She adjusted the wig one last time in the rearview mirror before stepping out of the car. Not used to the needle-thin stilettos, her legs wobbled like she was already half in the bag. She’d worn heels before, but never one’s so high and thin, ones worthy of a porn star. She had to be at least a foot taller in the things.
When traffic cleared, Karen hobbled across the street. Making it up the sidewalk and across the parking lot without falling, she managed to draw more than a few stares from patrons hanging outside the bar smoking cigarettes. A shiver tumbled down her spine and consumed her flesh in concentric circles. She looked up and met numerous sets of eyes, both male and female, and didn’t have to connect with their minds to know what they were thinking; especially the women, the resentment evident on their scowling faces.
Karen suddenly felt scared, her confidence reduced to almost nothing. She thought of what was at stake, of Morgan. Grinding her teeth, a measure of her confidence returned. She was undercover, and her performance would decide whether or not the mission got accomplished. Her body was transformed, her appearance altered. Now she needed to do the same with her mind.
She strutted her stuff: shoulders back and breasts out. Karen owned the outfit; the outfit didn’t own her.
As she approached the door, one of the male smokers moved aside. A whistle sounded off to her left, making her want to blush. She bit down on her tongue, not enough to draw blood, but giving her the extra push she needed to appear like a hardened woman.
She was hot, sexy, and had a role to play. She was an actress in a movie, giving the performance of a lifetime. She needed to do this for herself, for Paul, for the world, and most of all, for Morgan.
Chapter 50
The interior of McKinley’s was low-lit, most of the place hidden in shadow, save for the rear where the pool table shimmered under the soft golden glow of a hanging lamp. A jukebox next to the pool table played The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm.” A group of men Karen assumed were locals stood around the pool table laughing, holding pool cues and drinking bottled beer.
The bar’s countertop ran the length of the right wall. Tables and chairs took up most of the floor area, with booths along the left.
Karen scoped out the men she was sent in to probe. They sat around a table, Paul among them. The soldiers were dressed in civilian clothes, each with the same short cropped hair and square jaw. From their size, they could’ve been mistaken for a group of linebackers. She stared at them for a moment. Paul didn’t give her a glance, making her unsure whether or not he even knew she was there.
Karen sauntered to the bar and leaned over the counter’s edge, allowing her ass to become a focal point for men’s eyes.
Paul, as planned, nudged the man sitting next to him, then nodded Karen’s way. The soldier looked up and gawked, his eyes widening. The other men at the table followed suit and soon they were all glancing at Karen and commenting to each other.
Karen ordered a White Russian before turning around to survey the room. After getting her drink, she pulled a ten out of her pocket and told the bartender to keep it.
“Hey there,” a voice said.
Karen turned to her right. An emaciated man in a ripped and stained T-shirt and jeans had moved next to her. The smell he exuded was a nauseating mixture of sour milk and whiskey, and it took all of her willpower not to gag. She needed to stay stone cold and told the dirty skeleton to piss off.
“Lenny,” the bartender said. “Leave the lady alone.”
“Was just making conversation. Geez,” the guy said, and skulked away like a beaten dog.
“Sorry about him, Miss,” the bartender said. “He’s harmless.”
“It’s okay, just keep him away from me and the tips will keep coming.” With that, she pushed away from the bar and strode over to one of the booths, taking a seat that faced the Murphy men.
Wrapping her full, red lips around the tiny red straw, she nursed small sips while glancing at the table of soldiers.
A waitress came over to the men carrying a tray full of drinks. She placed the beverages on the table one at a time before retrieving the empties. A guy in a baseball cap pointed at Karen as he was talking to the waitress. The woman nodded before heading back to the bar.
A minute later the waitress came over to Karen’s booth.
“From the gentleman with the baseball hat,” she said, placing a White Russian down on the table. The woman smiled, revealing a mouth of tobacco stained teeth, then walked away.
Karen raised the new drink in a toast, her original not even half finished.
For the next twenty minutes while waiting for the inevitable, Karen spent her time diving into each man’s head, sifting through the contents and in search of anything useful about the fuel schedule.
Locating their fears was relatively easy, but for now she didn’t need them. Her main goal was to ascertain the schedule, but such a specific thought proved difficult to locate. She refocused on a single person instead of head hopping.
Her concentration broke when the man with the hat rose from his seat and sauntered over to her. The guy was well over six feet and must’ve weighed two-fifty or more, most of which was muscle.
“Howdy,” he said, a hint of southern accent in his voice.
“Hello,” Karen said, a coy smile on her lips. “Thanks for the drink. I was wondering if and when you’d say hi.”
“May I?” the man asked, motioning to sit.
“Please.”
The large man squeezed into the booth across from her, almost spilling the beer in his hand in the process. As soon as he was situated, he upended his glass, finishing the bottle’s contents in one chug. “Care for another round?”
“Oh, gosh, no. I’m already pretty tipsy.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, grinning like a fool. “How about a shot then?”
“You want to party, huh?”
“It’s my night off.”
“Well in that case, let’s party. Go ahead and order us a couple of shots.”
The man shouted to the bartender, his voice reaching through the music. “Two shots of…” He turned to Karen, lowering his voice. “What’re we drinking?”
“How about vodka on the rocks with a twist of lime?”
The guy barked the order to the waiting bartender then turned back toward Karen. “You planning to tell me your name or should I just call you ‘Beautiful’?”
“Yours first.”
“Mike.”
“Jill.”
“Jill,” Mike repeated. “Like Jillian?”
Karen laughed. The guy was so wrecked. “Yeah, sure. Like Jillian.”
“Jillian’s a hot name. Sexy.”
The man’s eyes filled with lust. Karen connected to his mind, read his desires to get her drunk, bang the shit out of her, then pass out, spent. The next day at work, he’d tell the guys how she couldn’t get enough of him, and that he was the finest lay she’d ever known. And the best part: never having to see her again.
The waitress approached and placed the shots on the table. “Anything else?”
“You can bring us another couple—these’ll be gone quickly,” The guy chuckled. “So, Jillian, you a regular? I don’t remember seeing you here before. Then again I only come in once a month.”
“No, I’m visiting my sister, but she’s a bore. She’s already in bed. I figured I’d head out on my own and see if I could get lucky.” She raised an eyebrow and stared into Mike’s eyes.
He grinned.
She picked up her shot glass and held it out. “To getting lucky tonight.”
Mike mirrored her movement, the glass looking like a thimble in his huge hands. “To getting lucky,” he echoed, and together they toasted. His smile increased in severity, his face looking almost in pain. He brought the glass to his mouth and downed the shot.
Karen wanted to dump the contents of her glass, but the men at the other table were watching, and she couldn’t do it without being seen. The vodka burned on the way d
own, warming her stomach. As she placed the empty shot glass on the table, fighting off the burn, the waitress set another full one in front of her.
By the time the fourth round arrived, Karen knew it was time to move on to the next step of the plan. Mike quickly downed the shot. Karen left hers on the table untouched.
“Drink mine, too,” she told him.
“That’s for you, sweetie.”
“I want you to have it.” She pushed the small glass across the table. “I’ll perform much better if I’m only buzzed. I’m a sloppy drunk.”
“What do you say we go…” Mike belched. “…out to my car?”
“Feeling lucky or was it my forward talk?”
“I’m going to rock your world. Let me just go tell my buddies I’ll be back in a bit.” Mike grabbed hold of the table and heaved himself out of the seat.
Karen couldn’t believe he used the line about rocking her world. The guy was a total loser. She reached out, grabbing his wrist. He turned to her.
“Are they your parents, Mike?”
He grinned, showing teeth. “Fuck ’em, right?”
“Yeah, fuck them.”
Karen rose to her feet, holding onto Mike’s hand and led the big man, like a child, out of the bar.
***
Outside, the night air was cool and refreshing. It helped Karen to focus.
“Forget the car,” she said. “Not enough room to move. Let’s go around back. We’ll have lots of privacy there.”
She led him around the building to the small dead-end alley. A putrid odor of rotting garbage and stale beer filled the air courtesy of the overflowing dumpster to the right of an exit door. Debris, wrappers, broken beer bottles, and crushed cans littered the ground. An old cemetery surrounded by dense woods lurked beyond the chain link fence.
“Close your eyes,” Karen commanded, and the big man did.
She jumped into his head, finding his deepest fear, and released it.
Karen brought forth Mike’s mother, a woman who had been a beast to him and his siblings. She’d turned crazy after Mike’s dad up and left the family for a younger woman. Mike was punished daily by his mother, whipped repeatedly on his back, buttocks, and legs. He carried numerous scars not only from the lash of leather, but from the scorching burn of the stove and his mother’s curling iron. He was often locked—naked—in the basement. Rats and spiders nipped at him as he slept. His mother barraged him constantly about how men were nothing but evil creatures and that he needed to live a life of hating himself and beg the Lord for forgiveness.
“No, Momma,” Mike screamed, holding his meaty hands to his head. “Please, stop. Don’t do that.” Tears flowed down his cheeks. “Not the basement, Momma, please.”
The big man resembled an oversized child now, regressed to the age of six. Karen had seen the horrible things he had done as a child, including killing his mother at the age of fourteen. He’d gone to a juvenile facility; his sisters taken to an orphanage. At nineteen, he killed a man during a bar fight after having a drink spilled on him. Instead of jail, he was offered a post in The Murphy Unit and enlisted for twenty years.
“Mike,” Karen said, speaking softly. “I can make this all stop and go away.”
“Please, Momma. No more. Make it stop. The rats…” The big man fell to his knees and steepled his hands together in prayer.
“Tell me about the fuel trucks, Mike,” Karen said. “The one’s that supply the base. When are they next scheduled to arrive?”
“No! Momma!” he wailed. Karen began to worry someone walking nearby might hear the man’s cries; it was time to move this along.
“Mike,” she said, sternly. “Tell me about the fuel schedule and I’ll make your mother stop.”
A squeaking noise sounded, causing Karen to look past Mike’s blabbering face.
Lenny, the man who had hit on her earlier, was coming from the rear exit. He stopped cold, his legs wobbling beneath him. He stared at Karen, taking in the scene with droopy, red eyes.
“You break his heart or something, lady?” Lenny said, his speech slurred. He then leaned over and hurled a stream of golden vomit into the wrappers and empties.
“Get the hell back inside,” Karen demanded.
Lenny finished puking and stood erect again, wiping his chin. He looked at her hard.
“What did you just say to me, you fucking dyke-bitch?”
Karen worried about breaking her connection to focus on the old drunk, so she let Mike do the deed for her. Mike spun around, his face crimson with anger, cheeks glistening with tears.
“Get out of here,” he growled, “before I break your scrawny little neck.”
Lenny’s eyes widened. He hurried back into the bar, slamming the door shut behind him.
Mike turned back to Karen. She felt herself weakening. Was it the alcohol? Maybe she needed sugar. She reached into her pocket, grabbed the bite-sized Snicker bar she had brought with her for such an emergency, and ate it. Dividing her attention between the two men, combined with the alcohol, must’ve depleted her faster than she thought possible. Feeling a little surge of energy from the chocolate, Karen dove for the information about the fuel delivery before she could no longer control the big man.
“Tell me, Mike,” she said, forcefully, “about the base’s fuel schedule.”
The man continued to sob, his rage from dealing with Lenny gone.
“Every Monday.”
“How many tankers come to fill the base?”
“One, except when the reserves need to be filled, then it’s usually two to three.”
Morgan had told her about seeing three trucks, which meant the reserves were full and only one tanker would be coming by next time.
“How often do the reserves need to be filled?”
“Every six months.”
“Otherwise only one truck delivers?”
“Yes.”
“How many drivers are there when a delivery to the Murphy compound is made?”
“One driver, sometimes two. The second is usually a trainee.”
That was good news. Two drivers would work; it was what they’d counted on.
“Where does the fuel truck originate from?”
“A refinery in Newburgh. The Hendrickson Fuel Company.”
Karen felt a heavy weight lift from her. She’d gotten the information and exhaled in relief. “You’re a good little boy, Mike. And I’m sorry to have to do this, but…” Karen grimaced, digging up a plethora of fears, releasing them all at the same time upon the man, who fell onto his back, writhing in silent agony.
Karen bombarded the man with his worst fears before tucking them away again. His pained expression lessened considerably, but then he simply passed out. She hoped that by overwhelming him, he’d be confused, and would assume it had all been a dream when he woke, memories of her forgotten.
Karen ran to Paul’s car, breaking one of her heels en route. She felt lightheaded and a little dizzy. When she was in the backseat, she called Paul. He came out a few minutes later.
“You look awful,” he told her when he climbed into the car. “What the hell happened?”
“Complications, but nothing I couldn’t handle.” She told Paul everything that had transpired between bits of candy bars and sips of soda.
“The alcohol probably affected you, is my guess. Now we know that you can’t drink and probe at the same time, and we know a little more about your abilities.”
“Well, I’m glad that part of the plan is over with,” she said.
“Me, too,” Paul echoed. “You’re tried and tested.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said, feeling better. “I don’t know about you, but I’m bushed. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
And with that, they drove back to Morgan’s house.
Chapter 51
Tubes protruding from Morgan’s neck, chest, and legs led to a large machine. The thing hummed incessantly as it drained the blood from his body. He was brought to the brink of d
eath before his tormentor supplied fresh vampire blood, rejuvenating him. This process went on for hours. In between the draining sessions, his flesh was scorched by a small butane torch that bubbled and melted his flesh. Hot iron rods—the metal glowing orange—were pressed against his forehead and shins, sizzling his skin to the bone as he bellowed in agony. A sledgehammer was used repeatedly to break his arms and legs, smash his kneecaps, feet and hands, the crunch of his innards echoing in his ears like cries from the grave. He’d even watched as the man severed his arms and legs, only to reattach them as he was pumped with fresh vampire blood.
Mr. Kubek was a professional, a master in the discipline of pain, but Morgan endured, frustrating the man to no end, and causing himself further agony. Only Morgan had found a spiritual strength at seeing Kubek’s own angst as the man failed in his task, unable to get Morgan to talk about why he had been outside the Murphy compound.
General Krueger had not the time to waste, because the main objective wasn’t Morgan, but finding the second alien ship.
The scientists, Paul included, stuck Morgan with numerous needles, taking blood sample after blood sample. Pieces of his flesh—organs and bone—were cut and ripped out in barbaric fashion. The vampire blood kept him rejuvenating quickly.
Morgan was subjected to a plethora of religious artifacts— Bibles, Torahs, Korans, crosses, stars of David, as well as other talismans he did not know the names of. All were placed on and inside him, his body sliced open to make room. None had any effect on him. Only garlic burned his skin and irritated his healing process. These were all things Morgan could’ve and would’ve gladly told them about, saving them the time and energy. But he thought it best that they continue; the more time they spent with him, the longer it would be before they focused their full attention on the spacecraft. The whole process was like a throwback to his earlier days when he first came to the Murphy labs.
“How are you doing?” Paul asked, standing over Morgan.
“I’ve been better,” he said. “Seems like I keep pissing off the General. He decided not to give me blood right away after one of the sessions with Mr. Kubek.”
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