“Walt, I have a proposal,” Ben said. “Since we’ve obviously been compromised, why don’t we just pack up and head into the woods? We won’t have to hold out but five hours. These people might be determined, but they don’t know the terrain.”
Walt smirked. “Of course we’ll leave. Soon.”
A cell phone sprang to life in the kitchen, its melodic ring at full volume echoing through the house. Ben and Walt froze as Grace shouted. She must have lunged for the phone, as it didn’t ring twice. Walt started for the door, but he didn’t make it all the way.
Grace was already talking into it as she entered the doorway.
“… no, no, no. Sheriff, I’m sure Alberta must have been mistaken. Hold on, Sheriff.” She looked up, her eyes darting in panic, her free hand palm-up to maintain silence. She held the phone tight against her chest.
“Sheriff Everson. He’s at the house. Calling to make sure we’re safe. Apparently, Alberta Weatherington said she saw us leaving right before the explosions. She thinks someone kidnapped us and set fire to the place.”
Walt seemed unconcerned.
“I’ll take it from here.” He grabbed the phone, shoved it to his chest, and faced Ben. “Work her over.” He pointed to Arlene. “I want answers before her heart gives out.”
Ben nodded but did nothing at first, listening to Walt as he stepped into the hallway and conned Sheriff Everson, his dramatic technique perfectly emulating a distraught family man whose house went up in flames. He turned to thanking God they weren’t inside and insisted they were at a hunting camp thirty miles outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Ben heard no more, as Grace shut the bedroom door. The distractions piled up, and time wasted away. He knew what would come next: Walt would conclude they had drawn too much attention, and for everyone’s safety they should take enough supplies to carry them through the day in the deep woods. He would insist Jamie be bound and gagged for the journey and left that way until the re-sequencing concluded at 9:56. Ben searched for an alternative plan and felt the keys to the blue Dodge in his pants pocket next to the flash drive. Behind his back, tucked inside his belt, the gun that once belonged to Rand Paulus now called out.
“He knows.”
Arlene’s haggard voice shook Ben from his trance. The bloodied woman no longer seemed disoriented, as her eyes focused like lasers upon Ben. Her smile was satisfied.
“He knows everything,” she said.
Ben felt a lump in his throat. “Who? Walt?”
“I know about you and Ignatius …” She coughed blood. “What you did two years ago. Walt must know, too. He let it happen.”
Ben felt a chill. He wanted to believe she was desperate, throwing out whatever wild accusations might give her a final chance at life. He even understood. He used to enjoy visiting Denny’s and chatting with Arlene during slow hours. She carried herself with such vigor despite having been a Chancellor exobiologist of great repute. She settled for menial work because Walt always insisted none of them could use their intellect to draw attention to themselves.
“He knows,” she said. “He’s been preparing. Kill me.”
Ben recoiled. “No. Already too much blood. Not again.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I have no future.”
Ben knew she was right, at so many levels, including the ones he had blinded himself to for the past two years. He saw similar pain in her eyes, and he did not want her to suffer anymore. She did not deserve this.
Ben released any moral restraints and shot Arlene twice through the heart. Arlene stared into eternity, a thin dribble of blood coursing from her left nostril.
Ben trembled, the gun’s smoking suppressor hovering inches above the dead Chancellor’s chest. A cold emptiness swept over him as he studied the second defenseless person he killed tonight and the fourth since he was dragged across the fold. Ben felt no remorse, only a deep, unbending regret that he became precisely the man he once vowed never to be. A string of profanities snapped him out of his trance. He felt Walt’s hot breath.
“Have you completely lost your mind, Sheridan?”
Ben found courage. “No. If she knew anything concrete, she was never going to tell us. She said I chose the wrong side, that Jamie would be dead before the rebirth. They’d shoot him and burn his body. I snapped.”
Walt loosened his fists. “As much as I despise to admit it, you’re right, Sheridan. We were wasting time and resources. We have to make preparations for our next move.”
“The, um, sheriff. Is everything taken care of with him?”
“Everson is a moron. I told him I’d drive back at first light. That would give us more than enough time for the mission objectives to be completed and allow us to start back toward the fold. The problem is not limited to our burned-out shell of a house.”
Ben nodded. “The neighbors. They claim they saw us.”
“The neighbors were half-asleep. Dim-witted buffoons. Of no concern now.” He turned to Grace, who was standing in the doorway. “We need to prepare the lake house for departure.”
Grace paused on her way out. “Complete preparation?”
“Yes. All of it.” Grace hurried off. “After I explained how we were in Louisiana – in fact, the very camp where Grace and I have been field-training Samantha for years – he sprung additional news on me. It appears one of his deputies was found shot several times along with another man … in your apartment, of course.”
Ben felt light-headed, as if he were watching Ignatius die in his arms all over again.
Walt continued. “This provides a considerable complication. Everson might be a moron, but even he would see there must be a connection between our fire and his deputy’s demise. I don’t think there’s been this much excitement in Albion since … oh, since your parents were murdered. Once they verify that we have not been in Louisiana … suffice to say, the farther we are from Albion, the better. It’s time.”
“Fine, Walt. I concede your point. But promise me one thing. I’ll have a chance to spend time alone with my brother before the end.”
Walt dropped a sympathetic hand on Ben’s shoulder.
“Sheridan, I once had a cousin. He was as close as a brother, so he did not understand when I could not tell him the truth about our mission. On the final night, the two of us barely spoke. If you feel this strange need to bond with James, I won’t stand in your way. However, he will be properly secured to the end.”
A fierce banging on another door drew their attention. They raced into the hallway and saw Grace pounding her fist against Sammie’s bedroom door.
“Samantha? Samantha? Open up now. Samantha?”
Walt wasted no time and launched a powerful kick that threw the door open. Ben saw the open window. Walt grunted but otherwise contained his temper, scanning the room with the quiet professionalism of a detective at a crime scene. He sauntered past Grace uttering the word “incompetent” over and over.
Standing in the doorway, Walt put a finger in Ben’s chest.
“James has lost his bonding privileges. We’ll search lakeside.”
Ben raced through the kitchen, opened the sliding door and tore out onto the deck. He searched east and west, assisted only by the spotlights on the deck. He called out to Jamie and waited in the dark stillness for a response he knew wasn’t coming. He didn’t have a chance to ponder how Jamie pulled this off.
He heard an unexpected hum in the distance, breaking the silence of the night. He couldn’t determine the sound’s origin, as it bounced across the lake and through the forest. His stomach tightened.
Walt screamed. “Sheridan, get in here.”
As Ben entered the kitchen, Grace raced up from the cellar, and Walt took out his keys.
“No time to search. They’re coming,” Walt said, glancing at his watch. He turned his attention to a long, narrow cabinet just inside the kitchen from the foyer.
“Who?” Ben asked. “Agatha Bidwell?”
“Who else?” Walt forged a smile as
he turned a key into a lock and opened the cabinet.
“I thought the cabin was secure.”
Walt hesitated but offered no answer. He reached into a deep cabinet stocked with assault weapons in vertical braces with magazines neatly arranged in cubbies below.
Walt grabbed a pair of AK-47s, which he tossed to Ben and Grace, followed by an extra magazine for each. He grabbed an M16, two pistols and extra clips.
“Lights,” he told Grace, who retreated toward the cellar. “Sheridan, come with me.”
“What about Jamie and Sammie?”
“Not an issue.”
Stunned by Walt’s nonchalance, Ben opened his mouth to say, “What do you mean?” Yet in that instant, the distant hum became a vicious roar. The next few seconds happened on instinct.
Ben realized which side of the house the helicopter was on, so he rushed through the kitchen toward Walt and the position that might have given them some defense. He loaded the magazine into the AK, a weapon he used once before.
The lights inside blinked out a second before the house became bathed in a blinding glare, as if time flashed forward to midday. Ben and Walt didn’t speak, but Ben knew they were too late. Escape wasn’t an option.
The bullets came like a meteor shower as bursts of machine-gun fire competed against the helicopter’s roar. At first, the glass of the sliding door and windows tinkled as bullets cut through them without a care, followed by the chaotic symphony of clangs, slams, bangs and thuds of impact deeper inside the house. Within seconds, however, the glass shattered, spraying in every possible direction. Shielded for the moment in the foyer, Ben glanced to his left, saw Walt’s eyes racing in a panic, no doubt plotting their escape plan. Then he realized what was missing. He looked over his shoulder into the kitchen, which was being shredded.
Grace Huggins glowed in the helicopter’s searchlight, her twisted body sprawled across the floor, her bullet wounds visible, hundreds of tiny shards of glass shining as they intermingled with the blood.
“We have to move out,” Walt yelled over the insane cacophony. “On my mark, through the front door. Follow my lead. Understand, Sheridan?”
As Ben slipped through the open door, bullets ricocheted through the foyer. The men raced out onto the wooden deck, their cars a few yards away. The searchlight’s glare cast the house in a bizarre glow. The barrage of bullets from the other side seemed muffled. That’s when Ben heard the crackle of single rifle shots. The first bullet ricocheted off the landing a few feet ahead, splintering the wood. Ben brought up his weapon, but he was too late. The first shots intensified. Ben tripped down the short flight of steps, never letting go of his rifle.
He lost track of Walt for a second, but that was long enough to feel the piercing of a bullet as it entered just above his right collar bone. A hand reached out and tugged at him, but Ben had no sense of where he was anymore.
21
J AMIE NEVER LOOKED back. He and Sammie were almost a half-mile from the lake house, following the trail westward less than ten feet from the shoreline.
Jamie kept the pistol aimed at the back of Sammie’s head. They passed through tiny whiskers of fog creeping along the shore like misshapen ghosts hunting for bodies. The path was muddy at times and overgrown in brief stretches, but otherwise as Jamie remembered from his last visit. It continued for two miles if they remained close to the water, or they could take a sudden turn where it branched off not far ahead. It would turn sharply up the bluff, a tricky incline in which the soil often gave way, and exposed roots acted like rungs on a ladder. The trail then intersected the lake road and continued on the northern side, winding in convoluted swoops through the deep, unspoiled forests.
Jamie followed the flashlight’s beam, making sure they didn’t miss the intersection.
He resisted Sammie’s nonstop efforts to end this nonsense.
“We don’t have to do it this way,” she said. “You’re scared, for good reason. You just found out you’re dying.”
“If I’m dying, it’s because of people like your parents and mine. Besides, if I go nuke, you and your folks get to take a trip back home. I’ll bet you’ll be heroes. Then you can go off and play soldier girl. I mean, that’s what your folks been training you for, right?”
“Is it so bad to want to be who you were always meant to be?”
Jamie laughed. “I figured I was made to be a cartoonist. But that’s just too damn bad for me, now ain’t it?”
Jamie wanted to lay it on thick, to be as sarcastic and angry about his fate as he thought Sammie could take, but he didn’t have the chance. The echo of squealing tires distracted him.
“What’s that?” Sammie asked.
The echo came from well ahead of them and above the bluffs. He swore the sound came from a car approaching from the west. Jamie perked his ears. This time he heard the sounds of brush being battered as something tumbled down the bluff, perhaps thirty yards ahead. The car burned rubber once more, this time heading east toward the lake house and beyond. Jamie caught a glimpse of the headlights.
“Rednecks. Probably throwing their empties down the bluff. Or a used refrigerator. Just rednecks.”
“No, Jamie. I really think we should turn back.”
He insisted she keep moving. The air off Lake Vernon was moist and cool. He almost forgot how perfect the summer nights out here could be. The gentle lake breezes gave way to an idyllic stillness as peaceful and cleansing as the stars above were brighter and closer.
Sammie stopped without warning. Jamie stumbled into her, the gun pressing into her back.
“Jamie, wait. I don’t think the people in that car were throwing out beer bottles. Look.”
She focused the flashlight on an object, and Jamie recognized the back of a human head on its side in a mud pack. Jamie thought the young black man’s profile was familiar. He grabbed the flashlight, shined it on the face and fell to his knees.
“Oh, God. Oh, God. It’s Coop.” He dropped the gun to his side, handed the flashlight to Sammie and told her to come in close. “Please, Coop. Don’t do this to me. Please.”
He wrapped one hand gently under the side of Michael’s face, which was caked in mud. His best friend’s eyes were closed, but blood stained the side of his forehead, just above the ear.
“C’mon, Coop. Wake up, dude. How did you …?”
“What’s he doing out here, Jamie? How could he …?”
“Shut up.” He placed two fingers on Michael’s neck and tried to calm his own panicked breathing. “A pulse. I can feel a pulse. He’s still alive. I don’t understand. How did this happen?”
Jamie and Sammie shared a knowing glance. Before Sammie said anything, Jamie cut her off. “No way. They couldn’t know anything about Coop. He wasn’t even at my place.”
“There’s no other explanation. This can’t be a coincidence.”
Jamie ignored her, wrapping an arm around Michael and trying to lift him from the mud. Only then did the flashlight display the blood intermingled with the packed wet soil and painted across Michael’s back. The bullet holes were brown and obvious. Jamie lost control of his emotions. Tears flowed as a river while he hugged Michael, trying to keep his friend up and alive, desperation overcoming him.
“Oh, God. I left my phone at home. They must’ve found out who I was texting. It’s your fault, Sammie,” he snarled. “All of you. He didn’t have anything to do with all this crazy shit. Look what you people did.”
Sammie became drenched in tears as well, and she tried to reach out to Jamie, but his desperate growl forced her back.
“It’s not our fault, Jamie. Please. Understand. I don’t know how Coop got involved, but it means …” Sammie froze, her tears dissolving as her eyes widened. “Agatha and the others. The car. It must have been them. They’re tracking us. Mom. Dad. They’ve got to be warned.”
She started to stand up, but Jamie grabbed her by the wrist, driving his nails into her skin.
“No way. You’re not going back. You’re
going to help me, Sammie. There’s a house. We gotta get Coop some help. He’ll die soon.”
“No, Jamie. It’s too late.”
“You owe me.” Jamie held Michael up with one arm and reached behind himself with the other. When he felt the gun, he brought it across his body and aimed. “We’re taking him to get help. That’s all there is to it.”
“But my parents. Your brother.”
“To hell with them. My best friend ain’t gonna die out here in the mud. Hold that light and help me lift him. Do it, Sammie.”
Jamie wrapped an arm through Michael’s left armpit and around his best friend’s back, which was wet with blood. He wiped his tear-blotted eyes with his free arm and watched as Sammie supported Michael’s right side. On a count of three, they lifted.
At the instant Jamie thought he could do this, that maybe he could pull off a miracle and get Michael to safety, the buzzing in his head returned. It was faint at first, like a swarm of bees a mile away but closing fast. Not as vicious as the million crickets, but equally exasperating.
“It’s happening again. The sounds. Like in your bedroom.”
Sammie stopped and looked away, her ears perked.
“No, Jamie. It’s not you. I can hear it too. It’s something coming. Something like …”
The buzz became a hum, and the hum developed a steady, rhythmic beat that included rapid mechanical clicks. That’s when a helicopter appeared as if launched from the forest. It curled until forming a course parallel to the shoreline, heading directly toward them from the west, red signals flashing and a search light poised in a narrow beam straight ahead. The rhythmic beat became a roar as the chopper flew over them.
Michael became much heavier; Jamie realized Sammie let go.
“It’s them,” she shouted as the roar lessened. “They’re coming to kill us all.”
“Grab Coop’s shoulder. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I can’t leave them, Jamie. They’re my parents. Your brother.”
The Impossible Future: Complete set Page 10
