Strange Robby

by Selina Rosen

  Spider pulled the other hand free, then slung the cuffs into the window, and answered the boy's question by screaming at the two-way glass.

  "Because they got nothing better to do with the taxpayers' money! Trying to make some kind of absolute soldier. Who knows how they did it or why? I only know that the stupid fucks seem to think it's perfectly OK to screw with people's bodies and their lives." She jumped to her feet and glared hard at the glass. "You kill people, and I'll kill you! Do you hear me? I'LL KILL YOU!"

  "My God!" Don said, stunned. "Look at this reading!"

  Fritz looked over his shoulder at the dials. The level of psychic activity that had just erupted in that room was . . . "None of our test subjects to date have been able to break a three. She just broke a six, and her nose isn't bleeding."

  "I'm not sure the room can contain her, Fritz," Don said. "The room is only made to contain up to an eight. If she can do a six without trying, who's to say she couldn't do eight or more? The barrier won't hold."

  "We can't afford to lose her as a breeder," Francis said. "The children of her first batch test higher than all the others from that same year."

  "Mark is from her . . . ?"

  "He's from the third batch, Fritz. His Father was William Brackstone. Mark has great potential; I would hate to lose him . . . "

  "We won't lose him, Francis, and we won't lose her. If we get the Fry Guy . . . Imagine the boon to the project if we crossed him with her!" Fritz said.

  "We'd be able to cut our projected outcome time in half. In one generation we could be looking at the future," Don said excitedly.

  "I want us to start testing the boy tomorrow," Fritz said. "If he has no potential for the program, then he's expendable."

  He watched through the window as the woman moved purposely away from the boy. When the boy tried to follow her she yelled at him to stay away from her. That she wanted nothing to do with him.

  "Will she ever give us the Fry Guy?" Don asked Fritz.

  "She'll crack. Sooner or later they all do."

  A mother and father woke up in Shea City to every parent's worst nightmare. Their son was missing.

  Cops and FBI swarmed their house and asked questions. The neighbors fanned out, putting up flyers. The police put up roadblocks. Rivers were checked and psychics by the dozens poured in to offer their services, He was . . . "by a river," "in a dark box," "afraid," "not afraid."

  So many questions from so many people. Had they seen anyone hanging around? Had Mark been unhappy? Do they think he ran away from home? Then came the lie detector tests.

  "What is your name, Sir?"

  "Jared Parker."

  "Mr. Parker, did you ever hit your son?"

  "I spanked him a couple of times, but hit him?"

  "Yes or no, Sir."

  "No." He tried to fight his anger. All he cared about was finding his son, and if this was what he needed to do to get the cops up off their asses, this was what he was going to do. But it was hard.

  "Did your wife ever hit your son?"

  "No."

  "Did you take your son anywhere and leave him?"

  That question because of all the parents who had run scams over the years. Collecting huge amounts of money to look for children that they had hidden someplace.

  "No."

  "Did you kill your son, Mr. Parker?"

  "Oh my God!" Jared cried out. "Is my son dead? Did you find his body? Is that what this is all about?"

  "Yes or no, Sir."

  "No! For God's sake, would someone tell me what's going on?"

  A red-headed woman walked into the room. "What the hell's wrong with you?" she yelled at the woman who'd been running the test. She looked at the results of his test and then at Jared.

  "Sir, no one has found a body. We have no reason to believe that your son isn't just fine. Get him off that thing! I want to talk to him in my office ASAP. And please don't do the same thing to the mother."

  Carrie paced her office.

  "Well?" Justin Denisten asked. He had been sitting in DA Long's office for almost ten minutes now watching her pace. While he didn't mind the view at all, he had things to do.

  "He should be here shortly," Carrie said. "Please, I need you to be patient."

  Jared Parker walked into the office.

  "Good! You're here. Close the door and sit down please." She cleared her throat before she continued. She seemed to be looking for some sort of inspiration. When she finally spoke again, it was obvious that she hadn't found any. "Except for George, who I have asked to be here as a witness, we have all experienced the fall-out from a giant government conspiracy being fronted by a department called the Special Weapons Task Force, or the SWTF . . . "

  "That's it! I'm out of here," Justin said, standing up.

  "Agent Denisten, wouldn't you like to know why your partner Harry Sullivan was killed?"

  "Harry got killed because he went snooping around those freaking So-what-if spooks. If we go snooping around we'll be just as dead."

  "This room has been run over with every modern bug detection device known to mankind, on top of that I have had a sonic disruptor put in. So even if we happened to miss a bug—we found three and a phone tap—there is no way a clean signal can leave this room. All they'd get is static. So we can talk freely," Carrie assured him.

  "You don't know these maggots, Sir. They have ways . . . they kill people."

  "Excuse me," Jared was at the end of his tether. "I have a nine-year-old boy missing. I don't see what any of this could have to do with my problem."

  "If Mr. Denisten will sit down, I'll tell you," Carrie said. She sat down and waited for him.

  Denisten sat down reluctantly.

  Carrie flipped on her monitor. "Now, if you can all just bear with me, I assure you that this concerns every one of us. My partner, Detective First Class Spider Webb came up missing the night before last. That same evening, her partner Tommy Chan and his wife Laura went into hiding. As you know, Denisten, Tommy and Spider had been working on the Fry Guy cases."

  He nodded.

  "Your late partner, Harry Sullivan, gave Spider Webb some information on the SWTF and a disk with a list on it. He knew more than he should have, and he gave it to the last person that they wanted to know, so they killed him." She punched a button on her keyboard, and the list appeared on the twenty-four inch monitor built into her wall.

  "What the hell is it?" Denisten said looking away, as if not seeing might somehow protect him.

  "It's a family tree of sorts. You see, the government has been secretly experimenting on people."

  "Come on!" Denisten screamed. "Something like that . . . there would be a leak!"

  "There is a leak, right here, right now. And the Fry guy, he's leak. I had my doubts, too. The notes Spider left on the end of this disk are kind of cryptic. Theories, lots of which contradict each other. Obviously she had been trying to figure this all out for quite some time . . . "

  "What does any of this have to do with my son?" James nearly screamed.

  "That's when all of the pieces came together," Carrie said. "When I saw a picture of your son on the TV today. See? This is a picture of my partner, Spider Webb." She punched a few buttons, and the view on the monitor changed. "Notice the size of her hands, Mr. Parker . . . Now here's a picture of your son . . . And here is a picture of Spider's dead brother, Scott, as a boy . . . ."

  "Christ on a crutch!" Denisten said. "But why? Why make people?"

  "These aren't normal people. Spider certainly isn't, you only have to look at her service record to know that. She's empathic, and she has this kind of mental manipulation where she can get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do. Who knows what else she can do?"

  "What does become clear as you read what Spider has written is that the Fry Guy doesn't have a weapon, he is a weapon."

  "What are you saying about my son?" Jared asked. "My wife was pregnant; I saw him born. He is my son. I can't explain the uncanny resemblance, but Mark
is my son."

  "If you'll look at the list you'll see that all of the women "implanted" had a certain blood chemistry. A chemistry conducive to carrying one of these babies. With the global internet, any government agency with a high enough security clearance can get their hands on any personal information they want. I imagine they find the right women, wait for them to come in for a pap smear—actually, any gynecological exam would do, as long as they aren't on the pill. Hell, you don't ever know what they're doing down there. You don't want to know; you just want it to be over with. It would be almost too easy to implant a fetus in an unsuspecting woman. Since the doctor is obviously already in cahoots, he's not going to say anything when the child has an alien blood chemistry."

  "Alien!" George screeched.

  "Oh, yes," Carrie punched up a picture of DNA. "This is normal DNA. Human DNA." She punched another set of DNA into the picture and over lapped it with the first one, showing clearly that they were not the same. This is the DNA coded for these children." She got rid of the human DNA. "Spider isn't afraid of very many things, but she's afraid to go to the doctor. Turns out that every doctor who ever treats her meets with some unfortunate accident. Three of them wound up dead, and the last one wound up with his leg broken. I talked to him. He was reluctant, but he gave me this. This is Spider Webb's DNA. As you can see, it is a perfect match. I don't know exactly how, but these people are all hybrids—half human, half some alien species not of this world."

  "Where's my son?" Jared asked.

  "Wherever Spider Webb is. See, for whatever reason, the Fry Guy is not part of their program. He's slipped away from them, and he's out of control. At least he's beyond their control. Spider is the only person who knows who he is, and she's not going to just give him up. That's the reason Tommy and Laura left. So that they couldn't be used to make her talk. Taking me would be too risky."

  "So what are you saying?" Jared asked in a panic.

  "I don't think it's a coincidence that your son is missing, Mr. Parker. They needed leverage. Tommy and Laura have disappeared, I'm off limits, and she's just not close to anyone else. I think they are going to use your son to make Spider talk."

  "You're saying he's not my son—that he's some kind of alien," Jared said. "He's not an alien. He's a little boy. My little boy."

  Carrie ignored his outburst. "The SWTF has got to be stopped . . . "

  "Agreed. But how?" Denisten asked. "These assholes have a sixth level clearance. That means there's a good chance that the fucking President of the United States knows exactly what's going on and isn't putting a stop to it. Wherever we go we're going to hit a stone wall. They won't kidnap you and take you away to be tortured because a missing DA causes big problems, but if you think they absolutely positively will not kill you because you hold a public office, then you are dead wrong, sister. If you give them too much grief they are going to decide that you are a bigger headache alive than you would be dead. You've had a lot of death threats, and that opens a big window of opportunity if they decide to dive through it. After all, no one's close to finding out who shot your legal assistant, are they?"

  "Because the SWTF leaned on me and I called off the hunt. Just like I didn't go to the authorities about Spider's abduction, just like Mr. and Mrs. Parker are going to miraculously find that their son ran away and is staying with his grandmother in south Florida . . . "

  "You're crazy if you think I'm going to quit looking for my son . . . "

  "I know where your son and my partner are. They are in the SWTF complex in Madrid, Tennessee."

  "Then let's go get him!" Jared said.

  "It ain't that easy," Denisten told him. "Place is a fortress. Hand imprint coding on all the doors. Dogs, six-foot electric fence, machine-gun armed guards at all the entrances. I don't think you realize, Mr. Parker, what DA Long has been saying. You can't just walk up to the door and say, 'Give me my son.' The way they see it, Detective Webb and your son are their property. They made 'em, so they own 'em. These people tortured my partner and killed him because he had part of the information that we have now all seen. What do you think they would do if you walked to their front door and told them you're on to them and you want your half-breed alien child back?"

  "You're suggesting I do nothing? What do I tell my wife?"

  "I'm suggesting that you do what I told you to do," Carrie said. "I'm sure the SWTF would be only too glad to make sure that your story holds water. As for your wife, I suggest you tell her that her son is safe as long as she keeps her mouth shut. Your boy is part of their program, and they're not going to hurt him unless you push their hand."

  "Don't tell anyone what you just heard," Denisten said. "Knowing this shit could get you killed. Get us all killed."

  Jared nodded. It was all so insane that it had to be true. "Can I go now?"

  "Yeah," Carrie said. She looked drained. "Please. For all of our sakes. Don't tell anyone anything. They may have your whole house bugged, your phones tapped."

  Jared nodded and stood up. "Am I ever going to see my son again? I don't care what he is. I've raised him, he's mine, and my family won't be whole till he's back with us."

  "If we are successful, you should get your son back. But I can't make any promises, Mr. Parker. Just remember that my partner is with him . . . It's in my best interest to do everything in my power to get them back."

  He nodded and left, head down.

  Denisten looked at her. "OK. So what do you want from me?"

  "For someone who didn't want anything to do with this, you certainly seem eager now."

  "Yeah, well, I can't get much deader than I all ready am . . . So?"

  "Harry found this information in one of the FBI computers, which means that the FBI knows exactly what the SWTF is doing. It also means that somewhere there is more data. I want you to see if you can't match these dates, this data, with births. Let's see if we can't find their 'people'."

  "And do what exactly?"

  "I don't know. Maybe activate their army against them."

  Chapter Nineteen

  "He who digs a pit shall fall into it; and whoever

  breaks through a hedge, a snake shall bite him."

  Ecclesiastes 10:8

  Tommy threw some wood into the fire and sat down in a folding lawn chair. He looked over at Laura, sleeping soundly on the blow-up mattress. He looked around and smiled. They were well set up here.

  The camp had grown up badly, and he had walked past it twice before he finally found it. He'd had to half carry Laura most of the way, and with full pack, even in the kind of shape he was in, it hadn't been a picnic.

  When they'd come up here every year when he was a kid, his family had kept the cabins up, fixing doors, windows, and roofs so that they could enjoy them from year to year. His uncles and father had kept the brush cleared out and the paths marked. No one had done that in years, and even the best cabin had obvious roof damage. He'd brought a hammer, nails and a tarp with him on that first trip in anticipation of damage.

  Of course he'd had to make a ladder from pieces of trees he found lying around. He'd nailed the tarp along the edges, carefully covering the whole roof.

  The cabins were small—just twelve by sixteen. He broke up a bunch of wood, brought it in, and started pumping up the bed which was the only thing he had brought with him besides the tools, tarps, bedding and food. Laura had been quiet, sitting and watching him as he worked. The trip and the hike had been rough on her.

  Laura lay down on the bed as soon as he got it pumped up, apologizing for not being more help. She went to sleep almost immediately.

  The door had a huge gaping hole in it, and the window was missing two panes of glass. Even though he'd kept the fire blazing and they had more than enough bedding, the first night they had still slept cold.

  The next morning he dressed Laura's wound, made them some breakfast and went back to get the rest of the stuff from the car. By the second trip, he decided that he had definitely over bought.

  That af
ternoon, using wood and panes salvaged from the other cabins, he fixed the window and the door.

  Laura used the camp broom, and despite his protests, swept the cabin out using only her good arm.

  Tommy turned the Coleman lantern off. They needed to conserve the fuel, and he could see just fine by the firelight.

  He'd bought a shit load of oatmeal, raisins, coffee, dried beans, vitamins and salt, but everything else was in short supply.

  The camp was on a creek, so they wouldn't want for water. He had been surprised at all the wonderful fold-up and inflatable camping gear you could get. He'd bought a hang up plastic bag, a solar shower, an inflatable shower stall, an inflatable sink, an inflatable bed, fold-up cookware, chairs, shovel, broom, etc.