His thoughts unscrambled when a ringing phone broke the silence. He saw Sammie and Michael stepping toward Walt. The phone continued to ring. Michael pulled it out of Walt’s shirt pocket.
“Dude, what do you think?”
Jamie grabbed the phone and opened it.
He stared at the caller ID but did not feel the usual fear associated with this woman.
“Hello?”
“I wish to speak with … James? Is that you, James? Oh, you dear child. Ms. Bidwell here. I am so very sorry we couldn’t have ended your school year on a more pleasant basis. Perhaps you and I need to engage in a very different manner of final exam. Yes?”
42
J AMIE TURNED TO his friends, then looked again at the bodies of two men whose obsession with Jamie got them killed. He tucked the phone against his chest.
“I think I have to take this,” he said before turning his back.
“What did I ever do to you?” He asked Agatha. “To any of you?”
“I believe you know the answer to that question,” Agatha said. “This is a tragedy for all. Unfortunately, James, you were …”
“Jamie. The name is Jamie. I hate James. I told you that in class.”
“And so you did. Jamie, you were destined for this end before you were conceived. I’m sure Walter and Benjamin have taken pains to provide you with sufficient back story. Yes?”
“They told me. Before they died.”
Agatha gasped. “Died? Walter is …?”
“I killed him myself. What do you think of that, Ms. Bidwell? Do I get to move to the front of the class now?”
“I don’t appreciate your tone, Jamie,” Agatha started. “I do not respond well to sarcasm in children. In your case, I’ll make an exception.”
Jamie did not want to have a row with this woman.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Agatha, speaking from the back seat of the Camaro, turned to Arthur, who was running a program to calibrate the origin of the phone signal. Walt did not give her enough time on the earlier call to fix his location. Arthur motioned for her to keep talking.
“Jamie, I’m not sure how much your allies have told you about the civil conflict between Chancellors, or the moral implications behind your creation. At this point, I will not diverge into a history lesson nor a treatise on bioethics. But you need to understand our point of view regarding the rebirth of the Jewel within you.”
“Is this going to be for a grade?” Jamie knew how much she despised that question.
“Very clever,” she said. “To serious concerns. In my universe, humans have lived on forty worlds for a thousand years. We evolved as a new breed of humans to surpass the limitations of earlier homo sapiens. But not long ago we embarked on a scheme to become even greater than ourselves. To ensure permanence. Some have used the words immortality and godhood.”
“Sure. Those are the words I’d find in the dictionary next to your picture. Right, Queen Bee?”
Agatha motioned to Arthur to step outside with the laptop.
“My point, Jamie, was that when we arrived here, I had no particular use for this Earth’s people or cultures. I despised their superficiality and inherent desire for immediate gratification without consideration of expanding their intellect and insight into the human condition. I always …”
“Talk like an arrogant bitch who made everybody you ever met despise being in the room with you.” Jamie spat into the phone. “You treated us like maggots, and that’s how we left your class feeling.”
Agatha took a deep breath and sorted through her response.
“I am arrogant, capricious, and sadistic. It is my nature. However, contrary to what you and your friends may think, I am not without a heart.”
Jamie laughed. He lost track of why he was even listening to the woman who had been leading a brigade of former friends to kill him.
“A heart, maybe. But lady, you got no soul. None at all. Just let me go. Let my friends go home and live their lives. Can’t you be a human being for once and just walk away?”
“I wish I could. But time has endeared me to people in a way I never imagined. Jamie, I have sat in small conference rooms with the parents of my students. I have listened to them tell me of their hopes and their frustrations. I have seen mothers in tears because they wanted more for their children and feared for the worst. I have seen pure and unconditional love in their eyes. I have seen bonds between parent and child that defied the world in which I was raised. I have seen tenderness, compassion, and fealty.
“And I have come to realize that Chancellors, who lack these essential qualities, do not deserve to advance beyond our failed state. I cannot allow them to unleash an abomination like the Jewel upon those forty civilized worlds. Our desire for immortality will lead to the fall of all humans. It has to be destroyed, and I cannot do that without killing you.”
He dropped the phone to his side and stared past his friends in silence. Sammie started toward him, but he motioned her back.
“You can’t put this on me,” he barked into the phone. “It’s not my fault. I didn’t make this happen.”
“But you will. If you stay the course rather than surrender yourself to us, you will be responsible. The Chancellors will consolidate their power, use an army of hybrids to obliterate all opposition, and begin a systematic genocide of the insurgent colony worlds. Billions will die. Now that you know the truth, you must concede to the only morally acceptable outcome. Give yourself to us. I promise we will not harm anyone with you.”
Jamie looked across the way to Ben’s body and searched his thoughts on Ben’s ‘third option.’ He turned to Michael, whose safety meant more to Jamie than his own life. He wished he had one night alone with Sammie, one brief interlude of perfection.
“I need time,” he told Agatha. “I can’t think. It’s like I’m back in your goddamn class again. I can’t think.”
Agatha got the thumbs-up from Arthur. He zeroed in on the coordinates of Jamie’s phone. She pressed her phone against her chest as Arthur contacted Reginald Fortis and Lester Bowman. Then Agatha nodded to Christian: time for him to join the hunt.
“I understand your emotional confusion. However, I believe your parents would have encouraged you to make this sacrifice. They were good and upstanding Chancellors. Their decision to send you into hiding with our team was devastating, but they understood the necessity. I was there when they said goodbye. They would see the moral rightness of this.”
Jamie froze. “What?” He felt his heart race. “My parents? They didn’t come? What? They weren’t …?”
Agatha twitched. She wondered whether she went too far. “No. Tom and Marlena Sheridan played the part, but your biological parents had a different agenda.”
“They’re alive? Mom and Dad?”
“Likely.”
Jamie wondered what other emotional punishment he was supposed to take today. He knew Agatha was not lying. The pieces made sense. The distance he often felt from his mother … Lydia even hinted at it hours ago. He thought the voices on those farewell messages were computerized, yet they must have been genuine.
“Their names. What were their names?”
“Bouchet. Emil and Frances Bouchet.”
“And Ben?”
“Not your biological brother, but he did love you as one.”
“And my name? Was it always Jamie?”
“James Bouchet.”
“You stole me. You bitch. All you Chancellors.”
He smashed the phone against a tree and turned to his friends.
“We have to move. Now. We’re out of time.”
Jamie gathered up an AK, pulled the strap over his shoulder and looked around until he found the .45 near Ben.
Just before he started back to his friends, Jamie saw a small metallic object half-buried in the kicked-up soil a couple feet from Ben’s body. He recognized the flash drive and grabbed it. Jamie couldn’t imagine what he’d do with this now, but the idea of leaving i
t behind seemed disrespectful. If Ben was telling the truth, if this represented the only meaningful work Ben did the past few years, then Jamie couldn’t leave it here for anyone to find.
“We’re taking Coop home. He’s going to be safe.”
Sammie nodded through her tears. “But what about you? What did she tell you? What did Ben say to you?”
Jamie brushed hair from his face. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”
“I’m down with that,” Michael said.
Jamie didn’t look back. He walked into the forest with the commitment that his final two hours would have meaning. He tried to suppress his rage, to block the truth hidden within his new and tighter skin: He was falling into an abyss. The Jewel was opening his mind to a different perspective on time and place.
He felt the shadows coming for him.
43
T HEY FOUND A battered, rusting, sky-blue pickup where Walt left it: Stopped shy of a trench at least six feet deep and wide slithering through the woods, a shallow but fast-moving stream at the base. Sammie said the stream flowed directly into the lake; they were less than fifty yards from a one-lane dirt road linked to the highway. Michael found keys inside.
“We better move,” Jamie said, listening to the ever-present albeit distant echo of a helicopter’s rotor blades.
Sammie hesitated, looking back across the trench.
“I shouldn’t have left him there like that,” she said. “He deserved better, Jamie. He was only doing what he thought was right. His mission.”
“So did Ben, but it’s done. They’re gone. Only thing we can do now is take care of Coop. I need you, Sammie.”
She raised the rifle to chest level and nodded. Jamie tried to focus upon the next challenge, to suppress fear of a fate two hours away. Sammie followed Jamie to the passenger side. Before he hopped in, Jamie inspected the seat, which was cracked and spewing foam filler. The rusting floor looked as if it would give way. Michael insisted on driving.
“Don’t got my license on me, but I’m the oldest looking, so that ought to count for something,” he said. As Jamie and Sammie climbed in, Michael leaned forward, looking around Jamie and said, “Figure you might wanna keep that gun on your lap, Sammie. Folks around these parts wouldn’t look twice at a good ol’ boy and his shotgun. But they’d take notice of a sweet thing like you locked and loaded, if you get my speed.”
Jamie wasn’t surprised by Michael’s recharged, sarcastic attitude; he was used to seeing Michael take this road whenever emotions threatened to get the better of him. Michael cranked the engine on the third try and maneuvered the truck around low brush and fallen limbs. The truck groaned and squealed, and each of them shared worried glances. Michael chuckled.
“She’s halfway to the grave, but I’ll bet she gets us there.”
The truck seemed to have little or no shocks, as each tiny bump bounced the three from the seat. Michael worked the steering wheel hard but couldn’t avoid low-hanging branches, which snapped upon impact with the windshield. Jamie remembered the nights he and Michael took jalopies such as this on joy rides. He used to love the exhilaration and fear.
They were within range of the dirt road when Jamie swore he saw an unnatural shadow out of the corner of his eye. The dark movement was cat-quick, visible just beyond the driver’s rear-view mirror. Light and shadow danced through the forest in electric morning routines; he was ready to chalk this up to paranoia. Then he saw Sammie raise her weapon and lean forward, also looking left. Michael made a sharp left around a tree, which scraped the passenger side. Jamie again faced Sammie, whose head still darted about to the left and through the cabin’s rear window.
He didn’t need to ask. “Coop. Floor it.”
Seconds later, the truck careened onto the road, which was thick in sandy soil. The rear tires roared and seemed embedded in the sand, but Michael gave the gas everything, freeing the pickup. The truck struggled until Michael recognized the incoming tire tracks and announced he would follow those out.
The road led straightaway for two football fields then banked to the right. Old growth forest encroached from either side, the high branches shading the road and low brush, leaving no semblance of a shoulder.
“The highway isn’t far,” Sammie said over the chugging, nauseated engine. “Maybe a quarter mile past that bend. Faster, Coop. I don’t feel good about this.”
Jamie understood Sammie’s impatience. His nerves crawled like the baited earthworms he used to drop into Alamander River. However, he didn’t have time to express his fears.
A blue sedan rounded the bend, not moving at a rapid clip, either, appearing to rock back and forth as it also navigated a terrain it wasn’t equipped to handle. Michael kept his foot on the gas until Jamie grabbed the wheel.
“Slow down. Pull over far as you can.” He turned to Sammie. They didn’t say a word, but he saw her trigger finger poised to unload the M16.
“No way,” Michael said. “We stay in the middle, they’ll pull over.”
“I don’t think so,” Sammie said. The blue sedan stopped, holding position in the center. Michael hit the brakes, the sedan a hundred feet ahead. Jamie slid one of the AKs into Michael’s lap.
The sedan’s driver-side door opened. Christian Bidwell stepped out, although he remained behind the door.
Jamie saw a river of sweat roll down Michael’s forehead and a familiar terror in his best friend’s eyes. Jamie knew with certainty they were in serious trouble when he saw Christian speaking into a cell phone.
Sammie grabbed their attention. “This is what we have to do. On a count of three, I’m going to open my door. As soon as I do, I’m going to jump. Put your heads down and follow me out as quickly as you can. Whatever you do, don’t slow down.”
A split second before Sammie began her count, reality struck Jamie like a thunderbolt. He remembered the unnatural shadow.
“He’s giving the orders this time,” Jamie whispered. He swung about and looked through the rear of the cab just as a man with a familiar face emerged from the brush thirty feet away. The shooter pocketed a cell phone, raised his rifle, and opened fire.
Jamie ducked, grabbed Michael by the arm, and yanked him down with enough force to pull his friend’s shoulder out of socket. The first bullets shattered the cab’s rear window, spraying a shower of glass over them. The shards danced on his and Michael’s bare torsos. Sammie flung open the passenger door.
As bullets pinged and ricocheted, Jamie followed Sammie’s lead and leapt across the seat, throwing his rifle out the truck ahead of him. He stumbled over the doorstop, raked his shoulder against the open door and fell to the ground, his knee smacking the butt of the rifle. Throbbing pain crippled his every concern, but only until Michael fell on top of him. Jamie rolled over, grabbed his rifle and was prepared to run into the brush, as Sammie instructed.
Sammie maintained a hunched position as she fired the M16 across the truck’s cargo bed. The semi-automatic bursts were as disciplined as Jamie witnessed when she brought down a helicopter. He grabbed his AK, ignored his pain, made sure Michael was not shot, and allowed instinct to take over.
44
A S JAMIE EXPECTED, Christian no longer held a position behind his car door. He was on the move, weapon poised. As soon as Jamie pointed the AK, Christian stopped and opened fire. Jamie pulled the trigger, letting loose a couple rounds as the enemy’s bullets smacked the door and sizzled past within inches of his head.
Sammie screamed. “Run. Go now.”
Michael leaped into the thick collection of myrtle, tall grasses and other scrub; Jamie lowered his weapon and did the same. He plunged forward through the thick, scraggly mess, branches and twigs snapping in his face and scraping against his bare arms and chest. He tripped over a low, knotted branch and fell, his belly lying flush on a thorny vine. He groaned as the thorns held him down. He dropped the rifle, grabbed the vine and yanked. He screamed, the sound of his desperation mild against automatic weapons fire.
Jamie ignor
ed the specks of blood on his stomach, picked up the rifle, and stumbled forward. He jumped, skipped and clambered over nature’s obstacles before emerging into a more open area of woods.
Michael peeked out from behind the massive base of an ancient oak. Jamie raced toward him. Seconds later, Sammie raced into the open twenty feet from where Jamie emerged. The instant they saw each other, she waved them on, her lips repeating, “Run, run, run.”
They didn’t take stock of this latest nightmare or their injuries. Instead, they ran. The land undulated, a series of small hills and steep slopes, the rotten remains of long-ago-fallen trees, a dry streambed and another collection of knotted bramble. Jamie assumed the trio covered almost a mile before Sammie raised her hand and suggested they stop. She told them to climb down a short slope and hunker against the base of a birch tree, its massive, twisting roots exposed by the eroding soil.
Jamie sat beside Michael, both wheezing and covered in perspiration. Sammie breathed hard as well, but Jamie noticed she didn’t seem beaten down. When they regained their breath, Michael asked the question on Jamie’s mind.
“How did they find us? How?”
“I don’t know,” Sammie said, reminding Michael to keep his voice to a whisper. “Couldn’t have been by GPS. That was something Daddy made especially …” As soon as she caught Jamie’s unblinking eyes, she stopped. “Probably luck. Yeah. The one in the helicopter probably told them where we were before I shot it down. They got lucky. That’s all.”
“Luck or not, don’t matter,” Michael said, pumping his chest. “I ain’t messing with these dudes again. Hear me?” His rasping voice began to take off. Michael jumped up and grabbed his rifle. “You get our asses out of here. Got that, Supergirl?”
Jamie grabbed Michael and pushed him down before matters worsened. Only once or twice did he ever see his best bud this way, and he recognized an understandable terror in Michael’s eyes. He also noticed scrapes and cuts on Michael’s chest, no doubt from the bramble.
“Coop. Chill. We’ll make it.” He handed his rifle to Sammie. “Show me how to use this.”
The Impossible Future: Complete set Page 19
