“They’re not her traps.”
So much for the good news. She never stopped to think while she was upstairs getting ready for them, Cliff was downstairs forging a temple of doom for her. So what had delayed Piper getting here?
The headlight of a passing car revealed Cliff standing six inches from her face, wearing a wicked smile, waiting for just this moment, so she could appreciate him gloating before he applied the kill stroke.
She brought the cleaver and the butcher knife together at his crotch, severed his dick. Cliff howled like a lone wolf.
“You had to stop and gloat, didn’t ya?” Piper grabbed the severed dick and testicles and shoved them in the ice chest alongside his hand.
Cliff commenced field surgery on his own mutilated crotch.
Alexis watched from a good distance away, having slinked off before Piper arrived.
“That’s it, we’re outta here,” Piper said. “She wins this round.”
“We’re not bailing out on a blasted housewife. I have a reputation to protect.” Cliff spoke with mock determination, considering how faint he sounded.
“Yeah, well, without your dick, your reputation might have an even tougher time of it.”
Piper kept slapping Cliff in the face to keep him conscious, which was long enough for him to finish surgery on his crotch in order to stem the tide of blood. When that wasn’t enough, he stuck a needle from his triage kit in Cliff, stuffed with epinephrine.
With Cliff only partly revived, Piper dragged him toward the front door. Cliff kept both hands on his crotch so the weight of the clamps wouldn’t cause them to lose their grip. For his Good Samaritan reward, Piper stepped into a bear trap. “Fuck! The next time you booby-trap this place, you want to cue me!”
“They’re not my booby-traps.”
He dragged Cliff out the door, his one foot still stuck in the bear trap.
***
The lights in the house went on on their own accord. Alexis thought of Cliff’s fateful last words: They’re not my booby-traps. And it dawned on her, finally: Atam.
Atam emerged out of the closet, holding a gun—one of her guns—aimed straight at her, evidently not knowing what to do with the figure clad from head to toe in Kevlar. She must have looked like a low-rent crash dummy.
He fired all six shots at her.
She went down for the count, wondering who’d put out the lights again.
***
Alexis came around to find Atam stripping the Kevlar from around her face.
“Thanks. It was stifling me, and making it all the more impossible to see.”
He laughed. “Considering we’ve never been so out of sync with one another, we did pretty well.”
“You were supposed to leave.”
“I used to design the corporate team builders. I couldn’t let all that experience go to waste.”
“Where are the kids?”
“In the basement with the babysitter. I told them mommy and daddy needed some time to play their adult games. I honestly don’t think they misinterpreted the innuendo.”
“Why didn’t you get the hell out like I asked you?”
“If I start doing everything you tell me, you’ll lose all respect. Besides, I was curious to see if inviting hell-spawn into our home necessarily conflicted with our whole domestic bliss vibe. Doesn’t appear to.”
She laughed, finally. He had to run the gauntlet of her rebukes before she could give herself permission to relax.
***
Alexis laid her daughter in bed. She needed to pull her intertwined arms, locked at the fingers, over her head like a necklace, for fear of pulling them off at the shoulders otherwise; Ellie was that determined to hold on.
“Mommy!” Ellie exclaimed. “Can we do adult games again, really soon?”
“Why?” Alexis asked.
“I loved all the candles in the basement. Really spooky. Was it spooky for you, too?”
“Very!”
“It’s decided then! Monday nights are for the spookies!”
Alexis laughed and sobbed as she hugged her daughter. Ellie’s indelicate remarks had released the latest wave of bottled up tension inside her she wasn’t aware she was carrying.
***
As she flicked off the overhead light to Ellie’s room, the nightlights popped on. Alexis closed the door, but left it cracked.
When she finally tore her eyes away from her daughter, it was in response to the noises Atam was making downstairs, cleaning up the mess left in the wake of the intruders. She found Robin Wakefield staring back at her. “Hell of a lot of help you were,” Alexis chided. “You were supposed to be my guardian angel.”
“You severed a guy’s hand at the wrist with a meat cleaver. You think you did that all by your lonesome?”
Alexis smiled. “Suppose not. Maybe I should have gone with a samurai sword.” She walked with Robin down the hall to avoid disturbing Ellie. “What’s with the red dress?”
“I don’t entirely know. My unconscious might be trying to bring something to my attention, despite my resistance, concerning one of the timelines I’m involved in.”
“One of the timelines?”
Robin sighed. “Long story.”
“You think I’ll be seeing our friends again?”
“I doubt it. Too much of an affront to their egos. They fancy themselves out of your league.”
“Honey, are you talking to yourself again?” Atam’s voice boomed from downstairs.
“No, darling, just my guardian angel.”
He must have figured she was having a PTSD episode, because he bounded up the stairs, picked her up, swirled her around, and kissed her. “This is what I get for leaving you unattended with a five-year-old for more than ten minutes.”
Alexis checked for her guardian angel, but she was gone.
She wondered how she could have known the woman standing before her earlier was Robin Wakefield. Somehow, she just knew.
THIRTEEN
The numbers in the accounts receivable ledger swam before Bespellion’s eyes. His head tottered on his shoulders like a boulder determined to roll downhill. It only got as far as the desktop. Instead of his head hurting from the thud, it felt good just to drift away.
***
Ermies watched Bespellion keel over on the desk. “Damn boy’s got no endurance.”
“He’s gonna go blind reading those numbers by candlelight. You couldn’t even provide him a decent lamp?”
Ermies bolted off his chair, wiped his eyes to chase away the bleariness. He shouted into the darkness of the warehouse. “Who’s that talking? Sure as hell isn’t my conscience. I don’t have any.”
“And what you gonna do when he knocks over the candle next time, burns the place down?”
“They make fire extinguishers for a reason. If you weren’t a ghost from my past you’d know that.” He kept taking tentative steps toward the mysterious female voice emanating from the darkness.
“It wouldn’t kill ya to ease up. They’re kids. They deserve a bit of fun.”
“They get a taste of that, they’ll scatter far and wide, never see so much as one of them again. The only thing’s holding this place together is fear of something worse out there.” He gestured to the open warehouse delivery bay, and to the big open spaces beyond. “God forbid they get it in their mind fun is something worth chasing after.”
Whatever spirit was out there separated the mountain of unsold items to clear a path to one in particular it wanted him to see. He lumbered toward it. He pressed down on his lower back, wincing.
He pulled out the box with the picture of an abacus on it. “Always wanted one of these. Must have come in and gotten tossed by one of those fool kids who didn’t know better.”
He carted it back to his desk, peeled open the box with all the eagerness of a child on Christmas day.
After setting the abacus on the table, he grabbed the ledger away from Bespellion, suddenly keener to add up the numbers himself.
&n
bsp; As he slid the beads of the abacus into place, tallying his receivables, his face alit with pleasure. Another wave of excitement rippled up his spine all the way from his groin to his tonsils.
Ermies turned as he heard the mound of unsold items shifting again. There, at the base of the mountain, was something he never expected to see: a remote-control jeep, the one Bespellion had been hoping to find all these years.
He cried as he brought it back to his desk and sat down with it. He turned it over in his hands, looked at the picture of the jeep from different angles, painted on each side of the box.
It had taken him finding the most precious gift in the world in the pile to get him to understand how much it meant to Bespellion; he was ashamed for not appreciating as much before.
He went over and shook Bespellion awake. He waited until Bespellion’s eyes could focus again before setting the box in his hands. “For you, kid.”
Bespellion’s face brightened as he raced to get the jeep out of the box. He stuffed the batteries in, set it on the ground, reached for the remote, then shook from fear it wasn’t going to work. “Maybe the batteries are dead.”
“Won’t know if you don’t try.”
“Bet it’s defective. Just like me.”
“Bet it isn’t. Bet it’s the most marvelous thing I ever beheld, short of you.”
Bespellion’s eyes watered as he met Ermies’ eyes. He ran up and hugged the old man. He squeezed him so tight, his ears rang. “Why are my ears ringing?”
“They’re not ringing.” Ermies pointed.
Bespellion followed this finger to the toy vehicle, whining as it wore wide circles into the floor. He had squeezed the remote up between Ermies and him when he hugged the old man, and unwittingly depressed the control lever. He laughed and played with the joy stick, as he chased after the jeep.
Ermies flopped back in his chair, watched Bespellion create ramps for the jeep to sail off of. “Don’t go breaking the thing on your first day.”
“Nah, it’ll surprise you. You’ll see.”
“Wouldn’t be the first thing tonight,” he mumbled. Ermies dried his eyes, glanced in the direction of the voice calling out to him earlier. She stepped out of the shadows. A beautiful woman.
“I’m Robin Wakefield.”
“I don’t know you.” Ermies felt guilty, like maybe he should.
“You keep traveling down the road you’re on, you will.”
He smiled. His eyes watered again. “I’d like that.”
She disappeared right before him, like some mirage.
“What did you do to earn a visit from her, Ermies?” he mused aloud to himself. With no answers forthcoming, he returned to his abacus, eager to make an account of how far ahead or behind he was.
FOURTEEN
Perdue checked on his men. They were sacked out for the night, stowed in their cots on the container ship that had brought them to Brazil, now headed for home. Plugged into POSTAL, they stirred fitfully in their sleep, a sign Perdue had come to recognize as the game taking hold of them.
The captain’s dog had found them, part Rottweiler, part Boxer, from the looks of him. His incessant barking to alert anyone nearby of their presence risked waking his men, even if it was likely to raise the dead first. Perdue clamped down on his yapping mouth, held his jaws shut, and tossed him in back of the ZAPPER truck. He was tempted to throw the handle and send the dog on a one way ride to oblivion. “Maybe it’s time to turn over a new leaf, Perdue.” He left the lever where it was, figured the dog’s barking was muffled enough by the thick walls of the chamber holding him.
Perdue hiked over to Purnell’s bunk, and seated himself next to the sleeping Purnell. He lit a cigarette. “It’s one thing to lean into your fears, Purnell. It’s another thing to get this far without the least bit of insight into yourself.” He took a puff on his cigarette. “I won’t hear any argument on this. I can’t keep expecting to power myself on self-hate. I need a cleaner-burning fuel where I’m going. What’s that you say? I don’t know, getting in touch with my feelings just seems a little odd to people like me. Guess that’s what I have you for. You really need to pick up the pace. You’re failing me, as usual. Oh, stop your bellyaching.”
The dog’s whining was reaching him through the back of the ZAPPER truck far better than his barking. Perdue relented, let the animal out, petted him on the head. “You tell anybody about this…” The dog licked his face feverishly. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
Perdue climbed in the back of the SWAT truck where the one source of light was coming from. Both trucks occupied the hollow between the gear and the men to either side.
“So you ready to brief me on Saturn?” Robes-Pierre said.
Perdue closed the door on the SWAT truck, sealed them inside, so his report wouldn’t disturb the others. He took a seat, and flicked off the lights. Then grabbed a handful of glow sticks, broke them one by one, and threw them about the truck for illumination. For the longest time he didn’t say anything. He just played his little game of self-hypnosis with the bioluminescent rods. Robes Pierre must have thought he’d lost his mind just contemplating the trip to Saturn. “The locals live amongst the gaseous atmosphere; they float like dirigibles. Their minds are powerful, haunting, and they have a way of getting into your dreams. That’s where they tend to take you over.”
Robes Pierre gulped.
Holding the latest glow stick close, and rotating it before his eyes, he continued his sermon. “The men will have to learn to take on these demons in their sleep, when they’re not exactly at their sharpest. As for the boy, Fabio, someone will have to be awake while he sleeps. Not just standing guard physically, but parked inside his mind, standing guard psychically.”
“Fuck me. How am I supposed to program the game for that?” Robes-Pierre didn’t sound his usual over-confident, over-zealous self. “Wait,” he said. “The Native Americans have this thing with dream catchers. And their shamans are big on traveling into netherworlds, communicating with spirits in other realms. If these Saturnians don’t exist in any one realm, a shamanic approach may be the key.”
“I guess that means Chew Toy takes point on this one.”
“You gonna be happy surrendering control to that guy?”
“Despite popular opinion, I’m not about style; I’m about results. Besides, my men know how I work. A little bit of me’ll be inside each of them, calling the shots as always. Sometimes you have to lead from behind, Robes-Pierre.”
Robes Pierre started keying in the changes to POSTAL.
From the rising din of pained sounds outside the SWAT truck, Perdue figured the changes were already hitting the men hard.
“Any other surprises I should know about?”
“Probably,” Perdue confessed. “Only, we won’t know until we get there.” He slipped on his in-ear headphones jacking him into POSTAL, and stuffed his body into a cubbyhole. He’d sleep like that for the night, as comfortable as on any cot. He’d trained himself to make do wherever he was.
***
“Initial assessments?” Perdue eyed the pale orange atmosphere of Saturn, and sucked on his cigarette, which probably felt like a better emotional crutch right now than his automatic rifle and the arsenal behind him in the SWAT truck, Purnell thought.
“Well, we just teleported in in full view of a couple hundred people, and managed to not turn one head,” Purnell said, still checking for reactions. “People who aren’t much put out by teleporters make me a little antsy.”
Perdue chuckled.
Widget closed ranks with his multiplexing analyzer. “I’m tapped into the grid. This is one cool place. For seasons, the city drifts up and down levels in the atmosphere. The closer to the planet’s core, the warmer things get. Of course, you sacrifice the charming view of the rings. And you risk the crushing pressures broaching the magnetic fields.”
“What’s with the pale orange?” Perdue asked.
“The sulfur in the atmosphere,” Widget explained.
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br /> “I don’t know. I could get used to this,” Robes-Pierre said.
Purnell had to admit, the city at night made Tokyo look provincial. Skyscrapers floated unhinged off the ground as if they were walking through a sculpture garden of monolithic proportions. Closer to the core of the city, where the buildings were clustered more tightly, the light show was nearly as spectacular as the rings overhead and a night sky thick with stars, the likes of which you needed to be in the desert back on Earth to appreciate.
“What are you doing out of the truck, Robes Pierre?”
“Come on, boss. It’s Saturn.”
“All the more reason to hide out inside. Until we know more about this place—the drinking water could kill us.” It was clear from his tone that Perdue wasn’t in a mood for argument. Robes-Pierre jumped in back of the truck, went virtual with his eyes on the city. He’d probably see more of it online and in less time than the rest of the team ever would, Purnell thought.
Perdue glanced over at Widget. “You get a lock on Fabio yet?”
“Yep. He’s in the district with the stoners and the rest of the low lifes.”
“Let me guess—the drugs keep away the Saturnian telepaths. If he’s too stoned to tune them in, they can’t get to him.” Perdue squelched his cigarette under the sole of his shoe. “Not a bad strategy, come to think of it.” He gave himself a second to appreciate the new surroundings. “Load up, boys. This promises to be one hell of a safari. We might just catch us more than a time traveler.”
The crew jumped inside the trucks, the ZAPPER trailing the SWAT lead car.
After putting the vehicles in gear and spinning their tires to no avail, Perdue and Purnell jumped out. They found Widget sizing up the situation ahead of them.
“Maglev track,” Widget explained. “Can’t get sufficient traction.” They watched as a maglev train and several cars whizzed by to illustrate his point.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 186
