Tethers

by Sara Reinke

  She saw Kat standing just beyond the doorway to the compound and froze. Her eyes widened. She looked like a doe pinned by a tractor trailer’s headlights.

  The woman held a strange, awkward-looking rifle in one hand, and some sort of square metal box in the other. Kat’s appearance startled her, and she dropped the box in the grass. She raised the snout of the alien rifle at Kat and stumbled back a step.

  “Who are you?” she said. Her brows pinched together, and she regarded Kat with dark, suspicious eyes. Her face was narrow, her features standing out in precise angles and curves. She had a long, narrow nose, and small, thin lips. Her skin was a deep golden brown, with patches of bright, frightened color in the apples of each of her high cheeks.

  “I…I’m Kathryn Emmente,” Kat replied. “Who are you?” She still held Eric’s pistol at her side. She was shocked to see another human being, she hadn’t even thought to raise it.

  The Indian woman kept staring at her. Kat realized she had a huge, bluish-black bruise forming on her forehead, above her left eye. Kat noticed that there was a fat column of dark grey smoke rising above the tree line, not too far past the security perimeter.

  “Where is Frank?” The woman ignored Kat’s question and cut her gaze around the yard, wide-eyed and dazed.

  The door opened behind Kat, and Jerica came out.

  “Jerica, no—go back inside,” Kat said.

  The woman swung the rifle toward the little girl. Jerica shrieked and darted behind Kat.

  “No!” Kat cried, and she brought Eric’s pistol up, aiming the muzzle at the woman’s head. She reached behind her with her free hand and touched Jerica’s hair. “I told you to stay inside, damn it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mommy.” Jerica hiccupped. “I got scared. I didn’t know what was going on!”

  “Where’s Frank?” the woman shouted at them, clutching her gun with both hands. Her voice ripped hysterically.

  “Put the gun down and I’ll tell you!” Kat yelled back, not lowering her pistol. “Put it down now!”

  They stood there, facing off in silence until a loud explosion ripped through the woods. The line of smoke darkened, becoming black, and began blowing across the horizon in fat, billowing clouds.

  That was a ship—her ship—exploding! Kat realized.

  The woman pivoted at the noise and watched the smoke. She turned back to Kat and Jerica. She looked anguished, horrified. “Where is Frank?”

  “It’s her,” Jerica whispered suddenly, her voice quiet and stunned. “Reba Crowe.”

  “What?” Kat glanced down at her.

  “Reba Crowe,” Jerica repeated, louder, stepping slightly from behind her mother. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “Shut up.” The woman had let the muzzle of her rifle lower, but she raised it again, shoving it at them. “Where is Franklin Brown? He said he would be here, he’d be waiting for me. Where is he?”

  “He’s dead.” Kat nodded toward the tree line outside of the perimeter field. “He’s over there somewhere, out in the bushes.”

  The woman’s mouth dropped open in a nearly perfect circle. “What?” She shook her head. “No…he…this is all wrong. Everything…it’s all gone wrong, but he said he’d be here…he said… How did he die?”

  “I killed him,” Kat told her evenly.

  She could see the rage flash across the woman’s face, like the edge of a breaking wave. She could see it ignite something behind the woman’s coal black eyes.

  “Jerica—” she began, and then the woman fired her rifle.

  Kat felt something slam into her chest, just north of her left breast. The force was incredible. It jerked her backwards; she felt her boot heel dance hard across Jerica’s small feet behind her.

  Another round punched into her forearm, and another into her right shoulder.

  Behind her, Jerica began to scream.

  Kat toppled to her knees. She tried to catch herself on the ground, but the grass was suddenly slippery and soaked with something hot. She stared dumbly at the blood spilling down her arm and pooling around her splayed fingers.

  “Mommy! Mommmeeeee!” Jerica shrieked. Kat could feel her little hands on her, grabbing desperately. She raised her head and saw the woman point the rifle at Jerica. Kat threw her elbow back, smacking hard into Jerica’s chin.

  Get down, she wanted to scream. Jerica GET DOWN!

  “Guungh!” Jerica cried, and she crumpled.

  Kat forced her arm to work, to bring Eric’s pistol up. Her finger squeezed in on the trigger, and she felt the gun kick against her palm…one…two…three times.

  “You murdering bitch!” the Indian woman, Reba Crowe screeched, and then a bullet ripped into the left side of her face, shearing away a large section of her scalp and skull cap. She twisted and fell back, landing in the lawn. She moved smoothly, her arms trailing in her wake, like a marionette whose strings have been abruptly severed.

  The gun fell out of Kat’s fingers, and she pitched face-first into the grass. She drew in a gasping, hurting mouthful of air. She was dimly aware of Jerica shaking her shoulder, sobbing and pleading: “Get up, Mommy, pleeeease get up! Mommy! Mommeeee, nooo, no please no NOOOooo!”

  And another sound. A faint roaring sound that was growing louder and louder, reminding her of static on an open com link. It felt like someone had covered her up with a feather-lined comforter, and she was suffocating. Somehow, despite this, Kat was freezing.

  Oh, pup, she thought, over the increasing roar of the static noises. Just let me sleep for a little while and I’ll be okay. I’ll fix you a grilled cheese, how about that? I’ll even cut the crusts off because I know you like it that way the best…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Kat sat in a white oak rocking chair on her enormous wraparound porch, looking out over the northern California coast.

  Jerica was down on the beach, standing at the very edge of the ocean, and Kat watched her poke daintily at sea foam with her toes. She was talking to a young man whose family vacationed in a house up the beach from them. He was seventeen, tall and handsome, and completely infatuated with the beautiful, fifteen-year-old Jerica.

  Kat studied her daughter’s posture, the casual angle that pushed her young bosom out toward her beau. Jerica gave her head a quick, coy nod, and her sheaf of golden hair flipped obediently over her shoulder.

  Kat reached over and gently, absently massaged her left forearm. There wasn’t much sensation left in her arm or shoulder, only what her doctor called “phantom sensations”. It had been explained to her that these ghostly feelings of pain, itching or burning were common among amputees.

  She sometimes wondered if Eric had felt the ghost sensations in his leg.

  Legion’s attempt to conquer the stellar platform and X-1226 had failed. But by the time rescue ships made it down to the moon’s surface, the bullet wounds Kat had suffered had gangrened terribly. She had been lucky to be alive.

  The tissue damage had been so extensive, almost 95 percent of her arm was now cyborganic, like Eric’s leg had been. The entire left side of her shoulder girdle had been refitted with biomechanical joints, bones, muscles, ligaments. The government had paid for the operation and prosthetic, every last dime. She’d received an official commendation from President Conner Dade himself, and she and Jerica had been invited guests at the White House.

  In the five years since, Kat hadn’t really thought too long or often about what had happened to them. She thought about Eric sometimes, like when her arm would itch in places that no longer should.

  The left side of her body always felt heavy and numb, like it had been shot up with Novocain, or carved out of wood. She often wondered if Eric had felt that way.

  Sometimes she would forget his face, and she would pull out his driver’s license and touch the young man in the picture. She couldn’t remember the sound of his voice, but sometimes, late at night, alone in her bed, she could remember what it felt like to have him laying beside her, with his arm around her. I
f she tried hard enough, she could imagine his hand holding hers, the warm pressure of his fingers through hers.

  Sometimes she still cried for him.

  Kat had become a writer. Her first two novels had been modest best-sellers, enough to have paid for the beach-front house. She was at work on a third, and had ideas already in mind for a fourth and even a fifth.

  She hadn’t written about X-1226, or about her life before that, even though she was frequently pressured to. In fact, she and Jerica rarely spoke to anyone except for their therapist about what had happened.

  She had become a quiet advocate for abused women and children, donating funds to various organizations, and helping to found a local support center called Harmony. She spent lots of time at the center, finding strength and comfort from the past with her friends there.

  She had found the she was no longer the frightened girl Chris Emmente used to beat, but nor was she the tough-as-nails woman she had struggled to be aboard the Daedalus. She had changed; X-1226 had changed her, and she had become a combination of these, strong and weak, vulnerable and capable all at once.

  She found she liked it best that way.

  The phone rang, breaking Kat’s train of thought. It was Brenda, her agent and self-appointed best friend.

  “Hey, Kat, these chapters look great.”

  “Thanks, Brenda.”

  “Is…is she all packed yet?”

  Kat looked out at Jerica and the young man. They were standing very close together now, and she watched her daughter tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

  “I don’t really know.” She laughed. “She’s been saying good-bye to all of her suitors.”

  The melody of Jerica’s sweet laughter floated up from the water’s edge, reaching Kat.

  “…she’s going to do great,” Brenda was saying. “How many girls get in the West Point Sovereign fighter program period, much less fifteen-year olds?”

  “Jerica can do anything she sets her mind to.”

  “Gets that from her mother. Are you sure you’re okay with this, Kat?”

  “Yes,” Kat said quietly, although the prospect of the big, hulking, empty, silent house terrified her. “I just…I’m really going to miss her.”

  Brenda rambled on and on about how Kat should be grateful she was going to miss the height of Jerica’s teen rebellion years, but Kat didn’t pay much attention.

  “I know it’s hard, but it’ll be good for you, you’ll see,” her friend Melanie at the center had told her. “You need to find your own place in things, on your own. It’s your turn, to be true to yourself.”

  “Yeah,” Kat had replied somewhat sadly. “I need to be my own hero.”

  She watched Jerica rise onto her tiptoes and kiss the boy lightly, briefly on the lips. Then she turned and ran up the beach toward the house, looking back to wave once. Her long skirt billowed around her legs, and she gathered a handful of the material to keep from tripping over the hem.

  “I’ll talk to you later, Brenda.” Kat cut the agent off gently and hung up the phone as Jerica mounted the porch steps. “Hey, pup.”

  “Mom.” Jerica frowned slightly, insincerely. “I’m not a pup. You know I hate that.”

  She plopped gracefully down in the rocker next to her mother, kicking her long, pretty legs up in the air and tilting back in the chair. She picked up Kat’s glass of lemonade and took a long sip.

  “Ooo!” Jerica’s nose wrinkled, and she set the glass back down. “Spiked it pretty good there, Mom.”

  “Just a little vodka,” Kat replied primly.

  The two laughed.

  “Who’s that?” Kat brought her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. She watched the young man Jerica had kissed walk away down the beach, his head hung, his footsteps dragging.

  “Brandon Hall,” Jerica said.

  “Nice guy?”

  Jerica glanced at her mother and smiled wryly. “Pretty nice, yeah.”

  “You ready to go tomorrow?”

  Jerica pushed at the folds of her skirt. “I guess so. I’m pretty nervous.”

  Kat reached over and touched Jerica’s hand. Jerica looked at her, and wrapped her fingers through Kat’s.

  “Will you be okay, Mom?” she asked quietly, her eyes large and round. It took Kat back for a moment, back five years—a whole lifetime—ago.

  “Yeah, pup.” Kat squeezed Jerica’s hand.

  They sat quietly on the porch for a long time, watching the sun slowly, inexorably sink toward the horizon.

  Jerica reached up to her throat and Kat watched out of the corner of her eye as she began to pull Eric’s West Point ring back and forth across a chain around her neck. Jerica’s fingers absently rubbed at the gold, pressing and prodding across the lettering, the bright red stone. She looked distantly, dreamily out at the ocean, at the small gathering of sea birds that ran this way and that on the sand.

  Kat pressed her fingers against her biomechanical arm, trying vainly to scratch an itch that wasn’t real but sure bugged the hell out of her anyway.

  “You ready for some supper, Jerica?” she asked.

  Jerica blinked dazedly. “Oh,” she said, coming out of her own little private garden of thoughts. “Yeah. Sure, Mom. I’ll probably turn in after that. I mean, I’ve got to get up pretty early tomorrow to catch the red-eye shuttle and…” Her voice faded, leaving an awkward silence.

  “Yeah.” Kat smiled at Jerica. “I know, pup.”

  They stood and gathered up their drinks and towels to go inside.

  “What sounds good to eat?” Kat asked.

  “How about grilled cheese?” Jerica suggested. “With the crusts cut off. They’re best like that.”

  Kat looked over at the lovely young woman her daughter had become. In her heart, she started to loosen the tethers that bound them together.

  Oh, pup, I will miss you so much.

  “I know,” she said.

  She followed Jerica inside, leaving the screen door open to let in the fresh evening breeze.

  About the Author

  Sara Reinke is the author of several books and is a member of the Louisville Romance Writers chapter of Romance Writers of America, EPIC and the Flowers and Hearts Authors Group.

  To learn more about Sara Reinke, please visit www.sarareinke.com. Send an email to Sara at mailto:sara@sarareinke.com or join her Yahoo! group to join in the fun with other readers as well as Sara. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tiralainn

  You have been exposed to subversive influences:

  for your own security and well being, you will now be terminated.

  Homeland

  © 2006 Michael Amos

  Available now in digital and paperback from Samhain Publishing

  Tracy Dwayne Jocelyn Higgs has a problem. Not only is he a Security Officer saddled with a girl’s name, he has awoken to find himself in a vast shopping mall with no recollection of how he came to be there.

  Worse still, the mall is under almost constant terrorist attack. The security apparatus operates a permanent state of emergency and none of the other terrified inhabitants of the mall have any idea how they came to be there or how to get out.

  Stalked by the obsessive femme fatale Mandy, shadowed by the annoying Information Officer Simms and in love with the no-nonsense Doctor Jodi Francis, Higgs must find out where he is, get in touch with his feminine side and save the inhabitants of the mall before he is terminated for his own security and well being.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Homeland:

  “We have a problem, Higgs. The mall is under almost constant terrorist attack. The terrorists have been distributing subversive materials.”

  Jared paused and clicked his fingers at one of the androids. It turned slowly and picked up a plastic bag from the desk, holding it aloft for Higgs to see. It contained a notepad and a pen. Joints hissing, the android returned the bag to the desk and placed its hand back on its gun.

  “So far we’ve been unable to work out how they are operating and
where they are based. Before you were injured, you were getting close to finding out what was going on. I need you to pick up from where you left off, find them and stop them.”

  Higgs considered for a moment. “Did I leave any briefing papers or notes?”

  For a moment—just a fraction of a moment—Higgs thought he saw the look of a haunted man in Jared’s eyes. Jared shook his head.

  “Your notes were destroyed in the terrorist attack which injured you.”

  Are you lying? It wouldn’t make sense for you to lie to me. “Sir, why are the terrorists attacking the mall?”

  Simms, who had been quietly forgotten up until this point, gasped and ducked back. The two android guards stepped forward and leveled their guns at Higgs, prepared to fire. Higgs stared open-mouthed, surprise dulling his instinctive reaction to dive for cover.

  “Overruled.” Homeland’s voice filled the room.

  The androids lowered their weapons and returned to the desk. Higgs looked from Jared to the androids and back again, opening and closing his mouth. Jared seemed completely unfazed by the actions of the guards and continued as if nothing had happened.

  “Terrorists are the enemies of freedom. It stands to reason that they should attack the freedom of the mall. Only a subversive would suggest otherwise.”

  Higgs realized he was holding his breath and let it out. Beside him, Simms visibly relaxed. With one eye on the androids, Higgs cleared his throat. “Why can’t we leave the mall?”

  Both he and Simms flinched as the androids leapt forward, guns leveled at Higgs. Homeland’s voice stopped them again. “Overruled.”

  Higgs and Simms breathed out.

  “Why should anyone want to leave the freedom of the mall? Only a subversive would want to leave the mall.” Jared smiled benignly, still apparently unconcerned by the androids’ murderous intentions on Higgs.

  Higgs felt emboldened to try his luck. “Why is everyone in the mall so afraid?”

  “Overruled.”

  The androids did not even get the chance to move this time. Higgs noticed they did seem to glance sideways at each other. They weren’t supposed to think, Simms had said.