by John Shirley
She was at a small window table in the Cruller, in what passed for downtown Quiebra. Her latte sat in front of her, untouched. She stretched, then rested an elbow on the table, and it rocked on its uneven legs, so that the latte slopped over. She muttered a curse and dabbed at the milky brown puddle with her napkin. Too big a puddle. She dropped the napkin into it and watched it soak the coffee up. Absorbing the hot coffee into its papery blandness, making it part of itself.
She shivered and tried the cell phone again. It seemed to be calling through now. She put the phone to her ear and heard a rush of static and the odd, jangling words again, something like the confusion that had come out of Waylon’s frequency searcher. Then it was as if some atmospheric hand had lifted, and the line cleared; she heard it ringing.
“Hello?” It was Rueben’s voice.
She had almost married Rueben, before meeting the guy who was now her ex. A few weeks ago, she’d found herself wishing she’d stuck with Rueben. But now that things were getting serious with Bert, Rueben was back into the “handy ex-boyfriend” category— only, it was hard to think about relationships at all just now.
“Hi, Rueben! Can you hear me okay? Cell phone problems around here.”
“Lacey? Sure I hear you! Good to hear you, too. Hey, there was a rumor, uh, that you and—”
“Yeah, we broke up. I’m staying with . . . well, near my sister in Quiebra now. But, hey, did you get my package? My note with that, um, item, right?”
“What package? And what note?”
“I overnighted it to you. It’s a sort of odd little computer chip on a—well, it’s soldered to another device. It was in bubble wrap, inside the envelope with my note. And you’ve got that computer science doctorate, ought to be good for something.”
“No, I didn’t get anything from you. Why are you sending me odd little chips?”
“That’s a long story. But I was hoping you could help me figure out what the thing is. I mean, it seems to be some kind of—of I don’t know what.”
“Nothing came. Have you tried to track it?”
“Um, I’m a little nervous about doing that at this point. To tell the truth, I didn’t use my own name on the envelope. I used a nickname I thought you’d remember, and a fake address. I was nervous about this call, too, but I figure they can’t monitor everything.”
There was a long crackling pause. “Listen, are you okay? I mean, how about if I come and see you? Have you—I mean, uh, are you . . .”
“Am I getting paranoid, Rueben? Yes, I probably am. Maybe not paranoid enough, Rueben. That’s what I’m beginning to think. Especially now. They must have intercepted that package.”
Another staticky interval and she found herself staring at people going by on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop window. An elderly man, bent nearly hunchbacked, walked along with a younger woman, probably his daughter; they passed a middle-aged man with clubbed hair, a purple shirt and a silvery tie—a local real estate agent, going the opposite way.
“Lacey?”
Coming behind the real estate agent was a woman in blue jeans and Levi jacket, with long black hair and high cheekbones and black eyes—one of the local Indians. All of them seemed to glance at her, as they walked by. As if . . .
She shook her head. As if what?
“Lacey, yo.”
“Oh, sorry, Rueben.”
“I really think you should, uh—”
“Rueben? I’m going to be okay. Don’t come to Quiebra, whatever you do. I’ll call you back in a few days.”
Before he could argue, Lacey broke the connection.
Two rather overweight teenage girls carrying Taco Bell bags were passing now. They looked at her. As if . . .
Snap out of it, she told herself. Do something normal. Get some distance from it. Christmas shopping.
She got up and went out, waving to the chubby lady behind the counter. She walked into a wind that was misty but not cold; she strolled past a beautician’s shop, and then stopped in front of a small jewelry store. Maybe some earrings for Adair?
She went in and thought she must’ve mistaken the sign in the window. The jewelry counters were all empty, except for fragments, here and there; a single pearl earring lying askew next to what looked like a broken bracelet. Mostly just blank black velvet under the glass tops. Well, maybe they were changing all their stock over.
“Hello? Anyone home? Are you open?”
After a few moments she gave up and turned to go—but turned back when a woman came out of the back room. Late middle-aged, short and busty, elaborately coifed silver hair, blue eye shadow, jewel-rimmed glasses with an onyx-beaded croky. Her lipstick seemed smeared, and her makeup a bit blurred, as if she’d been crying.
“Yes?” the woman asked.
“Um, are you open? All your stock seems to be gone.”
The woman looked hazily at the display cases. “Yes. It’s all gone. We haven’t got any to put out. It’s gone.”
“Right before Christmas? You must’ve had one heck of a sale.”
“Oh, no. People just came and took it. They came and took it, you see, as ‘resources’ they said. They just took it. Stole it really.”
“Stole it! What did the police say?”
“The police?” She seemed to sway on her feet. She clutched at the glass top of a display case as if she was afraid she might fall. “A lot happened in one day. Wasn’t it amazing? You can’t call the police now. You’re not one of them, are you?”
Lacey swallowed. “One of who?”
The woman blinked hard, as if a harsh light struck her eyes, and stared down at the empty cases. “My husband tried to leave town— was going to talk to the state police. Said he’d be back yesterday, by noon. He hasn’t come back.”
And then she seemed to sink down, below the level of the display case. Lacey lost sight of her for a moment.
Lacey went and looked over the edge of the case. The woman was sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth, her legs cocked to one side, crying.
Lacey tried to think of what to do. “Oh, gosh, let me get you a doctor! Or—some family—someone—”
“No!” The woman looked up at her in sudden panic. Lacey could see the color draining out of her face. “No, please, for God’s sake, don’t call anyone!”
The woman scrambled to her feet and ran, stumbling in her hurry, into the back room, slamming the door behind her.
Lacey backed away from the display cases, and then turned, hurried out and down the street. She hurried against the wind, down a block, left a block, to the police station.
“This,” she muttered, as she stalked up to the station, “is bullshit. I’m going to find out what the fuck is going on.”
Inside, she found a man seated on the other side of the reception window. Not the woman who’d been there a couple of days ago, when Lacey had glanced through the window. A tanned fiftyish man with deep smile lines, maybe the faintest suggestion of a hair weave. But she knew him. Bert had introduced her when they’d run into him at the new bistro. It was the mayor—Mayor Rowse.
“Hello, Mr. Mayor. Are you, um, doing a police job, here? Or, just waiting for someone?”
“I’m filling in here,” Rowse said, smiling, cocking his head to one side. “Certainly.”
“Yes, well, that’s unusual, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no, not when the police are so very busy. Big project going on. Certainly. I was able to pitch in here. But how can I help you? Is there a problem somewhere? You wanted to report something?”
“Hm? Well . . .” She opened her mouth to tell him about the lady in the jewelry store. The woman’s husband, the theft.
But she couldn’t quite bring herself to say anything.
No, it wasn’t couldn’t; it was wouldn’t. She didn’t feel it was wise. She wasn’t sure why. The mayor just looked at her. As if . . .
She shook her head. “No, no, I just . . . wanted to say hello to the lady that was working here. We had a nice chat but, uh, I’ve
got to get some—some shopping done. I’ll . . . talk to you later.”
She turned and hurried out. And went to her rental car, and got in, and drove home.
Think this through, she told herself as she drove. Decide what to do.
But that wasn’t exactly possible, somehow, to think it through. There weren’t enough facts.
Except—she knew she needed to get out of town.
She had to find Adair and Bert and Cal—and ask them to go with her.
December 13, late afternoon
Captain Gaitland was driving the van; Lieutenant Magee, a big military cop who had black features but light skin, like Colin Powell, sat beside him; and a thickset Green Beret sat in the backseat: Sergeant Dirkowski.
Dirkowski was in uniform, but the others were in plain clothes. Each one had a 9mm Smith & Wesson automatic under his jacket. Behind Dirkowski was a big open cargo space, and in it lay an empty military-issue coffin.
On the floor of the van, next to Magee’s leg, was a metal briefcase. On the side of the briefcase was what looked like a small stereo speaker grid.
They had just turned onto Quiebra Valley Road. “It seem to you like those Quiebra PD rollers back there were watching for us?” Magee said. “The ones we passed at the Shell station.”
“No, sir, I didn’t believe so,” Dirkowski said. An Alabama accent.
It was funny, Gaitland thought, how Dirkowski could be outranked by Magee but still be condescending toward him somehow.
“Well, I think so,” Magee said. “You sure we got enough personnel here, Captain?”
“We need only one sample,” Gaitland said, scanning the streets. Wondering how to pick one out. It’d be pretty awkward, walking up to people and running the scan over them. “We ought to be able to take one of them down, between us.”
“We had three guys out here for observation,” Magee pointed out, “and only one of them came back alive. Half-dead himself. Says the fucking breakouts keep experimenting with—what you’d call it—their form. Trying combinations of bodies, changing up the body.”
“That’s right,” Gaitland said. “They modify bodies at the cellular level. And they seem to be trying for several models, little ones and big ones, for different jobs. So that means maybe they can do things we can’t, uh, anticipate. Exactly. But a nine-millimeter round will stop anything, you put it in the brain.”
But, he thought, they could literally have more than one brain, in more than one part of the body.
He didn’t voice that thought to Magee.
“What I was thinking,” Magee went on, “was we maybe should get Stanner here. He’s been on-site. If those chowderheads in the observation team had consulted him, maybe they’d still be around.”
Gaitland noticed Magee turning to look over his shoulder at the road behind. “You see something back there I should know about?”
“It’s that police car. I mean, what if they took over the local cops?”
“It can’t have gone that far.” But Gaitland wondered. Aloud he said, “Stanner is AWOL. He’s been out of touch. Seems like he doesn’t trust us.”
Dirkowski snorted.
Gaitland looked at him in the rearview mirror. “You got something to say about that, Dirkowski?”
“No, sir.”
“Anyway, Lieutenant,” Gaitland went on, turning to Magee, “we’re trying to get Stanner back in hand—but he doesn’t even take orders from us, not now. We’ve had to follow him to get some sense of what he’s doing.”
“He shook those boys,” Dirkowski muttered. Adding, “Sir.”
Gaitland ignored him. “He doesn’t like the pace we’re working at, and you know what, he can’t make up his rules as he goes along and he’s going to find that out.”
“That fucking roller’s got his lights on, sir,” Magee said.
Gaitland sighed. “I’m gonna pull over. Everyone got their pistol permits, the special ID, all that squared away?”
Magee nodded. Dirkowski said, “Yes, sir.”
Two cops were in the cruiser. Looked like a white guy and an Asian. Gaitland pulled over to the shoulder, but the Asian cop shook his head, pointing to a side road that led to a park, screened by trees, just up ahead.
“They don’t want us on the shoulder,” Dirkowski muttered.
Gaitland pulled onto the side road. But he reached under his coat and loosened his pistol in its holster.
The two cops pulled up behind them and got out of their cruiser.
Magee said, “Maybe we ought to have the detector on.”
“How do we explain what it is, sir?”
“Go ahead, turn it on—and have your finger on the deprogram button,” Gaitland said.
Hands shaking, Magee pulled the converted Halliburton briefcase up onto his lap and opened it. The mechanism inside was solid-state, filling the interior, the equipment covered in a gray plastic panel that showed two LCD readout windows, and two toggle switches under a metal cover. The switches were labeled ONE and TWO. Wires ran up from the device to the inside of the lid of the metal briefcase, connecting to the transmitter grid that looked like a stereo speaker. It had to be simple because none of them were Facility technical staff; they understood the device only in theoretical terms.
Magee flipped the switch cover back as the cops stalked up to either side of the car. The cops—Quiebra PD—had their .44s drawn, but held down against their thighs.
“Can I see your driver’s license?” the white cop said to Gaitland. His name tag said WHARTON. The Asian was bending to look in at the other side. Was staring at that open briefcase and the arcane gear inside.
“Sure,” Gaitland said. He took out his wallet, took out the license, and laid it on the wallet next to the badge, which today was Secret Service. The Facility could get them any sort of federal badge they needed, each one authentic.
“Secret Service?” Wharton said, sounding amused.
“That’s right, and one military attaché. As federal agents, we’re packing sidearms, of course, but we have the paperwork.” Gaitland grinned at Wharton.
Wharton grinned back—an automatic, grimacing sort of grin. Something about it made Gaitland feel like gunning the van out of here.
“What’ve you got in back there, behind the Green Beret?” Wharton asked. “Looks like a coffin.”
“A box. Empty,” Gaitland said.
The other cop—CHEN, his name tag said—straightened up and looked at his partner.
Wharton nodded to Chen. Then to Gaitland he said, “Yeah, we’re gonna have to examine that briefcase, fella.”
“Excuse me, officer, but—” Gaitland said, turning to Magee. He mouthed, Hit switch one. Turned back to the cop, to finish, “—but you’ve just seen our badges. You ought to be cooperating, not hassling us.”
Magee flipped the first toggle. He went all stiff, staring at the readout. It said, positive. Meaning, these cops contained breakout components.
Meaning they weren’t human.
“Get out of the car!” the cops barked, both at once. Raising their guns.
Magee didn’t have to be told to flip switch two. The device in the briefcase hummed.
Gaitland looked at Wharton. The cop shivered, squinching up his face as if he was hearing an irritating sound that no one else could hear. He took a shaky step back.
Gaitland drew his own pistol and waited. Any moment Wharton would fall dead, at least in theory, as soon as he was deprogrammed.
Wharton looked at Chen—and both of them laughed.
“That,” Wharton said.
“Is not effective because—” Chen said.
“—Because you have failed,” Wharton said, “to—”
“—To take into account the anticipatory capability of the All of Us,” Chen said. “All gateways have been closed; all frequencies shuffled. And now . . .”
Gaitland was already taking a bead on Wharton’s head, but the cop moved with impossible speed and fired at the same time.
Gaitland felt
a hot wet shattering in his chest and thought, Why didn’t I wear the Kevlar? and that was nearly his last thought, as he heard them shooting Magee again and again. He felt another round hit him in the throat, this one feeling cold, and all the strength drained out of him as he slumped against the bloody Magee.
The last thing he heard was Chen saying to Dirkowski, “You can live, if you drop your pistol. We think we can use you. I mean, you can live—our way.”
And Dirkowski saying, “You got it.”
17
December 13, evening
“Cal, dude, have you seen Adair?”
It seemed to Cal that Waylon was probably stoned. A certain red-eyed, glazed quality. A slight fuzziness in his voice.
It was just getting dark. They were outside the Burger King, where Cal was sitting at a metal picnic table trying to fill out his employment application form in the light from the restaurant window. He’d made up his mind he was going to move out of his parents’ house, which meant he needed money, which meant he needed a job. He’d rather work on boats, but those jobs were hard to find in a steady-work way, short of joining the Coast Guard. The CG or the navy were tempting, but he didn’t feel right about leaving Adair alone in town yet. He wasn’t even sure why.
“No,” Cal said at last, writing in his social security number, “I haven’t seen her since she went to school. Lacey called looking for her, just before I came over here. And Donny called for her.”
“Oh, man,” Waylon said, “this is fucked up, it’s jenky, man, it’s like voop, she’s gone. I just fucking hope she’s not with Roy.”
Cal stood up, shaking with what he told himself was fury, but maybe it was more like fear. “What the fuck you say? Don’t say shit like that, not a word, Waylon, unless you know, man, that something happened to her—”
“Hey, whoa, chill—”
Cal stepped around the picnic table; Waylon took a step back. Cal snarled at him, “You come at me all mumbling to yourself, like a stoned pothead moron, about my sister. You been putting your hands on her, you fucking New York stoner?”
