The Empowered, page 34
I tightened my grip, put my other hand against my throat, and whispered a reply. “What are your instructions?” Freaking strange, but it worked. How, I had no idea.
“Go to this address in Redding.” Ashula read me the location, which I memorized.
“No more information at this time?”
“Your contact will have the job information.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“Come back to Portland. You will switch trucks after the job in Redding.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes,” she said. “Then you’ll call the number, and be told where to meet me.”
Did I say I loved being a mushroom? “Okay.” What the hell else could I say? Nothing.
“Thank you for your patience, Mat. I know you want to act.”
You’re an open book, Brandt, I could almost hear Winterfield say, in that sour way of his.
Maybe it wasn’t so hard to figure out I was antsy.
“Goodbye,” she said in my ear.
“Goodbye.”
I fingered the necklace. Nothing. No more vibration.
Time to wake up my cell.
We had a long way to go today.
I called Simon, had him bring his van. We all piled in and headed for California before sunrise. The drive south was dull and long. Simon stayed behind the wheel the whole time. We reached Redding before dark.
I called the number Ashula had given me from a payphone at a gas station.
“This is Frank,” an older-sounding woman’s voice said on the other end.
“The band is here,” I said. Stupid pass phrase. Between Support and the Scourge, all my phone calls were dumb spy stuff.
“Need to see you.” She gave me an address. “Bring sundaes.”
“With sprinkles.” Blech. Should have to say with extra nuts, because this was crazy stupid.
I had no idea if Support bugged the phone lines, but Ashula said the “pass phrases” were necessary. You’d think they’d come up with something more clever.
We drove to a dead-end street at the edge of Redding, where the houses all had overgrown lawns that had turned brown in the fall. We parked in front of an old farmhouse with a big porch, the kind where Grandma waited in a floral dress with a freshly baked apple pie, next to the American flag.
There was no flag, and no one on the porch.
We all got out of Simon’s van and trooped up to the door. The porch creaked when I stepped on the boards. The rest of my cell waited at the foot of the step. Keisha scowled. I knew how she felt, times two, since this was the kind of bullshit I had to do in Support.
Sometimes it was impossible to tell which was which. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, I could almost hear Ruth say.
The screen door was half-open, so I rapped my knuckles on the door frame.
The porch light stayed off. The front door unlocked and opened. Someone stood there in shadow, nearly as tall as me, but wider.
“Let me see your necklace,” a woman’s voice said.
My breath caught in my throat, but I pulled up my necklace and leaned forward, holding it out. I wasn’t taking it off for anyone, since it was the only way I could reach Ashula. I hadn’t had the necklace for more than a few months.
Long fingers stroked the necklace, while I leaned forward like an idiot. An ugly thought reared up in my brain, and I took a calming breath. I never wore the necklace when I met with Winterfield or Alex when he wasn’t being a stoner.
I could just make the outlines of a round face with a blade-like nose, below narrow eyes that were shut. A muscle throbbed in that round face.
The fingers released my necklace. She blinked and focused on me. Alex in stoner mode and I had talked about Support stuff when I was wearing the necklace. Shit.
“You’re approved,” she said. “Come in.”
I tucked the necklace back inside my shirt, took another calming breath. “Frank, right?”
“Yes. You must be Brandt.”
I nodded. “You’re a reader,” I said.
A low laugh. “Got it in one, missy.”
I’d never been around a reader before, but I’d heard about them. I guess I hadn’t been around Alex enough for her to pick up on that.
I turned to face the others waiting on the sidewalk. “Come on in.”
We trooped inside. The place stank of cigar smoke and onions. I just gave Frank first names, and Frank didn’t give me anything more about her own name.
“Boss woman says I’m going to work with you,” she said. She brushed a lock of crow black hair out of her eyes. Her hair was a tangled snarl, tinged with grey streaks. If Frank were going for the crazy-old-woman-in-training look, she’d succeeded. Her eyes narrowed. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’m doing this as an independent contractor for boss woman. I’m not with the Scourge anymore.”
I wondered how many “contracts” Frank did for the Scourge. Would they really let a reader leave the Scourge? Readers were way too valuable.
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“Good, just so you understand.” She cut to the chase. “There’s a black semi, with a couple of SUV escorts that will be coming down I-5 tomorrow. You can ambush them near the Oregon border. Say seven thirty.”
“How did you learn about that?” I asked.
“I read things, remember.”
“Not good enough.”
Simon nodded. “I agree. It’s mighty thin to go in on someone’s say so.”
Frank shook her head, her face sour. “You’ve gotta go make it difficult, don’t you? Fine.” She flexed her long bony fingers, reached toward Keisha. “I need something of yours to touch.”
Keisha took a step back. “Why me?”
“Why not? You look like the skeptical type.”
Keisha backed up further. “What, and they don’t?”
“I want something of yours, girl.” Bony fingers snatched at Keisha.
I shrugged when Keisha looked desperately at me for help. “Just get it over with.”
“Thanks, Mat.” She rolled her eyes. Reached inside her black leather jacket and handed an ancient looking ballpoint pen.
Frank took the pen, closed her eyes.
Licked her lips.
Was she going to read it, eat it, or make love to it?
Her eyes shot open. “This belonged to an old man, who lived in a shack down by the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi. He used to write his sermons with it.”
Keisha grabbed the pen. “Okay, fine, so you’ve convinced me.” She turned to me. “That was my grandad. He gave that to me a few years ago.”
Frank chuckled, her face smug. “They always believe when I read.”
Still didn’t add up. “Fine, so you can remote view or whatever an object. But how do you know when the shipment we are supposed to knock off will be there?”
Her smile became creepy. “Because I can read people, too, and connect them with other people. That’s how I got the info.”
“You read a person.”
“Yes.” She laughed. “Doing so ain’t easy. It takes a helluva lot of time, and hurts like shit. And I ain’t going to tell you who or where or when. Just that I can string things together. Objects to people. People to objects. Good enough?”
It would have to be.
I’d better never give her a reason to read me, or I’d be dead.
13
The forest of fir trees murmured in my head, as we waited for the truck and its escorts to show up. I was halfway up a big fir, standing in the crook of two branches. The world swayed as the breeze picked up. Shit. I hated heights but I needed to see.
I-5 narrowed to two lanes here in each direction. The box truck was parked on the turnoff across the freeway, Simon behind the wheel and Connor riding shotgun. The sun was just clearing the trees to the east. Shadows still covered the interstate.
Keisha crouched below me. “Make sure you don’t drop a tree on my head, bitch,” she’d said, tapping my arm.
“Can’t guarantee anything,” I had replied. She stuck her tongue out at me.
It wasn’t so funny now that I was about to kill a fir and drop it onto the freeway. I’d picked one over a hundred feet tall. It had to be two hundred years old.
It sucked to kill it but we had to stop the semi.
The lead SUV appeared north of us, roaring downhill in our direction, headlights still on. A moment later the black semi came into view. Couldn’t see the side, but this had to be it.
A few seconds later the trailing SUV showed up.
I reached down into the fir tree off to my right, stirred the rot I had started an hour ago and been working through the tree. It moaned, a pitiful sound in my head, tugging at my heart. The rot spread through the fir faster and faster, and then the tree began to topple.
I had wanted to time it so that the lead SUV would be past where the tree would fall, but I didn’t want to let the semi past, so I went early.
A hundred feet of fir smacked onto the highway with a crackling boom. The lead SUV hit the brakes, fishtailing toward the whipping mass of branches, and skidding hard, hitting the branches and smacking up against the tree. The SUV rocked.
The semi was a hundred yards back, so it had more time, but going sixty plus downhill with all that weight had to be a bitch when it came time to slam on the brakes.
The airbrakes shrieked, and the tractor trailer shuddered and groaned.
“Kill the tires,” I said into my wrist comm.
“Got it,” I heard Keisha answer.
The semi hadn’t stopped yet when a volley of railroad spikes streaked into the right side tires. The tires below the cab went bang and deflated. The ones at the front of the trailer went bang. She missed the rear ones. The semi leaned hard to the right but didn’t roll. Too bad. That would have made it impossible for them to leave, but chances were excellent the semi wasn’t going anywhere.
The trailing SUV stopped behind the trailer. Doors opened and men in military style camouflage jumped out. The driver and the front passenger hunkered down behind open doors, pointing assault rifles at either side of the road, while two more men jogged past, crouching, also pointing their guns in our general direction.
Passengers in the lead SUV tried to open their doors, but the doors’ metal had melded into the frame, thanks to Keisha. The dead fir’s dying moan still scoured my mind, but I smiled anyway, because they’d have to shoot the windows out and crawl over broken glass to get out.
The guys in the cab stayed put. I waited for the trailer doors to open. There had to be security inside. They’d be pissed off and a bit bruised maybe, but no doubt armed like their pals outside.
The two guards from the trailing SUV had almost reached the semi when the air went snap, crackle, pop! They stiffened, shaking like puppets, then fell to the ground.
“Got it in one, Connor,” I said over the wrist comm.
I reached into a fir tree opposite the rear SUV and spread rot through it. This tree was younger, maybe only a century old. Like the first tree, I pulled it toward the road by one last spurt of growth on that side before killing it. The tree’s dying scream filled my mind. It fell like God’s hammer on the SUV, crushing the roof and slamming the two goons hunkered down behind open doors onto the ground, the twisting metal shrieking in protest.
My stomach twisted. I’d just killed two men. I sagged against the tree. They may have been goons, but there should have been another way. I forced myself to focus. Only there wasn’t. Not that time. I had to do better with the next one.
Simon drove the box truck alongside the tractor trailer.
Gunfire banged from the front SUV as the goons inside shot out the windows.
Another snap, crackle pop! The gun fire stopped. The guards’ bodies slumped in their seats. Connor’s “static smack” was nasty. But hopefully they were just stunned.
That left whoever was inside the trailer and the cab.
The cab door facing me suddenly began steaming. Metal flowed and the door seem disappeared. I was too far to hear screams but it had to be hot inside that cab. Steam rose from both sides. Yeah, the driver and his security weren’t getting out any time soon.
So, we were down to the trailer.
I glanced at my wrist comm. Four minutes had passed. Cars came over the hill and screeched to a stop. A truck, too. South of us the same thing. We had to haul ass.
I climbed down the tree and sprinted for the trailer as the doors in the back opened. I drew my stunner. Simon jumped down from the truck, pointed his stunner toward the trailer. Keisha jogged toward me down the highway, hands free. Sweat gleamed on her face. She’d pushed it.
Explosions boomed north and south of us, along the road, and fir trees fell across the road, trees we’d rigged before. There. We were better isolated now.
No one appeared from the back of the trailer as I approached. There was sudden movement. I hit the pavement. My body armor banged against the ground, gauntlets scraping along the asphalt as I slid underneath the trailer
Black armored boots appeared on the far side as someone jumped down from the trailer with a thud. Another pair joined them. Boots swiveled, and suddenly leapt. “They’re jumping up!” I said into my wrist comm.
A big armored figure jumped over the back of the trailer and landed on top. The armor gleamed green-black. I sensed life amidst unlife, just like with the cables in the warehouse in Colombia.
I fired the stunner at the goon as another armored goon landed behind the first. I hit the first one full in the chest. The armor went from green-black to black. The goon still stood. He aimed a tube like launcher at a point behind me.
Shit, those things again. I scrambled up and back pedaled as a blob of green-black stuff hit the road and unfolded into a plant-thing that looked like a cross between a willow and a huge praying mantis. The thing hissed in my mind.
I fired the stunner at it, and the whip-like branches curled up. A metal saw blade spun into it, slicing it in half.
Keisha waved her arms and another hurled at the guard, slicing his arm halfway off. There was a muffled scream from inside the armor. I fought back bile. They were trying to kill us, I reminded myself.
The other goon crouched down and fired a blob directly at Keisha.
The air around him went zap. His armor turned black and he crumpled onto the trailer top.
Keisha ducked in time and the second blob landed just past her. She turned, but the thing unfolded with the speed of a nightmare. Branches whipped at her. She yelled and clutched her arms.
There was a big thicket of blackberries beneath the trees here. I knew because I’d grown them earlier just in case. I didn’t think we’d be fighting those walking nightmares again, but what the hell.
I sent the vines growing bigger, like an army of pythons at willow-mantis monster.
The vines slithered over the thing, grappled with it. I commanded them to tighten and pull it down. It had no way to cut the vines, disappearing beneath the vines until only a big tangle of sharp thorns remained.
Keisha was trying to stand. I helped her up, and she gasped. Her skin had turned a nasty shade of purple.
Poison.
I hit her with a hypo filled with ephedrine. “Catch your breath,” I told her, sounding like an idiot to myself.
Damn it. I hope that stuff worked.
I ran up to the trailer and around back, waved my stunner inside, but there were no more guards. There were racks, and hanging on the racks were green-black panels of living armor.
Connor and Simon joined me. Connor was white as a sheet, sweat dripping off his face. Even Simon looked worried.
I had Connor watch the rear SUV while Simon and I went up into the trailer.
I hesitated, then laid a gloved hand on a green-black panel.
A flash in my head, then it was the mirrored wall I couldn’t sense past.
Ellis’s fucking unlife. The lying bastard could lie all he wanted, but we’d found proof.
We just needed to get the armor out of there.
Fortunately it was in racks, four panels in each. There were like forty racks inside the trailer. No sign of a generator or power, guess they didn’t need it. We used the lift in the back to lower two racks. Then I noticed cylinders in another wall rack near the front of the trailer.
The cylinders had this green symbol on it, an oak tree over a DNA helix thing, all in green, surrounded by green vines. I forced myself to pull one of the cylinders out and take it with me. Proof that Ellis was making nightmares and had to be stopped.
Support would have to take action once I reported back.
We piled into the truck and drove up the service road, toward where Simon had left the helicopter.
I had to end the nightmares once and for all.
Frank was not happy to see us.
We had flown back to Redding, landing the copter at the airport, and then putting the armor and that cylinder into the back of another truck. We were supposed to drive back to Portland but I had a different idea, one that would get us more information on Emerald Biologic.
Frank opened the door a crack. “I told you I’m an independent contractor, remember?”
I nodded. “We need you for another job.”
She shook her head. “No way.”
This was getting nowhere fast. I hit the door, snapping the chain. I shoved my way inside, knocking her on her ass.
“You still are an independent,” I snarled. “We just need you for a new job. We’ll pay.”
She got up with a groan. “I gave you the reading that let you pull this job. That was all I was in for. ”
The others came in, Simon carrying one of the green-black armor panels.
Keisha loomed over Frank, and scowled at her. The ephedrine had done the trick and the swelling had disappeared, but Keisha was in a foul mood.
“Get ready to be useful again.”
Frank pushed herself up off the floor. Simon held the panel up to her, while Connor backed away, wide-eyed, and watched from the kitchen. The kid was spooked. For once I couldn’t blame him.
Frank shook her head. “I’m not touching whatever that is.” She crossed her arms. “You got your reading.”
“Go to this address in Redding.” Ashula read me the location, which I memorized.
“No more information at this time?”
“Your contact will have the job information.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“Come back to Portland. You will switch trucks after the job in Redding.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes,” she said. “Then you’ll call the number, and be told where to meet me.”
Did I say I loved being a mushroom? “Okay.” What the hell else could I say? Nothing.
“Thank you for your patience, Mat. I know you want to act.”
You’re an open book, Brandt, I could almost hear Winterfield say, in that sour way of his.
Maybe it wasn’t so hard to figure out I was antsy.
“Goodbye,” she said in my ear.
“Goodbye.”
I fingered the necklace. Nothing. No more vibration.
Time to wake up my cell.
We had a long way to go today.
I called Simon, had him bring his van. We all piled in and headed for California before sunrise. The drive south was dull and long. Simon stayed behind the wheel the whole time. We reached Redding before dark.
I called the number Ashula had given me from a payphone at a gas station.
“This is Frank,” an older-sounding woman’s voice said on the other end.
“The band is here,” I said. Stupid pass phrase. Between Support and the Scourge, all my phone calls were dumb spy stuff.
“Need to see you.” She gave me an address. “Bring sundaes.”
“With sprinkles.” Blech. Should have to say with extra nuts, because this was crazy stupid.
I had no idea if Support bugged the phone lines, but Ashula said the “pass phrases” were necessary. You’d think they’d come up with something more clever.
We drove to a dead-end street at the edge of Redding, where the houses all had overgrown lawns that had turned brown in the fall. We parked in front of an old farmhouse with a big porch, the kind where Grandma waited in a floral dress with a freshly baked apple pie, next to the American flag.
There was no flag, and no one on the porch.
We all got out of Simon’s van and trooped up to the door. The porch creaked when I stepped on the boards. The rest of my cell waited at the foot of the step. Keisha scowled. I knew how she felt, times two, since this was the kind of bullshit I had to do in Support.
Sometimes it was impossible to tell which was which. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, I could almost hear Ruth say.
The screen door was half-open, so I rapped my knuckles on the door frame.
The porch light stayed off. The front door unlocked and opened. Someone stood there in shadow, nearly as tall as me, but wider.
“Let me see your necklace,” a woman’s voice said.
My breath caught in my throat, but I pulled up my necklace and leaned forward, holding it out. I wasn’t taking it off for anyone, since it was the only way I could reach Ashula. I hadn’t had the necklace for more than a few months.
Long fingers stroked the necklace, while I leaned forward like an idiot. An ugly thought reared up in my brain, and I took a calming breath. I never wore the necklace when I met with Winterfield or Alex when he wasn’t being a stoner.
I could just make the outlines of a round face with a blade-like nose, below narrow eyes that were shut. A muscle throbbed in that round face.
The fingers released my necklace. She blinked and focused on me. Alex in stoner mode and I had talked about Support stuff when I was wearing the necklace. Shit.
“You’re approved,” she said. “Come in.”
I tucked the necklace back inside my shirt, took another calming breath. “Frank, right?”
“Yes. You must be Brandt.”
I nodded. “You’re a reader,” I said.
A low laugh. “Got it in one, missy.”
I’d never been around a reader before, but I’d heard about them. I guess I hadn’t been around Alex enough for her to pick up on that.
I turned to face the others waiting on the sidewalk. “Come on in.”
We trooped inside. The place stank of cigar smoke and onions. I just gave Frank first names, and Frank didn’t give me anything more about her own name.
“Boss woman says I’m going to work with you,” she said. She brushed a lock of crow black hair out of her eyes. Her hair was a tangled snarl, tinged with grey streaks. If Frank were going for the crazy-old-woman-in-training look, she’d succeeded. Her eyes narrowed. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’m doing this as an independent contractor for boss woman. I’m not with the Scourge anymore.”
I wondered how many “contracts” Frank did for the Scourge. Would they really let a reader leave the Scourge? Readers were way too valuable.
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“Good, just so you understand.” She cut to the chase. “There’s a black semi, with a couple of SUV escorts that will be coming down I-5 tomorrow. You can ambush them near the Oregon border. Say seven thirty.”
“How did you learn about that?” I asked.
“I read things, remember.”
“Not good enough.”
Simon nodded. “I agree. It’s mighty thin to go in on someone’s say so.”
Frank shook her head, her face sour. “You’ve gotta go make it difficult, don’t you? Fine.” She flexed her long bony fingers, reached toward Keisha. “I need something of yours to touch.”
Keisha took a step back. “Why me?”
“Why not? You look like the skeptical type.”
Keisha backed up further. “What, and they don’t?”
“I want something of yours, girl.” Bony fingers snatched at Keisha.
I shrugged when Keisha looked desperately at me for help. “Just get it over with.”
“Thanks, Mat.” She rolled her eyes. Reached inside her black leather jacket and handed an ancient looking ballpoint pen.
Frank took the pen, closed her eyes.
Licked her lips.
Was she going to read it, eat it, or make love to it?
Her eyes shot open. “This belonged to an old man, who lived in a shack down by the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi. He used to write his sermons with it.”
Keisha grabbed the pen. “Okay, fine, so you’ve convinced me.” She turned to me. “That was my grandad. He gave that to me a few years ago.”
Frank chuckled, her face smug. “They always believe when I read.”
Still didn’t add up. “Fine, so you can remote view or whatever an object. But how do you know when the shipment we are supposed to knock off will be there?”
Her smile became creepy. “Because I can read people, too, and connect them with other people. That’s how I got the info.”
“You read a person.”
“Yes.” She laughed. “Doing so ain’t easy. It takes a helluva lot of time, and hurts like shit. And I ain’t going to tell you who or where or when. Just that I can string things together. Objects to people. People to objects. Good enough?”
It would have to be.
I’d better never give her a reason to read me, or I’d be dead.
13
The forest of fir trees murmured in my head, as we waited for the truck and its escorts to show up. I was halfway up a big fir, standing in the crook of two branches. The world swayed as the breeze picked up. Shit. I hated heights but I needed to see.
I-5 narrowed to two lanes here in each direction. The box truck was parked on the turnoff across the freeway, Simon behind the wheel and Connor riding shotgun. The sun was just clearing the trees to the east. Shadows still covered the interstate.
Keisha crouched below me. “Make sure you don’t drop a tree on my head, bitch,” she’d said, tapping my arm.
“Can’t guarantee anything,” I had replied. She stuck her tongue out at me.
It wasn’t so funny now that I was about to kill a fir and drop it onto the freeway. I’d picked one over a hundred feet tall. It had to be two hundred years old.
It sucked to kill it but we had to stop the semi.
The lead SUV appeared north of us, roaring downhill in our direction, headlights still on. A moment later the black semi came into view. Couldn’t see the side, but this had to be it.
A few seconds later the trailing SUV showed up.
I reached down into the fir tree off to my right, stirred the rot I had started an hour ago and been working through the tree. It moaned, a pitiful sound in my head, tugging at my heart. The rot spread through the fir faster and faster, and then the tree began to topple.
I had wanted to time it so that the lead SUV would be past where the tree would fall, but I didn’t want to let the semi past, so I went early.
A hundred feet of fir smacked onto the highway with a crackling boom. The lead SUV hit the brakes, fishtailing toward the whipping mass of branches, and skidding hard, hitting the branches and smacking up against the tree. The SUV rocked.
The semi was a hundred yards back, so it had more time, but going sixty plus downhill with all that weight had to be a bitch when it came time to slam on the brakes.
The airbrakes shrieked, and the tractor trailer shuddered and groaned.
“Kill the tires,” I said into my wrist comm.
“Got it,” I heard Keisha answer.
The semi hadn’t stopped yet when a volley of railroad spikes streaked into the right side tires. The tires below the cab went bang and deflated. The ones at the front of the trailer went bang. She missed the rear ones. The semi leaned hard to the right but didn’t roll. Too bad. That would have made it impossible for them to leave, but chances were excellent the semi wasn’t going anywhere.
The trailing SUV stopped behind the trailer. Doors opened and men in military style camouflage jumped out. The driver and the front passenger hunkered down behind open doors, pointing assault rifles at either side of the road, while two more men jogged past, crouching, also pointing their guns in our general direction.
Passengers in the lead SUV tried to open their doors, but the doors’ metal had melded into the frame, thanks to Keisha. The dead fir’s dying moan still scoured my mind, but I smiled anyway, because they’d have to shoot the windows out and crawl over broken glass to get out.
The guys in the cab stayed put. I waited for the trailer doors to open. There had to be security inside. They’d be pissed off and a bit bruised maybe, but no doubt armed like their pals outside.
The two guards from the trailing SUV had almost reached the semi when the air went snap, crackle, pop! They stiffened, shaking like puppets, then fell to the ground.
“Got it in one, Connor,” I said over the wrist comm.
I reached into a fir tree opposite the rear SUV and spread rot through it. This tree was younger, maybe only a century old. Like the first tree, I pulled it toward the road by one last spurt of growth on that side before killing it. The tree’s dying scream filled my mind. It fell like God’s hammer on the SUV, crushing the roof and slamming the two goons hunkered down behind open doors onto the ground, the twisting metal shrieking in protest.
My stomach twisted. I’d just killed two men. I sagged against the tree. They may have been goons, but there should have been another way. I forced myself to focus. Only there wasn’t. Not that time. I had to do better with the next one.
Simon drove the box truck alongside the tractor trailer.
Gunfire banged from the front SUV as the goons inside shot out the windows.
Another snap, crackle pop! The gun fire stopped. The guards’ bodies slumped in their seats. Connor’s “static smack” was nasty. But hopefully they were just stunned.
That left whoever was inside the trailer and the cab.
The cab door facing me suddenly began steaming. Metal flowed and the door seem disappeared. I was too far to hear screams but it had to be hot inside that cab. Steam rose from both sides. Yeah, the driver and his security weren’t getting out any time soon.
So, we were down to the trailer.
I glanced at my wrist comm. Four minutes had passed. Cars came over the hill and screeched to a stop. A truck, too. South of us the same thing. We had to haul ass.
I climbed down the tree and sprinted for the trailer as the doors in the back opened. I drew my stunner. Simon jumped down from the truck, pointed his stunner toward the trailer. Keisha jogged toward me down the highway, hands free. Sweat gleamed on her face. She’d pushed it.
Explosions boomed north and south of us, along the road, and fir trees fell across the road, trees we’d rigged before. There. We were better isolated now.
No one appeared from the back of the trailer as I approached. There was sudden movement. I hit the pavement. My body armor banged against the ground, gauntlets scraping along the asphalt as I slid underneath the trailer
Black armored boots appeared on the far side as someone jumped down from the trailer with a thud. Another pair joined them. Boots swiveled, and suddenly leapt. “They’re jumping up!” I said into my wrist comm.
A big armored figure jumped over the back of the trailer and landed on top. The armor gleamed green-black. I sensed life amidst unlife, just like with the cables in the warehouse in Colombia.
I fired the stunner at the goon as another armored goon landed behind the first. I hit the first one full in the chest. The armor went from green-black to black. The goon still stood. He aimed a tube like launcher at a point behind me.
Shit, those things again. I scrambled up and back pedaled as a blob of green-black stuff hit the road and unfolded into a plant-thing that looked like a cross between a willow and a huge praying mantis. The thing hissed in my mind.
I fired the stunner at it, and the whip-like branches curled up. A metal saw blade spun into it, slicing it in half.
Keisha waved her arms and another hurled at the guard, slicing his arm halfway off. There was a muffled scream from inside the armor. I fought back bile. They were trying to kill us, I reminded myself.
The other goon crouched down and fired a blob directly at Keisha.
The air around him went zap. His armor turned black and he crumpled onto the trailer top.
Keisha ducked in time and the second blob landed just past her. She turned, but the thing unfolded with the speed of a nightmare. Branches whipped at her. She yelled and clutched her arms.
There was a big thicket of blackberries beneath the trees here. I knew because I’d grown them earlier just in case. I didn’t think we’d be fighting those walking nightmares again, but what the hell.
I sent the vines growing bigger, like an army of pythons at willow-mantis monster.
The vines slithered over the thing, grappled with it. I commanded them to tighten and pull it down. It had no way to cut the vines, disappearing beneath the vines until only a big tangle of sharp thorns remained.
Keisha was trying to stand. I helped her up, and she gasped. Her skin had turned a nasty shade of purple.
Poison.
I hit her with a hypo filled with ephedrine. “Catch your breath,” I told her, sounding like an idiot to myself.
Damn it. I hope that stuff worked.
I ran up to the trailer and around back, waved my stunner inside, but there were no more guards. There were racks, and hanging on the racks were green-black panels of living armor.
Connor and Simon joined me. Connor was white as a sheet, sweat dripping off his face. Even Simon looked worried.
I had Connor watch the rear SUV while Simon and I went up into the trailer.
I hesitated, then laid a gloved hand on a green-black panel.
A flash in my head, then it was the mirrored wall I couldn’t sense past.
Ellis’s fucking unlife. The lying bastard could lie all he wanted, but we’d found proof.
We just needed to get the armor out of there.
Fortunately it was in racks, four panels in each. There were like forty racks inside the trailer. No sign of a generator or power, guess they didn’t need it. We used the lift in the back to lower two racks. Then I noticed cylinders in another wall rack near the front of the trailer.
The cylinders had this green symbol on it, an oak tree over a DNA helix thing, all in green, surrounded by green vines. I forced myself to pull one of the cylinders out and take it with me. Proof that Ellis was making nightmares and had to be stopped.
Support would have to take action once I reported back.
We piled into the truck and drove up the service road, toward where Simon had left the helicopter.
I had to end the nightmares once and for all.
Frank was not happy to see us.
We had flown back to Redding, landing the copter at the airport, and then putting the armor and that cylinder into the back of another truck. We were supposed to drive back to Portland but I had a different idea, one that would get us more information on Emerald Biologic.
Frank opened the door a crack. “I told you I’m an independent contractor, remember?”
I nodded. “We need you for another job.”
She shook her head. “No way.”
This was getting nowhere fast. I hit the door, snapping the chain. I shoved my way inside, knocking her on her ass.
“You still are an independent,” I snarled. “We just need you for a new job. We’ll pay.”
She got up with a groan. “I gave you the reading that let you pull this job. That was all I was in for. ”
The others came in, Simon carrying one of the green-black armor panels.
Keisha loomed over Frank, and scowled at her. The ephedrine had done the trick and the swelling had disappeared, but Keisha was in a foul mood.
“Get ready to be useful again.”
Frank pushed herself up off the floor. Simon held the panel up to her, while Connor backed away, wide-eyed, and watched from the kitchen. The kid was spooked. For once I couldn’t blame him.
Frank shook her head. “I’m not touching whatever that is.” She crossed her arms. “You got your reading.”
