by Jobe, David
“Then we run away to a ranch somewhere and raise Sonny.”
Lanton laughed, “We are not calling our kid Sonny.”
She placed her mitten-covered hands on her shapely hips. “Then I guess you better stay alive to be there and help name him.”
Lanton gave a wave of dismissal. “And we aren’t calling him Monty Junior either. I swear my dad was playing a joke on me.”
“Go tell your team.”
“Yeah yeah.” Lanton turned and started for the living room.
Chapter Six
Propane and Promises
Natasha Serafima, Echo version, crouched low behind a tangle of trees and bushes, her wide eyes staring at Charlie version. “I can hear Delta in my head. She’s in so much pain.” She gave a series of shutters that had nothing to do with the cold night that closed in around her.
“We can all hear her,” Charlie said. Dressed in camouflage gear with her face painted black, Echo could only register her eyes and the faintest outline of her face. “That’s how these connections work. She’s dying. That is why we’re here. Check the address again.”
Echo pulled out the cell phone, leaning over it as she flipped through the various screens. “This is the place. “She turned the screen so that Charlie could see the red marker that indicated where they were.
Charlie smacked the phone out of her hand. “Shut that shit down. That light might as well be a lighthouse announcing our presence. Jesus, how dumb can you be?”
Echo reached down and grabbed the phone, able to detect where it had landed by the offending glow. She shut it off and jammed it back into her pocket. “You told me to check. I was just-.”
“Shhhh!” Charlie motioned for them to drop lower, though Echo was as low as she could go without getting her clothes covered in mud and god knows what else. “I think I just saw him through the window.” She reached back behind her, hand flailing for purchase. “Get me my bag.”
Echo slipped forward, grabbing the long duffle-bag that Charlie had insisted on bringing. She placed the worn strap into the woman’s outstretched hand. “You okay, Foxtrot?”
Version Foxtrot stood further back into the wooded area they were hiding, hands clasped to her chest as she wrung them over and over. “She’s in so much pain. Charlie, are we going to go rescue her?”
Charlie gave a low snort. “Something like that.” She withdrew a long metal tube from her bag.
“What is that?” Echo asked.
Charlie turned to face her, the fading moonlight illuminating a vicious looking grin. “It’s a grenade launcher, Echo.” She pointed at a large rusted metal egg on the lawn just beside the cabin house. “That’s a propane tank. This, plus that, equals a big enough boom to level that house, even if it has a basement.”
“Jesus, Charlie.” Foxtrot slunk further into the shadows, her own eyes wide with fear. “Why did you bring that? Where did you even get that?”
Charlie sighed. “I brought this to kill that little shit once and for all.” She hoisted the tube onto her shoulder, propping one leg out in front of her to steady her balance.
“You are going to kill Delta?” Echo tried and failed to keep the panic out of her voice. She too pushed back, away from the maniac version of themselves and the deadly weapon.
“She’s already dead. That is her way out of his clutches. This way, we wipe the slate clean and bring her back with Bravo’s help.” Charlie spun the end of the tube to face toward the propane tank.
“Why not just save her?” Foxtrot asked.
Another exasperated sigh escaped Charlie’s lips. “Because we don’t have the medicine required to nurse a starved-to-death woman back to health. We do have enough junk food to bring her back our way. Plus, do you want to risk going in there to save her?” She muttered under her breath, “Should’ve stuck with just four of us.”
Foxtrot did not reply.
Echo looked toward Foxtrot, hoping to plead silently with her to try and help talk reason into Charlie, only Foxtrot was not visible in the low light. “Charlie?” She asked, but the grenade launcher gave a loud bark that blotted out her words. The brief flash of light illuminated behind them and Echo could see Foxtrot being dragged backward into the woods by a shadowy figure. The woman kicked and flailed, a shadowy hand clasped firmly over her mouth. She was lost again as darkness returned. “Charlie!” The deafening roar of the propane tank exploding swallowed her cry, as well as shaking the ground. The intense flash of light that followed illuminated the woods behind them again, showing a limp Foxtrot being slung over the man’s massive shoulders, as he began to run away from them. Echo launched herself across the distance between her and Charlie, shaking the woman and pointing. She thought she was yelling, but the ringing in her ears drowned out any noise.
Charlie turned, her face lit up with primal mischief. At first, she didn’t seem to understand what Echo was trying to say. Then they both heard it. Not with their ringing ears, but the connection between them. Delta still wept and pleaded for someone to stop the horrible pain. Charlie’s face swept back toward the house, now engulfed in flames, and then at the spot where Foxtrot had been.
Even with the raging fire, she and the man had vanished into the dark. Echo thought she saw Charlie mouth a string of vulgar words that didn’t really fit together. Charlie shoved the grenade launcher back into the bag and slung it over her shoulder. She grabbed Echo by the arm and started dragging her along the path.
Echo followed, afraid of being left alone in the dark with the massive man. Confused, she tried to send her thoughts to Charlie, but she was too new to the whole thing to make anything happen. After what seemed like hours but she knew was only minutes, they stumbled out onto the road where they had parked the van. As sound returned, Echo could hear the wail of sirens in the distance. “We have to go back for them!”
Charlie shook her head. “Not a chance. The police will be there before we could even pick up a trail. Besides, he’s long gone, as we should be. Get in the van.”
“Delta’s still alive, Charlie.” Echo’s tone accusing.
“Yes, I know.” Charlie rubbed her temples. “The little shit set us up. That whole Delta overhearing the pizza delivery guy was just a way to get us out here. Clever to have him verify the address where Delta could hear it. Now he has another one of us.”
“He? Our target? What I saw was a huge man. You told me we were after a little boy.” Echo felt dizzy and weak. In the back of her head, Delta still wept, and she couldn’t shut it out.
“You really don’t remember?” Charlie slid open the side door to the van. “You met him on the freeway.” She shook her head. “No, you were just a shell, one of the zombies. Just smart enough to hold a gun and shoot.” She cursed under her breath. “I’ll explain when we get back to the house. Just get in the van and make sure no one is following us.” She jumped in and slid into the driver’s seat.
Echo stood outside the van, gaping at the doorway. The sirens were much closer now. She tried to remember back when she had first come into existence. She remembered standing on some highway and shooting a gun. Then fire. Horrible painful fire. The rest existed in a fog. “I want answers when we get home.” She climbed in, slamming the van door just as it was peeling away.
“Whatever.” Charlie gave a dismissing wave of her hand. “Just watch behind us. Make sure you don’t see anyone. Look for reflections and not just headlights, as he might try to follow with them off.”
Echo shuffled to the back of the dingy van, staring out the right square window. Behind them, an old two-lane highway receded into darkness, broken only by the occasional road sign. As far as she could tell nothing pursued them. After about twenty minutes in silence, Echo said, “Delta heard the explosion. We were close.”
“Close is relative, Echo. That explosion was loud enough to be heard two miles away if not five. Did you see the way that thing went up? It was a thing of beauty.” Charlie kept her eyes on the road, but Echo could see her peering at the rearview and side mirrors over
and over.
“We killed an innocent person.” Echo sat down on the wheel hump, drawing her knees up to her chest.
“No. That little shit stain killed someone. We were just a mechanism in the trap.”
“You know that’s not true.” Echo a glimpse of something sitting on the opposite wheel well. “We tried to kill Delta. We lost Foxtrot. And we killed at least one innocent person. You think maybe we should just call this vendetta of yours a wash?” She slipped off the wheel hump, crawling to the other side.
“This isn’t my vendetta, Echo. This is ours. His bitch of a girlfriend is the one that roasted you and Foxtrot the last time you drew breath. I know your mind’s all Fruity Pebbles and Lucky Charms up there, but I remember. Plus, now he has Foxtrot. Do you think she’s really going to remain as steadfast as Delta? Delta went on a hunger strike and is about to die a horrible death of starvation. We will be lucky if Foxtrot keeps from spilling the beans by tomorrow. We have to go home now and pack up. Take this circus of ours on the road.”
It was a small figurine. The figurine looked like a statue made of metal. A small knight standing on a dent in the wheel well. Echo picked it up to admire it. The carving looked so intricate. “How come I can’t talk to Foxtrot?”
“He probably knocked her out like he did with Delta.”
Echo sat back on the wheel well, clutching the figurine. “How do you know she isn’t dead?”
Charlie snorted. “That’s right. You haven’t been around when one of us bought the farm. Trust me, when one of us dies, you will feel it. Not only will it send a sharp pain through your body, but you will feel your intelligence grow. We all get the divided intellect back when one of us dies.”
Echo looked at the back of Charlie’s head. “So, the fewer of us there are, the smarter we are?”
Charlie shook her head. “Yes, and no. If you’re still around long enough, you start to level out. You get to be at about average intelligence, but only if you gain weight. If you stay the zombies you and Foxtrot were before, you’re a hair’s breath away from drooling to death.” Charlie looked at her through the review mirror, eyes narrowed. “Don’t go getting any ideas. We need all of us for this.”
“We didn’t need Foxtrot enough to go get her.”
“We will bring her back after he kills her.”
“So, I have to hear another one of us die in my head all over again. A slow painful death. Delta’s been nonstop begging for close to a whole day now. I can’t even sleep because of it.” Echo clutched the statue close to her chest.
“Look, Echo. As soon as we move locations, we will start looking for them. They can’t be too hard to track down. And when we do, we will save Foxtrot and kill that little shit.” Charlie glanced at her again through the rearview mirror. “What do you have there?”
“Nothing,” Echo said, slipping the figurine into her pocket. Just then the van slowed to a stop.
“We are here.” She put the van in park and turned it off. Getting up, she stared at Echo. “You aren’t going to be a problem are you?”
Echo shook her head. “No. I will do what you need me to do.” She decided that she was going to hide the figure once she got in the house. It would be her possession and hers alone. He little knight in shining armor. “Let’s go get Bravo and start packing.”
Chapter Seven
Stolen Pasts
Carrie Anne La Morte set the phone down and wiped tears from her eyes. She rested her elbows on her desk as she ran thin fingers through her long black hair. Her eyes drifted to the only picture that adorned her small desk. Eric Shull smiled back her, a younger version of herself smiling over his shoulder at the camera. She loathed taking pictures; she hated the proportions of her face, but Eric had been the kind of man to make her feel beautiful. No, not beautiful. Welcomed. When she had first come to this country seeking to start a new life, she had found that most people took her struggling with the American language as an indication of a lack of intelligence. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Eric had seen that. While she studied to get her certifications, he had been there helping her along, helping her decipher some of the tricky nuances of a language mad with power and duality. He had helped her again, and now because of it, he was dead. They had found her oldest friend hanging in his lab, a sham of a suicide note next to him. Carrie Anne knew enough about depression to know that it could be a silent killer. That the infected hide their wounds much in the way a person in a zombie movie hides a bite. Carrie Anne might have even believed that Eric managed to keep that side of him from her, he had been as mysterious as he was kind. Had it not been for the missing samples she sent him, she might have talked herself into believing he had done this to himself. Instead, she had no doubt that someone was going around cleaning up their mess.
She struggled with how to proceed. How to process this. She had told anyone who asked that she was married. She had learned quite quickly that men could be dogs and that a woman alone in a new land smelled like a meal. She had even used Eric’s picture as a clever visual reminder to those who came sniffing that she was not on the menu. She had never said he was her husband, the lie would have tasted like ash on her tongue, but she had not corrected those who made assumptions. She told Eric about it, explaining her reasoning and he found much amusement in it. He would badger her for background information, teasing that someone might come asking questions and he wanted to be prepared with matching answers. When she had thrown out dates, she should have known he wrote them down. From then on, he sent her flowers and gifts on their anniversary with sweet cryptic messages that were just quotes from the horror movies he knew she adored.
She looked down and saw that her blouse had become stained with a deluge of mascara-laden tears. “I will have to get you to the dry cleaners quick.”
“Hello? Anyone here?” A man’s voice came from the next room.
Carrie Anne stared at the door hard for a few seconds. Lanton had left not too long ago, promising her someone would come by, but she hadn’t expected someone so soon. She wiped off her face, taking a moment to check herself in the mirror. “You look like a raccoon.” She shook her head and threw her lab coat over her near ruined shirt. Stepping out into the other room, she found a younger man standing just inside the doorway from the hall.
From the look of him, he was in his early twenties. He wore his long black hair slicked back with an oily shine. Even indoors he had on thick sunglasses that looked like replicas from a past era like he had watched too many Terminator movies. He had adorned himself with a long black leather trench coat, a sugar skull t-shirt, and ripped jeans tucked into faded combat boots. When he saw her enter, a slow smile spread across his pale face. “Well, hello nurse.”
Carrie Anne crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not a nurse, and I don’t think you are allowed down here.”
Sunglasses sauntered across the floor each slow step with an exaggerated swagger. “I am with the F.B.I. and I just have some questions for you.” She could detect the odor of cologne from across the room as if the kid had bathed in it.
She arched a brow. “I highly doubt that. Let me see some identification.” She took a step back as he rounded the corner of one of the autopsy tables.
He patted himself down, again with drawn-out emphasis. “I must have left them in my other-”
“School shooter outfit?” She cut him off. “I really don’t have time for this.”
He stopped, and she could see the edges of his eyes narrow behind the sunglasses. “I can tell by your accent that you are new to this country, so let me break it down for you. You’re being very rude, and that could spell a lot of trouble for you. It’s only you and I down here. I don’t think there is even anyone else on this floor. How about you learn to cooperate before daddy gets mad?”
She felt the muscles in her jaw tighten. His offer to help only drew a sharp contrast to the man that had actually helped her in this country. A man who had wanted nothing else. Had tried for nothing else.
This one, this creep before her, she knew what he wanted. She could smell it on him as thick as the abundance of what she assumed was a knock-off cologne. “Stay where you are. What do you want?”
“Oh, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Truth is, I came here for one thing, but now I want something different.” He inched closer. “Tell me, what happened to Miss Fire’s missing limb?”
Carrie Anne blinked. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. It all started crashing down on her at once. Whoever this creep was, he had come to collect the missing sample they thought she had.
He gave a dry chuckle. “I thought you might know. What’s the racket? You selling superhero body parts on the side? Your freakish culture into ground phalange of female?” He laughed at his own joke. “You can tell Uncle Hypno. I’ll keep your secret. For a price.” His whole head moved to emphasize that he was checking her out.
“You killed Eric.” Her eyes narrowed. She took a step backward and felt her back pressed against the cold steel of drawers. She had nowhere else to go.
