Run (18 page)

Malachi smiled, and Casey knew this was it.  This was the end, and he was grateful because if it was the end he could stop hurting.  He had heard of men in so much pain that they were afraid death was coming, but Casey was well beyond that stage.  Now, he existed in such agony that his only fear was that death would not come soon enough.

The crazy man pushed the point slowly
into
Casey’s eye. One half of Casey’s world disappeared, and the pain that traveled through his body was so intense, so frightening.  He felt with peculiar distance the sensation of his bowels and bladder letting go.

"Tell me," Malachi whispered.

Please, Mary, Mother of God, he thought, Please, Mary Mother of God, he prayed as he had been praying for hours.  Please hear my prayer and let me speak.

And at last his prayer was answered.  Casey opened his mouth wide and screamed.  He screamed until his lungs gave out, high-pitched yowls of animal agony and rage that slowly petered into whimpers and wheezes.    

The whole time, the madman before him smiled.  He lay a hand on Casey’s head, like a patriarch of old giving a farewell blessing to a journey-bound son.

When Casey was finished screaming, Malachi leaned in again.  The needle was still in Casey’s eye.         

"Where are the new move-ins?  A girl?"

"Sherman Street," panted Casey.  It was hard to speak: Malachi had pulled out each of his teeth with a pair of pliers some hours before, so his voice sounded mushy and soft.  "Grey house.  North side of town.  Corn fields around it."

"What is her name?" asked Malachi.  "What name is she going by here?" 

"Kaylie Devorough," answered Casey.  He wanted to pass out and not wake up, but his body somehow held itself together.

"I knew it," said the blonde girl.  "I knew they’d change her name."

"I wonder what reason she’s been given for changing it," said the other man - not Malachi, the younger one with beautiful eyes and a smile that was brightest when Casey started screaming.  The black woman remained silent, as she had during the entire time in the basement.

Malachi cut off their conversation with a curt gesture.  "Anyone else coming in soon?" he asked.  Casey just stared at him a moment, not comprehending the query, his mind stretched to breaking.

Then the question percolated through to the small part of his mind that was still capable of responding.

"FRAN!" he screamed.  "NOW LET ME DIE!"

The force of the shout shook him to the core, but his four assailants didn’t react, and Casey’s pain and fatigue sodden mind slowly realized he hadn’t said anything.  Nothing at all.  He could not say what he wanted to say.

"No," he gurgled, and saw Malachi smile again.

"Is he lying?" asked the black woman, her first words in his hearing.  Her voice was soft, Casey noted, but it had a slight rasp to it, like her throat was coated with chalk dust.

Malachi looked at Casey, still holding the needle that had punctured the bartender’s eye and still remained planted in the orb.  "I don’t think so," he said.  "He’s broken."

He laid his other hand, the one not holding the box, on Casey’s head again.  Casey didn’t know what he was going to do.

"Goodbye," said Malachi. 

***

When the bartender was dead, Malachi stood a moment with his hand on the man’s cool head.  Part of that was just to make sure the man didn’t reanimate, though Malachi was fairly sure he’d fried out the man completely. 

Part of it was just to feel the moment.  Even with a soulless one, the moment of passing was a moment of virtue.  Of love.  Not for the bartender, of course, but for the fact that each of these moments was a moment closer to the realization of Malachi's task.  He smoothed down Casey’s hair, through which wisps of smoke slowly curled. 

"What now?" asked Todd.

"We find her house.  She’ll probably have a Protector with her," answered Malachi.

"So, do we go after them?" asked Jenna.

"No, we’ll just wait inside their house."  He nodded at Casey’s body.  "It looks like everyone in Loston has been put on Alert, so if we attacked her in public, it would never work.  We’ll wait inside her house.  When she comes in, we kill her privately."

"What if someone else comes in first?" asked Jenna.

"Then they got in the way."  He went to the stairs that led back to the bar.  Then stopped and turned back to Jenna.  "You spoke too soon, asking about Fran the way you did.  And if you ever do something like that again, you won’t be helping us anymore.  I’ll kill you and leave your body for the worms and your soul for Satan."

He ascended the stairs without waiting for her reaction. 

DOM#67A

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

3:40 PM MONDAY

John weaved through the students milling in the halls of the school, and found himself smiling again. 

It was unusual for him to be here at this hour.  Usually he took off instantly, beating the students out of the school and hurrying home to be alone with his thoughts.  But he’d awoken that morning with a sense of...something new.  Something that he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Happiness.

The reason for it was easily apparent: Fran.  Her cousin now walked beside him in the halls, having a harder time weaving his way through the crush of students trying to get to their lockers as quickly as possible so that they could vacate the premises.

"So it went good last night?" asked Gabe.

"Yeah."

"Mertyl said you didn’t get back before she went to bed.  Must’ve been a doozy of a night."

John chuckled.  "The best thing about small towns is the seventy year old woman that lives next to every house and works for the FBI," said Paul.  They reached the door to the office.

"Don’t change the subject," said Gabe, frowning, though his eyes danced and John could tell he was already planning the reception and compiling a list of people he’d send announcements to in his head.  "Have you seen her today?"

"Nope."

"But you waited for her in the break room didn’t you?"

John grinned - that felt good, to smile like that, completely happy - and opened the door to the office.  "Sorry, Chief.  No time to chat; gotta pick up my mail."  He swept into the office, leaving Gabe behind.

Mertyl sat, as ever, in her customary spot guarding the front of the office.  She smiled at John, and seeing her reminded him of why he was really in the office.  His good mood evaporated like a drop of water in a bonfire. 

Kaylie hadn’t been there that morning.  Her desk stood empty. 

"Hello, John," said Mertyl.  "How was school today?"

"Great, Mertyl.  How was your day?"

"Usual.  Wally had a hangover when he came in, but that’s getting to be a pretty normal thing, I suppose." 

Wally was the principal, the most tightly-buttoned person John had ever met.  He and Mertyl liked to joke that at night he went home to a secret crackhouse where he spent the night boozing and doing all sorts of inventive drugs.  John smiled at the joke, but the smile was a tight one.  Nervousness fluttered in his stomach, though why he should feel this way, he had no idea.  He was just asking about a student, and that was well within his rights. 

So why was he so edgy?

"Mert, I wonder if you could help me out."

"Sure.  What can I do you for?"

"One of my students didn’t come in today.  Could you find out why?"

"Sure, John."  Mertyl rifled through a pile on her desk.  "Who was it?"

"Kaylie Devorough."  Mertyl’s hands slipped on the papers for a moment.  She recovered quickly, but John noted a fleeting expression dance across her features.  Too fast to be made out, but something strange.  Then Mertyl’s smile returned.

"That’s easy, John.  Her father called in sick for her."

"What’s she sick with?"

"He didn’t say."

"Where do they live?  I’d like to see her about some things."

Mertyl stilled, all movement suddenly ceasing and leaving John with the momentary impression that his friend had been stolen away and replaced in the blink of an eye with some sort of wax replica, or a marionette that perfectly resembled Mertyl in every way, lacking only a soul.  Again, the strange look surfaced.  This time it stayed, though, remaining on her features as she said, "We have no record of that yet."

John was a bit daunted by the forbiddingly emotionless look on the old woman’s face, but he pressed on.  "Come on, Mertyl, how could that be?  We don’t let them into school unless their records are here."

Her face grew cold and hard as a piece of flint laying on a frozen patch of ground.  "We have no record.  Leave it alone."

John frowned.  Her speech disquieted him.  Just as Gabriel’s had done several times in the last few days, Mertyl’s voice seemed as though it was hers, and yet at the same time somehow wasn’t. 

"Hey, stranger."

John turned gratefully away from Mertyl, smiling as he came face to face with Fran.  She smiled back at him.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mertyl abandon her post, going into the ladies’ room in the short hall off the side of the office.  That was strange, too: in all the years he’d worked at the high school, John had never seen Mertyl go to the bathroom and leave her station during work hours.

"Hello?" said Fran, and John realized he had not responded to her salutation.

"Sorry, Fran.  Thinking."  He shrugged his shoulders in the universal code for "I’m an idiot sometimes."

"Thinking, eh?  Don’t hurt yourself."

"How was your first day?  How’s English 11A?"

"Well, they’re monsters, but at least there aren’t any drug runners here."

"No, not many of those in Loston.  Not unless you count the kids who steal chemistry equipment every year to build stills in their parents’ barns."

"They do that?"  She laughed, a mellifluous sound that tinkled through the air and seemed to brighten it.  He smiled a bit wider, his momentary disquiet dissipating in her presence.

"I...that is...."  Once more, his tongue seemed to thicken in his mouth as he struggled to find words to say to the lovely woman who stood before him.  "Uh...thanks for last night.  I had a good time."

"Me, too," said Fran.  She gazed directly at him, no shy girl.  He was again struck by her confidence and frank nature. 

"Sorry I didn’t actually get to show you much of the town." 

He was about to add "Maybe some other time" but before he could, Fran said, "That’s okay.  You can do it tonight.  I’ll be ready at seven."  She touched his arm briefly, and then was gone in a cloud of vanilla.

John stood quietly for a time, still trying to come to grips with the conflicting emotions he felt.  He wanted to be with Fran, he knew.  But at the same time he still wondered if by being with her he was not somehow being unfaithful to Annie's memory.  Intellectually, he knew that was ridiculous.  Indeed, he suspected that if Annie could somehow speak to him now she would probably chide him for withdrawing from life so completely.  But he couldn't completely shake the feeling in spite of that fact. 

In the midst of his musings, John realized he was alone in the office.  He could see the file cabinet that held names and information of all the students at Loston High, and actually took a step towards it. 

Mertyl came out of the bathroom.  "What are you doing?" she said, almost barking the words.

"Waiting to say goodbye to you, Mertyl," he answered.  And then turned around and left the building.

CONTROL HQ - RUSHM

AD 3999/AE 1999

Adam slapped his hand down on the console, a nearly silent display that was the only hint of his anger and despair.

"Sorry, sir," said Jason.

He studied the wall monitors, looking for any sign of the missing man.  Each inhabitant of Loston was there, represented by a prismatic holo that could be instantly enlarged to show where each person was and what he or she was doing.  But Adam was not interested in the population as a whole.  He only wanted to know about one of them.  Casey had disappeared from the screens a few hours before.  There were several things that could mean, none of them good.  Adam feared the worst.

"No reading at all on him?" he asked.

"None," answered Jason grimly. 

"So he’s gone. "

Jason shook his head.  "He could be just out hiking or something.  We have trouble picking up signals in the mountains."  But his face didn’t seem hopeful.

"For two days?"  Adam shook his head, as well, somehow making the movement bleaker than when Jason did it.  "No, Casey’s dead.  And that means they’re inside Loston.  Somewhere."  He paused, thinking.  "What about Devorough?"

Jason hesitated.  Then said, "He still hasn’t turned up, sir.  Neither has his...daughter."

Adam glanced at Jason, and saw that his right-hand man must be thinking the same thing he was: Devorough couldn’t have a daughter.  It was impossible. 

Wasn't it?

Adam felt things surging out of his control.  He had to get things back together again.  Soon.

"God," Adam whispered.  He finished the prayer in his head. 
Please, God, don’t let the world end here.
  Out loud, he said, "We have to find them."

"Should we go in?"

"Not yet," he answered.  "But get a squad ready."

DOM#67A

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

5:45 PM MONDAY

The office was deserted; had been empty for the last hour and a half.  The light was dim, the setting sun casting its last rays of orange through the frosted glass windows. 

John stepped out of the bathroom, where he’d hidden while waiting for everyone to leave.  He had a bad moment when he heard Janice, the woman who served as part-time janitor, come in the room.  Luckily, Janice was a bit lazy as a custodian.  John heard her check the soap dispensers, load paper towels by the sink, and then leave without checking the stalls.

An hour later he came out of the stall, waiting that long to make sure he didn’t bump into the principal or anyone else trying to put in a bit of extra work.  He didn't know why, exactly, but something told him that what he wanted to do would not be well-received by the staff of Loston High.