“I wouldn’t want that thing in my mouth either. Next time I’ll just shoot first and ask questions later,” Marisha said, staring holes through him.
“Okay, you two. Let’s try to at least act like adults,” Chenoa scolded.
“Duly noted. Are either of you hurt?” Cooper asked, giving them a once-over with his eyes.
“Other than—” Marisha stopped, realizing they might not already know.
“Other than who?” Chenoa and Cooper asked.
A somber quiet fell over the group. Marisha and Colleen just stared at each other, waiting for the other to deliver the bad news. Colleen took a deep breath and looked at Cooper, “Dr. Vasquez was shot. He begged to join me and never made it to the top. I told him it wasn't a good idea. I’m so, so sorry.”
Cooper’s shoulders slumped. His eyes downcast as he tried to process the news. Quickly, he perked up and took off towards the exit, “Come on! Let's go! We can't just leave him there; he might still be alive. We owe him that much.”
“He’s dead, Cooper. I saw it all. There’s no way he made it; Trust me,” Colleen said, trying to be sincere.
“You’re wrong! He wouldn’t just give up.”
Colleen shook her head, “It’s kind of hard not to give up when there’s a hole in your chest big enough to put your fist through, and part of your skull painted the exit door.”
Marisha's eyes grew huge.
Cooper narrowed his gaze, “I don’t care. I’m going to check. I don’t need your permission. Where is he?”
Marisha pointed to where she had left him. Cooper looked to see the body hidden under the lab coat. He exploded through the door, not daring to look any further.
“Go ahead and follow him, Chenoa; he’s going to need you,” Colleen said. Chenoa chased after him out the door and in a matter of seconds, the masculine wails of anguish could be heard.
“You could have been a bit more gentle on him,” Marisha whispered.
“Gentle? What good would it have done?”
“A lot,” she said, looking everywhere but at Colleen.
Colleen exhaled, “I know. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I feel like I’m all over the place today. Even my stomach feels sour. I need some air.”
Marisha bit her lip almost instinctually.
“Hey,” Marisha said, tensely laughing, “Let’s go see if Lito stuck around and check on the people in the morgue.”
They pounded down the stairs, pausing only to let Colleen catch her breath. Once they reached the basement level, they were greeted by John's toothy grin.
“Let me take care of this one,” Marisha said, “I see you all got out.” She looked at John and waited for a response.
“We did, just now, actually,” he said, half-smiling, “I take it, they’re all dead or at least gone?”
“They’re all dead or gone. The thing is, it’s not so simple,” Colleen answered, trying to still catch her breath.
“From in there, it sounded like this whole place was about to come crashing down.” John looked down, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Wait, did you say you just got out?”
“Yeah, maybe a few minutes ago. Why?”
Marisha saw Lito come around the bend, a huge grin on his face. Her face immediately turned sour. “We lost Doc,” she whispered.
“That can’t be right,” John’s eyes teared up as she tried to hold back.
“He’s gone, John. He died protecting me,” Colleen said.
John followed Marisha’s eyes to Lito, then back to her, “You don’t think that…”
“I’m about to find out,” Marisha said, anger and anguish in her voice.
Before Colleen could stop her, she pushed through the crowd and right into Lito’s face. She started a few times, trying to get the right words out. Finally settling on, “How did they know where we would be?”
“What are you talking about? I told you what they sent me to do, and I helped you.”
“Doc is dead,” Marisha spat. Her eyes were full of hate, “Whatever you thought you did. It wasn't good enough."
He jumped back and put his palms out as if trying to stop something coming towards him, “What?—I had nothing to do with that.”
“Truthmore and his lackeys knew where we would be, and now Doc’s brains are—” she choked up, trying not to picture it in her head. She promptly shook it off and pressed him more, “How did they know?”
“I was down here the whole time. You can ask John, everyone, here.”
“According to John, you just got here, and it took you all of a few seconds to get in. That’s an awful lot of time in between when your were supposed to be here, and when you arrived.”
Marish saw Colleen’s face turn green as she grabbed her stomach, she took slow breaths through an open mouth.
“I don’t know what to tell you. I can only tell you what I did.”
“I locked up Truthmore in a closet and left him. I came back 10 minutes later, he’s gone. Explain that?” Marisha’s blood flushed to her face, and her ears grew hot.
“I can’t…” Lito stared at her.
“How convenient.”
“This is madness,” he said, turning away. She grabbed his arm, spinning him back around.
“Don’t you walk away from me!”
Everyone had stopped what they were doing and stared at them now. Colleen had begun to make her way to Marisha. Tiny convulsion moved her throat with each step. Her steps slow and methodical.
“Of course, I can’t explain. You know what else I can’t explain? The Shifting? Why some of us live, and some of us die earlier. But you know what? That’s not my problem to solve,” Lito said.
“I know that, but you brought an awful lot of death with you today,” tears streamed down Marisha’s face. She wasn’t sure why she thought yelling at Lito would make her feel better. She hated having blood on her hands and knowing that their presence brought death upon the good people who helped them.
“I’m sorry,” Lito said, his voice barely audible.
She ignored his response, continuing on, “He told Colleen something before he died, and now...we’ll probably never know what it meant.”
“What did he say?” His face perking up for first, as if with genuine interest.
“I don’t know. I wasn't there.” Marisha said.
It was at that moment Colleen arrived and placed a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed.
“What did Doc say to you?” Lito asked.
“What makes you think you can help?" Lito walked into an adjoining room and grabbed a few chairs. Giving Colleen one to sit down in. He offered the other to Marisha, but instead, she just boiled underneath. It had to do with my mom, and this thing called HAARP. Whatever that is—” Colleen paused, seeing the recognition on his face.
“HAARP, huh?” he said, mulling it over and rubbing his chin with his thumb and index finger.
Colleen perked up, “Whar’s that mean?”
Lito waved a hand, dismissing the thought.
“Tell me,” Colleen insisted, raising her voice.
“I said it's probably nothing. Truthmore said a lot of crazy stuff.”
Colleen jumped up, catching him off guard as she slammed him into the wall. She put all her weight on him, keeping him pinned as he struggled. He tried to wiggle out, but she had her height and weight for leverage.
“Tell me!” she seethed. Her forearm slid up his neck.
“Truthmore talked about HAARP all the time like it was some holy mecca or a curse. I could never tell if he was just rambling or if it was an actual place. I figured it was one of his holy things. He said his real calling was in Alaska, but he still needed a sign.”
Colleen was sick and tired of arguing; all she wanted was a straight answer. “Do you think he was serious?”
“Like I said. He seemed crazy, but if Doc knew too, then it seems more and more likely that he knew something,” Lito held his hands up in surrender.
“Alaska, y
ou say?”
Colleen wiped her lips with the back of her hand, then used her other hand to steady herself.
“Yeah, but that’s about all he said. You aren’t seriously thinking of—”
“I am. I mean, it is just above us. Like America's hat, it can’t be that far.”
Marisha rolled her eyes, then patted Colleen on the shoulder, “You really are from Texas, aren’t you.”
Twenty-Six
Marisha
“This has to be a huge invasion of privacy.”
“Privacy? He’s dead, Marisha.” Colleen jammed her knife between the door and the jamb, wiggling the handle a bit, and finally, the door popped open, “There’s not a lot of privacy when you have secrets in a place like this.”
“That’s kind of hot, you know,” Marisha said with a quick eyebrow raise.
“What is?” Colleen narrowed her eyes at the gesture. Now was not the time for flirting, it was the time to get information.
“You breaking and entering.”
Colleen’s eyebrow arched up in a quizzical motion. Marisha shrugged her shoulders as she gently rubbed the back of her neck. Her half-smile lingered as she stood in the doorway as Colleen stepped through.
Doc’s solid oak desk sat across the vast room, piled high with notebooks and manila folders. It was a miracle that he got any work done or found anything in there. Colleen headed to the desk as Marisha searched the filing cabinets.
“I still can’t see you as someone who likes the bad-girl type.”
“I’m not really. You aren’t really a bad girl,” Marisha said, sifting through the drawers full of sketches and notes, “You just have your moments where your badassery—that's a word, right? — It's just so—" Colleen watched her close her eyes and shudder as if she had a cold chill, “I don’t know.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Colleen said, dropping her gaze back down to the desk, “What else do I do that is bad-ass?”
“You know when you pull off your shirt with one hand by grabbing behind your neck?”
“That? I would never have guessed that one. Out of all the things I do,” Colleen dawned a worried and slightly intrigued expression.
“What can I say? It takes strength and flexibility. I’m a simple girl with exquisite tastes,” Marisha said, shrugging her shoulders.
Colleen rolled her eyes, “Let’s get back to it. We need to find his journal or something like that. It has to be here somewhere.” Her full, rosy cheeks turned a dark shade of crimson as she let the compliment wash over her. There was something about how that girl made her feel. She knew she was still supposed to be mad at her right now, almost having forgotten why. It wasn’t worth it, not now.
Marisha closed the second drawer and moved down to the bottom one. She sorted pages and pages of documents, many from before they or Dr. Vasquez had even got there. With a hard yank on the last drawer, the whole cabinet nearly came falling down on top of her.
“I think something is keeping it from opening all the way. Come, give me a hand,” she called to Colleen.
They both grabbed the rusty metal beast and wretched on the handle; the drawer flew open, revealing a leather notebook with the initials FV embossed on the cover.
“You think…” Marisha looked at her, eyes wide.
Colleen nodded as she grabbed the journal. Flipping it open, they could see pages of writing inside. The entries went back a few years, with sizeable gaps of time between what might have been significant events. Her hand stopped the flipping pages when she saw that word, HAARP. Colleen’s eyes skimmed over the delicate calligraphy.
We found her outside of the city today, bloody, beaten, and on the verge of death. Of course, I didn’t recognize her at first. She was with some other girl. She had mumbled enough while in and out of consciousness for me to put it all together. What are the odds? The last time I saw her, she was all of maybe two years old, and I was just a kid myself. Something or someone had scared my parents to death, and we had left Alaska and HAARP in the middle of the night, and the only people I had ever known. A few days later, my parents and I were in a new bunker with new people.
The Shifting came out of nowhere. There were no bombs, or explosions, or fires—only widespread death and disintegration of complex life. Anyone caught outside was gone instantly. You were gobbled up and returned to the ground like dust. Mom and Dad had been scientists, so they thought that there had to be a rational explanation for it. They had been terrified of something happening, but I don’t think anyone was prepared for what they saw when those doors opened a few weeks later.
The religious zealot types had chalked it up to the wrath of a vengeful god—Hell-bent on destroying the world for it being a den of iniquity. To them, they had been saved because of their righteousness. If you asked me, these types are the ones for which you had to watch out for. We had a few of them in our new group, but my parents had told me to keep my distance. Little did we know how it all didn’t matter. When you try to use quick fixes for lifelong apathy, you rarely succeed. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
“It looks like he knew a lot more than he was letting on,” Colleen said. “We already knew that he had known Fane before we got here. There was a falling out over something.”
“What do you think it was?” Marisha asked, looking over her shoulder.
“I can’t be 100% certain, but I think the Killian’s had become radicalized not long before The Shifting. Everything here seems to describe them without so much as naming them specifically. Dr. Vasquez's family went on their way after they separated.”
“I get that, but it could’ve been anything.” Marisha bit the side of her mouth, stroking her chin, “This makes me think the Killian’s did something truly awful. All this biblical allegory is leading only one place.”
“Where is that exactly?” Colleen asked, taking her eyes off the journal and looking at the deep-in-thought woman beside her.
“To the destruction of the world,” Marisha said matter-of-factly.
Colleen burst out laughing but soon realized Marisha wasn’t, “You can’t be serious.”
“What other explanation do you have?”
“I know the Killians are dangerous, but they hardly have the means to pull off the destruction of all life on earth. That’s a bit of a stretch.”
“That may be true, but we don’t know who or what caused all this.”
“And… in all this, my parents fit in this whole end of the world picture. They knew about HAARP too. Heck, they might have even been involved. Once again, it’s all just vague information and supposition.”
Colleen kept scanning the journal, hoping for something to explain this cure that was ‘worse than the disease.’ “There nothing in here to explain what more he knew. I’m willing to bet he knew exactly what brought this world to its knees. What if they got ahold of this ‘cure’ and used it for something else? What if that’s what HAARP is?"
“Let’s say you are correct. We still don’t know what it is, and there’s nothing in there that gives us any indication of what to look for,” Marisha said.
“We may not know what we are looking for, but we know what direction to go in.”
“I’ll follow you anywhere, Sweetie, but I’ve got to know we aren’t looking for a needle in a haystack,” Marisha placed a hand on Colleen’s shoulder.
“I may not know what it is, but I know how to find it,” a familiar voice said behind them. The two women turned around to find Lito standing in the doorway. Colleen stashed the journal under her arm, hoping he hadn’t seen her.
“How long have you been standing there?” Colleen said, narrowing her eyes.
“Long enough,” Lito said.
“Long enough for what? To figure out how to stab us in the back, again?”
“You need me,” he said, smiling and shrugging his shoulders in a cocky manner.
“Like hell, we do,” Marisha snapped back, “I can’t see how you have anything to offer us.”
>
Lito’s eyes softened, and his body relaxed. “I’ve got more information about this place than both of you combined. You forget that Truthmore was fascinated with it. He talked about it all the time.”
“If he was so fascinated with it, then why didn’t he just go there himself?” Colleen asked.
Lito walked into the room and pushed himself up on the desk. He reached his left hand down and massaged his calf. A grimace appeared as he continued to move down.
“It’s no easy trip. On foot, the journey is practically impossible. He might be insane, but he wasn’t taking chances.”
Colleen placed a hand on Marisha’s shoulder and gently squeezed, “Let’s ease up. He’s pulled his weight since he’s been here.”
“Plus, I’ve got the supplies you need to get there. Don’t get me wrong; you’ve got a nice place here, but you’re nowhere near stocked enough to make it. You all are dead in the water without me,” he said, raising his eyebrows quickly and dropping them just as fast.
“No,” Marisha protested, “not a chance. You are more than welcome to help us prepare, but we aren’t taking you with us.”
Colleen squeezed Marisha’s shoulder, harder this time. She bent down and whispered in her ear, “Let’s hear him out.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to trust this guy,” she whispered back. Colleen had never expected this day to come, but could anyone really say they would ever trust someone who double-crossed them? You didn’t ordinarily forgive someone who left you for dead, but this wasn’t an ordinary world, with ordinary rules.
“Right now, he’s right. We don’t have a choice. Sometimes we have to trust people who haven’t been completely honest with us.”
“What’s that supposed to—” Marisha gave her a worried look.
“He goes,” Colleen said, finished with the conversation.
Twenty-Seven
Marisha
The way the sun illuminated the two horses standing in the hospital's old ambulance entrance made them look almost angelic—their auras bouncing off the sides of the faded yellow vans. A light drizzle painted the black and white speckled asphalt, and the smell of rain was tantalizing.
The Maddening: Book 2 in the Terror Saga Page 12
