The Warning

by Patterson, James

  He looked up, and his disfigured face approximated a wince.

  The chin-scar guy pulled a syringe from his jacket pocket.

  “Nope again,” I said, and jiggled the doorknob until Goldie yanked my hand away from it.

  I spun out of his grasp and clutched his arm in an aikido wristlock. I applied pressure, and he grunted and fell to the floor. Scar came at me with the needle, and I kicked it across the room, letting go of Goldie in the process. The two of them backed up, getting ready to attack. I shoved the table into them and went for the door again.

  There was a flash of light, and I saw a blade plunging toward my arm. I drew back quickly but not quickly enough as the blade slashed the top of my wrist. Whatever my new powers were, pain suppression wasn’t one of them. Ouch!

  The scientist sprouted a two-foot sword out of his right arm stump. Aw, shit, now he was going all supervillain on me. As he stood, I could see he was short and hunched—but he also moved fast.

  He swung his sword arm, and I ducked, the blade taking a wedge out of the cinder block. I went for his elbow to try to hyperextend it, but he dropped low, and the palm of my hand hit the wall, crumbles falling to the floor. A few drops of blood from my slashed wrist followed.

  I reeled back. My hand and arm hurt, but also: How was I doing what I was doing? How did I know an aikido wristlock?

  Goldie and Scar remained positioned on the opposite side of the table from me, and the scientist stood in front of the door. As Goldie reached into his coat for something—a gun?—the scientist swung his sword down at me, like I was a log he was about to split. I dodged and gave him a low, vicious kick in the ankle. He let out a shriek—one that I had heard in my dreams—and I turned to lift the table off the floor and heave it into the two suits.

  As the steel surface pinned both men to the wall, Goldie dropped his gun, and I pounced on it like a loose football. Just then I felt a sharp pain in my calf and let out a yelp.

  I spun around to see the crazed scientist with arms raised high, about to bring the bloody sword down on me for a killing blow.

  Everything went slow-motion—except me. I was moving at normal speed. I pointed the gun toward this monstrous murderer and fired.

  Again.

  And again.

  CHAPTER 26

  Maggie

  ANOTHER NIGHT, ANOTHER startling wake-up. This time it was a flurry of knocking on the front door that jarred me awake.

  “Mom,” I groaned, spotting 4:30 a.m. on my digital clock, “it’s another twenty-four-whore emergency.” I rolled over, figuring she’d deal with this latest animal problem. What would it be now, a psychopathic parakeet?

  Pound pound pound pound.

  “Mom! Someone’s—damn it.” I looked over, and Mom’s bed was empty. Now I vaguely recalled that she’d left for another emergency call hours earlier, something involving wild dogs bearing down on a herd of sheep.

  I threw a robe over my T-shirt, trudged downstairs, and peeked through the door.

  “Jordan?” I said as I opened it, and he rushed in, nearly knocking me over. “What are you doing out? Racing bears again?”

  His clothes were drenched in sweat and … was that blood?

  “I need help,” he said, and limped straight into the exam room where he hadn’t been sleeping, with blood dripping from his pants and both hands. “I hate to do this in the middle of the night, but could you get your mom?”

  “She’s out.”

  “I need stitches,” Jordan said, hopping onto the high table. He gingerly pulled off his Clemson sweatshirt to reveal blood caked around his wrist and forearm. “We have to hurry. They could be coming here any minute.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “What …”

  I could say no more. It was medic-mode time. I took his arm in my hands and inspected the crusted blood for the wound.

  “They got my leg, too,” he said. “I think that one’s deeper.”

  His arm had a clear, clean slice. “It’s not terrible,” I said. “Can you make a fist?”

  He did.

  “Now touch the tips of your fingers to your thumbs,” I instructed.

  He was able to do that, too.

  “This looks like an old wound,” I said. “It’s not fresh blood. How long ago did this happen? What’s it from?”

  He was too busy pulling off his shoe, which was filled with goopy blood, to answer. I knelt to look at his leg.

  “You won’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe what?” I said as I tried to get a clear view of the wound. I needed better light. “Hold on,” I said, and fetched Mom’s surgery lamp from the back room.

  “I went to the power plant,” he said. “I wanted to talk to my dad. I know it’s restricted, so don’t tell me I’m an idiot. I know it was a bad decision.”

  “You went to talk to your dad after we all went to bed?” I asked.

  “I know.”

  “Next time come talk to me. I’m around all night.”

  I looked up at him and saw the trace of a smile. That was a good sign.

  “This is obviously a stab wound,” I said, having pulled off his sock and rolled up his pant leg. It was deep, but clean—nothing jagged.

  “I know. I was there,” he said.

  “Don’t make me poke you in it, smart-ass,” I said. “I don’t think this can wait till Mom gets back. When did it happen?”

  “Probably about midnight,” he said. “I got to the plant around 11:30 and wasn’t there very long.”

  I stared at the wound for a long minute and wondered whether there was any way to reach Mom. I was so sick of this cell-phone problem.

  “Where’ve you been since midnight?”

  “Walking back here,” he said.

  “On this leg? From all the way out there?”

  He nodded.

  I bit my lip. “Did you see your dad at least?”

  He shook his head. “They had other things for me to see.”

  “We have to call the army hospital. Mom has the car—maybe they can come pick you—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “Who do you think did this to me?”

  “I have no idea, Jordan. How ’bout you tell me?”

  “It was them. It was the guys at the plant, working with the military. Remember those two guys in suits that I pointed out at football practice? They were waiting for me in this little room. We tussled.”

  “‘Tussled,’” I said. “You mean they stabbed you?”

  “No,” he said. “There was this disfigured psycho scientist with a skull-like face, no lips, no ears, and a sword that shoots out from where his right arm should be. I’ve seen him in my dreams, twice, but now I know he’s real.”

  Jordan’s face was peppered with sweat, and his undershirt was glued to his body. Maybe he had a fever? Delusions?

  “The psycho scientist stabbed you?” I asked.

  “Swear to Jah,” he said. “With the sword that came out of his arm stump.”

  “Like Wolverine.”

  “No, those are more like sword fingernails. This was a sword arm.”

  “Hang on,” I said, looking for a thermometer that hadn’t seen the inside of a dog’s anus. Jordan had an infection that must’ve given him a fever, and now, after walking around for hours with open wounds, he was delusional and experiencing hallucinations. I finally located a small electric thermometer in our upstairs bathroom, and as I returned to the exam room, my heart sank.

  Jordan looked awful, his skin pale and ashen, his face and body smeared and spattered with blood.

  “Who was the fight with?” I asked as I put the thermometer in his mouth.

  “Mmm mmm,” he said. He had a thermometer in his mouth. I pulled it out.

  “I told you,” he said. “Those two guys in suits—FBI agents, maybe—and that scary scientist.”

  “Scary scientist with a sword.”

  “Right. But I grabbed the gun from one of the FBI guys and shot him three times
in the chest.”

  “You killed the scientist?”

  “In theory,” Jordan said. “But I don’t think he’s really dead.”

  Okay, we’d ventured deep into Crazytown. I jammed the thermometer back into his mouth, but he pulled it out.

  “I didn’t shoot the FBI guys,” he continued, “though I pistol-whipped one of them, and handcuffed them both to a radiator. Obviously they know who I am and will come after me. That’s why we can’t go to the army hospital. And we can’t tell anyone.”

  “What happened to the gun?”

  “I ditched it in the woods on the way home,” he said.

  “Great,” I said for lack of anything better to say. Hadn’t we been snuggling on the couch just a few hours ago? I took the thermometer from his hand. “Leave this in your mouth this time, or I’ll stick it somewhere else.”

  He obeyed, and I had a silent moment to think. I couldn’t fix all this alone. I needed my mom.

  The thermometer beeped, and I pulled it out.

  “Holy crackers, 103.5,” I said. “Like I thought, you’ve got an infection. I’ve stitched up dogs before, so I could stitch you, but cleaning up an infection is beyond my medical training level. You’ll need my mom for that.”

  “I don’t want to get her involved,” he said, his eyes darting.

  “Like I said, I can stitch you up. You’ve lost a lot of blood. But after that, it’s either my mom or the army doctors—and I know you don’t want to deal with them.”

  Jordan rubbed his hands over his exhausted face, leaving streaks of blood.

  “Jordan. Sweetie. Close your eyes while I do my magic. You need to relax and get some rest.”

  “I can see in the dark, Maggie,” he said. “I’m faster, stronger, and smarter than I’ve ever been, and I can see in the dark. Plus, I know things—like the fact that they were FBI guys because they had a Glock 17M, and that’s the kind of gun that the FBI uses. The army standard issue is a SIG Sauer. How would I know a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Something crazy like reading? Or hearing it in the military camp where you spent most of the last year?”

  He scowled.

  “I’m going to close these wounds with Steri-Strips,” I said, “and Mom can clean it all out and stitch you up when she gets home.”

  “Okay,” he muttered.

  As I looked at my wounded pal, I wondered, Should I call the police? There’d obviously been a fight in which he’d been stabbed and slashed. I wasn’t the praying type, but I sent a plea out into the universe that my dear friend hadn’t shot—or, God forbid, killed—anyone.

  I poured alcohol onto a square of gauze and wiped the leg wound, causing him to flinch. “Hey, I’m resting here,” he grumbled. Ah … a joke.

  I pulled the surgery light closer and took out the large magnifying glass. I was clearing away the dried blood, but the surrounding skin was flaming red, and pus and blood oozed from the inch-and-a-half cut. It was a deep one, and who knew how dirty the weapon was?

  I had no idea how much of Jordan’s story to believe, but I knew this: He needed medical help before the wound went septic. This was a precarious, potentially fatal situation, even for a patient in a top-notch hospital. For a wounded teen sitting atop an animals’ examination table awaiting the return of a sleep-deprived veterinarian who’d been dealing with crazed pooches feasting on mutton, all bets were off.

  CHAPTER 27

  Jordan

  MAGGIE HELPED ME into the shotgun seat of the twenty-year-old metallic green Chevy Malibu, the beater her mom used for house calls when she didn’t need the pickup truck. Dr. Gooding was out in the pickup now—she’d be bringing back either wounded sheep or raging dogs, Maggie said—so there we were. Maggie had wrapped my leg and wrist tightly in cotton and gauze, but I still worried that I would drip blood onto the nubby cloth upholstery.

  “Relax,” she said, leaning my seat back before taking the driver’s seat.

  I felt comfortable and closed my eyes, my wounds still screaming but not quite as loudly as before. Maggie had given me ibuprofen before we left her house, even though I asked for something stronger. She said the only anesthetics they had were for animals, and she wouldn’t know the right dosage.

  “Whatever you’d give a rhino,” I’d said.

  She’d shot me a disgusted look. “I don’t want to kill you, Jordan.”

  Fair enough.

  Now she was laying a cold, wet cloth over my eyes and forehead and telling me to get some sleep.

  “I don’t know how long it’ll take me to find Mom,” Maggie said. “I don’t know which farm she’s at. In the meantime, your body needs to shut down and give yourself a chance to heal.”

  She kissed my hot cheek, which instantly grew hotter.

  “You rock,” I muttered, then added: “Just go fast, so you can get there before they find us. And don’t draw attention to us.”

  “Right,” she said. “Drive like a speed demon inconspicuously.”

  “You got it,” I said, closing my eyes. I was quiet for maybe five seconds, during which Maggie shifted from reverse to drive and hit the pedal hard enough to lurch us forward. “Maybe those guys at the plant aren’t FBI.”

  “What?”

  “The ‘Matrix’ guys.”

  “What about their Glocks?” She sounded like she was humoring me.

  “I know,” I said, “but why should I assume they’re official anything when I’m not sure that scientist even is human? Or was.”

  “Right. He’s probably a dead cyborg by now.”

  I squinted at her, hoping she’d notice my displeasure at her tone, but her eyes were fixed on the dark road, as well they should’ve been.

  “The scientist didn’t look like he should’ve been alive in the first place,” I continued. “Parts of his skull were visible. At first I thought he was a burn victim, but then I wondered whether he was part of a crazy experiment. He had no lips, and his teeth were completely exposed, like Two-Face in The Dark Knight.”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said, “we watched that movie together. But I’m sure it’s more likely that you actually saw someone who could’ve stepped out of a DC Comics movie than you imagined him in a delirious state after already having dreamed about him.”

  “I’m not delirious, and I didn’t have a fever before I was attacked by these guys,” I said. “Yes, it’s weird that I dreamed about him before I saw him, but he was alive, and I’ve got the wounds to prove it.”

  “Maybe it was déjà vu,” she said flatly, the car turning a sharp corner.

  “No, it wasn’t déjà vu,” I replied impatiently, flipping over the wet cloth to place the cool side on my forehead. “I didn’t feel like I’d been there before. I just recognized the guy—from my dreams.”

  “Maybe you recognized him as the flaming corpse you chased into the woods.”

  I realized that with every matter-of-fact statement Maggie made, my story was sounding more and more absurd, even to me.

  “No, the flaming corpse was different, more of a skeletal body. I think his name was Omega. The scientist was solid in the middle but with a peeled-back face.”

  “Maybe they’re cousins, not identically disfigured cousins,” Maggie said in a singsong.

  “That so doesn’t work,” I grumbled.

  “Well, since I don’t believe in clairvoyance, maybe you’d actually seen the scientist before, like at sick camp.”

  “I’d never seen him before. This is not a face you’d forget.”

  “But maybe you had seen him before. Otherwise you wouldn’t have recognized him.”

  “This nap is going great.”

  “What about during all of those surgeries after the car accident?” Maggie asked. “Maybe you saw him then, and your brain is just dredging up the memory. You were in and out of consciousness, dealing with so much trauma. How much of that do you remember clearly?”

  “Not much,” I admitted.

  “There you go.”

/>   “I’m telling you,” I said, “no matter my level of consciousness or whatever post-accident stress I was going through, if I’d seen this guy, I would have remembered him. Consciously.”

  “Or maybe the scientist looked similar to the guy in your dreams, so your brain just linked them up.”

  “Why do you keep arguing with me? Why do you have so much stake in my not seeing someone from my dreams?”

  She reached out her right hand and gently brushed my head. “Jordan, I have no stake in your being wrong. I just want to understand what’s going on with you so I can help you. I’m a logic-driven person, so what’s more likely, that you dreamed a supernatural skull man who turned out to be real and tried to murder you with his sword arm, or you’re feeling the easily diagnosed effects of infected wounds and an astronomical fever?”

  I didn’t answer. I knew what I’d seen and what I’d dreamed and what I’d done. I’d shot the scientist three times after he attacked me with his sword. I could see the dark spots spreading in his white lab coat from the holes in his chest.

  “His blood was black,” I remembered.

  “Of course, it was,” Maggie said. “Night-night.”

  I lowered the cloth over my eyes again.

  “I’m sorry about this,” I muttered. “I didn’t mean for you to get caught up in it.”

  “Caught up in what?”

  I tried to think of what to call it. Sinister plot? Family melodrama? Supernatural conspiracy? Paranoid thriller? Most of the soldiers had been acting weird, like automatons. Why? Who was controlling them? Why did that repellent scientist keep calling me Rho? Was that short for something? Ro-BOT? Did they think I was a robot, and that’s why they wanted me in “for repair”? But then why would he try to kill me? And how was the running, burning skeleton guy in the forest related to the rest of them?

  “This,” I finally responded. “I’m sorry you’re caught up in this.”

  Maggie guided the car around a curve, a sliver of pink becoming visible on the horizon.