Explosive Dreams

by Hadena James

  We weren’t eating meals together either. I had a taco pizza from a Breadeaux pizza store in town, left over from the day before in my fridge. I had taken the car several times to pick up Mexican from the small Mexican restaurant or a burger from Wendy’s or a sandwich from the Subway. However, I was eating lunch and dinner alone.

  Solitude never bothered me. People bothered me more. However, away from home in a part of Missouri I had never visited, I felt somewhat lost. Afraid I’d upset Nyleena, I hadn’t called her. I also hadn’t called Malachi, I didn’t need his voice in my head when I started chasing after the mass murderer. He’d just point out all my failings.

  The time in Palmyra was torture. I had never been much of a sleeper, a byproduct of my life. However, I also wasn’t good at being bored. When my clock told me it was three a.m., I crawled from bed, giving up on sleep for another hour or so. I flipped on the TV for background noise and opened my Kindle. After ten minutes of shopping, I found a book about serial killers that I had theoretically never heard of, spent the $3.99 and started reading it.

  An hour later, I had read the entire book. The author had been right, there were three serial killers in the book I had never heard of. With that sort of success, I bought the second book in the series.

  Crawling back into bed, I stared at the ceiling. Fifty serial killers that had never made the news was nothing. There were at least twelve hundred in the US and possibly as many as ten thousand currently at work. That was something to think about, something to make you lock your doors at night, something to make you decide that a Conceal and Carry permit was a really good idea. Of course, if you were attacked by any of these serial killers, chances were good your Conceal and Carry permit would be pointless and that your gun would be used against you, but it gave the illusion of safety.

  Another hour crept by, then another. As light began to seep into the darkened sky, I was finally starting to feel sleepy.

  “Ace!” Xavier was shouting at my door. My eyes instantly flew open. The adrenaline surged. I was awake.

  “What?” I shouted, climbing from the bed and unlocking the door.

  “I brought you soda,” Xavier handed me a Mt. Dew.

  “Is that all?” I frowned.

  “You’re usually awake with the rising of the sun.”

  “I haven’t been to sleep yet.”

  “Stop playing video games,” Lucas’ voice caught me off guard and I peered around the disheveled Xavier.

  “It isn’t the video games. It’s the twiddling of my thumbs while I wait to see if another carnival is brutalized by a bomb.”

  “Well, we can’t help you there. We can help you pack. We’re being assigned to stake-out duty,” Xavier told me.

  Lots of thoughts went through my head at that statement. We weren’t celebrity famous, but we were on the cover of magazines and the leading articles of newspapers occasionally. Then again, I wasn’t sure we would really be noticed as anything other than “odd.” Some of us would blend in better than others. Michael and I would definitely be in the “not blending in” category.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “You are going to love this,” Xavier said.

  “I doubt it,” I answered.

  “The Missouri State Fair is this weekend.” Lucas informed me.

  “He hasn’t hit any fairs that far south, has he?” I asked.

  “No, but it would be a hell of a target,” Gabriel came out of his room and set a bag on the floor. “And of the tri-state area where he’s been targeting, Missouri’s state fair is first. Iowa’s is next weekend and Illinois has one in two weeks.”

  “That’s convenient.” I shrugged. “It won’t take me long to pack.”

  Closing the door on them, I leaned against it for a few moments. The fair, much like Las Vegas, would be hell. The noise, the music, the screams, the lights, the smell of foods mingling in the air, the crushing throng of people, yes, it all added up to a personal form of torture. Not only that, but there were criminals of all kinds at large events like a state fair.

  My last experience at a fair was proof of that. This was just after my family had fallen to hell. My mother, sister-in-law and the kids all went to the Boone County Fair. Somehow, I attracted the attention of a pedophilic carney ride operator. He followed me home. What he didn’t know was that a couple of my dad’s friends were taking turns hanging out at our house. When he attempted to break in, the off duty cop shot him three times in the head in our living room. We moved the following week.

  Now, I was going to go back to a carnival. I would probably attract the attention of another deranged killer. Unfortunately for him, I had made peace with my inner monster. We were getting along well.

  “Ace!” Xavier beat against the door. With my reprieve over, I moved away from the door and threw what few items of clothing I had out into one of my bags. Next, I made sure the batteries were charged on all four Tasers. I hadn’t used them in a while, but you never knew when one would come in handy. I was slightly paranoid.

  “All right,” I opened the door back up. “Is there any way for me to get out of going to the state fair?”

  “No,” Gabriel told me.

  “Even if I claim medical reasons or religious grounds?” I pleaded.

  “If you had religion, I might let that one slide, but you don’t,” Gabriel told me. “Before you start to argue, searching for historical accuracy over the course of human history is not a religion. It might be an obsession, but it definitely doesn’t qualify as a religion.”

  “If I start a cult in the next few hours?” I continued.

  “The Cult of Cain,” Gabriel grinned. “A cult needs followers and rules. You have Lucas and Xavier, maybe Michael if he’s still in a bad mood. That doesn’t make you the leader of a cult.”

  “What about serial killers that send her presents?” Xavier asked.

  “Fan clubs are not cults, no matter how closely related the two might be, especially in Ace’s case,” Gabriel said. “Looks like you’re out of options. You’ll have to go to the state fair. Buck up, I’ll buy you a funnel cake.”

  “That would be awesome, if I ate funnel cake.” I checked the patch on my arm. It was still snug and pulling at the skin. In theory, it flooded my body with nicotine, lessening my cravings for cigarettes. It was a great theory and like most theories, it was failing to live up to the hype. I still really wanted a cigarette and the patch seemed to make me want one even more.

  “Who doesn’t eat funnel cake?” Xavier asked. “As your current primary care physician, I highly recommend you eat a funnel cake. I’ll write you a prescription if you want.”

  That summed up my life. Xavier was willing to write a note to get me to eat a funnel cake. I avoided deep fried foods because of migraines. I didn’t eat a lot of things because of migraines. I had never had a funnel cake, but the few times I had smelled them, they had smelled like heaven on a plate sprinkled with amazingness.

  Maybe I’d break the rules a little, after all, it was a fair. People were supposed to have fun at fairs. I might stand out if I looked miserable. A funnel cake might make me happy, or at least, as happy as I ever got.

  Chapter Seven

  Desolate, depressing, and desperate were words I would normally use to describe a carnival during the day. Tired parents straggling behind their excited children who were scrambling to ride every ride possible before they threw up and bored carnival workers wondering why the hell they were suffering through the hottest part of a Missouri summer day were what I was expecting. That was not the case.

  There were tired parents straggling behind youngsters determined to ride every ride possible and there were carnival staff looking like the heat was draining them of life and honestly, it probably was. However, the place was busy. It didn’t seem to matter that it was daylight. There was stuff happening.

  Rides were in full swing already. Game barkers were calling to people, trying to get them to part with a few bucks for a chance to win a giant teddy bear
or a large elephant. Food vendors had small lines, most of the people wanted cold drinks. Lemonade was very popular and these stalls had the longest lines.

  Craft booths were doing a brisk business. Shoppers wandered from booth to booth looking at the goods. Those that proclaimed to be Missouri-made and handmade were doing the best business. A shop selling tiny pewter ornaments glued to dragon’s tears seemed to be doing really well, surprising, considering the figurines were less than an inch tall and a single one cost five dollars, but the owner claimed the molds for the figurines were handmade and he was a Missouri native, these two things seemed to have people digging deep in their wallets for slightly off-kilter dolphins and lopsided wizards.

  The Missouri Highway Patrol and Homeland Security had tried to get the fair to ban coolers. It hadn’t worked. There weren’t many coolers, but it was my job to look for unattended coolers and try to find their owners. I also seemed to be in charge of defusing whatever chemical destruction was inside said cooler. For this, I had been given a bottle of distilled water and a box of baking soda. The water was a really bad idea since sulfuric acid was a component of the bomb, but no one listened to me. The baking soda felt heavy in the small bag I carried. The water felt even heavier.

  It was at least a hundred degrees in the shade with almost no breeze blowing. Once in a while, Gabriel would talk, but that was the only break from the monotonous buzzing that seemed to permeate the air. Lucas and Xavier were together. Gabriel and I were together. Michael was sitting in a nice air conditioned building watching computer screens of people coming and going at the gates. When the assignments had been handed out, I had pointed out how much they sucked, but Xavier had reminded me of Michael’s incident in the desert.

  The thought of him touching a “fuzzy” cactus made me giggle. It had required effort to stifle it. However, I had noticed Lucas crack a smile with me.

  “Well, is it as bad as you thought?” Gabriel asked.

  “I’m in a jacket to hide my badge and gun, it’s a bazillion degrees out here and the place hums,” I told him.

  “You are always so negative.”

  “Fine, on the plus side, when we both get heat stroke or sun stroke or turn into lobsters, we’ll get to go home,” I smiled. “And it isn’t dark yet.”

  “That’s the spirit, look for the silver lining.” Gabriel gave me a small shove with his shoulder. To anyone watching, this would have looked like playful flirting. To Gabriel and me, it was sibling banter. There was no flirting in my world. I didn’t understand it or care about it. Besides, Gabriel had a thing for Nyleena. This was awkward since Xavier did as well. We all just ignored it and it worked.

  “Did my arm just spontaneously combust?” I asked, giving Gabriel a grin and looking at my shoulder. He was in jeans, a t-shirt and a light-weight short sleeve shirt. I was in jeans, a t-shirt and a long sleeve shirt. The only thing I could say for it was that he would sunburn first. Of course, he was a red-head and would sunburn first anyway, but I took some pride in my olive skin-tone. It was pretty miraculous considering my parents were both Scottish and my mother seemed to instantly get a sunburn without a gallon of sunscreen.

  “You bitch when it’s hot, whine when it’s cold, are you ever comfortable?” He asked.

  “In Missouri?” I raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t the heat, it’s the humidity.” I hated that saying, but it was true. The warm moist air could act like a hot compress and ease my aching joints or it could make them feel swollen and achy because the barometric pressure was too high. Today was a too high day. The long sleeves and jeans covered the scars that decorated my body. New ones seemed to appear like magic. However, it had been almost two months since I had been injured. There was nothing I could do about the small burn scar on my neck, but it wasn’t as horrid as some of the others.

  “Can you really use baking soda to defuse a bomb?” Gabriel spoke quietly, trying not to spook anyone within hearing distance.

  “Probably,” I shrugged. “I certainly can’t do it with distilled water. Baking soda is a much better bet since it has sulfuric acid as an ingredient, but I’d have to know how it was set up before I could really make that determination. Baking soda won’t neutralize everything in the make-up, so it’s basically a working theory. When do I get my funnel cake?”

  “After we’ve had dinner.”

  “Um, we’re at a fair, I haven’t seen a whole lot on the food menus that I can eat.”

  “That’s why we are ordering pizza to be delivered to the building where Michael is holed up.” Gabriel lapsed into silence. Pizza I could and would eat.

  A stall carrying nice hand fans caught my eye. I had no idea what I would do with it after today, perhaps give it to Nyleena, but it offered a touch of relief. On the flip side, I’d have to carry it around with me all day or drop it into the shoulder bag that already felt full and heavy.

  “Just buy the fan, it will help you look normal,” Gabriel gave me a small nudge. I moved towards the stall. The color options seemed endless. Most were made of lace with strange spines that I thought might be bone or some similar material. The woman behind the cash register looked at least two hundred years old.

  “Did you make all of these?” I asked lamely.

  “Of course,” she smiled. Most of her teeth were gone, but the smile reached her eyes. It was rare for anyone but my unit and a select few others to give me a real smile. People tended to be unnerved by my presence. “You look like an earth tones type of girl.”

  “That’s correct,” I smiled at her.

  She stood and walked to the back of the stall. Her hands materialized a dark green lace fan with brown spines and a lighter green lace accent. I had to admit, it was beautiful. I hoped it functioned as well.

  “Give me two of them, the other one in brighter colors,” I added hastily.

  “Jewel tones or pastels?” She asked.

  “Um,” I frowned. I didn’t know what a jewel tone was, however, Nyleena wasn’t really a pastels person. She liked vivid purples and blues.

  “Jewel tones,” Gabriel said from behind me.

  “Purple if you have it,” I looked at the walls. The hanging fans were lots of colors, but none of the purples were eye catching.

  “Jewel tone purple,” the old woman smiled. She pulled another out of the back. “I’ve been saving these two for just the right people. I guess my instincts were right. They usually are.”

  The second fan was a dark, deep purple accented with a bright red. In my world, the two colors would never have matched. Somehow, this old woman made them work. It was just as beautiful and delicate as the green one. The spines were black on it.

  “What do you use for the spines?” I asked, trying to dig money from my pockets without exposing my guns.

  “Animal bones mostly, but sometimes wood,” she said. “My great grandmother taught me to make them when I was just a girl.”

  “They are beautiful,” I dug a hundred out of my pocket. The fans were forty a piece. I told her to keep the change. She dug out two boxes and put each fan in a wooden box that seemed custom made for it. I slipped Nyleena’s into my bag and took mine out of the box.

  “They’re functional too,” she gave me a wink and demonstrated by picking up a vibrant mahogany colored fan. As she moved it, her white hair moved with a gentle breeze.

  “Thank you,” I used my new fan. It was the simple things in life. Nyleena would love hers. Mine could be used as decor when I finished with this stake-out.

  As I turned away, I saw Gabriel slip another twenty to the old woman. He smiled and touched his cowboy hat. Usually he wore a baseball cap, but he’d foregone it to “dress up.” He wore a black hat that he told me was a Stetson. This meant nothing to me and I had no reason to doubt him, so I had just nodded and we had moved into the fairgrounds. Later, I would ask someone about a Stetson and its significance. It did shatter the idea of good guys wearing white hats and bad guys wearing black. As tormented as Gabriel was, he was definitely a good guy. He�
�d be great for Nyleena if they ever hooked up.

  “What now boss?” I asked him.

  “We continue to walk around, looking like fairgoers and trying not to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “That sounds like a crappy plan.”

  “That’s what security details are all about.”

  “I think I like chasing bad guys better.”

  “No, Ace, you enjoy getting shot at or stabbed or beaten up more than you like sitting on your hands waiting for a bad guy to appear.”

  “Well, the good news is, I’m a bad guy magnet.”

  “If that’s the good news, what’s the bad?”

  “I’m a bad guy magnet.” I smiled and turned away from the craft stalls.

  Chapter Eight

  Night brought the temperatures down from a hundred degrees to a balmy ninety. It also brought lights, thousands of people and brand new challenges. People would bump into me, which did more than annoy me. I didn’t like to be touched, being touched by strangers was awful. Once in a while, someone would notice the gun and give me a wide eyed look before noticing the badge that was discreetly clipped to my jeans.

  We’d eaten pizza over an hour ago. It had settled heavily on my stomach in the heat. Each of Gabriel’s attempts to buy me my first funnel cake had been politely declined. Watching the rides spin around made me feel worse. I finally found a picnic table and grabbed a seat. Gabriel came over with a cold soda for me and a lemonade for him. Lemonade was too sweet in this weather.

  I sucked noisily on the straw. My nerves were frayed. It was times like these that made me wonder about my decision to join the Marshals Service. It also made me wonder why they had gone ahead and hired me. I was stand-offish on good days. Tonight was bordering on combative.

  To his credit, Gabriel had sensed the change in my mood. He was reclined against the table, making it so we both faced the same direction. His eyes scanned the crowd as they moved. When someone went to sit next to us, he motioned that the table was taken. The group sought out a new table with some not so polite comments and grumbling that Gabriel dismissed with a wave of his middle finger.