Runner (Sam Dryden Novel)

by Patrick Lee

  The house itself was probably a hundred years old, biding the decades out here in the sticks while Topeka grew north to meet it. It wasn’t far off—the busy street Gaul had spoken of lay directly south, running east-west across the near horizon like a scar of neon and sodium-lit parking lots. Rachel could be there right now; Dryden and Holly had been in the farmhouse for ten days.

  In the darkness to Dryden’s right, the porch swing creaked in the wind. The swing was a big rough-beam construction, maybe as old as the house itself. He stood listening to it and watching the fields a while longer, then went back inside.

  Holly was in her room, asleep. For the sake of staying vigilant, they’d staggered their schedules so they were never both sleeping at the same time. Gaul had given them very few instructions when they’d said good-bye to him, but among them were Stay close to each other and Stay alert. He’d given them each a cell phone, with his own number on the contact list. The first sign of anything happening, you call me, he’d said. That’d been it.

  Dryden went to the kitchen. The big pantry leading off of it was stocked with easily two months’ worth of nonperishable food. In the attached garage were three giant chest freezers, also chock-full. There were two vehicles in the garage as well, a Ford Escape and a Chevy Malibu. Keys had been left in both ignitions, though Gaul had said nothing about leaving the place. Dryden had started both vehicles to make sure they ran and had found each to have a full tank of gas.

  Holly’s laptop was on the counter, plugged in and charging. Gaul hadn’t objected to her bringing it, or even using it to stay in touch with friends and colleagues; it was a way of maintaining some semblance of normalcy, for what it was worth.

  Earlier in the evening Holly had used the laptop to check e-mail. Afterward she’d closed it and gone out to sit on the porch swing, and through the screen door Dryden thought he’d heard her crying. She’d stayed out there for over an hour and gone to bed soon after coming back in.

  Dryden slid the laptop aside and started making a sandwich. He got a brick of cheese from the fridge, took a chef’s knife from a block on the counter, and cut two slices. He held the knife a moment longer, studying its edge, its point. What would it be like if Rachel locked him right now? How would it feel to suddenly, inexplicably want this knife in his throat? To want it badly enough to put the tip under his Adam’s apple and shove. He set it in the sink and went back to making the sandwich.

  * * *

  Holly woke four hours later. Dryden went to his room and lay down. He had the window open to the screen, and lay listening to the sounds of crickets and katydids and the wind sliding over the grass. He began to drift, and in the vague space near sleep Rachel came to him. They were sitting in the dark town house again, and she was leaning against him, warm and shapeless and fragile. He tried not to move. Tried to keep the moment from changing as long as he could.

  * * *

  “That’s Arcturus,” Holly said.

  It was two nights later. They were sitting side by side on the porch steps, looking at the stars. Even with the city’s outskirts so close, the night sky here was almost ink black.

  “You can’t tell, but Arcturus is a giant star,” Holly said. “If you put our sun next to it, it would look like a cherry beside a beach ball.”

  “You’ve studied astronomy?” Dryden asked.

  Holly shook her head. “I knew someone who wanted to study it. She told me a lot of these little facts.”

  She was quiet for a long time.

  “What was Rachel like when you were with her?” she asked.

  He considered his answer for a while. “Like a reminder that it’s worth it to be alive.”

  Holly pulled her feet up to the step beneath the one she sat on. She hugged her knees. “It’s a hell of a thing to be truly sorry for something. Sorry with every part of yourself. Do you think she could ever accept that from me?”

  Dryden heard needfulness in her voice. He wanted to tell her it was possible. Instead he pictured that last moment between Rachel and her mother, and said nothing.

  The wind picked up. Holly shuddered and pulled her knees closer. Dryden looked at her. Her bangs hung past her temples. Her eyes were almost shut. Something in her vulnerability commanded his attention.

  She looked up and met his eyes. For a few seconds she seemed almost afraid of him, the way he was looking at her. She was caught off guard, at least. Then she took a deep breath, and her eyes changed. Not afraid—intense. And still needful.

  A second later they were kissing. Hands on each other’s backs, grabbing, clinging. Her knees dropping out of the way, her body turning, mashing against his as hard as she could manage. Her mouth alive with her excitement, her breathing accelerating to match his. They were moving, then. Pushing up past the steps, sprawling on the old wood planking of the porch, hands going to shirt buttons, fumbling, pulling. He found her bra clasp and got it undone. She pulled her mouth back from his just long enough to speak.

  “I haven’t done this in a long time. If I seem—”

  Dryden shook his head. “Same here. You don’t even want to know.”

  Kissing again. Shirts coming off. Skin against skin with nothing in the way. Jesus, how had he waited this long to do this with someone again?

  She pulled back once more, their foreheads still touching. “Is this a good idea?”

  “It’s a great idea.”

  “It’s not really staying alert.”

  “It’s really staying close to each other.”

  She breathed a laugh. Pushed in again. Kissed him. Her hands traced the contours of his ribcage. His sides. Moving downward—

  Dryden opened his eyes. He pulled his face back six inches. All his excitement receded like hot water down a tub drain. His thoughts focused.

  Holly reacted. “What?”

  “Twelve days, and there hasn’t been any kind of spark between us. Not a thing.”

  She looked confused. “It seems like there’s one now.”

  “You’re not even close to my type,” Dryden said.

  “Well—okay, thanks. Jesus Christ—”

  “Think about what I’m saying,” Dryden said.

  For another half second she remained baffled. Then it hit her like a shove.

  “Oh shit,” she whispered.

  Dryden nodded. “It’s not us. It’s her. She’s here.”

  * * *

  Dryden got out his phone even as they pulled their shirts back on. He brought up the contact list and tapped Gaul’s number. As it began to ring, he turned and scanned the grassy field south of the house. Holly was already doing the same thing.

  It was almost pointless, though. In the near-total lack of moonlight, the terrain lay deep in darkness.

  The call rang a second time. Then a third.

  Sensing the delay, Holly turned and looked at him.

  Four rings.

  Five.

  “What if she already got to Gaul?” Holly asked. Her eyes were wide at the implications. “What if he’s dead and there’s no plan anymore? No help coming?”

  Six rings.

  Seven.

  Dryden turned and crossed to the front door, keeping the phone at his ear. Holly followed him into the house.

  Eight rings.

  Dryden hung up and pocketed the phone; Gaul could call back as easily as he could answer.

  They stood in the middle of the living room, all indoor lights doused, the night visible through the windows of every room that surrounded it.

  “She locked you and then me,” Holly said. “Right? The way you looked at me on the steps—you felt it first, and I didn’t. And then I did.”

  Dryden nodded. “She can only lock one person at a time, but—I guess with something like that, you give people a push and they’ll probably keep going.”

  “It worked.”

  “Yeah.”

  She went to the screen door and looked out again. “She wanted us distracted for a long time. Long enough for her to cross the open space
to this house.”

  Holly turned and faced him.

  She wants to be looking me right in the eyes at the end.

  Dryden nodded, seeing her point.

  All the same, something about the situation didn’t add up. Rachel had locked them each just long enough to turn them on to each other, but she wasn’t locking them now. Why not? If she wanted them preoccupied while she herself approached the farmhouse, she could’ve just kept locking them, alternating from one to the other, and made them sit on the floor helplessly. That would’ve been the surest move. So why hadn’t Rachel done it? Dryden had no answer to that. Which put him on edge.

  He took out his phone again. Stared at the blank display.

  “What the hell are we going to do?” Holly asked.

  * * *

  Two thousand thirty-one miles above the southern Great Plains, Miranda Twenty-six trained its instruments on the countryside north of Topeka, Kansas. Its lens platform made microscopic adjustments, keeping its viewing frame on the target it had been commanded to cover whenever it was in range. The target was a house centered in a broad square of uniform surface vegetation, a grass 97.441 percent likely to be Bouteloua gracilis, given the region and time of year. There were two human beings outdoors within the target frame, just entering the broad square of grass from the southern edge and moving north toward the house at walking speed. Their shapes suggested an adult and an adolescent, both female. Miranda Twenty-six relayed the image stream to the secure downlink designated 0814-13151, as instructed 12 days, 4 hours, 27 minutes, 41 seconds earlier. Since that time, there had been no further contact from the human operator.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Three minutes since Dryden had tried calling Gaul. No response. Holly had tried, too, with the same result. Then she’d called Dryden’s phone to make sure the damn things worked at all. She’d gotten through immediately.

  They moved from window to window, staying on opposite sides of the house from one another, watching the dark fields for any sign of approach.

  “This is stupid,” Dryden said. He came out of the kitchen and met Holly in the living room. “Even if we spot her, so what? What good would it do?”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  Dryden turned and looked back toward the kitchen—then past it to the door leading to the garage.

  “What if we just get the hell out?” he asked. “Get in one of the cars, leave the headlights off, and make a run for it across the fields.” He looked through the screen door, toward the porch and the south field. “If they’re coming from the edge of town, we’d want to go north. We could be out of her range in less than a minute.”

  “Unless she hears the engine and locks us again.”

  “We stay here, it’s going to happen anyway.”

  Holly shut her eyes hard, thinking. “Even if Gaul’s dead, we don’t know the plan is off. We can’t even be sure he is dead. If it’s still on, and we leave, we’re going to screw it up. We may not get another chance at this.”

  Dryden started to respond but stopped. Out in the dark beyond the porch, two hundred feet from the house: movement. Two silhouettes. He didn’t need detail to recognize their size and shape.

  Holly turned and followed his gaze. Dryden heard her breathing go shallow.

  Her hand found his and took hold of it. He squeezed back.

  The silhouettes came on, still deep in the darkness beyond the house’s glow. As Dryden watched, something in their movement struck him, but he couldn’t place what it was. He didn’t get the chance. A second later the night flashed blinding white, and then a blast front of sound slammed down over the house, blowing in the windowpanes on the south side. Holly screamed and threw her arms around Dryden. A second flash followed, and over Holly’s shoulder Dryden saw the two silhouettes turn to run. A moment later the flashes were coming one after another like strobe pulses at a light show, and the sky sounded like the inside of a machine-gun barrel.

  “What is it?” Holly screamed.

  “The plan,” Dryden said.

  In the wild flickers of light, he saw Rachel and Audrey still running away. Running south, back the way they’d come from. They covered sixty feet and made it no farther. Thick white streamers of powder were raining down over the field, as if a giant were slinging handfuls of flour into the wind. Where the stuff hit the ground it billowed out in all directions. Rachel and Audrey were right in the middle of it. In the last of the flashes, Dryden saw them both double over and fall.

  Darkness. Silence.

  Dryden’s ears were keening. He almost missed the ringtone of the phone in his pocket. He took it out; Gaul’s number showed on the display. He answered.

  “Where the hell were you?” Dryden asked.

  “Sorry about that,” Gaul said. “I wanted you both panicking, in case Rachel was reading you. Better to keep her confident.”

  There was a noise in Gaul’s background. It sounded like chopper turbines powering up.

  “Go to the couch and tear the middle cushion off,” Gaul said. “There are two gas masks underneath.”

  Dryden turned and crossed to it. The cushion came off as if it had been held by fewer than a dozen threads. He reached into the space below and took out the masks.

  “I’m ten miles south,” Gaul said. “I’ll be on-site in three or four minutes. Rachel and Audrey should be unconscious a lot longer than that, but as a precaution I want Holly to leave right now. Have her take either vehicle and just go anywhere, any route. Best if she doesn’t tell you where she’s going. Again, as a precaution.”

  “Good enough,” Dryden said.

  “See you when I get there.” Gaul hung up.

  The gas was already swirling into the house through the empty window frames. Smoky clumps of it, twisting and snaking. Holly had her mask on; in the last of the clear air, Dryden picked up his own and secured it to his face.

  He nodded out through the screen door. “Gas mortar shells.” His voice sounded filtered and mechanical in his own ears. “The launchers can be remote operated. Firing range can be several miles.”

  They went out through the screen door and stood atop the porch steps. Against the backdrop of lights at the edge of town, the gas cloud hovered like a fog over the field.

  Dryden relayed Gaul’s last instruction. Holly stared off into the cloud a moment longer, considering it.

  “I’ll stay with her,” Dryden said. “I’ll make sure she’s okay. Go.”

  Holly nodded at the gas. “Could that much of it kill someone? Especially a kid?”

  “I don’t think so.” He said it confidently, though he wasn’t sure at all. He’d been wondering the same thing since almost the first detonation.

  “Go,” he said again. “I’ll call you when it’s safe to come back.”

  She hesitated a few seconds longer, then nodded. She went past him, back into the house. Thirty seconds later he heard one of the vehicles start. The garage door opened, and the Malibu rolled out into the haze. At the end of the driveway it turned right; Dryden watched its taillights disappear to the west. He descended the steps and started into the field.

  * * *

  Gaul made another phone call, even as he strapped into the chopper. He connected the phone to his headset, and over the rotors he heard the call begin to ring.

  A man answered. “This is Hager.”

  “Everything’s set,” Gaul said. “Rachel’s neutralized on-site, and Dryden’s with her. I sent Holly away, but I can call her back when the time comes. She and Dryden are fully in the dark.”

  Gaul pictured Hager on his end of the line. The little compound in the Canadian Rockies. It was tough to keep his envy in check, thinking of the place—like imagining your enemy’s trophy on its pedestal. It made this uneasy cooperation all the harder.

  You had to do what you had to do, though. Whatever it took to bloom.

  “Understood,” Hager said. “Control asset will be airborne in five; expect it on-station above the target area in thir
ty minutes. We’ll go live as soon as we’re in range.”

  Gaul had seen an example of the control asset before, bolted to its cell tower at the test site in Cold Spring, Utah. The one coming into play tonight wasn’t attached to a tower; it was strapped down in the cargo hold of a C-5 Galaxy.

  We can’t guarantee we’ll tie off every loose end you’re worried about, Hager had told him, days before. Marsh, Harris, Dryden’s other friends. It’s not on me if they still go public against you.

  Would they, though? After what happened at the farmhouse in the next hour, would people like Dennis Marsh really have the nerve to stand up and make waves?

  We’ll see about that, Gaul thought.

  * * *

  Just over a thousand miles away, in his office in Washington, D.C., Dennis Marsh stared at his computer, his mouth going dry.

  On-screen, the phone-intercept program read TRANS-LINK INIT.—CALL STATUS LIVE—0 MIN, 24 SEC.

  At twenty-five seconds he heard Gaul say, “Copy that. We’ll talk after.”

  The call went dead with a click.

  It occurred to Marsh to wonder what his own expression looked like right now. Not quite one of surprise, he guessed. Maybe just that of a man bitten by a snake he’d been handling.

  He reached for his own phone; he already knew the numbers for the phones Sam Dryden and Holly Ferrel had with them. He brought up the on-screen number pad and then stopped.

  Gaul had given them those phones. There was no question Gaul’s people could monitor voice traffic on them.

  Shit.

  How to warn Dryden and Holly without tipping off anyone else?

  Marsh leaned forward in his chair and shut his eyes hard.

  Think. Think.

  * * *

  Down in the field, the gas was thicker than it had been on the porch, but it would be gone in a matter of minutes; the wind was moderate but moving steadily, shoving the whole cloud mass slowly east.