Loose ends r-1

by Greg Cox

  In ten words or less, Max updated his fellow hybrids on what had just happened. "We can't lose that Chevy!" he stressed passionately. "We can't let Morton hurt Liz again!"Sirens sounded nearby, growing louder by the second. "The police," Maria realized, drawn by the gunshots, the auto accidents, or both. "Hang on!" she warned Max and Alex as she threw the Jetta into drive and peeled out of the parking lot, going from zero to sixty in a matter of seconds. With any luck, she hoped, the cops would be too tied up with the big highway pileup to chase after them right away. In the rearview mirror, she saw the Jeep zooming right behind her. Michael had already used his powers, she saw, to repair the damage to their windshield. Hold on, Liz, she thought, following Morton's escape route along the shoulder of the highway. We're coming for you! Pouring on the speed, they came within sight of the blue Chevy before long. At first, Iiz and her kidnappers were heading north on 180, toward Carlsbad proper, but they quickly veered off the main highway, turning left onto a less-populated side road that led west toward the mountains. Motels, souvenir shops, and fast- food restaurants soon gave way to flat, barren, desert scenery. Cacti and yucca provided sparse decoration to the arid landscape whizzing past them on both sides of the road. Keeping one eye on the road and the other on the speeding convertible carrying away her friend, Maria tried to figure out where Morton and his accomplice were heading. Geography wasn't exactly her forte, but she didn't remember much in this direction except the mountains and maybe the northern tip of the park.

  Okay, she recalled, there was always Las Cruces, where the university was, but that was almost 150 miles away, on the other side of the Guadalupe Mountains. Surely the science guy wasn't planning to take a shanghaied teenage girl all the way back to his snazzy labs and academic colleagues? They must be planning to hide out in the mountains somewhere, she guessed, pushing the speedometer needle up to eighty and beyond. Not if 1 have anything to say about it! Morton knew they were chasing him, of course, especially after they followed him off the highway into the desert, where pretty soon they were the only cars on the road. He glared back at them from the back of the convertible, holding onto his cap with one hand and his gun with the other. Maria glimpsed the back of Liz's head, bizarro red hair and all, but she was too far away to tell how Liz was holding up. First the shooting, now this! she agonized silently, trying to imagine what her friend was going through now. This must be like her worst nightmare coming true.

  "Can't you just blast him or something?" she asked Max in desperation. She had the air conditioner turned all the way up, but still felt covered in sweat. "Some sort of Czechoslovakian tractor beam maybe?"Max shook his head. "It's not that easy," he explained succinctly, "not at these speeds." Shunning seat belts, he perched on the very edge of the backseat, leaning forward between Maria and Alex, his head and shoulders straining to bring him as close to the fleeing Chevy as possible. "If that car crashes, Liz could be killed."So much for that brilliant idea, Maria thought. She desperately wanted to close the gap between them and the convertible, just so she could get a better look at Liz, but knew that she had to keep a safe distance between the Jetta and Morton's gun. He had already fired at them a couple of times, but without much success, the wild shots ricocheting off the asphalt ahead of the Jetta or whizzing by overhead. Don't take too many chances, she warned herself, knowing that Liz was depending on her. Morton had to run out of gas and bullets eventually. If I have to, III chase him all the way to Tucson.

  The wail of a solitary police siren, coming from several miles behind them, complicated her plans. She couldn't see any flashing lights in the mirror yet, but the siren definitely sounded like it was getting closer. "Do you think they've got our description?" she asked uneasily, sharing an anxious look with Alex. There was no way they could rescue Liz if they had to cope with the police, too. Too bad we're way out of Sheriff Valenti's jurisdiction, she thought.

  "Don't worry about that," Max said grimly, dropping back into his own seat. He rolled down the window and shoved his arm outside, placing his palm against the outside of the door. "Just keep driving," he said, his brow knitting in concentration.

  What in the world-? She gulped, nearly losing control of the wheel, as the Jetta's cherry-red paint job changed before her eyes, a new metallic-green color spreading out from the right side of the vehicle, where Max's hand was, until the entire exterior of the car resembled some giant, glittering, green bug.

  "Hey, pretty cool!" Alex enthused, impressed by the Jetta's instant makeover. "You ever consider a career in grand theft auto, Max?" he joked in an obvious attempt to relieve some of the tension in the car. "You'd be a natural."I changed the license plates, too," Max replied dryly. He sounded winded, as though the large-scale transformation had taken a lot out of him. "Just to be safe."Maria had mixed feelings about this whole thing. "Urn, you can change it back, right?" She glanced sheepishly back at Max. "Otherwise, my mom is going to freak."Keep driving," Max repeated, unconcerned with anything except Liz's safe recovery. He sank back into his seat, exhausted.

  Peering in the mirror, she saw that Michael and Isabel had apparently been inspired by Max's ingenuity; widiin seconds, the olive-green Jeep had acquired a spanking new black paint job. She wondered briefly whedier Michael or Isabel had selected the color, then blinked her eyes as the numbers and letters on the Jeep's front license plate rearranged themselves. Vow, she thought, amazed at how adept her alien friends were getting with their powers. Instant, automotive dyslexia.

  She had to wonder what Joe Morton thought of the pursuing cars' uncanny metamorphoses. Tearing her gaze away from the mirror, she looked ahead-and saw the no-good gunman staring back at the Jetta with a totally flabbergasted expression on his ugly face. Hahl Maria gloated, enjoying his extreme confusion and discomfort. Maybe the Jeep and the Jetta's unnatural transformations would put the fear of God-or, at the very least, little green men- into die slimeball.

  A flashing blue light appeared in her mirror, ruining the moment. Looking back out her side window, she saw a black-and-white State Patrol car zooming up fast behind them. Instinctively, she put her foot on the brake, slowing down to something closer to die legal speed limit. A few car lengths back, behind the wheel of the Jeep, Isabel obviously did the same.

  "Hey, what are you doing?" Max shouted, watching in horror as Morton's blue Chevy pulled farther ahead of them, disappearing toward the not-so-distant mountains. "They're getting away!"You want those cops to pull us over?" she snapped back at him, fully aware that Liz was speeding farther away from them with each passing second. "You want to try explaining to the police what's going on?" She knew there was no other choice but to slow down and hope the cop car passed them by. "If you've got a better idea, Max, lay it on me!"Despite his all-consuming desire to rescue Liz from Morton's clutches, Max couldn't argue with Maria's trenchant assessment of their current predicament. Hissing in frustration, he slammed his fist into his palm as his anguished eyes watched the Chevy shrink toward the horizon.

  lights flashing, siren blaring, the State Patrol car drew up behind the two slowing vehicles. "Okay, everyone put on their Not-Guilty faces," Maria said, swallowing hard. A horrible thought occurred to her and she suddenly prayed that Michael and Isabel had been shrewd enough to transmute their bogus air force uniforms into something less incriminating. That was all they needed now: for the pair of disguised aliens to get busted for impersonating an officer (or two).

  The cop car cruised up alongside the Jetta and a stone-faced state trooper, peering through the passenger side window, scanned the metallic green vehicle and its occupants. Maria slowed down cooperatively, letting the officer take a good long look. "These aren't the 'droids you're looking for," she whispered under her breath, feeling a cold sweat glue the back of her shirt to her suddenly sticky skin. Here's where we find out, she thought, if Max's magic paint job did the trick.

  Paranoia made the next few seconds stretch out tortur-ously, but, finally, the wary trooper looked away from the Jetta, back toward the road ahea
d. Putting on a sudden burst of renewed speed, the flashing cop car accelerated away from them in pursuit, Maria assumed, of the fleeing blue Chevy.

  Letting her forehead droop onto the steering wheel, Maria let out a fervent sigh of relief, and wondered if she was ever going to get used to being on the run from the authorities. I'd better get used to it, she mused, if I'm going to hep hanging out with Michael and the rest of the Pod Squad.

  They had gotten away with it this time, but at an excruciating cost. Maria stared straight ahead at the disappearing lights of the patrol car. Morton and his convertible were nowhere to be seen, already long gone. She heard a brokenhearted groan from the backseat, but found herself afraid to turn around and look Max in the eyes.

  They had lost Liz.

  21.

  Shoot-outs. Kidnapping. Chases. This is more than I bargained for!" the science guy shouted over the wind blowing in their faces. Behind the wheel of the blue convertible, he sounded positively hysterical. "You just said that you needed a couple of tests done, that there was no danger, damnit! Now look at us. We're fugitives!"Shut up and drive!" Morton ordered from the backseat, where he kept guard over Liz while glaring back at the vehicles doggedly pursuing them. He fired again, bang, bang, then swore venomously as his shots missed their targets. "Who the hell are these kids?"Trapped in the back of the Chevy with the enraged gunman, Liz flinched every time the gun went off, throwing her hands over her ears. Morton's unhappy curses came as a relief to her, since they meant his bullets had not yet found her friends. Be careful! she silently urged Max and the others, deathly afraid that someone she cared for might be hurt or killed while trying to rescue her. She felt like she was caught in an endless, recurring nightmare, one that had started two years ago in the Crashdown, when Max first risked everything to save her. How many times, she despaired, is Joe Morton going to make my friends place themselves in jeopardy for my sake? A siren cried shrilly somewhere behind them, and Liz didn't know whether to welcome or dread the advent of the police. She was being kidnapped, true, but she also had way too many secrets of her own, secrets that, at all costs, needed to be hidden from any and all official attention.

  The driver's reaction to the distant siren was a good deal less ambiguous. "Oh, God," he moaned. "I'm going to jail." He peered, ashen-faced, into the rearview mirror, watching for the inevitable appearance of a police car in hot pursuit. "This can't be happening! I'm a scientist, not an outlaw!"Stop whining!" Morton berated the terrified techie. "Hit the gas! Faster!" He looked like he wanted to strangle the driver and take the wheel himself. "No ones locking me up now, not this close to the big payoff!" Liz knew he was talking about the briefcase full of alien hardware, now resting on the passenger seat beside the self-proclaimed scientist. "Hit the gas or I swear I'll blow your head off right here and now!"The Chevy sped up dramatically, the sudden acceleration throwing Liz back against the padded seat cushions. "That's better," Morton muttered, twisting around to check out the road behind him. "What the-!"His florid, bloodthirsty features went pale and slack as he witnessed something that shocked him to the core. "Okada!" he called hoarsely to the science guy, whose name Liz finally learned. "Look behind us. Am I going crazy or are those cars changing color?"Liz risked a peek back over her shoulder. Sure enough, both the Jeep and the Jetta were acquiring new paint jobs right before their eyes, the surprising new hues flowing over the cars' old colors like a high tide washing over a sandy shore. Liz felt a stab of guilt, knowing that Max and the others must be frantic to rescue her if they were willing to use their powers so flagrantly in broad daylight.

  "Holy cow!" Okada exclaimed. For a moment, he sounded more intrigued than panicked, his scientific curiosity piqued by the two automobiles' inexplicable transformations. "How is that possible?"The switch occurred in seconds; only moments later, the red Jetta and olive Jeep had been completely replaced by their green and black counterparts. Infuriated by his inability to comprehend what he had just witnessed, Morton turned on Liz, jabbing his semi-automatic pistol under her chin. The steel muzzle felt hot against her tender skin. "Who are you kids?" Morton demanded, spittle flying from his blubbery lips. His face was so close to hers that she could taste his sour breath, see his yellow, tobacco-stained teeth. "What are you?"The blaring police siren, growing louder by the minute, spared Liz any need to reply immediately. "Oh crap!" Okada screeched, his voice cracking. Flashing blue lights were now visible behind them, passing the transformed Jeep and Jetta to chase after the speeding convertible and its passengers. "It's the State Patrol!"Later," Morton promised Liz ominously, before giving the cop car his full attention. "Faster!" he ordered Okada, yanking his face and gun away from his frightened hostage. "Give it everything you've got!"The Chevy shot like a rocket down the lonely desert road, leaving the Jeep and the Jetta far behind, but the black-and-white police car continued to gain on them. "ATTENTION: YOU IN THE BLUE CHEVROLET," an amplified voice addressed them sternly. "THIS IS THE STATE PATROL!" Liz heard Okada whimper pathetically; the distraught scientist was definitely not cut out for a life of crime. "SLOW DOWN AND PULL OVER AT ONCE. I REPEAT: SLOW DOWN AND PULL OVER!"The hell I will!" Morton snarled, aiming his pistol at the oncoming police vehicle. "Nobody's taking my merchandise away from me now!"He opened fire, unleashing an ear-splitting salvo of gunshots against the cops, who must have gotten nearer to the Chevy than the Jeep or the Jetta ever did, because Morton's bullets inflicted a lot more damage this time around. One shot perforated the hood of the police car, causing an eruption of steam and smoke from the engine below, while another shot tore apart the besieged car's right front tire. Morton chortled with vicious glee as the injured vehicle lost control and swerved off the road into the desert, bulldozing through a stand of thorny mesquite before coming to rest amid a miniature sandstorm generated by the car's own bumpy landing.

  "Hah!" Morton gloated. "Serves them right!" Iiz crossed her fingers, praying that the officers were okay. She stared intently, hoping to see the troopers emerge unscathed from their wrecked vehicle, but the gritty cloud obscured her view, and the Chevy literally left the crash scene in the dust as they made their getaway, Okada still whimpering quietly to himself.

  Liz searched the empty roadway stretching out behind them. She spotted no sign of either the Jeep or Maria's Jetta. Had the police car chased them off? She didn't need extrasensory perception to appreciate the dilemma her friends must have been in. I'm on my own, she realized, numb with horror. No cavalry was coming, not right away, leaving her alone and helpless with a man who had already come close to killing her once before. Maybe this time, she thought, my luck has run out.

  Consumed by a crazed desire to get as far away from the stranded State Patrol vehicle as possible, Okada kept his foot to the. Gas pedal, tlov sonnv!%xwqL 3ncj nwr. vte.U into the foothills of the looming Guadalupe Mountains. "I don't believe this! This can't be happening!" Okada kept repeating over and over, apparently unable to believe that his career as a legitimate scientist had led him to this bullet-strewn flight from justice; Liz would have felt sorry for him if her own future career prospects, along with her life, weren't also hanging by a thread.

  "I've been thinking," Okada said, glancing nervously back at Morton. "Maybe we should just turn ourselves in, before anybody gets hurt." The Chevy slowed to under fifty mph, so that the reluctant fugitive could concentrate on persuading his volatile partner. "I mean, this whole thing is getting way out of control. Testing some spacy metal you liberated from the feds is one thing, but taking hostages, shooting at police cars-that wasn't part of the deal!"Forget it!" Morton said forcefully. "Nobody's talking to the police about anything." He gave Liz a murderous look. "Let me worry about the girl."But Okada wasn't taking no for an answer. "I'm serious, Morton. You're going to get us both killed, in a police shoot-out, probably!" Mustering all his courage, the rebellious scientist tried to lay down the law. "Well, no way. I'm a PhD, not a desperado. My life is worth more than that!"Why, you-!" Morton lunged from the backseat, losing his temper, but
stopped himself before actually attacking the man driving the car. He took a deep breath, regaining control, then contemplated his mutinous accomplice with a calculating look upon his ruddy face. "Okay," he said eventually. "Pull over to the side so we can talk this over."Liz didn't like the sound of this, but she kept her mouth shut. If there was any chance that Okada could talk Morton into letting her go, she was all for it, even though that prospect struck her as extremely unlikely. Stay out of this, she told herself prudently. You don't want to get between two desperate men, especially when one of them is armed.

  Coming to a halt next to some desert shrubs, Okada parked the Chevy, then turned to confront Morton. "About time you started seeing sense," he said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Things are bad enough already. We don't want to let this disaster escalate into a full-fledged bloodbath!"Yeah, whatever you say," Morton grunted. He shoved Liz down into her seat. "Don't move a muscle!" he threatened her before swinging open the back door and stepping out of the convertible, where he then yanked open Okada's door as well. "Get out," he ordered the scientist.

  "What? I don't understand?" Okada peered up fearfully at Morton, suddenly very reluctant to surrender the wheel.

  His Adam's apple bobbed up and down like a sine wave as he made another stab at reasoning with the stocky gun man. "I thought we were going to talk about this "Get out, I said!" Morton bellowed. He plucked Okada's glasses off the shocked scientists nose and hurled them into the gravel at his feet. Liz heard glass and plastic shatter beneath the gunman's cowboy boot. "Talk time's over," Morton snarled, grabbing hold of Okada's collar and dragging him out of the parked convertible. He spun the smaller man around so that Okada's back faced the desert scrub, then pushed him away. Sneering coldly, Morton raised his gun. "Guess I don't need you anymore, professor."No, wait!" Okada cried out, trying to ward off death by throwing up his hands. He stumbled backward, almost tripping over a patch of plump cacti. "Let's work this out!"Liz knew she should look away, but all she could do was cover her ears as a single gunshot permanently ended Okada's scientific career. His crumpled body lay amid the cacti, a crimson stream irrigating the sun-baked soil. Morton gave the body a savage kick that sent it rolling into a deep ditch beside the road. "How much is your life worth now, Mr. PhD?" he remarked snidely.