Lost Cargo (15 page)

Travis stared at him. “Your marriage license?”

“Annie and I got married yesterday at the courthouse.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, man? That’s great. That’s really great.”

“The best decision I’ve ever made.” Monroe took a step down the platform. “I’ve been meaning to ask you… was there ever anything to those photos?”

“We found something in the woods,” Travis said. “It’s a long story.”

Monroe stared at him. “Don’t go anywhere. Stay here. Stay right here and I’ll be back. You wait for me.” Then he turned and dashed through the station.

Travis kept one hand on the escalator rail, ready to flee, boiling with anger. The giant stared into the shadows. The lonely, rhythmic sound of the escalator filled the quiet as though the night itself was waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen.

The platform lights pulsed. A train to D.C. was pulling into the station. He couldn’t see Monroe. The darkness grew brighter as the train roared in. When the doors flew back, the giant crossed the platform with one huge arm around the bag and disappeared inside a car.

Travis tore across the tiles into a neighboring car and slumped down where he could see her through the door between the cars. He shot photos with his cell phone until he maxed out the memory. Then the doors slammed shut and the train moved out.

T
he giant got off at Cleveland Park. When Travis reached the sidewalk, cold rain was drumming down like a bone-numbing headache. He searched the crowd exiting the subway and spotted her half a block ahead. She passed the Yenching Palace restaurant and the 7-Eleven on Connecticut Avenue and turned up Porter Street, still grasping the canvas bag. The streetlights shone on her monstrous shape as she toiled up the hill and dwindled from sight.

She might be luring him into an ambush, but she didn’t see him get off the train. He swallowed his fury and tried to keep a clear head. Could she read? What if she went through Lexie’s bag and figured out where she lived?

He kept to the shadows under the towering trees that lined the road. The rain that ran in rivulets down the sidewalk masked the sound of his shoes. He promised himself he would only go one block to see where she went. But the block was long and winding, not a normal city block at all, and before he knew it, he was in the dark.

The giant reached the end of the block and froze as though she was deciding which way to go. One lone streetlight shone on her ghostly hair and massive shoulders. Her clothing seemed to fade against the trees. He wiped the rain from his face. When she took a sudden step forward, her voluminous cape flared over the ground. He hadn’t realized the cape had that much cloth hidden inside its folds and watched it unfurl all out of proportion, like a cape in a bad dream.

Pulse racing, he stepped behind a tree. When he dared to peer around the trunk, there was no sign of her on the wet, deserted road.

“That’s impossible,” he blurted out. “She was just here.”

The old boxwood and yew trees that bordered the houses loomed black and shapeless and suggested phantom figures to his frightened mind. The rain that blew through the leaves sounded like the sinister rustle of cloth. He turned in wary confusion and moved into the brooding shadows against a retaining wall where the cold bricks dug into his back.

What were you going to do if you caught up with her? You didn’t think that far
.

Something soft touched his face. Horrified, he ran his hands over his skin, but it was just a Daddy Long Legs, and he brushed the spider away.

Maybe she was lying in wait behind a bush, or in the gutter, or under a car. He felt around behind his back and found a loose brick, but he remembered what she did when the mugger pulled a gun on her and knew the brick was useless. Lightheaded with fear, he put it down.

The tracker would find her. He took the heavy silver device out of his pocket and watched the bright image spring to life. The hook gripped his fingers. Black lines formed into a recognizable map. Porter Street appeared. The image showed him by the wall and then shot to the intersection of Porter Street and 34th, where it honed in on the symbol of the luminous blue net. The net spun in a helix and grew still.

The giant was hiding at the intersection.

Travis stared up the street. She simply wasn’t there. “Damn it, I must have broken it,” he muttered and wrenched the tracker off his hand.

Yellow light shone through the shuttered windows of a house at the end of the block. The front door opened, throwing more light over the sidewalk. Voices carried outside. A woman with a black umbrella stepped outside, tugging something on a leash. A first he almost thought she was walking a balloon. The small white object seemed to float over the ground, wandering, tangling itself around her feet, and then it barked.

The woman lit a cigarette. The puppy sniffed her shoes and tumbled in the other direction. “Pee, Elliott,” she said. “Make a pee-pee.”

Sounded like a real winner. When she stepped under the streetlight, he could see her sleek hair, bony face, and luxurious coat. She took another drag and unwound the puppy from her legs.

“Make a pee-pee. Come on, you stupid dog. Hurry up and go to the bathroom. It’s freezing out here.”

While she finished her cigarette, a car turned off 34th Street onto Porter Street. Headlights streamed across a shape that resembled a monstrous gargoyle on the eaves. The giant extended her claws and landed in the shadows by the side of the house. Stunned, Travis held his breath. Another car sliced through the rainwater and flashed its headlights over the ground. The giant disappeared behind a parked car until the lights passed. The woman with the puppy kept smoking and then wheeled around.

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “You get away from me! Get away! I work for the federal government! You don’t know who you’re dealing with!”

The giant opened her jaws and bit down on the woman’s shoulder.

Just as the woman formed her next furious words, she stumbled and dropped her cigarette. Her fingers let go of the leash. Her mouth fell open. The white puppy bounded off, the cigarette spluttered out, and the black umbrella slowly rolled across the lawn until it came to rest upside down against a bush.

The woman’s hands fluttered and grew still.

The giant crouched down and snapped through the bones of the skull. Blood spread over the victim’s coat and pooled across the sidewalk in a wide stain. Shreds of red sweater framed the headless stump and gold glinted on the lifeless hands: a watch, a bracelet, rings that had marked the milestones of the woman’s life.

Mesmerized, Travis inched his cell phone out to call 911. When he pressed the first number, the keypad made a tiny beep.

The giant lifted her head from the gory feast to stare in his direction.

Run
, a voice in his head commanded. He tore his eyes away with enormous effort and forced his leaden feet to move, first one foot and then the other. His knees found the top of the retaining wall. Then he was somehow over on the other side, scrambling through the trees, heart pounding, blood roaring, feet stumbling through black ivy he could no longer see. The sickening sight of the woman’s slaughtered body filled his whole mind. Blind with horror, he tripped in the ivy and threw up, retching through his fingers to stifle the sound, and then got up and ran again with clots of vomit in his nose.

He dropped his cell phone and tore through the wet leaves and couldn’t find it and ran on, cursing himself.
Too much noise, too much noise
, his mind shrieked, but he kept running. House after house rose up to block his path. He cut behind them all, ignoring the pain ripping up his side.

A branch whipped across his eyes. Then a ten foot fence loomed ahead, and the back of another house, and he could see an open window, and if he could make it there he could scream for help, and—

Whomph
. Something struck him in the back with full force.

No, no, no
. He went down on his knees and scrambled up and kept running and
whomph
, it hit him again. He fell forward into the black leaves and came up with a mouthful of dirt, and it was her, it was her, she had him, and she was going to break his bones and rip his flesh and—

“No, damn you.” He twisted around to strike out. “No!”

To his horror he couldn’t see her. Where was she? Then he rolled, hit the bricks on the side of the house, pummeled the attacker, and still couldn’t see anybody. Invisible arms tightened around his neck. Shockingly small arms, the limbs of a child, and he beat them and pulled on a belt and tore off something and the attacker appeared.

A small, one-eyed alien with a damned mask. He grabbed the mask and stared into a pale blue face covered with folds of skin and a cluster of eyes. Six intelligent eyes. Flabbergasted, he fought the alien to the wall. He could see the stars in its gaze, and thousands of suns spinning in the galaxy’s spiral arms, and more, lush planets and cratered, frozen moons, and a glowing blue net streaming from the black triangle, its meshes swelling and straining with murderous creatures with bulging muscles and tentacles and horns.

Transporting terrible animals in cages.

“You’re old,” he gasped. “You’re really old.”

The alien reached out a stick hand.

Then he understood. “That’s what this is about. You want that tracker and that’s why you knocked me flat. How did you find me out here? My smell. You sensed me.”

The alien opened its hand.

“No way, Mr. Crazy Eyes, or whatever the hell your name is. No way. You’ve got my friend’s brother and you have to give him back. We’ve been looking for him for days and you need to understand that you can’t just abduct people around here and do whatever you want—”

And then he lost his voice. Somehow he could see Burke in the alien’s eyes. The real, live, pain in the ass Burke, fast asleep, dreaming, his arms and legs floating in a soft sea of luminous blue, in the same suit he’d worn out of Union Station with his wrinkled tie drifting beside him. The walls around him slowly shifted and melded together as the ship’s living skin grew over the gash in the hull.

Travis stared at the alien. “So you can’t let him out in the woods because he can’t walk… and you need this thing to find your cargo. Well, she’s back there, and she just killed somebody in case you missed it. She’s having a little nighttime snack on the sidewalk.” The silver tracker gleamed in his hand. “If I give this back, you can’t hurt Burke… you know, his sister loves him. God only knows why, but she does, and she’ll be heartbroken if anything happens to him. I guess everybody loves somebody. I hope you’re not lying to me.”

He closed his fingers over the tracker. Maybe it would be a big mistake to give it up. It was the only real proof the
UFO
existed.

Lamplight shone between the drapes in the open window above their heads. Maybe they would help him. Plates clattered. Somebody was setting a table. Steak and potatoes and asparagus. He fought to keep from vomiting again.

Two hands pulled the window down as if someone in the house had read his thoughts.
Click
went the lock. The hands closed the drapes.

They’d heard him running through their yard. They wouldn’t help him in a million years.

He didn’t know when the giant would finish devouring the corpse, but it wouldn’t be long. Lexie’s face came back to him. He remembered sitting in her kitchen, their closeness and her lovely smile. It seemed a lifetime ago.

The rain stopped. Nerves shot, he stared at the alien and back at the tracker in his hand. He had to make a decision. Water dripped from the trees and rolled down his skin. He wiped his face, looked up at the bright moon rising over the chimney, and caught his breath. The giant was on the roof, watching them.

It was impossible to make out her face, only a black shape of insatiable appetite silhouetted in front of the moon. Then she spread her cape, leaped from the peak of the roof to the back of the house, and landed above the door.

So huge and so quiet, he numbly wondered.

The seconds crawled by. The red glare of the city sky masked the stars, but he knew they were up there, wheeling by the billions. She came from some hellhole planet circling one of those hidden points of light, and the alien beside him knew all about it, an alien that had just jumped him and now seemed like a strange ally and his only hope. The alien wasn’t making a move, though. Surely it had a weapon, some hand-held stunner or high-tech killing device. But maybe the crash had damaged everything. Maybe all it had was nerve.

If they both died tonight behind a house belonging to people they didn’t even know, life would go on. The planets, the sun, and the stars would still move in their bright circuits through the ages. Nature in its majesty would continue with barely a ripple. He knew his biggest regret. He’d lost his heart to Lexie and would never be able to tell her. He didn’t even know if she was alive.

The porch light threw the giant’s shadow across the bricks to the second-story windows. The hair on his neck prickled. After she ended his life, his corpse would meet the same fate as the woman she’d just killed on Porter Street. She would drag his body into the woods and finish him off. Or maybe she would just eat him on the lawn.

He gave the tracker to the little alien. Might as well do something right.

The alien looked at him again with its odd cluster of eyes, clapped on a mask, seemed to give a nod, and ran across the dark lawn onto wide, deserted 34th Street. The streetlight shone on the mask. Crazy. How many light years did the alien travel to end up running down that miserable road? Did it have a family it left behind, or was it alone in life?

The giant rose from the roof, spread her cape like hellish wings, and flew onto the pavement. Then Travis understood again. This was his chance to run in the opposite direction. The little alien was drawing her away.

“No, don’t do that,” he said in horror.

The giant circled the little alien, once her captor, now her prey, who ran uphill, on the apex now, where it slipped underneath the trees. It was impossible to make out their shapes. Footfalls came out of the darkness. Then a heartrending scream reached into the blackest corners of the street, trailed off, and something snapped twice.