2043 A.D.

by Edward M Wolfe

  Charlie went down the hall and found the main bathroom. He grabbed a washcloth and wet it with cold water, then went back to Deron and held the cloth gently to his wound.

  “Ow!” Deron cried.

  “Can you keep that there for a minute? Just relax and hold that.”

  He went back to Michelle’s room and grabbed the naked man’s ankles and dragged him away from the doorway over to the left side of the bed, leaving a trail of blood in the off-white carpet. He pulled the blanket off the bed and draped it over Drake’s body. Then he left the room, going back to the bathroom off the hall where he wetted another washcloth and also grabbed a bath towel. Back in Michelle’s room he covered her with the towel. He felt a little stupid covering her with a towel, but he needed to wake her up and he wanted her to awaken with some sense of dignity for whatever that was worth after what she’d just been through.

  With the wet washcloth, he gently wiped away the blood around her mouth and on her cheek and spoke softly to her. “Michelle? Wake up, sweetheart. You’re safe now. Come on, wake up.”

  Deron heard Charlie talking to Michelle and sat up abruptly. “Is Michelle—oh shit. My head!” His skull pulsed with pain from the sudden motion. “What’s going on, Grampa?”

  Michelle woke to the sound of the two voices and was utterly confused to see Deron’s grandfather standing over her. Oh God, was he the one who….

  “What are you—” she started to ask, then looked down and saw she was covered by a towel and it seemed that she was forgetting something important and dangerous.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay, now. No one is going to hurt you. Do you remember me?”

  “Charlie. Deron’s grandfather. I thought I heard Deron talking. Is he here?” And then suddenly remembering what had happened before she passed out, she yelled, “We have to get out of here. There’s a crazy man here. He hurt me!” Michelle started crying and looking around, fearing that Drake would suddenly come back into the room.

  “That man will never hurt you again. I promise. You’re safe now. Deron’s here, but he’s hurt too. I’m going to take care of Deron and I need you to put some clothes on so I can call the police. Okay?”

  Michelle nodded and continued to cry silently. Charlie stood up to leave the room, and then turned to Michelle. “Try not to look over here beside the bed on the floor. In fact, have you got a robe you can wear for a few minutes?”

  Michelle pointed at the closet. Charlie walked over to it carefully to avoid stepping on Drake between the bed and the closet door. He slid the closet door open and saw a terrycloth robe on a hanger. He pulled it off and brought it over to Michelle.

  “Here. I don’t want you to have to see the man who hurt you, so I want you to get dressed in another room. Okay?”

  Michelle nodded as she took the robe. Charlie turned around so she could put it on.

  “That’s good, sweetheart. Now let’s walk to the living room and I want you to look straight ahead. Don’t look to your right. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Charlie walked beside Michelle to block her peripheral vision as he guided her out of the room. They reached the doorway and she saw Deron sitting in the hall holding a bloody washcloth to his head. “Oh my God, Deron! He hurt you too! Are you okay?”

  She knelt down in front of him and put her hand on his cheek. She started to cry again as she looked into his eyes. “I’m so sorry!”

  “Michelle, you have nothing to be sorry about. I’m okay. Are you alright?”

  Charlie reached down to Deron. “Let’s see if you can get up and walk. Slowly.”

  Deron took Charlie’s hand and let his grandfather slowly pull him up to a standing position. He squeezed his eyes shut. “That hurts, but I’m okay. I can walk.”

  “Let’s go into the living room. Both of you sit down and I’ll get some clothes for Michelle.”

  The three of them walked slowly into the living room. Deron held one hand to his head and put the other around Michelle’s waist. She put her arm around him and tried to keep him stable as he walked unsteadily. “I don’t know what happened. How did you guys get here? You saved me, didn’t you?”

  Charlie went back into Michelle’s room and came back a minute later with an armload of her clothes which he’d taken from her dresser drawers.

  “Michelle, take some clothes and go get dressed in your parent’s room, okay?”

  Michelle took the bundle from Charlie, nodded, and began walking down the hall in a daze. Everything seemed crazy to her right now, but getting dressed gave her something simple to focus on, so she did what Charlie asked.

  Charlie looked around the room and saw an autohost panel on the wall. He walked over to it and said. “I’m going to call the police now.”

  “No!” Deron shouted and jumped up from the couch, and immediately went back down, bringing his hand to his head and moaning in pain. Charlie turned around.

  “What’s the matter, Deron? I have to call the police. I killed a man!”

  Deron looked up at his grandfather and said, “So did I. I think I killed two men actually. And they’re after me. Uh, the police, not the dead men.”

  The two of them looked at each other in silence and then despite the gravity of the situation, they both laughed for a few seconds. “This isn’t funny at all. Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, sir. Men from the government kidnapped me a few days ago. It’s a long story, but I may have killed a few of them to escape. If you call the police, then we’ll both be locked up. But we’re not the bad guys, grandpa.”

  “You’re right. But the only alternative is to run and hide. I don’t mind doing that, but it’s no life for a child. I don’t think I can do that to you.”

  “I’d rather be on the run with you than in a jail, or that mind control hospital I was in.”

  “Okay. Then we need to get out of here fast. I just hate to leave Michelle like this. But I don’t see that we have any choice.”

  “Don’t leave me!” Michelle came walking into the living room fully dressed now in a pair of Levi’s and her new long-sleeved purple shirt. “Where are you going?” She started to cry as she looked at Deron and his grandfather waiting for someone to answer her.

  Before either of them could speak, they heard the distant sound of approaching sirens. Charlie made a snap decision. “Okay, you can come with us for now. Let’s go!” He began running toward the front door. “Get in the car. I’ll be right behind you!”

  Deron and Michelle followed Charlie down the hall but kept going straight when he turned right, going into Michelle’s bedroom. He picked up his shotgun and looked quickly around the room for something he could use to cover it. He didn’t see anything, and the sirens were getting louder, so he said screw it and ran outside holding the shotgun vertically alongside his leg hoping to minimize its visibility to some degree.

  The kids were in the backseat of his car so he entered the passenger side and slid across the bench seat to the driver’s side. He jabbed at the On button to start the car and missed it. The sirens sounded only a block or two away. He did it again and the car started. He floored the gas pedal and the car lurched forward, pinning Deron and Michelle against the back of the rear seat. At the end of the street, he barely slowed down to make the turn. Tires squealed at both ends of the block as Charlie turned his corner and the first of several police cars turned theirs, passing Drake’s car as they came around and raced the short distance to Michelle’s house where they screeched to a stop.

  Forty-three

  The police were responding to a report of shots fired with no additional information so they didn’t know what type of situation they were facing. They feared the worst since they rarely received calls such as this since the Firearm Safety Act of 2020 which banned private ownership of non-sporting weapons. Confiscation had begun even before the Act during the riots of 2016 which eventually turned into the War.

  Officer Kerrigan and Sergeant Adams were the first to arrive. They came
to a stop in front of the house. Adams, who was driving, immediately got out of the driver’s side, keeping low. He told his rookie partner to scoot over to the driver’s side and join him, using their squad car as cover.

  Adams called in a code to Command Central that would cause the doors and windows of every other house on the street to lock. Each house’s Residential Computer System would announce that there was an emergency situation requiring all occupants to remain inside until further notice. Adams requested that live motion and heat data from the residential computer be relayed to his comm.

  Kerrigan, who had only one year of experience on the force and hadn’t ever responded to a “shots fired” before felt an adrenaline rush from fear and excitement. “What’s the deal, Sergeant? You think it’s a cop who lost his marbles?”

  “It could be anyone, Mike. Why do you think it’s a cop?” Adams answered, peering at the front of the house and relieved at the sound of two more squad cars taking up positions on either side of him.

  “Who else could possibly have a gun?” Kerrigan asked, looking everywhere at once and willing his heart rate to slow down. He didn’t want the sergeant to see that he was scared out of his wits. He knew there could be danger in his chosen career, but he had never thought that he might get shot – especially not so soon after getting his badge.

  “Anyone can still have a gun, Mike. Never assume that they got them all. Some people buried ‘em. Some still get smuggled in from Mexico, and some people probably still have the software to print them. We just don’t hear about them because the fanatics who still have ‘em are smart enough to keep them hidden. They know if they use ‘em, they lose ‘em.”

  His comm chimed. The relay with the Kolnick house was up. No motion. No heat sources. He tapped a speaker icon on the Residential Metrics app and listened to audio coming from the house. Adams radioed to the other officers on the scene that the house looked and sounded empty.

  “Can we go in now?” Kerrigan asked.

  “You can. I’ll wait till we know the house is clear.”

  “But you just said it’s empty.”

  “Listen, Kerrigan. You gotta pay more attention to words if you’re gonna be a cop. It might save your life someday. I said the house looks empty.”

  “Res-Met says no heat and no motion. And we don’t hear nothin’. If that ain’t empty, I don’t know what is.”

  Adams couldn’t believe what little training new officers acquired in the academy. All procedure. Very little common sense.

  “Where do you think the Res-Met software came from?”

  Kerrigan didn’t see what the sergeant was getting at and asked, “The geeks in E.D.?”

  “Those guys are techs and analysts. Software is written by programmers. What if our perp is a programmer and he hacked the RCS feed? He could make it look like the house is empty. You wanna trust your life to what an app says?”

  “Uh… no?” All of his recently departed fear came flooding back.

  “Now listen. I’m going to pop the trunk. I want you to stay out of sight as much as possible while reaching in and grabbing the bullhorn. Can you do that?”

  “Sure, Sarge.” Kerrigan tried to sound casual. He slid his feet across the asphalt, doing a kind of squashed duck-walk to the rear of the car. Adams reached into the front of the car and touched a pictograph of an open trunk which caused the trunk latch to disengage and the trunk cover to rise a few inches.

  Keeping his head below the level of the rear fender, Mike pushed the trunk lid up just enough to allow his arm to slip in to the opening. He felt around blindly for the bullhorn. “I don’t feel it, Sarge. Are you sure we have one?”

  Adams heard the panic starting to rise in his young partner’s voice and told himself to be patient. He was just a rook and he was probably trying to keep from shitting his pants. “Okay. Get back over here and radio in that we haven’t seen anything yet. We have no visual on the suspect. We don’t want anyone coming into the line of fire.”

  Kerrigan, relieved to have a task he could accomplish without risk of getting shot, quickly complied. While Adams made his way around him toward the trunk, other officers responding to Kerrigan’s report estimated the width of the street, plus the sidewalks and some of the yard space on each side of the street then tossed their holocade units toward the center of the street.

  Adams heard the high-pitch whine as the units charged, then the subtle humming sound as they projected barricades, warning anyone who came along that this was an emergency situation and to stay back. He reached into the trunk and undid the strap holding the bullhorn. He went back to the front of the car where he had a direct line of sight to the open front door of the house.

  Adams lifted the bullhorn slightly, gesturing to the other officers to indicate that he was going to talk to the suspect. Being the senior officer of the three units and the first on the scene, he was in charge of the situation.

  “This is Sergeant Adams of the Orange County Police Force. Drop your weapon and come out with your hands up!” All of the officers stared at the front door, hoping to see the subject complying with the order. Adams could see red pinpoints of light dancing around slowly on the wall just inside the doorway. The police were ready to shoot to kill if the subject came out armed.

  Forty-four

  Charlie rounded the corner and fought the urge to keep the gas pedal mashed to the floorboard. The cops were so close, but he reminded himself that the house would keep them busy for a while. If he drove like a sane person, they had a chance to get away. Now he just had to think of where to go. By default, he took turns that led him out of the neighborhood and then southeast toward the mountains without being consciously aware that he was doing so.

  In the backseat, Michelle and Deron were silent. Deron wanted to ask where they were going but he figured Charlie might be still deciding that and would tell them when he knew. Deron turned and looked at Michelle. Even despite her recent trauma, he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was. He wished that they were sitting together under entirely different circumstances.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her so quietly he wasn’t sure she had heard him.

  She turned to him and nodded, then took hold of his hand in hers. She started to say something then decided against it, pursing her lips tightly together. She knew if she spoke, she’d cry, and for some reason she didn’t know, she really didn’t want to start crying. She wanted to hold on and not think and not talk and just see what happened next.

  Charlie’s mind was working feverishly. There was too much input. Too much going on to think calmly and clearly, but he had to force himself to slow his thoughts down. The rest of his life depended on what he thought right now and the decisions he made as a result of those thoughts. Before long, he and Deron would be wanted for murder and/or attempted murder. He was sure he would be exonerated once he explained why he had killed the man in Michelle’s bedroom, but he didn’t know enough about Deron’s situation to say the same for him.

  If there was any chance that Deron could claim self-defense, then Charlie thought he should drive them all to a police station and get the facts known before their flight from a crime scene brought them additional charges that they couldn’t be excused from.

  But if Deron had actually killed two people, or even injured them with intent to kill, especially government employees, then he needed to hide him and protect him. Charlie decided that he would tentatively head toward the mountains, but along the way he’d get more information and then decide if he should change course.

  “Deron, I need you to tell me the short version of what happened to you as quickly as you can.”

  “Well, a few days ago two men came to my school and took me to a place that was like a hospital. A man there told me they were going to rewire my brain so I wouldn’t become a criminal when I grew up. I hit him over the head when he wasn’t looking so I could get away. They caught me and then started me on their therapy program to turn me into a compliant zombie or someth
ing. If the therapy didn’t work, I would end up in their reject program where they experiment on your brain. The next day, me and this girl escaped and I shot two men with a weird sort of gun. I don’t know if I just knocked them out or if I killed them. After I got away, I went to Michelle’s, and the next thing I knew, you were waking me up.”

  Michelle turned toward Deron again. Her eyes widened in shock and disbelief as she looked at him questioningly, but she didn’t let go of his hand.

  “You said earlier you were kidnapped by these men?” Charlie asked. He couldn’t believe how Deron’s version of events was nothing at all like the story Kathleen had fed him.

  “I guess. Yeah. I mean, I walked into the library and they were in there. The librarian pointed at me and they came over and said they wanted to ask me some questions. On the way to their car, I got scared and ran, and then later I woke up in that place.”

  “Were they police?”

  “No. They were eeks. You know, the guys in black that patrol everywhere?”

  “Equality Enforcement Corps,” Charlie spat.

  “Yeah. Those guys.”

  “You said the place they took you to was like a hospital, but not a hospital. What do you mean by that?” Charlie’s eyes shifted continuously from the road in front of him to his rear-view mirror, then to the side mirrors and then back again to the front.

  As Deron explained how he seemed to have woken up in a hospital room but then went to what looked like a regular office, they left Orange County behind and crossed into Riverside County. Charlie realized where they could hide – if they could make it that far.

  Forty-five

  Every officer on the scene had his eyes trained on the doorway. The entire block was silent except for the humming of the holocades. In addition to the glow of the holographic barricades, the street was lit up with strobing blue lights from the patrol cars. With the report of shots fired, Adams had no intention of risking anyone’s lives. He pressed a button on his lapel communicator.