Face the Change (Menopausal Superheroes Book 3)

by Samantha Bryant

  By the time the van pulled up in front of the dry cleaners down the block, Sally Ann was as up to speed as anyone, having watched the videos and read the reports.

  At around one o’clock in the morning, alarms had sounded at a jewelry store out in Tall Oaks. The ritzy side of town. Security responded and found their access to the building blocked by a group of people forming a wall with their own bodies. The video clips showed the group moving en masse like they shared a single brain. It also showed the blank, glazed-over looks on their faces. Those blank faces had to be what got someone to use the z-word. Sally Ann was grateful she wouldn’t be facing down the rabid, flesh-eating creatures of Hollywood. She had a broad comfort zone, but zombies were decidedly outside it.

  The security guards called the police, who were equally stymied and confused. Even when they threatened with their guns, the crowd of people seemed completely unfazed. People who were grabbed and tugged resisted and moved right back into position when released.

  No one wanted to shoot their way through what looked like a gathering of ordinary Tall Oaks residents. So, the backchannel calls had begun, until they ended with the Department and Sally Ann Rogers, the lead agent on call.

  Sally Ann clipped her baton onto her belt as she stepped from the unmarked van. As usual, Agent Driver had made excellent time. He had an uncanny way with motor vehicles, directions, and traffic patterns. Three other agents fell in behind her, and they presented themselves to the lead officer, who seemed only too eager to hand the whole thing over to someone else.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, gesturing at the milling crowd. “It’s creepy.”

  Sally Ann followed his gaze. Some thirty or forty people were gathered, rocking back and forth, arms entwined. It didn’t look like a gang or even a club. A random assemblage of people: some women in yoga outfits, a troop of teenagers, a couple of people wearing dark green aprons over black clothes, and several others with logo-bearing polo shirts. A quick scan of the other shops in the vicinity revealed a coffee shop, yoga studio, and a big box electronics store that probably accounted for where the people had come from. Knowing that didn’t explain a damn thing.

  The officer had it right. This was creepy. The strangest thing was the silence. Even the youngest people in the group were slack jawed and vacant. They weren’t aggressive. They were simply in the way and unwilling to move.

  “There’s another group just like it at the other entrance. We haven’t been able to get inside.”

  Sally Ann sent two of her team to check out the far side and walked up to a young man at the edge of the crowd and snapped her fingers in his face. He didn’t seem to notice. Neither did the woman whose shoulder she gently shoved. The entire group stood trance-like, shifting a little to one side or another if Sally Ann tried to push them.

  Sally Ann studied one woman’s face, a tall African-American woman with a fierce brow but soft cheeks that reminded her of one of her aunties. Despite the invasion of her personal space, the woman didn’t flinch or even glance in Sally Ann’s direction. She seemed focused on a point in the middle distance in the darkness between the rings of light left by two streetlights. In fact, all of them seemed to be looking at something over there, but Sally Ann couldn’t see anything of interest.

  Training her binoculars on the area that had the crowd so intent, she spotted a car back there, alone in that part of the parking lot. If she had to guess, she’d say it was a Buick.

  “Gabe.”

  Agent Driver stepped up at her call, and she handed him the binoculars. “There, in the middle right, between the rings of light.”

  He grunted when he saw it.

  “Check it out.”

  Gabe Driver jogged back over to the van and climbed in. Meanwhile, Sally Ann worked her way through the crowd to get to the store behind. It was tricky. She didn’t want to hurt these people. But she needed to get inside.

  She pressed her way between two yoga women, only to have them close in next to her, pinning her shoulders. That didn’t stop Sally Ann. She dropped to the ground, and scooted through three more layers of people, dodging between knees and shuffling feet. She was clipped once or twice on the way through, but no one used any serious force. If the security guards and policemen had been a little less freaked out, one of them probably could have made their way through. Of course, Sally Ann was harder to freak out than most, and she was small and fast.

  She tapped her headset to report back to her team. “I’ve made it through. I’m going in.”

  The other agents knew better than to argue, though she heard the suppressed disapproval in the acknowledgement.

  The door tugged open easily, the lock mechanism hanging broken. She called back to the other agents. “Check and see if any of the crowd are employees of the store.” She jumped and rolled into the room, heading for the display counter she’d glimpsed from the doorway in case cover was needed. It wasn’t. No one was inside. No one and nothing. Every case was empty. The thief had probably already been gone long before Sally Ann and the other agents arrived.

  She had just raised her hand to her ear to report in when one of the other agents buzzed her. “You need to get out here. They’re dropping like flies.”

  Sally Ann raced for the door. As she burst through, the man nearest to her stumbled and started to fall. She caught him and lowered him to the ground, but was too slow to catch the women on either side of him, who hit the pavement almost simultaneously. “Faircloth,” she called for the officer in charge. “You’d better get some ambulances out here.” All the people who’d been blocking the entrance were on the ground.

  Sally Ann raced from person to person, checking for breathing and pulses. When she got back to the woman in the front—the one who looked like one of her aunties—Sally Ann found her sitting up and looking around. The expression on her face oscillated between confusion and anger. “Ma’am?” Sally Ann spoke gently, crouching beside the woman. “Can you tell me what happened, ma’am?”

  “What am I doing outside?”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was in the coffee shop. I was supposed to meet my boyfriend. Is he here?”

  Sally Ann looked around the crowd, but there was no way to know which, if any, of the men on the ground here or at the back of the building might be this woman’s boyfriend. “We’ll find him, ma’am. Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

  The woman looked thoughtful for a moment, then her eyes grew wide. “There was this woman.” She looked at Sally Ann. “Are you a cop?”

  “Not exactly, but I’m here to help, and I’ll believe you. Even if it sounds crazy.”

  After a long, searching examination of Sally Ann’s face, the woman seemed to decide to trust her. “It was a white woman, maybe around fifty or sixty years old. On the short side, but not as little as you. Soft, but not fat. There was something wrong with her face like maybe she’d had a stroke or something. Her eyes…”

  Sally Ann waited. Sometimes staying quiet was the best way to get someone to talk.

  “Her eyes were wrong. All white, cloudy like she was blind, but she could see. She looked at me, and told me to follow her.” The woman looked around again like there might be some kind of clue lying on the ground. “She told me to follow her, and I guess I did.”

  As more people began to stir, Sally Ann talked to as many of them as she could. Most were disoriented and confused. A few were angry and aggressive. But several remembered the woman. By the time the last statement had been taken and the last person sent home, Sally Ann had a pretty clear picture of the woman who had apparently hypnotized a crowd of eighty-three people with a few words. She hoped it would be enough to track her down.

  It wasn’t until the last emergency vehicle left that Sally Ann realized Gabe hadn’t yet returned, which meant she didn’t have a ride. She’d sent the other agents in the ambulances and police cars to coordinate. Now it was just Sally Ann in the wide, empty parking lot, watching the sun start to r
ise over the bridge on the interstate.

  “Driver?” No response. Of course, she had sent him to chase someone down. He could be well out of communications range. She pulled out her phone and texted him instead. Check in. Will be at the coffee shop on site. It wouldn’t hurt to see if she could learn anything else by talking to the employees. Perhaps there had been other patrons who had seen the white-eyed woman, but not followed her.

  The door squeaked a little as she pushed it open. The shop was still empty, and Sally Ann could hear water running in the work room behind the counter. She walked around, looking. The place was a mess—the garbage cans still full from the night before, some cups still out on tables, magazines and newspapers littering the furniture. That made sense. The employees had been among the victims at the scene. They had both left in ambulances, without properly closing up shop.

  A young man with blue hair came out of the back room carrying a huge coffee carafe in each hand. He shoved them into place and began fiddling with the filters and buttons on the tall machines at the middle of the counter. He hadn’t noticed Sally Ann, and she waited for him to finish his task before she cleared her throat to announce herself.

  “Shit.” The boy’s hand went to his throat. “I’m sorry, miss. You scared me. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Sally Ann approached the counter. “Looks like things didn’t get shut down quite right last night.” The boy shook his head gloomily, looking at the room.

  She pressed on. “Were you on shift?” She noted his name tag. Josh.

  “No. I do mornings. He referenced a calendar stuck to one of the cabinets. “Marcia and Sienna should have been on last night. They’re usually pretty good, but the manager called and asked me to come early today. Guess there was some kind of trouble last night?”

  Sally Ann nodded. “I heard something about that.” She pointed at the television over the counter. “Does that thing record somewhere?”

  “Oh yeah. They used it to catch that guy who tried to hold the place up a few months ago.”

  Sally Ann laid a badge on the counter. “I’m going to need to look at the footage from last night, Josh.”

  The boy ran his hands up the sides of his head and interlaced his fingers at the back of his skull. The gesture pulled his eyes wide. “I’ll have to call the owner about that.”

  “No problem.” She laid ten dollars on the counter. “Make me something sweet and lovely to drink while I wait.”

  A few minutes later she was sitting in a tall window seat, sipping a concoction that put sweet tea to shame for sugar content and looking out at the parking lot she’d spent the second half of her night in. The jewelry store was ringed by orange cones and police tape, marking the crime scene, and no one seemed to be trying to get inside. Repeatedly checking her phone did not make Gabe check in. She resisted sending a second message. After all this time, she knew him well enough to know he would respond as soon as he could. There was no question in her mind that he would.

  The cars had filled in pretty well by the time a fat Middle Eastern man in a green jacket bearing the shop logo came hurrying through the door. “What’s this about?” the man said.

  “Good morning, sir.” Sally Ann handed the man her badge—the first time she’d used it. It felt nice. Official. Like being a police officer again. “I’m Agent Rogers with the UCU, special consultants to the Springfield police. I need to see the security footage from last night. There was a robbery at the jewelry store, and a person of interest may have come through this shop last night.”

  The man seemed to turn yellow beneath his warm brown skin. He sat down. “A robbery? Here?” He looked out the window, anxiety pulling down the corners of his mouth. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No.” It was true enough. No one had been seriously hurt, not physically anyway. Sally Ann suspected healing would still be required. All the human shields had been dazed and confused. Some had been angry.

  “Josh.” The blue-haired young man came out from behind the counter when called. “Please take Agent Rogers to the office and help her access the security footage. I’ll see to any customers that come in.”

  Sally Ann stood up and followed the young man. When she glanced back at the table, the owner still sat there, looking out at the parking lot. He pulled out his phone.

  The “office” was really a glorified closet. There was barely room for the two of them around the desk and the dusty, ancient computer on it. The boy sat down and logged in, reading the login information from a post-it note stuck to the wall above the computer. The machine made an audible spin up sound and continued to rattle. It worked well enough, though. After another minute or two, Sally Ann had taken the boy’s place in the chair and was clicking her way through the footage of the night before, looking for the tall woman she’d spoken to in the parking lot.

  Josh hovered behind her, shifting from foot to foot. Sally Ann decided to let him stay. There was nothing here he wouldn’t be able to access on his own anyway, and the owner was very cooperative. He hadn’t even insisted on a warrant. Sally Ann would take a break where she could get one.

  She paused the recording when she saw the woman she sought and watched more slowly. Sure enough, a short white woman approached the taller woman at the counter with all the creams and sugars. The camera only caught the two women in side view. Sally Ann inched the footage forward until the suspect turned and looked back at the counter. It was as close as she was going to get to a front facial view. The angle was poor and made the woman’s face look wider than it probably was, but it was a useable image. She took a picture with her phone and sent it to research with a request to try and ID the woman.

  Josh helped her figure out how to download a segment of the video using the ancient system and save it on the flash drive she kept in her badge holder. “Thanks, Josh. Please make sure this gets backed up. Just in case.”

  Josh sat down, and she left him and returned to the dining area. Waving at the owner, she left the store and walked back toward the jewelry store. After checking in with the officer on duty so he’d know who she was, Sally Ann took up a position next to a tree in a planter out in the parking lot and checked her messages. Mostly business-as-usual e-mails. Nothing from research and nothing from Gabe. Waiting sucked.

  Sally Ann paced, kicking rocks out into the parking lot, and trying to decide if she ought to be calling out a search team to find Gabe.

  Then he pulled up. The van was filthy, the sides raked with long scratches and a big dent in the front passenger door. Gabe unrolled the window and waved at Sally Ann to get in.

  As best as Sally Ann could recreate it in her mind later, Gabe was lucky to be alive. The Buick took off as soon as he started moving, fishtailing in its haste to get out of the parking lot. Gabe pushed the van to impossible speeds and had closed most of the distance between them when the Buick pulled onto the highway.

  Gabe’s report made it sound like no big deal, but Sally Ann was sure the chase had been epic. She’d been riding shotgun enough times when Agent Driver used his mojo to know he could force that clumsy vehicle to do the impossible. He got close enough to get a good look at the driver: a short, middle-aged white woman with hair that had been dark and was now intermixed with an iron gray. Gabe’s description matched the picture Sally Ann had pulled from the security footage.

  That’s when things had gotten strange. Gabe suddenly got really tired. Right as he crossed over a bridge, he went to sleep. Sudden and swift, as if someone had simply flipped off a switch within him, he was unconscious. The van crashed through the protective railing and careened down the hillside through the trees. At least, that’s what Gabe assumed had happened. He woke up a few hours later, still strapped in behind the wheel and pressed into the airbag.

  After a few minutes’ repair work, Gabe got the van running again and drove back to pick up Sally Ann, somehow keeping the vehicle moving despite the damage to the tires and steering column. He was an hour up the road, southeast of Springfield and heading o
ut of state when he pulled back onto the highway, so getting back had taken a little time.

  Gabe’s first act, on arrival, was to apologize for leaving her waiting. Sally Ann offered to drive. After all, Gabe had dried blood on his face, and one eye was swollen nearly closed, but his message was clear. The van wouldn’t work…for her. He’d driven them both back to HQ.

  As soon as he parked the van, the whole thing sank with a metallic thunk and puffs of black smoke began to roll off the vehicle. Gabe let Sally Ann help him down, and from his wincing, she was pretty sure the man had broken at least one rib.

  Whomever this white-eyed woman was, she had a lot to answer for.

  Jessica and Walter Sitting in a Tree

  Jessica felt butterflies in her stomach. Kissing Walter always did that to her, made her giddy and wobbly in the best possible way. “Come back down here, Flygirl. I wasn’t done kissing you yet.”

  Jessica opened her eyes and realized she was hovering about six inches above the kitchen floor and rising. It hadn’t only been the kisses giving her butterflies. She smiled and turned her head to burp more or less delicately into her elbow, then lowered herself slowly to the floor, landing with her feet between her boyfriend’s loafers.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Sorry. I guess you swept me off my feet again.” Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed him again, this time maintaining her contact with the ground. As the kiss deepened, she pushed her body against his, and he let his hands slide across her back and down the curve of her hip. They’d had a great family weekend, with lots of time with the boys, but not enough time alone together.

  “Mom!”

  Jessica leaped across the room in a single fluid bound to the refrigerator, where she opened the door and pretended to look for something, pressing a hand against her heart. Her pulse raced and not just from her flight across the room. Walter laughed and leaned against the counter. She gave him a half-reproachful look.