Sleeper Seven

by Mark Howard

  After silently piloting the craft to the higher floor where her target lay, she maneuvered it around to the other side, just outside the unfinished room, and after aligning it as close to the window as possible, took a moment to prepare herself.

  "Return to autopilot, hold position, and open, please." The screen slid back to the map view, and as she pocketed the phone, the canopy separated, sliding apart with the familiar hiss.

  The cold wind plastered her hair to her face as she eyed the rippling plastic opening a few feet away. Taking a deep breath, she leaned out over the edge of the craft, and reaching forward, struggled to tear the hard plastic sheeting with one hand, while firmly grasping the lip of the open cockpit with the other. After muttering some choice curse words, she was finally able to poke a hole and tear a two foot gash in it. Lifting one leg outside of the cockpit, she placed her foot against the hull of the craft and leaned further, reaching her forearm into the opening. Grabbing hold of the interior window sill, she let go of the craft and pulled herself in.

  Tumbling onto the bare concrete floor with a thud, she lay still for a moment, but heard only the wind flapping through the gaping hole in the sheeting. As her eyes adjusted to the dark room, she could see the faint light of the hallway under the door. After army-crawling into the nearest corner, she curled up in a fetal position to keep warm, and began to exit again.

  Once out, she left the room and traveled down the circular hallway, towards the brightly lit finished area. Rounding a curve, she observed the two guards, again standing stock still and with eyes wide open. Her improvised plan now was to make a commotion, drawing them away from the door and giving her enough time to get back into her body, physically enter the room, and drag her charge — if necessary — back to the idling craft.

  Beyond the guards stood a bank of three elevators in the core support cylinder of the building, and further down she spied an open stairwell. Gathering herself to a point, she flew unnoticed above the guard's heads and dove into the stairwell, spinning downwards a few flights. She circled a moment, listening to see if she was spotted, but heard nothing. As she spun around, she imagined herself heavier and denser, and after having gained some momentum, plowed directly into one of the iron railings.

  The intensity of the metallic clang that ensued surprised even her, and upon hearing a shout from above, she flew back up to observe the result. Instead of both guards leaving their post to investigate, however, one remained in an attack pose, gun drawn and ready, while the other was nowhere to be seen.

  Speeding down the hall in the opposite direction, she came upon the second guard circling around from the other side, who was quickly checking each room with a flashlight. An ice-cold chill ran through her as she discovered he was only one door from the room where her body lay.

  Before she had any time to think about contingencies, he was in the room, shining his flashlight on her body huddled motionless in the corner. Drawing his gun, he shouted again, and she heard the footsteps of the first guard running down the hallway towards them. Appearing in the doorway, the second guard entered the room and trained his gun on her body as well. Frozen with fear, she could only watch, helpless, as this scene from a horror film came to life in front of her.

  ~ 33 ~

  Receiving no response from the body in the corner, the two guards seemed befuddled as to how to handle this strange situation. The second guard, noticing the flapping of the open window, sidestepped over to it and carefully peered through the hole. Jerking his body back like a cat escaping a paper bag, he shouted to the other guard while fumbling with the radio on his belt. Speaking haltingly into his handset, she could tell he was having difficulty explaining the situation to whoever was on the other end.

  The first guard, realizing the prone form on the floor was an intruder — and a strange looking one at that — lifted his gun to his shoulder, stepped forward, and kicked her body in the stomach. She heard herself emit a muffled 'oof' as her body writhed in pain, but in her current state she felt nothing, except for a rising anger, stirring her from the shock of being discovered.

  Spinning in a tight circle, she imagined herself as dense as a billiard ball, and flew into the back of the guard who had kicked her. She felt the impact to his rib cage, at which point her mass must have depleted, as she propelled through his torso without any further resistance. Disgusting as it was to feel the hot bone, marrow, lungs and heart, each of which she could clearly distinguish, it had the intended effect of knocking him to the ground where he lay groaning and writhing in pain.

  The remaining guard swung around wildly, searching for whoever had attacked his partner. If he had turned off his flashlight, he might have noticed a dim light gaining speed in a wide arc around the room. Instead, he flailed about ineffectively until receiving an unexpected punch to the solar plexus that sent him reeling. Crumpling to the ground, he projectile vomited — to Jess' dismay — directly onto her shoes.

  She quickly returned to her body, and waking up, was assaulted a second time with the stench of her handiwork. "Agggh!" she exclaimed, and holding her shirt sleeve over her nose, stood and wiped her pukey shoe on the guard's pant leg. Confiscating their weapons, she slid them out the window opening to the ground, then dragged the guards one by one to the elevator bank down the hall. After pressing the call button, she shoved them into the first car that arrived, and sent them, groaning, down to the lobby.

  That task complete, she entered her target's room to find him sitting up on the bed, cradling his head in his hands. He looked up, and without a word stood and shuffled towards her, as if he already knew what she was there to do. Positioning herself alongside him, she threw an arm around his waist and helped him down the hall to the empty room.

  Behind them, she heard the ding of an arriving elevator car, followed by the shuffling of several pairs of boots in their direction. It was either the reinvigorated pair, or reinforcements, but Jess was unwilling to stay and find out.

  Leaning him next to the window, she scrambled through the opening, landing roughly in the open cockpit outside. Spinning around, she stretched back through the window opening, hooking her vomity shoes onto the sill of the craft, and reached out to him.

  He grabbed her arms with both hands, leaning forward as she pulled back, and was almost out when Jess spotted flashlights behind him scanning the room. The beams quickly converged on them, and just as he had grasped the edge of the cockpit, she felt a hard tug and heard the grunts of the men inside as he was pulled backwards, away from her.

  Quickly removing her shoes with one hand, she fired each of them into the window opening, then grasped his free arm and braced her stocking feet against the wall of the cockpit.

  "OK Mustang Three, move back ten feet!" she ordered.

  The craft slid backward as if on a rail, dragging her subject through the window along with several other arms, until they lost their grip — or their nerve — and let go. His legs fell, pulling her forward as he dangled over the side of the craft. As she struggled to pull him aboard, a trio of rifle stocks emerged from the plastic hole.

  "Descend to the ground!" she ordered, and instantly they plummeted downward as shots rang out in the sky above them. Still holding his arms, Jess didn't have the strength to pull him in, and so she just held on, waiting for the ground to arrive.

  As the craft gently slowed to a stop above the concrete plaza, they found themselves hovering in the midst of three military troop transport trucks, the occupants of which were now a hundred stories above them. The lone remaining soldier, a driver enjoying his smoke break, stared mid-puff as a small, shoeless Caucasian redhead hoisted a supremely tall man with white hair — neither of which he had seen before in his life — into a strange-looking tiny black car that had silently descended from the sky.

  ~ 34 ~

  Her subject safe inside the cockpit, Jess ordered the craft to close. As the roof sealed shut and the panels cleared, she laughed aloud at the sight of the gentleman, folded into the seat of thi
s tiny craft, which was clearly designed for occupants no more than five feet tall.

  He glanced at her with a slight grimace, holding his head as if he had a wicked hangover. She offered him some of her water, and after drinking it, he leaned back as best he could and closed his eyes again. Her concern for him was interrupted by movement out of the corner of her eye: reinforcements had arrived, and had begun firing upon the craft with abandon. Strangely, she felt no impacts, nor heard any ricochet sounds, though they were shooting from less than a hundred yards away. Unwilling to see how much of this abuse the craft could take, she ordered it home.

  As the craft ascended, she watched the men below futilely continue to fire, even as their impenetrable target sped up and away. As they rose, sunlight flooded the cockpit; it had finally, inevitably, caught up to her. Looking down again, at the dawn of a new day in this strange city, she glimpsed a modicum of street traffic, surprisingly little considering the size of the city. Craning her neck back towards the hotel one last time, she spotted a dozen or so military vehicles converging on it from different sections of the city, not realizing their prey was long gone.

  She examined her new companion. Although out of it, his eyes were open now, and he seemed to be coming around. Relaxing into her chair, she was able to steal a few moments of rest despite the sunshine-filled cabin. Gazing down, she watched the greens and browns of the countryside pass by, marred suddenly by a long coil of white smoke below them. As she squinted, examining this strange cloud, another joined it, this one below their left side. Jess clearly saw the object leaving this new trail: a small, pointed red cylinder.

  Looking aft, she spotted two nosecones quickly approaching. Both jets shot by, one on each side, before turning hard in opposite directions, presumably to circle back around and fire upon them again.

  "Go faster!" she commanded the craft, instantly feeling the result of the acceleration. The jets had already circled around, however, and were gaining on them. Several follow-on missiles flew above, to the right, and underneath them. She wondered if they were just poor shots, or if there was something about this craft they just couldn't lock onto.

  The jets, still retaining a slight speed advantage, crept up astride them. Jess made eye contact with the pilot twenty feet off of their bow; above his oxygen mask his eyes showed a burning anger, even hatred, towards them. He suddenly banked hard to his left, away from them. As she leaned over the gentleman to see where he went, the craft rocked sideways, pitching her back into her seat.

  "Avoiding aircraft," the craft announced calmly, as Jess twisted to her right to find the nosecone of the second jet mere feet off their starboard side. As the craft continued through the hard bank, the second pilot gave up and pulled away, just as the first jet came around again. Positioning his aircraft ahead of them, he banked sharply, cutting them off, with the clear intention of bringing both aircraft down.

  "Avoiding aircraft," the craft repeated as it skidded right, throwing her roughly on top of the gentleman. Jess saw the confusion on the pilot's face as he looked up at them through his canopy, he vertical and they horizontal, while their craft followed the parabolic arc of his hard bank perfectly, avoiding a collision by inches.

  "Go faster! Outrun!" she ordered the craft, as she extricated herself and slid back into her seat.

  "Unable to comply," the craft countered. "Acceleration slope computed based on body..."

  "Override! Ignore!" Jess interrupted. "I authorize faster! Maximum discomfort!"

  "Understood," the craft announced, as the roar of thousands of additional chirping engines filled their ears, and the sudden eight g-force acceleration plastered them back into their seats. If Jess had been able to turn her head, she might have seen the incredulous expressions on the faces of their pursuers as they receded into the distance.

  The familiar mist began to form as they transitioned through the sound barrier, the drawn out 'pops' from before exploding this time in a matter of seconds, like the sound of a gatling gun.

  "Slipstream active and maximum velocity achieved," the craft informed them, as the acceleration abated and they regained the ability to move. They were over the ocean now — Jess had no idea where — but they were facing the sun, so she assumed they were traveling east. Remembering her guest, she looked over at him as he turned and gave her a wan smile, along with a thumb pointed sideways, as though grading her rescue effort.

  "My name is Jess," she offered, extending her hand awkwardly in the small space. He looked at it, looked at her, smiled again, and touched her palm with two of his fingers, but said nothing. Then, reaching forward, he brushed the featureless white console with three fingers, twisting them in a circle. A hologram of a spinning globe manifested in front of them, which he deftly manipulated in mid-air, zooming in to a location within Mongolia. Touching it, he twisted his finger in place, and the craft instantly responded with a one hundred and eighty degree turn. She looked at him quizzically as they headed, once again, away from the rising sun. Giving her the same wan smile, he wordlessly curled back into his seat.

  "Where are we going?" she demanded. He turned and smiled at her again, as though a parent entertaining the babble of an infant.

  "Take us home," she commanded. The craft turned back toward the sun.

  "Vishu" he countermanded, and the craft turned back westward. Again, she ordered it home, but found it — for the first time — unresponsive to her. Sighing angrily, she lay back in her seat, wondering how long this detour would take. Her bladder was killing her.

  ~ 35 ~

  After several minutes of tense silence, her subject — and now captor — rose from his stupor and turned to her, as if remembering something.

  "Come and knock on our door!" he sang, painfully off-key. She looked at him quizzically as he entreated her, a look of joyful expectation on his face.

  "We've been waiting for you!" he continued, in a deep, throaty nordic accent, still looking to her for some type of acknowledgement. She vaguely recognized the massacred tune from somewhere, but was gobsmacked as to what this was all about.

  "Ahh...OK," she nodded in faux fellowship, smiling at him warily.

  He took this as the confirmation he had been searching for, and with a victorious, knowing look on his face, he nodded back at her, winked, sat back again, and said nothing more.

  Jess anxiously charted their progress on the holographic globe, and forty-five minutes later they descended into a clearing within a vast expanse of forest, still dark in the twilight hour. Upon landing, she immediately hopped out and made herself scarce for a few minutes.

  Returning to the craft, she couldn't find the gentleman anywhere. This was her charge, and though he was out of immediate danger, she had lost control of the mission objective: to return with him safely in tow. Dismayed, she searched the area frantically, finally discovering him standing motionless next to an enormous, vine-covered tree, peering into the darkness of the forest. Sidling up next to him, he ignored her until she pulled at his garment, as if to lead him back towards the craft. He acted as though annoyed by an insect, and refusing to comply, simply shook his head 'No' while continuing to stare off into the trees.

  Not knowing what to do, she stood with him, as the silence slowly gave way to the synchronized buzzing of swarms of cicadas, which joined together in a rhythm that danced around the forest. To Jess, it sounded as though they were surrounded by thousands of tiny maracas, their earlier arrival having temporarily interrupted this nightly concert.

  The rhythm captured her attention until the cadence began to slow and trail off, and once again the entire forest was still. Hearing the buzz of a faraway engine, Jess searched the trees and spotted a pair of lights navigating slowly through the brush. Back and forth they moved, inching closer at turns. Disappearing for a moment behind a low rise, they reappeared much closer, at which point she could see it was a dark green jeep with two occupants.

  The vehicle made its way towards them, driving over tall grassy brush which scraped the
undercarriage only to spring back up behind them. They came to a halt fifteen feet away, without entering the clearing. The driver was an Asian male in his late twenties, dressed impeccably — if peculiarly — in a light gray business suit. Stranger still were the large pair of sunglasses he wore, since the forest had little light in this pre-dawn hour.

  The man was nothing, however, compared to his passenger: a tall Caucasian woman, her red hair perfectly coiffed, who was draped in a sparkling red evening gown with black and green alligator pumps. As the Jeep came to a stop, she rose and stood on the sideboard, grasping the edge of the windscreen for support. Unlike her companion, she wasn't wearing sunglasses, and stared curiously at Jess with hypnotic blue-grey eyes. This bewildering scene was interrupted by her gentleman friend, who, suddenly acknowledging Jess' existence, turned to her and offered his hand.

  "Thank you," he uttered in his gravelly voice, as she took his hand. He then slowly made his way to the Jeep, and taking the woman's hand, hoisted himself up into the back seat. The woman gave Jess one final look before she, too, turned away and sat down. The driver, still facing forward, fired up the Jeep and they began inching their way back into the darkness of the forest.

  "You're welcome!" she yelled, as they turned out of sight behind a stand of trees. Jess stood in stunned silence for several minutes, until the engine noise receded to silence and the singing of the cicadas slowly returned. She was suddenly angry — angry at herself for letting him go, angry at him for abandoning her in this place, angry at the confusion that swirled around this entire situation. If she was going back empty-handed, she decided, she was at least returning with some answers — if for nobody but herself.

  ~ 36 ~