“I’m in,” Val said. Val’s voice. All the inflection, the wit which made Val a damned good cellmate for five years was gone.
“Get to it. There isn’t much time.”
The girl hadn’t been able to create for them. They weren’t sure if it had to do with stress, or lack of gravity, or the wrong mix of nitrogen in the air she breathed. So Val got to stay on Earth. Lucky him.
Val took several deep breaths. He closed his eyes, opened them. Never once in all his life had Val knowingly harnessed his Sangauman talents. Sure, stuff happened, mostly light bulbs breaking, glass shattering. Sometimes their cell door would stick. No matter how many times they moved, or changed cells, when Val was pissed, or upset, or scared, the door would stick. He never knew what he was doing. The trained Alphas knew the strings to pull, the buttons to push.
About ten feet away, in an open patch of desert, something began to happen. This was the piece none of their mock-ups could predict, how it would happen. Each of the fifteen Tylwyth Teg knew the plans for the new body inside and out, down to the DNA structure. Tattooed into their consciousness, they knew every curve and bone and atom.
At first it looked like a dust devil. Particles caught up in the air moved and swirled. But it shimmered. Like the twinkling stars overhead, where a home would be. Felix realized his mouth hung open in a huge, gaping grin and he closed it.
He pulled his gaze away from his future and scanned the night horizon. With two Betas, if shit went down, he should be able to recover the Alpha if he needed to. Even though the monster was here to protect Val, if it sensed he’d been compromised, it wouldn’t hesitate to tear him to bits with those god-awful claws. Getting the Alpha out was job number one. Felix rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet.
Watching the swirling, changing thing before him pulled his thoughts from the monster. It was like watching something being born, but no, bigger than that. This was the birth of an entire new race, there would be no more living as a parasite now, no more searching for host bodies. The shape coalesced. At some point, the Alpha would transfer its consciousness to the new form, and poor Val’s body would die. For ever after the Tylwyth Teg would see him as a hero, worship him as the father of their race’s renaissance.
The frat boy Beta raised his arms in the moonlight. That was the signal. Felix went to Val’s side, shouted “pull back, get out of there”. He looked to the shifting thing, saw it freeze, then it melted away, leaving a moist smear on the dirt below it and the smell of ammonia. The Beta was tussling with the monster, Felix could hear grunting and moving around, shuffling of feet on dirt.
He tried to hold back the thoughts of despair, there wasn’t time. He could mope later. The Alpha disengaged, and Val collapsed on the ground. Felix held open the jar, allowing the Alpha to crawl back in; forcing itself from between Val’s closed lips. Betas went down with the ship, the Alphas you busted your ass to save. Felix checked Val’s pulse, still strong, and then took off at a sprint for his car. He hoped Maria would follow. She was still of use to him. But if she didn’t, oh well. This wasn’t the end of the world. It would have been a miracle if the test had worked. Val was ready. The next step would be to get him up to the ship, get him off Earth, away from the fucking Lharomuph.
The only thing Val had to worry about here was Rich. In a day or so, they could come get him, in the meantime, Felix would put some Betas out to watch him.
Everything would be fine.
16
He was too scared to wake up screaming, but was alarmed to find himself underneath a huge, black sky riddled with specks of starlight and a deep blue to the east indicating the rising sun. His heart pounded in his ears, rippling and coordinating with the hum. It pressed against his face like a sinus infection. He sat against a rock on the cool desert floor, next to a patch of scrub brush. Same spot he’d woken up last time. Perfect. God damn that hum. The back of his throat and his nose felt thick and stuffy; post-nasal drippy, like he was getting sick. That was just what he needed.
He breathed. Once. Twice. Just a dream. Like last time. One more deep breath. He knew he needed to reach up, to touch his face, to prove he wasn’t tethered to infinity via his spleen, or wherever that hell tube had reached to, but what if it were real? What if his fingers touched soft, silicon-like plastic?
It didn’t hurt to swallow; hurt up in his nose. He tried it a few more times, concentrating on it so hard it kind of did start to hurt.
Better to know than wonder, right?
Right?
He reached, moving like he was underwater. He was dressed, not wearing a hospital gown—that was a good sign. He wore the boxers and T-shirt he’d fallen asleep in. His legs were as pale in the starlight as they were in the dream. He looked at the deep blue sky and wondered how long he’d been sitting here, not touching his face. His index finger bumped against his nose, and he poked its tip...nothing hurt, nothing pinched or pulled. He explored his face, finding nothing out of the ordinary.
The cool night air made his muscles ache when he stood up. For a moment he felt weak, like in the dream. He stretched, not liking the even pulsing in his head. It was worse out here. Stretching felt good as he got his bearings, and made his way home. Like in the dream, like the previous night, he wasn’t wearing shoes, and each step hurt his delicate feet. He supposed he’d have to start sleeping in his boots, if these nighttime excursions were to become the norm.
He made it to his dooryard, and paused. On the rickety steps there was a big bundle of something.
A person.
Jesus, did Kate come looking for him and lock herself out?
He called her name, feeling like a jackass. She looked so uncomfortable.
She looked so uncomfortable because it wasn’t Kate. It wasn’t a woman, and whoever he was, he wasn’t alive. The red that soaked into the wood of the steps gave credence to that. No way someone could lose that much blood and live. Ignoring everything he’d learned from CSI, Val took the fellow by the shoulder and flopped him over, crumpling him against the door. Nope. Not alive. It was the guy from the restaurant...the frat boy. The one who’d been lurking out here.
And whatever killed TJ was very much alive and well.
Whatever killed TJ. He looked down at himself, at shallow cuts on his wrists and forearms. Shallow, bloody gashes on his legs that stung once he noticed them. There are a lot of nasty plants in the desert, they have to defend themselves. Did frat boy get a chance to defend himself?
Could it be a coincidence that Val was wandering in the desert for two nights in a row, where there happened to be gruesome killings in his neighborhood? Either he was very, very lucky or...
How? It was impossible to think he could be going into fugue states, and killing people with a giant machete or samurai sword—it was sharp as hell, whatever it was—and hiding the weapon during the day. And how did he keep the blood off his clothes?
He did it naked. Or in something like the hospital gown from his dream.
Or, more realistically, he didn’t do it at all. Then what was this guilt feeling that gnawed at him.
He went around behind the trailer, where the scrub met right up with the house. That was where the back door was, the one they never used. It stuck when he pulled on the latch so he thought it was locked, but a final tug pulled the wood free. Swollen from the afternoon rains? Kate was up, in the hallway, in a shooter’s stance wearing nothing but black panties and a white mostly see-through undershirt. She held the Desert Eagle before her, in two hands this time, God, please let her have forgotten the safety, have left that on. He held out his hand to calm her, he felt his pulse quicken at the sight of the gun. They needed to practice with the thing; she seemed hell bent on using it. If he was a killer she should drop him like a dog, here and now.
“Easy,” he said. “It’s me.”
“What are you...where have you been?”
He resisted the urge to swallow, to clear his throat, anything like that. “Sleepwalking,” he said, as matter-o
f-fact as he could muster. “And that frat kid from last night?” Kate nodded. “He’s dead on the porch.”
She blinked at him, and only then did she lower the gun. He still couldn’t see if she had the safety on or not. He hoped she wouldn’t shoot herself in the bare foot.
He waited for a reaction. Gave it a beat, then a second beat. “If we had left TJ, I’d say we should call the police, but we didn’t, we hid TJ, so I guess we need to hide this one, too.”
She shook her head. “You’re kidding.”
“No.”
She kept shaking her head. “I can’t—there can’t—” she let her voice trail off. “Did you,” she paused for a moment; Val could tell she wanted to ask if he did it. “See anything?”
He shook his head. “Nightmares. Like last night.”
“We could call Spence.”
“And there’d be an investigation, and they’d know we got rid of TJ’s body, and—”
“But there’s nothing linking us to this guy. He’s a no one.”
“He isn’t no one. A State Trooper and an Otero County Deputy saw him stalking us.”
“What if it happens again tonight?” she asked. She turned to the bedroom, came out a moment later, with jeans on and one of his T-shirts. Like she didn’t want him looking at her.
She didn’t have the gun when she came back. He doubted it would fire a second time. He’d left the clip in it; it was sure to jam.
She took a few deep breaths. “Did you do it?” she asked. “Either of them?”
He wished he could get mad, bluster at her, be appalled she would even suggest such a thing. Anxiety pooled in his chest.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so; they were both big guys, and I think I’d be showing more damage if I’d done it.”
“Unless you snuck up on them.”
“No one snuck up on TJ. This guy either.”
“So it wasn’t you.”
“I guess not.” Though there was guilt that held him.
And she looked at him like she didn’t believe him. She moved wide around him in the hall, towards the front door. “Are we going to hide this one, too?”
What else could he do? Helplessness washed over him like a sea, building, mixing with the hum. It was softer now than when he woke up. Kate headed for the door. If she opened the door, the dead frat boy would tumble right into the kitchen floor.
He almost caught her in time, but she hauled the door open wide, and was rewarded for her efforts with a dead frat boy flopping face-first onto her feet. Her toenails were painted red, now the tops of her feet were smeared with tacky, rust-colored blood.
Her scream was almost enough to wake the dead. Almost. The fellow on the floor lay still.
Blood pooled around her bare feet and she stepped back, leaving half a crimson footprint on the linoleum. She looked down at it, drawing in her breath in great gasping whoops.
Val tried to think. Corpses weren’t supposed to bleed. But this wasn’t bleeding. This was gravity.
He took her to the sink and wet a paper towel for her feet, knowing he needed to get the blood off the floor. This would never hold up against those lights they can use to see blood, would never hold up if they brought dogs in. The pool stopped spreading, at least. The blood would never come out of the crack by the doorjamb.
They had to hope the cops would never make it this far.
Kate calmed herself down, holding the damp paper towel to her foot as though she’d been cut, looking at the body. She poured herself a glass of water and drank half of it in one gulp.
If he was the killer, he wasn’t doing it in his right mind, which would make him nice and easy to catch.
He couldn’t be doing it; his arms would be sore from all that slicing and stabbing.
“What are you thinking about?” Kate asked. She sounded like she’d been running.
He looked at her.
“How we’re going to get rid of this.”
She offered him the water, and he took a drink. It tasted like chlorine, the well got like this sometimes when it hadn’t been used enough.
“He’s leakier than the last one.”
Kate’s look told him he wasn’t funny. He shrugged.
They stood a while longer.
“Are we doing this?” he asked.
She looked at him, and he wasn’t sure if he read too much into her stare, but it looked like she was accusing him.
“Why don’t you call Felix and tell him about this, too?”
Yow, where did that come from?
“We haven’t killed anyone. Just hid the bodies.”
“One body. We need to make it plural before the sun gets too much higher. He’s going to start to stink, and I don’t want anyone seeing.”
“We use your truck this time.”
“Wrong. We need the trunk. There’s already blood in there; if we go down for one we’re already fucked for both.”
“I don’t want that in my car,” she whined. Before she had stared at the body, now she actively looked away from it. “TJ was different. I knew him.”
“And I’m sure this was a hell of a guy. Get your keys, back it up to the stoop. At least he’s lighter than TJ.”
“How can you be so crass?”
“This was your idea to begin with. You found TJ. You were the one who decided not to call the cops.”
“I didn’t know there would be more of them.”
“Get your keys. We can mope about this later.”
She glared at him, but only for a moment. Then she turned away, a turn that said more than her glare, and got the keys. She stepped over the body and disappeared from sight. Val stared at the corpse’s milky corneas as the car started with a roar and a backfire.
So much for subtle.
The Daytona’s brake lights lit the kitchen as she backed up to the stoop. When she killed the engine it died with a sputter. God, he hated that car.
She parked the car so close to the body that she needed to reach across it to unlock the trunk. At least they wouldn’t have to lift it too far.
“You get the head. I’ll get the feet.”
Val nodded. As she reached, he interrupted her. “Gloves.” It didn’t matter, though, because he’d already touched the thing.
He grabbed some dish gloves from under the sink. That was it. Last pair. He’d be in trouble next time a body rolled around. The body’s head flopped and a little more blood dribbled out as he groped for purchase on the meaty shoulders. This guy was sturdier than TJ, but about as big. TJ had a lot of nice, light fat. This guy was all muscle. Val grunted, tried to lift with his knees, and not with his back. Kate had trouble with the legs, and when he paused to look at her he saw she’d been crying. If it wasn’t his fault, why did he feel so guilty?
The body left a crimson smear against the paint on the lip of the trunk, ketchup to the car’s mustard color. They’d have to clean it before they went anywhere. While Kate went into the house to get a rag, Val looked at the steps, the old, dry wood stained blood colors. He needed to get rid of the steps anyway; it might make a good afternoon project. To get his mind off the bodies, and off his mother. A sneaky little voice in the back of his mind wished to be back in prison. The thought stabbed at his heart, but it was a little bit true. He’d known which end was up. During his time there, he hadn’t disposed of a single corpse.
They looked in at the body for a moment before slamming the trunk on it.
“Shall we?” he asked.
She went without speaking, to the driver’s seat. He got in the passenger side.
“If you want to blow up at me, do it.” She could sulk for days before she let go on him. They didn’t have time for that bullshit.
She started the car and took a deep breath. She didn’t squeal her tires or anything dramatic, which was good considering their cargo; she pulled out of the driveway.
Neither of them spoke on their way to the mine.
As they drove, the pressure in Val’s head increased with t
he ticking of the odometer. By the time Kate stopped and he got out to pull the gate aside, it pounded like surf behind his ears. By the time she stopped in front of the mine’s gaping mouth, it felt like he was a hundred feet under water. Was she pausing for dramatic effect? Go, he thought, massaging his temples.
“Are you okay?”
“Pressure on my head. The hum is a million times worse. I guess it’s the stress.”
“Or the mine,” she said.
“Can’t be. You’d be feeling it, too.”
Kate shrugged, her face lit by the green of the dashboard light. “It happens when we’re here.”
“So let’s do what we have to do, and then get away.”
She drove slowly, gravel crunching under her tires, and gradually the shadow, then the darkness, overtook the little car. Kate looked to him, her face still green.
“Can you do this?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
She opened her door, leaving it open behind her. He wished she’d shut it; the light blinded him. She opened the trunk, and they saw this body had left behind a dark red stain in a different spot than TJ.
They were fucked if anyone found this car.
Val started to think how he could burn it, make sure the fibers from the carpet burned up, while still making it look like an accident. Thinking helped—if he let his mind go blank, the pressure seeped in even deeper.
The body tumbled into the darkness without ceremony. It had been special when TJ went, but the second time was a do-over.
Val felt hot blood on his upper lip. Nosebleed again.
He was concentrating on that when Kate grabbed his arm, her fingers like a vice.
“There’s something else in here.”
He tried to listen through the hum, tried to use his senses, but everything was dull and flat; only the monotony of the vibration stayed in focus. The car lights killed his night vision, and he could barely hear Kate speak. Like she was talking through a thick, down comforter.
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