AfterLife (19 page)

The thought was frightening. Wes didn’t know how dangerous
the Atumra was, but if their philosophies were as negative as he had been led
to believe, their ability to look into every aspect of antemort society was a
scary concept. Anne Marie told him Jezebel had been sent to recruit him. Is
this how they’d done it? Had Jez known everything about him before he’d even
met her? Had she known he’d become a Mortui? It was more than possible, it was
the most probable explanation. Since becoming a Mortui was genetic, how would
they have known he would become a Mortui unless they had access to his DNA? Ken
was right. They did have as much access as AfterLife did. Wes began to see the
extent of the threat the Atumra posed and the difficulties involved in tracking
the movements of an organization that might have the same technological
advances – and didn’t want to be tracked.

Oscar began talking louder into the microphone. His voice
was stressed, and he was rolling his chair back and forth between computer
screens. “I got jour location,” Oscar said into his headset. “I es tracking jou
with satellite. Jou have the antemort in jour car?”

Ken stopped his tour of Ops and rolled his stool over behind
Oscar. “Can I assist you with this one Mr. Oscar?”

“Please,” Oscar said, pointing to a headset sitting on the
counter. “Es a headset. Join in.”

Ken picked up the headset and put it on. “Aimee, Daemon, how
are you? This is Ken Sato here helping Oscar.” There was silence as Ken nodded
his head and listened to the voices through his headset. “I understand,” Ken
said, “and what information do you need?” There was a pause as he listened.
“That I can get.” He rolled over to one of the sets of screens and started
typing on a keyboard on the counter below them. The screens flashed between
different databases as he input information in the system. “How far behind you
are they?” A pause and then, “Do they know you know they’re following you yet?”
Another pause. “Well, that is fortunate, quite fortunate. You may be able to
save this one if you can somehow get away from them.”

The room was filled with tension as Ken and Oscar worked
feverishly on the information system and kept up a running dialogue Wes could
only hear half of. He remembered meeting Aimee and Daemon and wondered what
kind of help they needed. They were obviously being pursued by some of Atumra’s
soldiers. He remembered they were stationed in St. Louis, and by the look of
the images on the screens above Oscar’s head, they must still be there.
Whatever the situation was, they needed information fast.

Ken stopped typing. “The antemort, or Kyle, is genetically
inclined to become a Mortui so it doesn’t look like they are interested in him
as a candidate for possession. They must be trying to recruit him. You must
definitely try to shake them. The last thing we want is for them to end his
life and add him to their ranks.” Ken started typing again.

“Stay on the 270,” Oscar said. “See if jou can maneuver
around some of the vehicles to lose them. Try not to let them know, but if you
can pick up the speed a bit, in a few miles traffic picks up and there es a big
truck with a windmill blade on it. Oversized load truck. Es may be good place
to hide ’till jou can get to that exit jou need.”

“That would be a good idea,” Ken said, looking over his
shoulder at the monitors above Oscar’s head. One showed a map of the freeways
and traffic around St. Louis while another showed a satellite image of Daemon
and Aimee’s car, a simple four-door black sedan. They were on a busy six-lane
freeway close to the heart of St. Louis with a cement divider in the median
separating their three lanes from the three lanes being utilized by oncoming
traffic. Ken pointed out the car the Atumra soldiers were driving, a white
sports car about a quarter of a mile behind Daemon and Aimee and closing fast.
“Be careful. I checked the vehicle’s registration and I don’t believe it
belongs to Atumra, so I’m sure they won’t be opposed to abandoning or damaging
it.”

Wes could see the oversized load truck on one of the screens
with the giant wind turbine blade strapped to its bed. It was in the far right
lane, and because it wasn’t moving as fast as the rest of the traffic, it was
causing a slight bottleneck on the freeway. He wondered what Daemon and Aimee
had told the antemort to get him to go with them. It was possible they knew him
from the life they were living in St. Louis. It was reasonable to believe that
Daemon and Aimee’s passenger didn’t even realize he was such a hot commodity.
Wes remembered the last time he had seen them at the Hub and they were told to
get their new orders from Oscar. Was it to protect this antemort?

Oscar spoke into the headset. “They must be noticing they
might lose jou in the traffic, they es speeding up.”

“Yes,” Ken said, “I only hope you can make it past that big
truck before they catch up.”

The three men in Ops stared at the screens and watched the
black car weave in and out of traffic as it attempted to lose the white sports
car, but this became harder to do as the congestion on the road increased. If
they could just make it past the truck and get lost in the traffic, they should
be able to break away from the Atumra car following them. Finally, they
maneuvered the car next to the truck and then slowed as traffic became too
dense to do any more passing. The Atumra car was behind them, traffic was
bumper-to-bumper in all three lanes, and for a second it appeared they might be
safe. Suddenly, and without warning, the car driven by the Atumra soldiers
pulled onto the shoulder on the right side of the freeway and sped up until it
was even with the truck.

Ken, Oscar, and Wes watched in amazement and horror at what
was unfolding on the screen. Even though the quality of the satellite footage
wasn’t very clear, Wes could see the car, still on the shoulder, pull a little
ahead of the truck. He could clearly see a window open and watched as the
driver threw a small object that bounced on the road in front of the large
semi; then the sports car sped ahead. Oscar screamed a warning into the headset
as the object hit the front right side of the semi-truck, exploding and
igniting the truck in flames.

Swerving away from the blast, the truck smashed into the
packed lanes of traffic, ramming a number of cars including the black sedan
that was pushed backward. As the truck veered, the tires that were now in
flames burst, and the truck, windmill blade and all, rolled onto its side
cutting across all three lanes of traffic and scattering vehicles as if they
were matchbox cars. A handful of vehicles ran into the truck and traffic
quickly began to congest around it. In the middle of it all, just a few cars
back from where the truck had rolled, sat the black sedan, its front end
smashed. The scene of devastation they were viewing was horrific.

With no other cars in its way, the white sports car doubled
back on the now empty road and stopped just short of where the truck lay on its
side. Two people got out of the car and walked around the small space between
the flaming semi and the concrete wall in the median. Climbing through the
wreckage of scattered and burning cars piled up around and behind the fallen
truck, and completely ignoring the hurt and injured around them, the two
soldiers made their way to the black sedan.

“Daemon,” Ken said into the headset, “are you okay? Can you
hear me? They’re making their way to your car. Are the three of you able to get
out?” There was a slight pause as Ken listened. “What about Aimee? … The whole
dashboard? … The antemort, how is he? … How much blood? … Still breathing? …
Well that’s good.”

Watching the monitor as if transfixed, Wes wasn’t sure what
was going on inside the car, but by the tone of Ken’s voice he knew it wasn’t
good. Helplessly they watched as the two soldiers made their way to the car.
One pulled something out of a pocket and shot out the back window. They pulled
a figure from the back seat through the broken window. He must have been
unconscious because one of the soldiers slung him over his shoulder and they
made their way back to the white car and left the scene of the accident. Wes
knew these soldiers didn’t really care if he was alive or dead. If he was still
alive now, he wouldn’t be for long.

“Well, what can jou do?” Oscar rolled his chair over to
another computer and began working at its console. “No, es not jour fault,” he
said quietly into his headset.

“You both did extremely well,” Ken said to Daemon and Aimee.
“Medical crews are already dispatched so they’ll help you out of the car. It
will be difficult to get out of there on your own; you’d better go to the
hospital with the emergency crews. We’ll monitor which hospital they take you
to and Oscar will notify one of our nurses to be on the lookout for you.” Ken
took off his headset and placed it down on the counter and turned to Wes as
Oscar continued communicating with someone on his headset. “Both Daemon and
Aimee’s bodies were badly damaged and will need to be repaired.” His voice was
quiet, and his disappointment evident. Turning to Oscar he continued, “Did you
see where the white car went?”

“No.” Oscar sounded as discouraged as Ken. “They weren’t in
the car when backup arrived. They got away somehow.”

Wes looked across all the computer screens in the room. With
all this technology, how could they vanish so completely in such a short time?
There had to be a way to find them. How could they help antemorts if they
couldn’t even track the Atumra’s movements?

“We are still not experts,” Ken stated as if reading Wes’s
thoughts. He resumed his place next to Wes. “The whole anti-Atumra concept is
still quite new to all of us.”

“So they have a new soldier,” Wes said flatly.

“That they do, Mr. Wes. That they do.” Ken stood up and
motioned for Wes to follow him. They walked out of Ops and started down the
corridor toward the parking garage. “After training, you shall also receive
communication equipment. Hopefully all your pursuits will end more favorably.”

They didn’t spend much more time at the Hub and little was
said during their drive back to Charleston. Wes contemplated their activities
of the past few hours as Ken fought to keep the old Volkswagen on the road, and
thought about how he’d watched as another person’s life was taken. He hadn’t
seen the Atumra Mortuis suck the life from the antemort to make him one of
them, but he knew that was the inevitable conclusion of today’s events. AfterLife
recruited after death. The Atumra was recruiting healthy people in the prime of
life, and their methods were ruthless. Obviously, they wouldn’t let anyone or
anything get in their way. At this moment, Wes made it a goal to find a way to
keep them from getting any recruits on his watch. If he’d had any doubts
before, Wes now knew exactly how dangerous the Atumra was.

S
eth waited as
the blond boy, probably in his early 20s, fiddled with his keys in an attempt
to unlock his apartment door. He had plenty of time for what he planned to
accomplish, and the boy’s ignorance of his impending death was humorous. After
a couple attempts, the boy leaned against the doorframe, laughed a little,
looked at Seth with a nervous smile, and then returned to his struggle with the
aged lock.

Seth reached out and rubbed the boy's back in encouragement
since the only thing that stood between him and his prey’s energizing life
force was an improperly maintained door lock. The anticipation of the rush he
would receive from the feeding was almost as intoxicating as the feeding
itself. After another minute of fidgeting, the lock gave and the door opened.
“Come on in,” the boy said and stepped into the unlit living room on the other
side of the threshold. Seth followed him inside.

After entering, the boy switched on a low watt overhead lamp
that hardly added any light to the room. The apartment was cluttered and the
boy fluttered around, switching on a small stereo and trying to quickly clear up
some of the mess to make room for them to sit. Seth walked over and sat down on
the worn fabric of the newly cleared couch.

The boy kept nervously moving around trying to make things
look presentable but none of it mattered. In a few minutes he would be dead.
Seth didn’t know anything about the boy except that he was easy prey – no doubt
lonely and looking for companionship. His own good looks and aura of
sophistication enabled Seth to easily pick him up at a club a few blocks away,
and after buying the boy a couple of drinks, Seth asked where he lived. There
was no evidence of hesitation or suspicion on the boy’s part; he’d led Seth out
of the club straight to his home and his own demise. He was a perfect example
of why antemorts were weaker; they were usually the cause of their own
destruction.

A CTA train passed by outside the apartment window and the
sparks the train’s wheels made on the tracks emitted flashes of light, which
caused a strobe effect inside the apartment and added to the shadows caused by
the dim bulb. The boy finished with his preparations and timidly sat down next
to Seth on the couch.

“Sorry about that,” the boy said as he settled in beside
Seth. “I wasn’t expecting company tonight.”

“What were you expecting?” Seth smiled at the boy and lifted
an eyebrow.

“Nothing I guess, I have a pretty boring life. Not much
going on.”

“Then I should help you out with that,” Seth said as he
leaned in toward the boy. “We should make the boring go away.” The boy closed
his eyes preparing for a kiss that would never come. Seth lifted his finger to
the boy’s lips and pressed it against them, triggering the boy to open his
eyes. Seth looked in them and synced.

This boy was filled with life and Seth could sense the
energy flowing between them. Images of the boy’s life came with the life force,
and the boy had been correct in saying he had a pretty boring life. Antemorts
rarely lived exciting lives, at least by Seth’s standards – he really was doing
the boy a favor by ending it now. Seth finished feeding and the boy’s lifeless
body fell into his lap. He shoved the body off him and it flopped to the floor
with a thud. He kicked it off his feet and out of his way so he could stand up.