(R)evolution (Phoenix Horizon Book 1)

by PJ Manney

  Unplugging the connecting power cable from the blood pressure monitor, he exposed the internal electrical wire from inside the plastic insulation by rubbing it vigorously against a sharp metal edge of the mirror frame in the bathroom and ripping off the female end. He stripped more insulation from the ragged ends.

  All the flammable materials he could find were lumped in a pile: cloth and paper towels, paperwork, and antiseptic wipes. He ripped opened the wipes packets, so the alcohol in them would burn.

  Plugging in the exposed power cord to the outlet nearest to the door, he held on to the plastic sheathing and touched the two raw ends together right next to the paper towels, causing a short and spark. A paper towel caught the spark and smoldered alight. A breaker flipped somewhere on the floor, extinguishing the lights in his room, and he assumed elsewhere. He fanned the flame. There was a sudden commotion in the hallway. People yelled in surprise, but within a second, the building’s generator kicked in, while nurses ran for patients’ rooms to make sure the most vulnerable were all right.

  “Lazlo” tried opening the door to the room. When it didn’t, he banged on it. “Open up!”

  Peter lit the remaining paper towels as kindling and worked to get his bonfire ablaze, making sure it spread to the bed as well. He grabbed an oxygen hose and stretched it as far as it could reach, aiming directly at the fire to keep it burning hot, then wrapped it around a chair leg to anchor it in place. It made a nice little bellows, and he leveled the tiny flamethrower at the barricaded door.

  This was a real blaze. The room filled with smoke.

  Coughing, he struggled with the window, but it hadn’t opened fully in years. Could his skinny body get through the nine-inch opening he managed to make?

  Male voices shouted outside his door and battered their shoulders against it. The bed jerked a little farther from the door with each shove.

  Fresh air rushed through the small opening, adding oxygen to the fire. The smoke was getting too heavy to breathe.

  An agent’s eye peered into the one-inch-wide crack they had made in the doorway. “Fire!”

  Peter climbed onto a nightstand and, hoping it would support his weight, reached up to plug in the fire alarm. The siren screamed instantly, and he leapt down on quivering legs as a gunshot hit the wall above his head. Hoping the window was out of range, he grabbed the cell phone, clamping it between his jaws. He stuck his head out sideways to get it through, then shimmied his shoulders and arms out. When he looked down, the agent in the car and the agent guarding the door were gone. They were busy storming his door.

  Stabbing pain shot through his chest, his ribs guillotined between the window’s lower sash rail and the sill, pinning him like an insect specimen. He was stuck.

  Wriggling in agony to get through, the door shoved open another crack. A shot hit the window. Glass shattered. He shut his eyes and ducked, almost dropping the cell phone to the wet concrete below as his jaws twitched involuntarily. He squeezed his mouth down hard.

  They were sticking a hand through the crack, unable to aim and shooting wildly. He heard screams in the hall and a bigger commotion at the door.

  It was the shot of adrenaline he needed. Utilizing his body’s shaking from pain and fear, he shimmied furiously again to work one leg out of the window. It was an old building, with brick facing and old ledge work. Peter grabbed onto the window frame and dragged his other leg out, rubbery toes gripping onto the ledge. It was hard to maintain his quivering hold on the rain-slick building. He crept along the ledge to the adjacent room’s window and peeked in carefully. A fed beat him to it. Luckily, they couldn’t open that window, either, and couldn’t see him. If he didn’t get past the window, it was too big a jump to the top of the portico overhanging the entrance. He wasn’t sure he could make it.

  A white box truck, with panels painted “Driven Snow Linen Service,” trundled down the driveway toward the building. It would pass under and out the other side two stories below him.

  When the fed ran to another room, Peter crouched and clung to the exterior sill. He scuttled sideways under the sill, inching past. No one inside noticed rubber-gloved fingers skimming the granite outside.

  If he didn’t jump now, he’d miss the truck. He had to concentrate on keeping the phone in his mouth, no matter what. And not being seen.

  Down he dropped, over fifteen feet, landing on all fours on the gravel-strewn portico roof. Hands and legs were lacerated as he scrambled for the end of the overhang and fell onto the large delivery truck’s container roof. He hoped the guy in the cab didn’t hear the thud. Flattening himself out, he grabbed at his soaking wet hospital gown flapping in the back. No need to have his bare ass smiling at every passing bird. Or copter.

  He debated if he should call Talia’s number. Logically, he didn’t know how she could be working for the club if she was keeping him alive. So who did she work for? There was only one way to find out . . . He pressed the green button.

  One ring. Two rings. Talia answered, panicked. “Where the hell are you?”

  Shielding the phone as best he could from water and wind, fire alarms rang in the background of the call. She was at the hospital. “Look for the Driven Snow Linen Service truck. White, twenty feet long.” He peeked over at a street sign. “We’ve made a right onto Bruceville Road.”

  “Shit! If they knew you were there, they may know the car I’m driving. Fuck!”

  “Borrow Carbone’s.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Then hot-wire one.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll talk you through it.”

  “They taught that at Stanford?”

  “It’s a home-grown talent.”

  “What do I look for?”

  “A vintage Ford, sixties or seventies. They’re the easiest. You need an unlocked door or break the passenger-side glass.”

  “Why passenger side?”

  “Do you want to sit on broken glass? Or waste your time cleaning it up?”

  “Good point.” He heard the splatter of feet running on wet pavement.

  She was breathing hard as she raced through the lot. “I don’t see anything . . .”

  “Keep looking.”

  More time passed. “I found a Mustang!” she exclaimed.

  “Good. Pop the hood.”

  He heard her grunt, but no shattering of glass. “I’m pulling the hood release, but it won’t open!”

  “Does it say Mach I anywhere on it?”

  There was a pause. “Yes.”

  “It’s high performance. Two clips keep the hood from flying open at high speed. See them on top? Remove them and the hood will open . . . Did you break the glass?”

  “It’s unlocked.”

  “A vintage Mach I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Schmuck. Deserves to lose it.”

  Peter heard the muffled thud of metal. “Got it,” she said.

  “The distributor’s right up front—that thing with all the spark plug wires coming out of it. See it? Now follow the middle wire to the coil.”

  “Okay.”

  “Find the plus terminal on the coil and wrap one end of your wire around that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now string the wire to the plus battery terminal and wrap the other end of the wire around that.”

  “That’s why they call it ‘hot wire’?”

  “Yes. Now follow the plus battery cable to a little black can thing on the left side of the engine compartment. That’s the starter solenoid. The cable is attached with a nut. Pull off the rubber connector closest to where the battery cable attaches, leaving a bolt exposed.” He could hear her breathing. “Got it?”

  “Ummm . . . yeah.”

  “Okay. Now place any metal object—screwdriver, earring, anything conductive—across to connect the nut and bolt simultaneously and the car will start.”

  He could hear the sound of rummaging. Probably looking in her handbag. “Shit . . .”

  “What’s wrong
?”

  Another pause. “Nothing . . .”

  The engine started.

  “You did it! Now haul ass before the owner comes out!”

  A car door slammed. The background noise went quiet.

  “We’re making a right into Kaiser Permanente. Someone will look out a window and see a patient on top of a truck!” He slid left and grabbed a panel seam as anchor. “Shit!”

  “No! It’s okay. I’ll be there.”

  “Do it soon . . .” He peeked over the side. “Follow the ‘deliveries’ arrow.”

  “Got it.”

  He lay there, counting in his head. In ten seconds, he’d come within sight of the windows of the hospital, and his hospital gown and pale body would no longer blend in with the truck’s paint job. By “seven,” there was a rumbling roar behind him. It was a tweaked Mustang V8, maybe the sweetest sound he had ever heard. “Thank you.”

  “As soon as you stop, roll off away from the windows and the driver, if you can.”

  “Will do.” He closed the phone. The truck did a K-turn and backed up to the delivery bay. The moment the driver braked, Peter scrambled over the edge and, hanging from gloved hands, dropped to the asphalt. Intense shooting pains crumpled both legs. At the covered entrance, the guard missed an almost-naked patient stumbling away.

  Talia hit the turn at sixty miles per hour, but seeing Peter stagger toward her, slammed the brakes. The car spun, momentum continuing in his direction. He dived as far as he could, hitting wet pavement. The car skidded closer . . . closer—she was going to run him over!—until the tire grazed his leg. And stopped.

  The passenger door flew open, barely missing his head. “Get in!” she yelled.

  He crawled into the tiny, dual-bucket rear seats and Talia hit the gas. Hard. Tires squealed, the door slammed with forward thrust and they raced to the exit.

  He ducked as low as possible. “You know how to lay patch,” he gasped.

  “Give me the phone,” barked Talia.

  He handed it over. She headed for the 99 Freeway north. Once into traffic, she carefully tossed both her and his cell phones out her window, aiming for the most likely place tires would roll. Peter looked out the rear window. Both phones got nailed within seconds.

  “No comm tower’s gonna ping me and get away with it.” She pointed up to the E-Z Pass glued to the driver’s windshield before tearing it off the glass and throwing it out after its cell phone cousins. “When are people going to realize these things are information mother lodes for the government, the marketers, and every retailer in the world? Once the unholy trinity know who you are, not only do they follow you everywhere and record your movements, the media companies sell the information wholesale, so everyone can sell you more shit you don’t need or have you surveilled by name-your-government-acronym . . .” She took the first exit and reentered the freeway going south.

  “You with a militia?”

  “That’s funny coming from you.” She pulled another ancient cell phone out of her wet handbag.

  “Jesus. How many do you have?” The drop in adrenaline sped up time again and he shivered with cold and pain. Talia took off the cheap plastic raincoat and ratty sweater she wore over her T-shirt and handed them back to Peter as she cranked up the heat.

  “Wish I had more. And it’ll be a while. Get some rest.” She pulled out a couple of bobby pins, peeled off the blond wig, and stuffed them into her purse. Her red curls fell around her shoulders and she shook them out.

  “Where we going?” he asked.

  “San Francisco.”

  “Good,” he said. “Take me to Carter. Jackson Avenue at Alta Plaza Park.” But even though he fought to stay alert, he fell asleep.

  He woke in panic to honking horns near Livermore. He didn’t know where he was.

  “It’s all right . . .” Talia soothed.

  They approached the web of freeways that entwined the region, caught in rainy-day rush-hour traffic. He scrubbed at his face with his fists. “You got a makeup mirror in there?” pointing to her handbag.

  “Need to fix your lipstick?”

  “To quote a one-time friend, ‘Such a comedian . . .’ ” With his new voice and Ruth’s accent, he sounded like Rodney Dangerfield’s mother after a bender.

  She smiled and handed back her entire handbag. The contents only added to her mystery. After the wig and pins, he found three wallets, all black, but each a different style, with a different driver’s license, matching credit cards, and personal papers. Half a dozen cell phones remained. Some lip gloss, eye liner. A tiny packet of tissues. A case with a pair of large sunglasses. A bottle of ibuprofen. He opened the bottle and dry swallowed five capsules. He found the metal compact mirror in a small zipper pocket, along with makeup. She must have used the metal case to hot-wire the car. It had engraved on the front, “ ‘If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.’ Katherine Hepburn.” By Hepburn’s definition, Talia was a very fun girl. He opened it and took a good look at his face again.

  She caught sight of him in her rearview mirror. “Hope you like it. I picked it out, special . . .”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, I couldn’t just hand them a photo of Peter Bernhardt to work from, now could I? I gave them a photo of a guy close enough that a surgeon wouldn’t say, ‘That’s not the guy on the table!’ but enough off that you’d end up unrecognizable. Your face was such a mess, it wasn’t too hard to put it back any damn way they wanted, but the old-timer plastic doc definitely did a double take at my photo. He understood faces. He knew your cubist mess of flesh and bone and the photo didn’t match. The young doc with him didn’t know enough to be surprised. That teaches me to only work with the inexperienced . . . they know and ask less. But they did a damn good job in my opinion.” She gave him a quick appraisal as she drove. “You look older, more angular, almost ascetic, like some Spanish Grande or martyred saint by El Greco. Not some young, German-American bioengineer. You certainly sound different.”

  Peter’s grimace betrayed a bent ego.

  “Hey, don’t get me wrong,” she explained. “You’re attractive . . . really quite striking. Just different.”

  “When we get to Carter’s, park on Pierce. I’ll go down the alley . . .”

  She snorted with a glance in the rearview mirror. “That’s not your first stop. Not yet.”

  Freeway signs flew by. Peter said, “Then take the 580 to the 880.”

  “We’re not going there, either.”

  “Yes we are.”

  “She’s not home,” she insisted.

  “I need to see for myself.”

  “You really want to get caught, don’t you? That’s the first place I’d leave a stakeout if I were the club!”

  “Stanford Avenue!” he rasped.

  “You really are a scientist! You need proof? Great idea. Let’s turn you over to the club!” Talia didn’t say another word until they turned off El Camino.

  Peter ducked as low as he could to still peek out the rear windows. The gray shingled house with the farmstead roof and the zipper fence looked . . . sad. The grass was long. There were no lights on. Talia didn’t slow down.

  “Four o’clock, navy Crown Victoria,” she whispered, lips barely moving.

  A guy sat in the front seat, reading a paper. She was right. He was staking it out.

  Peter reached for a phone.

  “Don’t. It’s disconnected.”

  He decided to believe her. He had no choice. “I need to call information. Can I do that?”

  “For what?”

  “I need a number in Oregon.”

  She pulled out a phone and handed it to him, then turned down Hanover Street, so she could get back to the 280. He dialed 411. “Madras, Oregon . . . Subhuti Community . . . S-U-B-H-U-T-I Community . . . yes . . .” He handed the phone to Talia. “Ask for Shakti Alvarez. Then ask Shakti if she knows where Ananda is.” He said the name like it rhymed with “anaconda.”

  “Ananda? Shakti? Where the hell is this
?” The phone rang several times. Then someone answered. “Yes . . . Shakti Alvarez please . . . Yes, I’ll hold . . .”

  Peter looked out the window. She was headed toward his dark green oaks and tawny hillsides. They looked different now. They weren’t his hills anymore.

  Talia whispered while on hold, “What’s Subhuti?”

  “It’s Sanskrit for ‘good existence.’ She was born and raised on an ashram. Where the groovy and Buddhistly inclined could live together with their guru as though the ’60s never ended. Carter thought ‘Ananda,’ which means ‘bliss’ in Sanskrit, didn’t fit the new person she wanted to be after she fled the commune. So he changed it to ‘Amanda.’ After his favorite Noel Coward character in a play called Private Lives. That was freshman year. He introduced us freshman year . . .”

  Talia raised her pinkie. “Yes, is this Shakti? . . . Oh, good. Hi, my name’s Angelica Sternwood and I’m wondering if Ananda is around? Uh huh . . . Well, if you hear from her, could you please give her my phone number for me? It’s important . . . Well, you might hear from her, you never know . . . Uh huh . . . Sure, I’ll hold . . .” When Shakti found a pencil and paper, Talia gave her a number, thanked her, and hung up. In her rearview mirror, Peter stared blankly out the window. “She said she was surprised about anyone asking for Ananda. They haven’t heard from her in four years.”

  He struggled against inevitable tears. Amanda never made it to Oregon. They’d killed her. And her mother didn’t know.

  “Get off at Woodside,” he blurted out.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Evergreen Nursing Home.”

  “No. I’m taking you where it’s safe.”

  “The. Evergreen. Nursing. Home.”

  “Why don’t you get I’m trying to save you?”

  “I’m sorry you don’t ‘get’ family or love,” he shot back savagely, “but I do.”

  Talia looked stricken, but said nothing. She exited at Woodside, and he directed her with single words to the building.

  Overwhelmed with finding Amanda, he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten about his own father. He feared the money he had set aside for Pop’s care had disappeared. Would they stick him in a public home, a ward of the state?