Trinity (3 page)

3

“You didn’t hear nothing,” Rich shouted.

TJ blinked at him, so Rich repeated himself, louder this time.

Rich lived in a nice neighborhood, a new housing development, and TJ knew too much more of this yelling would involve the police. Granted, Rich would talk them down and they’d leave, but the embarrassment would make him even more pissed off than he already was.

“I didn’t hear nothing,” TJ said, hoping to pacify him. The lights behind the kitchen window clicked on behind nice curtains, and TJ could see Maria there, peering into the night. TJ raised a hand to wave, but Rich interpreted this as TJ’s not paying attention.

“Slade is a lying motherfucker.”

“He is. Absolutely.” TJ could do nothing but agree. He was good at it, it served him well.

“And nothing he said is true.” Rich punctuated this with a sausage finger jabbed at TJ’s chest.

“Nothing,” TJ echoed.

TJ’s agreement seemed to only anger Rich more. He eyed his Suzuki, parked on Rich’s driveway, and wondered if he could go soon.

“I mean nothing he said is true.”

This conversation started as they left Val’s trailer, at first Rich roared about his hatred for Val, TJ piping in when it seemed necessary. Rich pulled out some road sodas, they drank, nothing outside the ordinary, but Rich turned his anger towards TJ now. This didn’t usually happen, and getting away was the only respite.

“I gotta run, man,” TJ said, staring at the neat asphalt of the driveway.

Rich held him by the collar of his Fox jacket before he could raise his eyes. Bloodshot and brown-eyed, Rich glared at him from inches away. TJ wondered, in a quiet little place in the back of his mind, how Rich could do this and still be a cop.

“I don’t think you understand me.”

“I do, I do,” TJ said, a whine creeping into his voice. He shot his eyes to the left. Maria still watched from the window. TJ couldn’t imagine being married to someone so angry. She’d calmed him down, though. He was better than he used to be. You gotta keep looking on the bright side.

“Just go,” Rich said, releasing him and shoving him so he almost lost his balance.

“G’night, Rich. I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

Rich made an angry bear sound and turned away, entering his cookie cutter house and giving the door a window-rattling slam. Maria’s face disappeared, and TJ fumbled his bike key out of his pocket.

Kate.

Maybe things weren’t so great with her, but he could hope. TJ turned his bike out of town, towards Kate and Val. Val was skinny, and mean, and always thought he was smarter and more clever than everyone else. He wasn’t funny. He wouldn’t be funny when TJ broke his nose. Kate needed the right kind of rescuing, that’s all.

The ride relaxed him. Between the light traffic on these dirt roads and the starlight from above, TJ gained confidence. The roar of the bike’s motor soothed him, grinding out all the other sounds into a steady white noise. The trees around him had new leaves; they flapped in the wind like a thousand little flags. He wasn’t the kind of guy to get sentimental, but this was one pretty night and—

Something tan moved in the trees beside him.

A deer? He smiled. Didn’t see them too often. Whatever it was slid out of his line of vision before he had a chance to get a fix on it. He remembered jacking deer with his dad as a kid, he missed that. You had to be real quiet, watch them at the lick then be ready to go when the lights went on.

He hit a pothole, jarring his arms, and it got him thinking about the task at hand.

How could she love Val? She just thought she did. Now that he was out, TJ suspected Val Slade wouldn’t be sticking around for too long. TJ was the kind of guy who sticks around. Yessir. He’d get her away from Val and get her away from her brother, didn’t sound like she needed either one of them. He tried to ignore what Val said, what Rich made him say he didn’t hear. Was TJ the only guy in town who hadn’t raped Kate?

The cone of light the Suzuki threw out lit the bright green of the leaves, the only color in the grayscale of night.

It didn’t light up the man in the road until it was too late. TJ made a little whispery gasp of surprise as he mashed on the brakes, hand and foot, and jerked the bike to one side. The back tire lost its purchase on the road and TJ went down, the gravel chewing into his skin, pushing up his jacket and shredding his jeans. The bike stalled; the ticking of its engine the only sound.

TJ’s pulse pounded in his ears as he took a mental inventory of himself. Road rash, yep, but nothing broken. He was fine, the bike was probably fine…but what had—

The man stepped into the light.

He wore a light leather jacket and jeans, his hair and eyes were dark. The light, coming from below, played strange shadows on his face. His eyes were luminous pools.

“You all right?” TJ asked, getting to his knees, plucking a little bloody stone out of his side. He wanted to ask what the fuck the guy was doing out here, but his momma raised him better than that.

The man pulled a glass bottle out of his pocket. It looked like a mayonnaise jar. When lit from underneath, TJ saw something in it. Did the guy have a jar of tequila? That would explain a lot, as it was the only drink he could think of that would have a worm in it. TJ stood, wobbling. He’d thunked his head on the road, but not hard. He rubbed at it as he took a step towards his bike to pick it up. The gas cap didn’t stay on too well, and he wanted to get it up before the spilled gas got on the paint, but the man took a step towards him.

No, TJ thought, in answer to his own question. This man was not okay. Without even meaning to, he took a step back.

Uneasiness washed over him, dulling the pain in his hip and side. The man was so silent, so precise, yet something about the way he peered past TJ into the night unnerved him, made him turn too, looking for whatever the man thought was out there. The night felt warm, but now that he was off the bike, he caught a chill, a goose walking over his grave.

No way he’d let some drunk city fellow scare him off from his own bike. He took another step forward, and the man did too. Now they were nose to nose. TJ opened his mouth to speak, but the man reached out, faster than TJ could prepare for, and grabbed his chin. Two of the man’s fingers were in his mouth and he could taste them, salty like skin, but there was also a formaldehyde under-taste to them. He stumbled back and started to fall, but the guy held him by the chin and TJ dropped down to his knees. He swung at the guy, hitting the cloth of his jacket, but the angle was wrong, and he swatted like a girl. He swung again; he wanted the man’s fucking hand out of his fucking mouth. He gagged and tears sprang up in his eyes.

The lid was off the jar, and the man poured it at TJ’s face, mostly hitting his open mouth, but also gushing into his nose, down his chin, up into his eyes. It tasted like nail polish remover, like acetone. He screamed, but it came out as a gurgle.

It wasn’t tequila, but there was a worm, and it was in his mouth now. The man had moved around behind him, gotten both of his arms, held them back there and kept his head pulled back because now the hand on his chin was gone.

The thing in his mouth was longer than his tongue, about half as wide, and it was alive, because it was moving, plunging towards the back of his throat, blocking up the airway, Jesus Christ he couldn’t breathe! It was soft and hard all at the same time, expanding and contracting, not down his throat but up into his sinuses. He gagged, his airways were suddenly clear and he sucked in the sweet spring air, but he could feel it up behind his nose, like a pisser of an allergy attack, but one that moved and squirmed and settled itself in like it was getting comfortable.

Tears streamed from TJ’s eyes as he dropped onto his shredded butt, and when he pleaded with the man to get it out, his voice sounded high and nasal.

The man let him go, stepped back and wiped his hands on his jeans. The city boy patted TJ’s head, like he was a dog or something, and then took off. TJ turned, slow and stupid, in the direction the man ran to. His head feeling like it weighed a million pounds. Was there something out there? The light from the bike made it seem so dark everywhere else.

TJ sat, focusing on breathing. It was okay, he was okay.

And then darkness.

4

With a pulsing drone, Val woke from a white dream with the empty click of Rich’s shotgun echoing in his ears. It took a moment for him to gather his bearings. All he could remember from the dream was the color white, vague looming beings backlit by a light so bright they were reduced to long vertical shapes. His pulse raced, blood pounding in his ears.
White
. He sat up in the darkness and took a mental inventory. This wasn’t his cell, the air was much too fresh here, filled with quiet night sounds like birds and wind whistling through rocky outcroppings and rustling the scrub brush. The hum he’d carried with him all evening was stronger here, like sitting too close to the speakers at a rock show…but without the actual volume. All low-end, and nothing else. After the white of the dream, the night’s darkness was absolute, and it took Val another moment to realize he wasn’t indoors anywhere, but out on a grassy plain in the shadow of a pinyon pine. He closed his eyes, half hoping he’d wake up in his own bed, letting his eyes adjust to the night. When he opened them again it didn’t seem quite so black, but the half moon was obscured behind scrolling tendrils of dark clouds.

It was like being inside a subwoofer, padded and muffled. Almost loud, but not.

He sat for a moment, trying to acclimate himself to the vibrations that buffeted him. When he looked down he saw dark blood on his hand, and saw a long scratch. He stood up—the pressure of the hum made it hard to move—and noticed he was only wearing his boxers, what he’d gone to sleep in. They were white, and he’d touched them at some point with his bloody hand, leaving a streaky palm print. Val shivered in the dark. The desert got cold at night. So, now to figure out where the hell he was and how he’d gotten here. Ignore the hum, just ignore the hum. It permeated him, rattled his fillings like chewing on tinfoil. He’d sleepwalked before, but only in his jail cell, and hadn’t gotten far in an eight by eight room. It was one of those things he assumed he would be done with now he was free.

It had been a long while since he’d been out here in this brush, but it came back to him. He was off his mother’s property, this had been a goat farm when he was in high school, but he didn’t see any goats here now. SR-719 was somewhere over a little rocky outcropping to Val’s left, and he could follow it home from there. He stretched in the dark, his joints popping in all the right places, and he made his way towards the dirt road. His hand hurt, now that he’d noticed the cut, though it didn’t look too deep. He started to hum to himself, but it blended with the reverberating sound, so he whistled instead. He didn’t like the un-empowered feeling that came from sleepwalking, but he was outdoors, there was no one watching him. He was a free man.

Walking past the dark truck and the nasty yellow Daytona, he noticed the windows of the mobile home were lit up. God, he hated that thing. He hoped Kate wasn’t out looking for him, since that would mean he’d have to go looking for her, and there wasn’t a lot around here that made for a landmark. There were snakes and abandoned mines. He glanced at his hand as he pushed open the trailer door. It would look much better with all the blood rinsed off. A long scratch, really.

Kate sat at the Formica counter. She glowered at him over a cup of tea. It pained him to think how old any tea found in this house might be.

“Where have you—” her expression softened as she saw the blood. “What happened to your hand?”

He shrugged, went to the sink and ran it under cold water. “Just a scratch.”

“Where were you?”

She came to his side and touched his neck, tracking the long black tribal design that wove from behind his right ear down his arm to his right elbow. He shivered at her touch, remembering and enjoying it, and noticed the hum was softer, back to the level where it had been.

“I was walking, I guess. The hum was so intense when I woke up. It’s quieter now. Though loud and quiet aren’t really the right words to describe it.”

“Sleepwalking?” she asked. He nodded and shrugged again, drying his hand with a towel. Kate stood before him, wearing only a diminutive pair of black panties and a tank top. He’d learned earlier in the night that her eyebrows weren’t all she’d had waxed.

“Put some pants on if you want me to have a serious conversation.”

The hum washed over him, less, but still there. Couldn’t it go away? He rubbed at his temples, tried to focus on the way the little black strings on Kate’s underwear sat on her hips. If she turned around, he’d see his name there, in flowery cursive script.

“Sleep now?” he asked.

“Are you going to stay put? Do I need to chain you up?”

“You could, I guess. Don’t you think it’s a little soon for that kind of humor?”

She looked at him, startled for a second. “I meant it in more of a sexy way…” she said, before realizing he was joking and pantomiming throwing her mug at him. “Fuck you.”

“As you wish,” he said with a bow, and followed her back to bed.

5

With each step the jar in Felix’s pocket slapped his hip. Of course it had failed. It seemed like a good idea at the time, using the guy who was already pissed at Val, but he was too close. The creature had been hungry, freshly bonded, and out for blood. Felix hadn’t even waited around to see if it had taken properly. It didn’t matter. It was a waste of a Beta, yes, but soon that wouldn’t matter. He’d gotten where he was by thinking things through, not making rash decisions. It was just…he was so close.

Felix forced the familiar thoughts of what could be out of his mind and went back to the task at hand. He strolled the dark dirt roads of the Lincoln National Forest South Entrance Campground. He needed something for surveillance, preferably a human. A dog might not be a bad idea, it might be able to outrun the monster. But a human could cover greater distances and blend in better.

With the monster around, Felix wasn’t about to send one of the Alpha soldiers in. A Beta would do for this mission, probably would wind up as cannon fodder. Monster fodder was more like it, though once that thing got through with people they wished it had been a cannon.

Felix lingered near the outhouse, not relishing the stink of excrement. Humans were disgusting. So much waste. Breath, shit, sweat, piss, tears…they leaked
something
from every possible spot at every opportunity. In the quiet warm night Felix heard the zipper of a tent. They were headed for the outhouse for sure. He needed to use it, too, but it could wait. When he had his own body, this wouldn’t be an issue. Stars blanketed the sky. Felix had long ago given up looking for home.

He stayed in the shadows, letting the human use the outhouse. Better to let it void first. He caught his first glimpse of the human as it stepped out of the outhouse and let the wooden door slam shut behind it. It was a male, a large one. It turned away from Felix, swinging its flashlight, lighting up crazy swatches of the spring desert.

Felix sprinted and tackled the human from behind. “Hey!” it exclaimed, before it fell, catching itself with its hands. The dirt road scraped its hands, and Felix could smell the blood. He kept himself on the human’s back, pinning its arms beneath it.

“What the fuck’re you doing?”

It thrashed under him. It was good, knew how to move its body. But Felix was better. He threw the bottle at the ground by the thrashing human’s face. His Beta would find its way.

“What’s that?” The thrashing intensified, Felix knew the Beta was making its way towards the human’s mouth. If it couldn’t get in that way, it could use the nose. Humans were easy because they couldn’t close their noses. Not if their hands were bound. Felix covered the human with his body, stilling some of the writhing. “What the hell?” It was sweating profusely, sending of waves of stink and fear.

The human’s words degraded into inarticulate sounds, squealing and grunting. Felix hazarded a glance at it, and saw the Beta filling one of its nostrils, the thin skin stretching and plumping, then dropping back to nothing.

Felix let go of the human’s hands and stepped back. He knew, from experience, it would only be focused on getting the Beta out of its head. As predicted, it pawed at its face. It didn’t break the skin, but left red welts. Felix watched, feeling the earth under his shoes, wishing the legs and arms were his own.
Soon
.

When the human stopped thrashing, Felix knew the Beta had taken hold.

“How are you feeling?” he asked; voice devoid of interest. The monster took his last Beta, it would take this one, and the next one, but it would also provide a beacon to Val’s whereabouts. In some ways, it was a good thing.

“I feel…I have a headache,” said the Beta.

Felix nodded. “Yup. Val Slade’s your man, keep an eye on him. If you can do it without him seeing you, great, if he sees you once or twice, fine. Don’t let him know he’s being followed.”

The Beta looked confused. It was still inhabiting its new host body, still fusing synapses, making connections with the nerves.

“You got me?” Felix asked.

It nodded but was confused and sluggish.

The Betas didn’t blend as well as the Alphas. They could never pass; never fully integrate into the host’s society. That was fine, they didn’t need to. They were lucky.

“Val Slade.”

“I understand. License plate number AU407, address 14149 SR-179, Lott, New Mexico, 87203. No known telephone—“

“Yup, you got it—“

“—number or email address.”

“That’s him. Good luck,” Felix said, walking back to his car. When he’d first come to earth he thought their cars were ridiculous. He didn’t like them, thought burning gasoline was a stupid way to get around, stinking and inefficient. But it grew on him. Mostly amused him, as he learned how the humans were so passionate about their cars. Funny.

The engine roared to life. Felix looked in the rearview mirror. The Beta stood in the middle of the dirt road, looking confused. This one, Felix predicted, wouldn’t last long.