For as far as the eye could see in any direction, cars and trucks lay along the highway as if an intergalactic child had picked them up and thrown them. Some smoked. Some were on fire. Inside each one were various versions of the wounded, the dead, and the dying. Some had already pulled themselves free and were wandering, their eyesight just now restored. Still others knelt as Blane did, staring at the impossibility of it all.
He didn’t know how long he’d knelt and stared. Eventually he got to his feet. He tried his phone, but there were no connections. He turned east and began to walk. He’d hoped that he’d see an end to the carnage, but there wasn’t one. Interstate 10 had turned into one long junkyard that there weren’t enough tow trucks in the world to clear.
Chapter Ten
Berdoo Canyon. Hide Site.
CODENAME: TRAVESTY
Flight Sequence 20451333X
CLASSIFIED TALENT KEYHOLE
UAV Narration: Sgt Frank Spann
UAV Mode: Combat Swarm
…13 fly 100 meters, overview of compound. As was before, single black adobe hut set back 300 meters from nearest buildings. Other buildings include three two story dormitories, a main meeting lodge with dining facility, gymnasium and motor pool. Cathedral complex. No substantive activity.
…5 fly 70 meters, circling black hut. Red smoke comes from single chimney. Sand is clear of underbrush in 300 meter circle around building. No birds. No animals of any kind. No substantive activity.
…3 fly 200 meters over windmill farm. Note six men have been crucified on six different windmills. Monitoring. NFI.
…1 fly 20 meters, above motor pool. No substantive activity.
Finally there was some action.
Up until now, Frank had been so bored that he’d considered crashing one of his Shadows or Hunters just so he’d have something to do. He’d had enough time on his hands that he’d gone to several of the conspiracy theory websites that had been created to divulge the secrets of the Black Bishop. Most of them could hardly be true.
The website The Absolute Truth claimed that the Black Bishop is an alien sent to capture our daughters.
The website Underground Fact-o-holic stated that the Black Bishop is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine, to be precise. It asserted that he’s assembling his forces who, once ready, will go forth and destroy the farms of man.
The Warez Underground site The Secret Pact divulged in an almost incomprehensible post on their message board that the Harlots of the Black Grotto and the Monks of the Western Wind were young children harvested by the Black Bishop, to be recreated in his own image.
Pax Esoterix was nothing more than a series of message boards where people posted what they’d seen, heard or believed. More of a clearinghouse of information than anything else. A thousand virtual miles down the rabbit hole, Frank found a posting with a comment:
HalieJoe96: Hey, has anyone else seen the people crucified on the windmills in the windmill farm outside Palm Springs?
FryerTuck: I thought it was just me. Drove a load past there headed for Flagstaff and could have swore I saw a man going round and round like he was his own roulette wheel.
Frank couldn’t prove the other things, but he could detail three Shadows to check on the windmill farm and see what they could find, which he did. And sure enough, he spotted six men strapped to the giant windmill blades—not really crucified—at various points in the windmill farm. He captured images of each of them and even now was running them through the FBI biometric database that was connected to the DMVs, State Department Passport Office, credit card companies, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If they’d ever had their picture taken, he’d find out who they were and add the information to his report.
But a better question than who they were, was why they were there. He had to assume they’d been placed there against their will. To think otherwise was to enter a realm of masochism he’d rather not know about.
He’d filed a report and had an immediate comeback, first questioning why he’d detailed UAVs to that location, then asking him to continue monitoring and keep them posted. He couldn’t help but laugh at that. On one hand they decried him for his initiative, but on the other they wanted the fruits of that labor. Classic military. Don’t ever do something you aren’t told to do, but if you do and it works out, then good for you. He was sure someone back at HQ was taking the credit for his initiative. Whatever. Truth be told, it was done merely because he was so damned bored.
He checked his circuits, then deployed a single Shadow to Jennifer’s residence. She was due home from school soon, and wanted to see her… wanted to watch her walk down the street and see her move.
Creeper! his internal voice raged.
But he wasn’t a creeper. He was in love. Anyway, what he was doing was harmless. It’s not like anything would ever come of it.
He had the Shadow doing a figure eight at seventy meters and was watching the footage, when he saw something that made him lean forward.
Jenkies—he’d learned through Facebook that her friends liked to call her that—opened her back door, looked both ways, then slipped out and down the back porch. Then she edged around the corner of the house, all the while checking her six to make sure no one was watching or following her.
Such strange behavior.
He’d never seen her act this way before.
He checked the time on station and noted that he’d also never detailed a UAV to her home this early. In his impatience, he’d detailed the UAV twenty minutes early.
Jenkies walked up the street, waited at the light, then crossed the street, and entered the McDonalds on the corner.
He lost visual, but kept his Shadow on station. He checked his watch. Jenkies’ bus was due in fifteen minutes. She must have ditched school and was trying to pretend that she came home on the bus.
“You sneaky little devil,” he said to the screen.
For the next fifteen minutes, he kept his eyes peeled at the restaurant, checking carefully each time someone left. He stared at the screen so hard that he felt a headache coming. Not just any headache, but what could be a migraine. The pressure was just so intense that—
His vision went black with purple spots like when it did if he had a particularly hard coughing fit. The difference was that not only wasn’t he coughing, but he also couldn’t blink his vision free. He reached out with his hands and touched the monitor. Then he touched the keyboard. Everything was where it should be. Everything was as it should be. The only difference was that he was totally blind.
Is this how it happened?
Did people go blind instantaneously? He’d always thought it was a slow process unless—
He had a brain aneurism.
Or maybe a stroke.
Jesus and Mary, why me.
He felt a well of emotion pushing upwards. He fought against it, he fought to keep it down, but it was too powerful and it forced its way free in the form of a long uncontrolled sob.
Creeper! came the voice again.
Was that it? Was he being punished for following—stalking this girl? Was this divine justice—remove the eye which offendeth!
He began to pray to God that if his vision would be restored that he’d stop stalking Jenkies.
I promise I won’t stalk Jenkies if you restore my vision.
I promise I won’t stalk Jenkies if you restore my vision.
I promise I won’t stalk Jenkies if you restore my vision.
I promise I won’t stalk Jenkies if you restore my vision.
I promise I won’t stalk Jenkies if you restore my vision.
He began to see a lightening in the darkness.
He transitioned to speaking his prayer out loud “I promise I won’t stalk Jenkies if you restore my vision.”
He repeated the prayer, getting louder and louder, as the light became brighter and brighter, until he was standing, screaming his prayer to the top of his trailer when his vision was finally restored.
He sat d
own heavily as tears cascaded down his cheeks. He was out of breath. His chest heaved both from the exertion and the emotion.
He felt joyous.
He felt grateful.
Relief was too small a word to capture what he felt.
Then he glanced at the screen.
The bus had crashed… no… everything had crashed. Every car and truck and motorcycle had crashed into people and buildings and other vehicles. It was utter chaos. The video input gave him no sound. He could only imagine the cacophony of screams and noise from the scene.
He suddenly leaned forward as Jenkies exited the restaurant. He watched her cross the street, weaving her way between wrecks until she was at the bus stop. A young girl got up. Two boys lay broken and twisted. Jenkies ignored those people, stepped into the brush and leaned down.
Frank toggled the UAV and had it drop twenty meters as he zoomed in on the scene.
Jenkies was leaning over a body. She looked up and around, utter shock on her face. When she stood for one brief moment, Frank let out a gasp.
The body had her face.
It wore Jenkies’ face.
It was Jenkies.
Then who was this other girl?
Why were there two Jenkies?
Which one was the doppelgänger?
He watched as she fell to her knees and cried, incapable of helping her, wanting nothing more than to be there, to comfort her, to ask her why she was two people.
I promise I won’t stalk Jenkies if you restore my vision.
He shrugged the thought aside. He knew he’d promised God something serious, but that would have to wait. He turned to his email so that he could report what had happened, then stopped when he saw the emails pouring into his inbox like they weren’t about to stop. It looked like he didn’t need to tell anyone what happened. It had happened everywhere. He knew this because his inbox had just exploded.
Chapter Eleven
Palm Springs. Jenkies had been living in the crawlspace beneath the neighbor’s house since her doppelganger had taken over her life. Or at least that’s what she’d thought it was at first. But then as she stalked the girl she began to notice subtle differences in things. For instance, instead of their neighbors being the Schmidts and the Calhouns, they were the Odzers and the Calhouns. And the Calhouns weren’t the poor family on the street barely able to hold onto their precarious economic perch; the Andersons were. Then there were her parents. Her mom and dad looked like themselves and mostly acted like themselves, but where her real parents were micromanaging monsters, attempting to steer and guide every moment of every day, these parents seemed to barely pay attention at all.
Which is why it kind of stunned her that her doppelganger—the version of her in this universe—was still a cutter.
Jenkies knew why she did it, but this girl’s life seemed perfect. It was everything Jenkies had wanted for herself. She’d followed her and watched her and wished that this girl’s life could be hers. Funny thing was, Jenkies hadn’t cut herself since she’d entered this new strange reality. The lines on her arms were healing for the first time since she’d first put blade to skin at the age of nine.
But this girl, Jenkies II, was a cutting fiend. Jenkies had climbed the tree in the backyard and watched her through the window as she put twenty-three one inch cuts into the skin of her left thigh, then had lain listless, staring at the wall, until her mother had yelled for her to turn the light out and go to bed.
Jenkies tried to see herself in this other version of her, but it was too hard. Jenkies cut herself on the arms. She’d rarely ever cut herself more than twice a day—before school and before dinner. The pain made her feel alive, getting her through those things she hated, yet had to endure. She didn’t share her self-injury, nor did she talk about it. But Jenkies II did.
She’d followed her yesterday, just as she’d followed her every day. Once she was on the bus, heading for school, Jenkies would come home, change clothes, clean up, and eat. She’d almost been caught when her mother—Jenkies II’s mother—came home early one afternoon. Jenkies had been sitting on the couch watching television when the front door had opened. Her mother had come in, asked her how her day at school was, then had gone up to her bed to lay down. Jenkies had freaked and slipped into the back yard, then underneath the neighbor’s house. Yesterday Jenkies II had brought two friends home. Even though it was still daylight, Jenkies climbed into the tree, using the leaves to hide herself as best she could. What she saw had shocked her enough that she’d almost fallen. Not only were the girls cutting together, but they seemed to be in a contest with each other. Although she couldn’t hear what was being said, it was clear that a red haired girl was egging the other two on. Jenkies II seemed like she was getting annoyed.
Just then the neighbor and owner of the house she was sleeping under called out to her.
“Jenkies.”
Jenkies barely heard it because no one ever called her Jenkies.
“Hey, Jenkies, what are you doing up in that tree?”
She turned and regarded Mr. Calhoun, unable to even speak. He was cleaning his pool with a long handled brush. She’d forgotten about his pool. Coming out here only at night, no one was ever using it.
“What’s wrong?” he laughed. “Cat got your tongue?”
She mumbled something about needing to do homework, and scuttled down the tree and into the front yard where her father—Jenkies II’s father—was pulling in the driveway. She waved at him, and took off running down the sidewalk. He called after her, but she ignored it. It wasn’t until almost midnight that she was able to find the courage to return.
That was yesterday.
She watched the family during their hurried breakfast and didn’t notice anything that would indicate they knew about her. Even when she followed Jenkies II to the bus stop, the girl didn’t turn around once.
That afternoon, Jenkies waited in a McDonalds for the school bus to pass by, just as it always did. She sipped on a Diet Coke, biting the straw until it frayed at the end. The bus came into view, pulled up to the corner, and let everyone out. Two twin boys, a younger black girl, and Jenkies II.
As the bus pulled away, Jenkies felt a pressure building in her head, then a spike of pain, like she was having an instant migraine. She slammed her eyes shut and rubbed the right side of her head with her fist. The feeling subsided, but as she opened her eyes, something worse happened. She was completely blind. She couldn’t see her Coke, or her hand, or the table or even the window through which she’d just been looking.
Someone inside the restaurant screamed. This scream was answered by another. A tremendous crash came from outside, followed by several more.
Jenkies panicked and slid to the floor. She pulled herself under the table, brought her knees up and hugged them to her.
More screams came.
One of the restaurant windows exploded.
A man shouted to god begging him to make everything stop.
Jenkies hugged her knees through it all, sobbing almost silently.
Her vision came back to her in an instant. One moment she was squeezing her eyes tight, trying to hold back the tears and the next moment, she opened them and saw everything.
She saw the wreck in the intersection where seven cars, two trucks and a motorcycle had plowed together.
She saw the man standing in the kitchen of the McDonalds, holding one of his hands that had been burned almost all the way to the bone by grease.
She saw a body lying half on the curb, what was left of its head in the street, crushed by a mother in a minivan who sat sobbing uncontrollably while her baby wailed in the backseat.
Jenkies stumbled out of the restaurant and into the street. Up and down the road, was the same as in front of her—crashes after crashes after crashes as if—could it be? Had everyone gone blind for those moments?
She spun around, examining the world as the idea took hold. If everyone had gone blind in that instant, then she could easily see how there cou
ld be so many wrecks. She wondered about aircraft and put a hand to her mouth. If they were in flight, she was pretty sure planes used autopilot, at least that’s what the movies had impressed upon her. But if they were landing…
The thought of it took her breath away.
She stumbled into the street.
How had this happened? What had made them all blind?
Jenkies realized that she was standing alone in the middle of the street. She began to worry about Jenkies II. What if the other girl saw her? What would she do then?
She glanced in the direction of the bus stop and kept staring. The bus stop was gone. She felt her legs propel her to where the kids had been standing.
The young black girl was getting off the ground, her head bleeding.
The twin boys were pinned beneath a truck, but were alive.
She tried to find Jenkies II, but couldn’t see her. It wasn’t until she looked into the bushes that she found her. Jenkies ran to her and stifled a scream. Looking upon the dead version of herself in this world was the absolute most terrifying moment she’d ever experienced. What was even worse was how lonely she suddenly felt, for as long as there was another version of her, she didn’t feel alone in this universe that clearly wasn’t hers.
But now?
An emptiness blossomed inside of her so wide and deep she was lost in it.
A siren began to wail somewhere.
Jenkies could no longer hold it in.
She fell to her knees and cried.
Chapter Twelve
Indio. Blane made it as far as Indio before he had to go to ground. He’d managed to find a baby blue Vespa which allowed him to get through the mangled mess of I10 just slightly faster than walking. Twice he’d had to defend himself against people trying to take it from him. The first had been some young thug who looked like he’d stepped out of central casting with his jailhouse ink and angry sneer. Blane had been able to juke the Vespa enough that he could get away. But the second attack almost went sideways. A young mom who couldn’t have been more than twenty ran at him with her baby tucked under one arm like a football, growling, lips peeled back, saliva flipping out her mouth. She actually managed to grab his collar. Thankfully it ripped off or otherwise he wasn’t sure what she would have done to him.
Red Palm Page 6
