Those weren’t normal circumstances, though. Tex might have been distant and cool toward her, but she knew he wouldn’t allow Gary to kill her. She didn’t want Tex to kill Gary either, though.
Erika kept her hands on the wheel and the pedal to the floor. “Just be cool. Put the gun down. We don’t want to hurt you. We just need your car and—”
Gary pulled the steering wheel with his left hand while he tried to point the gun at her with his right. The car jerked, but Erika pulled the wheel hard in the opposite direction with her left hand while she beat at Gary’s hand with her right. She nearly ran into a Ford pickup as she pulled into westbound traffic.
Gary shouted at her, “Stop, or so help me, I’ll shoot yer ass!”
Blood rushed in her ears and her voice was no longer calm. “Put the gun down, Gary. Now! Before—”
The gun dropped to the floor of the car as Gary choked and spat, gasping for air.
“Tex, stop!” she screamed. “You don’t need to kill this guy.”
He ignored her, though. He had gotten even more efficient at the business of killing. Terminating Gary took less than two minutes. His body was a lifeless mass slumped against the passenger window in the front seat.
Erika wiped her drippy nose and wet eyes with the back of a shirtsleeve. She had difficulty seeing through bleary eyes and it was hard to hear with the sound of blood rushing in her ears. She thought she heard sirens. She avoided looking toward the dead man just a few feet away from her.
Her ankle and foot ached from pressing the accelerator to the floor, but she didn’t dare let up. If an authentic border patrol or law enforcement officer caught up to them, they’d find the dead body and arrest first, ask questions later.
A green sign came into view, and she took the exit. She hoped it was the one for Safford.
Erika took the ramp at sixty and nearly wiped out as she rounded the curve. Somehow, she kept it on the road, but the speed of the turn made Gary’s body fling toward her. His dead head landed on the seat next to her, his wisp of white hair brushing against her thigh.
She wanted to scream—to cry—to stop the car, jump out, and run away from dead Gary and dangerous, unpredictable Tex. She wanted to run until she got home. The thought of home reminded her that she no longer had one.
Stop it, Erika. Stop, stop, stop. She sniffed one more time, took a deep breath, and blinked away the tears from her eyes. Erika ignored the stop sign at the intersection and hoped no semi was barreling toward her as she gunned it onto the road leading northeast.
“Are we being followed?” she asked.
Tex remained curled into a tight ball, his voice muffled as he spoke. “I took care of them. For now.”
She tried not to think about what Tex meant exactly by “took care of them.” They’d spent enough time together in danger to have a pretty good idea what he meant.
“Do you think they saw enough of us to ID the car?” she asked.
“Unknown.”
Erika didn’t want to ditch yet another car. Worse still, she didn’t want to repeat how they’d gotten the Olds and put another human at risk for the same fate Gary got. “Any chance you can manipulate the matter of this car to change how it looks?”
Tex cocked his head to the side, his eyes far off as if thinking about her question. Finally he said, “Perhaps. I have not tried such a task before, at least not on such a grand scale. But I will attempt it.”
He closed his eyes and sat with his legs curled beneath him. He looked like a small, thin, big-headed Buddha.
The change was subtle at first. The color of car’s hood went from a dark, navy blue to dark green. That might have been enough to throw someone off a little, but it was unlikely to foil the Makers men completely.
A thin film of sweat shone on Tex’s forehead.
One moment Erika was driving a four-door sedan, and the next, she was behind the wheel of a Jetta.
“Jack’s car?” she asked.
It was, even down to a pine-tree air freshener hanging from the mirror. The only difference was that Tex had made the car a light tan rather than white.
“Besides the truck that I ignited, it is the only other car that I know.”
Erika drove them northeast toward New Mexico, her eyes glued to her mirrors, waiting for a copter or police car to catch up to them. Running for her life on a lack of sleep had exhausted her. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t running from something.
She got off the two-lane highway, worried that even a two-lane road was too obvious. Using the narrow, twisty road would take them even longer to make it to the wooded, remote, mountainous area where her Aunt Dana lived, but she thought going slow and shaking them off the trail was better than fast and running into them again.
As they traveled on the back roads, no sign announced, “Welcome to the Land of Enchantment” to let them know they’d entered New Mexico. She knew they had left Arizona only because she’d traveled to Aunt Dana’s house many times when she was younger. She remembered the subtle changes in the surroundings—the climb in elevation and the scrub giving way to squatty evergreens and sagebrush.
Erika rolled down her window and took in the scent of juniper and dirt. The cool air had a bright crispness to it that said fall but that was rarely felt as far south as Ajo. She breathed it in, relishing the clean air in her lungs after weeks in the dank, musty, oxygen-lacking underground world of the Conexus.
“Let me know if it gets too cold for you,” Erika said.
She wasn’t sure if Tex was still awake. He’d gone silent again.
Then he said, “It feels… good.” His eyes were wide and bright in the midmorning light, his skin less pale than it had been when they’d first left the school. “New Mexico is different.”
“Yes. A subtle change, but definitely not the same as Arizona.”
“I think I will like this New Mexico,” Tex said.
Erika chose to let him bask in a small moment of wonder and apparent happiness, at least as content as she generally ever saw him. She decided to keep to herself the gnawing fear that Aunt Dana wouldn’t welcome her with open arms.
8
TEX
Tex’s head spun as he catalogued the new sights and odors of the unfamiliar place called New Mexico. Erika had referred to it as the “Land of Enchantment.” Tex didn’t know if humans actually believed the land had magical properties, but he understood how the superstition could arise.
The light of the place was different from that in Arizona. It was somehow softer, more gentle yet still bright and sunny. A scientific explanation for the difference in the quality of the light escaped him, but it was unmistakable. Even a human would notice it.
Fewer particles of air pollution from manufacturing and vehicle exhaust were there. He breathed deeply of the clean air. His chest ached from the effort as his remaining lung tried to compensate for the missing one, stolen from him by the Conexus. His anger at them over the loss of his lung collided with the implanted memories of belonging to the hive. The cognitive dissonance made his head throb. He breathed the cool air more deeply and calmed himself. The anger served no purpose. He would simply have to adapt to having only half the lung capacity. I cannot grow a new lung, after all. Can I?
Tex wanted to examine every piñon tree and antelope, to sear those new images into his brain. He considered asking Erika to stop the car so he could run with a herd of animals galloping in a nearby meadow, but he was not strong enough to keep up. Using his powers to create shields, immobilize chase cars, and alter the structure of the vehicle had taken out of him what little energy he had built up since they’d come back from the world of the Conexus.
During his time with the Conexus collective, he’d had access to all their cumulative knowledge. It was a wisdom and history that stretched back for millennia—back to before the Regina existed, back to a time the Conexus considered legend and myth. Back to human history. He knew what was coming, and he would need all the strength he could muster to s
urvive.
The news report about the attacks in Europe had confirmed that. That is how it began. They had very little time before things would get very tough. He knew of a way to prevent the human world from ending up like the Conexus, cut off from the sky and living in the dark. Even at his full powers and without missing pieces of himself, though, it would’ve been a long shot.
Tex forced himself to seek rest. He grudgingly withdrew from the joy of discovery of new sensations in the place called New Mexico. Though he tried to enter the quantum realm and heal, his fractured mind flitted from one thought to another.
Erika had held him against herself in the dark hallway of A.H.D.N.A., the red lights blinking, her body warm and soft. The Regina’s long, thin finger traced a line down his face. Her touch sent chills down his spine, and he shivered now as he recalled it. Dr. Randall’s eyes were misty with tears when they rescued him from house arrest in Apthartos. He smelled the acrid odor of dead bodies befouled with their own urine and the stench of blood—or perhaps that was own blood he had detected as he lay on the cold table in the world of the Conexus.
Tex touched the back of his head, half expecting to feel the metal clamps that had held the cable connecting him to the hive mind. On and on his turmoil went, his fractured mind unable to focus. He was restless and fidgety.
“Are you okay back there?” Erika asked.
He was not okay, but he did not want to alarm her with the knowledge of just how unokay he was. He slowly blinked his eyes and tried to clear the blurriness. “I am here.”
“Oh, good. I’ve got to stop for gas when we hit the next town, and I’m thinking we should dispose of Gary somehow and—”
Tex rubbed at his temples. “Erika, please slow down your speech.” His voice was harsher and more impatient than he had intended.
“You don’t have to bite my head off. I’m exhausted, okay. I’ve been driving for hours while you were sleeping—”
“Meditating.”
“Whatever. You got to rest. I didn’t. And I’m up here with a dead guy decomposing next to me, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stop acting like Emperor Asshole for a minute and help me find a way to get rid of the body so I don’t have to sit with a dead guy.”
The longer Erika talked, the pitchier her voice became. At the end of her tirade, her voice was downright shrill, and her eyes glistened with angry tears.
Tex had no logical reason to fear Erika. She could not harm him. Even if she picked up the gun and tried to shoot him, he could stop the bullet in midair and even turn it on her if he wanted.
Yet she had a way of compelling him to attempt to avoid her wrath. Tex didn’t understand it. No one else made him feel that way. No one except Commander Sturgis. He didn’t want her to be angry with him but it was more than that. He had never cared what humans thought of him before, but he cared what Erika thought. Perhaps too much.
He was unaccustomed to apologizing, but he gave it a try. “I am… sorry.”
“It’s…” Erika wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. “It’s okay.” Her eyes were puffy and surrounded by dark circles. Her dark hair clung to her head from days of accumulated grime. She was only slightly less gaunt and pale than she’d been the day they arrived at the school.
Though she looked like a worn-out shell of the woman he had first met, he could not help feeling every bit as drawn to her now as he had then. He practically heard Commander Sturgis’s voice in his head, admonishing him to avoid attraction to others. She had trained him to deny himself friendships or even family. He was meant to be a weapon, a guardian of humans against alien threat.
“You will need all of your focus for your job,” Commander Sturgis had said. “Attractions—relationships—will only distract you. Allowing yourself even a single dalliance with a woman will undo you, 9. Don’t forget that.”
Tex hated Sturgis so much that he assumed she’d lied about everything. But as he stared at the back of Erika’s angry head, wishing beyond all wishes that he could find a way to simply make her care for him as much as he found himself caring for her, he wondered if Commander Sturgis had spoken the truth, about that one topic anyway. Erika, you will be the death of me.
Tex turned his attention back to the immediate issue. Erika was right. They could not continue to drive around with a dead man in the car. “Pull onto that side road. The one ahead.”
Erika did as he requested without argument and turned onto an unpaved forest-service spur road. After about a mile, the dirt road became not much more than a wide trail. They drove slowly over the rutted road but met no other cars on it.
Dust billowed behind them. A layer of rusty red dirt was covering the tan car. After another mile or so of rough driving, Erika pulled off the narrow trail and forced the car over a patch of sagebrush. She finally stopped in a spot of barren dirt.
Erika flung her door open and escaped the car without a word. A cloud of dust wafted around her, and she coughed. “Must not have rained here last night.”
Tex’s muscles were more limber than a human’s, but he too was glad to exit the vehicle. He stretched his arms overhead then bent over to stretch his calves. His eyes caught the side of the car, and he could not help the chortle that escaped his throat.
“What’s so funny?” Erika stretched too.
“I do not think I have a career ahead of me painting cars.” Though he had managed to force the paint molecules into a different color, the effect was uneven. The car looked as though it had been spray-painted with a sprayer filled with several different paints. Splotches of tan were layered over patches of dark blue and even bits of white, green, and orange showing here and there. “I have made a mess of this car.”
Erika shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We’re likely going to have to ditch it soon anyway. I gotta pee. Stay here. And no peeking.”
“Where are you going?”
“Into the woods over there. Just stay here, okay?”
She scurried off through the sagebrush and into a thin stand of piñon. Tex had spent enough time around humans to know that they all had a rather peculiar need for privacy regarding the basic functions of their bodies, facts of biology shared by all.
Erika cursed softly at a bramble bush and a few seconds later had choice words for the thorns on an acacia tree. She finally stopped, and Tex withdrew his attention before he sensed too much. Even from a distance, he could hear her unzip her jeans and smell the results of her makeshift bathroom. He had spent enough time with Erika to know she would likely be upset with him even for hearing her pee, let alone watching her.
He turned his back to her and instead stared at the dead body in the car. The man’s face was already bloated and pale.
Erika had cried over the man’s death. Tex knew human morals dictated he should regret killing the man, but the truth was he did not regret it. Though he wanted to deny all that Sturgis had taught him—all she had genetically programmed into him—he had been trained not to feel remorse, regret, or guilt about killing. The only feeling he had about Gary was relief that the man no longer posed a threat to reveal Tex to those that hunted him.
Tex popped the trunk in the off chance that Gary had been carrying around a shovel. A musty blanket covered in grass was there, along with a rickety aluminum-frame lawn chair, two road flares covered in a thick layer of dust, a spare tire with almost no tread, and a tire iron. Tex picked up the iron and examined it. The steel rod could be a useful weapon, but it would make a lousy shovel. He put the flares in his pockets, tossed the tire iron into the back seat, and closed the trunk.
Erika appeared from behind a nearby juniper tree. “Ah. So much better.” Her stomach rumbled loudly as she approached him.
“You need to eat.”
Her eyes landed on Gary’s bloated body. “Not anymore.” Her brows knitted into a deep furrow, and she scowled at Tex.
He avoided her angry glare. “It would be best if we could bury the body to prevent anyone finding it, but we have no tools, and I am not stro
ng enough to create a hole via telekinesis. We’ll have to dump the body and cover it as best we can.” Tex grabbed Gary’s shoulders and began to pull the heavy body out of the car.
Erika’s arms were crossed over herself. “We may have another option. Unfortunately, it will require us to carry Gary for a ways.”
Gary’s body was half out of the car, his legs still lying on the seat.
“Why?” Tex asked.
“It’s an awful thing to do to him, really.” Erika wrung her hands. “I mean, if I was dead, I wouldn’t want it to end like this for me. But I don’t see another choice.”
Tex resumed dragging Gary out of the car. “What are you talking about, Erika?”
The man landed with a thud, and a poof of rusty red dirt billowed around him.
“When I was doing my business, I noticed an old water tank for cattle. I haven’t seen any cattle on our drive, so maybe it’s abandoned. But with the rains lately, it’s probably got water in it. It’s about a hundred yards from where I was, so it’s a ways to take him. We can dump the body there. Even if it’s still being used, in this remote area, it could be weeks before anyone’s out here to check the tank.”
Even a few weeks in water would cause the body to decompose more rapidly than if buried in the dry, sun-packed dirt. For their purposes, that was a good thing.
“I am not strong enough yet to carry the body on my own. I will need your assistance. Are you able to help with his legs?”
Erika’s nose wrinkled, her lip curled, and she swallowed. She stared down at Gary, and her eyes filled with tears. “I can help.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. She checked Gary’s pants pockets both front and back and retrieved a black wallet. She opened it, her face still ghostly pale, her lip still curled. She pulled out some bills and counted them. “Forty-two dollars.” She shrugged. “This should at least buy us some gas and a bit to eat.” She stuffed the money in her front jeans pocket, shoved the wallet back into Gary’s pants, then lifted Gary’s legs.
H.A.L.F.: ORIGINS Page 5
