Applewood (Book 2): Fledge

by Myers, Brendan P.

  The engines revved higher as the plane began to slow. Out of the corner of his eye, Arthur caught the movement of wing flaps. Despite himself, he smiled. There was even a hint of pride in his voice when he turned to Richards and answered. “I’ll show you.”

  2

  It was the longest train Dan had ever seen. But as it passed them by, he poured out his story. He was not a bank robber. He was a drill press operator, for Christ’s sake. His nephew was indeed very ill. He was taking the boy to San Diego on the flimsiest of hopes. A girl he dated in college was now a researcher at the Scripps Institute. He had read an article about her in the alumni newsletter that said she specialized in blood borne diseases. Hell, she probably wouldn’t even remember him. But it was the only place he could think of. It was the only chance the boy had.

  He left out those parts no sane person would believe, of course. But he did admit the government was after the boy and would take him away if they caught him. They might even kill him. Yet even as he spoke these things aloud for the very first time, he was aware how crazy it all sounded. He plunged ahead anyway, turning his eyes away when telling Fred his nephew wasn’t contagious, hoping he hadn’t noticed. But of course, he had. The man was watching him like a hawk. Fred kept his face impassive throughout, but his eyes remained focused on his passenger, and as he listened, he seemed to weigh every word. He remained quiet long after Dan had finished telling the tale, a silence that Dan soon found oppressive

  While awaiting his fate, he saw Fred glance into the rear view mirror a few times. Turning to look in the passenger mirror, Dan saw a line of cars now behind them waiting for the train to pass. Despite the chill from the air conditioning, beads of sweat broke out on his forehead when he saw the car directly behind them was outfitted with blue lights. Behind its tinted windows was the unmistakable outline of a Smokey the Bear hat.

  His heart raced at the thought that their journey might end here. He turned to Fred and tried to read his thoughts. A moment later, when Fred reached for the door handle, Dan grabbed him by the shoulder. He tried to keep the panic out of his voice.

  “On the way here, you said that sometimes, it’s hard to know who the real enemy is. Believe me when I tell you it ain’t me and the boy. Please believe me.”

  His voice cracked at the last. Fred did not look at him as he stepped out of the car and closed the door behind him.

  His hand shaking, Dan reached over and turned the rear view toward him. He watched Fred slowly approach the vehicle. The trooper looked up and began rolling down his window. Beads of sweat poured down Dan’s face. He saw Fred tip his hat and then lean on the driver side door.

  The trooper listened to what Fred had to say, chiming in occasionally. Dan squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the trooper was laughing. Fred added a few parting words before hitching up his pants and turning to walk back to his own car. Dan slumped in his seat after seeing the trooper roll up his window. Fred opened the door and got back in the car, letting the silence linger a while before he spoke.

  “That there is a fella name of Tommy Red Cloud. He and my boys went to school together. His parents proudest day was the day he graduated from the academy.” Turning to Dan with a twinkle in his eye, he added, “Now, it woulda been plum suspicious had I not said how do you do, don’t ya think? I needed to send his mother my best as well.”

  Moments later, the longest train Dan had ever seen was all done passing them by. Fred put the car in gear and drove slowly across the tracks before picking up speed on the open highway. Dan sat back deep within his seat, almost faint with relief. Using his sleeve, he wiped away the last of his sweat while waiting for both his heart rate to slow and Fred to break his silence. Both took a few minutes.

  “Now, I reckon some of what you told me is the truth. However, I am just as certain that a bunch of stuff you told me is a load of crap. But that’s alright. We all got secrets, we all got stuff we don’t say out loud. Lord knows, I got my share.” He took his eyes off the road a moment to look his passenger in the eye. “But if I do say so myself, there are two things I know about in this world, son, and that’s cows and people. And it is a plain fact that nephew of yours is one sick boy.” He turned back to the road when adding, “And another plain fact is — no offense now — that you ain’t no bank robber neither.”

  Dan tried to suppress his emotions, but tears welled up anyway. When no longer able to contain them, he turned his head to stare out the window. The sky ahead of them was now a frightening black. They were headed straight into the deluge.

  On the outskirts of Mercy, the skies opened and water fell in buckets from the sky. As they passed through the small town, Dan glanced to the second floor of Maria’s. The two said nothing as they drove past the pig farm, and a few miles later they came upon the car. Fred began to slow down.

  “Do me a favor will ya?” Dan said. “Drive on by it first.”

  Fred nodded. Dan saw the car was exactly where he had left it, beside a deep trench that ran along the side of the road. He had noticed that all the roads in this part of the country had deep trenches dug on either side, each about forty-five degrees down from the grade. He had wondered about them, and when he saw the river of water now flowing from the street into the trenches, he understood their purpose.

  “This far enough?” Fred asked. They had gone about a mile beyond the car. Dan had seen nothing unusual. Then again, he didn’t know what he was looking for.

  “Yeah. Probably,” he answered. “And thanks,”

  Fred nodded and brought the car to a halt, executed a three-point turn to perfection, then drove back to Dan’s car. “I’ll wait right here, if it’s all the same to you,” he said.

  Dan nodded, then grabbed the box and antifreeze from the floor by his feet. Stepping outside, it was a shock just how cold the water really was. He had expected it to be refreshing, but after the chilly interior of the car, the cold water just made things more miserable. It took only seconds before the force of water falling on his head began to make it throb.

  He unlocked his car, turning his head away from the pungent aroma that escaped it. Dan recognized some of it as the funk that he had to admit his nephew exuded since his change, something akin to the smell of rotting fruit. With so much else going on, he hadn’t even wanted to think what that might be. But after two days cooking in the hot sun, that odor had blended with the scent of dirty clothes, discarded soda cans, fast food containers, and the cardboard backing from Hostess treats that were the one food his nephew could stomach on their long journey. Curiously, something about the disease had given him a sweet tooth.

  Setting those thoughts aside for the moment, Dan removed the hose from the box and chucked it onto the front seat. After going to the trunk to fetch pliers from his toolbox, he walked around front, popped the hood, and began the repair.

  What was left of the old hose conveniently crumbled in his hands, making the fix easier. The whole thing didn’t take much more than five minutes. God Bless Dodge, he thought. That done, he poured both jugs of fluid into the radiator, reminding himself to add water before they hit the road again. Slamming the hood shut, he threw the empty jugs into the trunk and returned the pliers to his toolbox. He left the door open a crack when starting the car, rainfall be damned. The engine groaned a bit but started immediately. He pumped the gas a few times to get the juices flowing.

  The electronic clock mounted on the dash read three-thirty P.M. There were still more than four hours before the boy would awaken, time enough to clean the car a little and do some laundry. Maybe even have himself a beer. Although they hadn’t stayed long, Dan had enjoyed immensely his few minutes in the bar last evening. He hated himself for thinking it was human company he craved, then smiled to remember that maybe it was just adult company he was after.

  His smile faded seconds later when he realized there would be none of that for him this afternoon. There was a post office right next to that friendly bar, and he was for some reason certain his pic
ture would be posted there as well. Probably best to just lay low anyway, he thought. For now, all that remained was for him to say goodbye to Fred. He put that off another few moments by pumping the gas a few more times before getting out of his car.

  Fred had pulled his Caddy off to the side of the road. The driver’s window came down as Dan approached. Fred shouted to be heard above the cacophony of water bombarding his car.

  “You all fixed up, son?” After Dan nodded, Fred went on. “Well then, you take good care of yourself, you hear? And you take good care of that boy as well.”

  He waited to capture Dan’s eye before he spoke again.

  “Tell me something, Mr. Smith, and be honest, now. There’s somethin’ . . . special about that boy, isn’t there.”

  It wasn’t a question. After a moment, Dan nodded. Though not surprised by Fred’s perceptiveness, he smiled while thinking that diseased or not, that boy had always been special.

  Fred returned the smile and clapped his hands together.

  “I knew it! I told ya son, there’s only two things I know about, and one of ‘em is people.” Reaching out his hand, he caught Dan’s eye. “You both take care now, okay?”

  Dan suppressed his emotions and gripped the man’s hand tight.

  “You take care too, and I . . . anyway . . . well. Just thanks. Thanks a lot. Thanks for everything.” He was about to release the man’s hand when he suddenly remembered. “Hey! Good luck to you too. With your surgery, I mean. Seriously.”

  Letting go of Dan’s hand, Fred smiled before grabbing the steering wheel with his left hand and removing his Stetson with the right.

  “Heh. I expect they’ll just grow back. They always do! And son? Should you ever find yourself ‘round these parts again, don’t forget to ask after the man with the hohns. They’ll know who ya mean!” Putting his hat back on, he shouted, “Good luck, my friend,” before peeling off down the road.

  Dan stood there in the rain and watched the car until it became a tiny pinprick. And after it had disappeared, he stood there a while longer.

  3

  The darkened room was laid out like an amphitheater. There were six rows of graduated seating accommodating approximately forty workstations. Each was equipped with both a telephone and a computer terminal. Dividers between each workspace offered some degree of privacy to the men who sat there, though only about a half dozen or so were occupied at the moment. They were earnest looking men in dark suits either on the telephone or examining green data on their computer screens. On the large wall before them, glowing dots pulsed here and there on a giant electronic map of the Americas.

  Agent Richards saw blinking blue dots just outside Vegas and Boise and Memphis. He noticed red dots pulsed high on the Michigan peninsula and low on the Florida panhandle. But it was yellow dots that dominated. From Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, it appeared America was suffering a plague of yellow dots. Smaller screens to the left and right of the large map swapped images occasionally. Richards watched them toggle between views of Europe, the U.S.S.R., and the Middle East. It would seem that those places too suffered their own scourge of dots.

  “This place’d give NASA a hardon,” he remarked.

  His host said nothing. Arthur was using the time to catch up on the grid. The Michigan situation appeared stable, but his brow furrowed to recall he had yet to hear back from Florida. He barked an order to one of the men to follow up.

  The command center for Task Force 142B was lost somewhere within and beneath the sprawl of Tinker Air Force Base just outside Oklahoma City, hidden deep within an unmarked concrete structure. After entering the base, the men had gone through a dozen levels of security to reach this place. Arthur had signaled the uniformed guards to give the smiling blond man in the white suit special scrutiny, but it appeared to have no outward effect on the man’s apparently constant upbeat mood.

  After passing through ordinary looking business offices somewhere over their heads, Arthur used an access card to summon the elevator that brought them here, to this cloistered sanctum some eighty-feet below the earth.

  “So, what’s it all mean?” the blond man asked, still trying to make heads or tails of the blinking screens before them.

  Unused to articulating his mission, Arthur hesitated before again remembering the old man’s orders. He took a deep breath before he spoke. “Are you familiar with Monte Carlo simulation, Mr. Richards?”

  Richards nodded. “Sure. Probability, variables, all that stuff, right?”

  “Exactly,” Arthur said. He gestured toward the map. “What you are looking at now is perhaps the most sophisticated Monte Carlo simulation in the world.” He paused to let that sink in, surprised to feel almost prideful talking about it.

  Richards only shrugged. “I still don’t get it,” he said.

  Arthur pointed at the screen and continued. “The data on that screen is the product of dozens of the most sophisticated mainframe computers on earth, all tied together. We collect and enter much of the data ourselves, of course, but our computers are also in constant communication with other computers throughout the world, culling, collating, and trying to make sense of the insensible.”

  Arthur glanced over to see the blond man was no longer smiling. In fact, his face had crinkled up a bit as if he were actually thinking. Perhaps there was hope for the man yet, Arthur thought.

  “What kind of data?” Richards asked.

  The man in the dark suit smiled. “You name it. Unsolved murder. Anonymous mayhem. Serial killer activity. Missing persons. For example, are you aware that more than a million people disappear in this country every year?”

  Richards shook his head.

  “Sadly, it’s true,” Arthur continued. “Certainly, many are simply lost souls who want to disappear, fathers who can no longer support their families, husbands who can no longer get along with their shrewish wives. Women escaping abusive relationships. Teenage runaways. A few of them turn up days, months, or years later. But most don’t. It is as if they have fallen off the face of the earth.”

  He paused a moment to let that sink in.

  “Now, in our business, of course, we also collect more . . . unusual data. Animal killings or disappearances. Cattle mutilation. Strangely, we have found that even the cycles of the moon or certain weather patterns can have a positive effect of the exactness of our data. We still haven’t figured that out yet. But we’ve got the best minds in the world working on it.”

  Richards turned to the map. “So what’s up with the dots?”

  Though irked at the inartful way the man had phrased it, Arthur couldn’t help keeping the pride out of his voice as he went on. He had been the driving force behind modernizing the company years ago. Some of the computer code he wrote still powered the large screen.

  “We have found over time that the yellow dots are mostly noise. Coincidences. Two or three missing persons within a short period, coupled with perhaps evidence of animal cruelty or an unusual number of missing pets. Random, bloody murder here and there. Just something to keep an eye on. They can come and go at anytime. But if they stay yellow for a specific interval, or other information turns up that tweaks the interest of our algorithm, they will then turn blue.”

  “And blue means . . .”

  “Action is required. More investigation is necessary. Agents may be sent to visit with local officials and the reporters who wrote the stories. Anyone involved will be debriefed for the slightest clue or extra bit of information. It should come as no surprise that we’ve learned over time that quite often, much of the more . . . unbelievable information will not be included in either the news stories or the official reports. People somehow convince themselves they didn’t really see what they think they saw, or hear what they think they heard. Police officers who don’t wish to be laughed at in their own stations will leave quite pertinent details out of official reports. Coroners too will often dismiss certain things out of hand. Therefore, it is our job to get that information, whether they w
ish to share it or not. Interviews are conducted with the missing person’s family, or the owners of killed or lost animals. Surely you can understand why in our business, it’s important to nip these things in the bud.”

  Richards again had that silly grin on his face when asking, “What about the reds?”

  Arthur paused again. He feared he had already said too much. In fact, Richards didn’t need to know any of these things. He kicked himself for his pridefulness while in his head, he damned the new DCI again. More than that, he damned his own father for not having the guts to stand up to him. After all, Task Force 142B had been around long before the old man who was now the Director of Central Intelligence was in diapers. It would be around long after he took to wearing them again.

  He noticed then that at some point while he had been distracted by Richards, a new yellow dot had appeared suddenly in the southwest corner of Arizona.

  In answer to Richards question, Arthur said only, “Intervention is ongoing,” before shouting, “Jenkins?” A bespectacled young man seated about three rows from the front turned around. “That one of yours? The one in Arizona?”

  The man turned to his computer screen before turning again and nodding.

  “What is it?” Arthur asked.

  The man turned again to stare at the green glow of his computer terminal. “Pigs,” he answered after a moment. “Lots of them.”

  Arthur walked down the thickly carpeted steps to the floor of the amphitheater, over to a screen on the right that currently displayed a map of East Africa. The blond man followed.

  “Get me a satellite on twelve, will you please?” Arthur said. “Start at ten miles and bring it down.”

  From behind came the clatter of fingers on a keyboard. A moment later, East Africa disappeared, replaced by a bird’s eye view of the Arizona desert. As the scene shifted steadily lower, a large complex of buildings came into view on the right side of the screen just off a long and empty highway.

  “Stop,” Arthur said, and the image froze. The blond man watched Arthur focus his attention on something that had caught his eye toward the top of the screen, something metallic reflecting in the desert sun a few miles away from the buildings.