Dallas listened, his tenuous grip on The Truth evaporating, only this time it was cosmic truth that refused to cooperate, not some meaningless classroom debate about the significance of poetry. And even as he grappled with enough stuff to drive him mad into the next century, a new truth dawned on him. Charlotte wanted to believe because it was the only way to cope with the whole experience. If it ended up being for a good cause, it wasn’t so horrible, right? Dallas tried to imagine lovely Charlotte being ‘refurbished.’ He just couldn’t deal. “He abducts humans and animals for body templates!”
Charlotte’s expression shifted, the rasping voice emerging. “Who do you think sent the assassin after me? It’s a government hit, to stop me from upsetting the way the Gultranz have done things for eons.”
Dallas stood beside the bed, trying to gather his thoughts. He didn’t believe the alien’s sob story for a bleeding second, but Charlotte was right about one thing. They had to find the gate.
*
Thursday morning, the thirty-first of May, dawned gray and storm-tossed. Rain whipped through the trees and pounded the roof of the house snug under the live oaks. Dallas fed Buster and found a change of clothes for Charlotte. Their plan was simple: focus on the area south of Brickell, moving toward Coconut Grove where the gate had opened.
“He said the gate expires today. Does that mean we have all day or just part of it?”
Charlotte had shrugged in her hospital bed. “Who knows? It could be expiring right now, for all we know.”
“That should give the hospital staff a thrill.” Dallas had to forcibly suppress the image of the Gultranz sorcerer being sucked out of its human shell before some astonished personal care assistant’s bleary early-morning eyes.
“Then we need to get moving.”
“This is a terrible idea.” Dallas pushed the wheelchair through the automatic double doors and out onto the hospital parking deck. The SUV sat in a loading zone near the wheelchair ramp. Charlotte gripped the arms of the chair with white knuckles and said nothing. He knew she was in pain, but she’d been adamant. There was no choice.
He eased her up into the passenger seat and left the wheelchair on the walk beside the driveway. Trying to go over the speed bumps as carefully as possible, Dallas wound their way out of the parking garage and into morning traffic, heading south.
Dallas was just pulling into a South Miami Wal-Mart to gas up when the urge to go hit him. There was no ignoring it, and he couldn’t expect to hold it for hours of driving if that’s how long it took. Cursing his uncooperative plumbing that ran on its own timetable instead of the one he and Charlotte had devised, Dallas reluctantly parked out front.
“I won’t be a minute, I promise.” Charlotte nodded and closed her eyes, her arms wrapped around her midsection, as Dallas got out of the SUV. “You protect her, got it?” he said to Buster who sat alert on the back seat.
Inside, he quickly found the men’s room and stepped past the freestanding signage—CUIDADO! PISO MOJADO—warning him the floor was freshly swabbed. Pushing the door open, he was met with an overpowering Lysol aroma that had scoured away any piss smell left by guys who couldn’t aim their stream into the small porcelain urinal. There were two stalls with doors, both unoccupied. Dallas selected the nearest one, locked the stall door, pushed his jeans to his ankles, and sat down.
At that moment, he heard the restroom door open. Footsteps came slowly into the room, passed the first stall, and stopped outside the one where he sat. He stopped breathing. Unable to see the shoes of whoever was obviously standing outside his compartment, he sat still as a fawn hidden in the tall grass with hyenas on the prowl. Then he heard the shrill dentist’s drill whine and the stall door sheared away. It fell sideways with a shocking clatter.
GQ model guy was as nattily dressed as ever. The handsome face winked at Dallas. “Nice view.” Then the inhabiting Gultranz lifted partway out of the body, revealing its hideous toothed snout. It was similar to Gurtz, only this one’s skin was shiny black like obsidian, no colors playing over its surface. The pinpoint pupils of its eyes flared yellow. It held the splitter, about the size and shape of an iPhone, loosely in its left hand.
“I’ll ask once. Where have you hidden the traitor?” The voice rasped at Dallas’s eardrums like an industrial file.
Aiming low, Dallas launched himself at the human host’s ankles, toppling them both. The assassin crashed forward into the stall framework, unfurling its Gultranz fingers out toward him. The splitter went flying, hit the far wall, fired … and cut the Gultranz assassin in half just as he was getting up. Intestines and other body parts spilled over the restroom tiles in a wet squelch right over the drain hole in the middle of the floor. Blood dripped through, joining the sudsy slosh of urine and cleaning fluids. Dallas rolled away from the carnage and scrambled to his feet. Its host shell dead, the military Gultranz exited the body as if it were the object of a taffy pull, stretched, extruded, and thinned until with a howl it tore and shredded and finally disappeared. Dallas leaned over the sink and lost his breakfast as the human shell’s head eyed him, its startled expression frozen on the generically handsome face.
Turning on the faucet, Dallas splashed cold water over his face, staving off the ringing in his ears that suggested he might be about to pass out. Straightening up, he saw the splatter-spray of red across his bare thighs and chest. It made the T-shirt look kind of tie-dyed. Dallas retched again, but there was nothing left to yark up. He peeled the shirt off and stuffed it in the trash receptacle beside the sink. Wetting a handful of paper towels, he washed off his arms and legs and pulled up his jeans. A red splotch painted the left side at the hip, but there was nothing he could do about that.
Dallas looked around for the splitter and found it against the wall under the urinal. With trembling fingers, he picked it up by its edges and went back to the doorless stall. Maneuvering around the lower half of the assassin’s shell without stepping in the mess, he slid the weapon into the water of the toilet bowl and flushed, cowering in case it went off again. When nothing happened, he let his breath out and watched the water swirl and gurgle, sucking the splitter down but not all the way. He could still see the top of it in the neck of the toilet. He flushed again and pushed it with the tip of his finger. As the water drained, it slipped out of sight with a scrape and the toilet completed its flush as if nothing peculiar had been shoved down its throat.
Dallas got out of the restroom as fast as possible without drawing attention to himself, even in his shirtless condition. That was part of why he’d been hired, right? Mr. Invisible. He was beginning to sense a larger connectivity, leading from the Limbus agency to this moment playing out in grisly perfection in a South Miami shopping strip. Any rational person would’ve packed it in right there, but now he felt more determined than ever to see the game through to the end. He made his way back to the Cherokee and collapsed into the driver’s seat.
Charlotte stared at him. “Dallas, what the hell…?”
“Met your ex-neighbor again.” He saw the panic in her eyes. “He’s dead, lucky accident. Got anything I can wear?” He felt like he was babbling.
“Look in my gym bag, back seat.”
Dallas found the bag and extracted a Yoga shirt decorated with the slogan When in Doubt, Just Breathe. He sighed and pulled it on over his head—he was in no position to be picky. He fastened his seatbelt with shaking hands. Cranking the engine, he cut across the parking lot and headed for the highway.
As rain lashed the windshield, Dallas drove the speed limit along the South Dixie Highway toward Coconut Grove, aiming for the place where Gurtz had come out of the gate. The Gultranz hovered in semi-transparent form over Charlotte’s body, looking like an ailing reptile pulled from a tank that’d never been cleaned.
When they reached Coconut Grove, Dallas drove to the grounds of the old Plymouth Congregational Church and stopped. Built in the 1800s and picturesquely ivy covered, it was a peaceful photo-op on any tourist’s walking tour of the Grove.
It was here, in front of this very landmark, that the portal from another world had opened in the middle of the night.
They waited in silence for a few minutes, and finally Dallas asked, “What’ll you do if Gurtz manages to leave?”
Charlotte’s breath was ragged. “I don’t think I can go back to that apartment in the Grove. I still can’t believe the assassin was right there next door.” Dallas couldn’t believe he’d almost had a tryst with the guy.
She sighed and leaned her head back. “I’ll probably look for a place close by. Maybe Coral Gables, somewhere like that. If he ever comes back…” She’d be waiting for him, Dallas thought, especially if he came in a human shell.
An idea took root in Dallas’s mind. “I want it, the house in Hallandale. I’ll take it over when you move out.”
Charlotte gave him a weak smile. “It’s just the right size for a single guy. Secluded, functional, cheap. Landlady who doesn’t ask too many questions.”
Dallas grinned. “It’s perfect.” All he needed was an income.
They continued to sit. Charlotte opened the window, giving the terrier a chance to sniff the air outside. “Buster doesn’t smell anything. Maybe we got here ahead of the gate.”
Dallas was feeling antsy. “I don’t want to just sit here and wait. We might run out of time. I’ll cruise around the neighborhood and see if we get lucky.”
Dallas didn’t like the way the alien’s skin had turned a dull muddy brown, its form hovering just above its host’s body as if too traumatized to stay fully engaged. A yellowish second membrane seemed to have slid over its eyes, although it was hard to tell as the alien got more transparent by the minute.
“Dallas, open your hand.” The sorcerer’s voice was a rough whisper.
Dallas was shocked—Gurtz never addressed him by name. “What, like this?” He held out his hand, palm up. Gurtz slowly unfurled one long digit and pushed it toward Dallas.
“Hey,” Dallas snatched his hand away. “I’m not falling for that electric eel trick of yours again.”
“You mistake…” Gurtz wheezed. “I, , , want to show you something… won’t hurt.”
Heart thudding, Dallas opened his hand again. The sucker pod of the alien finger brushed lightly over the center of his palm, right across his lifeline. Primary colors exploded in his mind, painting a surreal landscape. Saturated hues and fluid shapes formed sky, jagged landmasses, and a sinuous river whose pearlized surface resembled an oil slick. There were no pastels to rest the retinas. The wide river wound its way around tall mounds and high peaks in bright sulphur yellow, dusky orange, and darker ochre—massive shapes folded, rounded and featureless, as if carved from foam or shaving cream. On the horizon two enormous moons of mottled cerulean dominated the sky, one so close half its spheroid shape was hidden below the mountain range while the other hung low and full in a poisonous lime green sky so bright it hurt Dallas’s eyes from the inside out. Further beyond the two satellites, the sky darkened to cyan and then to cobalt and finally black where a sprinkling of stars dusted the heavens.
But most astonishing was the gate, or what Dallas assumed must be the portal that allowed travel from this strange world to places unknown. The track began as a pinpoint far out in the starfield and as it homed in on the alien landscape, it resolved into two distinct crimson tracks that paralleled each other much like the twin east/west bridges of the MacArthur Causeway. The trackways then spread into a wide red Chinese-fireworks flare when they reached what he guessed must be the gate itself. Straddling the river, it seemed a marvel of fractal engineering, with strands like dazzling gemstones arching up over the oilslick surface of the river, forming whorls and spirals on a deep purple field that held a center point of blinding white light.
It was terrifying, and beautiful.
“This is your homeworld?”
The Gultranz didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.
Dallas drove in silence up one street and down another, passing Charlotte’s old digs at Jacaranda Apartments at one point. The storm had mostly blown through, leaving the air damp and steamy. Finally, he stopped at a red light near the entrance to a gated community and looked over at Charlotte. “I give up, he’s got to give us some direction.” He touched her shoulder gently.
“Gurtz? Can you hear me? We’re just going in circles. Can you slip back in for a few seconds, just to see if we’re anywhere close?”
The Gultranz sorcerer shut his eyes and faded from sight. Charlotte shivered and opened one eye. The alien’s voice was muted. “…so much pain.”
Suddenly Buster barked sharply from the back seat and poked his nose out the window.
“It’s close!” Gurtz’s voice was barely audible.
“How far? Should I keep driving straight or what?”
“Turn left.”
“That’s a dead end. It doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Just do it!” Dallas knew Charlotte hadn’t meant to yell at him, but clearly this was the life-threatening situation he’d signed on for. Failure was not an option.
The Cherokee lurched as Dallas pulled a hard left.
“Are you sure? I don’t see anything weird looking.” Dallas scanned the sides of the road, having no idea what he was looking for. Buster was yipping, his head out the window.
Charlotte gripped the seat. “Doesn’t matter … smell’s strong.”
They cruised past hacienda-style homes deep in foliage, then a clutch of mango trees, then a few more houses. Charlotte shuddered. Blood seeped around her sutured side and belly. The alien inside tried to talk, his voice grinding like a shot transmission. “You know, Dallas… at first, I thought you were… the most… inept human I ever met.”
Dallas squinted. Was that a shadow across the sidewalk? It stretched into the street ahead of them and turned the bright crimson Dallas had seen in Gurtz’s vision of home.
Gurtz rasped, “I was wrong. You were my frien—” The Gultranz sorcerer suddenly lifted out of his host’s body and dissolved with no fuss right in front of Dallas’s nose. Charlotte’s body went slack.
The SUV slowed and rolled to a stop.
“Hey, I think it worked! Is he gone?” Dallas touched her arm. But Charlotte was dead.
His mouth settled into a hard line.
How lucky do you feel? Dallas wanted nothing so much as to punch Recruiter Rigel in the middle of his ugly face.
*
“I want your fucking job.”
“What?”
Dallas stood in the entrance to Rigel’s cube. “Just what I said.”
“That wasn’t in your contract.”
“That contract was crap and you know it. I did the job but it nearly got me killed, twice. But maybe you knew that too, huh? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to come back. How big was your bonus if the assassin took out Gurtz and me before we could find the gate?”
“I don’t know anyone named Gurtz.” Rigel looked unperturbed, but Dallas plowed ahead.
“Of course you know who Gurtz is. An innocent woman is dead because of him!”
“I hired you to be a dog walker. Recruiters are not allowed to interfere with the execution of a job once the applicant is hired.”
Dallas was hyperventilating in his fury. He took a deep breath and tried to connect the dots. “I see. So you hired someone you figured was incapable of performing the job to the end.”
He glared at the toad man, who glared right back.
“Well, surprise, I survived… so I’m here to collect my bonus. And that’s what I want.” He dragged the wrinkled contract from his jeans pocket and spread it out on the desk. “See, right there.” His finger stabbed the fine print at the bottom. “It says to tell the recruiter what you want if a bonus is earned, so I’m telling you.”
Rigel looked at the contract and then back at Dallas. Without a word, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a cell phone, popped it open, and thumbed a number. He texted something and waited, then texted back. Waited. Finally he closed the phone with a snap
and slipped it back into his jacket. Without a word he got up, removed his badge and laid it on the desk blotter. He gave Dallas a squint-eyed look, then turned and went out through the door in the wall behind him.
Dallas waited, angry but determined. They were not going to get away with this. He’d been set up and misled by shady employment offers before, but this was the worst. He waited some more, got up and went out to the reception room, which was empty. No surprise there. He went back to Rigel’s cube.
“Hey, are you coming back?” he shouted. Apparently not.
Fed up with waiting, Dallas went around to Rigel’s side of the desk. Under its Plexiglas cover he saw a map of a world which he assumed was Earth, with small pulsing red targets in hundreds, maybe thousands, of locations. Limbus offices? He pulled out the wide front drawer—empty. In the right-hand drawer he found, to his great surprise, a stash of Japanese Pocky in his two favorite flavors, strawberry and chocolate. He checked the date on the back of several boxes. They looked fresh. He couldn’t imagine Rigel munching on sweet-coated biscuit sticks, but how could anyone at Limbus know it was his own guilty pleasure?
The left-hand drawer held an industrial-sized key on a metal ring and a flip-top phone. The tag on the ring gave him a start: STAFF ONLY, D. Hamilton. A key to the front door? Or maybe the one behind the desk? He turned the key over in his hand wondering when it would have been made and why Rigel hadn’t given it to him. He flipped open the phone, which instantly lit up with a message: HELLO NEW RECRUITER.
Dallas checked the phone’s contact list and saw two entries, his own name and just the one word, Limbs. He punched it and put the phone to his ear.
An androgynous voice of indeterminate age responded.
“Greetings, new recruiter. Thank you for joining Limbus, Incorporated. Always remember your primary mission: we employ.” The call disconnected. Annoyed, Dallas hit redial but got a flashing message instead: SORRY, YOUR CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED. He was about to try again when a small voice interrupted.
Limbus, Inc. Page 22
