Winston Chase- The Complete Trilogy

by Bodhi St John

  Bledsoe cursed. He had all the time in the world if he had the Alpha Machine, but until it was in his hands, each minute lost felt like his blood spilling from an open vein.

  He tried to calm himself and think through the problems, but the light seemed impossibly bright. The stench of gunpowder burned his nostrils. And that screaming! Why wouldn’t she stop? Had she finally snapped under the pressure and lost her mind?

  Whatever the cause, Bledsoe had to take action. Immediately. He reached down with his left hand and grabbed the associate by his perfectly cinched tie. Bledsoe lifted his head and torso from the floor and dragged him to the RV’s side door. With a heave, he hoisted the corpse over the stairs. The body landed with a thud, half in and half out of the vehicle.

  “Nurse!” Bledsoe yelled over the woman’s redoubled screams. “Nurse, would you please shut up?!”

  With obvious effort, she ceased her wailing. Peering into the RV’s shadows, he saw her cowering in the front passenger seat. Her eyes were red, swollen, and frantic. Her hands glistened from wiping at her tears and snot. She disgusted him.

  “You—” she choked. “You’re a…a monster.”

  Bledsoe rolled his head back and gripped the doorway’s rail for support. “Really? I’m trying to save America, and you think I’m the monster?”

  “You killed—!” Her gaze flicked to the windows, from which she likely had a view of the hospital bed. “After all that, you just let him… He didn’t—” Fresh sobs bubbled from her face, and Bledsoe worried that she would start shrieking again. “And that other man!”

  “Yes,” Bledsoe interrupted. “About him. Would you mind grabbing an arm and pulling him in?”

  At first, the nurse only stared at Bledsoe with disbelief. Then a moan slowly built in her throat, building in intensity with each hitching inhalation.

  “Please stop that,” Bledsoe said over the din, but his words only made it worse. Nurse Hendrix locked her fists over her eyes, leaned over her lap, and let out a great gush of sound that reminded Bledsoe of gigantic, rusty gears turning after years of being left outside.

  So be it. He’d planned on letting her go to wander in the night and spend the next few days deliberating over whether blabbing to authorities was worth losing her family. That would be another loose end, though, and he was desperately tired of those. Especially the loud ones.

  He lifted himself into the RV and stepped over the Management man’s body. Nurse Hendrix looked up just in time to see him coming, then he fired a round into her chest. She spun around in her seat and slumped against the dashboard, a groping hand quickly falling still.

  Bledsoe rolled his shoulders and sighed. For a few heartbeats, he stood there, eyes closed, content to soak in the complete silence.

  “Better. That’s better.”

  He finished pulling the adjuster into the cabin and dragged him forward into the driver’s seat. Positioning him was a chore, but not as difficult as it might have been with his old body, with muscles that lacked QV enhancement.

  Finally, he lowered the back door and pressed the button to extend its ramp. Generally, these RVs hauled four-wheel ATVs or Jeeps — the sorts of vehicles FBI agents might need in the field. Bledsoe guessed that his impromptu adaptation of the rig was unorthodox. Well, the FBI and Management could piece it together and guess at his motives later. All he had to do was give them a confusing situation to try to puzzle out for a few days. It would help that the agents had seen their cars turned into blazing wrecks by some outside perpetrator. They might believe that the same person had returned to take further action inside the hangar. Mostly, though, Bledsoe was done with stepping on eggshells. He’d done that throughout the last decade of his life, and enough was enough. He needed to burn everything that had gotten in his way to the ground.

  Once Bledsoe had Claude and his bed rolled back into the RV, he closed the door and returned to the driver seat. The keys were still in the ignition.

  His first thought had been to drive some miles down the highway, turn off into the middle of nowhere, and dispense with the vehicle and its contents. That plan no longer satisfied. If he was about to reset everything, he had nothing to lose…except time. Better to make a statement, kick the hornets’ nest, and get going.

  Bledsoe cranked up the engine, positioned himself between the driver’s seat and the adjuster. He put the RV in drive and rammed the gas pedal to the floor.

  The mammoth rig shot forward. Bledsoe gave it a good twenty yards or so to build speed, then cranked the wheel over to the right. The RV veered sharply, shaved the wing off a P-40 Warhawk, and rammed into the inside hangar wall. The Management man’s body cushioned Bledsoe’s impact. Nurse Hendix lifted from her seat and slammed through the windshield but was prevented from flying through by the wall that now rested right against the RV’s dashboard.

  “Thanks,” said Bledsoe as he scooted himself out from under the associate. He was fairly certain that he’d felt several of the corpse’s ribs break against the steering wheel upon impact.

  Bledsoe knelt down next to the center console as smoke poured from the engine. Breathing became difficult. He located the quarter-sized button of the cigarette lighter and pressed it into the console, then returned to the main cabin. A lot of data was on the hard drives in these servers — too much. With days to weeks of analysis, a team might make enough sense of Bledsoe’s activities to understand that he had been up to something truly strange, but he was willing to gamble that either he would have the Alpha Machine recovered before that…or he was in for a very short future. Still, he didn’t have to make it easier for them.

  Bledsoe understood enough about computers and commands to understand where all his data was located. He quickly logged into the server’s main interface, navigated into the network maintenance area, and initiated a low-level format of his primary data volume. That would do enough damage in the next few minutes to slow down computer forensics teams.

  Back in the cabin, the cigarette lighter popped away from its heater coil. Bledsoe bent over and grabbed it as he located a notepad within the console’s storage box. He ripped off several sheets, crumpled them, and stuffed them into the top of a pocket in the driver’s seat’s upholstery. He took one more note sheet and set it against the lighter’s glowing element. The corner of the sheet caught and bloomed into flame. Bledsoe used this to set the wadded-up pages afire, then replaced the lighter into its hole in the console.

  As soon as the seat fabric lit into blue and yellow flames, Bledsoe knew his job here was done. With any luck, the RV fire would spread up the hangar wall, and by the time the Tillamook fire department arrived, the damage would be too great for any sort of quick analysis. He would have two agents left to testify that they had seen Winston Chase fleeing the hangar, complete with roasted federal vehicles in the parking area, and some strange man who likely wouldn’t be in any databases behind the RV wheel with two bullets in him.

  Bledsoe made his way to the front hangar entrance and stood just within the structure’s cover, gazing out into the blissfully dark night. He tapped briefly at his phone and held the device to his ear. The line connected in two rings.

  “Yes, sir,” said Agent Lynch.

  “Where are you?” asked Bledsoe.

  “Parking under the FBI facility.”

  “Good. Grab her, then head back to me ASAP.”

  “But—” Lynch cut himself off.

  Atta boy, thought Bledsoe. Less thinking, more doing. I need Amanda out of that place before they change the locks.

  “I was a bit optimistic in my assessment of how things would play out tonight,” he said. “There’s no time for supplies. We’ll figure that out later. I want you to pick me up about a mile south of the turnoff to the Air Museum from Highway 101. Clear?”

  “Clear, sir.”

  “We need to have a conversation about our future together, Lynch.” He paused to give emphasis to his next words. “You’ve been a great asset over the last few days, and I’d like that
to continue.”

  Lynch paused only briefly. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  Bledsoe hung up, slid the phone back into his pocket, and stepped out into the damp cold. He wrapped his fingers around his new artifact and, for the first time in hours, felt his mind clear. He would figure this out. He had one piece, and from that would come the others. Yes, things were simpler now. He was ready to move onward and upward.

  31

  Flight to a Better Night

  Winston was too far gone in his sorrow and shock to notice when the paved road blurring by beneath him gave way to gravel and mud. The rocks did a fair job of holding the roadway together, but more than once Winston’s feet slipped in the muck and uneven ruts left by trucks and tractor wheels. He ran past long fields, dark and sprawling in the black night. The only sounds he could hear were the rapid slapping of his shoes in the mud and the rhythmic shifting of his pack. The night swallowed everything else.

  The first time Winston slowed to glance over his shoulder, he found the two agents still in pursuit several dozen yards back. By the time he reached a hinged aluminum gate and cattle guard across the road, though, he couldn’t see them at all. They might still be back there in the darkness, running as fast as their slacks and age would allow, or they might have returned to the hangar for more instructions and reinforcements. Either way, Winston guessed he didn’t have much time.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t dispel the image of his father’s lifeless form staring at the ground, part of his skull still resting askew in his lap. Winston’s heart, however, only knew that his father had been young and alive moments ago — holding him, consoling him, trying to give him advice — and then, in the next instant, he was an old man, trembling and afraid as a body wracked by age and torture finally failed him.

  Winston rested his forearms across the top of the gate and set his forehead against its cold, dripping metal. The chill against his skin felt soothing. His chest heaved from the strain of running, and his sweat mingled with the night’s gentle rainfall made the corners of his eyes sting.

  Gradually, he became aware of the scent of gasoline. He glanced around and discovered a white, two-gallon plastic bucket laying near the fence’s right post. He tucked Little e under one arm and lifted the mud-crusted bucket by its cracked handle to examine it. Winston recoiled from the container’s strong smell. He realized this must have been what Shade had used to collect gasoline and pour out those letters he had left for the agents.

  Examining the ground more closely, Winston found a single bike track leading to the gate where he now stood. Beyond the gate, he could see where two wheels had landed in the mud as the bike had struck the dirt and fallen over. Shade must have brought the bucket along as he furiously rode to stay ahead of pursuit, then threw the bike over the gate and kept going. Winston looked beyond the fence line and up into the hills. Shade would be there, somewhere, either waiting for him or trying to evade capture.

  Or not, Winston thought. Evasion was not really Shade’s style.

  Part of Winston wanted to scale the gate and keep running until he reached the forest line and see if he could come to Shade’s defense. Another part of him wanted to escape all of this. He had failed so completely, caused so much pain and trouble to everyone he cared about, that he didn’t feel he could or should go on at all. That part of him wanted to give up, but perhaps it was only his exhaustion talking. He had just witnessed his father’s death and lost a critical piece of the Alpha Machine to his enemy. He needed to stop, to think, to question what he had done so far and what he should do next.

  Most of all, he felt a terrible weariness that drove through his grief and penetrated deep into his bones. There was no telling how much of that weariness spawned from his emotions or from using the Alpha Machine. He didn’t care. All he knew was that he was in no shape to confront more agents. He would be of no help to his mom or Shade, and now his dad was beyond any help at all.

  “I’m sorry, everyone,” he whispered to the night. “I’m sorry.”

  Back in the direction from which he’d come, Winston noticed a yellow light flare up into the black evening. Flames, he realized. Really big ones — a tall pillar of fire reaching far above the few vehicles in the parking lot before it.

  It had to be the hangar, Winston realized. Shade had upheld his promise not to damage the place, but Bledsoe obviously had different ideas. Was it some diversion to draw attention while he made a different move? Was he erasing evidence?

  The thought that Bledsoe might indiscriminately destroy such a wealth of history and knowledge drove another knife under Winston’s ribs. His father admired that history and understood the sacrifices that had gone into it. He had died as part of a mission to instill that appreciation in Winston. Bledsoe merely wanted to destroy it. Now, all those glorious planes would be ruined because Winston had failed to stop the man — one more way he had let his father down.

  Rather than scale the gate, Winston walked away from the road and into the adjacent field. Dead, fallen grass tugged at his shoes and crept up his pant legs with spidery touches. Once he had walked fifty or so yards, Winston sat in the grass. The dampness quickly soaked through his pants, but he didn’t care. Even as the heat of his running faded and the cold night brought shivers along his body, he paid them little mind. He set Little e in his lap and suspended the Alpha Machine between his hands. Again, he confirmed that the chronoviewer would not allow him to jump only a few hours. Everything within a week seemed to be blocked.

  Winston took a deep breath and bowed his head. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted nothing to do with this anymore. He tried to think of the last good time he’d had in his life, and his mind turned to Shade. He’d always enjoyed hanging out in Shade’s shack. Or watching Shade play football. Nothing compared, though, to visiting the Tagaloa cabin. Located above the shores of a long, winding lake on the south side of Mount St. Helens, the rustic vacation spot meant creaky bunk beds, hours of card games, and lounging on the wake-jostled dock. The place smelled of lamp oil, dusty blankets, and smoke. The connected outhouse was only a recent addition and was always nearly as frigid as the outdoors beyond its walls.

  How many summers had Shade’s family dragged Winston along on their trips? How many nights had he and Shade spent laying on that dock, staring up at the sky and into the infinitude of stars that stretched beyond them forever as they talked about life and girls and growing up? Stars like that were invisible anywhere around Portland. The coast was too hazy, and anything along the Interstate 5 corridor lay under too much pollution. But the Cascade Mountain air surrounding the cabin was clear and fresh, an invisible window through which all of the nocturnal universe was exposed in its rare, impossibly perfect beauty.

  Their last cabin trip had been right after school ended. June 14. Winston nudged the chronoviewer controls back to that date and made sure to keep the timestamp unchanged at 12:16 AM. It would be the middle of the night, dark and safe.

  That had been a good day, a great time. The last great time he could remember.

  Somehow, even though it broke the Alpha Machine’s rules as he understood them, the chronograph did not object.

  A small, white light flashed in the distance. Winston had to wait for it to reappear before he was sure that it was a real happening in the present and not some trick of interplay between the reality layers. A second light joined it. At least two people out there near the dirt road had flashlights, and they were coming this way.

  “Look at this!” called one. “Look at this grass! Someone went this way!”

  That was all the urging Winston needed. The chronoviewer controls remained green, and, with the last of his energy, Winston mentally bore down on the Alpha Machine to make the jump. His world blossomed into a field of white, as if one of those stars visible from the cabin had suddenly rushed to earth and engulfed him. Then it let him go, and Winston found himself still seated in the field, sparks dying all around. The grass stood tall and lush all about him. The rain a
nd clouds were gone, and stars hung high above. They weren’t Mount St. Helens stars. They lacked the number, depth, and clarity of that magnificent sky, but it was better than what he had left behind. The air was warm and rich with smells of life, and even the scent of cow dung, stronger now in the warm season, seemed welcoming.

  On June 14, Winston was far removed from the events in the air museum. He had never heard of the Alpha Machine. He had just finished the seventh grade. His biggest worries were embarrassing himself in front of Alyssa Bauman and evading Brian Steinhoff. Life had been simple, fun, and predictable. How had he ever thought that those days had been anything but ideal?

  Slowly, Winston slumped to his side. The Alpha Machine fell still in his hands. He raised one arm and rested his head on it as he ran his fingertips forward and back, forward and back, across the chronoviewer’s frigid surface.

  June 14 had been everything he had wanted, a day filled with class parties, a long drive surrounded by Shade’s hysterically bickering family, and a night spent listening to water lapping at the dock under him as Shade droned on about all of his grand plans for science experiments in the coming weeks.

  Nestled amid the tall grass, Winston smiled and wept until sleep overcame him.

  32

  Officer Onboard

  Alyssa awoke to the smells of salsa-laden scrambled eggs and sizzling chorizo sausage patties. She hadn’t known she was smiling until she opened her eyes and remembered that she was in “her” bedroom. The small space was Grandpa Clayton’s spare bedroom, but since he never had guests, the walls still bore several examples of her art contributions from years past. That ancient stick-figure sketch she’d drawn of the two of them in the park with his dog at the time, a spaniel named Eisenhower. A blue, red, and yellow scarf she’d knitted for him in the second grade. A selfie she’d captured of herself, Grandpa Clayton, and Grammy Rose with the digital camera they’d given to her in the fourth grade. For the last three years, of course, there had been no additions.