by LE Barbant
CHAPTER TWENTY
The torrent calmed to a drizzle and the air was thick with the smell of hot, wet asphalt. Rita crouched, her butt between her heels and arms hanging between her legs. Her knobby elbows pressed against bony knees. From her vantage point she could see clearly into the windows across the street.
The spot was her own, and she watched the same scene play out like every other Thursday night. The man cleared the dining room table as the mom sat nursing. The baby was three months old and getting big. A smile spread on the woman’s face as her eyes shined down on her pride and joy.
Everything was perfect.
Minutes after finishing the dishes, the man placed a light kiss on the woman’s forehead, like every other night, and left Rita’s line of vision. She held her breath, even though she knew he’d be back in view within a few beats of her heart.
The door cracked open as he stepped outside and lit a cigarette. A dog, smaller than Willa’s cat, yipped into the rainy air. The man stepped down the two steps and turned left, following the pattern.
The Taylors were liturgical creatures. Rita could set her watch by them.
Mike followed his nightly route down North Avenue. The brick streets and repurposed oil lamps were part of the charm that drew young urban dwellers to the North Side. Mike and his wife moved in nearly a year ago. Rita had watched Mike do the heavy lifting since his young bride was full with child.
The rain threatened to extinguish his smoke, so he cupped it in an attempt to keep the ember glowing. Mike swore he would stop, always setting goals and never achieving them. Rita always hated smoking and he knew it, but now she reveled in his addiction. Another piece of the past that hung on.
Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, Rita followed him. She could do the course blindfolded. The slick shingles would have caused most to slip, but she was made for this. The last leap was the furthest, nearly a dozen feet.
Rita took it without hesitation.
“You got a light?”
Rita spun, finding a hiding place behind a chimney.
“Yeah. Sure. Here you go.” Mike passed his lighter to a guy in a Steelers hoodie. The man lit his cigarette and inhaled as if his life depended on it. Handing the lighter back to Taylor, he asked, “How about a couple of bucks?”
Rita heard the man laugh as she had a million times before. “Nah, man. I have a no-cash policy. Sorry.”
Light shimmered off the knife the man pulled from the hoodie’s front pouch. “Maybe it’s time to change your policy. I’ll take whatever you have, then. Phone. Wallet. Everything but the dog.”
Rita peered over the lip of the roof again. Just do it.
“Come on, man.” Mike raised his hands to his shoulders. “I’m just out for a walk. Why don’t you give me a pass?”
Damn it, Mike.
“Not a chance.” The metal flashed again in the direction of Mike’s face, stopping just shy of his cheek. Mike’s hands shook like leaves in a gentle wind.
After a quick calculation, she jumped.
It was perfect.
She came down between the two men, knocking Mike back and the mugger to the ground. The kid looked up; he couldn’t have been over seventeen. Lips quivering, he stared at Rita. “What…what…are you?”
“Get out of here. Don’t come back.” The gargle was deeper than ever.
The kid dropped his knife and ran.
“Rita?”
She didn’t answer.
She couldn’t.
Instead, she sped down the road and slipped into the closest alley. Rain came harder again and mixed with her salty tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Chem balanced the aging laptop on his bony knees. His spot on the couch afforded him a view into Elijah’s room, where Tim still lay prone in the historian’s bed. The man had been unconscious for twelve hours, but Chem knew the worst was behind them.
He and Elijah had argued again about a hospital visit. Elijah finally relented, storming out of their tiny house. Chem hoped that his roommate would realize that they weren’t normal citizens any longer. They had to be cautious and keep a low profile. Tim’s condition would raise red flags for any medical staff and might even warrant a call to the Pittsburgh police—something none of them wanted. They could lie their way through the situation, but better if they didn’t need to.
His side project was going nowhere. After an hour of power searching the databases, his eyes were blurring, and he was no farther along than when he started. Rita’s case was confounding. All he had to go on was her testimony of what occurred the night of her accident. Trauma made her memory hazy. The catalyst was biological in nature, but he kept running into dead ends in regard to what could cause such a drastic change.
Chem had grown accustomed to being overconfident. Hubris was his hallmark, a natural consequence of usually being right. But he was coming up short, which seemed to be his new normal.
The worst part about the entire thing was that every minute he spent trying to uncover the mystery of Fishgirl—and configure a cure—was time spent away from Project Branton. That was his pathway to glory. But Rita had him by the short and curlies. The information she held over him could do some damage and he was determined not to let it get out. His best bet was finding a fix for her, fast.
It wasn’t that he didn’t feel badly for the woman. Her transformation changed everything. After his experience at med school, Chem thought that he understood isolation, but Rita’s experience took it to a whole new level.
But he hated being forced into something, and it was hard to pity someone who exploited you without remorse.
Chem shut his computer. He needed some fresh air and hoped that a walk might knock something loose. He checked in on Tim one more time before heading through the door.
****
The site of Robert Vinton’s last stand had been picked over thoroughly by Pittsburgh’s finest. For a police force of their size, they had an impressive forensics team. Word on the street was that the feds were called in to run point, but the media was silent on the matter. He crouched at the obvious site of death, the dirty asphalt still stained by the pool of blood that had flowed from Vinton’s body—the effect of the brutal bludgeoning that ruptured his body and ended his days.
Chem wasn’t looking for blood, but burns. Reports pointed to a creature much like Elijah’s monster. If that were the case, everything in the alley should be charred. He also assumed that if the creature was the same, there would be residue left behind by the monster’s dripping molten steel.
But there was none of this.
The recon mission came up short.
But the scientist knew that sometimes nothing was everything.
****
Chem sipped the Big Black Voodoo Daddy. The guys made fun of their African-American friend’s insistence on ordering the brew, but he didn’t care. The Russian Imperial stout was delicious, and the 12.5% ABV was precisely what he needed to take the edge off. The rich smell of grilled lamb wafted in from the gyro food truck positioned outside the opened garage doors.
Chem’s mouth watered.
The blowup that he and Elijah had was on his mind, and he wondered if their time would be as awkward as expected.
“Hey,” Elijah said, setting his IPA on the recycled pallet table.
“Hey.” Chem tried on a smile. It didn’t quite fit.
“Listen,” Elijah said. “I was pretty freaked out by what happened to Tim. I just don’t want anybody to get hurt. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, man. I know. It’s cool. But pain is a new line on our job descriptions, and it’s going to happen—again and again.”
Elijah rubbed his chest. Chem was still supplying Elijah with the ointment he had worked up in the old lab, and he knew that the historian would wear the marks of his transformation for the rest of his life. Scarring had already covered Elijah’s arms and part of his neck. The cream minimized the side effects, but couldn’t do away with them all together.
“I went out to Springdale, where Vinton was killed, tonight.”
“Oh, yeah,” Elijah said. “Anything?”
“Nothing that we didn’t know already. Whatever that thing is, it’s not you.”
“I told you that.”
“No, I don’t mean specifically you. I mean your kind. Everything has pointed to the fact that we have another molten man on our hands. But it can’t be, at least not like you. When you change, there’s evidence: burn marks, steel residue. This is something different.”
“Or somethings.”
“Huh?”
Elijah shifted from one foot to the other. “I spent the day canvassing neighborhoods that you identified from the police scanner. People are seeing monsters all over the place. I knocked on doors at four different sites; people love talking to a ‘reporter.’” Elijah grinned. “But you know what’s strange? In each place the reports were radically different. Some saw what I can only gather was the monster that looked like me. They said it was huge, metallic, and slow-moving. The thing had a red glow and lumbered through the streets, knocking over whatever shit got in its way. Sounded like it wanted to be seen. But the next group described it differently, almost opposite. One woman said she saw it clear as day, said it was human-sized and fast-moving. Almost as if she was describing Rita. But she’s way too careful to be seen.”
“Hmmm. And?”
“Apparently it flies.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah, I was surprised too. In Garfield, I talked with a bunch of folks who swore they saw a giant flying creature. It glowed, swooped around at their heads.”
“Shit. What are we dealing with here?”
“I have no idea.” Elijah spoke slowly, as though deep in thought. “It could be some sort of mass paranoia. Like the Salem witch trials or all those reports about cult activity in the 90s. You know, something weird happens. People get worked up into a frenzy, and then the next thing you know people are ‘seeing’ the same stuff all over the place, and blowing the whole thing out of proportion.”
“Yeah, except for in our case,” Chem said, “the Loch Ness monster is sitting across the table from me drinking a beer. I’m all for The Crucible thesis but something killed Robert Vinton and took out Tim Ford, and that thing is one hell of a dangerous ghost story.”
Chem sipped his beer, then stood up from the table.
“Alright. Take a break and flirt with your bar honey over there.” Chem nodded to the counter. The girl from their first night in town sat in the same place and occasionally glanced over her shoulder at them. “I gotta piss.”
Elijah laughed. “I don’t think I have time for any ‘honeys’ right now.”
Voodoo was filling up. Locals on one end of the bar, college kids escaping Oakland on the other. Chem gave the girls a wink and a smile as he ambled back to the men’s room. He glanced under the stall and saw what looked like gator-skin boots.
Odd choice…
The door swung open. Rita stood in its opening.
“Shit,” Chem said.
“Cover the door. I can’t be seen here.”
“I know, right. A lady in the men’s room. How the hell did you get in here?”
Rita motioned to a window over the stall. It was hardly large enough for a toddler to fit through. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I’m blessed with a large bladder, among other things.”
“I found something you guys have to see. Meet me in your basement in ten.”
The woman turned, stepped up on the edge of the toilet seat, and wiggled her way through the window.
Well, dayum.
****
Chem, Elijah, and Rita stood shoulder to shoulder around the lab table that was still marked with Tim Ford’s blood. Chem breathed through his mouth, trying to avoid the smell of day-old fish that emanated from Rita’s scaly body. Spending time with her was like hanging out next to the dumpster of a Long John Silver’s on a hot summer’s day.
On the workspace lay a metal object. It looked like a basketball with fins. Elijah turned it over and inspected the underside. The smooth surface glimmered even in the dim lighting of the basement lab. He traced his finger over seams in the metal.
“I came across it on the North Side last night.”
The North Side was on the other side of the city. Chem looked at Rita. Her eyes were hidden under the hood of her bright yellow coat. “What were you doing way out there?”
She ignored his question and moved back to stand in the corner.
“But, what is it?” Elijah asked, looking at Chem.
The chemist directed his attention at the device sitting in their basement. “How the hell should I know?”
“You’re the scientist.”
“Dammit, Elijah, I’m a chemist. We’re specialists. It’s like me asking you the sociological dimensions of Guam after World War II or some shit. I’m not Tony Stark.”
“It’s a military drone.”
Chem and Elijah jumped at the sound. A shirtless Tim Ford stood behind them. Bruises covered his body, several lacerations still leaking blood. The man gripped his side and leaned against the wall, allowing the structure to keep him vertical.
“Blackbow,” he pointed to the tattoo on his shoulder, “the paramilitary op I worked for, used them all the time.”
Elijah’s jaw dropped at the sight of the man standing. “You OK?”
“I’ve been worse.”
“Really?”
Tim grinned. “No, not really. This is the most shit I’ve ever had kicked out of me. Didn’t stand a chance against that thing. It ground me up and left me for dead. If it wasn’t for Nemo here,” he said, glancing at Rita, “yinz guys would be pouring cans of IC Light over my casket.”
She nodded, apparently unaffected by his quip.
“Blackbow used them primarily for reconnaissance, but by the end of my time with them, they were working on weaponizing.”
“What’s their range?”
“Hell if I know. The army’s got ones that are replacing fighter jets. But the drones we used for tight, urban recon had much less of an effective perimeter. And we never operated those far from control. I had a buddy who was a pilot, you know, glorified gamer. He controlled the thing from HQ with a joystick. But Blackbow was pretty serious about us not chatting like a sewing circle about our jobs. They were paying all of us enough to keep our mouths shut.” Tim pulled a stool up to the table, wincing as the legs squeaked across the floor. “This one is different. More advanced. Looks pretty impressive. You try opening it up yet?”
It took nearly an hour for the academics and ex-soldier to get the machine open. Rita sat quietly off in her corner. Inside was a complex system of wires and mechanics that could have played center stage in a robot movie. They were able to identify a tiny camera and hard drive nestled in between the radio and what Tim guessed was the propulsion mechanism.
Chem turned the back plate over in his hands. Scratched into the plate were numbers: 32608.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Elijah snatched the plate. “Can’t be official serial numbers. They wouldn’t build something as sophisticated as this and then carve its identification with a screwdriver.”
“Could be a code,” Rita said.
Tim rubbed his hand along the side of his face. “Do you think someone is trying to tell us something?”
“I’m certainly not Tony Stark either, but I’ve got some skills. I’ll head over to Hillman and see what I can dig up,” Elijah said, turning for the steps. “I want to know what the hell this thing is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The downtown district of Pittsburgh was like so many other medium-sized cities: bustling during the days and dormant at night. Either setting gave Willa the cover she needed.
She turned right on Forbes Avenue just like she had every morning for the past four days. Dobbs was a creature of habit, which made him easy to follow, and he tended not to care about hiding
his public persona. He wanted to be seen; he reveled in it. Handshaking all the way back to his office, the man looked mayoral—maybe even presidential. The only time she had seen him exhibit any caution was during a visit to a secluded warehouse just outside of the city.
Willa climbed the steps toward the arched entryway into City Hall. Everyone in the complex was too concerned with their own situations to take in the magician’s presence. She followed him to the bank of elevators, standing back twenty feet, to allow distance. The doors slid open, and Dobbs entered the metal box.
She stepped in behind him.
Though Willa had followed him for nearly a week, this was the closest she had ever come to him. Overpriced aftershave filled the small space. Men who seemed out of place in their suits—Pittsburgh’s version of the Secret Service—tailed his every move, preventing Willa from getting close. But they remained outside when he entered the city building. Dobbs was arrogant and assumed that no one would threaten him on his home turf—inside City Hall.
As they stood alone, Willa considered doing the deed there. She had failed to destroy Rizzo because she wanted to talk it through, to let him understand her game. But before she fled, Rizzo had given her vengeance a new name. And now her mark stood shoulder to shoulder with her in the elevator.
The man responsible for her mother’s death looked up from his cellphone and smiled, ignorant of her intentions. “Nice day out there.”
Rage filled her. She squeezed her fist and curled her toes trying to maintain calm. Before she ended him, she had to ask why, and that took time. Patience hadn’t always been the professor’s strong suit.
The doors slid open, and he stepped out. Willa followed, then hesitated in the foyer. She pulled out her phone and swiped the screen, more as a smokescreen than with any interest in what might lie within. Glancing up, she saw Dobbs give his low-level staffers and interns a thumbs up and a wave as he headed back to his office. His air of confidence was bolstered by a recent upswing in the polls.
Or maybe politicians always acted that confidently.
