See Jack Hunt (See Jack Die)

by Nicholas Black

  “Sorry, Jack,” he says as he turns away and disappears into the crowd again. And now, there's more spooks than there are people . . . and there are a lot of people.

  35

  Parkland Memorial Hospital.

  11:17 pm . . .

  We've been sitting for hours. Because of the serious nature of Jesse's condition, only the immediate members of the family have been allowed in to see her. Visiting hours were over long ago, but the doctors realized that there may not be a tomorrow, so they eased-up a bit.

  Angela and I are sitting on a burgundy vinyl couch, waiting for a miracle that I know isn't coming. I don't even look towards the observation room where Jesse's resting because I don't want to see it when the gatherers come. Earlier I sneaked away, under the auspices of fetching coffee for everyone, and called Hal. I asked what her survivability rate was, based on what information we had gleaned from Clark and the side-stepping doctors.

  Hal was rather succinct in his estimation, “Based on all available medical case studies, and taking into account Taylor, Jesse's medical history, age, and ethnicity . . . there is an estimated survivability rate of point-zero-four-seven percent.”

  Less than ½ of a percent.

  I wouldn't have even put it that high.

  Angela hasn't spoken in hours. She just sits next to me, her head resting on my shoulder, her body almost curled-up, facing me. And I hate seeing her like this. She's in so much pain, and I'm not.

  I wish I could give her some of my apathy.

  A bit of my ambivalence.

  I wish she knew the things I knew, without having to die to learn them.

  She is so full of compassion and empathy, and this is terribly hard for her. I feel her shaking every now and then, and it just tears me up inside.

  I'm wondering when she's going to ask me about the episode at the bookstore. I know it's coming. I just don't know when. I hold her close to me, hoping some of my body heat will help her fight the sadness. But then, how stupid is that? What the hell would I know about her suffering?

  I notice Ms. Josephine walking toward us, and she's got on a pair of blue scrubs, like the nurses wear. She walks by, glancing briefly in my direction and winking. She walks right in to where Jesse is waiting to die. And I see, in that brief moment as the door is opening and closing, that the spooks have all scurried to the corners, scared of something.

  That means only one thing . . . the gatherers are coming with their knives.

  I hold Angela even tighter. This world is cold and it's mean. Angela never got to say goodbye to her best friend. Because she thinks there's more time. Or, because she doesn't want to be intrusive while the family is worrying at her bedside. Maybe she just doesn't want to see her bright-eyed, energetic, full-of-life friend in this deteriorating condition. To be confronted by the reality of death.

  But as I hold her to me, us sharing our bodies' heat, I know that some part of her will be forever lost after this. She's resilient. She'll recover. But there will always be this, these hours, etched into her soul . . . for as long as she is alive. Longer, even.

  And for a moment I can see why people turn away from God, why they choose to ignore religion. I get it, now. It's the problem most of us probably have: How can something so good be so cold and uncaring? How can God ignore this young girl with her life ahead of her? How can He let her go, as if she was nothing more than a sick insect?

  Where is the Divinity in letting humanity be destroyed, even if piece by tiny piece?

  See, me . . . I don't have to believe or not. I know. My relationship with the man upstairs is a little different than the rest. I know He's there, and I know He doesn't have much to say to me. I feel awed, and at the same time, alone. In the cold dead of space, I'm worse than nothing. I'm the pointless little particle that spirals into infinity, and He isn't going to shed one nano-second of regret.

  But Angela, this may change her. She's so intelligent and insightful. She might take all this as proof of . . . nothing. That is to say, she might use this to forge her belief in nothing.

  About twenty minutes later Ms. Josephine left the room, the gatherer's knife wielding arms lifted for full swing in the background as the door opened and closed. She headed back down the hall, maybe a bit slower than when she came. Again she glanced at me, but this time she nodded as if to say, She's gone .

  It wasn't 30 seconds later I hear Mr. Blue being paged to Observation Room 3. All sorts of doctors appeared from every direction, racing into the room where Jesse is coding. Maybe the doctors will play tug-of-war with her soul for a short time. People will cry and scream and pace and fight, but in the end . . . the Land of Sorrows will win.

  It always does.

  36

  ALG office.

  Tuesday Morning . . .

  Ms. Josephine and I left Angela at the hospital with Jesse's parents. They all needed to grieve together and it really wasn't one of those environments where I belonged. When I left I hugged her and as I got into the elevator Angela waved back at me, seeming smaller and more fragile than she had before. That was late last night.

  I had wanted to go and visit her today, but the whole saving the world thing got in the way. And maybe I was glad, too. At this stage of my evolving life, I don't think I want to be talking to people about life and death. At least, not the people who don't see it from my point of view. And I can't tell her the way things work because, and I'm not sure about this, but I think that would violate the whole universal question of faith and belief. I don't want to sabotage her chances.

  So, to avoid all of those sticky issues, we're here at the office, hunting the badies. Ricky, it turns out, had this idea that we ought to monitor any radio chatter going to and from the higher ranking catholic priests. Billtruck took it a step further and decided we should listen to communications that were entering and exiting the Vatican. While this made me more than a bit apprehensive, they assured me that we would be just like flies on the wall. Completely non-invasive.

  Right.

  Now, I didn't know you could even do anything like that, but Billtruck said that everything's possible now that there are agencies like the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), the NSA (National Security Administration), and the CIA. These huge bureaucratic associations dedicate huge sums of money and technology towards listening to everybody else's phone calls. And since they use satellites to bounce all of their signals back and forth, we're not really doing anything they aren't.

  Billtruck explained that you don't have to hack the Vatican, or any of those alphabet companies. You just hack the satellites and the T3 towers, and if you have the software to decipher 126 PGP encrypted message traffic, you're good.

  I have to take their word for techy stuff like this. I've been reading WIRED magazine trying to figure out what the hell those three are talking about, and I'm still lost. Ricky, Billtruck, and Hal seem to have it all figured out.

  Long story short is: the Vatican had been very worried about something going on in Ecuador. Starting a little over a month ago, very ominous messages were going back and forth between an Ecuadorian Catholic priest and some anonymous voice in Rome. By some good luck, Hal found a short-term memory dump that hadn't been cleared out, yet.

  We haven't been able to identify the anonymous voice, but we know he's up there in the ranks.

  Right now we're all sitting in the quiet room as Billtruck lays down sheets of printed transcripts. Billtruck's way too big for this little room. He makes me feel like we're a couple of kids in a clubhouse and our parents just showed up.

  One by one he lays the calls down in front of us, in chronological order. I notice the calls started coming in towards the end of May. Coincidentally, that's just a few days after I mistakenly delivered the 23 Evils back to earth.

  “That's no coincidence, Jack,” Ricky said, his voice echoing with an almost metallic tone to it, like we're all robots. The air in here tastes like plastic and paint and conspiracy.

  Billtruck says, “The priest i
n Ecuador is worried about something, and he switches back and forth between Spanish and Italian several times.” He shakes his head, “ . . . I couldn't decipher it myself, so I had Hal do the translations. Obviously, it's not perfect but we get the gist of it.”

  I pick up one of the call transcripts, glance at it, then up to Billtruck. He nods, so I continue reading:

  Call originating from : Quito, Ecuador 30 May 21:11 44 (GMT)

  Priest Fernandez - “ . . . three children have been lost to the mountains.”

  Unidentified Voice # 1 - “Have the local police begun their investigation?”

  Priest Fernandez - “There was a searching party (group of farmers), but they found nothing.”

  Unidentified Voice # 1 - “And what are the people saying?”

  Priest Fernandez - “ . . . there . . . there are whispers of Chupacabras (Goat Suckers), Others say it's a cult of Satan worshippers that are taking the children for sacrifice. But there are no bodies.”

  Unidentified Voice # 1 - “Keep me posted, brother.”

  Priest Fernandez - “ . . . do . . . do you think it could be the . . . ”

  Unidentified Voice # 1 - “Contact me in two days with an update.”

  Call Ended : 21:13 16 (GMT)

  I put the paper down on the gloss white table, looking up at Billtruck. “What do you think the priest is asking about?”

  Ms. Josephine hands me another transcript as we all trade papers around the table, passing the calls to the left. She taps the dialog, saying, “Dat, right d ere , is interestin'.”

  I read,

  Call Originating from : Ambato, Ecuador 03 June 20:50 23 (GMT)

  Priest Fernandez - “Two more children have disappeared. One boy and one girl, from different families.

  Unidentified Voice # 1 - “How many, now . . . all together?”

  Priest Fernandez - “ . . . seven. None of them over the age of nine, or younger than five.”

  Unidentified Voice # 1 - (Whispering, untranslatable dialog in background)

  Priest Fernandez - “I'm worried.”

  Unidentified Voice # 1 - “There's no reason to create a panic, just yet.”

  Priest Fernandez - “The other priests are talking about the possibility that this could be the work of the Hostis Humanis Gen—”

  Unidentified Voice # 1 - “Do not echo this rumor. Do not even repeat it. I will contact you in a few hours with more information. There is a plausible explanation for all of this. The last thing we need is a panic.”

  Priest Fernandez - “Yes . . . of course. I'm . . . I apologize.”

  Unidentified Voice # 1 - “Keep your head, father.”

  Call ended: 20:51 28 (GMT)

  I turn to Ms. Josephine, “What's that? What does ' Hostis Humanis Gen ' mean?”

  Ricky leans back in his plastic chair, “ Hostis Humanis Generis . It's Latin. It means, the Enemy of all Mankind.”

  “Oh, alright,” I said, “For a second there, I was worried.”

  The more I think about it the more bothered I get. Not about the meaning, but the fact that they're discussing it. “Wait a minute . . . does that mean that there are others who know about the twenty-three Evils?”

  “They're the Vatican, Jack,” Billtruck says with a rather pained expression on his otherwise stolid face. “They have their own army, spies, all of it. They have an intelligence network that rivals the cold war KGB. Think about it, where can you go in the world where there isn't a catholic church, or at least a priest?”

  “Nowhere,” Ricky answers, folding his hands behind his head. “There are catholic priests in every city, in every country, and on every continent.”

  That's a lot of spies, I said to nobody in particular.

  And our quiet room, it's as silent as some door knob in an abandoned house.

  Billtruck shuffles through the calls with his big meaty fingers, “The rest of the calls, they're worse. More children going missing. No explanations.”

  “Here,” Ricky says, nodding towards another transcript, “they said it again. Hostis Humanis Generis. And the guy from Rome says he's going to send somebody down for further inquiries. They don't just do that.”

  “No dey don't,” Ms. Josephine agreed. “Whatever dey tink is goin' on, it's a big deal to dem.”

  Show of hands, I say. Who thinks this is our twenty-three?

  Each and every one of them raises their hands. Billtruck raises two. I look at him and he says, “One for me, the other for Hal. He thinks something is definitely going on.”

  Ms. Josephine nods.

  Ricky says, “Yup.”

  So . . . what now? I ask them, already knowing the answer.

  Billtruck turns to me, “Say, Jack . . . how's your Español, amigo?”

  Oh, shito.

  37

  Empty parking lot.

  Tuesday afternoon . . .

  Ricky and I are practicing parallel parking while Ms. Josephine checks out the house with the floating blue people. I bet Ricky lunch that the floating blue person is a reflection off of the swimming pool. He says it's a lost entity looking for peace in their sordid afterlife. I'm thinking, thick-crust pepperoni and mushroom.

  Parallel parking is easy to do, but hard to do well.

  Even though he's making snide remarks, I'm reading my DMV book, page 7-4, where it outlines the four steps to parallel parking.

  I read: Choose a space large enough for your car . . .

  Ricky says, “You can fit any car into any space if you know how to, and you have bumper to bumper coverage.”

  Signal, stop even with front car about two feet out from it.

  “You don't have time for all that crap. You find your spot and you haul ass.”

  Ricky, I say, I have to do it their way if I want my license. Otherwise, how can I drive when we're going on missions to hunt the forces of evil?

  He pretends to zip his mouth up and throw away the imaginary key, but I'm almost certain he's palmed it in his left hand.

  Make sure you will not interfere with oncoming traffic, then turn your front wheels all the way to the right and back slowly toward the curb.

  Three, when your —

  “Hold on, Jack . . . ” Ricky says, looking out his window across the parking lot.

  What?

  I look up at Ricky and his eyes are following two cars as they pull into the otherwise empty parking lot. He reaches into his pocket and slides out his phone.

  Think they're here to practice parallel parking? I say, joking.

  Ricky shakes his head, no, and speaks into the phone, “Billtruck . . . hey, make sure you keep my phone and the Porsche on your tracking system. We've got company.”

  I hear Billtruck's voice, “Roger that. Is it the same guys from last time?”

  “Not sure, yet,” Ricky answers. “We'll get back with you in about ten minutes or so. You're our eyes in the sky on this one.”

  “Roger that. I'm tracking your cellphones and the Cayenne , now.”

  Ricky looks over at me, “Answer questions with questions, Jack. Worst comes to worst . . . ”

  I know, I know. Head butt them and knee them in the nuts.

  He nods slowly, then starts to get out of the SUV.

  What are you doing? I ask him. Shouldn't we be in the early stages of a reckless high-speed chase?

  “No,” he says anticlimactically. “They'll just keep doing this until we get into a car accident, or I get so many traffic tickets that I can't drive anymore. No, let's see who these dickheads are. What they want.”

  We both exit the Porsche and walk around to the hood where we usually sit to eat McDonald's . Two black Lincoln somethings pull up. They look like those other cars that are in a funeral procession. Not the hearse, but the ones right behind it, with crying people in black, secretly figuring up what their cut of grandpa's estate is going to be.

  The two Lincolns stop about 15 or 20 feet in front of us, and there is a pause where nobody gets out of their vehicles.

  Ri
cky turns to me, his eyes still focused on the cars, “Look at their hands. Watch for guns or bats, or chainsaws.”

  And then eight doors pop open at the same time, like they've been practicing this for months. It's just us, leaning against the black hood of Ricky's SUV, and them, slowly stepping out of their black funeral cars.

  This is like some scene in a low-budget movie. Because, come on, nobody actually does this in real life. There's no showdown at sunset. People don't synchronize their car exits.

  I swear, if a guy in a wheelchair gets out and he's got, like, a cat or a monkey or a robot on his shoulder, I quit. I'll just turn around and walk off.

  But as we watch the feet shuffling, it's nothing quite so ridiculous. They all get out wearing nice suits. No visible guns, although their suits are unbuttoned, like in those mob shows, so they're probably packing. And they all basically look the same.

  None of them have hair. They've all got on sunglasses. They're all, oddly, shorter than Ricky and I. And very tanned. Like these guys spend a lot of money on tanning salons. You know what . . . they look Indian, or Asian, even. They definitely come from some place where people are basically wrinkled and angry.

  Their faces have a leatheresque look. Like an old pair of boots. There's a real X-Files feel to all of this.

  And then one of them, with his dark, squinted little beads for eyes, he pushes past the others and barks, “Where's the book?”

  “Excuse me?” Ricky answers calmly. He's unusually cool under the circumstances.

  “The book,” the man repeats in a kind of Asian accent. He could be in one of those kung-fu movies, this guy. “It belongs to us. It was lost, and we want it back.”

  Ricky and I look at each other, shrugging.

  “We're trying to be reasonable about this,” the kung-fu guy says. “We're only here to reclaim what is rightfully ours. It is very important. And we will not hesitate to use more decisive means to procure it.”

  That's the veiled threat that Ricky was warning me about, earlier. Ricky starts to say something, but I put my hand on his shoulder. I look at the sea of angry little men and say, “What are you talking about?” This is fun. Dangerous, and clearly stupid . . . but fun.