I inch my head around the stall’s gate, looking through the wrought iron bars. At first, I don’t see anyone, but when I step closer and look down, I find six children looking back up at me. Two are girls, both of them white and blonde. There are four boys, young teens, but one of them doesn’t look right. His eyes are large, with large black pupils and whites that are closer to a luminous light blue. Is he wearing custom contacts? I wonder. He notes my attention and turns his face to the floor. The kids are dressed in gray jumpsuits and are relatively clean and healthy looking. But a bucket in the corner, filled with piss and shit, accentuates the degrading surroundings.
“Daddy won’t let you leave,” one of the girls says. “We’re too important.”
“Do you want to leave?” I ask.
All six kids nod, including the boy, who I now suspect is one of Harry’s unluckier sons.
“Time’s almost up,” Lindo says. “Five at the back. Shotguns all around. What you got up there?”
“Six kids,” I say, opening the stall door to release them. “We need a way out!”
“Already on it,” Lindo says a moment before the front door explodes.
18
Godin’s SUV reverses through the barn doors, shattering wood with a crack loud enough to make me flinch. The sound of gunfire booms from outside, setting some of the kids to squealing. The vehicle screeches to a stop a few feet short of running me down. I fling the rear door up without missing a beat and motion inside and shout to the kids, “Get in!”
They hesitate.
Shit.
“Running out of time!” Lindo shouts, still watching the door. “They’re coming this way!”
“Who?”
“The family. Like all of them.”
“You can’t beat them,” says the kid with big eyes, still looking at the floor.
I take the boy by the shoulders. “We don’t need to beat Harry. Just get you away from here.”
“I’m not talking about Harry, or the men attacking the farm.” The boy looks me in the eyes, and it takes all of my fortitude to not stumble back. In that moment of connection, I can feel his fear, his hopelessness, and his earnest belief in what he’s telling me. For a moment, I give in to the surge of emotion, but a lifetime of grit, and the past five years of pushing through pain and loss, keeps me resolved.
And the boy responds to it, standing a bit taller, taking a deep breath. He gives a nod and motions for the others to get in the SUV. All six kids cram into the SUV’s rear compartment. I’m about to close the hatch when the strange-eyed boy and Lindo both say, “Too late.”
There’re two loud booms from the barn’s backside. The doors slam open, unleashing a mob of killers into our midst. Lindo has them in his sights, but he doesn’t pull the trigger. Harry didn’t send his whole family after us—just his kids.
His heavily armed kids.
Lindo dives over the door of a stall as the kids open fire with shotguns. The door is shredded, hanging open and leaving Lindo exposed. Weapons turn in my direction, forcing me into the stall that held the captive children. Buckshot eats up the wood behind me, but not the SUV.
They want the kids alive. It’s our only advantage.
The pfft of sound-suppressed bullets being fired snaps through the air from Lindo’s position. Part of me is horrified that he so quickly changed his policy of not killing kids, but the rest of me is relieved that I won’t have to do it.
When high pitched screams fill the air, I realize he’s not killing them. Just wounding them. I lean out as Lindo fires his final round, winging a ten year old boy’s leg, dropping him to the floor. But there’re still eight girls and boys, and they’re closing on his position. He still has the shotgun, but that’s not a weapon for wounding people.
Gunfire from the house intensifies and is met by the resounding hammer-thump of a machine gun. One of the two helicopters opens fire, and as the bullets rain down on targets in other buildings, it’s all I can hear.
Then the bark of a shotgun.
Despite the danger I peek out and witness a blur of motion as Lindo surges from the stable, slapping the smoking barrel of a child’s shotgun away from his body. The weapon fires again, peppering several stable doors with metal pellets and riling the horses into a frenzy.
Lindo backhands the young boy, sprawling him to the ground. In the same spinning motion, he swipes his shotgun out, connecting with the side of a second boy’s head, and performing a sweep kick that drops a girl.
He moves through the group of kids like a Shaolin monk, delivering non-lethal, but quite painful strikes, disarming them as he goes. Harry’s family is well-prepared for a shooting war, but none of these kids have been trained in hand-to-hand combat, and Lindo...whatever martial art, or mix of martial arts, he’s using, he’s a master.
Who is this guy?
All I really know is that his name is Steven Cruz, he’s not an Uber driver, and he’s something like a cross between James Bond and Bruce Lee. I also know he’s currently fighting for me, and for these kids. And for now, that’s enough.
One of the first young men he dropped to the floor pulls himself up behind Lindo, shotgun in hand. He raises the weapon, slips a finger around the trigger—and never gets a chance to fire.
I pull the punch as best I can, but it’s still hard enough to send the kid sprawling like a drunk ballet dancer.
With all ten kids disarmed and moaning on the floor, Lindo turns around and flashes me a grin. “Thanks for the assist.”
His accent is gone.
I’m at a loss for words about how to respond, so I stand there like a moron for a moment. I’m snapped out of my stupor when Lindo flinches, spins around, draws the taser Godin gave him and fires. The two darts strike a young man in the chest as he rounds the door. Lindo fires the second set of darts at a young woman dressed in a bloodied prairie dress. The pair convulse and fall, their synchronization now unintentional.
Machine gun fire from above grows louder and closer. A stream of bullets cuts through the ceiling, tracing a line between Lindo and me, and leaving a series of sunlit holes.
My first thought is that they’re trying to hit us, or the van, but it’s also likely that they saw Harry’s family rush in the back. And that means they’ll be coming around for another pass.
“Help me!” I say, rushing to the nearest stable and yanking open the door. The horse inside whinnies and bucks, but it starts to move out when I step to the next stable and open it. The horses gather in a panicked mass at the center of the barn. When we’re done, there are twelve in total. I’m about to give one a smack to get them running when the chopper swings around and unleashes a fresh stream of lead into the barn. One of the horses is struck in the flank. It shrieks and kicks as its blood sprays onto its neighbors. That’s all it takes to send the large beasts streaking out of the barn.
Lindo and I fling ourselves into the SUV, slam the doors shut, and I shout “Go!”
We emerge from the barn into the bright Arizona sun just behind the stampede. The horses charge across the lot, kicking up a dust cloud that makes driving difficult, but also helps mask our presence.
I catch a glimpse of the black SUVs as we pass, and the five mercs still taking cover behind them. Then we’re beyond them, and the parking lot, racing over the horse-flattened electrified fence and into the field.
The horses stay in a group. I’m not sure where they’re going—they probably don’t know either—but it’s due south and away from the farm. “Stick with the horses as long as you can,” I tell Godin.
The SUV careens over the rough terrain, tossing us like popcorn in a hot pan, but compared to the barn, it’s almost pleasant.
“How did you know to come?” I ask Godin.
“You sent me a message.” He points to the laptop mounted to the dash between us. The black screen shows a simple text message over black: Have kids. Need you in the barn, now! – Delgado. “Would like to know how you did that.”
I look back at Lindo
, seated behind Godin. “I’d like to know, too.”
“Had to use your name, man,” Lindo says, the accent returning.
“You can cut the act, Cruz,” I say. I’m not sure what effect I was hoping for by using his real name, but I get nothing.
“I actually do prefer Lindo,” he says. “And the simple answer, in layman’s terms, is I’ve got a computer in my brain.”
“That’s why you can’t hear them,” says the boy with strange eyes. He’s leaning up over the back seat.
Lindo turns around and sees him for the first time. The look on his face is pure delight. “We haven’t met yet,” Lindo says, offering his hand. “I’m a friend. My name is—”
“Lindo,” the boy says, keeping his hands out of reach. “I heard. I’m Jacob.” Then he turns to me and says, “They’re coming.”
Lindo blinks, gives the kid a squinty stare for a moment, and then says, “He’s right.”
“No computer needed,” Jacob says, tapping his head. Free of the barn, he’s becoming a sarcastic little bugger. I like him. When his confidence wavers, I cringe. He seems to have an extra sense of the world around him, so his sudden fear can’t be a good thing.
Machine gun fire pounds the air behind us. White hot tracer rounds cut through the horse-driven dust cloud. Ahead of us, there’s an explosion of red and a shriek. The struck horse topples. I see its feet upend for a moment and then my head thumps against the ceiling as we drive over the creature’s neck.
When the right-side wheels dig into the earth again, we swerve to the left, slipping out of the dust cloud for a moment. That’s all it takes for me to see one of the two Black Hawks pursuing us. The chopper is flying sideways, a hundred feet up, a gunner in the side door.
The big gun redirects toward us and I shout, “Back inside the dust!”
“But the horses!” Godin says.
“Screw the horses!” Young shouts from the back seat.
As we swerve back into the dust’s fold, a large equine body slams into the SUV’s side, spider-webbing the window next to Young.
In the back, Wini unbuckles and turns around, whispering comforting words to the children, who have begun to scream with every turn, thump, and close call.
Tracer rounds burn through the brown grit, striking another horse. It flails and falls away.
They’re whittling down our cover. Looking for a clear shot.
“They’re not trying to kill us,” Godin observes.
“They’ll want us alive,” Jacob says. “You all, not so much. Not after questioning you.” He turns to Lindo. “Well, they might take you alive. But not the rest of you.”
I think I mistook blunt honesty for sarcasm earlier. Jacob doesn’t pull punches.
Another fusillade of .50 caliber bullets tears into another of our escorts, thinning the dust cloud even more. That I can see blue sky ahead means the chopper above can see us, too. It won’t be long before one of those big rounds punches a hole in the engine.
“We’re out of time.” Jacob says, all emotion draining from his face.
“Hard left!” Lindo shouts, even louder. “In three, two—”
19
“Now!” Lindo shouts.
Godin taps the brakes just enough to allow the horse beside us to take the lead. Then he spins the wheel left. The vehicle’s eleven occupants slide to the right, crushed against the doors and windows. The chopper soars past, low to the ground, still pursuing the dust cloud. Rotor wash scours the hardpacked earth, kicking up a dust storm of its own and erasing our tire tracks.
We race toward a solid wall of brown stone.
A dead end.
“Lindo…” I say, and I don’t need to add anything else. His name is a threat. If he’s screwing us over somehow...
“There’s a cold spot.” Lindo taps the side of his head. “Thermals don’t lie.” He points. “There!”
I almost miss the gorge’s entrance. It’s hidden behind a wall of stone that blends perfectly with the wall behind it, creating the illusion of one solid wall.
Godin slows to a careful crawl and makes the sharp turn into the gorge. It’s a tight fit. Just two feet of clearance on either side. The walls stretch up several hundred feet. It feels safe, but if the Black Hawk passes overhead, the sheriff’s SUV will be easy to spot.
“Keep going,” Lindo insists. He looks like he’s just staring off into space, but he’s seeing things the rest of us can’t. “They’re coming back around.”
Deep inside the gorge, Godin turns on the lights and gooses the engine. We work our way down the winding path, flanked by layers of brown, orange, and maroon strata. And then there’s a ceiling.
Darkness melts over us. For a moment, it feels safe.
Then ominous.
“You feel it, too,” Jacob whispers to me. “Don’t you?”
“How do you do that?” I ask. “Know what people are thinking?”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” he says.
“He’s an empath,” Wini says, her tone suggesting that the conclusion should have been obvious. “Like Deanna Troi.”
“I have no idea who that is,” I say.
Lindo looks at me like I’ve just said that I have a computer in my brain. So does Young. And Godin.
“Really?” Godin asks, eyes wide as he steers through the smooth-walled cave. “She was the half-human, half-Betazoid Starfleet officer.”
“Next Generation,” Young adds.
“Star Trek?” I ask, recognizing the Next Generation reference.
“The comparison isn’t entirely inaccurate,” Jacob says. “Though Betazoids are fictional.”
“Empaths aren’t real,” Young says, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t gotten a good look at Jacob’s face yet, and here, in the dark, he’s not going to get a chance. “Perceptive maybe, but—”
“You’re afraid,” Jacob says.
“We’re all afraid,” Young says. “We saw mutilated animals, a Mormon cult wants us dead, and a team of mercenaries is hunting us.”
“It’s more than that,” Jacob says, calmer in the dark. “You’re afraid…of what people will think of you…because of bad things you did.”
After a moment of heavy silence, Young says, “The grace Jesus offers is enough to cover a multitude of—”
“It’s not Jesus you’re worried about losing, though. It’s—”
“Enough,” Young says.
“Do the rest of us,” Wini says, and while I can’t see the other adults in the vehicle, I can feel their tension.
“You’re afraid…for him.” No one can see who Jacob is looking at, but it’s not hard to figure out he’s talking about me. “Not that he might lose his life, but…that he’ll never get it back…” Jacob sounds confused. “What does that mean?”
“Sometimes,” Wini says, “people endure a hurt from which it is nearly impossible to recover.”
“You’re not talking about physical wounds,” Jacob surmises. “The sheriff is afraid for his life, and those of other people he is close to. That his actions today will put them in danger. And it might. I’m sorry.”
Godin stops the SUV two hundred feet inside the cave. The twin headlight beams get lost in a larger cavern ahead. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that the men pursuing us felt…ruthless.”
“That’s putting it lightly,” Lindo says, making himself a target for Jacob’s keen perceptions.
“You’re afraid that the others will cast you aside when they learn the truth,” Jacob says.
“What truth?” I ask.
“You’d have to ask him,” Jacob says. “I can’t read minds, just feelings, which are nuanced enough to guess the broad strokes.”
Though I’m curious about who Lindo really is, and his agenda, he’s helped keep us alive. That earns him a postponement of his interrogation. And Young’s scandalous business, whatever it is, can stay his business. “I think we can stop.”
“But I haven’t done you, yet,” J
acob says, his voice calmer than I’ve heard it. Diving into other people’s emotions puts him at ease, or at least lets him know his own fear isn’t a solitary condition. Then again, how much of his fear is being fueled by his ability to experience ours? Verbalizing our fears might give him some relief, like venting to a shrink.
I already know what he’s going to say, and I’m okay with it. “Go ahead.”
“You…” Jacob’s voice fades a little. “You’re afraid…to be happy? Is that right?”
I’m not sure what to say. It’s not what I would have said about myself. Afraid to let go, maybe. Afraid of the envelope. But happy?
“Afraid to be loved,” Jacob adds. His words feel like a fresh cut. Hot and harsh. “Because…it could hurt. A lot.”
“Yeah,” I say to a silent audience. “Sounds about right.”
“Is that…a tear on your cheek?” Jacob asks.
His question snaps me out of the emotional quagmire Jacob dropped me into and back into my more comfortable analytic self. “You can see me. In the dark.”
Aside from the lit cavern ahead of us, I can’t see anything.
“My biology is...adapted to subterranean environments.”
“How?” Lindo asks, a little too eager.
“Genetics,” Jacob says. His intellect strikes me as being advanced for his age. Probably advanced for my age. “Like Deanna Troi, I am only partly human, though in terms of percentages, I’m closer to seventy percent human, rather than Troi’s fifty percent, primarily because I had neither father nor mother.”
“Do you remember where you were…born?” Lindo asks.
Three deep breaths and then, “In a place like this.” Jacob’s own fear surfaces. “But kept at the ranch.”
“You’ve been a prisoner there?” I ask.
“I was unaware of my true status until last night.”
He’s talking about the UFO. “What happened?”
“We were brought to the stables,” he says. “There were twelve other children. Fully human. They were taken. We were scheduled for tonight. I suppose we still are.”
The Others Page 12
