drinking their coffee-shop coffees.
Most of the casualties appeared to be relatively slim platinum blonds, although the males in the area had a far more robust build than the women. In fact, all of the women looked surprisingly like her friend Jis. Pushing aside thoughts about that odd coincidence, her attention was drawn to the creatures swarming in through the shattered dome. What the hell are those things? They’re too big to be birds. In fact, they look like monkeys! Monkeys with wings! My life makes no freakin’ sense. It hasn’t really since I met Ron. Not that I would turn back the clock and not meet him even if I could. I miss him so much.
The screaming in the atrium achieved a new volume level as the creatures, with still more entering through the smashed dome, began attacking shoppers. It almost immediately became evident that cups of coffee-shop coffee, even the venti size, still too hot to drink, made a poor defensive weapon against flying monkeys.
Three monkeys broke out of the frenzy and headed straight for Lexi. She moved protectively in front of her stroller, her young son playing happily with a small, toy ray-gun. They both called it a “Zapper” because he pointed it at his targets and yelled, “Zap.” Some of his playmates’ parents didn’t approve of guns. Screw ‘em. The world is a dangerous place. In the blink of an eye, you could be attacked by coffee-resistant flying monkeys!
Automatically, Lexi reached behind her and smoothly drew her sword from the scabbard slung down her back. Getting the thing out of there was always slightly awkward, but she had long arms and it was still better than walking around with it strapped to her waist. Why the hell am I wearing my sword at the mall? What would the other parents think of that? Behind her, she heard a small voice already shouting, “Zap! Zap!” in rapid-fire succession.
She struck the nearest monkey as it came into range, cleaving it in two from its left collar bone to below its right shoulder. Its body left a smear of bright red blood as its momentum slid it across the yellow brick floor. The other two monkeys attacked in tandem but were no match for the skilled defensive work of Dr. Lexi Stevens and her prodigious son, Crane “The Kid” Samue. Over the course of the next several minutes, she dispatched a dozen more of the unlikely beasts, leaving a pile of bloody, sometimes twitching, corpses scattered more or less at her feet before the remaining monkeys thought better of it and found other, less formidable sho
ppers to terrorize. She wiped her sword on a spit rag pulled from the diaper bag. As she carefully sheathed the weapon, her son said, “Mommy, this is so wrong. Crane loves you, Mommy.”
Out of the mouths of babes, she thought. You’ve got that right, honey. “I know you do, sweetie. I love you too.” Looking down at her dog, handsomely attired in a red bandana, still sitting calmly next to the stroller despite the chaos of the last few minutes, she said, “Shyamalan, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.” Or Philly, for that matter. “And while we’re on the topic, you’re not a service animal. Why did I bring you to the mall?”
She was pleased that although the large Chesapeake Bay Retriever looked at her, head tilted to one side as though seriously considering the question, he nevertheless said nothing in reply. She was already concerned about her eight-month-old son’s unnatural verbalization acumen. I really don’t need the dog to start chatting with me too.
Hearing a new noise, she looked back toward the center of the mall and said, “OK, what now?” Floating through the opening in the ruined dome, well above the bloody havoc below, was a clear bubble, just large enough to enclose the beautiful blonde woman seated inside. The monkeys steered clear of it. The woman, holding something that looked suspiciously like a wand, was dressed entirely in form-fitting, pristine white leather. She wore a sparkling tiara in her hair. It was hard to make out anything else. The bubble’s surface distorted the woman’s features. Lexi realized that, unlike with the monkeys, she felt no sense of danger as the bubble approached. Once it came to a stop in front of her, she prompted, “And you are?”
Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens Page 30
